Heroines of the Resistance
Coercive control comes out of the house and into national policy.
Elizabeth Warren recently posted that “ICE agents are using physical and psychological coercion” (Threads, June 25, 2025).
For 1 in 4 women living in abuse in America, it’s not a surprise.
Yet I still hear both men and women express doubts when they hear the extremes that abusers will go to in order to gain or maintain control. One man told me all a woman had to do was warn the man and he wouldn’t hurt her.
Now under this administration, they have a televised seat to the misogyny, and it cannot be denied any longer.
Coercive control is the bedrock of abusers against women, gradually tearing down any inner resistance, even when there is no physical assault.
For those of us who lived and advocate for those under religious coercive control, it’s not a surprise either. The Southern Baptist Convention, founded on racism, has in the past decade clamped down more and more severely on women’s personhood.
The SBC and other evangelicals are a major supporter of Trump and are a major portion of MAGA membership.
Patriarchy is both taught and upheld by religious men who fear women’s power. Women are the common enemy. Preaching their inferiority bolsters men’s insecurities and legitimizes inequality.
Abusers are cowardly bullies who target those they think are easy prey. Their use of masks from the KKK to today prove that point.
ICE members play dress up to go “get their man” but it’s always a minority person they don’t expect much resistance. And the attacks on women both under ICE and Dark Age medical abortion and other health care restrictions only spotlight their cowardice.
Let there be no doubt: whoever is under that ICE mask is more often than not an abuser of women. The stories continue to come out.
Newsweek reported a May attack on a Massachusetts woman with a 2-month-old baby. Residents had formed a circle around the family to resist Ice attempts to arrest them. At one point a video showed an agent wrestling a woman for a baby. The report said ICE had already arrested the father and came back for the rest of the family. No warrants were shown.
Another account reports smashing in car windows and dragging a woman out A 9-month pregnant woman was detained. Agents slam a woman’s face into the ground. The wife of a Marine was taken. A Long Island mom of 5 was detained and sent to prison in Texas. These were citizens with no criminal record, no justification- just easy targets.
Within the law, Family Courts in conservative states have been weaponized against women to punish them for trying to escape. They award custody to fathers with records of child or domestic abuse in spite of ample evidence brought by the mother. Weaponizing their own children shows how low this type of man will go. And since Family Courts don’t have to operate like other courts, they are getting away with destroying women and children. Women’s Coalition International is fighting this movement.
Outside the law but pretending to be within it, ICE groups of wanna-be men feel free to terrorize entire families. Any woman who has experience with an abuser knows how quickly he can escalate and how irrational his actions can be.
Survivors report their pregnancies could trigger physical attacks. Kicking, belt whipping, and throwing their pregnant partners down the stairs are some of the behaviors. Advocates and therapists can verify similar reports.
Women under their type of control can have hope of escape if they can locate other women who know that these cowards can be confronted. When a woman tries to leave the risk of her getting murdered go up to 70%. Women must band together as we are seeing in the resistance to ICE.
ICE detention resulted in a woman losing her baby after they would not give her medical attention.
Americans believe Middle Eastern women are oppressed, beaten and treated like animals. That’s also true in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other GOP-engineered states.
In hospitals, more obviously gory violations are being perpetrated through draconian anti-abortion mandates. A dead woman “incubates” a baby. 15 of the 16 states with highest infant mortality rates are in red states denying reproductive care.
If they don’t kill you with ICE, they might get you in the hospital.
In addition to the brave Congresswomen and men fighting this pretense of government, individual women have stood up to ICE. One woman continued to challenge them when they came on the grounds to take a man, telling him “You don’t have a badge. You don’t have a signed warrant.”
Officially Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles has spoken publicly about the absolute disregard of the citizenry shown by ICE agents or wanna-bees. New Jersey representative LaMonica McIver was charged for protesting. Wives of detained men spoke out to legislators in Raleigh, NC. New York legislator Karines Ryes has introduced an act against collaboration with ICE.
Don’t give up. But we have to band together. We have to know our rights.
Mainstream media may try to spin this as pretenders mimicking ICE agents, as if ICE were a legitimate arm of a legitimate administration. ICE is a lawless pretense. Every angry man who wants to show women a thing or two is the second layer of this war. The third layer of the war on women is medical care.
A women legislator has been murdered. Is this a fourth layer?
We’re not going back.
Life is greater than death. Women give life.