Some trends have nothing to do with jokes or dances. They are terrifying rehearsals.

In Brazil, videos have been circulating across TikTok showing men simulating violence against women who reject them. The caption repeats: “training in case she says no.” And before it was considered just performative violence, a case in São Gonçalo sounded all the alarms.

A 20-year-old woman said no, and a month later, she was stabbed around 50 times.

The “training” trend is already attached to a real attack

According to Brut, Helena Anizio Rosak, 20, had turned down a man who sent her flowers and chocolates. Weeks later, he broke into her home in São Gonçalo, near Rio de Janeiro, and stabbed her around 50 times, stopping when her mother intervened.

Helena was placed in a medically induced coma and underwent multiple surgeries before recovering.

Meanwhile, the videos were spreading.

Brut reported that men in Brazil posted clips of themselves attacking mannequins or imaginary targets, repeating: “I’m practicing in case she says no.” Helena’s mother said the attacker followed similar content online.

@brutamericaMen are “training” to attack women in case she says “no”: this misogynistic trend is sparking outrage in Brazil following a knife attack on a woman. #news #brazil #misogyny

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What the videos show is horrifying

Reporting from The International Business Times describes a pattern across TikTok. Men stage punches and simulate stabbings just out of frame. Some point firearms at the camera. They all set the situation as a hypothetical woman rejects them.

The trend, often labeled “if she says no,” went viral around International Women’s Day.

In Brazil, authorities responded quickly. The Federal Police cybercrime division opened an investigation after complaints that the videos could encourage violence against women. Similarly, officials requested that TikTok remove the content and preserve data linked to the accounts.

TikTok stated it had removed violating content and continued monitoring. Still, similar videos continued circulating, according to authorities.

The pattern fits what researchers already call radicalization

Experts have been describing this trajectory for years and are now arguing that the videos do not exist in isolation. They sit inside a broader phenomenon of misogynistic content often referred to as “Red Pill” or “manosphere” culture.

Daniel Cara, a professor at the University of São Paulo, said this culture “legitimizes and encourages” violence against women. Flavio Rolim, head of Brazil’s Federal Police cyber hate crimes unit, warned of a gradual “process of radicalization” among some men exposed to this material.

That process rarely begins with explicit threats.

Researchers describe an entry point through what they call “veiled violence,” content that reinforces male dominance while framing women as adversaries. Over time, some users move toward more extreme communities where violence becomes normalized, then performed.

A study from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro found that 123 Brazilian YouTube channels promoting misogynistic rhetoric had reached a combined total of 23 million subscribers by 2024, representing an 18 percent increase in subscriber numbers over two years.

The scale of violence is global

According to statistics from UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, around 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed in 2024 by intimate partners or family members. This amounts to approximately 137 victims every day, or one every ten minutes, underscoring the scale of the problem.

The UN defines femicide as the intentional killing of women driven by gender-related motives, rooted in discrimination, unequal power relations, and harmful social norms.

For her part, Sarah Hendriks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division, stated that “femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behavior, threats, and harassment, including online.” She added that digital violence “often doesn’t stay online” and can escalate into real-world harm.

Brazil is already confronting the consequences

The reaction inside Brazil has moved beyond outrage.

According to Brut, some users have recreated the trend to show what they believe is the appropriate response to rejection, pushing back against the original framing.

At the institutional level, lawmakers are advancing proposals to address the spread of misogynistic content. One proposal seeks to criminalize content that, in the words of a lawmaker, “leads to the death of women every day.” Another bill, already passed by the Senate, aims to classify misogyny as a crime similar to racism, punishable by prison time.

Similarly, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has also addressed the issue, stating that men are becoming increasingly inhumane and violent.

(This article contains descriptions of sexual violence. Viewer discretion is advised for those who may be triggered.)

When discussing sexual violence, the focus is often on male perpetrators and child abuse, including incest. Female perpetrators are seldom considered. Statistics reflect this trend. According to global data, an estimated 91% of rape and sexual assault victims are female, and 9% are male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male.

This does not mean there are no cases of sexual violence involving women as perpetrators and other women as victims. For lesbian women, such incidents do occur, but remain infrequently discussed in public discourse.

This may contribute to skepticism regarding actress Ruby Rose’s allegations against singer Katy Perry.

In a Threads post, the “Orange Is the New Black” actress claimed that Katy Perry “sexually assaulted” her at a Melbourne nightclub. Rose responded to a Complex post referencing Katy Perry’s reaction to Justin Bieber’s Coachella set.

“Katy Perry sexually assaulted me at Spice Market nightclub in Melbourne. Who gives a shit what she thinks,” Rose wrote.

According to Rose, the alleged incident occurred when she was in her twenties. She responded to one fan who asked for details by writing: “She didn’t kiss me. She saw me ‘resting’ on my best friend’s lap to avoid her and bent down, pulled her underwear to the side, and rubbed her disgusting vagina on my face until my eyes snapped open, and I projectile-vomited on her.”

For her part, a representative for Perry responded to the claim in a statement to Variety that reads: “The allegations being circulated on social media by Ruby Rose about Katy Perry are not only categorically false, but they are also dangerous, reckless lies. Ms. Rose has a well-documented history of making serious public allegations on social media against various individuals, claims that have repeatedly been denied by those named.”

The allegations described by Ruby Rose are characterized as an act of sexual assault. “I was only in my early 20s,” Rose stated. “I’m now 40. It has taken almost two decades to say this publicly. Though I am so grateful to have made it long enough to find my voice, it just shows how much of an impact trauma and sexual assault have.”

Immediately, several people jumped in to share their experiences and connect the dots.

A user on Threads shared: When Katy Perry arrived at my queer party (Grouse) in 2010, I posed for a photo with her. I was a bit taken aback when she rested her hand on the top of my pubic bone during the photo. Later that night, a friend came over and complained about being groped… guess who?! Ruby Rose, I was told, was outside, sick, and never came inside. I stand with Ruby.”

Another user shared her experience: after meeting Katy Perry and telling her she did drag, Perry dragged her into her dressing room. “Here’s where it gets even weirder,” the user wrote. “Katy opens a giant road case full of her costumes. She pulls out the banana skirt costume and hands it to me, ordering me to ‘Put this on!’ I’m like, ‘Um, this won’t fit.’ That’s when she starts pulling my shirt off, and I’m starting to feel super uncomfortable. I’m like, ‘STOP,’ but she’s not stopping.”

She looked at Perry’s costume guy, who looked back as if this happened every night. “WTF is even happening right now?” she thought. At that point, Perry’s manager came in and shut it down as Perry began pulling at her jeans.

Although the matter did not escalate, the report suggests a pattern of concerning behavior on Perry’s part regarding consent.

This is another aspect of sexual abuse.

For lesbian women, the discussion around Katy Perry—who has faced criticism for her song “I Kissed A Girl”—is not uncommon.

“This is a familiar story and victim response for lesbians,” a columnist wrote for Lesbian Herstory. “I’ve been flashed, grabbed, humped—you name it—by women attracted to men who assume I would love the attention. I’ve been assaulted by more non-lesbian women than men. In my experience, men say gross things, but women attracted to men are more likely to touch me.”

In a 2024 post, the author discusses the violence behind “lesbian fetishism,” which is what appears to be happening with Ruby Rose.

“Fetishism isn’t always sexual,” the author writes, citing The Cambridge Dictionary, which defines the act of being fetishistic as including “having so much interest in an activity or object that you spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about it or doing it.”

“Lesbian fetishism involves spiritual fetishism,” the columnist adds. “Worshipping an object believed to possess a spirit or special magical powers; relating to this kind of worship. Instead of accepting lesbians as ordinary people who are a natural part of one’s surroundings, the lesbian fetishist conceals their homophobia by appearing fanatical—dehumanizing lesbians in the process.”

Although Ruby Rose’s case has received increased attention, sexual violence involving women persists as an issue.

For example, studies indicate that lesbian women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at rates similar to or higher than those reported by heterosexual women. Some research notes that approximately 44% of lesbians report experiencing rape, physical violence, or stalking by a partner in their lifetime. Additionally, 36%–44% of lesbian women report physical violence from a partner, though many cases may go unreported due to stigma or fear of discrimination.

Similarly, studies suggest that between one in three and one in four lesbians have experienced sexual assault by a woman. Additionally, up to 60% of lesbian women report sexual violence involving physical contact. These rates are similar to or higher than those reported by heterosexual women.

Why are these numbers not widely recognized?

The simplest answer: people believe abuse among women isn’t as serious. A more comprehensive answer involves social stigma. Lesbian women often face discrimination by law enforcement, fear of coming out, internalized homophobia, and other factors.

In fact, there are higher health risks among lesbian women due to mistrust of healthcare providers.

In the end, it’s the same pattern.

Whether discussing Ruby Rose or other individuals, narratives involving sexual violence often reflect complex interpersonal power dynamics and perceptions of control. These narratives can also challenge how individuals recognize the rights and humanity of others.

It is also the appropriation of masculine codes of violence, to which many women—whether they are Katy Perry or not—adhere as a form of complicity with the aggressor.

Finally, to speak of sexual violence without addressing all the spheres in which it manifests is to fall into complacent omission. And in doing so, to collaborate with the erasure of patterns that continue to repeat themselves over and over again.

In many Latino families, discussions about sex and relationships are still taboo. Young people often grow up discovering their sexuality on their own, with very little access to sexual education beyond the internet. Even more, when parents do talk about sex, it’s often related to potential negative consequences rather than establishing healthy relationships, developing communication skills, and understanding pleasure.

This lack of communication between Latino parents and their kids may have established a greater gap than we can imagine. Having open conversations about sex not only provides children with knowledge but also helps them make better partner choices, establish boundaries, and even feel safe when speaking about sexual or intimate partner violence.

However, a study indicates that Latinas still experience higher levels of psychological and physical abuse and violence than other demographics. The report showed that 23.4% of Latinas will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime, with 48% reporting that intimate partner violence (IPV) increased after immigrating to the United States.

So, where does it all start? How do we change it?

A good place to start would be en la casa.

The first step Latino parents can take is to eliminate marianismo

You’ve surely heard of machismo, but are you familiar with marianismo? This cultural framework has long shaped expectations of Latina womanhood and femininity. Within this ideology, the “ideal” woman is nurturing, family-oriented, religious, submissive, and, most importantly, sexually modest. Under this idea, desire is not something that a woman should explore openly. On the contrary, it should be regulated, contained, and silenced.

While marianismo primarily affects women, it also affects men, generating the idea that the “right” woman must adhere to these principles, and anyone who steps outside of them is considered “impure.” Research shows that marianismo “influences attitudes about, experiences of, and responses to intimate partner violence” among Latinas, showing that those who were raised under these ideals often faced higher rates of IPV and experienced greater psychological distress.

By eliminating marianismo from the equation and establishing households where children, regardless of their gender, can feel comfortable speaking about sex and desire without retaliation, we take a first step toward helping them shape healthy relationships in their future.

Establishing positive communication patterns

It’s time to open communication channels when it comes to relationships and sex. Yes, we understand that communication isn’t going to suddenly make all relationships healthier, and there are bigger generational fish to fry. Still, it’s the first step to breaking a pattern that isn’t serving our community.

When young people are given the space to talk openly about sex and relationships, they’re not just receiving information; they’re learning their voice matters. They are also learning that communication can help them establish boundaries, solve problems, and resolve disagreements with words rather than violence.

Starting is the hardest part, but it can be done progressively. Latina sexologist Rebecca Alvarez-Story, founder of Bloomi, shared some tips with mitú on how to speak to conservative parents about sexual wellness.

“The best way to become more comfortable with sex conversations in general is to have lots of small, casual discussions over time instead of one big awkward talk (the way that many of us assume it has to be),” she says. “Second, is to start finding/building a community of like-minded and/or open-minded people (who are supportive of you) over time. This type of network is especially helpful as you navigate new relationship structures and sexual experiences.”

Identifying the red flags

Many Latino parents, particularly mothers, may find it difficult to discuss relationships and sexual wellness due to their own experiences. As we mentioned above, Latinas face some of the highest rates of IPV and often the greatest barriers to leaving abusive partners, which can include socio-economic and mental health barriers.

In Inter-Generational Transmission of Violence in Latino Families: The Role of Mothers in Navigating the Cycle of Abuse, Zarah Zurita Quiroga states that “Mothers and children love and fear their abusers simultaneously, therefore, leaving can be healthy and painful. Children become a predominant source of resilience for mothers to heal from intimate partner violence.”

While these experiences may be painful to share or discuss, they can also become the foundation for helping future generations of Latinos identify red flags in their relationships and create positive, healthy bonds.

Some ways to help teens identify red flags and establish healthier relationships include:

• Giving direct rather than indirect advice. Instead of saying things like “be careful” or “respect yourself,” explicitly define healthy vs. unhealthy behaviors. Name things to avoid, like controlling behaviors, jealousy, and pressure.

• Invite open conversations about unacceptable behaviors from peers, friends, and even family members.

• Encourage your child, regardless of gender, to prioritize mental peace over the idea of “fixing” a partner or suffering in silence.

• Build trust through open dialogue, and ask them how they would like to feel in a relationship or what they would like their relationships to look like.

Transforming shame into strength

A new wave of healthy relationships in our community is possible—we just have to start from the root. While there is much more to relationships than upbringing, Latino parents can start early in teaching their children what they should strive for in the future, and most of all, that no matter what happens, their support system will be there.

It’s time to transform shame into strength and empowerment on these topics, and now more than ever, we have the tools to make it happen.

When Marilyn Monroe “appeared” on the cover of Playboy magazine, the publication still carried the subtitle “entertainment for men.” It was 1953, and the archetype of the sex symbol finally made the “readers’” dreams come true: her nude “Golden Dreams” photos were inside. Hugh Hefner purchased the images for $500 from a calendar company without Monroe’s direct consent, as she had posed for them in 1949 while struggling financially.

Ironically, it was Marilyn’s cover that gave Playboy its legitimacy. It was that precise cover that launched Hefner’s media empire, but it also solidified Monroe’s iconic status, despite the savage exploitation of her image.

Since then, Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith, Carmen Electra, Darine Stern, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Farrah Fawcett, Kim Kardashian, and Lindsay Lohan, to mention a few, have transformed appearing on a Playboy cover into a rite of passage: from stars to icons, from women to crowned sex symbols.

Where Latinas Fit in the Playboy Mythology

Latinas, for their part — and while they have always been the token of sexualization — were not invited to the party until recently. While Playboy México and other Latin editions have always featured Latinas on their covers, the American Playboy has only featured a few. Stacy Sanchez was Playmate of the Year in 1996. Ten years later, Jessica Alba appeared on the cover of the March 2006 issue. The first Latina Playmate of the Year was Raquel Pomplun in 2013.

And now, Karol G.

Karol G, Playboy, and the New Paradox of Legitimacy

However, Playboy is not the same magazine it was over 70 years ago. The uncomfortable paradox of legitimacy has transformed the publication into a Variety of sorts, with texts people actually read. And Karol G’s is one you shouldn’t miss.

Just days before making history at Coachella, the Colombian star told Paola Ramos she’s no longer interested in playing it safe. “Last year… life threw me to the floor, kicked me, pushed me, stood on me, spun me around,” she confessed. Now, she decided to do the cover because “I grew up inspired by how beautiful the women in the magazine looked and now I have the opportunity to be that beautiful,” or sexy, mamasota, as she said in Spanish.

And yes. This statement might be an impossible tautology for anyone who didn’t grow up inside the Latino community. A badass woman feels empowered by what began 70 years ago as a system of oppression for half the population. However, Latinas know there’s a unique power in owning your sexuality and your beauty. That, my friends, is a force that can build or bring down empires.

The Part Karol G Refuses to Apologize For

And this is precisely the sort of empowerment Karol G has spearheaded for years now, while struggling with heartbreak, impossible expectations, and coming to terms with her own history. From sold-out world tours to a heart-wrenching yet inspiring documentary, we knew she was ready to leave the apologies behind. Moreover, we intuitively knew she was ready to cut the generational curses imposed by the Latino mindset, including emotional dependence in relationships and the fear of el qué dirán.

“I’m letting go of everything,” she said, while adding that her newly single status is particular fuel on its own. “I’ve always thought that my most evolutionary moments come when I’m alone. As a good Latina from a traditional family, you're taught to give yourself fully to relationships, to the point where you can even lose yourself… I think you have to work a lot on yourself so the relationship can work. You also have to do the work so that you can walk away when you recognize it’s not going to work. When I finished my last relationship, I initially felt like, ‘Wow, I’m here again.’ But then I saw it as, ‘Wow, how beautiful that I had the courage to say that I no longer wanted to be there.’”

That mindset helped her let go of the pressure to “feel behind” for not having kids and allowed her to “be curious.” She’s now ready to receive what the world has in store.

Coachella, Consecration, and the Beginning

And that precise world seems to agree. She was expecting Coachella to be her consecration, but now that she holds the reins, she actually feels “like it’s the beginning.” “This is the first time in my life that I feel I’m going to see myself as the artist in the same caliber as the stage that I’m stepping on,” she says in her interview with Playboy.

“When I received the call, I felt like a huge weight fell on me… I feel very blessed to be part of a generation that is trying to change the narrative and raise our voice for the community… I feel like it’s a show for my community, for the world, but it’s a show that’s very much for me.”

And it makes sense. After all, what is empowerment, true empowerment, but self-love? Many people, including she who writes these words, often thought the idealization of Playboy and its Playmates by women was complicit in the oppression of patriarchy; it was a passive way of feeding the machinery of sexual violence. And hey, it might well have been years ago. But you cannot even attempt to see Karol G’s Playboy cover and interview and not feel proud and inspired by a woman whose self-awareness and humility transform into a unique beauty and intimacy only a Latina could pull off.

We have spent years being taught to sweeten what is hurting us.

That is why the Black Coffee Rule resonates like a church’s bell with women of color. On the surface, it looks like another internet-born metaphor, the kind social media loves because it can fit inside a carousel, a Reel, or a caption that sounds wise at 11:11 p.m. But beneath the aesthetic, the rule is getting at something much older and bitter: how often women, and especially women of color, are trained to tolerate what should have sent us walking.

The phrase has been circulating in a few different versions. In one, black coffee means accepting people exactly as they are, without asking them to dilute themselves for comfort. In another, it means getting honest about what you actually want, instead of describing life through everything you are trying to avoid. But the version that keeps lingering for me is the simplest one: stop adding sugar to things that are inherently bitter.

That sounds almost obvious until you realize how much of girlhood depends on teaching us the opposite.

The Black Coffee Rule is really about the stories we tell ourselves

We wouldn’t dare call it self-betrayal at first. We call it patience, grace. Maybe even emotional intelligence. We call it being understanding, being strong, being ride-or-die, being the bigger person, being realistic, being committed, being mature. And sometimes, just “being the eldest daughter.”

We say the job is just stressful right now. We say the relationship is complicated, or our friend is going through a lot. We say the family dynamic is cultural, and silence is temporary. We say the disrespect is not that deep. We say we are being flexible when what we are really being is slowly rearranged around someone else’s comfort.

That is what the Black Coffee Rule exposes. Sugar does not transform the thing itself. It only helps you swallow it longer.

And that’s the thing.

Because bitterness is not always the problem, sometimes bitterness is the information. It is the body clocking what the mind is still trying to negotiate away. It is the part of you that already knows something is misaligned, draining, humiliating, deadening, or wrong.

Women of color get taught to sweeten reality for everybody else

For women of color, the pressure is rarely just personal. It is structural. We are raised inside systems that keep telling us our rawness is too much, our anger is dangerous, our clarity is harsh, our directness is ungrateful, our boundaries are rude, our standards are unrealistic, and our truth is disruptive.

So we learn how to translate ourselves into something more digestible.

We make ourselves easier to manage at work, despite the toll it takes on us. We force ourselves to be softer in relationships and less intense in rooms that were never built for us.

We learn how to coat reality so everyone else can keep consuming it comfortably.

That is why black coffee feels like such a useful metaphor here. Just as black coffee does not apologize for being strong, we should not show up pre-diluted. Black coffee does not ask if you prefer it sweeter before it tells you what it is.

Maybe that is exactly the lesson.

The Black Coffee Rule is not about becoming cold

There is a version of this conversation that always goes wrong in the same way. Women get tired of being accommodating, and suddenly the culture starts romanticizing hardness as the only alternative. “Be ruthless,” some say. “Be savage. Cut everyone off. Stop caring. Become untouchable.”

That is not what I think this rule is asking for. After all, black coffee is not cruel. It is clear.

The point is not to become emotionally unavailable or perform strength through detachment. The point is to stop lying to yourself about the taste of what you are consuming. The point is to stop calling poison “complicated,” and stop dressing up depletion as destiny. Maybe it is time to stop converting your own discomfort into proof that you are “spiritually evolved.”

That is different.

And honestly, it is harder. Because it requires discernment. It requires you to trust your own palate and admit that some things looked right on paper and still felt wrong in your body. It requires you to leave before the ending becomes catastrophic enough to finally justify your exit to everyone else.

There is a bodily cost to all that sweetening

Chronic stress has been linked to a range of health problems, including autoimmune disease, and women shoulder a disproportionate share of autoimmune illness. NIH says nearly 80 percent of people with autoimmune disease are women, and NCCIH notes that chronic stress has been linked to the development of diseases, including autoimmune conditions.

That does not mean every difficult relationship becomes a diagnosis, or that every compromise becomes a symptom. But it does mean the old fantasy that silence is harmless has never really held up. The body keeps score in ways culture likes to dismiss until the consequences become undeniable. Think of it as the dairy you insist on putting in a coffee that's best served black.

So yes, there are moments when optimism helps. Delusion has its place. Manifestation, if we want to call it that, can be a survival tool. But there is a difference between hope and self-abandonment; between believing in possibility and sweetening something that is steadily eroding you.

What the Black Coffee Rule asks us to do now

Maybe the point is not to make life bitter on purpose. Maybe the point is to stop interrupting the truth the moment it tastes strong.

If the relationship is wrong, let it register as wrong.

If the opportunity is misaligned, let it register as misaligned.

If the room requires you to shrink before it can tolerate you, let that information do its job.

If the life you are building keeps demanding that you betray yourself in small, elegant, socially acceptable ways, stop calling that ambition.

Because the right things may still challenge you, they may still demand work, discipline, humility, and sacrifice. But they will not require that constant chemical operation so many women know by heart, the one where you keep adding sweetness to make a harmful thing feel normal.

That is the real appeal of the Black Coffee Rule. It is not cute. It is not really about coffee. It is about deciding that clarity matters more than comfort.

And for women of color, especially, that may be one of the most radical decisions available to us.

To stop sweetening.

To stop translating our pain into something prettier.

To stop assuming truth needs softening before it can be spoken.

To trust that we can handle the taste.

On the morning of March 18, after reading the last word of Dolores Huerta’s statement, I felt my heart break and a heavy knot form in my throat. I rushed downstairs with my phone in my hand to tell my parents. My Colombian father’s face fell into disappointment. He lowered his eyes and admitted with sadness, “Machista men have held too much power. I’m not surprised.” I got ready for work, and I couldn’t hold back the tears that fell down my cheeks behind the wheel. Why did this feel so personal?

And then it hit me: I thought she was safe. I thought Dolores Huerta had been protected, even when she was the face of a movement considered dangerous by the establishment. I naively thought that my devotion, and that of millions of Latinas who know what she sacrificed and the power of her fight, would have protected her from what we have all experienced one way or another. And I see it every day. The days go on, and more women in my life share their experiences. It happened to me when I was a young girl, and I grew up to become the friend who had already been through it, so my close friends felt comfortable enough to tell me their stories.

It is as if being subjected to sexual misconduct has become a rite of passage for young women. Worse still, as much as we speak out, the more we realize this system is not designed to defend and protect us. Yet we persist, even while we are still healing.

Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguia, and Debra Rojas are not victims. They are survivors, just like me, just like hundreds of millions of women. They kept their silence in the name of an entire movement, and it burdened them like stones in the pockets of a drowning man. No one should carry that weight. Not them, not the hundreds of girls trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, not me.

The farmworker movement was pivotal for my community. It humanized us and transformed labor rights, mobilizing thousands of people who joined with other communities in civil rights efforts. It secured better pay, safer conditions, and recognition for exploited agricultural workers. It empowered Mexican Americans and Filipinos to fight against poverty, discrimination, and powerlessness. It also gave us political identity and power. It started in 1962 through the cult of personality, one in particular: César Chávez.

Chávez became a beacon of hope for millions. While the uncomfortable silences that often arose when discussing César Chávez Day were familiar to all of us, we needed that figure. We all heard about his disdain for undocumented immigrants and Filipino workers. Latino outlets would remain silent. For God’s sake, people would compare him to Martin Luther King and Gandhi. We had “one of our own,” and we were proud. Maybe not of him, but of the force of the movement he had set in motion.

Because we have always known we are more than the stereotypes and the vilification of governments and media alike. We know the value of our community, and having someone in the public sphere who was “fighting the good fight” was a life raft in an ocean of desperation.

Now, that figure has crashed at our feet, this time with horrible accounts, stomping on our hearts and forcing Dolores Huerta to say out loud the horrors she suffered in silence to protect such an important movement for our community.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in her statement.

“I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”

This is happening at a moment when many U.S. Latinos are so desperately grasping onto any source of home, inspiration, or haven. It is also happening at a moment when our own government is at the center of a whirlwind of sex trafficking allegations and millions of documents that are evident proof for everyone except those in power. And we are enraged. But we have a similar situation within our own community, so I wonder: is it time to face our history for its facts, not for what it could better serve in public discourse?

I can’t help but think about California’s Governor Gavin Newsom’s statement: “The farm workers movement and a labor movement are much bigger than one man — and we celebrate that, and that will be our focus as we process what the next steps are.” And that’s precisely it: it is much bigger than one man. In fact, it is much bigger than any man.

As survivors, we face the scrutiny of people in disbelief—people who are either uncomfortable with the truth or want to protect the perpetrators. More often than not, the United States court system fails to advocate for our stories. In other instances, it is even more traumatizing to proceed with a legal case and have your entire life opened up for interpretation and debate by a bunch of, again, men.

Dolores Huerta, for example, had to find out she was not the only survivor through The New York Times investigation, and that devastated her. That’s how the system works. Yet she spoke. She refused to remain “calladita,” and more than 60 years later, she still reminds us that “sí, se puede.”

A report from the UK is now giving language to what many women have been describing for years in less polite terms. According to The Independent, the Centre for Social Justice claims “hundreds of thousands of women are ‘missing out’ on having children,” partly because of a “delay” in young men “maturing into adulthood.” The report projects that around 3 million women aged 16 to 45 are on track not to have children under current trends, compared with around 2.4 million if patterns matched those of their grandparents’ generation. That gap translates to roughly 600,000 fewer women becoming mothers, according to the think tank.

What’s more, that trend is being perceived in every corner of the earth.

The “motherhood” gap they are finally naming

The Centre for Social Justice frames this as a “birth gap” and calls it a societal failure, arguing that demographers consistently find the two-child family remains an aspiration in Britain while the UK birth rate has dropped to 1.41, a record low, according to the CSJ. The think tank says this “baby bust” reflects “fewer mothers, not smaller families,” and that the tragedy sits with “missing mothers,” women who hoped to have children but did not become mothers due to social pressures.

And here is the finding that caught our attention: the CSJ points to a 2023 poll finding that nine in ten young British women hope to be mothers one day, with an average desired family size of 2.3 children, even as family formation slides further out of reach, according to its press release.

So no, the story is not that women suddenly stopped wanting kids. The story is the distance between what women say they hope for and what their lives allow.

The think tank is blaming men’s “delay,” and it is not subtle

The CSJ report argues that “male employment and education trends may play a role in falling birth rates.” It draws a stark comparison: “In the past,” a 24-year-old man would likely have been married, had a child, and been working for a decade. Now, the report says, men leave home at an average age of 25. In our experience, however, men oftentimes leave home when they’ve found a substitute for their mother or primary caregiver.

The Times described the claim in even blunter language: a “delay” in male maturity means men become “marriageable” later, which delays when couples feel ready for children, and that delay can push women closer to the end of their childbearing years.

Now, let’s stop there for a sec. Women should be able to choose whatever path suits them best--whether it’s marriage, motherhood, or the freedom and comfort of single life. However, what’s interesting here is that the think tank found many women actually want to be mothers, but not to their kids and husbands.

“Motherhood” keeps getting pushed later, until it becomes a cliff

This is not only about romance or personal preference. The CSJ links delayed family formation to pressure points that sound like daily life: housing costs, delayed financial independence, later marriage, and career uncertainty. It also points to the rise in the average age at which women have their first child, from 23 in the early 1970s to 29 in 2024, according to its press release.

And the Office for National Statistics has been tracking the same direction of travel. In the ONS projection cited in The Independent, fertility rates for women under 30 are projected to decrease, while rates for women over 30 are projected to increase between 2022 and 2047. The ONS panel also listed factors that could shape fertility, from the cost-of-living crisis to immigration patterns and international conflicts.

In other words, this is a society that tells women to “wait” and then acts shocked when waiting becomes permanent.

The policy solution they are selling feels like a throwback

Whenever we talk about women’s rights, we do so with receipts. We are the first on the chopping block when it comes to liberties. So, whenever the system feels it’s running out of workforce because of our choice to be free, they immediately blame us and find ways to “course correct” us.

The CSJ recommendations are not far from this hypothesis. As reported by The Independent and described in its own release, lean hard on traditional levers: encourage marriage at younger ages, help men “enter adulthood” earlier, explore “pro-natal” policies like tax cuts and benefit changes, and treat family formation as a national priority. This aligns with the rhetoric the U.S. government is pushing here at home.

The CSJ also argues that creating financial incentives for children without addressing the decline in relationships is “putting the cart before the horse,” citing an analysis published in the Financial Times that links falling birth rates to a “relationship recession” among adults.

The Times adds that the report proposes steps such as more in-work training and apprenticeships, and even reducing the school leaving age, as part of accelerating adulthood.

If you are hearing echoes of social engineering, you are hearing correctly.

“Motherhood” is becoming collateral damage in a wider economic math problem

The CSJ proves our argument to be correct. According to The Independent, the CSJ warns that falling fertility rates could affect the balance between pensioners and working-age people, and argues that to maintain the ratio, the state pension age would need to rise to 75 by 2039. The CSJ press release also points to the Old Age Dependency Ratio shifting from 4 working-age people per pensioner in 1970 to 3.5:1 by 2025, with projections toward 3:1 in the coming decades.

The CSJ also calls for a national conversation about how “having enough children is essential for the economic survival of the nation,” and argues that too much policy treats children as a burden rather than central to the future, according to its release.

The quiet detail hiding in plain sight

The report is trying to describe a fertility crisis. Many women will hear something else entirely: a partnership crisis.

Because when a think tank can publish a straight-faced argument that women are “missing out” on motherhood partly due to men delaying adulthood, it is accidentally admitting the thing women have been saying in private for years. The gap is not only biological: it is relational. It is structural. It is the daily grind of carrying emotional labor, domestic labor, and the consequences of someone else’s stalled development.

Frida Kahlo has been watched, rewritten, consumed, and explained to death. She has also been reduced, for decades, by the very people who claim to “canonize” her, often filtered through male art historians who positioned her as Diego Rivera’s companion who also happened to paint.

Time has corrected some of that. Yet it has also created a new problem: Frida as a Benjaminian object of consumption, endlessly reproduced and endlessly purchasable, a face on mass-market products. For anyone who has not read Claire Berest’s Rien n’est noir, Frida can still feel like an enigma, or a symbol, rather than a person with a historical body, a political mind, and a life shaped by events that never stop arriving.

So when I learned Berest’s book would guide the new Netflix adaptation, my expectations shifted. Berest has been one of the few who delves into the depths of Frida’s complex personality while contextualizing her within the historical moment that framed her life, even though Frida herself often lived out of sync with the era she inhabited. And when the new Netflix series is being developed by Patricia Riggen (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), that detail alone raises the stakes. Riggen is one of the few directors of color in the industry and the first Latina director to helm action thrillers. If any life qualifies as an action thriller, at least emotionally, it is Frida’s relationship with pain and love.

Berest argues Frida Kahlo’s life revolved around two pivotal events: the car accident that left her with a broken spine and meeting Diego Rivera. Those events shaped everything that followed. They also risk becoming shorthand. So here is what I hope the Frida Kahlo series refuses to leave out.

The Frida Kahlo series has to start with her self-invention

Something has puzzled scholars of Frida’s life for decades: there are two versions of her birth date.

Frida said she was born on July 7, 1910, the same year the Mexican Revolution broke out. That date appears on the plaque at her famous Blue House in Coyoacán. “Frida said she was born with the Mexican Revolution. She used to take three years off her age,” explains art historian Julia Buenaventura. “It was her way of saying she was born with modern Mexico,” she explains.

According to her birth certificate, she was actually born on July 6, 1907. It was the first time Frida edited the history she wanted to live.

The facts that shaped the girl before the icon

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was German and was her first great love, while her relationship with her mother was distant. Guillermo cared for her when she contracted polio, even though he suffered from constant epileptic seizures. She did not speak German but spoke very good English from a young age.

Even her name carries a political biography. Until the late 1930s, she spelled it the German way, Frieda, derived from Frieden, the German word for peace. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Frida stopped using the “e” in the middle of her name.

In her personal papers, she sometimes signs as Frida Kahlo, sometimes as Frida Kahlo de Rivera, sometimes as Frida Rivera, and even as Carmen Rivera.

Identity, in other words, was never stable.

The Frida Kahlo series should show her ambition before the tragedy

She was so intelligent and daring that she was one of the first women to enroll at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, aspiring to study medicine. At school, she met intellectuals who stimulated her ideas and her thirst for political and philosophical discussions.

While the common myth makes it sound as if painting was a romantic calling for Frida, it was not. She had a plan, but so did life.

Frida did not always dress like “Frida”

For many, the image of Frida is associated with her Tehuana outfits made of colorful fabrics, traditional to the Oaxaca region. But the artist did not always dress that way.

Historian Julia Buenaventura notes that, as seen in one of her 1926 self-portraits, where she wears a red velvet dress, the young Frida dressed in the French style, like the women of her time and class. There are also several photos showing her dressed in men’s suits during her youth.

Guadalupe Rivera, who was Diego’s wife when Frida met him, described her as a “flapper,” the term used for the modern women of the 1920s who wore short dresses and corsets.

The Tehuana dress came into fashion after the Revolution. It is a symbol of Mexican identity. “Wearing Tehuana dresses was part of Frida’s self-creation as a legendary figure,” wrote Hayden Herrera in her biography of the artist.

One of Kahlo’s paintings, “There My Dress Hangs,” depicts precisely one of her Tehuana dresses against the chaotic backdrop of Manhattan. “The Two Fridas” also uses the Tehuana dress to represent the intensely Mexican Frida she became, in contrast to the Frida with European roots from before she met Diego.

The first accident has to feel as deep as her broken bones

On September 17, 1925, Frida suffered a devastating crash on her way home from school. The bus she was riding in collided with a streetcar, and the impact wrecked it. She was with Alejandro Gómez Arias, her boyfriend at the time. The injuries were catastrophic: her spine was fractured in three places, she broke two ribs and her collarbone, and she fractured three pelvic bones. Her right leg was shattered in eleven places, and her right foot was dislocated.

Regarding this, Kahlo remarked that this must have been the brutal way in which she had lost her virginity.

The medical practices of her time subjected her to multiple surgical operations, at least 32 throughout her life, plaster and various types of corsets, as well as various stretching devices.

Shortly before, she had begun working as an apprentice in Fernando Fernández Domínguez’s engraving and printing workshop. Before her accident, she had shown no particular interest in painting. Nor did she follow the art class at school with much interest. The battle against the aftereffects of polio led her to lean toward sports activities. However, after the accident, she tried to move as little as possible to aid healing. Thus, painting took center stage in her life.

Early paintings, early circles, and the road to Diego

In 1927, she painted the Portrait of Miguel N. Lira, an oil on canvas measuring 99.2 x 67.5 cm, in which she depicts her partner wearing a cap against a distinctive, symbolic background filled with objects and symbols alluding to his name. A year later, she painted a portrait of her sister Cristina with very clean lines and soft tones.

By this time, Frida had already begun to frequent political, artistic, and intellectual circles. Through Germán de Campo, a student leader whom Frida greatly admired, she met the Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella, who lived in exile in Mexico with his Italian partner, the photographer Tina Modotti. Through them, Frida came into contact with the painter Diego Rivera, 21 years her senior, with whom she would begin a relationship.

Ergo, she was already a painter and a complete individual before meeting Diego.

Diego as a footnote

Many know about Frida and Diego’s love story. However, few people know she was 15, and he was 36 when they met in 1928 at the National Preparatory School, where Diego painted a mural. Two years later, they married for the first time, and love put Frida’s tenacity to the test. “It’s a marriage between an elephant and a dove,” Frida wrote, recalling what her mother told her upon hearing the news.

We all know the story of Diego’s affair with Frida’s half-sister. Fewer know of Frida’s affair with the exiled Russian politician Leon Trotsky.

Both Frida and Diego were members of the Mexican Communist Party, although Diego was expelled. Both declared themselves Trotskyists until the start of World War II.

The relationship was tumultuous because of their personalities. It was also due to the circumstances.

Pregnancy, Detroit, and the paintings that changed art history

A year after their marriage, Frida became pregnant for the first time, but her body could not carry the pregnancy to term, and it had to be terminated.

In 1932, Diego Rivera was commissioned to create the Detroit Industry Murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts. In April, Frida painted “Sideboard on a Detroit Street,” heavily influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. She became critical of the American way of life, and this reflected in her paintings from that period. However, they were living in the U.S., not just visiting.

In August, she witnessed a solar eclipse, prompting her to incorporate the duality of night and day into some of her paintings, which became a recurring iconographic element in her work.

While in Detroit, she suffered a second miscarriage. During her recovery, she painted her self-portrait, Abortion in Detroit, executed in a more penetrating style, inspired by the small votive paintings of Mexican folk art known as retablos. What few people know is that, just as today, abortion was taboo, yet Frida spoke loudly about it, and about the pain behind.

Surrealism, refusal, and Frida’s own sentence

In 1938, the Surrealist poet and essayist André Breton described her work as Surrealist in an essay he wrote for her exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. However, she later stated: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted my dreams. I painted my own reality.”

However, few women were allowed to be part of the “boys club” in art history, no matter the genre or period. Women were often sidelined. Yet, Frida made it without even asking for it.

Politics as plot

In 1937, she and Diego met Leon Trotsky, an exiled Soviet revolutionary, and offered their home in Coyoacán for him to live there with his wife. Soon after, Frida began a brief affair with him.

Around this time, Diego Rivera adopted Trotskyist ideology. Within the Single Union of Construction Workers of Mexico City, the union led by Juan R. de la Cruz, whom Fernández Vilchis had trained and politically educated, discussions began regarding joining a faction of the Fourth International.

Faced with discord among the members, and because the movement was being sacrificed to Trotsky’s personal interests, Diego Rivera deemed it necessary to dissolve this Mexican section. Subsequently, Kahlo and Rivera changed their political views, becoming Stalinists, which caused a rift between them and Trotsky.

Nevertheless, Trotsky tried to rekindle his relationship with Frida, writing to her to ask her not to abandon him, but she never replied.

The divorce, the self-portraits, and the interior war

In 1939, Kahlo completed The Two Fridas, a self-portrait that reflected her two personalities. In this painting, she processed her marital crisis through the separation between the Frida in the Tehuana costume, Diego’s favorite, and the other Frida, of European roots, who existed before she met him. A vein connects the hearts of the two women. The rejected European part of Frida Kahlo threatens to bleed her dry.

After enduring a dysfunctional marriage marked by emotional abuse and infidelities on both sides, Rivera filed for divorce on November 6, 1939. Frida temporarily returned to her home in Coyoacán, where she suffered a period of depression during which she turned to alcohol as “a way to alleviate her physical and psychological suffering.” Their divorce was finalized in January 1940.

Trotsky’s assassination, her detention, and the remarriage contract

On May 24, 1940, David Alfaro Siqueiros attempted to assassinate Leon Trotsky, who was still residing at Frida’s home in Coyoacán. Following this attack, a raid was conducted at the residence, and the police detained her for several hours.

On August 21, Trotsky was assassinated at the age of 60, leading to accusations that she and Diego Rivera had killed him due to their close relationship with him. Both were arrested but were eventually released.

Unable to bear being apart from one another, they decided to remarry on December 8 of that same year. However, it was under certain conditions: Frida demanded financial independence and shared expenses. Many speculate that Frida refused to have sex with Diego, but there is no evidence to support this.

Teaching, recognition, and the U.S. institutions that framed her late career

Starting in 1943, she began teaching at La Esmeralda School in Mexico City.

In the late 1940s, her artistic work received increasing recognition, especially in the United States. She participated in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She also took part in The Exhibition by 31 Women, organized by the patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim.

Death, the missing autopsy, and the Communist flag

No autopsy followed her death, and that absence left room for a competing version of events: that she took her own life. The basis for that account, as it has circulated, comes from her nurse, who said she monitored Kahlo’s painkillers and claimed that on the night before she died, Kahlo overdosed. The nurse’s version hinges on a specific detail: Kahlo had been prescribed a maximum of seven pills, but she took eleven. That same night, she also gave Rivera a wedding anniversary gift more than a month early.

Afterward, her body was laid in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Her coffin was draped with the flag of the Mexican Communist Party, a decision that drew heavy criticism from the national press. Following the funeral ceremonies, she was cremated at the Panteón Civil de Dolores, and her ashes were returned to the Casa Azul in Coyoacán, where she was born and which later became a museum.

Rivera later called her death “the most tragic day of his life.” He died three years later, in 1957.

Few things feel as triggering as being called “hysterical” or getting hit with, “Are you on your period?” And with good reason.

For centuries, one of nature’s wonders, our menstrual cycle, has been weaponized against us by a patriarchal society that never tried to understand it nor had any interest in doing so. The spiritual and physical transformation that happens to us across a typical 28-day rhythm has been framed as weakness, impurity, inconvenience, comedy, or pathology. So, of course many of us grew up feeling like something was wrong with us.

So let’s start at the beginning.

What actually happens in your body

The day one of your period marks the beginning of the menstrual phase, when the uterine lining sheds, which causes bleeding. This phase is a time of lower estrogen levels and nutrient loss due to the shedding process.

Your body also moves through a normal range of cycle lengths. A normal menstrual cycle can last between 21 and 35 days. We often expect to bleed between three and seven days.

Meanwhile, mood and energy can change, but those shifts do not make you “crazy.” Lower energy and irritability can come with this phase, and it can be common to experience increased feelings of sadness and depression during the whole menstrual phase. Similarly, it is a moment when estrogen and progesterone sit at their lowest, which can help explain why energy tanks and moods dip.

What happens in the days leading up, and why everything feels louder

For many of us, the hardest stretch is not the bleeding. It’s the lead-up.

What’s known as the luteal phase follows ovulation and lasts about 12 to 14 days, as the body prepares for a potential pregnancy. During this phase, a ruptured follicle becomes the corpus luteum, and progesterone levels rise. If fertilisation does not occur, the corpus luteum atrophies, progesterone declines, and menstruation begins.

That hormonal change can show up as mood shifts, bloating, and fatigue. Common luteal symptoms include mood changes, bloating, and energy fluctuations.

Now, let’s talk about the cultural and religious stigma around the menstrual cycle

Many societies taught women to hide menstruation, treat it as unclean, or avoid even naming it. We are talking about centuries of indoctrination.

In Western industrial societies, many norms around conduct and communication rest on the belief that menstruation should remain hidden. In fact, many traditional religions consider menstruation ritually unclean, and menstrual taboo can involve menstruation being seen as embarrassing.

Even outside religious practice, that cultural hangover sticks. In Western industrial societies, menstruation is expected to remain hidden, both verbally and physically.

So when a woman tries to speak plainly about her cycle, she will probably face disgust, jokes, or silence, both from men and other women. What’s worse, she’s encountering a rulebook a lot of us never agreed to.

Hysteria, medicine, and how the menstrual cycle got tangled on purpose

Language tells on power.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word “hysterical” to the 1610s and notes it originally meant “of the womb,” tied to hysteria, a nervous disease once defined solely by men as a condition “peculiar to women” and believed to be caused by dysfunction of the uterus.

That history bleeds straight into modern stigma. In a column for The Daily Texan, London Lack writes, “The word ‘hysteria’ comes from a misogynistic and overgeneralized female medical diagnosis,” and notes that what we now recognize as depression, anxiety, epilepsy, or menopause was once dismissed as “female hysteria.”

Historically, women were often dismissed as “hysterical,” and symptoms of anxiety and depression were attributed to fragility and “wandering wombs.”

So yes, when men call women “hysterical,” they echo a long tradition of medicine and culture labeling women’s reality as pathology.

The magic of hormones, without the mystification

Hormones run the show during your cycle, but they are not a moral verdict.

The menstrual cycle is the body’s monthly prep for pregnancy, driven largely by estrogen and progesterone, which rise and fall, affecting mood, energy, sleep, appetite, stress, and confidence. Estrogen often boosts mood through serotonin, while progesterone can contribute to mood swings and irritability, especially as it drops before menstruation.

At the same time, we should hold onto nuance. Hormones influence mood, but they do not single-handedly define your emotional life.

That being said, our cycle is more than medical terminology

It’s not surprising that men don’t understand how a person can, in fact, be 28 different people in a month. After all, what happens in our bodies is not simple. But there’s a big difference between that and stigma, or worse, teaching us to stigmatize ourselves.

This is to say that there is nothing to “control” during our menstrual cycle. There is no calendar to follow, as if we were afraid of turning into Mr. Hyde. While it is true that learning about our bodies and their rhythms helps us feel more comfortable—God knows how uncomfortable our periods can be—perhaps the first thing we should learn is to be kind to ourselves and stop repeating the echo that was forced into our heads.

Prioritizing sleep, dietary supplements, vitamins, exercise, and meditation are not recommendations only for women, but for any human being who wants to improve their lifestyle.

The problem has never been the menstrual cycle, but the story we were told

Here’s the truth that cuts through all of it:

We live in a culture that calls women hysterical for having feelings, then tells us our menstrual cycle “proves” we cannot be trusted with power. Just watch the current status of the world and see how that argument debunks itself.

This bias has created glass ceilings for women in leadership, despite a lack of evidence that menses alone drives mood instability in healthy young women.

Furthermore, the mental health system, like many institutions, was built by men in a time when women were considered the “weaker sex.” That dismissal still echoes in how women experience healthcare today.

So when you feel like a different person at different points in your cycle, you don’t need shame. You need context. You need language. You need care. And you need a world that stops treating the emotional complexity of women as a punchline.

Because the problem was never you, it was a patriarchal system based on emotional simplicity and fear of what it cannot control.

Over the last twenty-four hours, we have witnessed a striking tableau. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before lawmakers and faced questions about what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, may or may not have done in connection with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Once again, a woman answered for a man.

Days earlier, the United States women’s hockey team confronted a similar dynamic. After President Donald Trump made locker room comments to the men’s team, the women’s team faced the fallout. These athletes, who actually secured the gold medal, declined the president’s invitation to the White House.

“We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal–winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,” a USA Hockey spokesperson said.

“Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate.”

Once again, women chose restraint in response to male impertinence.

How long will women continue to make excuses for men?

For centuries, society has trained women to apologize on behalf of others. Specialists describe this pattern as “emotional labor,” particularly when women regulate emotions, clean up messes, mediate conflict, and preserve harmony in professional and domestic spaces.

Women of color know this terrain intimately.

Systemic expectations weigh heavily on our shoulders. We are expected to soften our presence, to appear less threatening, to maintain calm in moments when others lose it. We perform this balancing act to protect our careers, our reputations, and sometimes our safety.

The cost accumulates, and then emotional exhaustion sets in. Career stagnation is also a risk, while the burden rarely distributes evenly.

The ritual of the “Inappropriate Apology.”

Consider how often we witness the same script: A man drinks too much, makes an offensive remark, or loses control. Immediately, a woman steps forward — a mother, grandmother, an aunt, a partner. Sometimes ourselves. She apologizes for behavior she did not commit.

Meanwhile, the man remains silent or walks off easily.

In columns such as Jessica Valenti’s Why Men Won’t Apologize, and in conversations initiated by Kacy Preen, observers point to a pattern: men appear unable to apologize, in part, “because they think they are entitled to forgiveness.” Society often conditions women to supply the forgiveness that allows men to evade consequences and continue the behavior. Preen argues that “these powerful men don’t think they should have to apologize because they don’t think they did anything wrong in the first place.”

What if we stop?

In the popular Reddit thread “Two X Chromosomes,” many women converge on a blunt conclusion: “Women shouldn’t apologize for the men in their lives. Those men need to learn to apologize for themselves. Unfortunately, that won’t happen until women stop apologizing for them.”

Users echo the sentiment: “That’s what allows them to get away with it.”

“Just like I’m not to blame for their behavior, I’m also not in charge of it,” one user wrote.

“Put the ball back in the guy’s court (LOUDLY),” said another.

The advice that surfaces repeatedly is deceptively simple: “If you need to apologize for someone else, stop and think about why you are doing it.” One commenter elaborated, “Examine why you are apologizing for them, and consider if they have ever apologized for themselves.”

Perhaps that is where the shift begins. Not with a grand gesture, but with a pause. A refusal. A decision to let accountability land where it belongs.

This year, women, specifically older women, could save the country. As Jennifer Weiss-Wolf explained in her article for Ms. Magazine, it is precisely women in midlife who have been most vocal and active in the political movement against the Trump administration.

And this movement is precisely what could change everything in November.

@nbcnewsThousands gathered for demonstrations against ICE across the country, including a student walkouts in North Carolina and New York City, as well as protests in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Texas and elsewhere.

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Older women had already begun to change their political views.

Before this nightmare became our new reality, women over 50, who have a high voter turnout rate, began to support Kamala Harris en masse. AARP polling in 2024 showed that women over 50 had moved more than any other group of voters, including younger women and men in the same age bracket, in Harris’s favor.

Today, there are 47 million women voters ages 50 and over, nearly 31% of all registered voters. In the 2024 election, more than a quarter (28%) of all voters were women age 50 and older, and nearly three in four (73%) of these women voters turned out. Moreover, they make up the largest bloc of swing voters.

The administration’s direct attack on women’s rights has made these women say, “Not on my watch.”

If 2025 has taught us anything, it is that Donald Trump is not in charge of the US government. It is the Heritage Foundation, the radical far-right think tank, that is setting the legislative agenda. One only needs to take a look at their new proposal, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” to see what they plan to do with women’s rights.

And considering that, in just one year, the government has implemented 50% of the Foundation’s Project 2025, we have no doubt that they are going for it. They want to control our bodies, our right to education, to work, to independence—rights that women over 50 not only fought for, but also remember perfectly well what life without them looked like.

Hence, the emergence of “organized gangs of wine moms,” angry suburban moms in the streets, and increasingly vocal.

And if you still doubt the power of these women, just look at last year’s key gubernatorial wins.

Women over 50 helped candidates like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia achieve their victories.

That also achieved an all-time high for women governors. This was while the Heritage Foundation machine was desperately seeking the vote of young men, and boy, did that backfire. After all, New Jersey and Virginia “are often a barometer of the national political mood.”

Oh, and the Heritage Foundation gave young men’s attention spans more credit than they deserved.

Even as the president flaunts his remaining testosterone with the men’s national hockey team, a new report from the centrist think tank Third Way predicts that many of the “swingy, moderate, low-propensity young men” who support Donald Trump will sit out the midterms this year.

Women of color will also decide the election.

Mothers of color are also fed up. Four months ago, during the “No Kings” protest in Dallas, Kat Vargas shared with attendees her confrontation with Ted Cruz at the Houston airport. “I called him out on his bullshit,” she told the crowd. “He called me a radical leftist. But I’m not a radical leftist,” she added. “I am a suburban mom who is tired of his shit.”

@fox4newsdallasfortworth“We all hate you for free!” Speaker Kat Vargas pokes fun at the idea that “No Kings” protesters were paid at the rally in Dallas.

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And like Vargas, there are millions.

According to the latest figures, 60% of American women say they disapprove of Trump’s performance in office. And this is in all areas: health, economy, security, education… not just immigration. According to these figures, both college-educated White women and Black women appear poised to repudiate Trump in big numbers.

For their part, Latinas, some of whom moved toward Trump in 2024, have done an about-face. According to figures from the Pew Research Center, 73% of Latinas registered to vote “very strongly disapprove” of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president. Of these, the majority are between 18 and 49 years old. But the most significant shift has been the increase in responses from Latinas over 50.

So, what is the conclusion? Nothing very different from the usual, although this time it is decisive: it is up to us women, once again, to clean up the mess that men have made.

After the men’s hockey team’s victory at the Winter Olympics, social media buzzed with a video that took us straight back to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The now-president spoke on the phone with the team in the locker room as they celebrated with FBI Director Kash Patel. Amid beer and orangutan cries, the President can be heard on speakerphone saying, “What would really be cool, and we’ll do the White House next time, we’ll just have some fun, we have medals for you guys. And we have to, I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that?”

Then Trump seemed to slight the women’s hockey team, adding, “I must tell you we’re going to have to bring the women, too; you do know that. Believe me, I probably would be impeached, OK?”

It was, once again, the same man we all heard say 10 years ago that you could do “anything” to women. The same man who is mentioned more times in the Epstein files than Jesus in the Bible.

Until then, hockey was having an epic moment in popular culture.

It’s yet another moment in the eternal whack-a-mole game the conservative religious right plays with any hint of social progress. Until the Olympics, hockey meant “Heated Rivalry,” meaning LGBTQ+ love and female desire. Once the Winter Games began, the women’s teams captured the public’s attention.

So what was the government's response, and more specifically, the FBI's? To hit them over the head and celebrate misogyny and toxic masculinity.

@sportswithjules#ushockey #womeninsports #democrat #winterolympics

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Trump’s ego fragility is obvious.

This was not an old man trying to be “cool” with the boys. It was another embarrassing scene of the fragile masculinity of the President of the United States. After the victory, Trump posted AI videos showing himself playing with the team and even hitting Canadian players.

And that is the only language spoken by the people now destroying the last remnants of post-World War II democracy: macho men beating their chests to demonstrate a power they clearly lack outside the office.

The saddest part? This will not make him any less popular.

Maybe it’s time to understand, once and for all, that this is precisely the President the majority of Americans who are going to vote want. There are no more excuses, though many of us never needed them. This is the man millions of people in the United States defend tooth and nail. This is the reality certain voters want to condemn the rest of the world to.

Because yes, the rest of the world has to deal with U.S. elections too. Just ask Ukraine, Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and now Mexico.

And if everything that has happened in the last 14 months doesn’t make everyone go out and vote en masse this November, then we really have no hope.

That question lit up the internet after Chelsea Delgado, a millennial mom of three from Phoenix, looked straight into the camera and basically begged twenty-somethings to give us something to watch again. Less “clean girl routine.” More life.

And honestly? She had a point.

Still, the replies under her video and the debates on Reddit tell a more complicated story than “kids these days.”

Chelsea Delgado said what a lot of Millennials have been thinking

Delgado did not sugarcoat it. She opened with a plea to “you young girls in your 20s” and called out the sameness she sees online.

The delivery feels funny, even theatrical. Yet the subtext lands harder: Millennials remember their twenties as messy, loud, and deeply social, and we miss it.

Gen Z heard her, then dragged the nostalgia out into the daylight

The comments under Delgado’s video read like a group chat full of elder sisters and tías reminiscing. People missed “ENTIRE camera rolls on Facebook after a night out,” missed watching everyone’s weekend unfold on Monday morning, and begged for the return of chaotic story times like “how I got home at 3 am and woke up at 5 am for work.” 

Other replies framed it as a content crisis: “Give us SOMETHINGGGG,” one account wrote. Another commenter joked, “Couldn’t agree more!!! What in the mocktail is going on!!” 

So yes, the vibe reads like a generational roast. But underneath the jokes, people asked a real question. Where did the public mess go?

Gen Z might not party like we did, and the data backs that up

If it feels like younger adults drink less, that is not your imagination. Gallup has tracked a decline in drinking among young adults over the past two decades, and it has also reported rising concern among young adults about alcohol’s health effects. 

Meanwhile, a cultural shift has played out in public, too. Business Insider has reported on how Gen Z’s relationship to alcohol and nightlife keeps changing, including how bars and restaurants are adapting to customers who drink less and want different kinds of social spaces. 

So when Millennials beg for “pregame” content and “clerrrrrbb” stories, Gen Z often responds with something closer to: we are tired, we are cautious, we are broke, and we do not want to go viral for the wrong reason.

The Gen Z fun drought might be an affordability problem

Business Insider has reported that rising costs can shape how young people define “fun,” including the idea that people feel priced out of going out.  That tracks with the broader online conversation about the “gentrification of fun,” which keeps popping up whenever Millennials ask why no one goes out like they used to.

On Reddit, one commenter summed it up in a blunt line: “There’s absolutely nowhere other than church and maybe the arcade. We are all broke for the most part, which doesn’t help either with options.”  Another person pushed back with a list of options like “Bar, bowling, pool halls, movie theatre, coffee shops, parks,” only for someone to reply: “Bro said “bar” Mf most of us arent going to drink.” 

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1qziqc7/lack_of_funsocialising/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=post_embed&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

That exchange captures the whole tension. Millennials picture a social life fueled by cheap drinks and low stakes. Gen Z points out that prices, norms, and relationships with alcohol have changed.

Gen Z also grew up under a different kind of social pressure

A lot of Millennials did dumb things and lived to tell the tale because the evidence did not live forever. That fear shows up repeatedly in this discourse, including in comments that basically say, "We had freedom because no one filmed everything."

YourTango’s take leans hard into that argument, pointing to smartphones, social anxiety, and the feeling that a mistake can travel. You do not have to agree with every line to recognize the anxiety underneath it. Getting perceived has become a sport. Getting clipped has become a risk.

And that pressure does not exist in a vacuum. Harvard’s Making Caring Common project has published research on loneliness and mental health stressors, including findings that loneliness and mental health challenges run high among young people. It becomes harder to say “go live your life” when many people feel isolated, overstimulated, or on edge before they even leave the house.

So are Gen Zers missing life, or protecting it

Delgado’s rant hit because it sounded like a dare: "Go be young. Go be messy. Give us the stories."

Yet the most honest answer might live in the mix. Gen Z still wants joy. They just keep recalibrating the cost of it, financially and emotionally. Meanwhile, Millennials keep looking back at the chaos we survived and calling it fun because we made it out.

Maybe the real generational divide is this: Millennials romanticize the lack of consequences. Gen Z lives in an era where consequences come with notifications.