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Summary: This article explains that feminism must prioritise the humanity, safety, and justice of women and girls by centring their harm and demanding accountability, rather than shifting focus to protecting male offenders or their futures.
Feminism starts from one place. Women matter. Women come first in a society built to protect men. Yet some self-acclaimed feminists forget this the moment news breaks about teenage boys raping teenage girls. Before grief settles, before the girl’s name is even held with care, they begin threads about rehabilitation. They speak about prison reform. They speak about the future of the boys.
The girl disappears.
Rehabilitation is a discussion to have. It should come after we have centred the harm, after we have named the violence, after we have demanded accountability. When the first instinct is to protect the potential of the male offender, you are not disrupting patriarchy. You are repeating it.
In Nigeria, where rape is underreported and survivors are shamed into silence, this pattern is not neutral. It feeds rape culture. It reinforces the idea that male futures are more tragic than female trauma.
Some of these women do this consistently. They mobilise for male offenders. They do not mobilise for women imprisoned for defending themselves against abuse. They do not campaign for girls pushed out of school after assault. They do not speak about the lifelong cost to women’s bodies and minds.
Advocacy reveals hierarchy.
What makes this worse is the tone policing. Women who express anger at sexual violence are told they are irrational. Women who demand strict consequences are told they lack compassion. Women who insist that rape must be treated with severity are accused of being carceral or extreme.
This is not feminism. This is coercion dressed in progressive language.
When women are pressured to soften their stance for the sake of male futures, that is patriarchal culture at work. When female pain is treated as a backdrop to discussions about male rehabilitation, that is patriarchal logic. When male violence is softened with empathy while female trauma is treated as an afterthought, that is rape culture.
Such advocates are not better than the raging misogynist on the street since the outcome remains the same. If women end up silenced, dismissed, or sacrificed for male approval, the packaging does not matter.
Some feminists have absorbed the idea that being progressive means never centring women too firmly. They worry that demanding accountability sounds harsh. They worry that prioritising female safety makes them appear unforgiving.
A movement without a clear subject collapses. If you cannot say who feminism is for, you will defend everyone except the people it was built to protect. Internal critique is not betrayal. It is how movements survive.
Ask yourself what you amplify when harm occurs. Ask yourself whose future you rush to protect. Ask yourself who you demand patience from. One woman harmed is one too many. One girl erased from the conversation is one too many. Feminism is not about performing balance in a society already tilted toward men. It is about correcting that tilt. It is about refusing to treat women as background characters in their own oppression.
And this requires honesty about love and loyalty. As feminists, before your love for the men around you, before your desire to appear fair, before your fear of backlash, you must first love the class of women. You must be accountable to women as a group living under male dominance.
If your feminism regularly asks women to shrink, to endure, or to be quiet for the sake of men, then it needs interrogation. The label is not enough. The outcome is what counts.
