The Crime You Don’t Protest Is the One You’re Benefiting From
Opening: Naming the Unnamed Crisis
America can mobilize for cages at the border. America can mobilize for climate change. America can mobilize for far-off human rights abuses. But America cannot — or will not — mobilize for the largest, oldest, and most immediate human rights crisis on our own soil: the mass dispossession, abuse, and killing of women.
We are trained not to see it. We’re trained to see women’s suffering as “personal,” “tragic,” or “isolated” — anything but systemic. But if you stop for one moment and actually look at the numbers, the court dockets, the bank accounts, and the graveyards, the pattern is unmistakable.
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The Foundational Problem: Male Power Without Accountability
This is not a misunderstanding. It is not a few bad apples. It is not even just “misogyny” as an attitude. It’s a material system of extraction:
Control over women’s bodies → free reproductive labor.
Control over women’s unpaid work → free domestic labor.
Control over women’s credibility → ability to steal wages, alimony, inheritances, houses, IP, businesses.
Control over women’s stories → ability to frame each theft or murder as an “isolated tragedy.”
That’s slavery. Modern, distributed, legalized, white-collar slavery. Men aren’t confused about what they’re doing; they’re incentivized to keep it hidden. Ending it would mean losing the profits — and giving back the trillions of dollars siphoned from women.
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Why Men Can Protest ICE but Not Femicide
External vs. Internal Activism
It’s easier to protest “bad systems” far away than to admit “I’m personally benefiting from a bad system.” Men can rage about ICE or oil companies because those aren’t their direct behaviors. Confronting the mass dispossession of women would mean confronting their own jobs, marriages, family inheritances, and legal victories.
Hero Story vs. Accountability Story
Activism that casts men as “protectors” or “heroes” (save the whales, rescue migrants) is ego-flattering. Activism that casts them as exploiters or beneficiaries of harm (return stolen wages, return alimony, change custody courts) is ego-shattering. Guess which one gets funding, hashtags, and bumper stickers.
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