When Someone Decides What You Will Be Called: Name Control as a Tactic of Abuse
Your name is one of the first things you learn belongs to you. That is exactly why controlling it can carry so much power. Sometimes an abusive person doesn’t merely…
Your name is one of the first things you learn belongs to you. That is exactly why controlling it can carry so much power. Sometimes an abusive person doesn’t merely…
Some people try to control women by frightening us. Others discover they can control a room by humiliating us. Humiliation can look like “joking,” teasing, embarrassing you in public, exposing…
“America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity.” ~ Shirley Chisholm There is…
There’s something deeply dangerous about how we’re taught to think about harm—and especially about the people who cause it. We’re told:“If someone was really that bad, wouldn’t we know?”“If they…
[WeSurviveAbuse.com] Some men don’t fear the harm they cause.They fear the moment a woman finally says,“You will not harm me anymore.” This is perpetrator fragility—when a man responds to being…
Some truths are not too complex to understand—they’re just too inconvenient to admit. Even toddlers can identify patterns. I once babysat a precious little girl who would simply run up…
Survivors often face: the coercion to disappear inside someone else’s reflection. Some people weren’t looking for love.They were looking for someone to become them.To abandon their own voice.To live in…
It is not women who are being exclusionary when we protect our spaces.It is not women who are the barrier to real, lasting change. When people refuse to recognize that…
Trust is not a gift.Trust is built.Earned.Sustained through action, protection, and accountability. But what happens when a society builds its laws, culture, and institutions to shield, excuse, and uplift harmful…
Sometimes Survivors speak in whispers.Sometimes in long pauses, in shaking hands, in misplaced laughter.Sometimes… not at all. But let me tell you something that experience and sacred witness have taught…