Pink Pitchforks (Part 2): Healing the witch wound

As the sound of silencing echoes

This essay is a continuation from Pink Pitchforks (Part 1): How the feminine fights dirty.

The sound of silencing

When my original post was deleted, I appealed to the group admin with ultimate decision-making authority, saying it was unfair censorship. He admitted that he was uncomfortable with weighing in on the deletion of my post, as it would look bad for him to overrule a female moderator. He deferred to the women on the admin team as being “closer to the issue.” In other words, although he was in the position of authority, he disqualified himself from giving input because of his anatomy. 

I wonder if this is the trade we have negotiated with progressive gender politics. It looks like the agreed-upon cost to men for maintaining a “good guy” image these days, is accepting some sense of learned impotence. Now trending: the new age fashion of defanging, designed for those living in a male body. But is the tag of “non-threatening” really the highest value we hold for modern masculinity?

This is not the boon of women’s empowerment. This is the byproduct of feminism-as-terrorism.

I was heartbroken at witnessing this post-me-too reality, where some voices are valid and “other” voices are not. After my initial post, at least a dozen men reached out to me directly. They wanted to tell me their stories of pain in relating with women — including partners, lovers, and business associates. Most of what they described was emotional or psychological abuse. The thing is, no matter whether we suffer blows from physical or verbal violence, the damage is real and the injuries take time to heal.

As I listened to men’s stories, I felt a lot of empathy. I realized that while we have largely normalized women gathering and sharing, most men don’t have the same circles of emotional support. Men, as a category, are now deemed more dangerous than other humans. And if you’re labeled a “bad one” according to society’s binary sorting function, then your voice is devalued — or even demonized. This socially-endorsed silencing was applied to me as well, as soon as I was identified as enemy-number-one to the sisterhood.

It was not fun to be cast as the villain. It was a huge pill for me to swallow and it didn’t go down easily — being banished as a woman-hater and victim-blamer and not being able to speak up for myself. I wanted so badly to defend and explain. I wanted to point to past work I’ve done in victims’ advocacy, going as far back as university. I wanted to point to future plans I once made, to invest my life savings into a women’s community temple space. But it would have been useless. There are only three roles in this game: if you’re not the victim and you’re not the rescuer, then there’s only one possibility left: you must be the one to blame.

This tendency to polarize and fight is the feature of a society where many feel powerless. It seems like this “other-ing” and outrage towards an exaggerated enemy has only worsened during recent pandemic years. We now have a full-on global addiction to weaponizing victimhood. But victimhood is the weapon of choice for the weak. No one is actually getting free when the oppressed becomes the oppressor. 

I don't think that man-blaming feminism is going to cure us all from patriarchy. In much the same way, the sexual shaming of women has done nothing to heal collective masculine guilt wounding. Personally, my deep desire is to live in a world where it's okay for women to own their power, and along with that their responsibility; a world where it’s okay for men to admit their wound, and along with that their vulnerability.

What’s a witch wound?

Before this whole drama unfolded, I had never heard of a “witch wound.” A friend used the term to describe what I was going through. When I went to Google this, I found it defined as: “the intergenerational, collective feminine wound that comes from persecution and ostracism for being different, which can manifest as a fear of being seen, speaking up, and stepping into your full magic and power.” Hmm. Sounds about right.

Definition of the witch wound

I was scarred by what happened, and honestly, I was quite scared to show up again. At the same time, I was also determined to expand my vision and voice, and not to shrink from this online beating. Pushing myself to post again was my version of tough love self-therapy. Going into hiding would have meant co-signing my own repression — a reinforcement of the shaming and silencing. But I decided to use this opportunity to do some healing on my witch wound instead.

I posted again two weeks later to announce the birth of this Substack channel. I wanted to prove to myself that it’s safe to be me and it’s safe for me to speak. This is why I keep posting, even if people find me annoying. I already had a lot of social anxiety before all this went down. Nowadays when I meet new women in my home community for the first time, I often wonder what silent judgments they bring because of something they have heard or read online. This is the social cost of my public sharing.

It was disorienting to be a woman being aggressed by women. It showed me how victim and perpetrator dynamics often align subconsciously along gender lines. With this experience, my world flipped upside-down and inside-out. I would see women sitting together in a cafe, or gathering in a circle on the beach, and I would feel intense fear activation and contraction throughout my body. It was such a weird feeling. I once mistrusted men because of my past sexual trauma, but then suddenly it was groups of women that felt threatening to me.

The twist of irony here: the women who defend safe spaces for women were the same women who attacked me when they saw me as a threat. And the women who champion and elevate women’s voices were the same women who went to great lengths to shut down my voice when we disagreed. In a strange inversion of reality, I could have used a support group for people who felt victimized by the women’s support group.

Getting off the harm train

Everyone in this story thought they were doing the right thing. Everyone was guided to move according to their personal ethics and beliefs. Everyone was operating through the distortion of heightened emotions. Everyone was trying to navigate complex social constructs, and doing that somewhat imperfectly. Everyone was doing the best they could, given their capacity and level of awareness in the moment. I forgive everyone as I forgive myself.

It’s easy to see how the momentum of the harm train got carried away. First, a man crosses a woman’s spoken or implied boundaries. She posts her complaint in a large online forum to assemble support for herself. I am moved to speak up for the voiceless accused. Women attack me because of their fear for the sanctity of the online group. The drama triangle keeps turning. It could easily go on turning forever. The players play different parts but it’s the same story repeating. The only way to get off this train is by taking on response-ability.

I recognized that my body’s extreme stress reaction to seeing groups of women together was unusual. So I did a lot of self-healing over the following month to rebalance and regulate my system. I am blessed to live in a place where many supportive therapies are available, and to be able to give that to myself. 

For a long time, I was really hurt and angry. But now I finally feel grateful for the upgrades that I received. For a long time, I also had intense shame about how severely I was impacted by what happened — because it was “only” happening on a screen. But now I start to find my vulnerability is a source of strength. Through the eyes of self-compassion, I see how my nervous system does not differentiate between an online assault and a physical assault.

This essay series has been a work in progress for many months, partly because I saw how affected I was. I didn’t want to write from a space of reactivity, passing the hot potato of harm. So it took a while before I felt like I could share my story in integrity. I also had to accept that no matter what I write here, someone will disapprove. There’s no way around it. Rejection is a tax we pay for fully exposing and expressing ourselves.

There are certain situations that still shake up emotional residue from this episode. For example, when I hang out in large groups of unfamiliar women, I notice that my nervous system requires some special handling. While I can zoom out to see a higher perspective, it is also up to me to tend to my human wounds and sensitivities without bypassing.

Having this ongoing allergic sensitivity to women’s gatherings is sad to me, because I once felt so held and so free in such spaces. Yet I feel blessed to be gifted with such an intense activation and initiation into my power. I now see the value of every strike that landed in my heart, because receiving and transmuting all this energy has strengthened me.

Now that I have found my voice again and reclaimed the courage to share freely, writing is helping me anchor in the most important learning.

In the next essay, I will take a look at when the victim identity is actually useful, how we use safe spaces for healing, and what it takes to create true community — Pink Pitchforks (Part 3): Safe spaces in community.

Part 3: Safe spaces in community

• The drug of false belonging

• Victim: a state of emergency

• The place for safe spaces

Part 4: Power and response-ability

• Reframe on accountability

• Transmuting pain into power

• How I am creating more safety

• Life lessons earned