I've been writing online about my journey through life for 15 years now. Some of you have been been around for that long, keeping up with my journey, which is awesome. However, it's only recently that I've started writing about the problems I'm seeing with feminism in the world around me, and today I thought I'd write about WHY I've started writing about this.
I grew up as an abused child. My mum got pregnant after having a one night stand with my dad, so he did what he thought was 'the right thing' and they got married. I grew up with a mother who was angry about her life. She was in love with another man, but her pregnancy and marriage to my dad tore her away from the life that she had hoped for, and that left her a bitter, angry woman. She would take out her anger on me, and then on her other children (my two younger brothers) once they came along.
We were punished by her all the time, for almost everything that we did. Anything that irritated her (and you know how irritating children can be) was cause for her to start swinging with her favourite instrument of punishment, a horse strap; and if she was really angry, it didn't matter to her which end she swung. All you could do was retreat into a corner, pull yourself into a ball as best you can, and cover your head to protect it from being hit by the buckle as she started swinging.
Because I was her first child, I was the brunt of her anger. She directly blamed me for her miserable life, because if I wasn't born then her life would be much better than what it was, and she'd be much happier. She would often complain that she wished she killed us kids when we were born, then her life would be better. Even today, she wishes the same thing.
As an adult, I came to understand that she was mentally unbalanced with significant issues, but as a child, this didn't matter. As a child, I was made responsible for everything in her life that she was unhappy with, and she was quick to take her anger out on me for it.
And then there was how she treated her husband, my father.
She never assaulted him like she did her children, but her emotional abuse was a tirade that never stopped. He was the one whose fault it was that she got pregnant and took her away from the life she was hoping for, and instead giving her a life she was miserable with. We got the occasional physical abuse, but he got the constant emotional abuse.
He never once hit her, or even raised his voice to her. He never once had a screaming match with her. He tried to bury himself in his work, and then hobbies once he retired, and just nodded and smiled when she went on with her tirades. He did this for years, until he died in his sleep aged 81.
All through those years as a father and a husband, he tried to do the right thing. It left him miserable. There was a time when I was about 20, when he was sitting with me as I waited for a bus that would take me 4 hours away to my distant home at the time, that he confided in me that as soon as my younger brothers left home he would be leaving as well. He was tired of it all, and he needed to get away from the woman that was his wife, who hadn't been able to resolve her anger. It was the first and only time in my life that he spoke to me as one adult talking to another adult.
But he never did leave.
He was in his 60's when he confided in me he'd be leaving... I can only imagine that it's easier to stay in a situation of unhappiness, at least with the devil you know, than to leave, alone, in a world that's unfamiliar. At least there was familiarity at home, with the angry woman. It was easier than leaving her.
During all those years growing up, I never once saw them kiss. I never saw them hold hands. I never saw them happy to have each other. I never knew what love was, because I never saw it and never felt it.
And so we get to today, when I see feminists and their sympathisers talk about how only women are victims, and only men are abusers. And I see official support services for female victims of domestic abuse, but rarely do I see official support services for male victims of domestic abuse.
In this world, male victims of domestic abuse are treated as if they deserved it - they must have abused their partner first for her to react the way they did. And so even victims who are male are treated as abusers, and the support they need is lacking.
And when I hear these feminist claims that only men are abusers, I feel anger so deep that it's difficult for me to talk about it, to express it, to even acknowledge it. Feminism makes me angry because it it supports my mother and blames my father, and in doing so, it supports her abuse of me, my brothers and my father, because it says only women are victims and only men are abusers.
And that's why I'm against feminism.
I can feel the anger inside of me right now, as I'm writing this - blood pumping faster through my veins as I write, as I feel the years of pain still inside of me.
When people have asked me why I'm so angry, I've tried to intellectualise it, because the anger feels indescribable. I've been afraid to talk about it, to let the lid off the pressure cooker, in fear of what I might say, or even what I might do. I've not even known what to say, or how to say it, because I haven't wanted to express all those years of pent-up anger. (I feel like saying I feel rage, because it feels so strong, and it burns so strongly inside of me. But rage is violent, uncontrollable anger. I can control it, so it can't be rage. Right?)
As the years have gone by, I've seen men around me ask permission from their wives or girlfriends to do what they want to do in their lives. I've seen that feminism's influence on our society has disempowered men so that they're afraid to upset women for fear of the consequences, and I see it getting worse as laws and society itself changes and criminalises men for even just upsetting women.
With feminists influencing society to believe that all women are victims and all men are abusers, I can see that the end result is going to be catastrophic. But also, when I see women try to tell the world that this is a good thing, all I see is women like my mum who want immunity to abuse men and boys while telling those same men and boys that it's all their fault they're being abused.
Feminism says that it exists to bring about equality, and that may have been true in the beginning, but equality can not come from promoting only women as victims and only men as abusers.
Evidence shows that feminism is actually about promoting and engaging in the abuse of men and boys, and it has to stop. It has to. Because it supports women like my mum, and that's something I can never accept as reasonable.
That's why I'm against feminism.
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