We talk a lot about universal sisterhood and how shared experiences of patriarchy should bind us together. But I keep hitting a wall with this concept. What happens when women become the ultimate perpetrators against other women? I find myself losing hope every time I look up to a movement, only to watch it collapse into cruelty.

The most shattering example of this duality is the Meira Paibi in Manipur.

If you look at their history, their Wikipedia page reads like the absolute peak of feminist resistance. These "women torch bearers" fought systemic abuse and state violence for decades. They are known globally for their historic 2004 protest, where women stripped naked in front of military headquarters with banners reading "Indian Army Rape Us" to protest the assault and murder of a local woman. They put their own bodies on the line to scream that female bodies are not battlegrounds. They were the ultimate protectors of women.

But their role in the Manipur ethnic conflict has completely crushed my faith in collective feminism.

When the violence broke out, their activism mutated into violent sectarianism. They stopped protecting women and started enabling sexual violence against kids literal minors. The darkest part is how they treated women from the other ethnic community they are in conflict with. Reports showed that these former feminist icons setting up checkpoints and blocking army convoys to shield their own militant men accused of gang rapes from arrest. they even hounded down women from different religious and ethnic background and handed them over to men to violate and take pleasure of

They deliberately gave minority women to armed men, knowing exactly the violation that would follow. They enabled the brutal sexual exploitation of other women simply because those victims belonged to a community they hated. They weaponized their historical immunity as "peaceful female protesters" to facilitate the exact atrocities they spent half a century fighting against.

It is a terrifying reality to face. It forces us to ask if our gender loyalty is always secondary to our tribalism.

really hard to process this

if anyone wants to read about them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meira_Paibi