You don't have to worry about who we women are—since you don't seem to know—because we are not the people behind the violence. Men need not keep speak
You don’t have to worry about who we women are—since you don’t seem to know—because we are not the people behind the violence. Men need not keep speaking publicly about their concerns with us. Everyone on this planet would be safer if men worry about themselves.
There is something missing from these endless public debates about women. And once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore.
We see entire panels of men assembled to discuss what a woman is, whether women should have boundaries, and whether women should be allowed to maintain spaces of our own. Some of these discussions turn into little more than men calling women names because we refuse to agree with them. We know. We have seen you do that since the playground. Call us names when you don’t agree with us.
But I want people to start asking a different question.
**Why are we debating women instead of examining the male behavior that makes people seek protection in the first place?**
Because there is something revealing about who is being asked to accommodate whom.
Look at Who People Are Trying to Get Away From
When people describe feeling unsafe in male prisons, male psychiatric wards, male shelters, or other male environments, what danger are they describing?
Often, it is violence, intimidation, sexual assault, or the threat of harm from other males.
Yet somehow, the public conversation keeps returning to women.
Women must reconsider our boundaries. Women must explain our discomfort. Women must be persuaded to share spaces. And when we ask about our own safety, we are accused of being unreasonable.
Meanwhile, the behavior creating the danger receives remarkably little attention in these debates.
**Why is the proposed solution so often to move someone away from males rather than make males stop harming people?**
Notice Who Is Expected to Provide Safety
Men break it and women must fix it is not working.
There is another uncomfortable truth worth discussing.
Women and even girls are frequently expected to provide comfort, emotional reassurance, accommodation, and a sense of safety to other people.
Girls are still learning how to navigate the world themselves, yet they can be expected to make room for other people’s needs and discomfort.
Women are expected to understand. To welcome. To adjust.
But who is asking why female spaces are repeatedly viewed as the answer to dangers associated with male environments? Men aren’t being asked to change a thing. Or offer anything at all. Very simply, stop choosing violence against others.
This must cease. In the home, in the neighborhoods, in faith spaces, on teams, on campuses. No one wants to discuss the elephant in the room.
If people are seeking refuge from male violence, why aren’t we talking about male violence? Specifically ending it. I don’t care if we have to have a program on tv, internet, and billboards every single day 24/7 that teaches men to stop choosing to be violent.
Because even if every single space was mixed sex, would the violence go away? No. Have you seen the domestic violence statistics? Men are harming entire loving families. We have family annihilations something like every five days now. Boys shooting their school mates sitting at their desks. Women and girls terrified to break up with boyfriends.
That is a male violence issue, and it ain’t about how anyone “identifies.” That is the problem now. We focus too much on men’s feelings and not their choices that end up causing others harm. Women and girls have feelings. Regrets. We get told “no”. We get ridiculed, mocked, rejected, and discarded. BUT we make different choices.
This does not mean every male is dangerous or every woman is safe. It means the documented patterns of sexual violence deserve more attention than they are receiving in these conversations.
The Question Is About Behavior
The next time you encounter another debate about what a woman is, listen for what is missing.
Are the speakers discussing sexual violence? Are they asking how perpetrators gain access to vulnerable people? Are they examining why institutions fail to intervene?
Are they demanding safer psychiatric wards, prisons, shelters, and hospitals?
Or are they spending another hour explaining why women should reconsider our boundaries?
Because those are two very different conversations.
One examines behavior that causes harm. The other places women under examination.
And we should be asking why.
Women Are Not the Violence Problem
We have research documenting the disproportionate sexual violence experienced by female human beings. We have decades of testimony from Survivors. We have women explaining why privacy, boundaries, and appropriate safeguards are important to them.
Yet women are still treated as though our reluctance to surrender those protections is the problem requiring correction.
I want people to notice how easily the discussion moves away from perpetrators and toward women’s attitudes.
A person’s need for safety deserves serious attention. But protecting one vulnerable population should not require dismissing another population’s safety concerns.
And if male violence is part of the reason people want different accommodations, then male violence belongs at the center of the discussion.
Not as a passing reference. Not as something everyone acknowledges before returning to another lecture about women.
As the problem requiring action.
We cannot solve violence by continually rearranging the lives and boundaries of people who may be harmed. We have to confront the people committing it and the institutions allowing it to continue.
So the next time a panel of men gathers to debate women, I hope somebody is brave enough to ask them a question. (Because if you want to know where the feminists are, ask the producers of the program; they refuse to book us. So you need to come find us on your own. We will be easy to spot. We are the people working to end male violence.)
But anyway…..ask others….
Why aren’t you discussing male violence with this same urgency?
Why aren’t you organizing to make male environments safer?
And why does your proposed solution keep requiring something from women?
Because I am tired of watching women become the subject of debate while the behavior creating so much of the danger remains comfortably outside the conversation.
Tomorrow when someone else has another understanding of life or a belief, or an ideology…the burden to accommodate it is going to fall upon women because of male violence.
Women are not the problem people are trying to escape. Male violence is a problem people are trying to escape.
And it is long past time we started having that conversation.