American women won the right to vote in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified. One hundred and six years later, in San Antonio, Texas, some women at a conservative summit said they would hand that right back to their husbands.

This is worth slowing down for.

What TF Happened in San Antonio?

The Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit convened in San Antonio, Texas, during the first weekend of June 2026. Approximately 3,000 mostly young Christian conservative women attended. TPUSA has been led since last fall by Erika Kirk, the widow of founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed during an outdoor college debate in Utah in September.

Keynote speaker Savanna Stone, a 21-year-old conservative content creator with approximately 800,000 followers across platforms, presented the concept of household voting to the crowd. The idea holds that one vote per household, cast by the male head of that household, should replace individual voting rights.

Several attendees told reporters they would accept that.

Alexus DeGraaf, 31, from Columbus, Ohio: “My perspective as a Christian woman is that my husband and I are one flesh. I vote the same way he does, so honestly, I would be okay with giving up my right to vote, because I know that he would represent me well.”

Brooke Foxworthy, 48, a stay-at-home mother who had recently relocated from California to Texas, put it this way: “If my husband’s the head of the household, I am the neck, and we work very cohesively together. If he were voting on behalf of our household, I would be fine with that,” per CBC. She said she would apply the same arrangement to her daughter.

KayElah Gardner, 19, a nursing student from San Diego, told CBC she would give up her vote if it led to the elimination of abortion access.

The framework these women are drawing from is biblical patriarchy, a belief system rooted in Ephesians 5:22, “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord,” which holds that men should lead in both family and civic life, per The Meteor.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly amplified a version of this argument, reposting a video of Doug Wilson, an Idaho pastor, advocating against women’s suffrage. Hegseth’s family attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee, part of Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches network.

Where This Idea Comes From

Conservative thinkers first raised the concept in the 1980s, drawing from pronatalist movements in Europe, per The Meteor. It gained organized momentum in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s under Doug Phillips, the founder of Vision Forum Ministries.

Historian Beth Allison Barr traced the concept to its roots in an interview with Katie Couric Media: “The householder was the wealthy white man who had the vote. So it was more about class privilege and racial privilege.”

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez identified what has changed about the current moment: “These ideas are being platformed more brazenly and more unapologetically, and moving from a kind of quiet subculture into the mainstream.”

Tia Levings, a survivor and author who has written about escaping biblical patriarchy, added: “When proponents of these ideas aren’t able to legislate these changes, they will get women to self-subjugate.”

Not Everything Is That… Grim?

The images that circulated from San Antonio focused on the women who said yes. The fuller picture, per CBC, is that the vast majority of attendees pushed back on the idea of household voting.

Emmy Mills, 20, from Greenfield, Indiana, offered one of the sharper responses: “Not all of our destinies are to get married and have kids,” per CBC. Her point names a structural problem with the model itself. Household voting, in every version on record, assumes a married woman with a politically engaged husband. Most women on earth do not live that life.

But The Fact That Some Women Are Already Indoctrinated Should Scare All Of Us

“When you give up your voice, you give up your rights,” Levings concluded.

Women won the right to vote in America in 1920 after more than seventy years of organized struggle. Suffragists were arrested, went on hunger strikes, and died for it. They fought for an unwavering mission: the right of every woman to cast her own ballot. The women in San Antonio were free to attend that summit, hold those beliefs, and cast their votes in November because of those seventy years of work.

And yes, faith is a private matter. How any woman chooses to vote is entirely her own. However, a policy of household voting removes the choice.

By Carmen Aub.

I remember an old home video shot on a camcorder. I’m about nine, missing a tooth, and dressed in pink. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered without hesitation: famous.

Today, I think about my inner child—the one I cry with after a “NO” at an audition, and the one I celebrate with by dancing to the songs from “El Diario de Daniela”. With a career spanning nearly 17 years, much of my life has unfolded on set. I started fueled by goals, but also shadowed by insecurities about what it truly meant to be an actress.

Over the years, I discovered that I wasn’t looking for fame; I wanted to be taken seriously.

I wanted to be respected for my work, my talent, and who I am. Fame can come through many paths, but building a career and finding your place within an industry is something completely different.

When I was 20 years old, I got the call that changed my life: “You got the role of Flor Cáceres for ‘¿Dónde está Elisa?’” Without knowing it, that milestone would bring questions about appearance, physical standards, and the expectations we women face. However, the true turning point came in 2014 when I joined the cast of “El Señor de los Cielos” to play Rutila Casillas.

Spending over a decade on such a production was a unique era of growth.

I matured alongside the series in the public eye, learning that a character can become a powerful reflection for the audience.

In the beginning, joining a story that portrays such raw worlds meant challenging stigmas and traditional narratives. But Rutila broke paradigms by showing a woman with power, a voice, ambition, and the agency to make her own decisions. Through characters like Rutila Casillas, Mónica Robles, and Diana Ahumada, I realized that women do not have to choose just one version of themselves. We can be feminine and strong, sensitive and powerful, vulnerable and capable.

I also learned the value of women supporting women.

For a long time, we were taught to compete against one another, when in reality, we go further by lifting each other up. That doesn’t mean we stop being human; we might feel insecure or envious because those emotions exist, but the difference lies in how we respond to them. I have learned to transform those feelings into admiration, allowing me to look at another actress and say, “You deserve this, you are amazing.”

While we have made progress, there is still a long way to go. More and more women are occupying key spaces as leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists, yet we continue to face inequalities. We still earn less than our male colleagues, and we face twice the pressure to prove our capability in an industry where physical appearance and age seem to have a countdown clock.

When a woman stands firm in negotiations or sets boundaries, she is often stigmatized as “difficult,” “demanding,” or a “diva,” whereas that exact same behavior in a man is applauded as leadership and strength of character. I learned that you can be kind and firm at the same time, without shrinking yourself to be accepted.

And over the years, I have also witnessed the immense pressure surrounding aging.

For a woman, growing older still feels like something we are supposed to hide, as if the years strip away our value. Experience is celebrated in men, but for us, it becomes a contradictory demand: to possess the maturity of age, but the appearance of youth.

If I could look back today and speak to that nine-year-old girl, or to the young Carmen who stepped onto the set of “El Señor de los Cielos” for the very first time, I would tell her not to confuse fame with a calling. I would tell her never to lose her peace chasing approval, and that her worth isn’t found in likes, but in what is real.

I would also tell her to be bolder in defending herself, to ask for what she deserves. To remember that the entertainment world, while a place where dreams come true, is still a business. And just like in any business, everyone looks out for their own interests. That is why we must learn to look out for ourselves and confidently occupy the space we have worked so hard for.

Now, as a mother, I understand these expectations even more deeply, and I embrace the past 17 years with gratitude. What comes next for me is to keep building, exploring new facets, and leading my own projects, all while keeping my values and the voice I discovered along the way fully intact.

Argentina entered the 2026 World Cup having done something genuinely striking. The government of Buenos Aires compiled a list of 13,000 people, mostly fathers who owe child support, and submitted it to U.S. homeland security, requesting that they be banned from attending matches. “Those who fail to meet a responsibility as fundamental as feeding their children must face the consequences, said Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Macri.

Argentina’s squad then took the field. All while two of their players have faced sexual assault allegations. Gonzalo Montiel was charged in 2023 and acquitted in 2024. Thiago Almada was investigated and not charged. Both are playing, as if nothing was happening.

They are far from alone, and the list of players who have faced rape or sexual assault allegations is long.

At Least Eight Players at This World Cup Have Faced Rape or Sexual Assault Allegations

Thomas Partey of Ghana is facing seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault brought by four different women in England, according to The Athletic. He was first charged in July 2025 and faced two additional counts in February 2026. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies any wrongdoing. His trial is expected in 2027 at Southwark Crown Court. Ghana coach Carlos Queiroz justified his inclusion on the grounds of “the presumption of innocence.”

However, Partey’s participation required some maneuvering. His original visa application to Canada stated he had no criminal charges, which was inaccurate given the charges against him. Canadian authorities denied him entry, and he missed Ghana’s opening match in Toronto. He played freely in the United States.

Morocco’s captain Achraf Hakimi, widely considered one of the best defenders in the world, will stand trial in France for rape stemming from a 2023 allegation. He lost his appeal during the second week of the World Cup, according to Front Office Sports. He denies the allegations. Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi has said the team is “behind” him, according to ESPN. During Morocco’s penalty shootout, Fox Sports lead analyst Stu Holden called Hakimi the team’s “star man” before listing his accolades. Hakimi missed his kick. Morocco is still advanced.

Similarly, Cape Verde captain Ryan Mendes is under active police investigation in New Zealand for allegedly raping his team’s FIFA liaison during a tournament in March 2026. He has not publicly commented. And Cape Verde’s federation did not respond to requests for comment.

For his part, Japan’s Kaishū Sano was arrested in July 2024 after he and two others allegedly gang-raped a woman at a hotel in Tokyo, according to South China Morning Post. During interrogation, he reportedly denied the allegations, and charges were dropped after a private financial settlement with the victim. Sano then publicly offered what he called a “sincere apology to the victim for my actions that caused great trouble.”

The Japan Football Association categorized the incident as a “personal mistake” and issued no long-term ban or expulsion from the national team. Meanwhile, Sano scored Japan’s only goal in a 2-1 Round of 32 loss to Brazil. Similarly, his teammate Junya Ito was investigated for sexual assault in 2024, denied the allegations, and sued the woman who accused him. Prosecutors dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence. The woman’s lawyer called that outcome “extremely unjust.”

But nothing of this is new. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo has been in and out of courts for nearly two decades over a woman’s allegation that he raped her in Las Vegas in 2009. The two settled in 2010 for $375,000. She sued again in 2018, claiming she had been pressured into the settlement and a non-disclosure agreement. The case was dismissed in 2022. Her appeal was denied in 2023.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo has denied the allegations throughout. He even appeared at the White House alongside Donald Trump as part of a Saudi delegation in November 2025. He scored for Portugal against Croatia on July 2 before Spain eliminated the team on July 6.

FIFA’s Response Has Been Consistent: Silence

When Front Office Sports asked FIFA for comment on the multiple players competing under rape or sexual assault allegations, the organization did not respond. Regarding Ryan Mendes specifically, FIFA said in a statement that it “takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously.”

Jennifer Simmons Kaleba, a spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, told Front Office Sports what that statement amounts to: “That’s the standard line we hear whenever any organization’s governing body is looking into accusations of sexual assault. But taking sexual assault charges seriously should also include creating and insisting upon environments where the behavior is neither tolerated nor swept under the rug.”

Canada Was the Only One That Drew a Line

When Canada denied Partey entry, court documents showed immigration officials making a specific distinction. The fact that Partey had not been convicted was “irrelevant” to their analysis. “Given the explicit nature of the allegations in the indictment, it was open to the (immigration) officer to conclude that the applicant committed serious acts of sexual violence that render him inadmissible to Canada,” the documents read.

Canada recognized a difference between the presumption of innocence, which entitles someone to a fair trial, and the assumption that nothing should change until a verdict arrives. No other country, federation, or governing body did so at this tournament.

The NFL, in contrast, has a publicly available conduct policy that reads: “It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime in a court of law. We are all held to a higher standard and must conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful.” FIFA has no equivalent.

Football journalist Cerys Jones, who spent months investigating football’s relationship to violence against women, wrote in The Athletic: “If the issue is not thrust into the spotlight by high-profile allegations, football does not give violence against women a second thought. Decision-makers do not consider it worth their time to come up with clear policies, or consider the message that they want to send in these situations — both to players about what is acceptable and to survivors about what the consequences will be of them coming forward.”

The World Cup final is on July 19. The list is eight names long and not getting shorter.

The ground in Venezuela was still shaking when the warnings began circulating through social media. People were posting simultaneous news reports and appeals regarding people trapped under the rubble and missing children.

Within hours of the magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on June 24, Venezuelans who lived through the 1999 Vargas catastrophe began sounding alarms that most international outlets have not covered: in the turmoil of a disaster of this scale, children get separated from their families, and that separation creates an opening that predators have exploited before.

And they knew what they were talking about.

Venezuela Has Not Forgotten What Happened to the Children of Vargas in 1999

In December 1999, the mountains above the coastal state of Vargas gave way after 15 continuous days of rain, sending roughly 20 million cubic meters of sediment crashing into the towns below. The disaster killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 100,000 people, according to officials cited by Cinco8, a Venezuelan investigative outlet. In the confusion of the evacuation, children were separated from their parents by the dozens.

“We searched for people who, even if injured, were alive,” Ángel Rangel, then-director of Civil Defense, recalled in testimony published in a university thesis and later cited by Cinco8. “We followed a procedure in which we first got out the elderly, children, and the disabled, then women, and finally men. Yes, children traveled even alone because of what their parents did. Parents handed them over, and one, as an officer, received them as part of the rescue effort, also out of humanity.”

The Association of Missing Relatives eventually counted 49 boys and 70 girls who had been separated from their families and never returned. As of 2006, 81 families were still searching, according to Cinco8. By 2019, researcher Rogelio Altez had compiled a list of only 20 minors he believed could still be alive based on cases he documented between 2002 and 2004. Among them: a girl named Cindy Yesenia Buitriago, who was last seen on December 9, 1999, at a passenger terminal in Cúcuta, traveling with her grandmother toward Caracas. Her mother, Rocío Vargas, was still searching for her in Colombia as recently as 2019.

Rumors of trafficking circulated from the beginning. Willmary Comus, a Vargas survivor, told Cinco8: “Even before the tragedy, there were people watching children. Then, amid the desperation of many parents who handed them over to be saved, it is likely that they fell into strange hands.”

No government agency, neither Civil Defense nor the Ministry of Interior and Justice, ever published confirmed figures on the number of children who disappeared. “It is hard to say it, but in people there persists this vague idea of having seen them,” Manuel Guacarán, the civil chief of La Guaira at the time of the tragedy, told Cinco8. “Over time, those stories faded.”

They have not faded for everyone.

680,000 Children Need Humanitarian Aid After Venezuela’s Earthquakes

Twenty-seven years later, the same conditions that made Vargas so dangerous for children are already in place. UNICEF estimates that 680,000 children are among the 1.8 million people who need humanitarian assistance following the June 24 earthquakes. Separately, demographic estimates place 3.9 million children in the regions directly affected by the earthquakes.

“Hospitals are functioning beyond capacity, thousands of children do not have reliable access to safe drinking water, and many schools have been damaged,” Manuel Rodríguez Pumarol, UNICEF’s representative in Venezuela, said in a statement reported by UN News. In the capital alone, preliminary reports indicate damage to 432 schools, more than a third of the total, some of which are now being used as temporary shelters for displaced families.

The destruction of public records offices, the collapse of health infrastructure, and the displacement of families into overcrowded shelters create the exact conditions that child protection experts say trafficking networks exploit. Eight hospitals in the affected areas have been evacuated, according to El Nacional, further disrupting any capacity to verify family ties or accelerate reunification.

Suspicious Messages About Children Appeared on Social Media Within Hours

The warnings did not come first from institutions since, to be honest, they don’t exist. They came from Venezuelans who remembered.

Among the first to raise the alarm was artist Soy Ange Rodríguez, who shared publicly that she had begun receiving messages from unknown accounts asking where children could be found in the disaster zone. “I have received many very concerning messages from very random accounts asking me: ‘Where are the children to take care of?’ ‘I want to take care of children and babies,’ ‘I offer to take care of children and babies,’” she said. “With so many ways to help, why so much interest in accessing children and babies?”

Venezuelan content creator El del Gorrito Azul also sounded warnings on social media, sharing screenshots of messages he had received that appeared to offer children for sale. The warnings spread rapidly through Venezuelan digital communities inside the country and across the diaspora.

“A lot of people are taking advantage of this situation to take children, girls, and babies,” Rodríguez said. “It is very sad that these children are now orphans, and it is our duty to care for and protect them, because unfortunately, anything that could happen to them would be much worse than a life as an orphan.”

Child Protection Organizations Are Demanding Protocols Be Activated Now

Cecodap, a Venezuelan organization dedicated to promoting and defending the rights of children and adolescents, issued a formal statement calling on national, state, and municipal authorities to incorporate an all-encompassing approach to child protection into all emergency response actions, according to Diario Las Américas.

“Family reunification must be a priority from the first hours after the disaster,” Cecodap said in its statement. “The urgency of the emergency can never justify procedures that increase the risks of disappearance, trafficking, or the irregular appropriation of children.”

The organization called for the immediate creation of a registration and identification system for separated children, the activation of search and reunification mechanisms, and the suspension of any adoption or permanent separation process for the duration of the emergency. No child, Cecodap stated, should be handed over to anyone claiming to be a relative without first verifying their identity and the relationship.

UNICEF and Save the Children have issued parallel warnings. Save the Children stated that without rigorous identification controls and safe spaces, children separated from their families “could be at risk of exploitation and abuse” by criminal networks that routinely exploit the chaos of disasters, according to El Nacional. The organizations drew on lessons from earthquakes in Nepal, Haiti, and, more recently, Turkey and Syria. International humanitarian law specialists have also recommended suspending any international adoption process or cross-border transfer of minors whose family situation has not been fully verified.

What People on the Ground Are Being Asked to Do

Content creator Karen Explora shared detailed protocols for shelter operators and volunteers in a widely circulated social media video. Her instructions are specific: shelters need a single, monitored access point so that no one enters or leaves without being identified. “Nobody enters or leaves that shelter without us knowing who they are,” she said. Every child must be registered with their name, age, and the data of the adult accompanying them. Children must be kept in a physically delimited area, visible and monitored at all times, where no adult can interact with them without authorization.

“We need one single access point under constant watch by a designated volunteer,” she said.

Mothers, activists, and volunteers have already begun putting those protocols into practice. A website, rescateinfantilvenezuela.com, was launched in the days following the earthquakes as a coordination point for tracking and protecting children across the disaster zone. People on the ground are following the instructions being circulated.

The Warning Is Not Hypothetical. Venezuelans Know That Firsthand.

El Nacional noted that, as of its reporting, there are no confirmed complaints or evidence of trafficking in the most affected areas, including La Guaira and northern Caracas. But the organizations sounding the alarm are explicit that the point is to act before the first case appears, not after.

“The protection of children cannot be considered a complementary action within the humanitarian response,” Cecodap said, according to Diario Las Américas. “It is a legal obligation of the state and a key condition to ensure that the emergency does not generate new violations of rights.”

Venezuela has already lived through what happens when those protocols are absent, when children disappear inside the chaos, and no one can account for where they went. The ground has barely stopped shaking in 2026, and the people who remember 1999 are not waiting for history to repeat itself.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor kept her eyes on Chief Justice John Roberts as she read her dissent from the bench on Monday morning. He never met her gaze.

It was Sotomayor’s second dissent from the bench in four days, a step the Supreme Court reserves for its most serious disagreements. The case was Trump v. Slaughter, and she didn’t mince words in what she had to say. The ruling, she warned, handed President Trump more power than the English king the country’s founders revolted against.

What the Supreme Court Just Ruled in Trump v. Slaughter

The court ruled 6-3 on Monday that Trump can fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, without cause, according to multiple reports. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion. The decision overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 precedent that had allowed Congress to protect the heads of independent federal agencies, including the FTC, from being removed by the president without cause.

Sotomayor Says the Ruling Gives Trump Power the English Crown Never Had

In a 49-page dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling gave Trump “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches.” She read that dissent from the bench for nearly 20 minutes. Sotomayor argued that the British Parliament had “often restricted the Crown’s ability to remove even high-level royal officers,” and that the Constitution’s framers had “never intended” to give the president “the complete set of powers” the English Crown held, let alone more.

Sotomayor wrote that the ruling transforms the president’s “duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

The 90 Year Precedent the Court Just Erased

For nearly a century, Congress operated under the understanding that it could shield certain federal agencies from direct presidential control, an understanding the Supreme Court itself had endorsed since Humphrey’s Executor in 1935. Sotomayor wrote that the majority pulled off “such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch” that it amounted to telling Congress, after 90 years of relying on the court’s own precedent, that it had been operating in “open defiance of the Constitution all this time.”

“Its conclusion is wrong,” she wrote.

She also noted that the majority carved out an exception that protects the Federal Reserve from the ruling, but questioned whether that exception was rooted in principle or in convenience.

“Chaos Will Follow”

Sotomayor wrote that overturning Humphrey’s Executor will “unleash only chaos” for federal agencies, Congress, and lower courts because the majority “simply refuses to explain where its theory leads or where it ends.” She wrote that the ruling replaces “90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all-encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions.” Her closing line on the bench was just as direct. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow,” she said.

She warned that “dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands.”

Why Sonia Sotomayor’s Dissent Resonates Beyond the Courtroom

Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court, joined the bench in 2009 after President Obama nominated her. Her dissent on Monday came four days after she also read a dissent from the bench, that time after her Republican appointed colleagues allowed the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers who had not set foot on U.S. soil.

Both dissents came from the same trio of Democratic appointed justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, the court’s current minority. With palpable anger, Sotomayor called Monday’s ruling “grievously wrong” and accused the majority of pushing an “absolutist” view of presidential power that leaves no room for what she called a necessary “counterbalance.”

A justice who has become the loudest voice of dissent on a court reshaped by a conservative supermajority is now screaming fire from the rooftops. Fealty to the Constitution, she wrote, means respecting “not just what it says, but what it does not say and by its silence leaves to others to decide.”

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a speech in 1962. And that’s a lesson the Black community in the U.S. has never forgotten. What’s more, it’s one that the Latino community might need to catch up with.

For a few years now, the conversation about Latino identity in this country has circled back to the myth of the monolith. We are not one thing. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Dominican, Afro-Latino, Indigenous, recent immigrant, fifth generation, the differences inside that word “Latino” are real, and pointing them out has become commonplace in our own media, including this one. The argument is fair. But lately that conversation feels unfinished. We’re quick to name every fracture within our community and slower to ask how a community broken into a dozen subcategories finds its way back to one another to fight the same fights.

This Juneteenth, I keep thinking about a community that figured that part out a long time ago.

What Juneteenth Actually Commemorates

Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day Major General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3, informing enslaved Texans that they were free. The announcement came two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a delay caused by the fact that Texas had seen little Union military presence and had even become a haven for enslavers fleeing other states. Granger’s arrival in Galveston freed more than 250,000 people still held in bondage.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, but freedmen in Texas had already been marking the date as Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, or Freedom Day since 1866.

The Roots of the Black Community’s Unity

The cohesion Black Americans built afterward was a diligent, almost fervent, process. Generations of chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and exclusion from white institutions pushed Black communities to build their own, the Black church chief among them, alongside historically Black colleges and universities.

Political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, writing for Princeton University Press, describe how segregation made Black Americans’ social networks unusually interconnected, since exclusion from white neighborhoods, schools, and churches meant Black kinship and friendship circles stayed concentrated within the Black community itself.

When Black Unity Decided an Election in Alabama

White and Laird point to the 2017 Alabama Senate special election as proof that the infrastructure still functions. Republican Roy Moore was expected to win easily in a state Donald Trump had carried by 28 points the year before. Then sexual misconduct allegations surfaced, and Black turnout exceeded 2012 levels for Barack Obama, delivering 96 percent of the Black vote to Democrat Doug Jones, including 98 percent of Black women, according to NPR exit polling. That margin, built through the kind of close-knit social networks White and Laird describe, decided the race.

A Diverse Black Community That Still Moves as One

None of this means the Black community is uniform. The number of Black immigrants in the United States more than doubled between 2000 and 2024, reaching 5.6 million, with Jamaica, Haiti, and Nigeria among the top countries of origin, according to the Pew Research Center. Ideological diversity within the Black community has also grown substantially, with nearly a third now identifying as conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s, according to White and Laird.

Yet 80 to 90 percent of Black Americans still identify as Democrats, a consistency the researchers attribute to what they call racialized social constraint, the social expectation, enforced informally through families, churches, and friendships, that group unity outweighs individual political drift.

What Latinos Can Learn From the Black Community’s Unity

That’s the footnote that Latino media rarely sit with. We’ve gotten comfortable naming our internal differences. We’re less practiced at building the kind of social infrastructure that turns a fractured population into a force that shows up together, term after term, fight after fight.

The lesson isn’t that Latinos should pretend to be something we’re not. Diversity inside a community and solidarity between its members were never opposites to begin with. The Black community has spent generations proving that a group can hold its differences and its unity at the same time, and that the second one doesn’t have to wait for the first one to disappear.

That’s worth celebrating today, and worth learning from long after it.

Growing up, cheating had a very clear definition in my household, and I suspect in yours, too. You either did it or you did not. The word came in one size. And nobody needed a qualifying adjective.

And then someone on the internet invented the prefix “micro,” and I’m in serious need of a glossary.

The term micro-cheating has been circulating on social media since at least 2024, when it went viral on Threads and X after a post listed behaviors that supposedly qualify as micro-cheating: deleting messages, secretly messaging someone, and “seeking friendship with people you find attractive.” The post gathered 24,500 likes and 8.7K reposts. The comments, as you might imagine, were everywhere.

“There’s no such thing as micro cheating,” one user wrote. “Cheating is cheating.” Another observed with appropriate alarm: “Creating a dating profile? Nothing ‘micro’ about that.” And the response that perhaps best captures the collective confusion: “That’s MACRO cheating 😭.”

What micro-cheating actually means, according to the experts

Micro-cheating refers to small, repeated behaviors that exist in the gray zone between loyalty and betrayal: texting someone you find attractive more than your partner knows about, keeping an old flame on social media and regularly checking their profile, describing yourself as “basically single” to someone new, or maintaining a work wife or work husband dynamic that you would feel uncomfortable showing your partner in full detail.

According to Psychology Today, micro-cheating involves behaviors that lead someone to question their partner’s emotional or physical commitment without constituting a physical affair. For Emma Spector and Christina Pérez, the behavior includes small transgressions with one thing in common: they are done covertly and violate the implicit agreements of the relationship, as they wrote in their column for Vogue.

Australian TV personality Melanie Schilling might have popularized the term, though there is limited academic scholarship on it. But what the term has instead is an enormous online footprint and no shortage of disagreement about what qualifies. Is cyberstalking someone you find attractive micro-cheating? Removing your wedding ring before a night out? Complaining about your partner to a friend you used to date? The lists vary depending on who is writing them, which tells you something important about the concept itself.

Here is what therapists actually care about

When couples arrive in therapy using this term, the verbiage is almost beside the point. What matters, according to Empathi, is the secrecy.

“If your relationship is a house,” Empathi writes, “micro-cheating behaviors are often like leaving windows cracked open. Not wide enough for someone to climb through, but just enough for cold air to get in. Over time, the whole house gets chilly.”

London-based psychotherapist Daren Banarsë, quoted in Vogue, makes a similar argument: “What makes micro-cheating particularly insidious is how it operates through secrecy, emotional investment, and a subtle sexual undercurrent. Even without physical contact, it can create a parallel emotional world that excludes your partner.”

But for licensed marriage and family therapist Lori Schade, of Compassionate Connections Counseling, the warning is unequivocal: “The problem with crossing boundaries is that you’re safe until you’re not.” In her clinical practice, she has never heard an affair client say they went looking for one. What she hears instead is: “It just happened.” “I can’t believe I’m in this situation.” “I never planned this.” The micro behaviors, accumulated over time, reach a tipping point. A gradual slide that felt harmless at every individual step.

But here is what gets lost in the debate about labels. The question “Does this count as cheating?” is often a way of managing guilt without doing the harder thing: asking why I am doing this in the first place. What is this other connection giving me that I am not getting, or not asking for, at home?

Couples can spend months arguing over whether liking an ex’s photo constitutes a violation. Meanwhile, they have not had a real conversation in weeks. They are fighting about the symptom while the actual problem sits untouched in the corner.

The one-size-fits-all trap

The age-old problem with relationship conversations is that we keep searching for universal rules to apply to something that is, by nature, particular. My gay male friends, the vast majority of whom are in open relationships, would find this entire conversation faintly bewildering. Women who date women have their own patterns entirely, from remaining close with exes to moving in together faster than anyone else has finished their first coffee. What reads as a red flag in one relationship is a Tuesday in another.

The micro-cheating conversation, if you look at where it tends to originate, circulates most heavily in heterosexual contexts. And frequently, the approach arrives from the male side of that dynamic, probing the flexibility of what fidelity is supposed to mean. That alone should tell us something.

One Threads commenter offered a point worth sitting with: “You’re going to need other people when your relationship is rocky. Your partner cannot be expected to be your everything at all times.” Someone else replied that when he had leaned on platonic friends during a rough patch, his partner considered it a betrayal anyway. She had dictated who he was allowed to lean on, even when she did not want him leaning on her. That, as the thread agreed, is its own kind of problem entirely.

The answer is not as complicated as the internet wants it to be

Anything done in violation of the mutual agreement you and your partner have made, against the other person’s explicit wishes, is a betrayal. Not just in terms of attraction or flirtation with others, but in terms of respect for what the other person is willing to tolerate, negotiate, or accept. Secrecy is the variable that turns gray-zone behavior into a genuine breach of trust. Hide something from your partner because you know they would be hurt by it, and the behavior has already answered the question of whether it crosses a line.

There is no universal list. There is no algorithm for it. There is only the specific agreement that two specific people have made with each other, and whether both of them are honoring it.

Micro-cheating? The word itself is almost beside the point. What we are actually talking about is trust, and what happens to it when someone decides that what their partner does not know will not hurt them.

It usually does.

For those of us who grew up in the ‘90s, dating has been a ritual that has evolved over the decades. After all, we’re the last hybrid generation—we’ve experienced life both before and after the internet. While we were the first to experience online dating, meeting people at bars or concerts was a common habit well into our 20s. We knew little about mental health, red or green flags, or the exhaustive categorization of personality traits. We navigated the dating scene blindfolded, trusting our instincts at best, and musical compatibility at worst. The closest we came to the performative nature of relationships was the dreaded moment of introducing someone to the family and saving ourselves from the “So, what about a boyfriend?” for a few months. That is, if you were lucky.

But not having social media everywhere gave us the freedom to make fools of ourselves with our partner choices, or to have the most beautiful love story without leaving any evidence. In the end, it was a win-win. Our failures were ours alone. Our victories belonged to us first, to everyone else later—if we decided to share them at all.

And then social media found us.

Before the Algorithm Knew What Love Should Look Like

Back then, you could date someone for six months, and nobody knew about it except the people you actually told. You could break up, cry into your pillow, process it at your own pace, and move on without a thousand people asking where he went or why you unfollowed him. You could send a terrible text message without agonizing over whether he saw it immediately. You could like a photograph of an ex without triggering a three-hour spiral about what it meant. You could be in love without proving it to anyone. You could be heartbroken without performing your heartbreak for an audience.

Your relationship was yours. Not a content opportunity. Not a reflection of your worth. Not a metric to be measured against someone else’s highlight reel. Yours.

But we gave that up. We handed it over to platforms designed to keep us scrolling, comparing, doubting. And now we’re living in the rubble of that decision.

What Social Media Built in Place of Love

If you’re a straight or bisexual woman, men are expected to do this or that, respond to your texts at this speed, behave in this way, and never forget a list of requirements that reads like a PDF too large to attach to an email. If you’re a straight or bisexual man, the conversation is even more toxic. While there’s still a glimmer of hope in men who talk about emotional availability, healthy relationships, and what it really means to be in a couple, there’s a growing majority that talks about demonizing women as a whole.

For the gays, the dykes, and the dolls, things have always been complicated. But we’ve learned, through years of struggle, having to hide our love away, to build communities. And maybe our straight friends could take a cue. But that’s a conversation for another day.

On Reddit, however, the conversation speaks volumes. A user shared a reel in which an influencer said, “See, this is why I keep telling you girls—never settle for less,” because a guy had written something cute on the back of a bill.

A 16-year-old girl shared that she was so upset that her boyfriend didn’t pay for their date himself, didn’t plan it himself, didn’t know the exact words to say when proposing to be her boyfriend, that she felt he was emasculated. At sixteen. Because social media told her that love is performative, and there’s a rigorous script to follow.

The result? A checkmate that’s eroding the willingness of millions of people to even try to meet someone. According to the Liberty Champion, 34 percent of young adults have felt uncertain or jealous because of how their partner interacts with others on social media. A simple like from an ex, or a misinterpreted comment, can send lovers into a frenzy. And according to research from ManyChat, nearly 80 percent of people have questioned their partner’s fidelity due to social media activity.

We’re not in relationships anymore. We’re in a perpetual state of surveillance, comparison, and doubt.

The Algorithm’s Most Dangerous Invention: Universal Red Flags

Here’s what social media did that might be its most insidious trick: it told us that there’s a universal standard for what constitutes a red flag, a green flag, a healthy relationship, a dealbreaker. As if human connection is a checklist.

The social media algorithm is designed to show you content you’re interested in, but depending on the type of content you interact with, it can backfire. Videos like “5 Ways to Know He’s Cheating on You” or “How to Tell if She has Lost Interest” often show up on people’s feeds, creating new insecurities. When you interact with even one of these posts, more similar videos begin to appear. The algorithm carefully sorts and matches content to audiences with similar preferences. In theory, it’s meant to make scrolling a positive experience. In practice, it’s a tailspin of negative emotions.

But perhaps we should propose a middle ground here: what if, instead of talking like a broken record about mental health, we engage in deep psychoanalysis (or any approach that fits you best)—the kind that takes years and gets to the root of the issue—to understand that the insecurities perpetuated by social media are a simulation that has nothing to do with othersand everything to do with our own demons?

The red-flag content isn’t about your partner. It’s telling you about yourself. About the parts of you that were already fragile, with due reason. Social media didn’t create those insecurities. It just gave them a megaphone. Then, what if we throw that megaphone out the window and look inside? Maybe, just maybe, we will build ourselves so strong that we will have our own irremovable standards. And no influencer is going to tell us how high or low our bar is.

Or, What If We Just Told Social Media to Go to Hell?

Yes, we’ll have our share of failures. But at least the stories we’ll tell over the years will be more interesting. After all, without those stories there would be no music, no poetry. And God knows how much we need music and true poetry these days.

I’m not saying, “Delete Instagram. Delete TikTok. Delete the apps altogether.” You can take a break (or two) and enjoy content about pups and cats, history, or old movies. But those accounts that have convinced you that love is a performance metric? Yeah, they should go to hell. Stop watching people who are making money off your insecurity. Stop measuring your relationship against someone else’s job.

Believe me, the couples who are thriving aren’t the ones posting about it. They’re the ones who turned off their phones, had a conversation without documenting it, made a mistake without an audience, and built something private.

Love doesn’t need an audience. It never did. We just forgot that somewhere between the algorithm and the likes and the comments section. We completely forgot that the most beautiful parts of a relationship are the ones that exist only for you and the person you love.

So here’s what I’m asking: what if we gave ourselves permission to be bored by social media? What if we decided that our love story doesn’t need to trend? What if we actually, truly, turn off our phones and go out and live a little?

I think we’d make horrible mistakes, but we will also remember what love actually feels like.

By Yamily Habib.

When I decided at 38 to move to the countryside, my mother immediately offered to help. Despite her autoimmune disease, she didn’t want me moving alone again. She understood better than anyone what it means to do everything alone, even when married.

Once I settled in and saw the neglected land ahead, my mother had a panic attack. “It’s too much work for you alone,” she said. But after watching her figure out her life, despite a husband who added to her burdens, I replied, “Watch me.”

Leaving home young taught me to be self-sufficient, but my new challenge was different. Still, I never thought it was impossible. I learned the tools and tricks for land management, survived accidents and mistakes, and remain stubbornly independent—not because help isn’t needed, but because my internal code resists it.

We’re All Breaking the Same Cycle

Seeing Erika Cruz’s reel on social media, I realized my experience isn’t unique. This conditioning is deeply rooted in many Latinas in their 30s.

“Most of us grew up watching the generation before us stay in situations that didn’t serve them because they heavily relied on a man financially and to make decisions,” Cruz wrote in the caption of her video. “That has shifted. Women are more likely to pursue higher education, and we are starting businesses at a faster rate. This doesn’t mean that we don’t want romantic love, but it does mean that we care about having independence and the opportunity to pursue our calling.”

To say she hit the nail on the head is an understatement.

My mother married at 20 while pregnant and had her three children before 30. She wasn’t financially dependent on my father, but social conditioning and pride weighed heavily on her. She raised us, finished medical school, earned many degrees, and after separating, became independent. That’s when I saw her truly shine.

These early lessons stuck with me. Growing up watching her bound by a self-imposed yoke fueled a building frustration inside me. By age seven, I swore I would never let anything tie me down that way. My choices—good or bad—would be my own, and I would refuse to depend on anyone, no matter the hardship.
And yes, this came at the cost of an irremediable reluctance to commit and an unbearable discomfort with intimacy. But this is most likely just my own issue. For I look around and see so many women of my generation achieving both, and I am grateful for our titanic capacity to break generational curses—though I am also grateful for therapy.

The Emotional Work Nobody Asked For

I am not the eldest daughter, and I greatly admire all those who are, like my mother, and the decision-making burden of parentification they were subjected to from a very young age. My experience was different, though not very far removed. As the middle daughter between two boys, my responsibility was (and still is, though I’m working on it) to tune in to the family’s emotions, to translate the emotional atmosphere, and to explain what’s really going on before the escalating drama devoured us all. These experiences also explain why Latinas of my generation are so obsessed with setting boundaries, returning emotional baggage to its rightful owner, and trying to sublimate our own.

These patterns carry into our professional lives as well. While we’ve diligently built our careers, honoring our mothers’ tenacity but learning not to repeat their mistakes, I see that there’s still work to be done—at least for me.

I recognize how hard it is to delegate, work as a team, or say “no” instead of taking on responsibilities that aren’t mine—filling weekends and losing sleep.

The Privilege of Choice

But as I write these lines, I realize that the bulk of the work is already done. At my age, my mother was tired enough for three lifetimes, and the possibility of doing things on her own terms didn’t seem possible. For my part, I live the life I always wanted, despite the difficulties and obstacles that come with the contract of life. I am completely independent, and it is by my own choice.

The privilege is undeniable.

By Miryam Valdivia Romero.

I was standing at the gate counter, passport in my hand, and the agent looked at me and said, “You can’t board. It expires in less than six months.”

And I swear, in that moment, everything in me just dropped. I had just landed from another flight. I was supposed to be on my way to my grandmother’s funeral. And suddenly I was stuck. I could feel the pressure in my chest getting heavier by the second.

Here’s the thing, though. I had been in this moment before, just a different version of it.

Five years earlier, when my grandfather died, I did what I had always done. I held it together. I flew to the funeral, showed up for my family, and stayed strong. I didn’t cry until I saw him in the casket, and even then, I pulled myself back together fast. I remember thinking, "Look at me. Look how well I’m handling this.” I was so proud of that version of strength.

And then my body shut down. Completely. I got so sick I couldn’t push through it, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t “be strong” my way out of it. Because when you don’t let yourself break, your body will break for you.

So when my abuela died last year, I told myself to be strong, to hold it together, to show up for everyone the way I always had, even though I was breaking inside.

But standing at that gate counter, being told I couldn’t board, I didn’t get the chance to pretend.

I don’t remember walking away. I don’t remember calling my sisters. But I remember their voices, calm and steady from across the country, saying, “Hold on. We’re finding you an appointment. We’re getting you there.” My fiancé drove me three hours through the night to a passport office. The agent made sure I got out on time. TSA pulled me to the front of the line. Strangers moved aside so I could get through.

I sprinted to the end of the terminal, heart pounding, and made it to the gate just as they started boarding.

And then I broke.

For three hours on that flight, I cried. The kind of crying where you can’t catch your breath, where your whole body shakes, where you’re not even trying to stop it. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t trying to hold it together.

I didn’t get sick.

The difference between 2019 and 2025 wasn’t just two funerals. It was everything we got handed without anyone calling it what it is.

I didn’t grow up in a family that talked about mental health. My parents were too busy surviving. They came here navigating a system that wasn’t in their language, that wasn’t designed for them, that made them jump through hoops just to exist in it. You don’t sit around processing your feelings when you’re fighting to keep the lights on, when you’re trying to figure out a form that nobody will translate for you, when you’re working two jobs and still being told you don’t belong here. You push, you endure, and you figure it out alone because that’s the only option the system gives you.

And as their daughter, I absorbed all of it. No one sat me down and taught me the rules; I watched. I watched my mother handle everything without asking anyone for anything. I watched the women in my family carry grief, stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty without ever naming it out loud. There were dichos for that. “Los trapos sucios se lavan en la casa.” You don’t air your struggles outside these walls. And “el que dirán,” the ever-present weight of what people will think, kept everything locked tight inside. You handle it quietly, you handle it alone, and you definitely don’t let anyone outside the family see you struggle.

I grew up learning to navigate that same system, except I had to do it faster, smarter, better, and in both languages.

Every achievement was a payment toward their sacrifice. Every milestone was proof that what they went through was worth it. You don’t ask for help when you’re trying to prove something, and you don’t fall apart when people are counting on you to be the one who made it. What they called strength, I had made into my entire identity. And I was so good at it that I stopped noticing it was costing me something.

Our parents were running an operating system built for crisis, and they handed it down to us whole, along with the food, the faith, the music, and the love. We became first-gen professionals, leaders, executives, and we carried that same survival code into boardrooms and team meetings and performance reviews, places where we were still being asked to prove ourselves, still being underestimated, still doing twice the work for half the recognition. But here is where it gets complicated. Nobody told us there was an off switch, and nobody modeled what it looked like to stop surviving and start actually living. Most of us never got the memo that we could update it. I thought I had. I hadn’t.

This is why mental health awareness advice so often bounces off first-gen Latinas like us.

The advice assumes the barrier is information, go to therapy, practice vulnerability, and ask for help. And we hear it, we nod, we maybe even believe it intellectually. But none of that reaches the part of us that learned, at a cellular level, that needing people is a liability, that asking for help is a burden, and that falling apart is a luxury we were never allowed. The belief that you have to handle it alone isn’t a mindset problem. It’s the scar tissue of surviving a system that was never built for you.

And here’s what that costs. Your nervous system is tracking everything, every “I’m fine” when you’re not, every time you carry everything alone because you think that’s what strength looks like. When you refuse to feel it, your body will make you feel it. I know because mine did, twice. The second time, I finally let it be different.

Real strength, the kind worth building, is building the capacity to break, building the capacity to ask for help, and building the capacity to let yourself be held instead of holding everyone else together. That is the unlearning that the women before us never had the safety to do.

You are not in survival mode anymore, even if the voice in your head still sounds like the girl who had to figure everything out alone, and asking for help still feels like it comes with a cost.

It doesn’t. And you deserve to know what that feels like.

Miryam Valdivia Romero is an International NLP Master Coach, Certified in Neurolinguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Regressions. she is specialized in leadership and behavioral coaching through the lens of emotional mastery, communication, high-trust culture-building, and multicultural team development.

There are things so deeply ingrained in our collective imagination that we rarely stop to question them. One example of this is that lingerie is sexy (for whom, why, and whether it’s actually comfortable are conversations for another time).

Personally, I can’t help but think that, at some point, a couple of centuries ago, it was the symbol of liberation from corsets. Nowadays, of course, the argument that lingerie has become a means of objectifying the female body is a completely valid point.

However, while reflecting on what it is and what it’s for, a Reddit user came up with this brilliant question: What is the male equivalent?

The fact is, we’ve talked so much about female beauty that, often—and to the detriment of my heterosexual and bisexual friends—we’ve overlooked what is visually appealing in a man in certain contexts.

The responses are revealing.

“Fresh out of the shower, with wet hair and a towel tightly wrapped around his waist,” one user replied. “After 40 years of marriage, my husband still makes my heart race.”

Speak of relationship goals.

Another user shared their experience from their perspective as a man: “Wife walked into the bedroom to go to bed as I was getting up (she’s a night owl to say the least). I hadn’t done anything other than strip out of my night clothes (tee shirt and tighties) and was standing there naked. She let out a little squeal. After 38 years of marriage, I’ll take it!

Aprons (especially denim ones) with no shirt, nothing but oven mitts, suspenders, jeans, and a shirt buttoned up with the sleeves rolled up… the answers are so diverse it’s almost beautiful to read.

It turns out that, in reality, the female erotic imagination is much more diverse and creative than we thought.

I did my own research, too.

I decided that perhaps the answers from Latinas might be culturally specific. I asked my colleagues and friends, and I have to admit, they didn’t disappoint.

“Sweatpants,” a colleague told me. “There’s something about them that gives off a ‘I’m not trying too hard’ vibe, which I find really sexy.”

My best friend was more specific: “Gray sweatpants,” she said. “There’s something about that color that lets you guess what’s underneath.”

“Sleeveless T-shirts,” said another, laughing. “Even if there aren’t any muscles there.”

Although most of my friends agreed on anything related to cooking, one was very specific about the image of a sweaty man after working out. Though she also agreed on “whatever he’s wearing while he cooks,” so I think there’s something important there.

The wide gap in perceptions.

The biggest takeaway from this experiment has been the disconnect between women’s perceptions and men's beliefs about where their own appeal lies.

And yes, perhaps it has to do with so many decades of focusing sexual objectification on women. Have we forgotten to explore the erotic in men, then?

More recently, shows like “Heated Rivalry” proved that what women find sexy in a man isn’t necessarily an athletic body (though it seems to help a lot). Rather, it’s precisely that kind of sensitivity, the absence of masculine performativity as men have invented it in their own minds. It’s a man who cooks, the delicate vulnerability of a towel around his hips.

While men think their masculinity lies in the truck, the money, the inherent violence of the vernacular macho, on the other side of the spectrum, things are perceived in a radically opposite way.

What’s more, it seems that while for many men what’s sexy about a woman is her lingerie, for women it’s a web of meanings that, truth be told, they should start sharing out loud with the opposite sex.

By J Noa.

[ESPAÑOL MÁS ABAJO]

There’s a part of the music industry nobody tells you about when you’re starting out. At some point, everyone around you thinks they know exactly who you should be, how to talk, how much to share, what to show, which version of yourself “performs” best for the numbers.

And even when you don’t want to listen, eventually you do. I’ve wanted to fit in, too. I’ve tried to learn the game and play it. I let myself believe that growing meant making myself easier for people to digest.

Especially being a young, Black, Dominican woman in rap. Sometimes I feel like the industry doesn’t quite know what to do with someone like me. Or rather, it does know, but it would rather sand you down into something more comfortable, more commercial, easier to package and sell.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that so many decisions in this industry are driven by fear. Fear of disappearing. Fear of not connecting. Fear of not going viral. Fear of not making the numbers move. And when there’s that much noise around you, it gets incredibly easy to lose sight of who you actually are.

That’s when I started questioning everything. And I want to be clear: this isn’t about not wanting success. Of course, I want to sell out shows, build a long career, and take care of my family. I want music to let me live without looking over my shoulder. But going against the system doesn’t mean rejecting success. It means refusing to lose yourself chasing it.

That’s why I kept coming back to this idea of being “antisistema” (anti-establishment). Not as someone who rejects everything and wants to go to war with the world. To me, being anti-establishment means asking yourself: how much am I willing to change just to move forward?

Because that pressure is real, even if nobody says it out loud, it’s there in the obsession with going viral. It’s in softening certain things so they go down easier. It’s in turning your whole personality into content, in making decisions based on what the numbers need first and what you actually want to say second.

And yes, there were moments where I even got confused. I got too caught up in the metrics, in external validation, in trying to decode what people expected from me. But the more I tried to adapt, the further I drifted from the reason I started making music in the first place.

That’s where “ANTISISTEMA” came from.

I didn’t start rapping to become a brand. I started because I had things to say. Because I grew up watching hard things happen. Because I figured out early that sometimes the only way to truly exist is to speak loudly. Rap gave me a space where I could feel free without asking anyone’s permission. And for a while, I forgot that.

“ANTISISTEMA” is about finding my way back to that part of myself. Not some “back to my roots” narrative, but understanding that growing up also means learning to make decisions with more intention. Understanding the business without letting the business decide who you are.

I don’t want to spend my life fighting the industry. But I don’t want to spend it obeying it either. And I know a lot of young artists feel exactly the same way, even if they’re not saying it out loud.

Everything moves too fast right now. There’s constant pressure to prove yourself, to stay visible. Someone is always telling you how to talk, how to dress, what to post on social media, and what kind of song to make. And the louder the noise gets, the harder it becomes to hear yourself.

So this era doesn’t feel like rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It feels like clarity.

It’s about stopping the habit of making decisions out of fear of disappearing. It’s about recognizing that not everything that gives you exposure is actually good for you. That not every opportunity is worth it. And that not every kind of growth requires you to cut parts of yourself off.

I know I’m still learning. I’m 20 years old, and I don’t have all the answers. But here’s what I do know: I don’t want to become a hollow version of myself just because the industry finds that version easier to consume.

Maybe that makes the road slower. But I’d rather build something real. Because at the end of the day, when the numbers fade, when the trends die, when the viral moment passes, the only thing that actually remains is the authenticity of your voice.

And that’s what I’m fighting to protect.

Como artista joven, negra, dominicana y rapera, me rehúso a dejar que la industria me diga quién soy

Por J Noa

Hay una parte de la industria musical de la que nadie te habla cuando empiezas. Llega un punto en el que todo el mundo cree saber quién tú deberías ser: cómo hablar, qué tanto decir, qué enseñar, qué parte de ti “funciona” mejor para los números.

Y aunque no quieras admitirlo, eventualmente terminas escuchando. Yo también he querido encajar. También he tratado de entender el juego y jugarlo. También me dejé llevar pensando que crecer implicaba volverme más digerible para la gente.

Especialmente siendo mujer joven, negra, dominicana y rapera. A veces siento que la industria no sabe muy bien qué hacer con alguien como yo. O mejor dicho: sí sabe, pero prefiere moldearte hacia algo más cómodo, más comercial, más fácil de vender.

Con el tiempo he entendido que muchas decisiones en esta industria nacen del miedo. Miedo a desaparecer, a no conectar, a no volverte viral. Miedo a no hacer números. Y cuando hay tanto ruido a tu alrededor, es muy fácil perder de vista quién eres de verdad.

Fue entonces cuando empecé a cuestionarme muchas cosas. No se trata de no querer crecer . Claro que quiero llenar conciertos, tener una carrera larga y cuidar de mi familia. Quiero que la música me permita vivir tranquila. Sin embargo, ir en contra del sistema no implica rechazar el éxito. Es no querer perderme en el proceso.

Por eso empecé a pensar tanto en la idea de ser “antisistema”. No como alguien que rechaza todo o quiere vivir peleando con el mundo. Para mí, ser antisistema es preguntarte hasta dónde vale la pena cambiar para avanzar.

Porque esa presión existe, aunque nadie lo diga en voz alta. Está en la obsesión de volverte más viral, en suavizar ciertas cosas para que sean más consumibles. Está en convertir tu personalidad en contenido, en tomar decisiones pensando primero en los números y después en lo que de verdad quieres decir.

Y sí, hubo momentos en que hasta yo misma me confundí. Me enfoqué demasiado en las cifras, en la validación y en entender qué era lo que la gente esperaba de mí. Pero mientras más intentaba adaptarme, más me alejaba de la razón por la que empecé a hacer música.

De ahí salió “ANTISISTEMA”.

Yo no empecé a rapear para convertirme en una marca. Empecé porque tenía cosas que decir. Porque crecí viendo cosas difíciles. Porque entendí muy temprano que, a veces, la única forma de existir era hablando duro. El rap me dio un espacio en el que podía sentirme libre sin tener que pedir permiso. Y por un momento siento que me olvidé de eso.

“ANTISISTEMA” fue volver a encontrarme con esa parte de mí. Nada de “volver a mis raíces”, sino de entender que crecer también es aprender a decidir con más criterio. Entender el negocio sin dejar que el negocio decida por completo quién eres tú.

Yo no quiero vivir peleando con la industria, pero tampoco quiero vivir obedeciéndola. Y sé que muchos artistas jóvenes se sienten así, aunque no lo digan en voz alta.

Todo se mueve demasiado rápido. Hay que estar constantemente intentando demostrar algo, mantenerse visible. Siempre hay alguien diciéndote cómo deberías hablar, vestirte, qué subir a las redes, qué canción hacer. Y mientras más ruido hay, más difícil se vuelve escucharte a ti misma.

Por eso esta etapa no se siente como rebeldía por rebeldía. Se siente como claridad.

Se trata de dejar de tomar decisiones desde el miedo a desaparecer y de entender que no todo lo que te da exposición te hace bien. Que no toda oportunidad vale la pena ni todo crecimiento tiene que venir de sacrificar partes de ti.

Yo sé que todavía estoy aprendiendo. Después de todo, tengo 20 años, y no tengo todas las respuestas. Pero sí sé esto: no quiero convertirme en una persona vacía solo para que la industria me encuentre más fácil de consumir.

Y quizás eso haga el camino más lento. Pero prefiero construir algo real. Porque al final, cuando se apaguen los números, las tendencias y el momento viral, lo único que realmente queda es la autenticidad de tu voz.

Y eso es lo que estoy tratando de proteger.

By Yamily Habib.

At 25, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted out of life. The plan was to earn a Ph.D. and pursue a line of research at a university that would be intrigued by my outlandish ideas about combining art and quantum physics. I was still working six days a week on the night shift at a bar so I could pay my bills and keep studying during the day. The instinct for survival was so overwhelming that I didn’t have time to sit down and ask myself if this was still what I wanted to do. Until my visa expired, and I couldn’t renew it.

My options were very limited, so I decided to move and try to take my research to another university in another country. No one was interested in the ideas that seemed groundbreaking to me at the time. And that’s when, one night with my head in my hands over my books, it hit me: this isn’t what I want to do with my life.

I looked around and realized that all my friends were enjoying life, going from party to party, to concerts I never knew they could afford, traveling everywhere. I had become so fixated on one idea of life that I was letting my actual life pass me by. I slammed the books shut and turned off the computer and my phone. That very night, I realized I had spent my whole life chasing an idea of stability, hoping to one day have a job teaching at a university that would allow me to do what I truly loved in my free time: writing. That was it. That was what truly made me happy.

The next day, I put together a resume and a couple of clips of articles I’d written for a friend’s magazine and started looking for work as a writer. Today, thirteen years later, I’m immensely grateful for all the hardships I had to endure in those early years, writing up to eight articles a day for less than $30 just to survive. I had the opportunity to work with editors from the old school of Latin American journalism; I learned not to bury the lede, to rewrite headlines up to 50 times, to lay out a magazine, and, eventually, to coordinate an editorial team.

That’s why, when I saw Hali’s viral video where she says, “From about 26 to 32, you enter your ‘existential crisis era.’ It’s very important that you ride that crash out,” I couldn’t help but smile and say, “Absolutely.”

What so many of us experience at that age has a name: “quarter-life crisis.” And it’s one of the defining moments in any woman’s life.

It’s a real transition, not a personal failure.

According to a 2017 LinkedIn survey, 75 percent of people aged 25 to 33 have experienced a quarter-life crisis. The average age of onset is 27. And hey, this isn’t a sign that something is wrong with you. It doesn’t imply either that your experience is a collective tantrum. It’s a developmental milestone that happens when your early-life assumptions crash into reality.

A quarter-life crisis typically occurs between the ages of 20 and 30, though it can extend into the early 30s. Specialists describe it as a period of uncertainty marked by anxiety, confusion, and dissatisfaction with various aspects of life. In my experience, it’s a time of constant questioning, whether it’s your career choices, relationships, or even what you’re wearing every single day. And Hali is right. Even if you don’t recognize this as a normal part of growing up, please, listen to it.

The collision between expectation and reality.

Quarter-life crises don’t emerge from nowhere. Gabriel Kwakyi, who runs The Musing Mind, identifies several common triggers. They include misalignment between the life you imagined and the one you’re actually living. An un-integrated loss. Excessive self-expectations tied to age-based timelines (being married, buying a house, earning a certain promotion by a specific birthday). Comparisons to peers who seem to be moving ahead. Life changes that isolate you. Lack of validation from people who matter to you.

For many of us, it’s not a catastrophic event you can pinpoint. Instead, it’s the accumulation of smaller stressors that eventually demands attention, or directly crashes you out.

What it actually feels like.

The onset of a quarter-life crisis can feel like mental vertigo. You’re drawn toward questions about who you really are, stripped of the scripts you’ve been following. MindWell Psychology NYC notes that this period is marked by feelings of being stuck or directionless, even when you’ve “checked the boxes.” You might feel anxious about money, purpose, or the future. You might feel disconnected from yourself. The pressure to figure it all out right now can feel suffocating.

Kwakyi writes that “it is in times of confusion, stress, or pain, when we are knocked off balance and finally take a look around that there arises a golden opportunity for these repressed voices of our inner selves to come to the surface of our consciousness and be seen.” It’s uncomfortable and exhausting, and you experience insomnia, changes in appetite, or persistent anxiety.

Moving forward means honoring what’s shifting inside, and moving past the rubble.

The path through a quarter-life crisis isn’t linear, and it doesn’t require having all the answers. City Scape Counseling recommends starting with small, achievable goals that build momentum. Reflect on your values, relationships, and whether your current work feels purposeful. Set limits on social media, which often amplifies comparison and self-doubt.

Others recommend seeking a connection. Talk to people who’ve been through this. Find a therapist if you need one. Read. Listen to people who’ve survived their own reckoning. Kwakyi writes that “when you find the courage to listen to the voices of your deeper self and the will to evolve your perception or your life situation as a result, you will come through this experience stronger and happier.”

My recommendation? Throw your expectations out the window. As John Lennon used to say, “life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”

What I learned in those early years of working as a writer for almost nothing was that I wasn’t a failure. I was actually being honest. I learned to stop chasing someone else’s definition of success. To align my actual life with what actually made me feel alive, not in an imagined future, but every single day.

The quarter-life crisis doesn’t last forever. But the person you become on the other side of it does.

Only over a week ago, Carmen Teresa Navas learned her son had been dead for almost a year. Ten days after she received the information, she passed away.

For more than 16 months before learning the truth, Carmen searched for her son. El País reports she was 83 when she began visiting Venezuelan prisons, hoping to find proof he was alive and that someone could tell her where he was.

On May 7, 2026, officials finally told her the truth. By that time, Víctor had been buried in a secret grave for nearly ten months, and the government had kept this hidden almost as long as Carmen had searched.

The Arrest No One Acknowledged

Víctor Hugo Quero Navas was 51 years old. The Miami Herald describes him as a merchant, while other sources call him a businessman. In early January 2025, officers from Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency arrested him without a judicial warrant.

The charges were terrorism, conspiracy, and treason to the nation.

But according to the BBC, eyewitnesses gave a different account. They said Víctor was not carrying explosives or weapons. Instead, he had hallacas, a Venezuelan cornmeal dish, and candy. He was on his way to celebrate New Year’s Day with his mother.

What happened next was silence.

Carmen never received an official notice about the arrest. The Miami Herald reports that authorities gave her no information about where her son was, his condition, or his legal status. The system had completely hidden him.

Searching Through Closed Doors

For the next 16 months, Carmen represented a common Venezuelan tragedy: a mother waiting for news that never arrived.

According to the BBC, she visited detention centers across Caracas, including the DGCIM of Boleíta, the Helicoide, the center at La Yaguara, Zone 7 of Petare, and many times to Rodeo I, a maximum-security prison known for its harsh conditions. At each place, multiple sources say officials told her they had no record of her son, no information or confirmation he was alive, and no permission to visit.

But other inmates knew. The BBC reports that prisoners in Rodeo I told Carmen when her son arrived and later when he became ill. The government never gave her this information.

On May 4, 2026, just days before officials told her the truth, Carmen stood in Altamira Square holding a photo of her son. CNN reports she spoke out: “Give me proof of my son. Where are they holding him? If he is alive… because since they arrested him, I have not seen him a single time.”

Her desperate question challenged a system built on disappearances, where people are held in places that officially do not exist, by agencies that deny knowing them.

According to The Miami Herald, human rights organizations had already classified Víctor’s case as a possible forced disappearance. Similarly, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in April, the commission had granted precautionary measures in favor of both Carmen and Víctor, determining they faced a “serious and urgent situation” that placed their “right to life, personal integrity and health at risk.”

But protective measures on paper meant little against a state system that operated in silence.

The Hidden Death

On July 15, 2025, according to the Ministry of Penitentiary Services statement, Víctor was transferred from Rodeo I to the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital. The reason given: he was suffering from “upper gastrointestinal bleeding and acute febrile syndrome.”

Nine days later, on July 24, 2025, he died. The stated cause: “acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary thromboembolism”—a blood clot that had blocked his lungs.

After that, there was silence. The Miami Herald reports that authorities said they buried him on July 30 following “legal protocols,” because “no relatives formally requested visitation rights” and because Víctor had allegedly “failed to provide information about family contacts while incarcerated.”

This account could not be true. Carmen had been searching, visiting Rodeo I many times, and going to courts, security agencies, and the Ombudsman’s office. Foro Penal said the government’s explanation was not just wrong but cruel. “Víctor Quero died while he was disappeared!” Alfredo Romero, the organization’s president, wrote on social media. “The Penitentiary Ministry says he provided no family information, but his mother went many times to Rodeo I and authorities denied he was there.”

Nearly ten months went by as Carmen kept searching, not knowing her son had already been buried. The Miami Herald reports that just days before the government admitted Víctor was dead, attorneys with the Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy were still publicly demanding information about his whereabouts, unaware that officials had buried him in secret.

The Exhumation

On May 7, 2026, Carmen was called to the Ombudsman’s office. There, she learned the truth: her son had died almost a year earlier.

Carmen asked for the body to be exhumed so she could identify it herself.

On May 8, the grave was opened. According to the BBC, when Carmen saw her son’s body, she said: “How is it possible they killed him like a dog?”

According to Maryorin Méndez, the journalist who had documented Carmen’s entire search and remained by her side, Carmen was devastated by one detail in the government’s official statement: the claim that no one had searched for her son. “Of course Víctor had family,” Carmen insisted to Méndez.

Carmen wanted to give her son a proper funeral. She arranged a mass at La Candelaria Church in Caracas, a large, crowded church where she could finally honor him in public. Dozens of relatives of political prisoners gathered there to acknowledge what the government had tried to hide. Carmen seemed to find a moment of peace. “She said she felt very well, calm despite everything,” Méndez noted.

But something changed after the service ended. Telemundo reports that Carmen tried to speak for her son. “She said it was very hard, that she only asked God for strength,” Méndez recalled. “And after those hours, she faded little by little.”

That night and into Saturday, Carmen felt unwell. She said she couldn’t breathe properly. She was taken to a medical facility, but according to all reports, every test came back normal. The doctors found nothing physically wrong.

On Sunday, May 17, 2026, just 10 days after learning her son was dead, Carmen Teresa Navas died. The cause was never officially released.

Carmen had been waiting for answers about the exact date her son died and the true circumstances of his death. “She said she didn’t believe that date,” Méndez said. Carmen died still waiting for the truth.

The Weight of a Mother’s Loss

Carmen’s death ignited immediate and widespread condemnation across Venezuelan society. María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was among the first to respond.

“Not only did a mother die; a woman who turned pain into courage and despair into protest was silenced,” Machado said. “Carmen leaves us with an immense lesson in perseverance and dignity. An 80-year-old woman faced, alone and without fear, an entire apparatus of terror that wanted to erase her son and break her family.”

According to UPI, Carmen became known as the “grandmother of Venezuela,” a symbol of the suffering faced by families of political prisoners under the state’s repressive system.

But she was not alone in her grief. According to the BBC, four other mothers whose sons were detained under similar circumstances had died in the previous six months in Venezuela without ever seeing their children freed.

Global Outcry

According to the human rights organization Provea, the cruelty for these families was even greater: “Many times, mothers don’t just have to deal with the vital needs of their sons in prison, where there isn’t even clean water to drink, and a national economy that destroys citizens’ pockets. They also face the pain of not knowing where their son or daughter is—a victim of forced disappearance, a perverse practice increasingly common among state security forces.”

On May 18, the political party Vente Venezuela, led by Machado, released a statement condemning both deaths as inseparable from state cruelty. “Not only did they kill her son, Víctor Hugo Quero, but they forced her to search for him for months, knowing he was already dead.”

According to Venezuelan government sources quoted by The Miami Herald, authorities announced a criminal investigation into the circumstances of Víctor’s death. However, human rights organizations cited in the UPI report warned that any investigation must be independent and have international oversight, not be handled by the same system that had hidden his death.

The NGO Foro Penal, which had accompanied Carmen throughout her search, released a statement to CNN emphasizing her legacy: “Her strength, dignity, and perseverance in the face of silence and uncertainty were an example of the strength of mothers and relatives of victims in Venezuela.”

Carmen had wanted one simple thing: to see her son alive, to know where he was, to be acknowledged as his mother. The government had denied her that. And in the end, it denied her even the time to grieve him properly.

All it left her was 10 days.

By Reyna Grande.

Reyna is an award-winning Mexican-American author best known for her landmark memoirs The Distance Between Us and A Dream Called Home. This time, she turns her gaze inward to explore the scars left by migration and the ongoing work of stitching herself back together. MIGRANT HEART interrogates how living between two nations, two languages, and two identities has shaped Reyna as a woman, mother, and writer. Moving from the legacy of violence in her hometown of Iguala, Mexico, to a bittersweet family vacation in Europe spent reconciling her own impoverished past with her children’s world of abundance, she uncovers startling truths about the nature of survival. It is an essential read for the seekers, the dreamers, and anyone who believes in the enduring, transformative power of finding one’s voice.

Two years after my father left for the US, my mother followed him north, leaving her three children in Mexico. I was four years old when she immigrated to California. In January 1980, a few weeks before her thirtieth birthday, my mother arrived in Los Angeles and found a job trimming threads off freshly sewn garments in LA’s Fashion District. She was one of the thousands of undocumented immigrant women working long hours for less than minimum wage, in unsafe conditions, and with no health insurance. She made fifteen cents per piece, the threads she snipped clinging to her clothes like spiderwebs. All day she stood, with scissors in hand, in an airless room full of industrial-sized sewing machines and steam presses, rushing from one garment to the next, trying not to cut her own fingers. She hated this job. She felt trapped in this LA sweatshop.

In Mexico, she’d been an Avon lady and loved la chamba, the hustle of working in sales as an entrepreneur. She enjoyed walking from house to house around the neighborhood, displaying her merchandise and catalogs, chatting with her clients. In Los Angeles, she missed the freedom of working outdoors, setting her own hours, being her own boss. Two years after she arrived, she and my father split up. My siblings and I were still waiting in Mexico to be reunited with them. When we finally crossed the border three years later to begin our new life in Los Angeles, the family we had known in Mexico was gone. My father had left my mother for another woman, and my mother, in turn, left her children for another man. She gave my father sole physical and legal custody of my two older siblings and me, keeping only the youngest, my sister Betty, who was born in the US. We never shared the same address again. I saw my mother only once or twice a month. Stepping back from our lives, she allowed my father and stepmother to raise us as they saw fit.

My siblings and I grew up in Highland Park in northeast LA, which at that time was a working-class Latino neighborhood with a serious gang problem. But we came from the poverty-stricken state of Guerrero—the second-poorest state in Mexico—so Highland Park was a huge upgrade. The dirt roads of my childhood were replaced by wide, paved streets that seemed to go on forever. Instead of shacks made of sticks and cardboard, like the one we called home in Mexico, the streets were lined with real houses made of thick stucco walls and shingled roofs. Although we were still poor by American standards—my siblings and I slept in the living room on a sofa bed, our sleep punctuated by gunshots, sirens, and the whirring of police helicopters in the distance—the solid walls of our one-bedroom duplex on Avenue 50 provided a protection we’d never known in Mexico.

My father, a maintenance worker with a third-grade education, spoke little English. We were still undocumented then, but he’d hold up our report cards and say, “I brought you here to this country so you could get an education, have careers one day, be homeowners, have money for retirement.” These were his hopes, and he demanded excellent grades and perfect attendance, threatening to send us back to Mexico otherwise. He wanted us to achieve the American Dream in all its glory and for our lives to be completely different from those we’d left behind. “We are in California now,” he’d say, “and we need to look forward, not back.”

My mother was the opposite of my father. She had humble aspirations, not lofty dreams. She was content with what little she had, as no poverty in Los Angeles could ever compare to the poverty she’d left behind. “Sometimes, we had nothing to eat but a tortilla sprinkled with salt and a jalapeño pepper to warm our bellies,” she’d say. As long as she wasn’t that poor, she was happy. For her, survival was enough. She’d never been taught to reach for more. Where did my father get his ambition? Who taught him to dream bigger? I do not know. What I do know is that he passed it on to his children. “I didn’t bring you here to be nobodies,” he often said. “We didn’t risk our lives crossing the border for you to end up as failures.”

A few years later, my mother left her factory job to become her own boss—a vendor at local open-air swap meets, like the tianguis in Mexico. Because she didn’t drive, her husband quit his ironing job, and they both worked the swap meets: in South El Monte on weekends, in San Fernando on Tuesdays, in Santa Fe Springs on Wednesdays and Fridays. Thursdays, they restocked merchandise at the wholesale shops in Downtown LA. They traded their stable, if low-paying, jobs in the garment industry for the risky business of selling Avon, Jafra, and Mary Kay products, as well as seasonal items like silk roses and teddy bears for Valentine’s Day, cheap plastic sandals in the summer, and toys at Christmastime. “Look at your mother,” my father would say with a grimace. “That’s no way to live. Peddling goods at the swap meet. No stability, no retirement, no benefits. That’s why she’s on welfare.” The more he denigrated her, the more we did, too. We worked harder at school, vowing not to follow her path. We were determined to be different, to achieve the life our father craved.

My father’s dreams, while well-intentioned, burdened his children immensely. I carried the weight of his expectations, pressured to succeed and validate his sacrifices. But the more I tried to live up to them, the more distant I grew from him and from my mother. When our mother’s (and little sister’s) absence overwhelmed us, my siblings and I would go see her. We entered another world when we visited her in Downtown LA. My mother’s neighborhood near Skid Row made us wonder if we were still in California, and not in a poverty-stricken country like the one we’d left. Walking from the bus stop on Spring Street to her house on San Pedro Street, my sister, brother, and I navigated through the unhoused people spread out on the sidewalks and avoided the sex workers standing on corners. The streets reeked of urine and marijuana. Piles of trash crunched under our feet. Plastic bags of all colors floated around us in the wind like miniature parachutes. We hurried to our mother’s one-room studio, squeezing amid the chaotic jumble of furniture and stacks of boxes where she stored her belongings. Her home, with a shared bathroom and kitchen on that floor, was infested with roaches and mice and smelled like skunk.

My mother supplemented her earnings by recycling cans and bottles. She would dig into trash with bare hands, leaving bags of her haul in the corner of her studio apartment—feeding roaches and stinking up the place—until she had enough to make a trip to the recycling center. Our visits to her home were awkward. Our history of separations, of her abandonment, hung over us. She treated us as visitors, not her children, and seemed incapable of giving us the motherly love and warmth we craved. We were always the ones to visit her, and if she ever missed us, she never said so. It was as if we didn’t exist, unless we came knocking on her door. When she complained about the pitiful sales at the swap meet, we would suggest that she learn to drive. “That way you can drive yourself, and your husband can get a stable job. Then at least one of you could have a steady income.” The suggestion terrified her. “¿Y si me mato?” And if I kill myself? She insisted that her husband keep driving her to the swap meet.

As my siblings and I came of age in California, we assimilated more and more into US American culture. We spoke English fluently. We listened to Madonna and Depeche Mode; dressed up as superheroes, ghosts, and Greek goddesses on Halloween. We began to replace telenovelas with shows like Small Wonder and Married . . .with Children. My sister did modern dance. I joined the marching band, performing multiple times in Disneyland’s Christmas Fantasy Parade and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. The more education we received in US schools, the less we understood our mother. We internalized the disdain US American society feels for immigrants like her—the undereducated, non-English-speaking, low-skilled immigrant worker living on the margins of society. We began to reject her and all she represented. Our US Americanized eyes saw her as a symbol of everything we desperately wanted to escape. So, consciously and unconsciously, through the years, we excluded our mother from our conversations and, eventually, our US American lives.

At twenty, I was accepted to UC Santa Cruz. Though it was only six hours from Los Angeles, my move north deepened the gulf between my mother’s world and mine. Arriving in Santa Cruz, I felt I had gained access to a better version of California—a fairy-tale version. Santa Cruz was an idyllic place, the campus nestled in a towering redwood forest overlooking Monterey Bay. Every morning, the world’s tallest trees were the first thing I saw. Walking to classes, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and pine needles, I’d pass deer foraging for breakfast and banana slugs crawling on the forest floor carpeted with layers of fallen leaves and moss. Standing in the dappled sunlight filtering through the redwoods, I’d gaze at the sparkling blue waters of Monterey Bay, stretching before me like a shimmering dream, the cool, salty breeze kissing my face, and feel incredibly lucky. My world was expanding, and my place in it changed. In Santa Cruz, I made my first vegetarian and vegan friends. I’d never heard words like tofu, soy, and wheat germ, nor eaten alfalfa sprouts and split pea soup. There, I also made my first openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual friends.

For the first time, I found myself a minority student in my classes. When I shared these experiences with my siblings, they thought I had moved to another country, not just another part of the state. To my mother, Santa Cruz sounded like another planet. Everyone in Santa Cruz was into environmental protection. When it rained, students danced naked in the forest, pretending to be fairies worshiping the redwoods. They tied themselves to trees and protested when the campus administrators announced the construction of new buildings. We were all supposed to protect the environment, and recycling was a must. Even our food waste was recyclable—destined for something called compost. It was then I discovered my mother was engaged in environmentalism without knowing it, rescuing cans and bottles destined for landfills to pay her rent.

I dreaded anyone asking about my parents’ occupations. “My dad is a maintenance and construction worker. He’s good with his hands.” But when it came to my mother, the words shamefully spilled. “She recycles cans and sells stuff at the swap meet,” I’d mumble. Thinking I could hear people’s unspoken judgment, I would quickly add, “I don’t know why she can’t get a real job.” Her poverty embarrassed me. Even in the “richest country in the world,” poverty clung to my mother like the threads from those factory garments.

My double major in creative writing and film & video exposed me to different kinds of storytelling. In one film class, we were assigned to create a five-minute documentary on a subject we wanted to explore. The biggest enigma of my life was my absent mother. So I chose to tell her story. I returned to my mother’s California with a borrowed camera to spend a weekend documenting her life as a swap meet vendor. We woke up before dawn and loaded the minivan. The rear seats had been removed to make room for the merchandise. In the early morning stillness, as my stepfather drove us to the swap meet, I sat on the floor, the worn carpet scratchy beneath me, wedged between crates of Avon deodorant and boxes of hair polish, the camera pointed at my mother while I prayed we didn’t get into an accident.

The sun had yet to rise, but the Starlite Swap Meet was bustling, the crisp morning breeze reeking of exhaust from all the vendors driving in. The air vibrated with the sounds of heavy metal pipes as they assembled their booths, thick plastic tarps thrown over with a whoosh and tied down with bungee cords and straps. As the sun rose over the vendors’ canopies, I watched, through the camera lens, as my mother arranged her merchandise, finding just the right way to display it. I saw how much she enjoyed talking to the customers, getting their attention with small talk, having them smell a perfume or sample the silkiness of a hand lotion.

With the camera aimed at her, I witnessed my mother’s love of selling. It didn’t matter that she was on her feet all day, skipping meals or forgoing a trip to the restroom to avoid missing a sale. I felt bad for her when people walked away without purchasing anything. I watched her face beam with pride and joy when she made a sale, and, the bills clutched in her hand, she’d make the sign of the cross and thank God for helping her. After a long day, with little energy left, we took down the canopy, folded the tarps, disassembled the frame, packed the unsold merchandise back into the van, and left the now-empty lot. As dusk settled over Los Angeles, with the silhouettes of palm trees in the distance, we drove back to her tiny apartment, the van a little less full of boxes, me a little less suffocated, a little less ignorant. For the first time in a long time, my disconnect with my mother eased a bit. After dinner that night, she put on her favorite music, and I filmed her dancing to “Juana La Cubana,” a cumbia she loved because, though not Cuban, her name is Juana. The song spoke to her Mexican heart. She felt it was written just for her.

In the editing room at UCSC, I watched my mother’s face flash across the computer screen again and again, radiant with the fervent prayer of thanks after a sale. I felt closer to her than I ever had. An invisible thread stretched between us, a silent connection despite the distance. A reminder of the bond we’d once shared, before a border separated us. I had to screen my film in class. I was nervous, ashamed even, to show such an intimate portrait of my mother. What would the students and teacher say? What would they think of her? Of me? As they watched my mother dancing in her tiny apartment, I wondered if they saw what I had seen for the first time through the camera—not a woman beaten down by poverty, but one whose humble aspirations filled her with gratitude for a life that was a tiny bit better than the one she’d left behind. I realized then that through my film, I had brought my mother, with all her resilience and humildad, into my California. This five-minute film wasn’t enough to halt the widening cultural divide between us, between my US Americanized self and the woman who still carried Mexico in her heart, but for that one moment, it had.

When I graduated from UCSC, I returned to Los Angeles because, to my dismay, I couldn’t afford to live in this better California. Santa Cruz was home to wealthy retirees and workers from Silicon Valley. Few good jobs were available. To supplement my student grants and loans, I had painted dorms as part of the student paint crew on campus and sold hot dogs and ice cream cones on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Even though I had enjoyed those jobs, I didn’t want to continue working there after graduation. I didn’t cross the border to end up selling hot dogs for a living, I told myself, channeling my father. No way. I thought of my father’s dreams for us—“Education, careers, houses, retirement, that’s what I want for you!” Someday, somehow, I was determined to have those things, to make him proud. Someday, somehow, I was determined to fit into a narrative of success that, even if it didn’t always align with my own desires or identity, would be better than the life I’d had as a child. So I said goodbye to the redwoods and deer, the wharf and boardwalk, the surfers and hippies, to try my luck in the city where I had come of age.

Though difficult, I eventually accomplished all my father had dreamed for me. I had a college degree and a promising writing career. I became a homeowner at twenty-six and began putting away money for retirement. All these things have given me access to yet a different California. My writing opened the door to the literary community of Los Angeles and beyond. I read from my work at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—the country’s largest book festival—which I’d never even heard of until I was in my mid-twenties. I read at the Mark Taper Auditorium at the beautiful Los Angeles Central Library, a mere ten minutes from my mother’s home but in the nice part of downtown, which I hadn’t known existed. I read at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena; Skylight Books in Los Feliz; Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica. I presented my work in California cities I’d never heard of: Mission Viejo, Santa Barbara, Delano, Blythe, Camarillo, Idyllwild, Point Reyes, Santa Maria, Arcata, Carlsbad, Merced, Chico, Half Moon Bay, Red Bluff, San Jacinto, Calexico, Manteca, Taft.

While I crisscrossed the state reading from my books, my mother moved to Pico Union, one of the last remaining low-income communities adjacent to a gentrified Downtown LA. She lived less than a mile from a four-star hotel, L.A. Live, and the convention center. The house where she rented a room was across from a freeway rampart, the air thick with exhaust fumes and the endless drone of passing vehicles. Underneath the concrete overpass was a houseless encampment. Makeshift tents huddled together, their occupants shuffling among piles of discarded belongings, filling gallons of water from the fire hydrant on the corner.

Due to declining sales during the recession, my mother gave up the swap meets and began recycling cardboard full-time in addition to cans and bottles. Downtown businesses called her to pick up their cardboard at the end of the day. With a knife in hand, she’d slit the packing tape, carefully flatten boxes, then heave box after box into the back of the van. When it was full, with the metallic smell of processed cardboard clinging to her, she and her husband would drive to a recycling center on Slauson Avenue in South Central to sell the cardboard, getting forty to fifty dollars for their effort. “That’s not even minimum wage,” I once pointed out. She shrugged, answering, “In Mexico, I would be making five dollars a day.” I’d shake my head in disapproval and, as I did every month, give her money for rent. Even after all these years, though I understood her to an extent, I still struggled to accept my mother’s out-of-touch relationship with the standards of US society. I still couldn’t grasp how she found solace in merely making do. It has been hard for me to stop seeing her approach to life solely through the lens of US American ambition, always striving for more.

Whenever I found the time to visit my mother, she’d tell me stories about her world. She told me about a restaurant parking lot in Pico-Union where buses take locals to a casino on the way to Palm Springs for as little as twenty dollars round-trip. She’d go whenever she could afford a day off. She told me about the friends she’d made—like a housewife who snuck out when her husband left for work, took the bus to gamble the grocery money, and made it back before he returned. She told me about her friend’s son, a drag queen who danced at the local nightclubs doing tributes to Selena. How one night, his friend, another drag queen, had been lured into a restroom, doused in gasoline, and set on fire.

She told me about the time she and her husband gave her brother-in-law a ride to LAX, leaving their rickety truck on the curb. They went inside to help him with his luggage and use the restroom, and when they came out fifteen minutes later, their truck was surrounded by six police vehicles. They arrested her husband for driving without a license, towed the truck, and left her stranded at the airport. “I didn’t know you couldn’t leave your car at the curb,” she said. There was no point in my mentioning the repeated announcements outside the terminal telling you not to leave unattended vehicles. The announcements were in English.

When asked to be the keynote speaker at an annual education conference in San Jose with over seven thousand educators, I asked my mother to come with me to help with my daughter, who was a toddler at the time. The conference provided a booth at the exhibit hall where I spent all day hustling to sell and sign my books and talking to educators about my writing and experiences as an immigrant child in California public schools. I introduced my mother to every teacher who came to my booth. “Mucho gusto, Señora Juana, you must be so proud of your daughter,” they’d say, shaking her hand. At one point, my daughter got antsy, and I asked my mother to take her around the exhibit hall, where vendors sold teacher supplies and materials. Half an hour later, I saw my mother walking down the aisle toward me, a bulging plastic bag in one hand and my daughter’s hand in the other. “What do you have there?” I asked her, wondering if vendors had given her samples. She opened the bag, revealing the many cans and bottles. Her face beamed with joy when she said, “The trash bins are full of these! I couldn’t fit them all in. I need another bag!” I thought of all those teachers I had introduced her to, mortified at what they must have thought seeing their keynote speaker’s mother digging through the trash. Would they be judging me when I delivered my keynote later that evening? I wanted to run out of the convention center in shame, but then I realized that while I had wanted to bring my mother into my world, she had also brought her world into mine. I told myself that if I wanted to have any kind of relationship with her, I needed to accept her as she was, to respect her ability to find contentment in a life that had offered her so little, and to live by her own standards. To not ask for more.

My ambition and determination have given me upward mobility and material success but have also led me to feel ashamed of my mother for not achieving enough. I have struggled to do what Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez encourages us Brown girls to do: “. . . you must hold your parents in your heart as you dismantle the systems that have kept people like them down.” My mother is in her seventies now, her life reduced to a one-room studio in Pico-Union. She still doesn’t speak English or drive. After a stroke left her partially paralyzed, she can no longer rummage through trash cans or go around town picking up cardboard. On Mother’s Day 2025, on her way back from gambling at the casino, her bus crashed into a stalled SUV on the freeway. The driver of the SUV died. My mother, along with thirty-one passengers, was injured. She needed major knee surgery and months of physical therapy. She will likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. My siblings and I have given her thirteen grandchildren—all born in California. Unlike us, our US-born children are all native English speakers. Most of them can’t even speak Spanish, can’t speak to their Abuela Juana without the help of Google Translate. Sadly, the distance isn’t just about language. The emotional distance she kept from us in childhood is even wider with her grandchildren. They’ve missed out on the warmth of a close grandmother-grandchild bond with her. Through the years, the threads of our relationship have continued to fray, and though my siblings and I do our best to help our mother, whatever bond still connects us always feels fragile. I’ve struggled to be grateful for the little she gave me, to accept that her own unresolved traumas limited her, and to stop resenting being left to do some of her emotional work for her. It’s a jumble of conflicting emotions: anger I was given so little, sadness for the mother I never had, and guilt from knowing she was also a victim of her own past; yet I continue to judge her.

When I feel the distance between us is insurmountable, I think of the time I followed her around with a camera, filming a day in the life of Juana, my mother, the stranger. I look at her in her wheelchair, and in my mind she’s dancing to “Juana La Cubana,” twirling around and around. I will always be on the outside looking in, seeing her through a camera lens in a way I never will with my naked eye.

Mercedes Sánchez did not set out to become a spokesperson for late motherhood in the Latino community. She became one despite the silence and taboo around it.

For years, late motherhood has been framed in mainstream culture as either a glamorous lifestyle choice or a cautionary tale. Inside many Latino families, however, it still lives somewhere far less comfortable. It gets whispered about, judged. It gets turned into a side-eye at a baby shower, a raised eyebrow in conversation, and the eternal warning from las tías.

Mercedes knows that first-hand.

After years of pain, endometriosis, IVF, miscarriage, and being repeatedly dismissed by doctors, she became a first-time mother at 41. And instead of keeping that experience tucked away as a private triumph, she decided to build what she had not been able to find herself: a space where Latinas could talk openly about “delayed” motherhood, fertility struggles, grief, and the complicated reality of arriving at motherhood later than the culture expected.

That space is “Soy Nueva Mamá.”

The damage of silence.

Mercedes says the taboo around late motherhood brews like a rotten concoction. It is even more painful in our community.

“It hit me when a señora or two responded ¿a esa edad? after I proudly told them I’d had my first baby at 41,” she says. “For anyone unfamiliar, ¿a esa edad? translates literally to ‘ at that age?’ In our culture, it carries a whole world of meaning. It’s the raised eyebrow, the slight pause, the tone that says: “ Shouldn’t you have done this sooner?”

That is such a specific kind of Latino shorthand. It feels like an affection trap, often from elders, and can sound almost harmless. Yet what it carries is unmistakable.

“It’s not always mean-spirited. Sometimes it comes from people who love you. But it lands like a judgment every single time.”

Most people, she says, were genuinely happy for her. But the few comments that were not still mattered. They told her something was missing from the conversation.

“Those two reactions were enough to make me think: Oh snap. We need to talk about this.”

The deeper wound, though, came earlier.

Mercedes remembers being at her sister’s baby shower, dancing, celebrating, living fully inside someone else’s joy, when an aunt suddenly pulled her aside and asked, “Mercedes, ¿pero cuándo va a ser tu turno?”

The question became a trigger.

“I wasn’t even thinking about me that day,” she says. “But in that one second her question sent me flashing back through everything, the IVF from 2016, the miscarriage that came years later, like a ten-year highlight reel in three seconds flat.”

Her response was immediate. “Tía, when it happens, you’ll be the first to know. Pero jamás me preguntes eso.”

But, for a Latina, behind boundaries, there is always guilt.

Not because she had been wrong, but because so many Latinas are raised inside a cultural structure where defending your own pain against an elder can still feel like a violation. She describes walking a full circle around the venue, then coming back, sitting next to her aunt, and asking about wedding plans as if nothing had happened.

“That’s how deep it runs in our culture,” she says. “You don’t talk back to your elders, even when they’ve just cracked your heart open in the middle of a dance floor.”

What’s more, Mercedes is clear about what sits underneath moments like those.

“What they’re really policing is the idea that a woman’s worth is tied to when and how she becomes a mother.”

For fifteen years, medicine kept treating the pain and missing Mercedes, the woman.

For Mercedes, long before motherhood, the journey began in her own body. Or rather, the body in pain, and the long years of being told that pain was “normal.”

Mercedes was 16 the first time the cramps hit hard enough to upend everything.

“I was on the subway coming home early from school when the cramps hit me so hard I could barely move. Vomiting, nausea, the kind of pain that makes you question everything.”

For years, she missed class. Later, she missed work. And like many girls and women are taught to do, she interpreted that suffering through the cultural frame she had been given.

“Through most of my teens and twenties, I thought this was just what periods were. Nobody told me otherwise.”

Doctors prescribed naproxen, Aleve, and anything else to quiet the pain after twenty or thirty minutes. But the relief came with a cost: it ended the inquiry.

“That was the whole conversation. No curiosity. No follow-up questions. Just: take this.”

It was not until she and her husband began trying to conceive when she was 33 that she started pushing harder for answers. A laparoscopy in 2016 finally confirmed endometriosis. The specialist’s answer was birth control, which made no sense given that she had been referred there because she wanted to get pregnant.

“I asked, but what causes this? Can we get to the root of it? The doctors had no answers.”

“I learned to push through pain in a way that built a certain resilience,” she says. “But I also spent nearly two decades being told that what I was feeling was normal, manageable, controllable with a pill. Nobody was curious about why. I had to become my own advocate.”

If she could speak to her younger self now, the girl on the subway, the one who still thought agony might be part of the deal, she knows exactly what she would say.

“Your pain is not normal. Ask the hard questions early. Find someone willing to look for the root, not just treat the surface. And trust yourself, because if something feels wrong, it probably is.”

Miscarriage, and a long relationship with grief.

In social discourse, miscarriage carries a violent baggage. People either do not speak about it at all, or they rush to turn it into resilience and speed past grief.

For her part, Mercedes wanted neither performance nor premature redemption. She and her husband chose privacy.

“The miscarriage had begun about a week before we hosted a small New Year’s Eve party at our place,” she says. Immediate family was there, and an aunt and her family were visiting from out of town.

“Before I got dressed, I put on a pad, just in case. I wore a cute, short, shiny purple romper. Nobody knew what we were carrying. We were smiling and hosting and being present, and underneath all of it, there was this thing we hadn’t told anyone about yet.”

Eventually, she told a small number of people, much later. But at the time, and for a long while after, the grief remained between the couple.

“After the miscarriage, I was devastated. I stopped thinking about having kids entirely. I told myself that was it for me, closed that chapter in my mind, and refused to go back there for a long time.”

“Miscarriage is one of those things our community doesn’t talk about. There’s no script for it. No one brings it up at the dinner table. You grieve privately while showing up fully everywhere else. And somehow that becomes normal.”

Years later, however, something shifted. Mercedes let herself reopen the question of motherhood. And she is grateful she did.

“The loss is real. Give yourself the space to feel it, however that looks for you. And when you’re ready, you’ll know.”

Holistic medicine as contention.

Where most people would be cautious, Mercedes is practical. She talks about holistic medicine as the first place someone actually asked a question.

A fellow blogger mentioned acupuncture after becoming pregnant with twins following IVF. Mercedes researched it, found an acupuncturist named Deb who specializes in reproductive health, and booked a consultation.

“That first consultation changed everything,” she says. “It was about an hour long. She wasn’t a therapist, but she asked about my sleep, stress, relationships, and work. She wanted to understand my whole life, not just my symptoms. I remember thinking: finally. Someone is actually listening.”

With Deb, she says, the conversation turned. They talked about stagnant blood and inflammation. About the role of diet, Chinese herbs that could support specific issues, from cysts to fibroids. She began adding more leafy greens and moving toward a Mediterranean diet.

“Look. I love my pizza, tacos, and fried food,” she says. “Deb never told me to give those up entirely. But she helped me understand that some of my favorites cause inflammation and that adding the good stuff matters as much as cutting things out.”

Prayer became part of it, too. So did silence, boundaries around noise, and anxiety during pregnancy. And the sudden awareness of the healthcare system.

“We need healthcare providers and insurance companies to cover acupuncture and holistic medicine the same way they’re now starting to cover IVF and egg freezing.”

Her husband’s insurance covered acupuncture for a while. Then they changed plans, and she began paying out of pocket. That, she says, needs to change.

“Conventional medicine is necessary. We need it for labs, imaging, and testing. But its information is often limited. Chinese medicine tries to find the root of the problem, not just manage the symptom. Both should be accessible.”

Her Latino family, she says, did not fully understand the holistic route at first. But they supported it anyway. And eventually the results spoke for themselves.

“Now, most of my immediate family and even some cousins have gone to see Deb for various things. That says everything.”

Soy Nueva Mamá was the natural next step.

Mercedes says she looked around and realized that, while English-language spaces had begun making room for conversations about fertility, miscarriage, delayed motherhood, and reproductive health, there was very little in Spanish that spoke directly to Latinas navigating these same realities.

“The need feels more urgent in Spanish-speaking communities,” she says. “The silence runs deeper there.”

That silence is exactly what she wanted to interrupt.

“Because I looked around and realized there was no space in Spanish where a Latina could talk openly about having a baby later in life. Not about the fertility challenges, not about the endometriosis, not about the miscarriage, not about the holistic healing. None of it.”

The response has confirmed what she already suspected.

Women comment that their daughters are going through the same thing. Others say they lived it themselves. They ask about acupuncture, about natural conception, about what helped and what did not.

“I couldn’t be the only one going through this. I knew I wasn’t.”

She points to a recent New York Times report noting that nearly half of American women at 30 have never had a child, while by 45, 88 percent are mothers. The headline, she notes, has often been framed around women intentionally delaying motherhood. But her own story points to another truth that doesn’t have the lobby system behind it.

“For a large percentage of us, this wasn’t a choice. We didn’t wait by design. Life, health, and circumstances brought us here.”

That is part of what makes Soy Nueva Mamá feel so necessary. It widens the frame beyond the neat empowerment language that often dominates late motherhood discourse. It makes room for grief, delay, pain, confusion, ambivalence, and the long detours that shape women’s lives, whether they asked for them or not.

What she wants is simple and radical at once.

“I want women to feel less alone.”

Emotionally, she wants women to have a space where they do not have to perform strength before they are ready. Medically, she wants them to know they have options, that asking better questions can change everything, that a whole-person approach is not a fantasy. Culturally, she wants to give Latinas permission to arrive at motherhood on their own timeline without needing to defend it to the family, the community, or the culture.

And she is clear that this conversation is not only for younger women.

“I also want to reach the older generation. Not to shame them but to open the conversation.”

This way, Mercedes is not writing a revenge story against the aunties and señoras who asked the wrong questions. She is trying to widen the script they were handed, too.

Disruption and a new language.

What makes Mercedes’s story resonate is that she is not simply offering inspiration. She is naming a cultural tension many Latinas know by instinct but rarely hear articulated.

Motherhood in our communities still carries an imagined timeline. There is the right man, the right age—a perfectly knitted script. When a woman falls outside it, by choice or by circumstance, the culture still offers very few generous ways to understand her.

Mercedes is trying to change that, publicly and in Spanish. Without pretending the road was simple or the pain was noble, like an Instagram grid.

And maybe that is the best gift of Soy Nueva Mamá. It does not ask women to become symbols. It lets them remain human, an individual whose body hurts, who carries grief in secret while hosting dinner. People who found answers outside the institutions that failed them.

“You are not behind. You are not broken,” Mercedes concludes. “Your body is not a clock that someone else gets to set.”

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from online trends, it’s that they always point to something bigger brewing beneath the surface. And the Manosphere is the perfect example of this. The digital misogyny movement is seeping into every sphere—from schoolyards and workplaces to relationships.

We were warned through documentaries; women who were victims of intimate partner violence were screaming it from the rooftops, and yet we turned a blind eye.

Now there are rape academies and a black market selling software to create revenge porn against girlfriends, sisters, and family members. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see the new trend targeting the female orgasm.

You only need to do a search on Twitter to realize what the campaign is about: “Female orgasm doesn’t exist,” says one user. “It’s just a lie made up by big penises.” “Female orgasm isn’t even necessary for reproduction,” says another. “If God doesn’t care about you, what makes you think I do?”

The common thread among all the men in the conversation seems to be precisely that: the supposed “biological uselessness” of female pleasure.

It seems the manosphere has quickly moved from “recreational misogyny” to the construction of an increasingly dangerous system of thought.

“In hindsight, it is startling that all of this was normalized for so long,” wrote Laurie Penny in her column for The Guardian. “It was apparently inconceivable that violence against women could constitute a crisis—unless, of course, the violence was blamed on immigrants or on transgender people, at which point women’s safety suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda.”

“When feminists and others in the eye of the storm tried to raise the alarm, we were told we were exaggerating for attention, or that we couldn’t take a joke,” Penny adds. “Beneath the posturing, cartoon frogs, and meme-speak, these were lost young men who deserved patience and understanding, and if we didn’t offer it, we were heartless, humorless killjoys.”

Attacking the female orgasm has always been part of the misogyny playbook.

Decades ago, the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) was denounced by global organizations defending the rights of 230 million girls and women who were victims of this perverse practice in regions such as Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Today, it is considered a violation of human rights. However, the argument behind it seems to be the same one being revived by members of the manosphere.

The argument is often that it protects a girl’s virginity before marriage and ensures fidelity afterward. It is wrongly believed that FGM reduces a woman’s libido, thereby preventing “sexual misconduct” and ensuring the family’s honor. However, members of these communities insist on the same thing: it is not biologically “necessary.”

But this did not only happen in communities of color.

The institution of psychology itself stigmatized female pleasure from the very beginning. As Reina Gattuso explained, from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, many psychologists, inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis, argued that women should only achieve orgasm through vaginal penetration by a man. Any other form of female sexual pleasure—including masturbation, queer sexuality, and any stimulation of the clitoris—was considered a sign of “masculinity,” imbalance, or even insanity.

It is no wonder, then, that women themselves still feel ashamed when talking about pleasure. Nor is it surprising that this is one of the main targets of the manosphere, a community built by men that, as UN Women explained, has become an umbrella for “online communities that have increasingly promoted narrow and aggressive definitions of what it means to be a man—and the false narrative that feminism and gender equality have come at the cost of men’s rights.”

“These communities promote the idea that emotional control, material wealth, physical appearance, and dominance—especially over women—are markers of male worth,” the organization explains.

In this context, the female orgasm becomes a trigger for the already problematic insecurities of masculinity.

In the male worldview, the female orgasm has been attached to some unfounded sense of masculine achievement, partly fueled by the distortion of pornography and a lack of education. All of this makes it fertile ground for the advance of the manosphere.

In short, this is yet another example of how machismo has failed men, leading them to believe that there is a role to fulfill that involves distancing themselves from emotional intelligence and sensitivity in all aspects of interpersonal relationships.

Now, the risk once again lies in the escalation of violence as the sole solution for a handful of men incapable of taking responsibility for their own failure.

In just a matter of weeks, we’ve seen the unveiling of a “Rape Academy,” a black market for hacking tools to use against wives and friends, the epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools, and now a conference to “save masculinity” in Mexico. What the hell is going on?

It is impossible to turn a deaf ear to the expanding epidemic of domestic violence and its “creative” new outlets anymore. It is not that gender based violence was ignorable before—quite the opposite. But international institutions built a framework, however imperfect, that offered a glimmer of hope that we were making progress.

Recent weeks suggest something else. Instead of healing gender based violence at its root, we have watched the genesis of a medusa of violence, a sort of thousand-headed monster that “adapts” to new circumstances with terrifying creativity.

A “Rape Academy”? What do you even do with that

The first and most shocking news story of recent weeks was a CNN investigation that uncovered how, in disturbing group chats, a significant number of men “encourage one another to drug and assault their wives,” and swap tips on getting away with it.

In a report from CNN’s As Equals series, the investigation places this phenomenon in context: men organizing privately through platforms to unleash the worst of their monstrosity. Since the case of Gisèle Pelicot, who her husband had drugged so he could charge men to rape her over 200 times, became public, the nature of these platforms has also come to light. Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle’s ex-husband, used a chatroom called “Without Her Knowledge.”

Today, one year after the trial, CNN found “a hidden, online world where the commodification and amplification of sexual violence against women is flourishing.”

One porn site, Motherless.com, hosts more than 20,000 videos of so-called “sleep” content uploaded by users, with hundreds of thousands of views.

The website, which had around 62 million visits in February alone and whose core audience is in the United States, describes itself as a “morally free file host where anything legal is hosted forever.”

The legality of some material posted is in serious doubt.

So-called “sleep” content is categorized using descriptive tags such as #passedout and #eyecheck.

In these videos, men film themselves lifting women’s closed eyelids to prove they are sleeping or sedated, and some “eyecheck” videos have over 50,000 views. Within Motherless’s “sleep” community, first reported on by German investigative journalists Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh, members exchange tips on how to drug their partners.

In the “Zzz” chat group, which a Motherless user had linked to and where CNN first met Piotr, members do the same. CNN does not disclose the names or dosages of the specific medications users claim to use.

A Motherless user claimed he ran a business selling and shipping “sleep liquids” to any address worldwide. The man, who said he was based in Ceuta, a small Spanish enclave on the North African coast, stated on his Telegram account that a bottle of the liquid, which he claimed was tasteless and odorless, would cost 150 euros (approximately $175). “Your wife won’t notice a thing and won’t remember a thing,” he said.

Misogyny as infrastructure

As if a “rape academy” wasn’t enough, Wired reported that men around the world are buying hacking tools to use against their wives and girlfriends. An investigation by a European nonprofit organization found that thousands of men are members of Telegram groups and channels that advertise and sell hacking and surveillance services that can be used to harass friends, wives, and girlfriends, as well as ex-partners.

The investigation found that these communities engage in “the widespread trade, sale, and promotion of a wide variety of abusive content,” including non-consensual intimate images of women, so-called “nudification” services, as well as image folders that, according to the sellers, include child sexual abuse material and depictions of incest and rape.

Over six weeks earlier this year, researchers from the algorithmic auditing group AI Forensics analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages sent through 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities that regularly post abusive content targeting women and girls, Wired reported.

More than 24,000 members of Telegram groups and channels contributed 82,723 images, videos, and audio files during the study, according to the analysis. Many posts target celebrities and influencers, but men in the groups also frequently victimize women they know.

Among the extensive types of abusive content and services observed by the AI Forensics researchers were frequent references to “accessing, publishing, and doxing women’s private information,” sharing their Instagram or TikTok content, as well as references to spying or hacking. “Victims are often named, tagged, and locatable via shared profile links,” the group’s report states.

One translated post on Telegram titled “Professional hacking on commission” claimed to be able to give customers “access to phone gallery and extraction of photos and videos,” as well as “anonymous social media hacking.” Another message says: “I hack and recover any type of social media service. I can spy on your partner’s account. Send me a private message.”

Across the dataset, there were more than 18,000 references to spying or spy-related content. One post reads: “Hi, do you want to spy on a girl’s gallery? We sell a bot that does it, DM for info.” Meanwhile, users were observed asking if people could find phone numbers linked to Instagram accounts and making other requests, such as “who exchanges spy photos and videos?”

Schools are the new front line of the deepfake nude crisis

And the bad news keep coming. Wired also reported how these trends are seeping into the lives of young people and becoming the new normal.

According to the outlet’s reporting, teenagers are saving images of girls they know from school on Instagram and Snapchat and using harmful “nude” apps to create fake photos or videos of them naked. These deepfakes can spread rapidly throughout the school, leaving victims feeling humiliated, violated, desperate, and afraid that the images will haunt them forever.

The deepfake crisis affecting schools began slowly a couple of years ago, Wired reported, but has since grown significantly as the technology used to create explicit images has become more accessible. Incidents of sexual abuse involving deepfakes have affected “some 90 schools worldwide and impacted more than 600 students,” according to an analysis of publicly reported incidents conducted by WIRED and Indicator, a publication focused on digital deception and misinformation.

The findings show that, since 2023, students, mostly middle schoolers, from at least 28 countries have been accused of using generative AI to send sexualized deepfakes to their classmates. The explicit images, which feature minors, are considered child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This analysis is believed to be the first to examine real-world cases of abuse involving AI-generated deepfakes occurring in schools around the world.

The true extent of sexual abuse involving deepfakes in schools is likely much greater. A survey by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, estimates that sexual deepfakes of 1.2 million children were created last year. One in five young people in Spain told Save the Children researchers that deepfake nudes of them had been created. The child protection organization Thorn found that one in eight teenagers knows someone who has been a victim of this. In 2024, 15% of students surveyed by the Center for Democracy and Technology reported being aware of AI-generated deepfakes related to their school.

“I think you’d be hard pressed to find a school that has not been affected by this,” says Lloyd Richardson, director of technology at the Canadian Center for Child Protection. “The most important thing is how we’re able to help the victims when this happens, because the effects of this can be massive.”

So, why is Mexico hosting a summit to “save masculinity”?

And massive they already seem. Because instead of causing an uproar and an urgent call to action, in places like Mexico, where gender based violence is endemic, the so-called “Fearless Masculinity” summit was held. And no, we are not making this up.

According to Forbes, the event took place last weekend at the Santuario de los Mártires in Guadalajara and featured misogynistic figures such as Jordan Peterson and Eduardo Verástegui. Worse still, given that Jalisco is one of the most violent places for women, the event received state funding.

In just the first two months of this year, 756 Mexican women were violently murdered, most in accidental cases, some 2,812 were raped, and more than 162,000 calls were received by emergency services related to gender based and domestic violence, according to government data.

The event targets men who are “confused, empty, and disconnected.” The website claims it all began “From an attack on masculinity and the need for virtuous men… with our personal needs, life stories, and wounds, we sought a path of healing that we shared with our friends through retreats, workshops, boot camps, and now… a congress!”

The group features “spiritual guests,” including priests, bishops, and even an archbishop, all Catholics who promise to “save” masculinity. Their argument: “We are living through a silent crisis: men who are confused, empty, and disconnected from their purpose. Masculine identity has been weakened, leaving profound questions: Am I enough? Do I have what it takes?”

The event promotes a return to “traditional values” and even invites women “who wish to understand the heart of a man and better accompany him.” Other audiences they aim to reach include married couples “who want to strengthen their bond as a couple,” families “who want to reconcile, strengthen ties, and reinforce their mission as a family, and young people “who need guidance, identity, direction, and brotherhood.” It also targets priests, consecrated persons, and educators who accompany men, young people, and families on their spiritual journey.

Misogyny in 2026 wants therapy language and state funding

Put those pieces together, and a pattern emerges. Private platforms market assault as a technique. Telegram groups sell coercion as a service. Schools become laboratories for violation through deepfakes. Meanwhile, public life offers “healing” narratives for masculinity that funnel resentment back into “traditional values,” backed by institutions that still command legitimacy for millions of people.

This is how misogyny survives. It borrows the language of self-help, the aura of religion. It borrows technology's scalability and frames women as the problem.

The monster keeps adapting, and the cost is always women

However, it seems we are doing something right, because the feminist movement has exposed the failure of patriarchy and machismo to such an extent that the monster now retreats into private sites, hides in the deepest corners of the web, or relies on institutionalized Catholic propaganda to throw a last-ditch tantrum.

That is a bleak kind of proof. Yet it is proof all the same.

Because when violence has to keep reinventing itself to maintain control, it tells you the old story no longer holds on its own.

By Latesha Byrd

Black women in the public eye live by an unspoken rule: feel everything, show nothing.

If you’ve been watching Summer House, you know that in late March, Ciara Miller — nurse, model, and Bravo fan favorite — found out through a joint Instagram post that her ex, West Wilson, and her best friend Amanda Batula were officially an item. Not a quiet rumor she could sit with—a coordinated announcement sent to millions of followers.

What did Ciara do? She showed up on a red carpet a few days later and said, with a smile, that she was “thriving.” Then she posted a photo of herself in a blue tracksuit outside Sephora, with the caption: “@sephora actually rewards loyalty.”

The internet erupted. Her castmates praised her. The consensus was: she handled it perfectly. And she did.

Somewhere between the betrayal and that red carpet, Ciara Miller had to make a decision that Black women in the public eye make every single day. She had to choose between what she felt and what she could afford to show.

The double standard hiding in plain sight

Let’s be honest about what the reality TV landscape rewards. White women who flip tables, throw drinks, scream, cry, and spiral get GIFs, tribute videos, and Halloween costumes made in their honor. Their worst moments become their most iconic ones.

The mess is their brand.

Black women on the same shows operate under an entirely different set of rules. When we express pain loudly, we’re called aggressive. When we cry, it’s called dramatic. When we set a boundary, it’s called difficult.

The same fire that makes a white cast member a fan favorite makes a Black cast member a liability to producers, to brands, and to the algorithm.

This isn’t a perception problem or a sensitivity issue. It’s a structural one. And Ciara Miller, whether she thought about it in these terms or not, navigated it flawlessly. She gave the world just enough to know she’s okay and not a syllable more.

How composure turns into pressure

There’s a culture that made her choices necessary. Composure is a tool. But when composure is the only tool available to you, when expressing pain publicly puts your livelihood at risk, what you’re left with isn’t strength. It’s pressure with nowhere to go.

And pressure with nowhere to go becomes something else over time. It becomes anxiety that wakes you up at 3 am. It becomes an exhaustion that has nothing to do with your schedule. It becomes the slow erosion of trust in people, because the last time you trusted someone, they announced their relationship on a Sunday, and you found out with the rest of the internet.

This is why the most important thing women of color can do is build a private space where the performance stops entirely.

The spaces we need to build

I’m grateful to have a community of women around me, professionally and personally, who know the full version of me. Not the LinkedIn version. Not the brand-safe version. The one who ugly cries, who says exactly the wrong thing when she’s hurt, who sometimes needs to be told she’s not crazy before she can think clearly again.

A huge component of being in community with others is that it’s important to build it deliberately, protect it fiercely, and show up honestly in it.

Of course, there are nuances to this experience. I know what some of you are thinking: not every Black woman in the public eye is penalized for expressing emotion. And you’re right. There are exceptions, and representation is improving. I also know that poise is genuinely a value for many Black women, not just a survival mechanism.

Ciara Miller’s Sephora post was brilliant. Her red carpet appearance was powerful. But the version of her that matters most is the one no one saw that weekend. The one who got to be a full human being somewhere safe, with people who loved her, away from the cameras.

That’s what I want for every woman reading this.

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.