This week’s Scaffolding topic is the role of law enforcement in the scaffolding. We discussed how CBP/ICE, and local law enforcement function as gatekeepers in our justice system. They decide whether survivors are believed, whether patterns are documented, whether parents are separated from their children, detained or deported.

We also discussed how sexual violence is too often left out of criminal justice reform conversations. Violence is usually discussed through excessive force, but sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape-case mishandling and abuses by law enforcement are also part of the same power structure. This is especially dangerous for women who are Black, poor, criminalized, involved in sex work, undocumented or otherwise treated as less credible by the system.

Another part of the conversation was New Mexico and the humanitarian search work being done there. In the desert, women and girls are disappearing not only from their lives, but from public memory. Some are migrants. Some may never be identified. Some may not even be recovered. And when a woman’s clothing, shoes, backpack, phone, ID, or bones are left exposed to sun and wind without urgency from the state, that too is part of the scaffolding.

We talked about Battalion Search and Rescue and the Not Forgotten Project — Para Las Madres, a humanitarian search and documentation effort in New Mexico. Volunteers return again and again to desert sites where remains have been found or reported, searching for bones, clothing, backpacks, IDs, phones, and anything that might help restore a name to someone who has been reduced by policy and indifference to “remains.” Jenn and I will be going to New Mexico to join Para Las Madres the first week of June.

This work is grueling and sacred, and it should not depend on volunteers scraping together gas money. If you’d like to learn more about this important work, I just published a piece about it here. If you’d like to donate to the Not Forgotten Project, here is their GoFundMe link.

The throughline is this: violence against women persists because too many systems treat connected harms as separate problems. Law enforcement, courts, workplaces, insurers, mental health systems, immigration enforcement, border policy, and public agencies all touch the same crisis. When they do not act with urgency and care, they become part of the scaffold that allows the violence of women to persist.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for engaging with us in this urgent conversation.

Thank you, , , , , , and many others for tuning into our live video. Join me for our next live on Sunday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Apologies for postponing our Live episode of Scaffolding today as I had a major dog emergency. But somehow, the stars aligned for us to bring you exactly the kind of conversation Scaffolding was built to hold.

With two of the bravest chicas around, this is one necessary conversation. Join Jenn Budd and me on Wednesday, May 20, at 7 p.m. EDT for a live discussion with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.

Jenn and Alisa understand what it means to confront systems and tell the truth anyway. Both know what it means to survive rooms that try to contain women, writers, and truth-tellers — and to keep investigating, writing, and refusing to be silenced.

The good ol’ boys, and even some gals, want them to shut up and behave, but thankfully, they refuse. And America is all the better for it. Together, they bring fire, depth, and courage — and I consider myself lucky just to be in the room.

This is why we created Scaffolding: for honest, necessary, unsanitized conversations rooted in the belief that women have the power to tear down the old scaffolding and build something better.

In this episode of Scaffolding, we examine what happens when the language of “protection” becomes a tool of surveillance, punishment, and control.

We begin with recent reporting from Jessica Valenti on mothers investigated by CPS and police after helping their teenage daughters seek abortion care, including cases where family separation and coercion allegations were used to delay or threaten access. From there, we look at the fight over mifepristone — the medication used in many early abortions — and why efforts to restrict telehealth, mail, and pharmacy access are really about controlling the pathways to care.

We also discuss the recent CBP cruise ship story, where federal authorities made serious allegations involving child sexual exploitation material while offering limited public transparency around charges, evidence, or prosecution. Together, these stories raise a larger question: when the state says it is protecting women, children, families, or the public, who is actually being protected — and who is being watched, punished, separated, or disappeared?

This conversation connects reproductive surveillance, family policing, immigration enforcement, media responsibility, and institutional betrayal — and asks what it would mean to build systems rooted not in fear and control, but in care, transparency, due process, reproductive freedom, and real safety.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This episode is about the structures we are taught not to see — the headlines that soften male violence, the institutions that protect themselves, the digital spaces that profit from women’s degradation, and the silence that lets it all continue.

In this episode, we talk with Zulfina from Letters from a Feminist about rape culture, the next generation of red pill males in digital spaces who normalize abuse, and how difficult it is for younger generations of women to navigate dating when their safety is compromised.

We also talk with Nick Paro, host of Intelligent Masculinity, about accountability, fatherhood, male avoidance, and what it means to build a version of masculinity that does not depend on domination.

We are so incredibly grateful to Zulfina and Nick for spending time with us today. Listen, share, and subscribe to Scaffolding if you believe women and children deserve safety, dignity, and protection from sexual violence and abuse.

Jenn Budd and I created Scaffolding because naming harm is not enough. This new weekly Sunday podcast is about the structures that keep patriarchy standing and what it would take to tear them down. In our first episode, we talk about why women need spaces to speak plainly, think structurally, and start building something better for women and children.

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