Tomorrow, It Could Be One of Us: When Having a Voice Becomes a Death Sentence

I keep returning to the moment the news arrived, abrupt and disorienting in its finality. Yanar Mohammed has been assassinated. There is always a pause when a woman like Yanar Mohammed is killed. It is not only grief that settles in that instant, but recognition. A quiet, collective understanding of what it means when a woman dares to speak and is silenced for it.

Yanar Mohammed was not invisible, nor was she marginal in the sense institutions often imply when they fail to protect women. She was visible in precisely the ways that are publicly celebrated. She was outspoken, committed, and relentless in her defence of women’s rights. She embodied the very figure that global discourses of empowerment claim to uphold. Yet that visibility did not shield her. It marked her. It rendered her legible not only to those who supported her work, but to those who sought to extinguish it. This contradiction between celebration and exposure is one we continue to avoid confronting.

Violence against women is persistently framed as episodic, as though it emerges from isolated acts carried out by individuals. We are invited to understand each killing as tragic but singular, disconnected from broader structures. Yet the repetition itself tells a different story. In Iraq, particularly in the aftermath of the Tishreen protests, women who stepped into public life as organisers, protesters, and symbols of resistance were not only visible. They were targeted. Figures such as Sara Talib became emblematic not simply of dissent, but of the risks attached to it. Women were shot in their homes, pursued beyond the public sphere into spaces presumed to be private and safe. These acts were not random. They were deliberate. They communicated a message with chilling clarity. Speak, and you will be made into an example.

What is often less visible, but no less consequential, is the aftermath of such violence. The killing of one woman reverberates outward, disciplining those who remain. Silence begins to spread, not as absence but as strategy. Colleagues withdraw. Voices lower. Names are withheld. Women become cautious not only about what they say, but about being known at all. The question shifts from what must be said to what can be survived. Fear, in this sense, is not incidental. It is functional. It is doing precisely what it was designed to do by narrowing the space of participation until speaking itself becomes a risk calculation.

Even within that fear, something else emerges. A quieter, more unsettling question begins to take shape. Could this be me tomorrow? It is a question that resists geographical containment. There is a persistent temptation to locate such violence elsewhere and to frame it as a feature of instability in distant contexts. This is a deflection. The forms may differ and the intensity may vary, but the pattern persists across borders. In Brazil, women organising in favelas encounter escalating violence as a response to their visibility. In Myanmar, restrictions on basic necessities such as menstrual products under military rule demonstrate how control over women’s bodies is reframed as governance. In Iran, conflict reshapes not only infrastructure but imagination itself, limiting what women are permitted to hope for, to demand, and to survive.

Beyond these contexts, the terrain of violence has expanded rather than diminished. Online spaces, often imagined as sites of democratic expression, have become extensions of surveillance and harassment. Women are subjected to threats, deepfakes, and sustained intimidation that function cumulatively rather than singularly. In these spaces, silencing does not arrive in one decisive act. It emerges through continuous pressure that renders participation exhausting and, at times, untenable. The method changes. The outcome does not.

To treat this as separate from politics is to misunderstand its function entirely. Violence against women who speak is not peripheral to democracy. It is part of its erosion. When participation in public life carries the risk of harm, representation becomes selective and filtered through fear. When women must weigh visibility against survival, voice ceases to be a right and becomes a privilege unevenly distributed. Discussions of democratic decline frequently centre on elections, institutions, or economic instability. Yet the persistent removal of women from public space through intimidation and violence is no less significant. It reshapes who can appear, who can speak, and who is permitted to remain.

And still, women continue. This is the contradiction that systems of violence cannot fully resolve. Women withdraw, and then return. They write under pseudonyms, and then sometimes under their own names. They fall silent, and then speak again, often with greater clarity and urgency. Violence does not extinguish resistance. It transforms it. It sharpens its edges, multiplies its forms, and extends its reach. Each woman who is killed for speaking does not end a conversation. She expands it, inscribing her absence into what remains to be said.

This is perhaps the most difficult truth to hold. The conditions that made Yanar Mohammed’s assassination possible are not confined to one place. They exist in varying degrees across different contexts, embedded within systems that regulate whose voices are tolerated and whose are not. The distance between there and here is far thinner than we are willing to admit. The mechanisms of silencing, whether overt or subtle, immediate or cumulative, are already in operation.

Tomorrow, it could be one of us.

Not necessarily through assassination, though that possibility cannot be dismissed. More often, it arrives through quieter means. It appears through erasure, through intimidation, and through the gradual internalisation of limits that teach women to disappear before they are ever directly targeted. It is in these moments that the stakes of speaking become most apparent.

The question remains, unresolved and urgent. What does it mean to continue speaking anyway?

To share, to write, and to insist on presence is not merely an act of awareness. It is an act of refusal. Refusal to allow silence to complete the work that violence begins.

The Calculations No One Sees

 There is a quiet mathematics to living in a disabled body.

It is not the kind you are taught in school. There are no formulas, no guarantees, no clean answers. And yet it governs everything.

Before leaving the house, there is a calculation. Before agreeing to a meeting, there is a calculation. Before attempting something as ordinary as building a business or sustaining a routine, there is a calculation.

How much energy do I have today. How much will this take. What will it cost me tomorrow.

These are not abstract questions. They are the conditions under which decisions are made.

What often goes unspoken is that this constant negotiation is work in itself. It is cognitive, emotional, and physical labour that remains largely invisible to those who move through the world without having to account for their bodies in this way.

Some forms of disability are immediately visible. A wheelchair signals difference in ways that systems at least claim to recognise, even if that recognition is often partial or inadequate. But chronic illness introduces another layer, one that is less easily seen and therefore more easily dismissed.

There is a particular kind of strain in being both present and questioned. In showing up and still having to justify the limits that shape your participation. In navigating a world that expects consistency from bodies that cannot promise it.

This is why the language used in public discourse matters so deeply.

When figures like Nigel Farage speak of a “war on welfare,” the phrasing does not simply describe policy. It reshapes perception. It frames support as excess, need as suspicion, and survival as something that must be scrutinised.

It leaves little room for the realities that sit behind the word “welfare.” The realities of unpredictability. Of exhaustion that cannot be scheduled. Of days that end early, not by choice, but by necessity.

There is an assumption built into much of this rhetoric that effort and outcome exist in a straightforward relationship. That if one tries hard enough, the body will respond accordingly. That productivity is always available to those who are willing.

But for many of us, that relationship does not hold.

Effort does not guarantee capacity. Intention does not override limitation. And pushing beyond what the body can sustain does not lead to success. It leads to collapse.

These are not failures of character. They are conditions of embodiment.

What becomes difficult, then, is not only managing the body itself, but navigating the expectations imposed from outside. Expectations that are often shaped by people who have never had to question whether their energy will last the day.

By late afternoon, the margin narrows.

Tasks that seemed possible in the morning begin to recede. Concentration fragments. Physical stability shifts. The body signals, sometimes quietly and sometimes without warning, that it has reached its limit.

And yet the world continues to measure worth in output, in consistency, in visible participation.

There is a gap here that cannot be ignored.

A gap between how disability is lived and how it is spoken about. Between the complexity of embodied experience and the simplicity of political language. Between what is required to survive and what is assumed about those who rely on support.

If there is to be any meaningful conversation about welfare, it has to begin from within this gap.

It has to take seriously the lived realities that are so often flattened into narratives of dependency or misuse. It has to recognise that what is being discussed is not a system in isolation, but the lives that depend on it.

And it has to move away from certainty.

Because certainty, in this context, is often a sign that something essential has been overlooked.

The calculations continue, regardless.

Quietly, repeatedly, and without recognition.

But they are there.

And they shape everything.

“You Can Help Her”: Colourism, Proximity, and Professional Placement

I remember the moment with a clarity that has not faded. We had both interviewed for the same HR role at one of the colleges within the University of Oxford. Monica and I were not strangers to one another’s work. We had operated within the same institutional environment, and over time I had supported her development. She had entered the field from a different professional background and was still consolidating her grounding in HR practice, whereas I had accumulated a greater depth of experience and, in many instances, had been positioned as the one to guide, mentor, and clarify processes for others, including her. It is for this reason that the outcome of the interview did not simply surprise me; it unsettled something more fundamental in how I had understood experience, progression, and institutional decision-making.

I was informed that Monica had been appointed to the role. This, in itself, could have been absorbed into the familiar language of interview variability, that people perform differently, that panels make decisions based on criteria not always visible to candidates, that no process is entirely objective. What followed, however, made such explanations insufficient. I was told, without hesitation, that I could “help Monica.” It is a statement that appears, at first glance, to gesture toward collaboration. Yet, situated within the context of the decision that had just been made, it revealed a far more complex dynamic. I was not being told that I lacked the requisite knowledge or capability; rather, I was being positioned as someone whose expertise could be drawn upon without being formally recognised or institutionally authorised. What was being offered was not a role, but a relation, one in which my knowledge would remain available, but my authority would not.

In attempting to make sense of this, I found that explanations rooted solely in individual performance or merit were inadequate. The dissonance lay not in the idea that someone else had been appointed, but in the terms on which I was subsequently positioned. It is here that the concept of colourism becomes necessary, not as an abstract sociological category, but as an organising logic within professional spaces. Institutional discourse often treats race as if it operates uniformly, as though all racialised individuals are read in the same way and encounter similar conditions of inclusion or exclusion. Yet colourism disrupts this assumption by revealing the gradations through which race is lived, perceived, and managed. Those whose skin tone, features, or presentation are read as closer to whiteness frequently encounter a different set of institutional responses than those who are more visibly marked as Black.

As a dark-skinned Black woman, I am not afforded the ambiguity that sometimes mediates how others are read. My presence is immediate and legible, and it carries with it a set of interpretations that precede any professional interaction. There is no capacity for my identity to be softened or deferred; it is already inscribed onto the encounter. This is not simply a matter of visibility, but of how that visibility is interpreted within organisational cultures that continue to associate professionalism, neutrality, and authority with proximity to whiteness. In this context, passing is not merely a personal or cultural phenomenon, but a structural one. It is less about an individual’s desire to align with whiteness than about the ways in which certain bodies are received as less disruptive to established norms. Those who are able to occupy this space of relative ambiguity are often granted a degree of institutional ease that remains inaccessible to those whose difference is more immediately marked.

This is not to deny the complexity of mixed-race identity or the forms of marginalisation that accompany it. Belonging is not guaranteed by proximity to whiteness, and experiences of dislocation are real and significant. However, within professional environments, proximity to whiteness can nonetheless operate as a form of institutional currency. It can facilitate access to roles that require representation, relational engagement, and public visibility. It can render an individual more legible as a safe or appropriate embodiment of the organisation. What is at stake here is not a hierarchy of suffering, but a recognition that institutions do not simply exclude or include; they differentiate, calibrate, and position.

The statement that I could “help Monica” must therefore be understood within this broader context. It signalled that my expertise was acknowledged but not deemed suitable for visible authority. My knowledge was positioned as useful, even necessary, but my presence was not considered appropriate for the role that would require sustained interaction, representation, and relational leadership. What I encountered was not a dismissal of competence, but a form of containment. I was being invited to contribute without being permitted to lead, to support without being recognised, to remain present but not central. This dynamic, which I understand as delegated expertise without positional power, is one that recurs with particular frequency for darker-skinned Black women in institutional settings.

Such dynamics are not confined to formal decisions; they are reinforced through everyday interactions that accumulate over time. I recall working in an environment where I was the only Black person present. On one occasion, something trivial went missing, and the question of its disappearance was directed toward me with a casualness that made it difficult to confront. It was not framed as an accusation, yet it carried an assumption that required no explicit articulation. Moments such as these rarely find their way into official accounts of organisational culture, yet they shape how individuals come to understand their position within a space. They produce a form of embodied knowledge, a recognition of how visibility operates, of how quickly one can become the site onto which suspicion, humour, or unease is projected.

When considered together, these experiences reveal that inclusion within institutions is often conditional and unevenly distributed. It allows for participation, contribution, and even recognition, but it does not necessarily extend to authority or visibility. The distinction between being included and being positioned becomes critical here. To be included is to be present within the institution; to be positioned is to be granted a place within its hierarchy that carries weight, influence, and legitimacy. Colourism plays a significant role in mediating this distinction, shaping not only who enters organisational spaces, but how they are arranged within them.

What I experienced, then, was not an isolated incident or an unfortunate outcome of a competitive process. It was an instance of a broader institutional logic, one that operates quietly and often without explicit acknowledgement. It is a logic that permits the extraction of knowledge while regulating who is authorised to embody it. It recognises capability while simultaneously managing its visibility. And it does so in ways that are rarely named, but deeply felt. Once this pattern becomes visible, it is difficult to interpret such moments as neutral or incidental. They begin instead to appear as part of a coherent, if unspoken, system through which difference is organised and contained.

Layered Institutional Power: We Were Never Running the Same Race

 image by blogger

The idea of a “level playing field” continues to shape how we talk about opportunity, merit, and success. It is invoked to reassure, to motivate, and often to silence. If everyone begins from the same point, then outcomes can be explained through effort, talent, or resilience.

But this premise is fundamentally flawed.

We do not begin from the same point.

The image presented here conceptualises what might be understood as layered institutional power, a structure in which proximity to authority, legitimacy, and recognition is unevenly distributed before any individual action takes place. Rather than a single starting line, there are multiple entry points, each positioned at a different distance from institutional power.

White men occupy the closest position. This is not an assertion about individual intent or character, but about structure. Institutions  historically and contemporarily—have been organised in ways that centre white masculinity as the normative standard of authority. As a result, movement through these spaces is often facilitated by pre-existing networks, assumptions of competence, and a familiarity that reduces friction.

White women are positioned differently. While they encounter gendered constraints, their proximity to whiteness affords a degree of structural advantage not equally available to others. Their trajectory is shaped by both access and limitation, but it does not begin from the same distance as those who are racialised.

Black men, in turn, navigate a terrain marked by hypervisibility and constraint. Their presence within institutions is often conditional, mediated by racialised assumptions that shape how competence, authority, and belonging are perceived. Progress is possible, but rarely unencumbered.

Black women are positioned furthest from institutional power. This placement reflects not only the intersection of race and gender, but the cumulative effects of exclusion, misrecognition, and structural neglect. Expectations of excellence persist, yet are often accompanied by limited access to support, protection, or institutional validation.

This ordering is not incidental. It reflects the ongoing reproduction of power through institutional practices formal and informal that privilege certain bodies, voices, and identities over others.

To speak of whiteness in this context is not to make a claim about individual people, but to identify a system. Whiteness operates as a structuring logic through which authority is defined, distributed, and maintained. It shapes who is seen as legitimate, who is heard without resistance, and who is able to move through institutional spaces without constant negotiation.

This becomes particularly visible at the level of global leadership. Decision-making bodies, political institutions, and economic forums continue to be dominated by a narrow demographic, reinforcing the association between authority and specific identities. Even in moments of apparent diversification, power is not always fully transferable. It is often constrained, scrutinised, or rendered conditional.

The presidency of Barack Obama, for example, represented a historic shift in representation, yet did not signal a complete transformation of structural power. His leadership was persistently mediated in ways that revealed the limits of inclusion within systems that remain fundamentally unchanged.

Within this context, the persistent emphasis on individual resilience warrants critical examination. Calls to “work harder,” “lean in,” or “remain resilient” assume that distance can be overcome through effort alone. Yet resilience does not eliminate structural barriers, nor does it recalibrate starting positions.

The concept of layered institutional power therefore invites a shift in analytical focus. Rather than asking why individuals fail to reach particular outcomes, it directs attention to the conditions under which those outcomes are produced.

Who begins closest to power?
Who is required to travel further?
And how are these distances maintained?

Answering these questions requires more than incremental reform. It requires a fundamental rethinking of how institutions are structured, how legitimacy is conferred, and how power is distributed.

If the race itself is uneven, then the solution cannot lie solely in encouraging individuals to run harder.

It must also involve asking whether the race, as currently designed, should continue at all.

Disability, Vulnerability, and War: The Civilians Who Cannot Run

War is often discussed in the language of strategy, geopolitics, and military capability. Analysts debate borders, alliances, and weapons systems. Yet these discussions frequently overlook one of the most vulnerable populations in any conflict: people living with disabilities.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 16% of the global population lives with some form of disability. In conflict zones, that percentage can be even higher because war itself produces injuries, trauma, and long-term impairments. Despite this, disabled civilians are rarely centred in discussions about humanitarian response or evacuation planning.

For many civilians, survival in war depends on the ability to move quickly: to flee bombings, cross borders, or reach shelters. For disabled people, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses, this mobility cannot be assumed.

People who rely on wheelchairs, mobility aids, carers, or medical equipment often face severe barriers during emergencies. Hospitals may be destroyed or overwhelmed. Electricity needed for medical devices may fail. Medication supplies can disappear within days. Accessible transport is rarely available in evacuation corridors.

The result is that many disabled civilians are left behind when cities empty.

Humanitarian organisations have repeatedly warned that disabled people are among the least likely to escape conflict zones and among the most likely to experience severe deprivation during displacement.

Disability does not exist in isolation; it is deeply connected to infrastructure and social support systems.

In stable conditions, disabled individuals rely on:

• accessible healthcare systems

• medication supply chains

• caregivers and support networks

• accessible housing and transport

• electricity and assistive technologies

War dismantles these systems rapidly. When hospitals are damaged, roads blocked, or supply chains interrupted, survival becomes precarious for those whose daily life depends on consistent care.

For individuals requiring dialysis, insulin, oxygen support, or specialised medication, even short disruptions can become life-threatening.

Displacement creates an additional layer of vulnerability. Refugee camps and temporary shelters are rarely designed with accessibility in mind. Basic facilities such as toilets, water points, and sleeping areas may not accommodate people with mobility impairments or sensory disabilities.

The United Nations has repeatedly highlighted that disabled people are often excluded from humanitarian planning, meaning their needs are addressed only after crises escalate.

As a result, disabled refugees frequently experience:

• limited access to aid distribution points

• isolation from community support networks

• higher exposure to neglect or exploitation

• reduced access to information about evacuation or assistance

These risks compound the already difficult realities of displacement.

International law recognises that disabled people require additional protection in crisis situations.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obliges states to ensure the safety and protection of persons with disabilities in situations of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies.

Similarly, humanitarian principles embedded in the Geneva Conventions emphasise the protection of civilians, including those unable to defend themselves.

However, implementation remains uneven. In many conflicts, disability is still treated as an afterthought rather than a central humanitarian concern.

For those of us living with disability, watching images from war zones can feel deeply personal. When we see elderly civilians being evacuated from rubble or injured people transported through chaotic streets, we recognise how fragile survival can be when infrastructure collapses.

The question that emerges is simple but unsettling:

What happens to those who cannot run?

War exposes a fundamental truth: independence is often an illusion sustained by functioning systems. When those systems disappear, vulnerability becomes visible.

Addressing disability in conflict requires more than sympathy. It requires structural planning.

Humanitarian responses must include:

• accessible evacuation planning

• disability-inclusive refugee camps

• prioritised access to medication and medical equipment

• accessible communication systems during emergencies

• inclusion of disabled voices in humanitarian policy design

These measures are not optional additions; they are essential to protecting millions of civilians whose lives depend on them.

War does not only destroy buildings and infrastructure. It reveals the inequalities embedded within societies.

Disabled civilians, the elderly, and those requiring ongoing care often face the greatest risks when violence erupts. Yet their experiences remain largely absent from mainstream conversations about conflict.

If humanitarian responses are to be truly just, they must begin by recognising a simple reality:

In war, the people who cannot run are often the ones left behind.

After Careful Consideration”: The Phrase That Hides the Reality of Recruitment

 

Every job rejection email seems to begin with the same sentence.

“After careful consideration…”

The phrase is meant to sound respectful. It suggests that someone has read your application carefully, weighed your experience, and thoughtfully decided that another candidate was a better fit.

But anyone who has worked inside recruitment knows that this phrase often has very little to do with careful consideration.

In many cases, it simply means you were not shortlisted.

No explanation.
No feedback.
No transparency.

Just a sentence that performs fairness while revealing nothing about how the decision was actually made.

The theatre of fairness

Recruitment systems depend heavily on the appearance of fairness.

Policies are written.
Processes are described.
Emails are carefully worded.

But the most important stage of recruitment — shortlisting — remains one of the least transparent decisions in professional life.

At that stage, applications are filtered quickly. Sometimes hundreds of candidates are reduced to a handful within hours.

Applicants are rarely told:

• how many people applied
• what criteria were actually prioritised
• whether the role already had an internal candidate in mind
• how long applications were actually reviewed

Instead, they receive a sentence that suggests thoughtful deliberation.

The phrase “after careful consideration” does important institutional work. It protects the organisation. It signals professionalism. It closes the conversation before it can begin.

But for the person receiving the email, it often raises a simple question:

Careful consideration of what?

When the stakes are not equal

For some applicants, these rejections are simply part of the normal job search process.

For others, the stakes are much higher.

Disabled people, for example, often rely on remote roles because traditional workplaces are physically inaccessible. For them, jobs that can be done from home are not simply flexible opportunities, they are often one of the few realistic ways to participate in paid work.

Yet remote roles are rarely structured as disability access opportunities. They are presented as perks or lifestyle benefits available to everyone.

This means disabled applicants often compete for the same small number of roles as people who have far more options in the labour market.

When those applicants receive the familiar rejection email, the phrase “after careful consideration” can feel less like a neutral outcome and more like a quiet dismissal of a rare opportunity.

The invisible filters

Recruitment systems also operate through assumptions that rarely appear in official criteria.

Names that sound foreign can trigger bias.
Accents can be interpreted as lack of professionalism.
Disability can quietly raise questions about reliability or productivity.

These judgments do not need to be explicit to influence outcomes.

They can shape shortlisting decisions in subtle ways that applicants never see and can never challenge.

Once the rejection email arrives, the process is already closed.

The phrase remains the same.

After careful consideration.

The dignity of transparency

Most applicants are not asking for guaranteed success.

They are asking for something far simpler: honesty.

Imagine if rejection emails simply said:

“We received a very high number of applications and could only shortlist a small number of candidates.”

Or:

“We prioritised candidates with specific experience that closely matched our internal needs.”

Even a brief explanation would acknowledge the reality of the process.

Instead, organisations rely on language that sounds thoughtful while avoiding accountability.

A sentence that closes the door

For institutions, “after careful consideration” is a polite administrative phrase.

For applicants, it often represents something else entirely: the closing of a door without explanation.

And when that door is already difficult to reach  because of disability, race, foreignness, or other structural barriers the phrase can feel less like professionalism and more like a performance.

Not careful consideration.

Just careful wording.

 

Why Minimising Abuse Is Dangerous: The Harm Behind Saying “She Was 15, Not 8”

When Violence Is Reframed as Preference

Every so often, someone says something so casually harmful that it stops you in your tracks. Recently, I heard the statement: “Epstein wasn’t into eight-year-olds, he was into fifteen-year-olds.” It stayed with me, not because the sentiment was new, but because it revealed such a familiar and deeply troubling logic. It is the logic that reframes abuse as a matter of preference and turns the exploitation of children into something negotiable depending on age.

This is the cultural rot I keep writing about. A worldview that has spent generations sexualising girls, rationalising violence, and inventing new ways to make harm sound less harmful. When someone claims the abuse of a fifteen-year-old is less disturbing than the abuse of an eight-year-old, they are drawing from a long history of minimising violence, softening its language, and making exploitation easier for society to digest.

The sexualisation of teenage girls is not an accident. It is a structural feature of the world we live in. Film, media, music, and everyday social attitudes all contribute to the idea that teenage girls are almost women. This narrative makes them hyper-visible as sexual beings while stripping them of their right to be protected as children. It is the same logic that tells us a fifteen-year-old “knows what she is doing,” a fourteen-year-old is “grown,” or a sixteen-year-old looks “mature for her age.” These phrases are never neutral. They are cultural tools that make certain girls, especially Black and Brown girls, appear older and less innocent in the eyes of the public. And once innocence is removed, protection follows soon after.

This is why so many people instinctively believe that the exploitation of a teenager is less severe. The boundaries of childhood have already been blurred by a society that insists on seeing some girls as adults long before they become one.

Rape culture thrives on technicalities. When someone says “it wasn’t eight-year-olds, it was fifteen-year-olds,” they shift the focus away from the violence and onto a superficial detail. This redirection softens the discomfort. It allows people to distance themselves from the gravity of the harm. It is the same pattern that excuses teachers who develop relationships with students, men who claim they did not know a girl was underage, or older predators who wait until a child hits the legal age of consent by a matter of days. None of these scenarios become less exploitative just because the language surrounding them is manipulated.

Power makes true consent impossible. A child cannot meaningfully consent to an adult who holds wealth, influence, status, or any form of authority. Not at eight. Not at fifteen. Not at seventeen. The presence of overwhelming power collapses the possibility of autonomy. Coercion does not need to be loud to be coercive. Compliance does not equal consent.

The practice of comparing ages also erases the lived experiences of survivors. It suggests that a fifteen-year-old should somehow have known better. It implies that her trauma is less legitimate, that she is closer to adulthood, and therefore less harmed. That kind of thinking is violent. It shifts empathy away from the child and toward the perpetrator’s supposed preferences. It encourages society to debate harm as though it has a gradient, as though some children are more deserving of protection than others.

We cannot allow this logic to continue unchecked. The moment we start negotiating which children count as victims is the moment we align ourselves with systems that protect abusers and silence survivors. Minimising harm creates apathy. It conditions people to overlook violence. It trains communities to accept exploitation when it is packaged neatly enough.

There is no acceptable age for abuse. There is no softer version of exploitation. There is no universe where harming a child becomes justified based on how close she is to adulthood. Harm is harm. A child is a child. And our language should reflect the seriousness of what is being done to them.