The Delusion of “Women Are Strong”, How It Kills Us

Yesterday, I shared my story with a social worker. After listening, he nodded and said, “Well, I know women are strong. Women are strong. So something’s going to happen.”

It was meant as encouragement. But in that moment, I realized how dangerous—and pervasive—this sentiment is. Because yes, women are strong. But strength alone doesn’t stop attacks, doesn’t end systemic brutality, doesn’t fix the fact that we are being intentionally stripped of our humanity, piece by piece, day after day.

This belief that “women are strong” too often becomes an excuse:

To avoid helping.

To deny the scale of what’s happening to women.

To place the burden back on us to survive horrors we should never face.

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“Just Ask Them to Stop Killing Us”?

Several weeks ago, I spoke with a woman about what I now call the Holocaust happening to women—a systematic, relentless killing of women by men across the world. When I said we need to defend ourselves, she looked uncomfortable and replied: “Well, we can’t just do violence back because they’re doing it to us.”

So I asked her: “What do you recommend?”

She said: “We just ask them to stop killing us.”

That’s the level of delusion we’re trapped in. People don’t understand what genocide looks like when it targets women. You cannot politely ask someone who’s committing genocide to stop and then have any expectation that they will.

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The Pattern of “Accidental” Deaths of Strong Women

There’s another piece we need to talk about: the unsettling pattern of strong women dying in so-called “accidents.”

In college, the woman among us who was most awake—studying women’s issues, challenging power, sharing what she learned—died suddenly in a car accident, right after graduation.

My friend Leanne, an extraordinary marriage attorney fiercely fighting for women’s rights, was mowed down in what was called a freak ski accident.

My own life has been threatened, with what I believe were deliberate attempts to kill me.

My friend Ava Harder, another brilliant, outspoken woman, faced suspicious events that felt like attempts on her life.

And I fear that Elizabeth Warren herself—one of the strongest political voices for women—may actually be dead, replaced, or silenced, because her absence in moments demanding her leadership is glaring.

These aren’t isolated tragedies. They form a pattern of targeted erasure, a chilling possibility that women who stand up, speak out, and inspire others are systematically removed—often under the comforting guise of “accidents.”

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Obedience is Deadly: A Lesson from the First Holocaust

We must keep repeating this: in the first Holocaust, Jews were told to be obedient. They were ordered to sew stars of David to their clothes, to gather what they could carry, to report for transport—believing, or hoping, that compliance might mean survival.

This obedience led millions straight into extermination. It was only near the end of the Holocaust that some realized: obedience itself was a trap.

In 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began. Knowing death was inevitable, Jewish resistance fighters rose up with homemade weapons, fighting Nazi forces in the streets of the ghetto. Though vastly outgunned and ultimately crushed, they showed the world that resistance—even hopeless resistance—was the only moral and human response to systematic annihilation.

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The lesson is stark and urgent:

Asking for mercy or fairness from those intent on your destruction is futile.

Obedience to genocidal systems accelerates your death.

Resistance, even when desperate, is the only path to dignity and possibility.

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We Must Stop Being Polite About Genocide

Today, women are told to be strong, patient, polite. To hope men will stop killing us if we just ask nicely. This is a deadly lie.

Strength alone isn’t enough. We must refuse obedience. We must refuse silence. We must expose what is happening—and build the courage to collectively resist.

Because if we keep letting them pick us off one by one, we will just die. We will be killed. We have to work together, stand together, and refuse to let any more of us be erased in silence.

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Call to Action: Look, Remember, Record

It’s time for every woman—and every person who cares about women’s lives—to look closely at the stories around them:

Think of the strong women you’ve known—the ones who stood up, spoke out, or inspired you.

Ask what happened to them. Did they vanish? Were they silenced? Did they die suddenly in a so-called accident?

Start a record. Write it down, keep track, and talk to others.

Compare your stories. Patterns only emerge when we share what we’ve seen.

If we don’t document these losses, they remain isolated tragedies instead of the systemic erasure they may truly be.

Together, we can expose what’s happening—and finally begin to fight back.

And we must go further: we, women, need to take back the narrative. Right now, men have total control of the narrative—and they are erasing the real problem, burying the genocide happening to women beneath endless distractions about Trump, ICE, billionaires, transgender, climate change—bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

None of those conversations confront the true crisis: the patriarchal system murdering women. We need to fully command the narrative.

Just as in the first Holocaust, where victims’ screams and calls for help were silenced so the killing could continue undisturbed, our cries for help are being intentionally suppressed today—because they want to kill us.

We need to be very clear about what we are up against.

That is what may begin to save our own damn lives.