Participation is power for women.
We’ve been tricked into believing that our withdrawal, our retreat, will make us valuable enough and might make them miss us and come looking.
That may work if you’re a peacock, but it doesn’t work if you’re a human woman.
Why? Because we live in a culture of scarcity. And in a culture of scarcity, someone is always willing to lower the bar to claim their prize.
Imagine every woman pulled back, every woman retreated. Even then, there’d be one who would step out, sell herself out, to grab what she could. And just like that, the game gets dragged down for everyone.
Retreat loses its power.
Our only power is to engage, to participate in everything before us.