[Trigger Warning: Abuse]

One of my hardest experiences with the Red Pill men in my life, as a woman, was suddenly being expected to take on their deepest traumas or be punished. I wanted to help, I really did, but from 2014-2021ish I had A LOT of men in my life suddenly expecting that I listen to their deepest and darkest traumas without interruption, but perfectly handle the transference and projections without enforcing my own boundaries...even though I was not a professional. What none of them understood was that I was in recovery for my own traumas. It's not that I didn't want to, it was that I couldn't (and it had nothing to do with them being men and everything to do with their traumas triggering mine).

I pissed off most of my male friends those years. 2014 is when I finally went into recovery for the extreme abuse that I personally endured as a child/teen. I told no one that I was sneaking off to therapy and seeing specialists because it was against my faith at the time. I surely would have been ex-communicated, right? This was my little glimmer that I was losing my religion and my faith in God. Stoicism was appealing to me more, but of course this was my dark secret. I was taught that if the world punished me that I must have deserved it. I blamed myself for the actions of my abusers, despite never have committed those crimes towards anyone myself. I started to hate and nearly loathe myself. I must be the world's shittiest person if God hated me this much, right?

As I was secretly going through my own trauma recovery, I was also going through my "Crisis of Faith" stage of my glow up. Huge chunks of who I was were cracking and falling right off me, beliefs I held yesterday suddenly seemed like shitty ideas and that pissed me off, I was picking up new stuff, my side lover at the time was testing my soul, heart, and mind more than anyone had before, my Husband's anger was getting bad, I was coming to terms with my desire to be polyamorous but simultaneously being framed as a "cheater" publically when people found out (even though I wasn't), I was mortified that I was mentally checking out uncontrollably while on a date with a gorgeous stud who surprisingly didn't freak out when I had no idea what was happening with my head, suddenly fragments of my mind seemed to be gluing themselves together, I was having what I later learned to be these scary things called "flashbacks", and then...I was also being introduced to the men's rights movement.

I generally try to be an avid supporter of men's rights and recognize the unfairness of certain things they experience. I also tried to recognize an abused man not talking about it, to genuinely compliment them more (shout out to 'blue suit guy' for helping me learn this - I was listening, I swear), and make it clearer and shut them down kindly but as efficiently as possible if they wanted to be with me and I did not hold the same feelings. I read books about how men need relationships to function and how I could be a better partner within their range not mine, to carry myself with more grace, and soooo much more. But after many of them dumped their traumas and dark confessions on me and then punished me for not handling it perfectly, I started to support men less than I did before (and I was, at the time, known for my good treatment of men).

I got angry and resentful. I had so much going on in my life and now I was suddenly expected to play therapist for free and with zero training. I was broken too. I needed to be fixed too. I needed to go through my week without another male friend taking all my bad moods, long work hours, and PMSing personally. I needed to figure out how to navigate my own trauma before I could learn to handle other's. But that didn't matter. I doubt many of them meant to hurt me intentionally, but there was a new underlying expectation now that I do things that I had never done before, have wisdom and knowledge that I did not hold, and except new relationship dynamics as a woman who was indoctrinated to "be seen and not heard" and follow a man's lead.

With everything on my plate, the rise of the men's rights movement broke me.