Women like the Yazidis who have been subjected to sexual violence on such a terrible scale cannot easily be reintegrated into old patterns, nor will they thrive if they are seen — and see themselves — as shamed victims. Part of the process of rehabilitation has to involve challenging the stigma survivors face.

Of course, there are ways to do this without taking up arms. But the fact that some of the survivors in the refugee camps of Iraqi Kurdistan, which is still heavily patriarchal, have chosen this path indicates the influence of the radical Kurdish female guerrillas. A women’s council formed last July by Rojava-influenced Yazidis went so far as to declare that the goal should not be to “buy back” abducted women and children, as is common when dealing with the Islamic State, but to liberate them and at the same time establish new traditions of self-defense.

That won’t be easy. Two years after their capture, thousands of Yazidi women and children remain in captivity. Many more are scattered in refugee camps in Turkey, Iraq or Rojava, while others have tried to flee to Europe, some drowning on the way. But the epicenter of the Yazidi struggle remains Sinjar Mountain, the ancestral home to which many now in Iraqi refugee camps desperately want to return.

One barrier in their way remains the same Iraqi Kurdish forces of Masoud Barzani who abandoned them two years ago, and whose pesh merga have capriciously operated the checkpoint at the border crossing that leads to both Rojava and the north side of Sinjar Mountain, making adequate access to essential supplies and building materials difficult if not impossible. This has been done in cooperation with Turkey’s blockade of the Rojava Kurds.

Those of us moved by the plight of the Yazidis and the image of women fighting the Islamic State can, and should, do more than express admiration from afar. We need to help the American government listen to its own ideas about gender equality, democracy and pluralism. The United States recently promised Mr. Barzani’s forces a generous amount of military aid.

The price tag for that aid must be freedom of movement for the Yazidis, so they can return to their homes and rebuild, hopefully with full involvement by women and survivors of the Islamic State’s sexual violence, and a permanent end to the blockade of Rojava, whose guerrillas have been some of the only forces capable of fighting the Islamic State — not in spite of their feminism, but because of it.