We cannot keep living in a world where every tool meant to protect women and girls gets dragged into a tug of war.On one end, new ideas are
We cannot keep living in a world where every tool meant to protect women and girls gets dragged into a tug of war.
On one end, new ideas are twisted and stretched until they are no longer about women at all, quietly redirected to benefit men who present as harmless, progressive, or kind, but who are ultimately waiting to feed on women’s labor, safety, and gains.
On the other end, those same ideas are burned to the ground by alliances with men who have never wanted equality, never wanted shared prosperity, and certainly never wanted women, disabled women, poor women, elder women, or girls who do not look like them to rise.
And in the middle?
Women and girls.
Disabled.
Elderly.
College-aged.
Poor.
First-generation students.
The oldest daughters.
The quiet caretakers.
The ones holding families together with tired hands.
Still waiting to be served.
Still paying the price.
We keep introducing concepts meant to protect, lift, and celebrate them.
And then we watch those concepts get devoured from both sides.
That is not progress.
That is not justice.
That is not solidarity.
That is displacement.
Take the word and concept of “inclusion”. There’s nothing wrong with this word or concept. GenX and Boomer women have no excuse to get this one wrong.
You tell the men to create their own spaces just like we did when we were kids. “Nice try, but no. Do your own work.“
But then, some women on the other end go further and suddenly pretend that the word “inclusion” will not benefit the older women in their circle, the young girls, their kids, and their friends. Hell, we are the older women!! So much is being lost.
And because we can’t work together we get less. Great now we all have nothing. Together.
You will get your likes, your follows, applause, and your speaking engagements but at the end of the day…the women still are women.
Other cultures and women’s movements have handled this with more maturity. They kept the principle of inclusion while refusing its misuse. They understood that protecting women’s safety does not require erasing a word. It requires drawing intelligent boundaries.
Women of all ages and backgrounds are tired of being the ground everyone stands on while arguing.
We are allowed to say this plainly:
Stop projecting political hatred onto other women.
Stop using women’s lives as bargaining chips.
Stop calling betrayal “strategy.”
Stop calling exploitation “unity.”
As women, we can all believe in boundaries, guarding, discernment, wellness, and healing
But more than anything, we believe in work.
Real work.
Showing up.
Teaching.
Mentoring.
Building.
Moving resources.
Standing beside one another when it costs something.
Protecting women when it is inconvenient.
Measuring progress by who is safer, who is stronger, who is less alone.
Not by who won the argument.
Not by who controlled the language.
Not by who sounded righteous.
Women do not need more words to fight over.
We need protection that holds.
We need communities that serve.
We need movements that remember who they were built for.
It is time to put women and girls back at the center.
Not as symbols.
As lives. Living human beings.
As sacred responsibility.
As the true measure of our work.
Healthy movements do this:
- Keep the value
- Refuse harmful interpretations
- Separate principle from practice
- Protect the vulnerable without apologizing
Unhealthy movements do this:
- Collapse complexity
- Turn words into loyalty tests
- Treat boundaries as betrayal
What our questions can look like going forward:
- “Does this actually protect women in real life?”
- Does it work?
- Does it keep harmony?
- Does it keep people, especially women and girls, safe?
- Does it let the group function?
Affirmations for Women Who Choose Work Over Noise
- I measure progress by who is safer, not by who is louder.
- I refuse to let women’s lives become the battlefield for other people’s wars.
- I do not confuse clever language with real protection.
- I choose to build what actually holds women, not what only sounds good.
- I see when women are being used as bridges for causes that will not carry us across.
- I honor boundaries as a form of love, not exclusion.
- I withdraw my energy from arguments that leave women unprotected.
- I do not offer women and girls as sacrifices to anyone’s ideology.
- I recognize when “unity” is being used to disguise extraction.
- I stand with disabled women, elder women, poor women, girls, first-generation daughters, and quiet caretakers as a matter of principle, not convenience.
- I do not allow my compassion to be converted into access to women’s bodies, labor, or futures.
- I trust my ability to tell the difference between shared humanity and strategic harm.
- I choose discernment even when it makes me unpopular.
- I invest in teaching, mentoring, guarding, and showing up.
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