I like to check out reddit.com every day. It’s a site where anyone can post content, readers up or down vote each post and you see content in order of what’s been upvoted the most, so readers play a role in what content reaches the most people. There are subreddits, which divide content by themes that you can subscribe to to further curate the content you see on your home feed, sort of like a Facebook feed but instead of the posts of people you have as friends it’s the popular posts from the themes (subreddits) you’ve subscribed to.

One of the subreddits I subscribe to is TwoXXChromosomes, “a subreddit for both serious and silly content, and intended for women’s perspectives.” The subjects don’t always catch my attention, but lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about women who have noticed other women, women they don’t know, in dangerous situations and they step in to help. An example might be a woman notices that another woman is being followed or harassed and so she steps in and pretends to know the woman and either walks her away from the situation or stays until the harasser leaves. The posts are by the women who were helped, thanking the women who stepped in, whose names they usually don’t get and who ask nothing in return, who simply help them out of a tough situation and carry on.

I love knowing that not only are women out there, being aware and present for each other when we’re vulnerable, but that those stories are being acknowledged and shared on the internet, a place that can be so cruel and inhuman at times, but in this case being used to share these stories of simple kindness/great courage and inspiring others to be aware of each other’s needs and the ways we can show the same level of care in kind.