Feminism, My Mother, and Me (Trigger Warning)
JDylah_da_Kyllah
Registrant
Hello, friends.
I'm not sure exactly what to say here, or what hasn't been said by others, but it's something that I wanted to get off my chest. Serious Trigger Warning because I talk about what was done to me; I hadn't intended to say so much, but it's done now and I can't make it go away. I apologize in advance, as this is going to be a straight-from-the-heart ramble, though I will attempt to make it as cogent as possible.
Addendum: I feel obligated to state, for whatever reason, that this is a from-the-gut, stream-of-consciousness . . . thing . . . which does not necessarily reflect what I actually think or believe, not the least because I wasn't concerned at the time of writing with making sure that I was saying everything "correctly". I just needed to say it, however ugly it may seem, so I apologize in advance. Now then . . .
Women scare me. Not all women--but most.
My mother, who was a self-avowed feminist with a heaping side of misandry, was (how do I put this?) my "primary" abuser. My great-uncle was sexually abusive as well, but my mother was the person that I lived with, so in many ways what she did feels "worse", simply because I was subjected to it on a semi-regular basis (when my father was out of town for business) from the ages of 8 to 18. Her physical and verbal abuse--a result, I believe, of her alcoholism / the copious consumption of boxes of Franzia--began when I was 6.
(Meanwhile, my great-uncle put his tongue in my mouth when I was 5, forced me to sit on his lap when he had an erection--in full view of the family--when I was 8--and during the same visit kissed me again and forced me to give him oral sex--and to swallow. I was 14 when again he forced me to give him oral sex, to kiss him, and then he raped me.)
But I digress.
My mother was always sexually inappropriate, for as long as I can remember. Everything from calling me into the bathroom to watch her towel off, making a show of her breasts and private parts, to parading around the house naked (and encouraging me to do the same, when I was 8 and too young to understand) . . . To asking me to undress for her . . . To graphically detailing her sexual exploits, forcing me to watch pornography . . . Luring me to bed in covert ways, even when my father was home (i.e. on a Saturday morning, "Come here, Dyl; let's cuddle and sleep in!", just press her body against mine under the covers) . . . things that my dad, bless him, could never have assumed meant anything wrong . . . And then she began to touch me, to force me to touch her private parts and kiss her, to press the weight of her body down on top of me. I hated it. I shrank so far into my body that I may as well have not existed. Perhaps I didn't. No--I didn't.
But my body did.
I'm gay. I have no attraction to women, but she touched me and rubbed her body against mine and forced me into . . . places. And I was young, and friction is a stimulus.
I'm so ashamed of my body, even now. On bad days I hate that I feel sexual arousal at all, that it's a terribly dirty thing, that there's a black hole consuming that part of my body.
I heard her and my father having sex often. She made the same sounds with me. I can feel her body as she
Now I cannot hear my neighbors without being triggered. Sometimes I hear a woman and hate the autonomic arousal. I am not attracted to woman; I tell myself it's an ingrained response to trauma, much as rape survivors sometimes experience arousal via stories of rape. But I feel dirty and disgusting and as if I betray myself.
Indeed, this has caused a massive rift in my relationship with my father as well. He was head-over-heels in love with the woman who would become his second wife, after he divorced my mother. I didn't know her, as their courtship occurred when I was away at college. I came upon them making out in the kitchen, and asked my father if they could please try to keep it down around me. He promised; he said we had a deal.
Not so.
And so a few nights later I heard them having sex, loudly, and I left him a note on the counter: "We had a deal!" before creeping to hide in a corner of the basement for the rest of the night, where he found me in the morning.
My father's response to his broken deal was "People have sex. Get over it." (Fun fact: this is my therapist's response as well.)
He shattered my trust. His then-girlfriend, now-wife--insofar as I'm concerned, she had equal part, though perhaps that's just my prudery at thinking people who have sex loudly in close quarters are incredibly rude.
They do not, probably cannot, understand that in its own way this felt like yet another violation. My brain now does not trust either of them. I heard him having sex with her, heard him having sex with my mother, and the sounds my mother made--
Circuitous, broken illogic, but my body has decided they aren't safe. After ten years I still feel this way and that's part of why I will not go to visit them.
Of course they won't understand this, so I won't bother trying to tell them. I thought I wanted to, once, but is it worth it? Probably not.
But I digress.
I tried to tell people--teachers, school counselors--about the things my mother did, and no one believed me. To this day, even as I tell my story or when I am triggered or whatever else the case may be, the feeling of dissociation is synonymous with "You're lying. You're not telling the truth. No one will believe you. It isn't true. Stop lying."
And so it goes. My mother and great-uncle have stolen sex from me--anything and everything. Being kissed. Being touched. Making love. Being given compliments--being told I'm beautiful--being told I'm sexy. These words disgust me, and the actions--as they should be? I do not know what these things are. I do not know their joy, and have never met a man who understands. Does such even exist? I'm 30 and a virgin and it's not that I mind so much as the fear that I will never meet a man who knows what it is to be patient and gentle and that everything from the unexpected kiss to all a manner of sexual acts are scary, scary things, even though I know that they don't have to be.
But again, I digress.
And so it goes and my mother wanted me to be the perfect feminist. I won't deign to make a judgement on all of feminism, or all feminists, but all that I've seen of the modern kind (from my mother to her friends to the feminist authors I was forced to read in school to the rampant misandry on the internet and its acceptance into classrooms as a matter of fact to #MeToo to the continual silencing of male survivors to the blatant misandry that's becoming so socially-acceptable) . . . all of it is so, so terrible, so backwards, so hurtful and hateful and the hate is accepted and perpetuated and I fear it will never end.
So women scare me. Angry women especially.
But also women.
Before I lost my job due to COVID, I was doing research for my employer and happened to read many higher-education institutions' policies about sexual harassment. I was astounded to read that the vast majority of policies called for action against the accused, whether the harassment was "real or perceived". I couldn't help but think that this was solely about females reporting males, and that any man so-accused would likely lose his job and have his entire life destroyed. What recourse would be taken against a woman, if a man reported her? Who believes a man if he is raped or domestically abused by a woman?
Insofar as I recall, men's reports of being raped by women aren't even classified as rape, which skews the statistics for any who might be looking for incidents of female-on-male sexual assault. I believe if we "adjust" for this gross misunderstanding, rates of female-on-male sexual violence are equal to those of male-on-female--if not more. I could be wrong; don't quote me. But I read it somewhere, and it stuck.
I wonder, too, how many female victims of female-perpetrated abuse are also silent. The statistics on domestic violence in lesbian relationships, for example, were terrible, the last I saw. What answer does feminism have for that, except to blame everything on the all-pervasive "patriarchy"?
Women, after all, can only be raped and abused. They cannot be rapists, cannot be abusers, cannot be terrible, terrible monsters. No, no: only men. And women, of course, who can lie and manipulate, are to be believed all in their accusations, whether founded or not. "Innocent until proven guilty" means naught.
And I fear for myself--my own safety, I suppose. I am legally blind and fear constantly that a woman may misconstrue how I'm "looking" at her (when I'm not even looking at her at all, but so goes the perception). I am also gay, of course, but I don't believe I'm often "read" as such (hooray for stereotypes!), so I don't know that I even have that "obvious" "protection".
And so what could I possibly say that would be taken seriously, if a woman in the workplace (or anywhere) were to accuse me of some imagined misconduct? "I'm blind. I'm gay." Surely I would start to cry, or dissociate to the point of being able to say very little in my defense. Would that even matter--a grown man reduced to the child who was raped and beaten for ten years, terrified, unheard, crying and daring say nothing because he knows he that his innocence won't be believed--just as his cries for help weren't believed, all those years ago?
Or does the word of women trump all?
I find myself withdrawing more and more: I am a good man. I know this. I am gentle and kind and would never say or do anything undue to anyone. But I find myself terrified, dissociating, isolating, for the fear of the hammer that will inevitably drop (or so it feels)--and so it was, when I was young. I thought after each incident of rape that it would end. It never did.
I cannot read or hear angry words written or spoken by women without being triggered. Of course the feminist response to this is "Does an angry woman, a woman in power, scare you? Good!" or "You must be a misogynist, with your frail little 'masculine' ego!" or any number of other things that send me reeling, things that my mother said and more.
My mother is everywhere, even though she's been dead for ten years.
"Good" feminists are out there, of course--by which I mean good women, and maybe there is good feminism that doesn't subscribe to the mainstream current version. I don't know.
Though I will say that I had a lightbulb moment the other day, in realizing that feminism is just an ideology, and at this point and time, it's being given unholy power and becoming something unquestionable, which makes it all the more dangerous. It's entirely possible to be a perfectly good human being without being a feminist--and not, in fact, automatically a misogynist by default for not accepting feminist ideology.
I'm tired of being frightened and cowed and effectively abused by my mother after all these years by complete strangers who believe their abuse is righteousness. I'm tired of being silent, but I don't know how to speak. And who can I tell, who won't read something like this and immediately think "Oh, he's a misogynist, he hates women!" After all, are female survivors not allowed to hate men?
I do not hate women.
I am simply terrified of most of them, with two exceptions.
The face of my mother is everywhere.
I'm not sure exactly what to say here, or what hasn't been said by others, but it's something that I wanted to get off my chest. Serious Trigger Warning because I talk about what was done to me; I hadn't intended to say so much, but it's done now and I can't make it go away. I apologize in advance, as this is going to be a straight-from-the-heart ramble, though I will attempt to make it as cogent as possible.
Addendum: I feel obligated to state, for whatever reason, that this is a from-the-gut, stream-of-consciousness . . . thing . . . which does not necessarily reflect what I actually think or believe, not the least because I wasn't concerned at the time of writing with making sure that I was saying everything "correctly". I just needed to say it, however ugly it may seem, so I apologize in advance. Now then . . .
Women scare me. Not all women--but most.
My mother, who was a self-avowed feminist with a heaping side of misandry, was (how do I put this?) my "primary" abuser. My great-uncle was sexually abusive as well, but my mother was the person that I lived with, so in many ways what she did feels "worse", simply because I was subjected to it on a semi-regular basis (when my father was out of town for business) from the ages of 8 to 18. Her physical and verbal abuse--a result, I believe, of her alcoholism / the copious consumption of boxes of Franzia--began when I was 6.
(Meanwhile, my great-uncle put his tongue in my mouth when I was 5, forced me to sit on his lap when he had an erection--in full view of the family--when I was 8--and during the same visit kissed me again and forced me to give him oral sex--and to swallow. I was 14 when again he forced me to give him oral sex, to kiss him, and then he raped me.)
But I digress.
My mother was always sexually inappropriate, for as long as I can remember. Everything from calling me into the bathroom to watch her towel off, making a show of her breasts and private parts, to parading around the house naked (and encouraging me to do the same, when I was 8 and too young to understand) . . . To asking me to undress for her . . . To graphically detailing her sexual exploits, forcing me to watch pornography . . . Luring me to bed in covert ways, even when my father was home (i.e. on a Saturday morning, "Come here, Dyl; let's cuddle and sleep in!", just press her body against mine under the covers) . . . things that my dad, bless him, could never have assumed meant anything wrong . . . And then she began to touch me, to force me to touch her private parts and kiss her, to press the weight of her body down on top of me. I hated it. I shrank so far into my body that I may as well have not existed. Perhaps I didn't. No--I didn't.
But my body did.
I'm gay. I have no attraction to women, but she touched me and rubbed her body against mine and forced me into . . . places. And I was young, and friction is a stimulus.
I'm so ashamed of my body, even now. On bad days I hate that I feel sexual arousal at all, that it's a terribly dirty thing, that there's a black hole consuming that part of my body.
I heard her and my father having sex often. She made the same sounds with me. I can feel her body as she
Now I cannot hear my neighbors without being triggered. Sometimes I hear a woman and hate the autonomic arousal. I am not attracted to woman; I tell myself it's an ingrained response to trauma, much as rape survivors sometimes experience arousal via stories of rape. But I feel dirty and disgusting and as if I betray myself.
Indeed, this has caused a massive rift in my relationship with my father as well. He was head-over-heels in love with the woman who would become his second wife, after he divorced my mother. I didn't know her, as their courtship occurred when I was away at college. I came upon them making out in the kitchen, and asked my father if they could please try to keep it down around me. He promised; he said we had a deal.
Not so.
And so a few nights later I heard them having sex, loudly, and I left him a note on the counter: "We had a deal!" before creeping to hide in a corner of the basement for the rest of the night, where he found me in the morning.
My father's response to his broken deal was "People have sex. Get over it." (Fun fact: this is my therapist's response as well.)
He shattered my trust. His then-girlfriend, now-wife--insofar as I'm concerned, she had equal part, though perhaps that's just my prudery at thinking people who have sex loudly in close quarters are incredibly rude.
They do not, probably cannot, understand that in its own way this felt like yet another violation. My brain now does not trust either of them. I heard him having sex with her, heard him having sex with my mother, and the sounds my mother made--
Circuitous, broken illogic, but my body has decided they aren't safe. After ten years I still feel this way and that's part of why I will not go to visit them.
Of course they won't understand this, so I won't bother trying to tell them. I thought I wanted to, once, but is it worth it? Probably not.
But I digress.
I tried to tell people--teachers, school counselors--about the things my mother did, and no one believed me. To this day, even as I tell my story or when I am triggered or whatever else the case may be, the feeling of dissociation is synonymous with "You're lying. You're not telling the truth. No one will believe you. It isn't true. Stop lying."
And so it goes. My mother and great-uncle have stolen sex from me--anything and everything. Being kissed. Being touched. Making love. Being given compliments--being told I'm beautiful--being told I'm sexy. These words disgust me, and the actions--as they should be? I do not know what these things are. I do not know their joy, and have never met a man who understands. Does such even exist? I'm 30 and a virgin and it's not that I mind so much as the fear that I will never meet a man who knows what it is to be patient and gentle and that everything from the unexpected kiss to all a manner of sexual acts are scary, scary things, even though I know that they don't have to be.
But again, I digress.
And so it goes and my mother wanted me to be the perfect feminist. I won't deign to make a judgement on all of feminism, or all feminists, but all that I've seen of the modern kind (from my mother to her friends to the feminist authors I was forced to read in school to the rampant misandry on the internet and its acceptance into classrooms as a matter of fact to #MeToo to the continual silencing of male survivors to the blatant misandry that's becoming so socially-acceptable) . . . all of it is so, so terrible, so backwards, so hurtful and hateful and the hate is accepted and perpetuated and I fear it will never end.
So women scare me. Angry women especially.
But also women.
Before I lost my job due to COVID, I was doing research for my employer and happened to read many higher-education institutions' policies about sexual harassment. I was astounded to read that the vast majority of policies called for action against the accused, whether the harassment was "real or perceived". I couldn't help but think that this was solely about females reporting males, and that any man so-accused would likely lose his job and have his entire life destroyed. What recourse would be taken against a woman, if a man reported her? Who believes a man if he is raped or domestically abused by a woman?
Insofar as I recall, men's reports of being raped by women aren't even classified as rape, which skews the statistics for any who might be looking for incidents of female-on-male sexual assault. I believe if we "adjust" for this gross misunderstanding, rates of female-on-male sexual violence are equal to those of male-on-female--if not more. I could be wrong; don't quote me. But I read it somewhere, and it stuck.
I wonder, too, how many female victims of female-perpetrated abuse are also silent. The statistics on domestic violence in lesbian relationships, for example, were terrible, the last I saw. What answer does feminism have for that, except to blame everything on the all-pervasive "patriarchy"?
Women, after all, can only be raped and abused. They cannot be rapists, cannot be abusers, cannot be terrible, terrible monsters. No, no: only men. And women, of course, who can lie and manipulate, are to be believed all in their accusations, whether founded or not. "Innocent until proven guilty" means naught.
And I fear for myself--my own safety, I suppose. I am legally blind and fear constantly that a woman may misconstrue how I'm "looking" at her (when I'm not even looking at her at all, but so goes the perception). I am also gay, of course, but I don't believe I'm often "read" as such (hooray for stereotypes!), so I don't know that I even have that "obvious" "protection".
And so what could I possibly say that would be taken seriously, if a woman in the workplace (or anywhere) were to accuse me of some imagined misconduct? "I'm blind. I'm gay." Surely I would start to cry, or dissociate to the point of being able to say very little in my defense. Would that even matter--a grown man reduced to the child who was raped and beaten for ten years, terrified, unheard, crying and daring say nothing because he knows he that his innocence won't be believed--just as his cries for help weren't believed, all those years ago?
Or does the word of women trump all?
I find myself withdrawing more and more: I am a good man. I know this. I am gentle and kind and would never say or do anything undue to anyone. But I find myself terrified, dissociating, isolating, for the fear of the hammer that will inevitably drop (or so it feels)--and so it was, when I was young. I thought after each incident of rape that it would end. It never did.
I cannot read or hear angry words written or spoken by women without being triggered. Of course the feminist response to this is "Does an angry woman, a woman in power, scare you? Good!" or "You must be a misogynist, with your frail little 'masculine' ego!" or any number of other things that send me reeling, things that my mother said and more.
My mother is everywhere, even though she's been dead for ten years.
"Good" feminists are out there, of course--by which I mean good women, and maybe there is good feminism that doesn't subscribe to the mainstream current version. I don't know.
Though I will say that I had a lightbulb moment the other day, in realizing that feminism is just an ideology, and at this point and time, it's being given unholy power and becoming something unquestionable, which makes it all the more dangerous. It's entirely possible to be a perfectly good human being without being a feminist--and not, in fact, automatically a misogynist by default for not accepting feminist ideology.
I'm tired of being frightened and cowed and effectively abused by my mother after all these years by complete strangers who believe their abuse is righteousness. I'm tired of being silent, but I don't know how to speak. And who can I tell, who won't read something like this and immediately think "Oh, he's a misogynist, he hates women!" After all, are female survivors not allowed to hate men?
I do not hate women.
I am simply terrified of most of them, with two exceptions.
The face of my mother is everywhere.
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