On Feminism, dating, and raising our daughters
"I am not a victim. I tell you this because my story has value. I tell you this cause I want you to know, what I know. To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength. You destroy the woman, you destroy the past she represents. I will not allow my story to be destroyed. What I would have done to have heard a story like mine. Not for blame. Not for reputation, not for money, not for power. But to feel less alone. To feel connected. I want my story..heard."
PROLOGUE
I've edited and rewritten this a million times in what feels like mere seconds. I deleted this originally. I then tried to edit this into a more appropriate post that didn't need to call out anyone by name but still find a way to take back some power and hold people accountable for their actions. I did this while soaking in cheerio milk and flailing around with my daughter, typing letters and words whenever I had a free hand or second. Of course that edit was deleted while I tried to navigate watching a toddler alone all morning. I was going to give up on this but two things happened to force me to keep this up and say what I need to say:
1) My friend Matt Jones passed away a few days ago after a long battle with cancer. Yesterday would have been his 26th birthday. He fought tirelessly to speak up for the marginalized and I want to honor him in the only way I know how- speaking up for myself. He was stronger than anyone I've ever met. If I had one ounce of his strength I wouldn't even need to write this. I wouldn't be crying everyday as soon as I wake up, screaming and curled into a ball because my lack of self-worth leads me to horrible situations and allows me to ignore red flags for the sake of potentially being loved.
This is for you Matt. We'll see you again one day.
2) I watched Hannah Gadsby's Nanette on Netflix. Please please watch this if you want to have an understanding on how women's stories are rewritten, exploited, and erased and the most powerful tool we have is to talk back to the misogyny we experience acutely and over a life time.
I will not let anyone tell me to diminish, edit, or delete my story and marginalize me because my narrative does not reflect what they want it to say. I have been harassed, bullied, and threatened over some of this content, to the point where I actually feel like I did when I was a little girl, bullied for being overweight, cast aside like a pariah because I didn't fit traditional feminine ideals. My voice was taken then, but it will not be taken now.
"I am not a victim. I tell you this because my story has value. I tell you this cause I want you to know, what I know. To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength. You destroy the woman, you destroy the past she represents. I will not allow my story to be destroyed. What I would have done to have heard a story like mine. Not for blame. Not for reputation, not for money, not for power. But to feel less alone. To feel connected. I want my story..heard."
PROLOGUE
I've edited and rewritten this a million times in what feels like mere seconds. I deleted this originally. I then tried to edit this into a more appropriate post that didn't need to call out anyone by name but still find a way to take back some power and hold people accountable for their actions. I did this while soaking in cheerio milk and flailing around with my daughter, typing letters and words whenever I had a free hand or second. Of course that edit was deleted while I tried to navigate watching a toddler alone all morning. I was going to give up on this but two things happened to force me to keep this up and say what I need to say:
1) My friend Matt Jones passed away a few days ago after a long battle with cancer. Yesterday would have been his 26th birthday. He fought tirelessly to speak up for the marginalized and I want to honor him in the only way I know how- speaking up for myself. He was stronger than anyone I've ever met. If I had one ounce of his strength I wouldn't even need to write this. I wouldn't be crying everyday as soon as I wake up, screaming and curled into a ball because my lack of self-worth leads me to horrible situations and allows me to ignore red flags for the sake of potentially being loved.
This is for you Matt. We'll see you again one day.
2) I watched Hannah Gadsby's Nanette on Netflix. Please please watch this if you want to have an understanding on how women's stories are rewritten, exploited, and erased and the most powerful tool we have is to talk back to the misogyny we experience acutely and over a life time.
I will not let anyone tell me to diminish, edit, or delete my story and marginalize me because my narrative does not reflect what they want it to say. I have been harassed, bullied, and threatened over some of this content, to the point where I actually feel like I did when I was a little girl, bullied for being overweight, cast aside like a pariah because I didn't fit traditional feminine ideals. My voice was taken then, but it will not be taken now.
If any of the following sounds like you, I ask you to choose to reflect on how your actions affect other people and how your own self-hate is not an excuse to perpetuate emotional abuse against women.
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Important Terms
I’ve dated three guys since my big break-up in February, in which my BABY DADDY (reclaimin it bitches) and I ended things. I’ve been single momin' it all day every day since then; aka hiding in my parent's basement being pretty depressed.
Yeah, I’ll be honest- it’s really lonely. Of course I want to date! Unfortunately it's gotten....really weird out here.
First, there was Joe the mechanic. I’m not joking; his name was Joe and he was a mechanic. A divorced single dad who would “never trust anyone again,” this really just fizzled out after a whirlwind few dates.
Next was Spencer, the 27-year-old single father who had been married (and divorced) three times. I found out the first time I met his daughter she thought he and his ex-wife were still married and she was coming home soon. So that was awkward. Especially when she kept trying to show me pictures of his ex-wives...also, he told me he was in "business management" which I found out is actually just code for working at a sex shop/ gas station these days.
Then there was Lord Voldemort, who most of this is about. LV and his cronies completely humiliated me in a way I had no idea was even possible. It was a whirlwind month and a half in which he held love over me, dangling it like string above a cat's head, always jerking it away whenever I got too close; because ultimately the love was an illusion and I just couldn't see it. I didn't want to see it. He invited the women in his life into our relationship; they began to collect data on me, like scientists performing shock experiments on lab rats just to see their reaction. They called me a cunt and a bitch while never meeting me. Glass was shattered by fists. But this was buttressed by his promises of love and marriage and new beginnings and tattoos for my daughter and I so I believed him. My vulnerability was attacked and I fell right into his bloody jaws, so he could chew me up and reduce me to the prison inside his belly, surrounded by my greatest fears. I sit here now, alone in my bell jar.
Common pattern alert: All three of these men were divorced at least once (two very recently) with at least one daughter. And-in their own special way- treated me like shit. In the most recent case, there was some major woman-on-woman crime.
I'll stop here to recognize that the issues I experience in my interpersonal relationships with men are not entirely because of sexism. I am not an easy person to be in any kind of relationship with; I bring baggage and I move too quickly and I desperately want to find someone to love because I want a real family. I don't feel bad for saying that or wanting that, and I shouldn't, but it causes me to allow men to treat me in ways that aren't acceptable, loving, or at times even humane. I see the red flags which will likely lead to my poor treatment but I press on; that is how I comply with my own oppression. I allow men to have control over me. I believe everything they say even when my experience tells me otherwise. I have to confront this about myself if I am going to call others out.
I'm a big believer that most of our social change starts on a really small scale- it's called a human revolution in Nichiren Buddhism- and it occurs inside the individual and within our interpersonal interactions. So when we talk about “smashing the patriarchy,” I’ve realized dating and romance are critical areas in which sexism and misogyny need to be examined.
We have to explore the consequences of how men treat the women they date and the way they raise their daughters; and, begrudgingly, we have to indite the ways in which women are complicit in their own oppression and perpetuate patriarchal values in romantic relationships, against themselves and other women. I believe these are all interrelated and we can understand these behaviors better when we contextualize them with one another.
It seems icky to me to talk about anyone as a parent; I usually don’t do it because I’m not an asshole, and my attitude is if your kid is safe, alive, and healthy, you’re doing a great job! But what happens when the men that have been raised inside a misogynistic system have children? What happens when they treat women poorly in their interpersonal relationships? What does that foster inside the psyche of a young woman creating her perception of the world around her and her fundamental sense of self?
The problem is, this kind of nuanced sexism is expressed subtly and silently; but it’s still a killer. Let me just say this right now: You can’t claim to be anti-sexist while simultaneously abusing and manipulating women. You just can’t do it! You can’t use women, lie to them, and exercise your power by exploiting their weaknesses to gain something from them, then discard their emotional carcasses while also raising women that will be instilled with a strong sense of confidence and worthiness. These are mutually exclusive.
Here's some more examples of how this works. Voldemort and friends-are you reading? Keep up, this is for you.
You can’t be pro-woman if:
1) You tell a woman you love them after a week, get a tattoo in her honor including a tribute to her daughter, make plans to move in together, eventually get married, and then when you suddenly break up because she "hurt your feelings," you dismiss her sadness by declaring something dumb and hyper-invalidating and manipulative like “it was only a three-week relationship.”
2) You say "I love you" to your girlfriend and then immediately drive to sleep with your ex where you two together then call said girlfriend to break up with her. Together.
3) You use your love as currency with women to find acute emotional healing from your own shit storm of pain and then abandon them.
4) You use your words to encourage a woman to attach herself to you, thereby becoming vulnerable, and then show disdain if they express more closeness to you.
5) You talk about potentially helping raise a single mother’s daughter on the third date and then say you feel too much pressure from the woman. (That one's for you too, Spence.)
6) You stalk, harass, and verbally abuse another woman for dating your ex-husband and participate in her humiliation.
7) You call every day incessantly, expecting a woman to devote all her free time to you even after she expresses the need for individual time, then make her seem like SHE is the unhealthy one for her feelings.
8) You project your past hurts from your relationships onto the woman you're currently dating.
9) You pathologically lie to women.
10) You intentionally involve an innocent young girl in your chaotic ping pong game of love.
11) You use gifts or finances frequently to gain a woman's trust and create intimacy, then indicate this is not the level of intimacy you are prepared to give.
12) You easily discard women like trash.
13) You constantly invalidate a woman's feelings or emotions.
14) You break up with a woman and then ask them to attend a formal ball with you two days later (That's you again, Spence 👋🏽 ).
15) You say horrible things about your ex and how she raises your daughters, but then get back together.
16) You threaten a woman by smashing your fist through a window.
17) You use your poor mental health to justify treating women poorly in relationships.
18) You break up with your girlfriend and then bring up her past abusive relationship to say that someone has treated her worse than you.
19) You exploit a woman's pain.
20) You don't take care of your daughters.
21) You support the men in your life abusing women, whether through active participation or standing idly by.
22) You create a false truth and use others as a source of strength to overpower a woman's story.
23) You lie for her love.
24) You inflict pain on a woman for something a man has done.
25) You lack basic humanity when navigating a conflict with another woman, taking cheap shots to find anyway to destroy her sense of self-worth.
26) You criticize a woman for a man's issues and admonish her for being involved with him.
27) You take away a woman's dignity to feel self-worth.
28) You lack remorse for your abuse, manipulation, and lies.
29) You revel in the pain you have caused a woman.
30) You co-opt another woman's story and then spread to others a new version that is so far removed from reality it can only be in order to mind fuck her into submissiveness.
31) You care more about being right than honor a woman's dignity and basic humanity.
32) You only address another woman's humanity when you feel you have gained power over them; an apology in this context is meaningless and selfish.
I hear these kinds of stories all the time. These men exploit emotionally vulnerable
women like an addict does the needle, and no one calls them out for it. Because we still are
unsure of how to navigate the discourse on sexism in interpersonal relationships. And
we continue to raise women that find esteem and even power/control through romantic
entanglements with men. Men are born with a privilege of feeling like (if they want) they
can treat women like inanimate dolls; tossing them aside when they get bored.This isn't bitterness. This is
me calling out the fact that misogyny is
rampant in romantic relationships and we need to discuss it. Guys, you need to call out
your friends that treat women like shit. Your friend's not just an asshole, he's a
sexist asshole. Violent abusive behavior starts somewhere and is rooted very deeply in
our interpersonal relationships. Men don't have to rape or sexually abuse and harass us
for there to be some serious psychological sexism happening that needs to be
addressed.
For the friend whose boyfriend ghosted her after 5 YEARS and two unused purchased plane tickets...
For the woman whose husband is cheating and an alcoholic, but she sticks around because she doesn’t feel like she can do better...
For all the women that got sucker punched by an emotional manipulator...
For the women that spent their money, worked their ass off, and depleted their resources while being gaslighted to believe you were the problem...
it's ok to talk back!!!!!
it's ok to talk back!!!!!
it's fake love, it's fake news. and I'm not here for it. and neither is Drake.
solidarity
EPILOGUE
I did get some redemption from this experience. When people deny your truth for so long you begin to doubt and question it yourself. I am a single mom and I raise my daughter alone. The people around me see how much pain I am in, how stressed out I am, but often do little other than agree "it's hard." I feel alone because no one can understand, so I called her father after this recent trauma. He has failed in the past to acknowledge it was mostly his failings for the separation of our family, and that I have sacrificed my entire life, mental health, and ability to find love because he couldn't learn how to grow up and raise his daughter. He finally admitted this to me and gave me a sense of validation. Fatherhood is a privilege not a right homies.
For like, $17.99
What is rejection? What is a self-fulfilled current of rejection? What is the word for this?
Why is it bad to love
Like when I run and look up against the rare bright blue skies
In motion,
The sparkling landscape both lifts me up
And lowers the clouds
“That’s it,” I think.
If only I could always feel
Like this
How I feel
When I look at the clouds
Rejection does not exist here
But my idle threats will burn into you
“I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand”
When I sent you my favorite Hot Snakes song and you didn’t like it
When you said we’d have to work on the “hip hop” thing
When you talked about "hypocritical feminism"
I’ve been deceived over and over by Aria
They keep coming for me
Over, and over
I would like to be removed from this narrative, T. Hughes.
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Enjoy the tat and the lies it represents