Am I turning into a misandrist?

[MyRareBear]

I'm straight. I've always been attracted to men. After a lot of back and forth, I even dated one (for a godawful amount of time, too, by the way). Except that relationship has completely screwed me over. It's been years and I haven't dated anyone else.

My understanding of consent is gone. I might even be asexual now. I swing between extremes of repulsion towards the male species versus an intense kind of hate towards them because I'm convinced I'll never get the love I wanted. Every women I know in a relationship is compromising. Every man to me has either assaulted a woman, has continued to associate with an assaulter or the secret third option, done something against women that people are not aware of yet. (Hell, have you ever opened a p"rn site and seen the kind of views the most degenerate videos get? And if poor middle school me can stumble across someone's r"pe fantasy, what's to say my future husband hasn't?)

Maybe, I do ever date a man again, and hell, I get married to one. How do I know he's not like my ex and won't change colours years down the line when I've let go of my job and am raising kids? Screw assault, what if he harms me? The stats speak volumes. What if I end up as a case on the paper, too?

Somewhere along the way, my fear of men combined with my desire for love has melded into this soup where I can barely talk to a man without being curt for no apparent reason. I feel intense dislike like "this is a male and this male has sexual desires and is hence, disgusting. There's something wrong with him, I just don't know it yet".

The idea of dying alone is simultaneously terrifyingly lonely and also a relief. Not to mention the repercussions of living with all this hate in me. I've already somehow begun to drift from my male friends. What do I do?
[And no, therapy isn't an option, thanks]

Branleuse

I agree.

Misandry is not the opposite side of the coin to misogyny.

I swing between extremes of repulsion towards the male species versus an intense kind of hate towards them because I'm convinced I'll never get the love I wanted.

So you're a female incel?

well I’m glad you’ve identified you need therapy, but given you won’t want to engage in solving this problem (which is your perception of the men, not the actual situation) then you have three, maybe four, options:

• become a closet hetero and an outward lesbian in a lesbian relationships
• stay single forever and live with the fear of dying alone
• try and find a man who respects you and women and start a relationship with him
• join a commune or a cult (but this probably won’t actually give you the love you want).

The choice is yours, but it’s one of those things.

try and find a man who respects you and women and start a relationship with him

I think your advice is generally good but this one is where the problem lies.

A lot of women think they have found one of these men and then find out he isn't.

Very few women choose a relationship with a man they believe doesnt respect them or women in general.

Unfortunately, a lot of women also look for signs of 'benevolent sexism' as a sign of respect but that tends to just be the socially acceptable face of it. And they discover too late that he isn't actually respectful at all.

Very few women choose a relationship with a man they believe doesnt respect them or women in general.

I don't know - some are very openly and outwardly sexist and still seem to attract female partners.

I don't think you are, neither do I think you need a "therapy". What for? I'm 47, married and at around the age of 42 my eyes opened as well.
As a PP said, I feel very similar.

That's true. But I still think it's probably relatively very few...

I also think that benevolent sexism plays a big part in this where behaviours are coded as kind and protective when they're not.

My mum is the sort of woman who giggled and tittered at open and outward sexism. I can't really explain that but she was also one of the biggest misogynists I've personally encountered.

Which world leaders in particular are paedophiles and rapists?

You can change your mindset, but you need CBT.

I personally think unfortunately you’re not wrong. Men are socialised to be harmful to women because they are not expected to be emotionally reciprocal, just to provide, and to think they are top of the food chain. The ‘male lonliness epidemic’ is just men once again asking women to rescue them rather than do the work. 9/10 men don’t get it and think there is no problem. It’s not all men but it’s most of them. I think we need to start teaching women that most men are unlikely to meet their needs now we are more independent and focus on happiness in other areas!

Rhymes with ‘bump’.

Not all men are like this. And women/all people can let you down in one way or another.

Try to keep up with the news.

Is it? I highly doubt that many handmaidens' are troubled by that.

You can Google it any time or maybe pick up a newspaper.

I think the problem is that your feelings are hurting you.

I recognise that most men are not “good” people. A lot of them are very very bad.
More so than women.

But you gotta find a way to let go of the rage. Becuse it’s burning you up.

Men are not mandatory. You don’t need to have one. The reason for your rage is the cognitive dissonance between the brainwashing of society telling you p what you are supposed to want and the fact that you actually desire to be done with men.

It’s ok to dislike men and de-center them. It’s not ok to spend your life as a ball of hate. You have to find a way to let that go. Take up yoga or something.

I think this sums it up very well.

you seem to be spending a lot of time enraged by men. I don’t blame you there are an awful lot of utterly shit men, probably quite a few utterly shit women as well, but they don’t tend to have such a negative impact on other people as men do. Gently though, it would probably do you good to have some therapy and see if you can “de-centre” these thoughts. Where the aim should maybe by to come to terms with the world as it is and how you can live happily in it. Not to train you to accept terrible men, but to allow you not to think about it all the time. Being angry and sad about the way the world is won’t do you any good and it’s certainly going to be taking far more space in your mind than it ever will for men, so trying to be happy is a good goal.

See

I love bashing men, and feel they deserve it for their awful ways, despite wanting to shag the hot ones. I think thats a fine balance xx

But ive also been in a space where I feel that all men are abusive and being unable to feel safe around one.

The latter isnt okay, because it was affecting me as a person and was the result of trauma. Its also not true, lots of men are alright. They have thoughts and feelings like we do, they laugh at stuff, they like to eat drink like we do. They aren't all just walking around planning on raping teenage girls.

I never say 'well if this was reversed' as I hate it, but if a man felt that all women were golddiggers and only like tall men, we'd tell him to get out more and socialise.

You need to meet lots of new people and get out of your head, as you'll only get worse op

You definitely do deserve love and there are normal men out there. I feel like i understand you, and can tell you that, i am getting to a better place and you will too 🩷

“I recognise that most men are not “good” people”

Wow that is a sweeping assumption! I’ll give you some context, i’m 50 and have never once cheated/done wrong on any of my previous partners, all were long term relationships where i was happy right until the end, however all of them eventually cheated on me, probably because i was seen as ‘safe’ which probably isn’t attractive.

I think you get a mix of good and bad regardless of whether they are male or female, the world has changed and women are now fighting back so to speak, and i don’t blame them as ‘some’ men deserve it. But some don’t! Some of us have real feelings and feel real hurt.

I’d stand by what I said. I’d be fair and put good men at around 15 percent. Plenty more are “ok”. You know the sort, seem alright but when push comes to shove they probably wouldn’t call out their shit friends who cheat on or bully women. Not Bad, but, cowards and similar.

Lots are straight up bad.

I don’t know where you fall in the spectrum. But it’s always weird when people assume the statement applies to them. Why are you sympathising with the bad lot rather than standing with women?

The statement most men are not good is perfectly fair and I stand by it. I’m less concerned with your feelings and more about the women bad men kill and weak men fail to protect.

I'm in no way whatsoever standing with the bad lot and neither did i assume it applied to me, why would i, as i'm not one of the 85% you refer to, i'm standing with your 15% of good men and the women that deserve better...

I don't expect anyone to be concerned with my feelings least of all you, it was for context only.

In order to give a value as specific as 15%, you'd have to be pretty careful to have taken into account negativity bias, confirmation bias, population subsampling, etc., etc.

Honestly @MyRareBear I am more surprised these days who cannot see the patterns of male behaviour that drench us all. I still love some men. We are wired for social attachment after all but I think the patterns of male behaviour as evidenced daily in reliable sources is hard to ignore.

Smart cookie right there 👆