This was in my high school and early college years, later on in life I was able develop romantic relationships with them and healthy platonic relationships. I’ll be upfront and say a lot of the times if a straight dude hates women vehemently, it’s probably because he’s not getting laid or able to form any semblance of a romance with a woman.
i had a semester of hating men because my friends and i kept getting sexually harassed
How'd you get out of that phase? I wouldn't say that I hate straight men but I tend to assume negative things about them by default (that they are unconsciously sexist, that they don't see me as a full person, that they are often thinking of me as a sexual object) and I struggle to break free of that mindset because it aligns with most of my life experiences. I keep trying to correct this by building healthy platonic relationships with straight men, but none have worked out so far - they always start hitting on me eventually, and I'm openly gay.
To be completely honest, I stopped meeting that many new men 😂 At the moment I mostly interact with men from my uni department, who are luckily all great, and established friends and family, who are also either great or at the very least I can challenge any casual sexism and they'll take me seriously. Because of that my default expectation slowly shifted to that of being treated like a human being by men, and sexism became a (small) shock and not an expectation, so my feelings could also change. I'm sorry this is kind of a downer of an answer :')
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Sorry this ended up as a bit of a rant, but:
I really hope it for you too! Actually some of my closest guy friends rn are nerdy tech dudes who are into sci-fi/fantasy. It sounds like such a stereotypical bad combo lol but they're really great and sincerely pro-feminism. So you never know!
Tbf there's also something to be said for.. having no positive expectations. Like when I say I hated, I mean I was genuinely seething about it a lot. Combo of a whole string of bad experiences with harassment one after another + living below an AirBnB which was rented out for huge parties (esp stag parties) every week and sometimes more often. When we tried to run around and complain and get it shut down we
CW
got told we have nothing to complain about because in another flat of girls living below an AirBnB a couple of them got raped, and we hadn't been raped yet so what're we even so upset about. When we went to our uni for advice we got given rape whistles because they had no idea what else to do lmao. Also some other fun victim blamey stuff.
Anyway it (and some other stuff) culminated in me being really depressed, seeking counselling, the guy counselor being kinda disturbed about me not wanting to wear high heels anymore because I felt unsafe in them so I ended up kinda comforting him that I'll work on wearing high heels again lol... Anyway all that to say was that that was a really extreme time in my life, and since then for a while after it was more like you - "assuming they don't see me as a full person" is a good way to put it. For me the end goal there was to not feel too much emotion about it, I guess. Not like ignore it (because it is wrong and it is infuriating) but just not allow it to eat up my actual mental energy. The fact that my emotions are more positive than that as a whole now is kind of just luck.
That’s not a phase. That’s reality. I think how you navigate it is key... it’s one thing have that in the back of your mind it’s another to be bitter about it. Does that make sense?
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Damn that sucks. I guess it doesn't help that pick up artist advice makes guys think that they can "get any woman." But I'm curious as to why they all eventually hit on you even though you're openly gay. Do they think you're not really gay and it's some kind of "guy defense" because you're actually bi? Or are they so desperate b/c of the hell of tinder that they just want something that they think is achievable to them? Or do they think that they can "turn" you?
In general, lesbian sexual attraction is not seen as valid or "real" due to, you know, patriarchy and homophobia. Women cannot be defined outside of a relationship to a man. This is why girls can kiss each other while wasted and it's not seen as gay (or even as cheating if they both have boyfriends), but a dude would be labeled a homosexual the instant he brushed his buddy's hand. It's why couples look on lesbian Tinder for a female third and not nearly as often for a gay male one. And men will routinely solicit threesomes from monogamous lesbian couples, so honestly, them coming onto me while I'm single is pretty mild in comparison. On some level, yes, they really do not believe that exclusive attraction to women can exist - that's the belief held by our culture at large - and that's why all those "friendships" immediately ended.
I'm really sorry that's happened to you! Sometimes I still struggle with viewing women in my life platonically, even if we've had a healthy friendship for a long time.
It's definitely a byproduct of my own insecurities, but I would rank "being openly gay" as up there with "being in a monogamous relationship" or some other equally clear boundary. I hope you can find some guy friends who can respect those boundaries :(
I did similar because of men who do not understand that I am gay.
Oh hey that’s cool. Wanna have a threesome?
Yeah, no that’s not how this works.
that's fair.
if you're at college I wouldn't even bother trying to make friends with the guys there, especially if you're at a private institution