When Women Uphold Misogyny in Classical Music Culture

We don't talk enough about this. That is the role some women play in upholding patriarchy, enabling abusive men, silencing survivors, and gatekeeping change. It’s one of the most painful truths to confront; not just because of what it reveals about power and misogyny, but because of how betrayal feels when it comes from those we expect solidarity from.

This isn’t about blame, but about understanding how oppression recruits us, how systems condition us, and how we can begin to break those patterns.

It's Not About the Abuse, It's About the Doubt: How Patriarchy Weaponizes Women’s Silence Through Other Women

I’ve seen it too many times. A woman comes forward to share her story—about a conductor who crossed the line, a teacher who exploited his authority, a colleague who said something vile behind closed doors—and instead of solidarity, she’s met with suspicion. Not just from men. But from other women.

“He never treated me that way.” “Maybe she misunderstood.” “She’s exaggerating.”

“She’s just upset she didn’t get the job.”

“We have to protect the reputation of the organization.”

And suddenly, the abuse isn’t the story. The woman is. Her credibility. Her tone. Her timing. Her motive. Her emotions. Her past. Her career. Her.

It’s a strange thing to watch, and an even stranger thing to name. Because it goes against everything we’re taught to believe about sisterhood, solidarity, and the myth that gender automatically equals alignment.

But the truth is that patriarchy doesn’t just live in men. It recruits women, too.

The Making of an Enabler: Where Internalized Misogyny Begins

Most women don’t wake up one day and decide to defend abusers. It’s subtler than that. It starts with what we’re taught to value:

Be nice. Be likable. Don’t cause trouble. Don't be that woman.

Be grateful for opportunities. Protect your mentor’s reputation. Play the game.

And it starts early—sometimes in music school, sometimes in church, sometimes around the dinner table. We learn, little by little, that proximity to male power offers protection. That the best way to stay safe is to stay quiet—or better yet, stay agreeable. And for some women, that conditioning is so deep, they mistake it for truth.

The result? A generation of women who are more comfortable policing each other than holding men accountable. Women who’ve learned that aligning with authority can feel safer than challenging it—even when that authority is harming others.

The Roles Women Are Trained to Play: How Women Reinforce Harmful Norms

How does this play out? I’ve watched women step into roles that maintain the very systems that keep others silent:

• The Apologist, excusing abuse as personality: “He’s just old-fashioned.”...believing harassment is a misunderstanding that can be solved with a well-worded email.
  

• The Gatekeeper, warning survivors to stay quiet: “People talk. Don’t ruin your future.” They warn younger women not to speak up because “It’ll come back to bite you.”

  They've spent so long navigating sexism that they've become fluent in its defense.

  They confuse compliance with professionalism. They just want you to know that blowing the whistle might ruin your career and hers—so maybe hush?
  

• The Rationalizer, minimizing harm to preserve an image: “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
  

• The Silent Bystander, who absolutely believes you but unfortunately has a brunch to attend and can’t get involved right now, or they're just "quietly observing." They are the ones calculating that the truth isn’t worth the fallout.
  

• The Enabler believes the man over the woman because, “he’s never been inappropriate with me.”They may even help institutions smooth things over behind the scenes. They think protecting reputations is the same as protecting people.
  

• The Neutralizer insists on being “non-partisan” when harm is named.

  They want to “keep the peace,” even if that peace is built on someone else’s silence. They suggest that calling out abuse is “divisive” or “too emotional.”
  

• The Pick-Me who says, “I just don’t get along with most women. I’m not like other girls—I enjoy the emotional safety of male friendships and not having boundaries.”

  They are proudly “not like other women.” They think feminism has gone too far. They believe women who speak out are ruining it for the rest of us.
  

Sometimes a fellow woman knows exactly what a man has done and stays silent. This often feels like a massive disappointment when you hear them using statements like the ones listed above. It comes as an even bigger betrayal when you find they have protected a man who has harmed you or someone else. That's why it's so important to teach other women how internalized misogyny plays out like this. That's why I wrote this guide to help others. Here are some solid examples of how it plays out in everyday work environments to various degrees:

• The woman on the hiring committee who says, “I just don’t think she’s a cultural fit.”

• The female HR manager who pressures the female complainant to “resolve things privately.”

• The female colleague who says, “She’s probably just upset she didn’t win that audition.”

• The woman DEI panelist who believes in “toning it down.”
  

Policing Each Other Into Silence

One of the most painful moments I ever witnessed was when a respected female leader in the classical music industry dismissed a survivor’s account online by saying, “She’s just trying to stir the pot.”

I remember sitting with that line for days. Not because it was unique, but because it was familiar. I’d heard it before, in different words:

“She’s difficult.” “She’s emotional.” “She just wants attention.”

What they meant was: She’s inconvenient.

Women who challenge the status quo are always inconvenient—especially to other women who have learned to survive by reinforcing it.

And in that moment, I realized something gutting: The women defending the man who caused harm weren’t just defending him. They were defending themselves—their choices, their silence, their past alliances, their illusions of safety. They were trying to convince themselves that the system wasn’t broken—because they’d built their whole careers inside of it.

Notice how all of these statements can be easily interchanged with something a man would say in attempt to minimize a women and prevent them from speaking out. This goes to show how deeply imbedded patriarchy and misogyny is, and how gender discrimination and bias is based on long-standing patterns and norms.

When women protect abusive men, they aren’t just defending individuals—they’re defending a system. And that system depends on silence. It depends on plausible deniability. It depends on women who will echo the words, “He’s never done that to me,” as if that settles anything.

This isn’t about interpersonal drama. It’s about women who’ve become gatekeepers to survive—and in doing so, keep the gates closed to others. It’s about power laundering itself through the language of diplomacy, loyalty, and restraint.

What Happens When Sisterhood Becomes Conditional

When women protect abusive men, we don’t just harm the people they’ve hurt. We harm ourselves. We send a message—to every girl watching—that power matters more than people. That we’ll trade truth for comfort. That sisterhood has terms and conditions. And worst of all, we uphold the very structures that keep us all in fear.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Every time a woman chooses to believe another woman, to speak up even when it’s risky, to stop explaining away male behavior, to break the pattern.....we take something back. Our voice. Our agency. Our ability to change the ending.

Why the Myth of Merit Persists: How Some Women Deny Gender Discrimination to Preserve Their Narrative

When you name systemic gender discrimination and bias - some women push back hard—not because they don’t see it, but because admitting it threatens the stories they’ve built their careers on.

By acknowledge bias and discrimination, it means acknowledging that your own success might not have come from merit alone, and accepting that your success may have come with unacknowledged privilege. That means they’ve been complicit in it—or at least benefited from it. And no one wants to see themselves as the villain in someone else’s story.

That’s a hard truth for some to confront. So instead, some women double down on the myth of merit or fairness:

• “I never had a problem, so it must not be real.”

• “Hard work is all it takes.”

• “Some people just don’t have what it takes.”

Denial doesn’t make the system fair. It just keeps it intact.

The Foundation of Misogyny is Rooted in Male Dominance

While some of the behaviors and dynamics explored in this piece may have broader or even universal applications — such as the tendency to align with power for safety or self-preservation — misogyny itself is not a universal moral flaw or generic human failing.

It is a gendered system of power, one deliberately constructed and historically maintained to privilege men and subordinate women. And In that system, men overwhelmingly hold the keys.

Misogyny isn’t simply about individual bad behavior. It’s about who is protected, who is punished, and whose voices are allowed to matter.

And while women can certainly internalize and replicate these dynamics....sometimes even becoming enforcers themselves — it is men who overwhelmingly benefit from the structure, and men who are most often positioned to reinforce it.

Understanding this distinction is critical.

If we mistake misogyny for a neutral or universal flaw, we obscure the very power imbalances that allow it to thrive. We risk flattening a deeply hierarchical system into something passive or accidental, rather than confronting it as the deliberate, patterned, and gendered reality that it is.

At its core, misogyny is a system designed to uphold male dominance and female subordination.

When men engage in misogyny, they’re acting as agents of a larger system (patriarchy) that already grants them more authority, privilege, credibility, and protection by default over women.

Boys are taught at a young age — sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly — that emotion is weakness, dominance is strength, and that women exist in relation to them: to admire, to serve, to please, or to control.

Male success is often framed as something that must be proven through power over others, which includes objectifying or belittling women as a rite of passage.

In schools, sports teams, fraternities, and even orchestras or conservatories, young men are often rewarded for loyalty to one another above all else, creating cultures of protection and silence when abuse happens.

How does it play out in real life?

In classical music, for example, male conductors, professors, and principal players often enjoy unchecked authority.

When they belittle or exploit women — through sexual advances, favoritism, or verbal degradation — male colleagues may dismiss it as “just how he is,” “passion for the art,” or “part of paying dues.”

Men continue to dominate the most powerful and visible positions in the classical music industry — particularly within orchestras, conservatory leadership, and institutional governance. This imbalance is especially evident on competition juries, faculty rosters, audition panels, and in artistic directorships, where decision-making power disproportionately rests with men. Principal roles in orchestras — particularly in sections historically coded as “masculine,” such as brass, percussion, and conducting — remain overwhelmingly male. This persistent gender imbalance not only shapes who gets hired or promoted, but also influences the cultural norms, mentorship patterns, and unspoken expectations that govern the field.

In general, men uphold norms that reward confidence coded as masculine, punish women for setting boundaries, and hire those who remind them of themselves. Socially, men often bond with each other by objectifying women, ranking them, joking about them — or dismissing accusations made against their male friends as “overblown,” “drama,” or “he said/she said.”

The key difference?

Men uphold misogyny as its primary enforcers.

It benefits men. Solely.

It protects their access to power, social capital, and career mobility.

When a man defends another man who has harmed a woman, he reinforces a system that already favors him — often without consequence.

Women, by contrast, uphold misogyny not from a place of dominance, but often from fear, survival, or conditioned loyalty.

It’s not that the harm isn’t real when a woman sides with an abuser — it absolutely is. But she’s usually navigating a structure where her safety, acceptance, or success is tied to how well she plays by the patriarchal rules. Again, that might mean defending a powerful male mentor, resenting or turning on a female colleague for speaking up, or staying silent to avoid being ostracized.

Patriarchy Comes in Different Outfits, Yet, the Same System

• Misogyny in men is often overt, institutional, or quietly tolerated.

• Misogyny in women is often internalized, polite, or disguised as professionalism.

• Feminism isn’t the cause of division—it’s the invitation to repair what patriarchy divided.

• You can uphold harm with the best intentions in the world. And you can choose to stop.

• Real solidarity doesn’t just mean “supporting women”—it means questioning the systems that silence them. Even when those systems are polite.

This Isn’t About Blame—It’s About Power

This isn’t about saying women are always right or men are always wrong. It’s not wrong to want to believe the best in people. It’s not inherently bad to want to stand up for a colleague, a friend, or a mentor—male or female.

And it’s not that women who internalize misogyny are bad women. Most of them are doing what they’ve been taught to do. Many don’t even realize they’re participating in harm. Some genuinely think they’re being fair or neutral. Some are just trying to survive a system that punished them long before they ever questioned it.

But the point isn’t whether women should be allowed to defend men. The point is:

• Who gets heard, and who doesn’t?

• Whose pain is believed, and whose is rationalized?

• Whose reputations are protected, and whose are destroyed?

• Who gets to make a mistake and recover…and who doesn’t get that luxury?

When a man is accused, people rally around his “potential,” his “legacy,” his “reputation.” When a woman speaks up, people dissect her “tone,” her “credibility,” her “motives.”

That double standard is the problem.

This is about power—not personality. About systems—not isolated events. About patterns—not petty grievances. And most of all, it’s about learning to recognize when “neutrality” is actually just complicity in disguise.

The Myth of “Divisiveness”

One of the most common responses to calling out abuse, bias, or systemic harm—especially from within an institution or community—is the accusation that you’re being divisive. People love to throw around terms like “divisive” and “black-and-white thinking” whenever someone dares suggest that maybe—just maybe—the system isn’t as fair as it pretends to be. You've probably heard it:

• “I don’t want to view the world in black and white.”

• “This kind of thinking just creates enemies.”

• “Feminism like this is what turns people off—it makes men the villains.”

• “You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

• “You’re blaming people for things they didn’t even mean to do.”

Feminism doesn’t make men the enemy. It challenges power structures. If a man feels personally attacked, that may say more about his investments than the feminism itself.

The world is nuanced, yes. But if you need nuance to excuse silence or protect someone’s reputation, you’re not defending complexity—you’re defending comfort.

Intentions aren’t enough. Most people don’t intend to harm. But harm still happens. Especially when institutions are more worried about optics than people.

And no, calling it out isn’t “divisive.” It’s repair.

What’s actually divisive is a world where women’s trauma is debated while men’s reputations are preserved in glass. The world is complex, but that doesn’t mean power dynamics are a vibe-based theory.

If a system keeps rewarding certain people and silencing others, that’s not nuance. That’s design.

Why People Deflect with “Intentions”

A common reaction when discussing systemic misogyny is to focus on individual intent:

• “But he didn’t mean it that way.”

• “She didn’t realize what she said was harmful.”

• “We’re all just trying our best.”

And sometimes, yes—people don’t know any better. Sometimes, no one ever taught them that certain behaviors are rooted in sexism or inequality. But good intentions don’t erase harm. They don’t undo the silence, the bias, or the damage left behind.

Again, it’s entirely possible to be a kind person and to uphold harmful systems. In fact, that’s how most harm happens—not through overt malice, but through a thousand small actions that go unexamined because they feel neutral, professional, or well-meaning. Calling those actions out doesn’t mean declaring someone evil. It means naming a reality that too many people are still living with, often invisibly.

What Feminism Actually Confronts

Feminism, at its core, doesn’t aim to cast men as evil or divide people by gender. It asks harder, more urgent questions that I mentioned before:

• Who holds power?

• Who is allowed to speak—and be believed?

• Who is safe in this space, and who is expendable?

• Who is rewarded for being silent, and who is punished for telling the truth?

Feminism confronts the reality that “neutrality” often protects the status quo. That systems are skewed. That access, fairness, and dignity are not evenly distributed—not by merit, but by legacy, bias, and protectionism.

Yes, that can be hard to hear. Yes, it challenges people’s beliefs about how the world works. But refusing to see the imbalance doesn't make things more unified—it just protects those already benefiting from the way things are.

So What Really Drives Women to Defend Abusers?

Patriarchal Bargain Misogyny in women doesn’t happen because women hate women. It happens because women have been trained to survive patriarchy by aligning with it. This is what feminist scholar Deniz Kandiyoti called the patriarchal bargain: the strategy women use to gain security, proximity to power, or protection from worse harm by upholding patriarchal norms. It's not malice. It’s survival. But survival can look an awful lot like betrayal. Fear of Exile

Speaking out, or even standing with someone who does, can result in exile. In tight-knit fields like classical music, academia, or corporate leadership, reputations are currency. Many women fear losing access, being labeled “difficult,” or becoming targets themselves. So instead, they distance themselves from survivors—or worse, discredit them. Pick-Me Behavior

This term refers to women who seek approval by aligning with male perspectives at the expense of other women. It’s not always conscious. It can come from a deep desire to be accepted, to be “one of the good ones,” to be safe. These are all parts of what manifests as Internalized Misogyny:

Again, many women have been taught from girlhood that their own worth—and the worth of other women—is conditional. That men are default leaders. That women who speak up are “dramatic,” “emotional,” or “jealous.”

Over time, these ideas embed themselves, often unnoticed. Women begin to doubt other women before they doubt a man in power. They begin to police tone instead of focus on the abuse. They start defending the system because it feels safer than disrupting it. When Loyalty Is a Trauma Response: Stockholm Syndrome, Trauma Bonding, and Institutional Betrayal

Sometimes, what looks like loyalty is actually something much more deeply complex. For some women, aligning with the very systems or people who have harmed them isn’t about agreement or affection. It’s a survival tactic—a coping mechanism shaped by experiences of deep, unresolved trauma.

Psychological responses like Stockholm syndrome and trauma bonding aren’t signs of weakness or gullibility. They’re protective responses—developed in environments where survival depended on appeasing, attaching to, or humanizing someone in power. These patterns can persist long after the immediate threat is gone.

And for many, these responses are unconscious. Stockholm syndrome and trauma bonding can remain unrecognized, especially when someone has grown up in, worked within, or studied under systems where fear, dependency, admiration, and power are tightly interwoven—particularly when harm comes from someone charismatic, beloved, or revered.

Over time, emotional attachment to authority figures—or to the institutions that enable them—can feel safer than facing the threat of exile, conflict, or ostracization. 

What may appear from the outside as “defending the abuser” is often a long-ingrained survival strategy: a way to stay safe, visible, or accepted. It’s not betrayal. It’s learned protection.

If any part of what I wrote about Stockholme Syndrome or Trauma Bonding resonates, you are not broken. You are responding the way many people do when their safety has once depended on loyalty and compliance.

But these patterns can be unlearned. Healing begins with awareness, compassion for yourself, and the courage to ask hard questions:

• Do I minimize harm to avoid conflict?

• Do I feel safer aligning with powerful people, even when they’ve hurt others?

• Have I ever ignored someone’s story because it threatened my sense of security or belonging?

• Have I ever justified bad behavior because I admired or depended on the person who did it?

These are not easy questions. But they are powerful ones. And you don’t have to face them alone. Working with a trauma-informed therapist, especially one familiar with abuse dynamics or institutional trauma, can help unravel the emotional ties that keep you loyal to harmful systems or people. Peer support, survivor communities, and education around trauma bonds can also provide clarity and a sense of shared experience.

There is no shame in having learned survival strategies that once protected you. But there is freedom in learning new ones that let you live—not just survive.

Not All Harm Between Women Is About Internalized Misogyny: Why Intersectionality Matters

Before I go further, I want to clarify something.

This article isn’t meant to reduce or collapse every form of harm between women into internalized misogyny. When I use that term, I’m specifically describing how patriarchy operates through women who protect or excuse abusive men.

But not all harm between women comes from loyalty to men. Sometimes it comes from loyalty to white privilege. Or class status. Or a version of womanhood that feels safe, respectable, and familiar.....a norm. While all women may experience gender-based discrimination, marginalized women face additional layers of oppression due to the intersection of their gender with other social identities.

That’s where intersectionality comes into play. To understand the difference between the experiences of white women and marginalized women, it's important to grasp the concept of intersectionality. This term, coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, highlights how various forms of inequality, such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, can overlap and compound to create unique experiences of discrimination and oppression. Power doesn’t just move through gender. It moves through race, class, age, ability, citizenship, body size, and more. When we ignore those overlapping systems—like racism, ageism, classism, xenophobia—we miss the full picture of how women can harm, silence, or undermine each other, especially in environments like classical music where status and proximity to power matter deeply.

For women of color, gender and racial discrimination are often experienced together, not separately. And harm doesn’t just come from patriarchy, but sometimes from white women upholding white privilege.

First, it's important to recognize the key differences in the experiences of white women and marginalized women when it comes to discrimination:

• Compounded Discrimination: Marginalized women, particularly women of color, face discrimination based not only on their gender but also on their race or ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc. This can manifest in areas like employment, where women of color experience bigger pay gaps than white women.
  

• Workplace Inequality: While all women can face workplace inequality, women of color often face unique challenges and discrimination. They may be more likely to experience micro-aggressions and disrespectful behavior compared to white women.
  

• Access to Resources and Opportunities: Marginalized women may have limited access to resources such as education, healthcare, and financial services due to systemic barriers.
  

• Violence and Safety: While violence against women affects all demographics, marginalized women, such as women of color face heightened risks of violence and harassment due to the intersection of their identities.
  

• Representation and Inclusion: Traditional feminist movements have been criticized for centering the experiences of white, middle-class women and overlooking the unique challenges faced by marginalized women. It's crucial for diversity and inclusion efforts to acknowledge and address the specific experiences of women of color and other marginalized groups.
  

Too often, white women in this field can name gender inequality, but stop short of looking at their own implicit biases in other areas—especially when it comes to race.

Racial bias and discrimination shows up quietly but consistently. Here are some examples:

• Only one woman of color is invited to perform at a prestigious music conference that focuses on gender equality - only to be scheduled to perform on a smaller stage (or farther away) during the same time slot of a famous white woman or famous all-white woman ensemble performing on the main stage....thus, outshining her and diminishing her opportunity to be seen and heard.
  

• A white woman posts about feminism and equality, but doesn’t speak up when a Latina colleague is labeled “difficult.”
  

• A Black woman on an orchestra board raises a concern—and is met with silence, or worse, a side conversation afterward by a white woman in leadership.
  

And sometimes, it’s more direct.....

• Like when I, the only person of color, served on a gender discrimination panel for the League of Women Bass Players (Low-B) and the only woman to receive negative feedback from a viewer who targeted my presence and questioning why I was even there.
  

• Or when the woman executive director of Low-B responded to my concerns with, “People will say what they want to say, and I want to hear it. Deal with it.”
  

• Or when I received hate emails and comments from a patron of the Atlantic Horn Festival who questioned if I am a legal American citizen (which I am), and further questioned my right to speak about gender equality on the festival's page - based on my ethnicity and origins. This is an example of both racism, and xenophobia.
  

Similarly to gender discrimination - racial discrimination is also rooted in power. Again, this power is called white privilege. It, too, is about who gets to be seen as a leader, a truth-teller, or even a professional—and who gets dismissed.

This isn’t about accusing every white woman of racism. It’s about returning to asking those honest and necessary questions:

• Who gets the benefit of the doubt?

• Who gets centered in conversations about equity?

• Who is protected—and who is left to fend for herself?
  

Racial bias and discrimination is a necessary part of the conversation, because some women are upholding patriarchy, while others are upholding the systems that protect their place within it. And those systems aren’t just gendered—they’re also racial.

As women of color, we’re not just fighting to be seen by men. We’re fighting to be seen by white women too. We navigate both gender discrimination and racial bias at the same time—and still, we’re often pressured to code-switch, to stay gracious, stay quiet, and not make it “about race.”

[Code-switching involves adjusting one's speech, mannerisms, or even appearance to better fit in or be perceived positively in a particular environment. It's a survival strategy employed by individuals from marginalized racial or ethnic groups to navigate social situations and interactions, particularly in environments where the dominant culture is different from their own. It's a way to fit in or be perceived as more acceptable by the dominant group.]

But it is about race. And when we ignore those layers, we fail each other. Intersectionality helps us tell the whole truth. And telling the whole truth is the first step toward actual change. Intersectional feminism emphasizes the need to address these interconnected forms of inequality to achieve a more inclusive and equitable society.

I wrote this article to center gender inequality and the ways internalized misogyny plays out through women who protect, excuse, or enable abusive men. But we can’t have that conversation honestly without also naming racial bias and discrimination.

These dynamics don’t exist in isolation. And while this piece focuses on gender-based harm, I fully intend to explore the other layers—racism, classism, xenophobia, ageism—in future writing. Because if we’re serious about dismantling systems of power, we need to name all the ways they show up. Especially when they show up between women.

I want to thank the musicians who have reached out with their stories and inspired me to add this section. I will cover other forms of discrimination and bias in future articles since my journal was designed to highlight topics related to ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as musicians health and wellbeing, and professional development. Many of my articles have focused on misconduct and sexual assault in the industry up until now - but being a woman of color, I also aim to focus on the struggles that people of color face in classical music culture. This area does not get enough coverage, and I am going to give it some much-needed attention soon on my orchestra journal.

Unlearning Is Not Shame—It's Growth and Liberation

We’ve all internalized something. We’ve all said the wrong thing. We’ve all made decisions from fear or silence or the desire to be accepted.

Again, this isn’t a call-out. It’s a flashlight. A mirror showing the blind spots in our subconscious mind - highlighting the things that go unaddressed like our own hidden biases. If you’ve found yourself in any of these roles throughout the article, know you’re not a bad person. You’re honest. But honesty has to become action. Because once you see how internalized misogyny and implicit biases operate through both men and women, it’s no longer just “the culture.” It’s a choice, and now you get to choose differently. Unlearning any form of implicit bias takes more than awareness—it takes risk. It means breaking ranks with those who taught you to keep your head down. It means choosing truth over comfort. It means understanding that neutrality is not justice.

Women aren’t powerless here—we are essential to either the maintenance or the dismantling of these structures.

Every time we choose to believe survivors, speak up in uncomfortable rooms, question the language of “not my experience,” or name complicity for what it is—we chip away at a system that counts on us to stay quiet.

If we are serious about changing toxic cultures and addressing abuse in this industry, we have to look at how women are weaponized by the very systems that oppress us....and how to stop playing that role. Here are a few things you can start doing to reverese the harm:

• Listen Without Deflection

  When a woman comes forward, resist the urge to rationalize or soften what happened or what they are trying to tell you. Just listen. Ask yourself: Who benefits if I discredit her?
  

• Name It, Even When It’s Painful

  Call it what it is. Internalized misogyny. Gatekeeping. Patriarchal loyalty. Racism. Gender Discrimination. Sexual Harassment, Ageism, Ableism, etc. Use the words. Language matters.
  

• Choose Solidarity Over Safety

  If you’re a woman in a position of influence, your silence is a statement. You can either use your voice to protect power or to dismantle it. There is no neutral.

  
  

• Hold Institutions Accountable

  Stop excusing systemic failure as “one bad apple.” Hold organizations and leaders to ethical standards—especially when they try to bury complaints or protect reputations over people.
  

• Educate and Unlearn

  We’ve all absorbed messages about identity, power, and worth. Challenge them. Read. Reflect. Uplift survivors. Uplift each other.

What Solidarity Actually Looks Like

Solidarity isn’t just hashtags and slogans. It certainly isn’t sipping wine at a “women in leadership” panel while ignoring the woman who got pushed out for naming abuse. It’s not saying “I believe in equity” while defending a guy who “mentored” half the staff into therapy. Solidarity is naming what others are afraid to admit. It’s choosing people over image, and truth over brunch-friendly diplomacy. Because the real drama isn’t the women who speak up. It’s the institutions and people who punish them for doing it. Solidarity is what you do when the accused is your friend. When the predator is someone who once mentored you. When the institution you love has failed someone you don’t even know.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s messy. It costs something. But you know what costs more? Silence and denial disguised as diplomacy.

I want us to stop calling it “drama” when women speak out. Stop calling it “cancel culture” when women demand accountability. Stop calling it “divisive” when we finally tell the truth. Because the most divisive thing is pretending that abuse only exists when men do it loudly.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a woman promoting "civility" over accountability, choosing institutional loyalty over harmed people, or with a calm demeanor and the words, “Let’s not jump to conclusions. He’s just old-fashioned and from a different time.”

But we know better now. We know what it is. (c) Katie A. Berglof, 2025 (See: Legal Disclaimer)