I dated a man who belittled me, threatened to hurt my family, stalked me, and made me cut all my friends out of my life. And people are pretty quick to agree that he was abusive. My brother dated a woman who made him quit his job because she didn’t want other girls looking at him, repeatedly locked him out of the house in freezing temperatures in the middle of the night to “teach him a lesson”, and refused to be seen with him in public if he wasn’t dressed to her standards. And almost no one calls her abusive. People have called her “crazy”, “high-maintenance” and “jealous”, but not abusive. And that’s not right.
In relationships, women and girls can get away with a lot when it comes to their male partners. When women are belittled and manipulated by their male partners, they often hear “leave him, he’s abusive, he’s no good”. When men are belittled and manipulated by their female partners, they hear “that’s just how women are!”, “uh-oh, someone’s in trouble!” or “you’ve got to keep your girl happy!”. We pretend that women are naturally jealous and toxic, and that men are supposed to quietly deal with being put down, spied on, or even hit without complaint. That’s bullshit, and no gender benefits from this nonsense. Women are capable of abuse. We aren’t innocent little kittens, who bite and claw because they don’t know any better and aren’t capable of causing real harm. It’s not cute when we mistreat our male partners. We are completely capable of doing real, lasting damage to a man’s mind, body and self-esteem. Women are capable of controlling their jealousy. I see a lot of pictures and quotes shared by my female friends, boasting about being crazy or proudly declaring that being jealous is a part of who they are. We shouldn’t feed ourselves this sexist garbage. Women are perfectly capable of respecting their male partners’ privacy and trusting them to interact with other women.
Women are capable of calling out other women. If you see your girlfriends humiliating their boyfriends or intentionally messing with their heads, put a stop to that shit. Call out abusive behaviour when you see it. Women often see exactly how their friends treat their partners, and this kind of nonsense makes all of us look bad. Fight domestic abuse in all its forms. Male survivors of female abuse often feel lost, weak, and ashamed of what they’ve been through - there are very few resources out there for them, and virtually no shelters or safe places for them to go. Their stories are not believed, or they are made to feel that the blame lies with them - as if this is happening because they are not manly enough, they are not tough enough, they are not strong enough. Enough is enough. Women can be abusers. Men can be abused. It’s time to believe them.
reminds me of that talk show clip where the guy was locked in his apartment three stories up by his girlfriend and had to jump out and hurt himself badly enough to need to go to the hospital, and the audience laughed while he was describing that and the host actually told them off and said if this was a woman describing the exact same scenario you would not be laughing.
everyone is capable of being abusive. No one should get a pass from being recognized as abusive just because of their gender.
