We use clear language about women and girls because abuse prevention, sexual violence advocacy, privacy, boundaries, medical realities, caregiving, exploitation, and recovery often require clear language. We also recognize that women and girls are not a single story. Race, culture, disability, age, class, immigration status, faith, sexuality, and history shape how harm is experienced and how healing support must be offered.

We Survive Abuse refuses to submit to any part of male culture that self-exempts from the problem.

The part that insists it is “not like those men,” while forbidding women and girls to speak plainly about male violence.

The part that says it is innocent because it did not personally commit the harm, yet does little to stop the conditions that make the harm common, predictable, and survivable only at great cost to women and children.

We strongly reject the idea that men get to decide when women’s testimony becomes too uncomfortable, too divisive, too angry, too public, or too inconvenient.

If a culture benefits from women’s silence, dismisses girls’ warnings, protects men’s reputations before women’s safety, and refuses to confront male violence because it has declared itself “not part of the problem,” then it has already chosen a side.

We Survive Abuse stands with women and girls who are done shrinking their truth to protect anyone else’s comfort.

In response to the ongoing and ineffectively confronted global epidemic of male violence against women and children, WeSurviveAbuse centers women and girls and uses clear sex-based language in its safety and advocacy work.

We share resources that support Survivor safety, truth-telling, human dignity, and the protection of vulnerable people. We especially seek work by and for communities whose voices are too often overlooked.

We make every effort to avoid featuring resources and information that blame survivors, excuse abuse, erase women and girls, romanticizes harm, pressure people to stay in danger, or use healing language to silence truthful speech.

We reserve the right to speak truth, challenge assertions we disagree with, say “no,” and set boundaries.