Don't Put It Down Yet: For the Women Who Are Tired of Begging Men to Care

Samantha Witness

A new kind of grief

Lately I'm hearing from a new wave of women, and they don't sound angry anymore. They sound tired. Grieved. Resigned.

They've watched headline after headline about women hurt, assaulted, and killed. They've watched cases dismissed, sentences shrugged off, and powerful men sail through accusations that should have ended careers. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a quiet conclusion settled in: men don't care.

If you're one of those women, I want to start by saying this: your exhaustion makes sense. You are responding normally to an abnormal amount of harm.

Shouting into an echo chamber

Many of these women are now shouting a warning to the ones who haven't figured it out yet. Look closer. Your father, your brother, your uncle, your boyfriend, your husband may love you. But many of them are not willing to do anything drastic to protect women, not even you, who has been personally harmed and they have awareness of it. They’re simply not willing to lose a friend, a vote, a promotion, or a little comfort over it.

So we beg. We post. We share our stories. And we often find that the people listening are the people who already know. Survivors talking to survivors.

That solidarity is real and precious and also brutally expensive. Every time a survivor recounts their assault so someone might finally care, they pay for it in their body. Many of us with chronic pain, racing hearts, sleepless nights, flashbacks, and the days we can barely get out of bed. We are asking the most wounded among us to reopen the wound over and over, hoping that this time it will be enough to move someone who was never planning to move.

Name the hard truth

I'm not going to pretend this away. Many men, maybe most, do not truly care. Not in the way that costs them anything. They'll say the right thing at the right moment, then go back to laughing at the joke, voting for the man, defending the friend, and changing the subject.

You are not imagining it and you don't need to talk yourself out of what you've seen to keep going.

Why we can't stop?

Here is the part I need you to hear: the fact that they don't care is not a reason to stop. It is the reason we can't.

Indifference is a strategy. It works by wearing you down until you give up on your own. No one has to silence you if you silence yourself. The day we stop fighting is the day they actually win, and they win without lifting a finger.

Every right women hold today was won by women who were told no one cared, and who kept going anyway. They didn't wait for permission or for the majority to come around. They made it impossible to look away.

We need leaders who truly respect women

We need more people in power who truly respect women. Ones who show it and don’t just say it in a campaign speech.

Look for respect in two places. First, in how they consider us: whether women's safety, health, and lives shape their decisions, or get mentioned only when it's convenient. Second, in who they surround themselves with. A leader who respects women doesn't just talk about us, they share their power with us. Look at their cabinet, their board, their staff, their inner circle and if it's all men, you have your answer.

It is long past time that the people running this country represent the United States, the whole of it, and not just the men in it.

Knowledge works. That's why they fear it.

If you are doing awareness work, advocacy, education, or reform, I want you to know that you are moving the dial. Always! Even when it feels like nothing is changing or the progress is too slow to see.

How do I know? Watch how hard they try to suppress it. Watch the fights over what can be taught, which books stay on the shelves, which stories get told, and which data gets collected. Nobody spends that much energy stopping something that doesn't work.

They are terrified of knowledge, because a woman who knows her rights, knows the warning signs, knows she isn't alone, and knows what was done to her has a name is a woman who is very hard to control. Every conversation you start, every workshop you lead, every policy you push, every young person you teach is a crack in the wall.

Rest is not surrender, babe

Not throwing in the towel doesn't mean running yourself into the ground. As a therapist, I'll say it plainly: you are allowed to rest. You are allowed to log off, mute the news, and step back from the comment sections for a while.

Survivors, you never owe anyone your story. Your healing is not a public service, and you don't have to relive your worst moments to prove your pain is real. Let others carry the megaphone some days. That's what a movement is for.

Rest is how you stay in this for the long haul and quitting is walking away for good. Those are not the same thing.

You have more power than they want you to know

So don't throw in the towel yet. You have to make it matter to the people it doesn't matter to. Make it personal. Make it local. Make it impossible to ignore at the dinner table, the school board meeting, the ballot box, and the office.

You have power as a woman — a terrifying and bewildering amount of power. Power to organize, to vote, to teach, to build, to raise the next generation, to tell the truth.

That is exactly why you are treated as a threat that needs to be controlled. Nobody works that hard to control something powerless.

Rest when you need to. Grieve when you need to. Then pick it back up, together. We are not done.