Trying to get healthcare in America often feels like being a crab in a bucket, especially if you’re female. Throughout my time as a fertile female, I had my rights over my body violated repeatedly. It only stopped when I was surgically sterilized.

The main perpetrators were not men. They were women. It was women who…

Women. Women did most of this. Not men. A man was the one who agreed to sterilize me. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I am such a vocal advocate for male gynecologists in women’s spaces.

I refuse to see female gynecologists after that shit happened one too many times. #Sorrynotsorry, I feel like I have a target on my head whenever I ask a woman for help with my right to have sex.

Getting pregnant was an eye-opener. The very same women who were telling me that a baby would fix everything were the ones who were smirking, saying things like, “Wait till you can’t sleep! Tee hee!”

It was as if they took joy in me being impregnated against my will. Moreover, they wanted to tell me how much my life would suck—and how my needs no longer mattered at all, because baby.

They also were the ones who, after I gave birth, would sneer at me and say, “BREAST IS BEST,” in a loud voice while I looked for baby formula in a bid to help my kid’s two dads get some food nearby.

Boy, they weren’t happy to hear about the open adoption.

Just like that, they quickly changed their tune. After being scolded for not doing what they wanted me to do (my own addictions and issues be damned), they would go back to telling me how having a baby that I keep would be the best thing for me.

I…Well, let’s say that I don’t talk to anyone who behaves that way anymore. Adoption was the best thing for the welfare of my baby, all things considered. The fact that people can’t accept that is ludicrous and also deeply offensive. Not everyone is “mom material.”

Yet, I can’t help but shake the feeling that my child’s wellbeing was never really their primary objective. A lot of these women acted like they wanted me to be “taken down a notch,” if you get my drift.

The term “Humiliation Ritual” or “Ritual of Humiliation” is an online slang term getting kicked up on TikTok and Instagram. It’s meant to describe any sort of hazing activity to get accepted into a group or anything that could be embarrassing for the person who submits to it.

If this sounds like hazing, that’s because it (kind of) is. Hazing, or putting people through embarrassing, degrading tasks as a way for them to prove themselves worth, has been a part of human psychology for millennia.

Sailors used to have a whole Poseidon ritual for new recruits that involved crawling through garbage on the deck. In fraternities and sororities, hazing can often lead to PTSD. Some hazing rituals have even killed people.

Humiliation rituals can be used as a barrier to entry—forcing people to share your pain or else. They can also be used as a way to punish those who do not do what they are expected to do, even if it’s performative.

This term, more commonly used by far-right advocates in a more twisted form, has a lot of truth to it. Society has a weird way of treating one’s personal choices as an affront to others, even when those choices wouldn’t impact other people at all.

Most of the humiliation rituals I’ve experienced dealt with people who saw me as a threat because of my brains, my sexuality, or my devil-may-care attitude. I have a life I wanna live, and a lot of people can’t stand that I refuse to let others have a say in it.

However, not all humiliation rituals are punishment—though they all are rooted in control. A good example of a humiliation ritual that most people know about is hazing.

In Greek life, hazing is a four-letter word. You don’t talk about it. It is actually illegal in most (if not all) states and it’s officially banned by the Panhellenic councel. Yet it’s an open secret that it still happens to varying degrees in different chapters.

Hazing rituals are done as a form of tradition, a form of trauma-bonding with others of the organization. Studies show that hazing makes people more dedicated to an organization and also makes group identity stronger.

At times, hazing and other humiliation rituals can make a person lose their personal identity altogether. This is why many cults use humiliation rituals to keep people compliant. It makes the crowd a bigger priority than yourself.

Yet, it’s never really about being part of a group, is it?

It’s about control.

Yes, quite a few men like seeing women in pain or women unable to leave too. But this article isn’t about men. It’s about other women who can’t stand the idea of other women being sexual, childfree, and in control of their own bodies.

It’s about how too many women have a tendency to hurt other women just so they can feel superior. Or rather, it’s how society encourages women to cut one another down to hold up a system that harms us all.

As someone who has experienced it firsthand, I notice the smug look of satisfaction that crawled upon that evil nurse’s face in the delivery room when I told her she was hurting me, that she wasn’t paying attention to my needs, and that I felt embarrassed.

I’ll never understand why she took so much joy in making me feel dehumanized and unlistened to. Who knows? Maybe Newark Beth Israel hires from the Josef Mengele School of Bastards.

Or, perhaps it’s just the way that misery loves company.

It wouldn’t be the only example of this I’ve seen.

Many single girls often have seen that one girl who is in an absolutely horrific relationship who insists that every happily single girl needs to get married. Or the one housewife who drunkenly admits she hates her kids, only to encourage others to have children when she’s not blacked out on a kitchen floor.

Oddly enough, those women tend to be just as judgmental of other women in their own shoes—though it’s done with a weirdly warm welcoming. It’s almost as if they view it as a sign that the newly hurt woman is part of her community, or perhaps, under her control.

On the surface, almost every woman you meet swears they’re “a girl’s girl,” but when push comes to shove, not many actually want to see other women doing well or being happy on their own terms. Most women, aside from the “not like other girls” type, are also open about being feminist.

I’ll be honest.

True feminists are hard to find regardless of gender. If you don’t believe me, watch how many peoples’ hackles get raised when you say you don’t want kids, want to get sterilized (as a man OR woman, it happens with both genders), or want to have more than 10 kids—provided they have the resources to do so responsibly.

Women who can’t stand the idea of other women choosing their own paths often use humiliation, ostracism, and sabotage as a way to exert control over others. It’s their way to attack women they deem a thread—even when the women in question are totally well-meaning.

It’s a question I wondered about quite a bit.

Many of the women who play “crabs in a bucket” with other women often have insecurities about themselves—perhaps dealing with sexuality, status, or popularity. I’ve seen quite a few “pickme” types get downright venomous with women who are conventionally attractive for that reason.

Truth be told, society weaponizes women against women. Without other women upholding patriarchy, much of what happens today wouldn’t happen. Heck, think about how many industries would collapse if they couldn’t make women feel like they’re in constant competition.

Obviously, the women who act out in those controlling ways aren’t well. But I’m also not afraid to say that I’m not a fan of them and that they do immeasurable damage to everyone around them with their control-freak ways.

Had so many anti-feminist women not sided with the GOP, Roe would still be part of our country’s fabric.

I wish I could be sympathetic. I really do. But far be it for me to be upset for them, considering that they were clamoring for others to suffer that same fate. All they’re doing is getting the very treatment they wanted.

Perhaps, with time, they’ll realize that the women they punished were never the real enemy. Rather, the true enemy was within their own insecurities all this time.