First of all, rage. Do it. There is no reason you don't get to feel your feelings. Not feeling them hurts you, and you don't deserve to be hurt. This is about you. It's about every single one of us. And especially women because we are constantly being told to sit down and take the hurt. This is not about not protecting ourselves. We must do that in order to stop others from hurting us.

This is a tough one to parse, because you are absolutely 100% correct. Sometimes, to stop hurt, we have to fight and that means hurting someone else. Whether they deserve to hurt or not isn't the question. It's whether the way they are treating us is acceptable. If we don't stand up and say no and show we won't allow it, it keeps happening.

Anti-violence is necessarily violent. Why? The breakdown of violence is violent. Someone will always be hurt, but we must remember our own value in the process. When we do that, we can more toward the knowledge that, even when systemically oppressed, we can internally hold true to our own value. That removes power from the oppressor to harm us at the psychological level. And with the reclaiming of power comes strength to resist other abuses.

If you have to fight to stay safe, this is saying fight. Because you are important, and you have to see that first, hold to it first, insist on it first. You are already good enough. You just need to find a new perspective when you look in the mirror.

I don't believe one can do no harm and take no shit. I think one can take no shit and try to do as little harm as possible while refusing said shit, but valuing yourself sometimes means others will get hurt, and then it's their turn to honestly assess why they are hurting and what they can do to stop their pain and reclaim their power. Hopefully conversation will happen. Hopefully awakening. At the least, we have set a boundary.

For context, when I originally made this image, a person was stalking me online. It was my way of saying (again) STOP. They didn't stop, but I had claimed my power and was no longer bothered by their mind games. They don't get to hurt me. I don't deserve to be hurt, even though that's what they desperately wanted me to believe. Same as with systemic oppression. It's classic narcissism. When we stop believing the man "gets to" hurt us, we will have ripped a huge chunk of power away from the system oppressing us

Hope this ramble makes sense. BIG BIG love to you. You are beautiful and I think you need a reminder that you are worth it.