hug you, choke you:
the art of suffocating nicely
For years, I mistook closeness for love, mistook attention for truth, mistook a smile for safety. The women in my life circled me like polite predators, wrapping themselves around me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. The gifts, the letters, the endless confessions of trauma—they called it sisterhood, but it was strategy. Love bombing, they called it when it was convenient, a barrage of intimacy to ensure I stayed too close to see clearly. I learned early that if I questioned their victimhood, I was “mean”.
At its core, “soft control” operates on the tension between vulnerability and dominance. Manipulative women frequently use tactics such as:
Love bombing: overwhelming a target with gifts, letters, (as-close-as-you-can-get) physical closeness.
Trauma dumping: sharing deeply personal stories to establish emotional leverage.
Defensiveness and derailment: shifting blame or redirecting conversations when confronted. Ignoring your feelings when they are brought up-or blaming you for having them?
Status anxiety: excessive concern with appearances and the opinions of others.
These behaviors blur the line between extreme insecurity and aggression. The manipulator often positions herself as the victim, making any challenge to her behavior appear cruel or unjust.
Contemporary feminist spaces, while often built on ideals of solidarity and empowerment, can inadvertently amplify toxic female behaviors. Online accounts suggest that women high in Cluster B traits—including narcissism, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and manipulativeness—find these environments especially fertile.
Such individuals thrive in collective identities, often using group solidarity as a shield. This can be the same circle of friends without making any new ones or the same workplace (without moving onto any new ones) Reputation destruction, cancel culture, and covert campaigns against disagreeers are not anomalies in these spaces but rather mechanisms of maintaining dominance. Unlike men, who often resolve hierarchy disputes through direct confrontation, women rely on behind-the-scenes social coercion. Thus, toxicity becomes normalized under the guise of “feminist justice.”
One of the most insidious aspects of toxic female behavior is the cultural acceptance of perpetual victimhood. When women are taught that all struggles stem from patriarchy, men, or external forces, they are spared the responsibility of self-reflection. This cultural script encourages the weaponization of suffering: to be “hurt” is to have power, and to be challenged is to be oppressed. This mindset not only undermines personal maturity but also corrodes female solidarity. True solidarity requires accountability; toxic solidarity demands silence. As a result, female-dominated spaces unfortunately often stagnate in cycles of drama, suspicion, and exclusion.
Be Authentic! B - B - Authentic!
Resisting toxic female dynamics requires clarity. It requires distinguishing between those who have insecurities and those who are insecure. The former can grow, the latter can only consume.
Authenticity, rather than compliance, must be the foundation of female connection. This means rejecting coercion disguised as care, resisting victimhood as a social currency, and embracing directness even when it risks rejection.
Clarity will eventually arrive. I have learned to stand alone in that clear light, to see the difference between care and control, empathy and envy, sincerity and strategy. Years ago, I learned to let go of the box and/or to stop worrying about how others perceive me inside it.
To firmly reject those who perform for approval.
I have learned that the people who dislike me most often dislike themselves most.
Reader, if you find yourself confused, in vicious cycles or at odds with someone you don’t really respect, do not seek their understanding. Just be, standing upright and honest in a world of disguised claws, unafraid, unbound, unashamed.