Men who don't take your side 🚩🚩🚩

Honestly this is a huge issue for me, my dad always took the side of abusive men in my life. Basically hes an MRA too and once told me the world is matriarchal. Why, i asked? His boss was a woman. I used to lean on him a lot and try so hard to fit into what he would tell me as if everything was my fault and i could fix my relationship if i would just stop reacting emotionally to being treated badly, because "there's no such thing as abuse or being treated badly and nobody can hurt you if you dont let them and yes he loves you even though youre hurting he doesnt hurt you you hurt yourself " sigh

Yikes do we have the same dad? Mine once told me that cat-calling is women's fault and modest, nice women don't get cat-called. I told him that I've been cat-called before, does he think that its my fault? And he said, "I don't know what you were wearing or how you were acting." It honestly really hurts. I'm not saying that I necessarily want the gun-toting dad who won't let me date anyone or go anywhere either but having a somewhat protective dad would have been nice. Instead he just doesn't care. I came home and told my parents I had been sexually harassed by a male friend and my dad said this sounds like a conversation for your mom and left the room.

What is it about men’s perpetual uncontrolled need to play devil’s advocate in every scenario? Like do they think agreeing or empathizing is a weakness or something? Does it make them feel smart and powerful to always interject an opposing view? My dad is also like this (one of the many reasons I don’t let him be a part of my life) and he’d do it seemingly for the sake of doing it. Even at times where I know he’d actually agree or say something he’s said a million times- still would just take the other side. Infuriating.

See, my family is Christian Conservative but they’re not the worst? Like, the men are the first defense and if you say someone hurt you they’re gonna pull up and it’s not gonna end well for the accused. They stopped going to a specific church bc the pastor kept asking my cousin for a hug and it bothered my aunt and uncle. It was creepy. They removed themselves from the situation. I don’t understand MRAs and what kind of shabby, loser lives they live to not want to protect women from potential and real threats. All of my boyfriends have been protective, but not possessive and that’s the right kinda balance. Ready to knock a mofo out if he steps out of line, but also understanding that he doesn’t own you and you’re not an object. It’s a delicate balance, but an important one. Like, I had a group of men burst into my home (they ended up being paramedics called to the wrong house) while my then bf and I were snuggling in bed. We heard banging and he asked if I invited anyone over and I said no, then they opened the door and he quickly rolled out of bed, closed me in the room, and confronted the group of men. They left without a fuss and were directed to the right place, but it was a huge moment. He wasted like zero time assessing the potential threat and then springing into action to protect me. That’s a man and that’s the kinda man we all want in our lives. Or like when you’re wearing a skirt on the escalator and they stand behind you so no one can look up it. Or when they see a group of men are making you uncomfortable and so they stand between you and the men. Literally it’s so simple for good men to show you that they will protect you. Even just walking closer to the road is a good sign.

Not my dad but my mom. I was twelve but looked 9 or 10. I was returning home from doing an errand for my narcissistic mother and some dudes old enough to be my father said some nasty things to me. When I told my mother she said, "Well you must have done some to [provoke] them." That's when I knew that if anything happened to me, no matter what the circumstances, she'd blame me.

once a guy did something horrible to me and I said I was going to confront him about it and my brother got annoyed

Okay yes, vent incoming. Reading this there is a specific moment that kept coming back to me. So I played D&D with this new group, me being the only girl aside from the girlfriend of one of the players. We played at the girlfriend's place where they live together. She wanted to go to bed and had mentioned it a few times (we had been playing for 5-6 hrs at that point). When she said it again around 00:00 to him he reacted pissed at her, telling her to just wait and some other irritated/pissed stuff. It was so uncomfortable, the others also looked unconfortable. We were wrapping up a battle so we were almost done, but no one stood up for her. So at the end of the round I said hey guys, we've been playing for a long time and [girl] has already said multiple times that she wants to stop. Can we just listen to her? We ended up finishing the round a bit quicker (one player's character was at a life/death point so we didn't want that to wait for another 1-2 months). Anyhoo, this is already infuriating af. But the worst came later. I was messaging with one of the guys in the group that I'm close to and he asked what I thought of the game. I explained some things that bothered me, including this problematic behavior (the bf not respecting her needs and even lashing out at her). Guy friend said that he found it uncomfortable as well, and that he talked to our GM about it who knows the couple a lot better. Guess what this guy said. He said that this is normal when there's hangouts at their place because she usually wants to go to bed earlier than the rest. I was like.... Okay... Is that supposed to reassure me? The problematic behavior happens so often that it's normal? How tf would that be reassuring? When I said this he was like huh, yeah you're right, I didn't think about it like that. I have some hope for this guy friend's moral compass, I'm still cautious ofc just to clarify. But the fact that the GM was not sympathetic to the girlfriend's situation, or at least not enough to grow a spine and confront his friend about it, makes me sick honestly. I've already been fantasizing about the next time this happens and me saying something about it. I'll need to be careful about it though as I work with him unfortunately. Rant over <3 thanks for reading