Women Are the Threat Authoritarians Fear Most
They try to shut us up because women lead the movements that bring regimes down.
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In This Issue:
Learn why every authoritarian project fears organized women.
Share the stories that show women on the front lines breaking the regime’s script.
Plug into the women-led networks that make autocrats lose sleep.
They Fear Women Who Don’t Shut Up
They fear women who refuse silence. Not only because of our voices, but because our voices turn into marches, mutual aid, and ballots that flip “safe” seats into referendum questions. Authoritarians don’t simply dislike women. They see us as a structural threat. Harvard researchers who study patriarchal backlash make that dynamic unmistakable: empowered women destabilize authoritarian power.
Misogyny Is the Regime’s Opening Move
Trump’s recent tirades at women reporters revealed the system he runs on. In a few days, he called one journalist “piggy” for asking about the Epstein files, snapped at another for being “insubordinate,” and smeared a third as “ugly, inside and out.” Outlets tracking his escalating attacks on women journalists show the pattern: humiliate women who challenge him and signal to the base who may question power.
Hostile sexism isn’t a side dish—it’s the fuel. Research shows that hostile sexism correlates with support for political violence.. When Trump spits “quiet, piggy,” he activates a worldview that treats some people as expendable. He knows what he’s doing. So does his base.
Women Make Movements Unbreakable
Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks confirmed what women in movements always knew. When women join nonviolent campaigns in large numbers, those movements win more often and build more durable democracies. Their global analysis shows that only 3.5 percent of a population sustaining collective action can crack regimes.
Women often push movements to that threshold. They organize block by block, create care networks, and design tactics that widen participation. Scholars at the Belfer Center detail this in a study on misogyny and autocracy, arguing that patriarchal backlash doesn’t just accompany autocracy—authoritarians wield it as a weapon.
Red-State Women Are Rewriting the Story
Cable news paints resistance as a blue-city phenomenon. On the ground, women in red and purple America drive the fight.
In Washington, DC, during Trump’s militarized occupation, the women-founded Free DC organized neighborhood by neighborhood to defend their city. Their model appears in this profile outlining their plan to mobilize 25,000 residents.
In Colorado, more than 200 women formed a rapid-response network to track ICE and Border Patrol, protect kids, and support families. The blueprint appears in this CPR report.
In North Carolina, Siembra NC packed churches in Charlotte and Greensboro and trained thousands in a week.
And when Ohio women marched on DC, dozens of mostly older women took on a 36-hour round-trip protest, including one who logged her 72nd protest of the year.
Even inside the GOP, gender fractures the authoritarian front. After the Epstein files dropped, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded transparency, creating visible MAGA women breaking ranks when sexual violence entered the conversation.
The Women Who Keep Democracy Alive
The women holding this country together don’t wait for permission. They walk kids to school under ICE surveillance. They run rapid-response channels. They pack sanctuaries for rights trainings. They ride overnight buses to protest. They register neighbors in parking lots.
Authoritarians fear women who don’t shut up because we don’t only speak. We organize. We feed families. We protect each other. We move people one conversation, one ride, one vote at a time. That’s how movements hit the 3.5 percent threshold that breaks regimes.
They fear women who don’t shut up.
So speak up, organize, and fight like hell.
We’re not done until democracy wins.
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POWER UP: Join the Women Who Make Authoritarians Sweat
Step into the networks women built—grassroots power that grows stronger every time one more person plugs in.
Back local democracy with Free DC.
Stand with immigrant families through Siembra NC and Mijente.
Defend reproductive freedom with SisterSong, The Brigid Alliance, and your local abortion fund.
Strengthen pro-democracy organizing through Red Wine & Blue and Supermajority.
We are the power to take our country back together! Let stop the Trump Regime, Republicans and the Supreme Court!
Love this. Yes. Women are the solution. Lets link arms. Go!