I want to tell the truth. Not the sanitized version, not the academic version, and not the “girlboss empowerment” version that gets passed around like a sticker on a water bottle.
I want to speak from the wound. Because that’s where this story actually begins. Feminism did not start as a rebellion. It started as a cry. A cry from women who had been breaking for centuries.
Women whose bodies were used, whose voices were silenced, whose labor was exploited, whose intuition was mocked, and whose pain was dismissed as “hysteria.”
Feminism was born from trauma, and anything born from trauma carries a shadow. This is the part we’re not allowed to talk about. But I’m going to talk about it anyway.
The Feminine Didn’t Rise — She Armored
- There is a difference between a woman who is rising and a woman who is protecting herself from collapse. A woman rising is soft, intuitive, receptive, deeply rooted in her emotional and spiritual power. While a woman armoring is strategic, over-functioning, hyper-independent, and disconnected from her body because she’s tired of being hurt inside it.
Most of us weren’t rising. We were surviving. And when a movement grows out of survival, it cannot help but take on the shape of the wound.
Feminism Was a Response — Not a Restoration
Feminism didn’t restore the feminine. It reacted to patriarchy by adapting to it.
Women were told:
- “Be strong like a man.”
- “Work like a man.”
- “Detach like a man.”
- “Don’t need anyone.”
- “Emotion makes you weak.”
- “Femininity is dangerous.”
To win in a male-designed world, women were pressured to become men with a softer exterior. This is the root of the distortion. We didn’t reclaim the feminine. We abandoned her to survive.
When a Wounded Movement Meets a Wounded Masculine
Here’s what no one says:
Feminism became distorted not because women became powerful, but because the world was already distorted by a wounded masculine. Not healthy men. Not sacred masculinity.
But the unhealed, unconscious masculine archetype:
- dominance
- suppression
- emotional numbness
- competition
- power-hoarding
- disconnection from the heart
Feminism absorbed the very traits it was trying to dismantle. It’s not that women became too masculine. It’s that society taught us masculinity was the only safe way to exist. And we believed them.
The Polarization: When Empowerment Turns Into Superiority
The sacred feminine never demands to be above the masculine. Only the wounded feminine does. Because the wounded feminine is not empowered, she’s terrified. Terrified of harm. Terrified of abandonment. Terrified of vulnerability. Terrified of trusting men again. In trauma language, this is a protector part.
In feminist language, it became ideology. Somewhere along the way, parts of feminism turned into:
- anti-male
- anti-masculine
- anti-polority
- anti-vulnerability
- anti-dependence
- anti-intimacy
And instead of healing the wounded masculine, the world saw men as the enemy. This wasn’t feminism. This was pain.
The New Prison: Hyper-Independence
When women walked out of patriarchy, many unknowingly walked into another cage.
A cage made of:
- burnout
- over-responsibility
- emotional detachment
- distrust
- nervous system collapse
- “I don’t need anyone”
- “I’ll carry everything alone”
This is not freedom. This is the exhaustion of a woman who had to become her own protector for too long. Hyper-independence is not empowerment. It’s the body saying, “No one has ever stayed long enough for me to rest.”
The Distortion Isn’t Feminism — It’s the World It Grew Out Of
Feminism is not the villain. The wound is.
The wound of:
- motherlessness
- fatherlessness
- emotional neglect
- unsafe masculine energy
- suppressed feminine energy
- generational trauma
- survival-based femininity
- the collapse of trust between the sexes
Feminism didn’t create these wounds. It revealed them. If the world had nurtured the feminine, feminism never would’ve needed to exist at all.
What the Feminine Actually Wants
Beneath all the ideology, beneath all the trauma, beneath all the armor… The feminine wants none of this.
She wants:
- safety
- softness
- attunement
- partnership
- devotion
- emotional intimacy
- reciprocal love
- the masculine healed, not hated
- the return of sacred union
She wants the masculine standing beside her, not above her, and not beneath her. She wants the dance again. The ancient dance. The cosmic dance. The divine polarity. The union that births worlds. The union that creates life. The union that heals everything patriarchal, wounded, and broken.
Feminism, in its distortion, forgot this. But the feminine hasn’t. She remembers. She’s always remembered.
A Path Forward: From Distortion to Integration
We don’t need to throw away feminism. We need to evolve it.
To shift it from:
- reaction → restoration
- ideology → embodiment
- trauma → truth
- armor → sovereignty
- gender blame → polarity healing
- separation → union
Because the future is not matriarchy. The future is not patriarchy. The future is wholeness. The divine feminine rising is not about overthrowing the masculine. It’s about healing the masculine and feminine in all of us so we stop repeating history’s wounds.
This is the work of our generation. This is the work of soul-led women. This is the work of remembering who we were before the world taught us to survive.