This is going to be a long read but I promise you it's worth it. I'm posting it on a throw away account because most people wouldn't believe me and it's entirely personal. If I hadn't lived through this I wouldn't believe it myself.

If you were to ask me if I was a feminist when I was eighteen I would have proudly told you yes. I would have told you women deserve equal rights and that's what the movement is about. I truly thought I was lucky to be born male in America. I was as naive and stupid as they come.

A little more than a decade ago I found myself in a particularly bad relationship (punctured condoms and on a previous occasion lying about birth control in an attempt to get me not to wear one at all.) I noticed the tiny needle hole in the condom then inspected the other two in the pack and found they all had them. Then and there I decided it was time to end the eleventh month relationship.

Around a week or so after the break up she called me to tell me she was pregnant. I was naturally suspicious due to the combination of her recent past behavior, timing, and the fact I'd always worn a condom. She insisted on coming over to discuss things and after arriving kept shifting the conversation from the pregnancy to the “wonderful future we would now have together.” After listening to a little bit more of this delusional babble she told me that she had a surprise for me and proceeded to show me where she had deeply carved my name onto her inner thigh (millimeter plus thick scar material). In complete disbelief I asked her, “Why the fuck would you do that?” Her response was something along the lines of “So you'll never forget I'm yours.” By this point I wasn't completely listening as I was struggling to fully process the situation.

Feeling utterly uncomfortable at this point I realized I was witnessing some sort of psychotic break. Then she sexually assaulted me in an attempt on her part to “seduce” me. When she managed to briefly get her hand down my pants I shit you not, the name John Bobbit flashed through my mind and I probably threw her off me about six feet in a panic. Undeterred she got back up and tried to continue with her seduction assault. Having completely lost my shit by this point I shoved her again. When she tried a third time I found myself screaming in her face “Don't touch me you sick cunt”, “Are you fucking retarded?”, and plenty of other expletives. Cue her water works and unintelligible cry speak.

I then told her to get in the car and drove her to the drugstore. Once there I went inside and bought a pregnancy test. When I told her to take it she continued to cry and kept trying to insist that she would do it later. Finally after much yelling she agreed to take the test. I figured she would use the drugstore bathroom but instead she popped a squat right then and there in the parking lot between two cars. After taking it she wouldn't hand it over to me and kept repeating, “Why are you doing this to me?” Finally after a few minutes I just took it from her. Negative... obviously. I told her never to speak to me again and left her there in the parking lot. I noticed her phone on the seat and despite everything she had done I still felt guilty for leaving her stranded. I used her phone to call her Mom and explained everything about what had just happened and that she would need to go get her. This white trash woman simply laughed at the end of my story and said, “She's clearly off her meds again, I'll go get her" and hung up. I left her phone on her car and went over to my friends house to get wasted trying to forget this night ever happened. I'd later learn about the cocktail of five prescription drugs she was on that helped her balance her Bi-Polar disorder and other psychotic tendencies from a girl she went to high school with. In the eleven months we were together I was never told about any of this once and she behaved normally until the end. She apparently decided she didn't need her medication because things were going so well.

Everything was quiet for a few days and then the stalking began. I'd see her sitting in my parking lot in her car from time to time. Then I started getting 20 - 30 calls a day from a marked private number for a while and had to change my phone number. She then tried to show up and talk to me multiple times but I wouldn't even open the door for her. This was when everything stopped for a few months then suddenly escalated out of nowhere.

I was hanging out with a friend one night listening to music and playing video games when the sliding glass door on my 2nd story apartment window shattered. This cunt threw a pipe at it. My bud and I looked down from the balcony and she was standing there. She yelled “What are you going to do about it faggot?”, then got in her car and drove off. I went downstairs while I was on the phone with the 911 and that was when I saw my car. All the glass was broken, the paint was keyed all over, all tires were slashed, and she had beaten on the body with the pipe denting it all over. We explained to the cops what had happened that night. I told them about everything that had happened previously. They left but then came back later that night. She and her mother told the police a concocted story about how I had threatened the mom and violently assaulted the daughter. I have no fucking clue to this day why they didn't just arrest her and felt the need to get her side of the story. I had a witness and thousands of dollars in property damage as evidence. This clearly can't be normal procedure but it was in fact my reality. I was told that I could still press charges if I wanted but that they would also have to arrest me for the threats and assault. The police actually acted like they were doing me a favor by giving me the chance to drop the whole thing. I called my Dad and asked him what I should do. He knew the whole story already. After thinking about it for a few minutes he said that I had no idea how she may have hurt herself this time and told me to drop the whole thing and look into a restraining order. The possibility of fucking up my whole life with a violent assault charge isn't worth a car and an apartment deposit.

So I petition the court for a restraining order and it's denied on the basis that there are no court records of her previous actions. If I had pressed charges I could have gotten one... and been charged with assault. Apparently the judge doesn't consider “police incident reports” as adequate court records because no charges were pressed. He said they couldn't just give them out to everyone. I never felt lower in my life and couldn't fucking believe everything that had happened.

I only ever saw that ex again once in my life three years later. I was living in a different apartment in the city and was a Junior in college. I went outside and hopped in my car. She was parked in the space next to me. She stared at me for about ten seconds and then drove away slowly.

I had pushed this out of my mind for years but seeing her again really made me ask the question. What rights do I have? The courts failed me. The police failed me and acted like they were doing me a favor. I started to investigate the feminist statistics I had been force fed my whole life. Few people take the time to realize that statistics are completely meaningless unless you understand how they were derived. By scratching below the surface I began to reach my own conclusions and learned to recognize bullshit for what it was. I don't automatically believe what anyone tells me these days. I take the time and do the research. The more I learned the more I came to understand the importance of the Men's Rights Movement. We truly do live in a misandry where men's lives are cheap, marginalized, and devoid of rights because of a fundamental lack of societal protection.

I take the time these days to write my politicians. When I read something outrageous I endeavor to learn more and see what I can do. Recognizing a problem is meaningless unless you try and do something to change it.

This was how I became a MRA.