Morituri,
Yes. I know. I spend a lot more time in the Discuss board than I do in this one. I don't post nearly as much as I lurk, but that's mostly because I find the people who do post there to be thoughtful and well informed (including and even particularly Case) and I don't often feel I can add much more than they already have. I am not giving up on the board or the forum. I was feeling very ill at ease and was in no place emotionally to continue in the conversation in that state. When I am upset, I make mistakes. Occasionally vulgar ones that I cannot unmake. I do not want to do that here. So I stepped away.
Case,
I know very well that you did not intend to be hurtful and that any insult I may have felt was at least as much my own biases filtering your words as it was anything you posted. Intimate partner violence against men is a difficult subject for me (and I swear is not the topic I meant to bring up when I initially addressed Chris. I was looking for a discussion about how we as an audience react to realistic violence in a cartoon setting where other acts of violence are framed as normal. I should have done more to clarify that). Once that nerve was struck, I was not in a place to handle further conversation. I feel that now I am. But I feel that
why I reacted the way I did warrants explanation and is possibly relevant to the discussion at large, so please bear with me while I expose some scar tissue.
And even thought it's already in the thread title,
Content Warning for domestic violenceI was assigned male at birth. I still present male in public places because it's safer and my secondary sexual characteristics are very prominent. Presenting female actually increases feelings of dysphoria for me because it highlights the parts of my body that are not feminine. In spaces like this where my body doesn't matter, I much prefer presenting as female and using she/her pronouns. Because my dysphoria is highly dependent on my situation, I generally describe myself as non-binary. I am also demisexual and bi. Thirteen years ago, I had no idea that those were things that someone could be. Mostly because of my "conservative" religious upbringing, I thought trans people were just homosexuals with a weird sex thing and that being gay or bi was something other people were, but definitely not
me. As far as anyone knew, including myself, I was just a chronically depressed cis het man. Thirteen years ago, I also got married.
It was fine at first. I was happy. But she had a habit of kicking over sand castles just because you were proud of them and she thought you shouldn't be. "It was a joke. Lighten up. It's only a sand castle." This should have been a red flag, but I didn't see it. Slowly, emotional abuse escalated. When we fought, if I got too angry, I was a bully. If I didn't get angry enough, I was emotionally distant and I didn't care. There was never a right amount of angry to be. If I got upset about something she did, she would soon enough launch into a crying fit about how I thought she was a terrible wife and I must hate her and refused to speak to me until I apologized and reassured her that she was a wonderful wife and I was wrong to have brought it up. We never did talk about my damned sand castle. I became more and more unhappy. When I once suggested separating for a while to cool our heads and to get into therapy once we were in an emotional state to do so, she threatened suicide if I left. So I stayed. One night, the fighting became too much and I said I was going to go stay with a friend until we calmed down. She began screaming. She started hitting me; throwing punches. Her shouting wasn't even coherent at that point. I tried to get away, but she planted herself in front of the door and wouldn't let me pass. I didn't want to take a chance with the back door, because that way led through the kitchen where the knives were. Eventually I was able to force my way past the door and out for the night.
The next day I had a fat lip and a black eye. She had a few bruises on her right arm where I had tried to push her arm away to get away. To get her to stop hitting me. Mutual friends who I thought knew me and trusted me were
sure I was lying, that I must have instigated the violence because she had a bruise. Other friends laughed and mocked me because my wife gave me a shiner. Others insisted that I should have been the "bigger person" and not defended myself because I was larger and therefore more of a threat to her than she was to me. Others thought it was no big deal because she didn't do any "real damage". Exactly one person was supportive of me. Out of all our friends and family, only one of them saw me as the wounded party.
The next day she checked her self in for a suicide watch at our local psychiatric hospital. She made sure I knew through mutual friends. Three days later when she was out, I was back at home with her because "I couldn't do that to her". I went right back to the emotional abuse and manipulation because I was afraid she might actually hurt herself. I went through three more years of that before
she left
me for being queer.
So believe me, I know how real domestic violence against men is. I know how hard it is to get help. I know how deep those wounds are and how deep that poison runs. I get it 100%. And to me, the feminists whose work I read and the feminists I associate with, the toxic attitudes about manhood and toughness that make it so hard to get help are a very important part of the overall target of feminism.
Your post
felt very personally accusatory. It
felt like you were saying "How can you not see how hurtful and toxic these comments are to men who have actually suffered DV? How can you not see how insensitive you're being?" Your strike-throughs and footnotes seemed snide at best and sardonic at worst, as if suggesting that I can't see the difference between men with legitimate social grievances (and there are some real doozies!) and the bog standard, trilby-wearing MGTOW. Now, I don't know you super well, but I know you well enough to know that it wasn't your intention to make me feel that way. But once I
was feeling that way, I couldn't articulate a response and I didn't want to lash out. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to return to the discussion in a rational way, so I bowed out in as short a way as I could to avoid saying something I did not mean. I'm sorry if my abruptness caused concern or offense.
Honestly? No. I never saw the #whataboutzemenz meme or the bathing in men's tears meme. I have never read Jezebel. I don't know who Lindy West is. Maybe I
have been living under a rock for the last four years. Maybe that's a giant blind spot for me. In fact, it absolutely is. I have the luxury of not associating with the more toxic aspects of feminism or the social justice movement. I know that they exists, certainly. I've been called a brown shirt and told that I am exactly what's wrong with this country for refusing to call everyone right of Bernie Sanders a Nazi or suggesting Feminism would benefit from more robust internal criticism. But not nearly as often as I've been ridiculed because I
did call the people waving black suns and odal runes Nazis. But I'm not often the target of the hate speech from the far left, so I don't see it if I don't go looking for it. The hate speech from the far right comes straight to my door every day. So if you've got good suggestions as to where I need to be looking (I do appreciate the suggestion of Ally Fogg, by the way), I'm very open to that.
My comment about feminism being concerned about male DV victims was a response to Jack Frost. I should ahve quoted them. I will do so now.
3) It's not perceived to be as threatening, because it's done by a woman, and therefore, according to the SJW enforced gender constructs, can't be threatening. Something is only seen as bad or socially unacceptable when society tells you it's bad or socially unacceptable. In other words, that idea that women can't be abusive or threatening is a social construct.
Woman hits man: Oh he must have done something to deserve it.
Man hits woman: How dare you ask if she did anything to deserve it, that's victim-blaming!
That comment looks a lot like blaming social justice advocates for the current state of abuse against men; using SJW in a way as it is often intended as derogatory, insisting that the relevant social constructs are enforced by social justice advocacy rather than having existed long before the modern social justice movement and the straw argument at the end. Jack Frost was arguing against a point that, as far as I can see, nobody in this thread was making; that violence is OK if a woman is doing it. If I just missed that comment, I will gladly be corrected. Seeing that argument was deeply frustrating. I'm sure that just about everyone who has seriously discussed and social issue from any position has dealt with being argued
past. You can feel like you have to mow a field of strawmen before the discussion can move on. It's a common obfuscation tactic.
I'm sure other people have made that argument in other places, but they aren't talking to them. They are talking to us. And nobody here is making that argument. I suspect that is because we all know it's a bad argument.
Now, Having said all of that, Case, I don't think you're wrong. At all. Not even a little. "Are we doing a good job right now?" No. Not only no, but hell no. As I said, arguing past someone is a popular and effective obfuscation technique. It is not at all uncommon to enter an argument and demand that others answer for the worst arguments of those perceived to be on "their side". "This other blogger said the bad thing therefore your entire position is characterized by the bad thing" is an easy way to get your opposition to talk about what you want them to talk about rather than the issue at hand. Being toxic is a good way to get your ideological opposition to talk about the toxicity of "your side" and make more moderate voices feel slighted and, subsequently, sympathize with their more toxic "allies".
The "Kekistan" flag is nothing but a recolor of a Nazi war flag. But when not-at-all fascist or racist conservatives feel like they are getting lumped in with the actual-very-real Nazis, those Nazis pat them on the back and reassure them that the left just like calling people Nazis and they're clearly irrational and they don't have to engage with them. Then the not-at-all fascist or racist conservatives adopt the Kekistan flag now thoroughly convinced that it isn't a Nazi flag and wear being called a Nazi as a badge of pride. Before you know it, you can no longer tell who the real Nazis are in the crowd, and that is exactly how they want it.
I don't believe that's what Jack Frost was doing, but the effect of my response is not entirely different. By stopping to effectively preach to them to "EXPLAIN! FEMINISM!", I was not helping. If I mean to engage publicly in this discussion (the broader discussion of social values, not this specific discussion), I need to do better. I think You were right to call attention to it.