I gently disagreed with another woman on this sub an hour ago. My disagreement stemmed from almost 20 years of experience in the subject that she was talking about, but I didn’t mention that in my reply. Instead of trying to understand my opinion, she kept telling me to look it up because I’m blatantly wrong and she’s right, so I should stay quiet if I don’t have an informed opinion.

Instead of having a respectful conversation, she repeatedly broke rule #2 (“don’t be a dick) and essentially told me that I need to get used to being verbally abused since we’re about to get it even worse from men. When I told her she was breaking rule #2, she told me she didn’t care and kept telling me to “get on her level.” I told her that I am not her punching bag and blocked her.

We are angry, that‘s natural given where we’re at. But can we not self-cannibalize? The sort of behavior that she showed will splinter our community instead of build it. We have enough people trying to divide and conquer us. We have thousands of years of history behind us showing that this division absolutely works to stop women from gaining meaningful power.

Name-calling, condescending comments, and telling other women that they’re wrong without any real discussion is not the way to unify our cause. This kind of eye-pecking will be our downfall.