Interesting fact: Before his murders were discovered, Bundy did volunteer at a suicide crisis hotline in Seattle called the Seattle Crisis Clinic in
Interesting fact:
Before his murders were discovered, Bundy did volunteer at a suicide crisis hotline in Seattle called the Seattle Crisis Clinic in 1971. The work involved speaking with people experiencing emotional distress, including suicidal thoughts. He was reportedly considered a competent volunteer and received training in crisis counseling.
He also became involved in crime prevention and victim advocacy efforts during his time in Washington state. While studying at the University of Washington, Bundy co-authored a booklet with another student called “The Rape Prevention Handbook” (1974). The pamphlet offered safety advice for women, such as awareness of surroundings and precautions against assault. Safety advice. Ted Bundy was a serial killer.
Part of his ruse was appearing empathetic and being near people in crisis.
Many abusive people do not present themselves as dangerous. Some deliberately cultivate reputations as helpers, protectors, leaders, or advocates because trust creates access.
Bundy’s case is often discussed in training about “the trusted offender” or “the wolf in the shepherd’s clothing” phenomenon: people who exploit positions of credibility.
Q: Someone on social media asked this question: So Beira’s place would welcome a woman who looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson but not a man who looks like Ariana Grande. (So now you know that it was a man because many men’s only gateway and connection to women is through appearance. Very manly thing to do. Whittle everything down to height, weight, age, ability, and size when determining which women get the right to safety and privacy.)
As a facilitator: YES. YES. YES.
Support groups and other healing spaces aren’t about what you look like. Women come to women’s support group with their women’s needs. Very female-centered.
Support groups aren’t about what you look like. They’re about what you’ve lived through. When women come together, it isn’t only that something horrific happened to her but also what society expects of her now that she has survived. Society expects her to move on, forgive, and minimize how she feels.
It came to my attention years ago that a shelter was being managed and facilitated by a man. I wasn’t stunned to learn that he was having victims to “reframe their trauma” when they spoke about the impact of male violence on their lives.
It’s something that happens when you are in the wrong space. Someone wants to “correct” you back into their comfort level.
People often say, “Why should women have sex-based support spaces?”
Here’s a better question: What is the purpose of a support group?
A support group isn’t designed to reflect the diversity of the outside world. It’s designed to meet a specific need.
A cancer support group isn’t about excluding healthy people.
An addiction group isn’t about excluding people who don’t drink.
A bereavement group isn’t about excluding people whose parents are still alive.
The boundary exists because the shared experience is the need for healing and therapy.
The same principle applies to women recovering from male violence.
A female-only support space isn’t about appearances or judging anyone’s identity. It’s about creating the conditions in which Survivors can feel safe enough to speak honestly.
The women attending are not there to make a political statement. They’re there because something happened to them.
After rape, domestic abuse, or sexual exploitation, some women need the certainty that everyone in the room is female. That isn’t hatred. It isn’t prejudice. It isn’t exclusion for its own sake.
It’s a therapeutic boundary.
Support groups work because people don’t have to explain some aspects of the very experience that brought them there. They are there to talk about the real-life conditions that may have exacerbated their wound. They are there because they want a safe place to lay down their burdens. They are there to do the work of healing.
Healing begins when survivors no longer have to negotiate the conditions that make them feel safe.
- Every support space has boundaries. The purpose of a support group is not to mirror the outside world—it’s to create the conditions people need to heal.
- Boundaries aren’t discrimination. We don’t call bereavement groups discriminatory because they’re for grieving parents, or addiction groups exclusionary because they’re for people in recovery. The boundary serves the purpose.
- Women’s trauma is often sex-specific. Many women seeking help after rape, domestic abuse, prostitution, or sexual exploitation were harmed by male bodies. That reality matters in trauma recovery.
- Safety isn’t just physical—it’s psychological. Healing requires an environment where survivors can exhale, lower their guard, and speak freely without explaining why they need those conditions.
- Sex-based spaces remove an unfair burden. A woman shouldn’t have to disclose the details of her trauma or negotiate her boundaries just to receive support.
- Choice is the real goal. Inclusive services can exist alongside female-only services. Supporting one does not require eliminating the other.
- Not every space has to be for everyone. Society already recognizes this principle in countless settings. The question isn’t whether a boundary exists, but whether it serves a legitimate purpose.
- Women’s privacy deserves respect. Conversations about rape, pregnancy, menstruation, reproductive injury, or intimate violence often require a level of privacy that many women can only find among other women.
- Compassion doesn’t require erasing differences. Respecting one group’s dignity should never require another vulnerable group to give up the very conditions that make healing possible.
- A civilized society protects the most vulnerable. Female-only trauma services don’t exist to exclude. They exist so that women whose boundaries have already been violated can finally enter a room where those boundaries are respected.
The purpose of a women’s support space is not to recreate the world as it is. It is to create, however briefly, the world a Survivor needs in order to begin healing.
It is 2026. We are still having to explain this. Meanwhile, males aren’t setting up their own “inclusive” support groups to heal themselves. Women are still being tasked with doing the lion’s share of planning, nurturing and healing.
Let women heal in peace.