maia strzygowski

I fear that many young people (my 17-year-old self included) in the throes of executive dysfunction, fists in the air saying “fuck capitalism”, are demanding change that they aren’t willing to contribute to.

I reject the idea that emotional intelligence must look soft, quiet, yielding. I reject the psychologised policing of female résistance. I reject that therapy culture’s promise of peace always means silence.

I want to puncture one more cliché: the myth that difficult women are just wounded girls in disguise. That their difficulty is code for unprocessed trauma. That if they were just healed , they would be nicer. More manageable.

But healing is not a synonym for submission.

Ohhh yes, it’s exhausting! You are misunderstood, misquoted, misread. You are often too early. You disrupt groupthink. You risk being labelled “toxic” in the same breath you are being privately thanked for saying what others couldn’t.

I’ve tried being reasonable. I’ve tried being the kind of woman who doesn’t send long emails, doesn’t call out inconsistencies, doesn’t demand intellectual accountability at dinner parties. It works. For a while. People like you. You get invited back. You are praised for your calm, your clarity, your reasonableness .

But then comes the night you... See more

Then there’s Cassandra, cursed to speak the truth and never be believed. I know a few modern Cassandras, women who warned of dangers, emotional or systemic, and were dismissed as dramatic, irrational, crazy. Only to be proven right, spectacularly and too late. Prophets in the age of polite gaslighting.

But if you listen closely, buried under centuries of rolled eyes and condescending nods, “difficult” starts to sound like code. A compliment disguised as complaint. A word used when someone cannot dominate you, narrate you, or get you to shut up. It means: she will not bend to the script you gave her . Which is precisely what makes her divine.

The word “difficult” is rarely just an adjective when applied to women. It’s a diagnosis. A signal flare to others: beware, she thinks too much ! It’s the HR-memo version of “madwoman in the attic”. A strategic buzzword designed to keep sharp women blunt.