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(Image shows a spread pair of magpie wings)
One of the things women don't accept about the lives of men is that we really aren't allowed to tell people "no". Women always bring up the statistics of femicides committed "because a man was told no" - and, while that is obviously unacceptable (guys; being able to handle not getting what you want is the primary sign of a competent, successful, powerful male... You don't get to be an "alpha" if you've never had to accept that something isn't going to go the way you'd hoped.)
But, despite the femicide statistics, women spend a lot of their time quite dramatically telling people - including men - no. They scream it at their children. They pair it with slamming around the house, often destroying personal property, in arguments with their partners. They dominate social media with all the things they "won't accept". They shove their "rights" as someone experiencing menopause in employers' faces as they refuse to do normal parts of the job they were employed for. In meetings, they pout and mew that "I just don't think that will wooooorrrrkkkk", and refuse to be swayed on things they don't want to take on.
Women are constantly seeing the world around them being told that their "no" has to be respected, even if that doesn't always manifest in the way people in the world treat them.
In contrast? The communication, particularly to women, is that a man's "no" is never legitimate, and can just be ridden roughshod over.
Employers, faced with a seemingly endless list of things they have to do for, allow from, and exempt their female employees from, tend to default to seeing their male staff as "the people who don't get to refuse" - because, being real, someone has to do the work that exists in a company or sector, regardless of their longterm hormonal cycle position, their choice to have children, their relative body fat percentage, or whatever else very well-funded, middle class white women gang together to insist the government provides legal protections for.
A lot of conversation happens about men taking off a condom when their partners are unaware to "force" a pregnancy - but women equally pretend to be on contraception which they have stopped taking, they get drunk whilst on birth control, which often negates birth control. Even when that deception isn't happening, women tend to believe they can "talk men round" to wanting children, rather than simply hearing "no", and thinking "okay, I really want children, so I need to go and find a man who also wants children, rather than trying to 'fix' this guy."
When women hear "no" too often from male partners, they're not at all averse to threatening to "just go and be a lesbian" (which is also insulting to actually Sapphic women, who are usually trying to work around issues in their relationships - because the problem is simply different humans living in close proximity, rather than gendered dynamics.) Men, however stressed and frustrated they become by women, never threaten to "just go and fuck with other men".
Nowhere is the dismissal of men's rights to say "no" and be heard more clear than in the way men who experience abuse are treated.
All of the communication about abuse centres on women as victims, men as perpetrators.
When men are raped by women, the overwhelming response is "You should be grateful". Boys who are molested by adult women are told they should "appreciate getting to learn from an experienced woman." Even at the most 'benign', people ask if it's "really" rape, molestation, etc. Female perpetrators are routinely excused with "Well, the patriarchy made them like that", or "they were probably acting on orders from a man!"
Men who talk about domestic abuse are dismissed as weak, lacking authority, being "too sensitive" - aspersions about heterosexual men's sexuality are thrown around very liberally when their abusers are women.
There are roughly 35million cisgender men in the UK, yet the minute a woman has more than three bad experiences, it's "all" men. Meanwhile, men can consistently find themselves experience violence, sexual abuse, coercive control, etc from different women, and still not feel they can talk about that without rushing to reassure everyone that of course they know that most women aren't like that at all! That they completely understand that women face so many pressures! Men are hyperfixated on making it so, so clear that they know that the women who abused them are a tiny, tiny percentage of women generally, and that absolutely their abuse doesn't mean they hate women. But one man annoys a woman? All men are arseholes. She hates men. She's going to become a lesbian. Men should go to war and be killed.
The overwhelming majority of abuse I've experienced has been from cis women. That includes:
. Being threatened at knifepoint (twice, two separate women)
. Being pushed in front of a moving vehicle
. Violent verbal abuse
. Being prevented from getting out of a car that was being driven deliberately dangerously
But, despite the femicide statistics, women spend a lot of their time quite dramatically telling people - including men - no. They scream it at their children. They pair it with slamming around the house, often destroying personal property, in arguments with their partners. They dominate social media with all the things they "won't accept". They shove their "rights" as someone experiencing menopause in employers' faces as they refuse to do normal parts of the job they were employed for. In meetings, they pout and mew that "I just don't think that will wooooorrrrkkkk", and refuse to be swayed on things they don't want to take on.
Women are constantly seeing the world around them being told that their "no" has to be respected, even if that doesn't always manifest in the way people in the world treat them.
In contrast? The communication, particularly to women, is that a man's "no" is never legitimate, and can just be ridden roughshod over.
Employers, faced with a seemingly endless list of things they have to do for, allow from, and exempt their female employees from, tend to default to seeing their male staff as "the people who don't get to refuse" - because, being real, someone has to do the work that exists in a company or sector, regardless of their longterm hormonal cycle position, their choice to have children, their relative body fat percentage, or whatever else very well-funded, middle class white women gang together to insist the government provides legal protections for.
A lot of conversation happens about men taking off a condom when their partners are unaware to "force" a pregnancy - but women equally pretend to be on contraception which they have stopped taking, they get drunk whilst on birth control, which often negates birth control. Even when that deception isn't happening, women tend to believe they can "talk men round" to wanting children, rather than simply hearing "no", and thinking "okay, I really want children, so I need to go and find a man who also wants children, rather than trying to 'fix' this guy."
When women hear "no" too often from male partners, they're not at all averse to threatening to "just go and be a lesbian" (which is also insulting to actually Sapphic women, who are usually trying to work around issues in their relationships - because the problem is simply different humans living in close proximity, rather than gendered dynamics.) Men, however stressed and frustrated they become by women, never threaten to "just go and fuck with other men".
Nowhere is the dismissal of men's rights to say "no" and be heard more clear than in the way men who experience abuse are treated.
All of the communication about abuse centres on women as victims, men as perpetrators.
When men are raped by women, the overwhelming response is "You should be grateful". Boys who are molested by adult women are told they should "appreciate getting to learn from an experienced woman." Even at the most 'benign', people ask if it's "really" rape, molestation, etc. Female perpetrators are routinely excused with "Well, the patriarchy made them like that", or "they were probably acting on orders from a man!"
Men who talk about domestic abuse are dismissed as weak, lacking authority, being "too sensitive" - aspersions about heterosexual men's sexuality are thrown around very liberally when their abusers are women.
There are roughly 35million cisgender men in the UK, yet the minute a woman has more than three bad experiences, it's "all" men. Meanwhile, men can consistently find themselves experience violence, sexual abuse, coercive control, etc from different women, and still not feel they can talk about that without rushing to reassure everyone that of course they know that most women aren't like that at all! That they completely understand that women face so many pressures! Men are hyperfixated on making it so, so clear that they know that the women who abused them are a tiny, tiny percentage of women generally, and that absolutely their abuse doesn't mean they hate women. But one man annoys a woman? All men are arseholes. She hates men. She's going to become a lesbian. Men should go to war and be killed.
The overwhelming majority of abuse I've experienced has been from cis women. That includes:
. Being threatened at knifepoint (twice, two separate women)
. Being pushed in front of a moving vehicle
. Violent verbal abuse
. Being prevented from getting out of a car that was being driven deliberately dangerously
. Being held down by my neck and beaten with implements
. Being threatened with "being sent to a children's home" if I left my room overnight (which led, on several occasions, to me sneaking out of the window to urinate, so that I didn't risk being heard going to the bathroom)
. Being left in a room with my own vomit, trying to clean it up myself, at age 6, whilst still being unwell
. Being sexually assaulted by a group which including several females, who were very proactive partcipants
. Being told, age 5, when I encountered evidence of my mother's menstruation, and, understandably, asked about it, that "this happened because I had to give birth to you." (By the way, that's not funny - it's emotional abuse, especially when said to a very young child, and it doesn't really help with the "Waaaahhhhh, but men don't know anything about women's bodies! Misogyny!!!!")
. Having women, in very public settings, feel that they were completely entitled to grab my arse, put their hands down my pants, yank up my jeans and smack my arse "because I shouldn't have to see that" (I was squatting down to reach things at the back of a low shelf in a supermarket...I was wearing a belt with my jeans...I would obviously have pulled up my jeans myself once I'd got my item and stood up...)
I do not trust cis women I don't have an existing positve relationship with. Even in that situation, I don't feel comfortable telling women I do have an existing positive relationship "no". Saying that makes me "misogynist", while women publicly saying men should be killed is apparently not misandry...
Are some men just abusive, violent, and selfish? Yes - but so are some women.
Some men, however, are acting more aggressive than they should because it's the only way their "no" is actually heard.
I've recently come to accept that I'm dealing with CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) - you know, the same condition people who've seen frontline combat get? And that, in my case, that defined most of my childhood, also - which is an explanation for why 90% of my memories of childhood are of extremely negative situations, and why, even at forty, I struggle to know what I enjoy, or might enjoy. At the moment, I'm still going through a depressive episode, and nothing feels enjoyable. My four "I know I like these" things have, since I was 10yrs old, been reading, writing, the ITV police procedural The Bill, and animals and nature; I'm really struggling to engage with reading. Other than my blogs, and things for work, I haven't written in over a year. It feels physically exhausting to even think about putting my DVDs of The Bill on. I don't want to go outside. I swing between feeling overwhelmed by knowing that all my pets will one day die, and feeling that I can't stand having my pets, I want to rehome them, etc. (Fortunately, having experienced severe, suicidal depression since I was 12 years old, I've learned never to act on thoughts I have while depressed, no matter how convinced I am that they're the right thoughts.)
. Being left in a room with my own vomit, trying to clean it up myself, at age 6, whilst still being unwell
. Being sexually assaulted by a group which including several females, who were very proactive partcipants
. Being told, age 5, when I encountered evidence of my mother's menstruation, and, understandably, asked about it, that "this happened because I had to give birth to you." (By the way, that's not funny - it's emotional abuse, especially when said to a very young child, and it doesn't really help with the "Waaaahhhhh, but men don't know anything about women's bodies! Misogyny!!!!")
. Having women, in very public settings, feel that they were completely entitled to grab my arse, put their hands down my pants, yank up my jeans and smack my arse "because I shouldn't have to see that" (I was squatting down to reach things at the back of a low shelf in a supermarket...I was wearing a belt with my jeans...I would obviously have pulled up my jeans myself once I'd got my item and stood up...)
I do not trust cis women I don't have an existing positve relationship with. Even in that situation, I don't feel comfortable telling women I do have an existing positive relationship "no". Saying that makes me "misogynist", while women publicly saying men should be killed is apparently not misandry...
Are some men just abusive, violent, and selfish? Yes - but so are some women.
Some men, however, are acting more aggressive than they should because it's the only way their "no" is actually heard.
I've recently come to accept that I'm dealing with CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) - you know, the same condition people who've seen frontline combat get? And that, in my case, that defined most of my childhood, also - which is an explanation for why 90% of my memories of childhood are of extremely negative situations, and why, even at forty, I struggle to know what I enjoy, or might enjoy. At the moment, I'm still going through a depressive episode, and nothing feels enjoyable. My four "I know I like these" things have, since I was 10yrs old, been reading, writing, the ITV police procedural The Bill, and animals and nature; I'm really struggling to engage with reading. Other than my blogs, and things for work, I haven't written in over a year. It feels physically exhausting to even think about putting my DVDs of The Bill on. I don't want to go outside. I swing between feeling overwhelmed by knowing that all my pets will one day die, and feeling that I can't stand having my pets, I want to rehome them, etc. (Fortunately, having experienced severe, suicidal depression since I was 12 years old, I've learned never to act on thoughts I have while depressed, no matter how convinced I am that they're the right thoughts.)
Perhaps I need new hobbies, new interests - but I have no idea what those might be. Nothing feels possible, or even desirable.
Trying to rework and progress your life while you're handling the effects of childhood abuse, dealing with a condition which is basically severe trauma reshaping your brain, and while every day brings new claims of how awful and hateful you are, how you should just be killed like a rabid dog, how you shouldn't be allowed to be part of public life, is almost impossible.
And yes, women - I am "going to therapy" (or, rather, since I can't afford therapy, going through therapeutic practices myself: Somatic processing. EMDR. I did used to journal, but that's fallen by the wayside of "can't write because of the depression" at the moment.) What are you doing, other than claiming everyone else is "being melodramatic", or that you're "overstimulated" as you violently tear people apart because they're not you, and you can't stand people who aren't you being allowed to exist equitably with you.
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