So the other day I walked into a women’s restroom at work and found a “Be Kind” sign awkwardly placed below the paper towel dispenser. Like someone had gone to great trouble to make sure it stayed in a place it clearly didn’t belong. Why? Just why? I thought, Can’t even go take a p!ss without being told how to act! Women are always being told: Be this, be that! Now in the frikkin’ restroom? I threw the d@mn thing in the trash and was even sure to push it down to the bottom so no one could see it and fish it out. I made sure it wasn’t replaced.

I know things like this are nothing new, but I see it in a new light since peaking just over a year ago. And I’ve called this “thought policing” because that’s what it feels like - being told what to think, how to act, etc. Of course, the sign could have been a sarcastic way of telling people to wash their hands or something, but I doubt it, and it was still annoying. And I have seen similar signs on policing our behavior in other restrooms in different places. I asked my brother, also gender critical, if signs like this go up in the male restrooms. Nope.

Smh. There are no trans people at my workplace, so this means the sign was definitely placed there by another woman (as opposed to a man pretending to be a woman). What this means: Women can’t even go to the restroom without being told how to think, feel, and act - by other women! It’s an example of the continued infantilization of women, like, “Ok girls! This is your daily reminder of how to act!” My theory is that this is caused by internalized sexism - “I have to act like this, so you do too” type of deal. It’s a very entitled way of thinking, that whichever woman did this thinks she is entitled to speak for all women. If it makes even just one woman uncomfortable, it is not “empowering”, it is not “inclusive.” It’s degrading.

And it begged the question… what does “Be Kind” even mean? Out of curiosity I looked up where “Be Kind” came from. I guess it was some kind of anti-bullying campaign. But the only time I’ve seen the phrase used is when TRAs use it to bully women into accepting men in their same-sex spaces. How ironic.

It’s worth restating a common sentiment I've seen among radfems… I hate “Be Kind” signs or similar, and even think they’re damaging for women. Why? We know that kindness is often conflated with “being nice”. And we know that women are no more obligated to “be kind” than men. And when this is posted in the only woman-only space for women working in male-majority fields (like I do), this is really just reinforcing the idea women should be nice to men. But nice girls don’t get the corner office. And considering that my line of work is particularly infamous for male-on-female harassment and even violence, this is also just telling women to be complicit in their own subordination to men; to second-guess their boundaries; to be nice little flowers.

So I ask for your perspectives. Why do women do this? Why do some women feel this compulsive urge to tell other women how to act? If anything, why do such women think I want to be told to “be kind” when I go to take a leak or a dump? Are they really that desperate? And what other ridiculous thought-policing signs have you seen in women’s restrooms?