I work in the domestic violence field and guys? Lads? Bros? I have seen some really awful women out there.
I have seen cases where women beat the hell out of their boyfriend or husband and then called the cops on him for finally responding physically to stop her.
I have seen cases of women sexually abusing their boyfriends or husbands and insisting that he must have wanted it because he’s a man and his body physically responded.
I have seen cases of financial abuse where women leveraged traditional gender roles of men as providers and then drained accounts and disappeared.
I have seen a ridiculous amount of stalking behavior from women, harassment, and/or tracking and monitoring their male partners’ or exes every move.
I have seen cases of women using children as pawns and/or making false allegations to child protection agencies.
I have seen cases of especially white women enacting horrific racial abuse on their black, native, or latino male partners.
I have seen cases of women who are caretakers for their disabled male partners using that caretaker role to control, manipulate, and abuse them.
I have seen cases of mental, physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse of mothers or other female caretakers to their sons/other boys under their guardianship or care.
I have seen cases of cis women outing stealth trans male partners to their communities, resulting in targeted transphobic violence from those communities and from the state.
I have seen cases of women intentionally getting their sober/recovered male partners back into drugs or alcohol as a way to control them and make them dependent on her again, and I’ve also seen cases of tiny! frail-seeming! women using drugs and then viciously physically attacking their much larger and theoretically stronger male partners or relatives to the point of putting them in the hospital.
I’ve seen cases of severe mental, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse of men by women go completely unaddressed for years because he wasn’t believed or it was downplayed to such an extreme that he didn’t seek help.
I’ve seen cases where women intentionally stopped taking birth control like they’d agreed upon as a couple in advance to force a permanent co-parenting relationship on their male partners.
And yeah! So many of these women showed up and tried to pretend that they were the real victim (against the great weight of the evidence) and/or that they were Strong Independent Girlbosses for doing this stuff.
This stuff happens to men, from women, all the time, and if it’s happened to you: 1) I’m sorry you had to go through that, and 2) the true promise of feminism is a world in which the victim’s gender does not determine whether or not they are believed or helped, and the abuser’s gender does not determine whether or not they are held accountable.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong and very possibly malicious.
So guys if you are going through any of this with your girlfriend, wife, or female relative, you don’t have to take it. You deserve help and love and compassion and safety. You deserve to heal. And you’re not alone.
