Pink Pitchforks (Part 1): How the feminine fights dirty

A true story about cancel culture in conscious community

Last year I made a controversial social media post, which turned into an energy tsunami that lasted for weeks. This was one of the most intense events of my 2022. It’s the reason why I created this Substack channel as a sacred space for my writing. It’s also what moved me to publish the details of my own sexual trauma journey after nearly two decades in recovery. Now another level of healing is happening as I share this story.

My post was sparked by the uneasiness that I felt in observing the activity in a women-only Facebook group, where a broad range of boundary issues were being discussed — everything from an unwanted hug to penetrative rape. Names were being named openly in the court of social media. It was a group with nearly 2,000 women globally at the time. Women who came forward offering alternate views, trying to defend a male friend or partner, or asking factual questions about a situation, were regularly mocked or muted.

I became aware of what was going on in the online women’s community because of a chance meeting with some women in real life, at the waterfall. They were talking about how unhealthy the online group dynamics had gotten. Everyone agreed that something should be said, yet everyone hesitated to be the one to say something. But when I went home that evening and read through several group threads, I experienced a strong, visceral response: “This is not okay. I have to say something.”

So I made my infamous Facebook post: calling for compassion and fairness towards accused perpetrators, asking victims to consider due process prior to social media shaming. I expressed an unwelcome opinion about the culture of the online women’s group. It was not a take-down aimed at a specific person; it was a reflection for anyone who had been participating in or spectating the group’s activities. I wrote my post in a stream of consciousness and shared it in two places without editing: in an online forum for the broader community and in the women’s group itself. 

I knew that what I wrote was going to stir up a bit of controversy, but I was not at all prepared for the severity of what happened next. The backlash was immediate and vicious. From behind the shield of a computer screen, the pink pitchforks came for me.

The masculine approach to conflict is typically direct and overt. When the  masculine fights, the expression of aggression is more likely to explode into shouting or escalate to physical blows. If you do something that pisses off the masculine, there’s not much doubt that you have crossed a line. The argument is not shaded and the issue is not left to fester. You know exactly where you stand. Trouble tends to be resolved or released immediately.

The way the feminine fights is more subtle. It’s more likely to feature hidden poison and indirect assaults. As the vanguard of feminine energy, women have perfected many different forms of emotional and psychological warfare — designed to cause maximum damage with minimal detection. I faced a variety of feminine strategies: attacks on my character, stabs at my self-worth, punches at my integrity, a battery of guilt tripping, excommunication from the women’s group and erasure from the public arena. The harm from this kind of non-physical violence is mostly invisible, and it’s often slow-release.

For example, one woman brought up a long-ago meeting that I had had with her former partner. Unknown to her, I met him as part of a mediation attempt that was initiated by a victims’ advocacy group that I had been volunteering with. But according to her version of reality, she said that I had approached him because I was seeking sexual healing. She used this made-up story to mock my choice in men, pointing to this meeting as proof that I had no clue about what healthy masculinity is.

A leader in the women’s community responded to me mentioning my own sexual trauma history by sharing a graphic meme to invalidate my personal experience. The meme pictured what appeared to be a psychiatric patient, seated in a police interview room, behind bars. The caption of the image read in bold letters: “Are there any REAL victims here?” This meme took direct aim at my authority to tell my own story.

In the comments of a follow-up post, another woman called my original post dangerous and suggested that it was irresponsible for me to express such views. She methodically made repeated direct associations between my post and actual physical violence. This woman likened my callout of the women’s group to punching someone in the face, and compared my public critique of the group culture to “telling the Nazis where the Jews were hiding.” She referred to the thoughts, threats and imagined reactions of “potentially physically violent men,” and pointed to me as the proximal cause for whatever those people might decide to do after reading my post.

Some women belittled me with baby language. Others used sarcasm to ridicule me. A conspiracy story emerged around the timestamp on my post, which attempted to undermine my credibility. Gossip was spread about my betrayal of the sisterhood, as evidenced by the presence of certain men in my friends list. Out of my sight, lies were circulated about me supposedly having shared screenshots, in violation of the women's group confidentiality. My friends were flooded with private messages from women’s group leaders, questioning their loyalty to the sisterhood and campaigning for them to remove or edit comments where they had expressed support for me.

Some of the other punches thrown were so subtle; you might miss them if you blinked. One woman offered up an innocent-enough explanation for why I was immediately kicked out of the women’s group, suggesting that “maybe it was because [my] values were not aligned with the values of the group.” Of course, she didn’t specify what those misaligned values might be. But dear reader, you are free to imagine. This is a textbook example of how the feminine fights dirty. It makes shadow puppet shapes from behind the smokescreen of a nice-girl smile.

After three days of emotional labor hosting a heated public dialogue that was hundreds of comments deep, my entire post was deleted without warning. The previous communication from the admin team acknowledged that my post did not break any group rules. But what my post did was touch a nerve. It triggered fear and defensiveness among the women’s community. The me-too monster was provoked to fight. And while the emotional and psychological warfare was mostly removed from public view, those jabs still entered my psyche. 

My nervous system was triggered into flight mode for a full week. At the first post-post meeting I had with a dear female friend, I couldn’t even bring myself to hug her, which is our usual way of greeting. On top of the barrage of hatred in the broader community, I was removed from the online women’s group without a single direct message to me. That triggered some deep rejection wounds. Over time, I managed to alchemize much of this pain into learning, but I am also a walking reminder of the harm of non-physical violence.

I know these women didn’t necessarily intend harm, but I experienced what they were doing as harmful. Similarly, I also didn’t intend harm, but they experienced what I was doing as harmful. I have no interest in blaming anyone for anything. With the clarity that comes in time, I see that the shitstorm that was unleashed was/is part of collective consciousness. I know that so much of what happened here is not unique to my story; it goes beyond any particular group or community. What I think is interesting to explore are the social dynamics at play. 

With this event as background, we can look at the broader phenomenon of cancel culture in the next essay in this series — Pink Pitchforks (Part 2): Healing the witch wound. Here’s a preview of what’s coming in the remainder of this series:

Part 2: Healing the witch wound

• The sound of silencing

• What’s a witch wound?

• Getting off the harm train

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