i've been on the receiving end of violence from women. i have absolutely been white knuckle terrified of being killed by a woman i was in an intimate relationship with. it's not something one sees coming. one minute you're with someone on a team, the next you're seeing the danger right next to you, trapping you.
spoiler alert: i got away. when i ended things with her soon after, over the phone from 30 miles away, i made it seems like it was generally amicable. i constructed a story of my own emotional unavailability, because it was plausible and i could come across as unhappy. i told our mutual friends it was about some vague incompatibility, because i was not looking to be invalidated or worse when any accusation got back to her. it's been years now and i have surgically removed any social threads connecting us so as to create the perception our estrangement was natural and unintentional.
i never told anyone except a guy i've known for 20+ years who went through something similar more recently and was spiraling about how to process it. i'm grateful he reached out when he did. it sucks because suddenly fearing for your life sucks, but the extra layer of knowing in your bones that many of those close to you would dismiss your experience, explain it away as your misunderstanding, and default to taking the side of your abuser. my heart goes out to anyone who has lived this experience as any gender.
i don't even like the general topic coming up among friends, because it makes me upset when people i am close to can't wrap their mind around the concept, in the abstract, that anyone who has access to a motor vehicle can kill someone. or that anyone of any size can physically hurt and deeply traumatize someone who trusts them with violence or the threat of violence. because that's what trust is: making yourself vulnerable to another.
this phrase can die a thousand deaths. men might be conditioned by patriarchy to pretend women can't hurt or kill men, but fear has a way of continuing to exist underneath self-deception.
this phrase can die a thousand deaths. men might be conditioned by patriarchy to pretend women can’t hurt or kill men, but fear has a way of continuing to exist underneath self-deception.
Seconding this to say that I was once in an abusive relationship with a woman who was physically violent and threatened to call the cops on me for domestic abuse if I tried to break up with her.
This sort of thing is a really clear example of how toxic masculinity also hurts men.
:I-was-saying:
i've been on the receiving end of violence from women. i have absolutely been white knuckle terrified of being killed by a woman i was in an intimate relationship with. it's not something one sees coming. one minute you're with someone on a team, the next you're seeing the danger right next to you, trapping you.
spoiler alert: i got away. when i ended things with her soon after, over the phone from 30 miles away, i made it seems like it was generally amicable. i constructed a story of my own emotional unavailability, because it was plausible and i could come across as unhappy. i told our mutual friends it was about some vague incompatibility, because i was not looking to be invalidated or worse when any accusation got back to her. it's been years now and i have surgically removed any social threads connecting us so as to create the perception our estrangement was natural and unintentional.
i never told anyone except a guy i've known for 20+ years who went through something similar more recently and was spiraling about how to process it. i'm grateful he reached out when he did. it sucks because suddenly fearing for your life sucks, but the extra layer of knowing in your bones that many of those close to you would dismiss your experience, explain it away as your misunderstanding, and default to taking the side of your abuser. my heart goes out to anyone who has lived this experience as any gender.
i don't even like the general topic coming up among friends, because it makes me upset when people i am close to can't wrap their mind around the concept, in the abstract, that anyone who has access to a motor vehicle can kill someone. or that anyone of any size can physically hurt and deeply traumatize someone who trusts them with violence or the threat of violence. because that's what trust is: making yourself vulnerable to another.
this phrase can die a thousand deaths. men might be conditioned by patriarchy to pretend women can't hurt or kill men, but fear has a way of continuing to exist underneath self-deception.
Seconding this to say that I was once in an abusive relationship with a woman who was physically violent and threatened to call the cops on me for domestic abuse if I tried to break up with her.
This sort of thing is a really clear example of how toxic masculinity also hurts men.