At Battered Women’s Support Services, we see every day how deeply gender-based violence and violence agains

This week, the executive director at BWSS received a message that was explicitly hateful, laced with racial slurs and misogyny. It came in response to our work addressing violence against women. The content was not unfamiliar. It was vile, yes. But it was also routine. For those of us doing this work—especially racialized women, anti-violence service providers, and feminist organizations—the backlash is anticipated.

This message ended with the full use of the N-word—undisguised, violent, and meant to dehumanize. That final word was not incidental. It was the point.

This is not necessarily about one message or one individual. It is about a pattern. A strategy of attack that seeks to derail, intimidate, and discredit those who are doing the work to build a future free from violence against women and gender-based violence. These attacks—whether online, by text, through public campaigns or threats—are political. And they are designed to keep systems of power intact.

This is not new. Anti-violence movements have always faced resistance. But today, that resistance is finding more visible and violent forms—shaped by digital tools, political polarization, and a growing effort to undermine anti-violence services, feminist and anti-racist advocacy. When we challenge the roots of this violence, when we advocate for survivors, we become targets ourselves.

What this message reveals is not just the existence of hate, but how central that hate is to the structures we are trying to change. It reflects the ways that some people see gender and racial justice not as a necessity but as a threat. And that is precisely why this work remains urgent.

We are not sharing this to sensationalize the abuse. We are sharing it because silence is what hate relies on. When we expose it, we name it for what it is: an extension of the violence we are committed to ending.

BWSS has reported the incident to authorities, and a Hate Crimes Unit is investigating. We always take precautions to protect the safety of our staff and community and have internal protocols in place for situations like this.

This work is about building safety—for survivors, for communities, for future generations. And safety means more than responding to violence after it happens. It means disrupting the conditions that allow it to thrive. That includes confronting the racist and misogynist backlash that follows every step forward.

This moment is not about one message. It is about the need for a collective refusal to accept hate as the cost of doing this work. It is about calling on our allies, our communities, our funders, our media, and our governments to see this clearly: those who fight for safety should not have to defend themselves from new forms of violence in the process.

We will continue. And we will not be silent. To join #DesignedWithSurvivors please email us at endingvolence@bwss.org