Women’s trauma dumps and gossip sessions are more revolutionary than we think

Every week, PhilSTAR L!fe explores issues and topics from the perspectives of different age groups, encouraging healthy but meaningful conversations on why they matter. This is Generations by our Gen Z columnist Angel Martinez.

At the risk of failing the Bechdel test once and for all, I have to say that nothing bonds two straight women who have never met each other quite like the subject of men. Whether it’s a guy who crossed a boundary more than once or robbed us of our youth by trapping us in a loveless relationship, we all have our own sob story that we’re willing to spill after even the most minor of triggers. 

It’s precisely why scrolling through the #womeninmalefields hashtag on TikTok has proven so addictive: It's like being in on a huge open secret, or skilled in a certain cipher. In case we don’t share the same algorithm, this trend involves putting a spin on our most traumatic experiences with the opposite gender—gaslighting, cheating, even fetishizing bisexuality—and to some effect, exposing the men who ruined our lives. This genre of oversharing is nothing new to TikTok: In fact, its algorithm often trades shock value for short-term virality. It’s why we’ve seen so many trauma salads and Dating Wrapped presentations, and why we’ve watched more than 50 parts of the Who TF Did I Marry? series—all of which feature women. 

If our ancestors learned that we enjoy these luxuries today, they would have died of envy. Back in the day, women were chastised and demonized for speaking amongst themselves. According to Silvia Federici’s research for her book Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, the term “gossip” first originated to define female friendships who were companions in childbirth. After religious, elite society fueled the rise of a heteropatriarchal society, women’s power slowly deteriorated, causing their “independence in speech and social formations to be perceived as a threat.” It was only then that the term “gossip” bore a negative connotation, associated primarily with women.

In the Philippines, we see this in how the concept of the Marites has seamlessly embedded itself in our cultural lexicon. “I have always been interested in how it’s a woman’s name that is used in the pejorative sense. It really points to how female knowledge is not taken seriously and often undermined or subordinated under patriarchy,” writer, critic, and curator Alice Sarmiento shares with PhilSTAR L!fe.

This institutional minimization of women’s narratives has inspired the rise of whisper networks, or alternative avenues for restitution. “If a report filed by a woman about another person in an organization, usually a man, being unsafe or outright abusive gets brushed aside or dismissed, then usually the only recourse women in organizations have in order to keep each other safe is to warn each other, to whisper about it.” Sarmiento says. Think of it as the predecessor of a girl sliding in your DMs to warn you about a guy you’re seeing, or exchanging screenshots of chat conversations in a club CR. 

In a way, despite its glaring faults and shortcomings, social media has lessened the need for whispering, so to speak. Now, we can take our grievances to a public platform, and reach and receive support from a wider crowd. The #womeninmalefields trend, specifically, is an intriguing narrative device to use in fulfillment of this objective: “Men often get away with poor behaviors, with many people seeing them as part of ‘acceptable’ male socialization,” life and relationship coach Alicia Serrano explains to L!fe. “By flipping the roles and having women—who historically have been socialized to be more polite and agreeable—‘act’ out these behaviors, the normalization aspect gets taken away, making it clearer to see the unhealthy aspect behind these behavioral patterns.”

This process also reaffirms women’s struggles after being invalidated by men who wish to strip them of their power and agency. “Poor behavior and toxicity are often so normalized for some people that it takes seeing people post about things to realize the unhealthy nature of these patterns,” Serrano says. When you see several women’s partners telling them they’re the problem for something you’ve also been punished for, doesn’t that just fully convince you that you might not have been the problem either? 

Such communal support can be cathartic to those who have been through unpleasant experiences—a much-needed reminder to women to show up and claim space. “Whenever we feel physically isolated from each other, [movements like this] create a common sense of experience for other people,” Marion Abilene Navarro, teaching associate at the University of the Philippines’ Department of Behavioral Sciences, says in an interview with L!fe. “That’s why it’s helpful for women to use technology and social media, because it helps them gain greater ground and reach a wider audience of feminists across the globe or in different fields.”