I have always lived under patriarchy and misogyny, and the impacts of this are why I arrived at social justice work a few years later.
Now, as a gender equality activist with a visible profile, the impacts are harder to deal with and overcome. They are why I found myself barefoot in my neighbour’s garden. Death threats, rape threats, stalking and harassment have deeply affected me. For a long time, I thought I was someone who could handle it. That I'd be able to compartmentalise in a way that trauma wouldn’t affect me.
My brain is essentially just a complex computer, and so it was delusional and maybe even arrogant of me to expect a consistent but undulating level of fear and trauma to have no effect – that would have made me the first. In the past six years, I’ve had four ongoing police cases, and my complex computer has taken a hit; processing consistent evidence that there are a number of men out there that hate me and who want to hurt me, whether that’s through an Instagram DM, a voice note screaming, or actions that are much more serious.
Through the most challenging moments of navigating this, my brain and body has become confused and done things I don’t understand; in the aftermath of a particularly traumatic event, my hands and arms would shake uncontrollably when I heard my partner come back from work, even though I knew it was him. My brain was so used to being in fight, flight, freeze or fawn that it and my body didn’t know I wasn’t in danger. Your body doing something you can control is scary, and the way my brain works since that trauma is different; I have PTSD and I have to work to train my brain like a dog each day.
It’s like living with a different brain, because before this everything was different. I didn’t have to try to be okay. This impact is real, but passive language was often used to describe what was being done to me: “weird DMs have been sent” was how the police officer described ongoing and targeted harassment – including death threats – from men I’ve never met. “People have too much time on their hands” is a comment I hear to describe men who stalk and harass me. And not only do these comments successfully minimise the seriousness of these actions, but I also think the same thing every time: This isn’t “people”. This is men.’
I know it reveals something deeper about our culture that the only time we automatically use gender neutral language is when describing a threat or issue that primarily comes from men, instead of when it’s actually appropriate. I know we don’t want to face the problem or say it out loud. But to name it is to state a fact: Men are terrorising women. And I am terrified by the men who hate and terrorise me.
All women have been on the receiving end of misogyny by men and, yet, all women have loved men
Another fact is that these men do not define my experience or perception of masculinity because I am simultaneously deeply cared for by men who love me. Both of these things are my reality – both are true. Not all women are targeted by incels or men who hate feminists like I am, but almost all women have had negative experiences with men. All women have been on the receiving end of misogyny by men and, yet, all women have loved men. We are navigating this strange duality together, just in different ways and on different levels.
I can see, with the clarity of retrospect, that I have carried this tension for more than a decade. Depending on the room I’m in, I have felt judged both in moments I have expressed my anger at men, as well as in moments that I have expressed my belief in them. So I picked a side. For so long, I thought this work required me to placate my frustrations and resentment of men in order for me to tap into my belief that they can grow and change, but what I didn’t realise was that pushing my anger or resentment down was pressurising it. It was going to come out at some point, and it did this year. The work I did in response was to allow myself to feel both, whenever I needed to, and often in tandem with each other. I balance this all the time.
I don’t just know that it’s okay to hate and love men. I feel it. I do it.
I hate how men have made me feel.
I love how men have made me feel.
I hate that we are organised around men.
I love the feeling of showing up for men I love.
I hate what men have built.
I love men who continue to uphold it.
I hate how much men gain from patriarchy.
I love men that disrupt patriarchy.
I love that I can support men in that goal.
I hate the expectation for me to teach them.
I love how safe I feel with the men I love.
I hate how unsafe men make me.
I love my job.
I hate that it’s a response to trauma and patriarchy.
I hate that most men do nothing to disrupt this.
I love men who do nothing to disrupt this.
I hate that this all affects me so much.
I love that I don’t numb these feelings.
As you can see I feel a lot, all the time, about exactly this tension. I am carrying the above list around with me every single day. Many of us are, but we’re either not aware or we’re ashamed of the duality. And I guess recognising the shame around this tension is key. That’s why I’m here writing this for you. But why I’m writing it for myself, too.
Before I was an activist, I was a woman working a job, in a regular office on a liveable wage. My parents raised me lovingly with strong values, but so had society and it was strict and repetitive; giving me magazines and commercials that showed me my appearance and the extent to which I met its choking euro-centric beauty standards was my value. It showed me movies and television shows that repeatedly demonstrated traditional, restrictive gender roles and they encouraged me to only see myself as three things: a mother, a wife or objectified, and often – very often – society told me that men were my protectors. In movies and TV they were framed as the only thing that kept women safe, that saved them. In books and in religious institutions, too. Conversely, it also showed me that men were my most common threat, too; I saw them prey on women all the time in TV and entertainment, but it was so normalised and twisted that most of the time coercion, assault, stalking and harassment were portrayed as adoration or a compliment.
I grew up around safe, loving men (save for one weird “uncle”), so I didn’t personally feel like men were a threat until I was a teenager and a sneering man in a diner near Disneyland, Florida stared at me and my body for ten minutes straight as I, a very young-looking thirteen-year-old, collected and ate my food. That was my earliest memory of feeling unsafe around a man. When I was four a man called me “sexy” but I had been too young to understand what it meant. I was followed home was I was sixteen. Then, I stopped believing in men who were employed to protect me, when a security guard of the bar I worked at lifted up my shirt and groped me when I was nineteen. I didn’t realise how common, and scary, it was to be pursued until a boy I had been kind to in school started stalking me and many other women when I was in my early twenties. I dealt with all these moments in relative silence, and never zoomed out to connect my own experience with the long-recorded history and data which shows what women deal with at the hands, and minds, of men. Until I became an activist and part of my job was connecting those dots.
Connecting the dots is something I am hoping this book will help you do; how often do you allow yourself to feel all the anger and all the love you hold for men? Do you feel like you are failing by recognising you hold resentments towards men? Do you feel bad for being frustrated at the way they show up in your life sometimes? Do you feel inclined to be understanding, caring and nurturing at all times? While it’s easier not to explore the tension of loving men and also feeling hatred in our darkest moments, I’d implore you to sit in the duality of this.
It’s often been said that men explode outwards and women implode; we are more likely to question ourselves deeply and analyse our thoughts, feelings and behaviours more often than men, who have been taught to blame things outside of themselves and not been given the tools to emotionally excavate. When it comes to our feelings about men – we have to remove shame and accept that it’s complicated. Maybe you can recognise that two, or more, things can be true at one time and to put a pin in “what it means about you” for now. Sometimes, It’s okay to just feel things. I hope you can recognise the tension you hold and allow it to exist, if only while you read these pages.
In an abstract way, rather than an interpersonal one, I believe we are in a toxic relationship with men en-masse. Though our personal relationships with them might differ in dynamic and healthiness, as a society we face a giant tension: the fact that men are a huge threat to our personal safety and the biggest barrier to our liberation sit side by side with the reality that we love them, believe in them, trust them and know they could change things. We are in communion with, and inextricably linked to our biggest challenge. So, take a deep breath and say it out loud with me:
When it comes to our feelings about men – we have to remove shame and accept that it’s complicated
I am navigating a society that tells me men are my protectors, whilst knowing the reality that they are my biggest threat.
I am navigating my feminism knowing men are a key to our liberation whilst constantly seeing evidence that they uphold patriarchy.
I believe men are our greatest threat and barrier and yet I love and believe in men.
I think about this daily. I struggle with it all the time. From fathers to sons and from brothers to friends and partners. We are in communion with men. Society organises us around them and so they make up such a significant part of our experience. There's beauty, frustration, pain, harm and love tied up in our story just existing alongside men. Between what they have been forced to be and what we need them to be is a gaping chasm. This patriarchal paradox is huge, and what does holding it every day do to us? Where are we meant to put it? And why the fuck aren’t we talking about it more?
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