Feminism Isn’t About Hating Men. It’s About Asking Why Women and Girls Keep Paying for Men’s Violence

Let's talk about the girls no one gives any energy to.Protecting women does not require fearing men. It requires refusing to make women responsibl

Let’s talk about the girls no one gives any energy to.

Protecting women does not require fearing men. It requires refusing to make women responsible for managing dangerous ones. Feminism asks us to notice not only who possesses power, but who is expected to absorb the consequences when that power is abused.

“Not all men” misses the entire point.

So do “Not a this man” and “Not a that man.”

The point is the system and how it protects certain men. And ALWAYS men. The male people.

Let’s look at Drew Peterson.

Drew Peterson was a police sergeant in his late 40s when he became involved with Stacy, whom her sister said was just 16 when they met. He had authority. A badge. A career. A wife.

Years later, Stacy disappeared at 23.

Peterson was never charged in her disappearance. He was eventually convicted of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Now look at what can happen on the other side of the system. Because like now, some institutions become very interested in a girl’s choices only after spending years uninterested in what was being done to her.

When we recognize a child’s danger only after she does something desperate to escape it, protection has arrived far too late.

Chrystul Kizer was 17 when she killed the 34-year-old man she said had sexually abused and trafficked her. Allegedly for two years. A girl. She was prosecuted and ultimately sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Cyntoia Brown-Long was 16, being exploited in commercial sex, when she killed a 43-year-old man she said she feared. She was prosecuted as an adult, sentenced to life, and spent about 15 years incarcerated before receiving clemency.

Sara Kruzan was abused and trafficked beginning in childhood. At 16, she killed the man who trafficked her.

She was sentenced to life without parole.

Survival can look disorderly from the safety of a courtroom, a classroom, or a comfortable home. There is something terribly backwards about demanding perfect judgment from a frightened child while making endless excuses for the adult who frightened her.

When a powerful adult receives the benefit of every doubt while a vulnerable child carries the burden of every proof, neutrality has already chosen a side. And beneath this is the unsaid. That the access to and ravaging of her body by a male was “no big deal.”

A society reveals its values twice: by whom it protects from danger, and by whom it punishes after danger arrives. Our system. The system here in the United States of America still punishes girls who are trafficked for self-defense.

The most important intervention is the one that happens before survival requires desperation.

So when women talk about the danger men can pose, answering “not all men” does not address what they are saying. We don’t give a damn that it was “not this type of man” or “not that type of man.”

Of course not all men harm women. But at least ask yourself, “Why is this person or group covering for male harm?”

The question is what happens when women and girls encounter the ones who do.

Who notices the warning signs?

Who believes the girl?

Who investigates the man?

Who gets the benefit of the doubt?

Whose fear is considered reasonable?

Who is allowed years of excuses—and who gets judged by the worst few seconds of her attempt to survive?

We should be deeply troubled by any system capable of overlooking girls while they are being harmed, then discovering its full power when one of those girls fights back.

Believe children, and that includes girls, enough to investigate. Protect them enough to act. Respect them enough to remember that childhood should not be a test of endurance.

That is the conversation.

Power.
Protection.
Credibility.
Accountability.

Often follows males. Maleness is portable.

And the terrible distance that can exist between the protection a girl needed and the punishment she eventually received.

Listen carefully when women describe a pattern. A pattern does not disappear just because you can name an exception.

Accountability asks what happened. Justice also asks what had been happening for years.

May we build a world that does not require girls to become evidence before we decide they were worth protecting. We will know we have built something better when girls no longer need extraordinary courage to receive ordinary protection.

In 2025 alone, more than 177,000 missing-person records were entered for girls under 18 in the United States. Many were found. Some children were reported missing more than once. But every entry represents a moment when a girl’s whereabouts—and potentially her safety—were unknown.

And there is a deeper story hiding inside those numbers: 75,875 of those 2025 entries involved Black girls, even though Black girls make up a much smaller share of the U.S. girl population.

Sources / Citations

FBI — National Crime Information Center (NCIC). 2025 NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, 2026. The report records 177,350 female missing-person entries for ages 0–17 in 2025: 2,839 Asian, 75,875 Black, 3,822 American Indian/Alaska Native, 5,650 race unknown, and 89,164 White. These are entries during the year, not the number of girls who remained missing at year-end, and the same individual can generate more than one entry.
FBI 2025 NCIC Missing Person Statistics

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Our Impact: 2025. NCMEC reports that it supported 32,167 missing-child cases in 2025, with 29,013 resolved and 3,154 still active. NCMEC also reports that 92% of the missing-child cases it handled involved children who had run away.
NCMEC 2025 Impact Data

NCMEC — Child Sex Trafficking Data. Among missing children reported to NCMEC in 2025, 1 in 7 were considered likely victims of child sex trafficking. Among the likely trafficking victims in NCMEC’s data, 92% were female and 84% were ages 15–17.

And we cannot talk about missing girls in America without naming Indigenous girls.

In 2025, the FBI recorded:

• 75,875 missing-person entries involving Black girls under 18
• 3,822 involving American Indian/Alaska Native girls under 18

These numbers represent missing-person entries, not necessarily unique children, because a child can be reported missing more than once.

But behind every entry was a moment when a girl was gone.

A family was looking.

Someone did not know whether she was safe.

Black girls matter.

Indigenous girls matter.

Girls who run away matter.

Girls in foster care matter.

Girls being trafficked matter.