Edited (a bit) from FB page What an Amazing History:
Rebecca Traister is naming a pattern that masquerades as respect.
She's a journalist who's covered American politics and women's issues for over two decades. She's watched patterns repeat across campaigns, newsrooms, and institutions.
And she's identified something crucial: endurance is treated as virtue when institutions are unwilling to change.
Women are applauded for surviving conditions that should never be normalized.
Persistence becomes the substitute for reform. Praise replaces responsibility.
This framing is not accidental.
Rebecca Traister grew up watching politics. Born in 1975, she came of age during an era when women were fighting for visibility in spaces that had excluded them for centuries.
She studied at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, then started covering politics and culture in New York. By the early 2000s, she was writing for publications like Salon, New York Magazine, and The Cut—documenting women's experiences in politics, media, and culture.
In 2008, she covered Hillary Clinton's first presidential campaign. She watched how Clinton was scrutinized in ways male candidates never were. How her voice was called shrill. How her ambition was treated as suspicious. How she was expected to be warm but not too warm, strong but not too strong, experienced but not threatening.
And she watched how the narrative around Clinton focused on her resilience. Her ability to endure. Her strength in the face of endless attacks.
The praise was genuine. But it was also convenient.
Because celebrating Clinton's endurance meant never having to examine why she faced attacks that male candidates didn't.
Celebrating endurance shifts attention away from the source of strain.
If women can withstand imbalance, the system avoids examining why the imbalance exists. If women are strong enough to survive hostile environments, institutions never have to ask why the environment is hostile in the first place.
Strength becomes an expectation. Relief becomes optional.
In 2016, Traister published All the Single Ladies—a book examining how women's increasing independence was reshaping American society. She documented how single women were building lives outside traditional marriage, creating economic power, demanding political representation.
The book was celebrated. But Traister noticed something troubling in the response: many people praised women for their resilience in navigating systems that weren't built for them—rather than questioning why those systems hadn't changed.
Women were applauded for "having it all"—career, family, independence—as if juggling impossible demands was an achievement rather than evidence of structural failure.
Women were celebrated for breaking glass ceilings—as if the existence of glass ceilings was inevitable rather than constructed.
Women were praised for their strength in enduring discrimination—as if endurance was the goal rather than elimination of discrimination.
Traister's observation exposes the trade being made: endurance is individual. Change is structural.
Applauding the former often delays the latter.
It allows inequity to continue under the banner of resilience. It lets institutions off the hook—because if women are strong enough to survive broken systems, why fix the systems?
Meanwhile, the conditions that demand endurance remain intact.
In 2018, Traister published Good and Mad—a book about women's anger in America. She traced how women's rage at injustice has been policed, pathologized, and dismissed throughout history—and how that rage has also driven every major social change.
The book came out during the #MeToo movement, when women were finally being heard about harassment and assault they'd endured for years.
What Traister insists on is recalibration.
Women do not need more praise for surviving broken systems. They need those systems to stop breaking them.
Recognition without reform is not progress. It is management.
It's a way to contain frustration without addressing causes. It's a way to celebrate individuals without changing institutions. It's a way to maintain power structures while appearing to acknowledge their problems.
Traister has spent her career documenting this pattern across American politics and culture.
In 2020, she covered another presidential election—this time watching Kamala Harris become the first woman vice president. The celebration was real and meaningful.
The question is no longer: How much can women endure?
It's: Why has endurance been demanded in place of change for so long?
Rebecca Traister is now in her late forties. She's covered politics, culture, and women's issues for over 20 years. She's written books that shape national conversations. She's documented patterns that most people miss.
Because endurance is not a solution. It's evidence of a problem.
And until we stop celebrating women for surviving conditions that should never exist, those conditions will continue to exist.
Waiting for the next generation of women to endure them too.
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ICE and Border Patrol victims:
Keith Porter
Alex Pretti
Renee Good
Silverio Villegas Gonzáles
Heber Sanchaz DomÃnguez
Victor Manuel Diaz
Parady La
Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
Geraldo Lunas Campos
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The Flat Iron Building in Asheville NC
