This is a mirror check, not an attack…..free printable checklist
There is something we do to women that I wish more of us would stop and examine.
A woman speaks up about unfair pay, sexual harassment, discrimination, or some other injustice. Before we can even finish hearing what she has to say, somebody jumps into the conversation with, “Well, where was she when the other woman was going through the same thing?”
And just like that, we’re no longer talking about the injustice itself.
We’re talking about whether THIS woman has done enough for everybody else to deserve our attention.
Men go silent about what other men do to women all. The. time. And we rarely put them through anything resembling the same examination.
We don’t routinely demand a public accounting of every male celebrity who worked alongside a man accused of harming women. We don’t expect every male colleague to issue a statement, explain his private conversations, or prove that he tried to intervene.
Yet we can become remarkably comfortable making those demands of women.
And I think it’s time we examined that.
- Why are we so comfortable with men’s silence around violence, harm, and abuse prevention?
The Russell Brand case gives us a reason to have this conversation.
Brand’s criminal proceedings concern serious sexual violence against women. But beyond the individual case, there is a larger question about the expectations society places on people when men are accused of harming women.
Look at how differently we sometimes approach silence in men and silence in women. Men have every right to be silent and keep their relationships, reputation and finances in tact. But not women?
When a woman hasn’t publicly commented, people may ask what kind of woman she is. Whether she supports other women. Whether she has principles.
But how often do we turn to the men in the same professional circles and ask comparable questions?
And I don’t mean that every man who ever worked with somebody accused of a crime should automatically be suspected of knowing something. That wouldn’t be fair.
I mean that our expectations should not change simply because the person being questioned is a female human being.
If we believe silence deserves examination, then let’s examine it fairly. Let’s pay attention to who actually knew something, who had the authority to act, and who may have been in a position to prevent harm.
That makes more sense than expecting women to serve as everybody’s designated accountability department.
- We don’t know what a woman has been doing behind the scenes.
This is one of the things that troubles me most.
We see that a woman hasn’t made a public statement, and some of us immediately decide she hasn’t done anything.
How would we know?
She may have made phone calls. She may have challenged somebody in a meeting. She may have helped another woman find an attorney or quietly supported her through a difficult experience.
She may have tried to change something and failed. She may still be working on it.
Or she may not have been involved at all.
The point is that we don’t know.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating public visibility as proof of commitment.
But some of the most important work people do never makes it onto social media. Some conversations are confidential. Some efforts require discretion.
A public statement isn’t the only way to stand beside somebody.
And the absence of one isn’t proof that a woman doesn’t care.
- We fill in the blanks, then judge women by the stories we invented.
Think about how easily this happens.
We don’t know why she was quiet, so we decide she was selfish.
We don’t know whether she offered support privately, so we decide she abandoned somebody.
We don’t know what she knew at the time, so we assume she knew everything we know today.
Then we take those assumptions and use them to question her character.
That’s not fair reasoning.
We cannot turn what we don’t know about a woman into evidence against her.
This is worth remembering in our own lives, too.
How many times have we heard somebody describe a woman as cold, unfriendly, difficult, or unsupportive because she didn’t respond the way somebody expected?
Maybe she had a reason. Maybe she didn’t.
But we ought to be careful about filling in another woman’s story with our own suspicions.
- We don’t know what speaking publicly might cost her.
People can be very generous with somebody else’s courage.
They’ll tell a woman to speak up, call somebody out, risk her position, or make a public declaration.
But they won’t be the ones paying her bills if she loses her job.
They won’t necessarily be there if she faces retaliation, harassment, legal expenses, or professional isolation.
A woman may have contractual obligations. She may be receiving legal advice. She may be bound by certain confidentiality requirements, although not every NDA or contractual restriction is legally enforceable.
She may also be protecting somebody else’s privacy.
And sometimes she is simply trying to survive a difficult season in her own life.
It’s easy to volunteer another woman’s livelihood, reputation, and peace of mind when none of those things belongs to you.
Before we condemn her silence, we ought to ask ourselves whether we would willingly accept the consequences we’re demanding that she risk.
- A woman may not be emotionally free to speak.
This deserves more consideration than it usually receives.
Suppose the subject is sexual assault.
We have no idea whether a woman has her own experiences with sexual violence. We don’t know whether she’s grieving, recovering, overwhelmed, or dealing with something deeply personal.
We don’t know whether speaking publicly would bring unwanted questions about her own life.
And she shouldn’t have to disclose painful experiences to earn permission not to participate.
Survivors, especially, deserve to hear this clearly.
You can care about another person’s suffering without making your own emotional life publicly available.
You can support a cause without discussing your personal history.
You can choose not to enter a conversation that you know will be harmful to your well-being.
You do not owe strangers an explanation of your private pain to prove that you have compassion.
- Women are allowed to have their own strategies.
This is another thing we tend to overlook.
Not every woman believes the most effective response is a public response.
Some prefer to work through professional channels. Some believe private conversations can accomplish more. Some are gathering information, seeking advice, or waiting for an opportunity to act.
Others may decide that a particular situation is not theirs to manage.
Women are capable of making those judgments.
Yet we sometimes behave as though a woman’s strategy is only legitimate if it matches what strangers wanted her to do.
We say we want women to have agency, but then we become offended when they exercise judgment independently of us.
Respecting a woman’s voice also means respecting her authority to decide when, where, how, and whether to use it.
We don’t have to agree with every decision to recognize that it belongs to her.
- We demand solidarity from women, then use their supposed lack of solidarity as an excuse to dismiss them.
Now, this is where the contradiction becomes difficult to ignore.
A woman finally speaks about discrimination.
Instead of examining what happened, somebody says, “I don’t feel sorry for her. She didn’t say anything when another woman went through it.”
And there we are.
The person demanding solidarity has decided to withhold it.
The unfair pay is still unfair. The harassment is still harassment. The discriminatory policy hasn’t disappeared.
But now we have given ourselves permission not to care.
We have turned solidarity into a test a woman must pass before we will listen to her.
There is a difference between questioning somebody who actively defended injustice and criticizing a woman merely because she didn’t make a public statement.
Those are not the same thing.
A woman may have been inconsistent. She may have changed her mind. She may have recognized a problem only after experiencing it herself.
None of that makes the injustice acceptable.
And I hope we never become so interested in examining a woman’s shortcomings that we forget to examine the wrongdoing she came forward to describe.
- We expect women to carry responsibilities that we don’t consistently place on men.
Women are expected to speak for themselves AND for other women.
To be aware of what is happening. To respond quickly. To say the right thing. To defend people publicly. To demonstrate that they care.
And when they don’t, people may treat that as a moral failure.
But where is the comparable expectation that men publicly challenge the mistreatment of women?
Where are the demands that male colleagues demonstrate solidarity with women facing discrimination?
Where is the sustained attention to men in positions of authority who actually received complaints and had opportunities to intervene?
Of course, there are men who speak out and take meaningful action. And men can face criticism for remaining silent.
But the unequal expectations are worth examining.
We should not expect women with little power to carry greater public responsibility than men who may have had the authority to change what was happening.
Responsibility ought to have something to do with knowledge, power, and conduct.
Not simply whether somebody is a woman.
- We should be asking more questions about the people and institutions with power.
When wrongdoing comes to light, it is reasonable to examine whether institutions received warnings, whether complaints were investigated, and whether people with authority responded appropriately.
Those questions can help us understand how harm occurred and whether there were missed opportunities to prevent it.
They are different from asking every woman in the vicinity to prove that she was sufficiently supportive.
A male executive who received a credible complaint and had authority to investigate occupies a different position from a female colleague who knew nothing about it.
And the same would be true if their sexes were reversed.
Accountability should follow responsibility, not stereotypes about who is supposed to be caring, nurturing, or available to help.
That is a standard we can apply consistently.
- We can practice this fairness in our own communities.
This isn’t only about celebrities.
Think about the workplace where a woman reports harassment and everybody begins discussing whether she was friendly enough, supportive enough, or sufficiently loyal to her coworkers.
Think about a church where a woman raises concerns and people spend more time questioning her attitude than examining the conduct she reported.
Think about a school where a girl complains about mistreatment and somebody immediately brings up an unrelated occasion when she wasn’t kind to another girl.
Or a family where a woman finally says she’s been treated unfairly, only to hear a list of all the times she supposedly failed somebody else.
We can recognize these habits without deciding that everyone who has participated in them is a terrible person.
Sometimes we’ve simply absorbed expectations that deserve another look.
But once we recognize the pattern, we have an opportunity to change how we respond.
When somebody tells us about an injustice, we can begin by examining the injustice.
We can ask what happened. We can listen. We can distinguish what we know from what we’re assuming.
And we can stop making women responsible for proving their goodness before we consider whether they’ve been treated fairly.
- Survivors do not owe the world a perfect history of advocacy.
I especially want Survivors to understand this.
You may have spent years trying to get through your own circumstances.
Perhaps you didn’t have the emotional strength to participate in every conversation about abuse. Perhaps you were afraid. Perhaps you were still finding language for what happened to you.
Maybe you were working, raising children, caring for family, trying to find housing, or rebuilding your life.
Maybe you simply didn’t want to talk.
And then one day, you found yourself ready to speak about something.
You deserve to be heard.
You don’t have to establish that you defended every other Survivor before you can speak about your own experience.
You don’t have to explain why you weren’t available when somebody else needed support.
Your right to name an injustice does not depend on a perfect record of public solidarity.
That doesn’t mean we cannot grow in how we support one another. We can, and I hope we do.
But growth should not require women to surrender their boundaries or make their private lives available for public inspection.
- Solidarity should be something we practice, not something we use to punish women.
I believe in women supporting women.
I’ve seen what happens when women share information, offer practical help, challenge unfair treatment, and make room for one another.
There is real strength in that.
But solidarity loses something important when we turn it into another obligation women must perform on demand.
We can invite women to participate without assuming they owe us participation.
We can appreciate public advocacy without dismissing private efforts.
We can encourage courage without pretending everybody faces the same risks.
And we can hold people accountable for what they actually did without inventing a history of what they supposedly failed to do.
Most importantly, we can stop using one woman’s absence from a previous conversation as an excuse to ignore the woman speaking before us today.
Before we ask where she was, let’s ask ourselves something.
The next time a woman speaks about mistreatment and somebody asks, “Well, where was she when another woman needed her?” I hope we’ll recognize what is happening.
We are being invited to turn away from the issue she raised.
We are being asked to judge a history we may know very little about.
And we may be applying an expectation to her that we wouldn’t think to place on a man in the same circumstances.
We don’t have to accept that invitation.
We can return to the facts. We can listen without requiring a woman to pass a character examination first. We can direct our questions toward the people who caused the harm and those who had meaningful opportunities to prevent it.
And we can remember that a woman’s life contains more than the parts of it we have been permitted to see.
She has her own responsibilities, her own judgment, her own relationships, her own struggles, and her own decisions to make.
We don’t know everything she has done. We don’t know everything she has endured. And we don’t need to know those things before we can recognize that she deserves fair treatment.
If we’re going to talk about solidarity, let it begin there.
Not with another demand that women prove themselves.
But with the ordinary fairness of hearing a woman when she speaks.
Before You Judge, Consider What You Don’t Know
It’s easy to form an opinion about a woman’s silence when we don’t know what she’s been doing, what she’s carrying, or what speaking publicly might cost her.
But before we judge her, perhaps we should examine our own expectations.Before_You_Judge_Checklist_WESurviveAbuse
I’ve created a free three-page reflection checklist to help us recognize the assumptions we make about women, question the different standards we apply to men, and practice greater fairness in our everyday conversations.
Use it for personal reflection, group discussion, or as a reminder to listen before making judgments.
Free Printable: Before You Judge: There Is So Much You Do Not Know
Created by WESurviveAbuse.com
