I’m (m) tired. I’m so tired. I’m sick of being a man. And it’s not gender dysphoria. I’m not a woman, I just don’t want to be a man anymore. I’ve had it.

When I was eight years old, I was the victim of sexual assault. I went to my teacher (f) like school-aged children are taught to do, and I got told that it didn’t count. In those words. “That doesn’t count”. It took me seven years to tell another soul about it after what happened was swept under the rug.

One year, in high school, I returned from summer break, and I didn’t know why, but NOBODY would talk to me. Nobody would even make eye contact. Well, it turned out, the person I finally DID decide to confide in about what happened to me had falsely accused me of rape. My life never recovered from that. My friends cut ties with me. The hallways were all glares and venomous barbs. After senior year, I needed a fresh start, so I decided I’d change my name to drop off people’s radars.

Young as I am (23), I’ve been in two long-term relationships which have been horrendously abusive. I’m compassionate to a fault, but people seem to think that as a man, I shouldn’t just WANT to bear responsibility for the suffering of others, I should HAVE to.

I spent two years with a woman I regularly had to talk down from suicide. And you know what she told me after our messy split? That she wouldn’t actually have done it. She just wanted my undivided attention.

My current partner is getting a lot better and more respectful than she used to be (she has some serious baggage of her own), but if I get told I’m not a “real man” one more time, I’m going to put my head through a wall. We’re trying to move past this, but she’s spent most of our relationship expecting me, as a man, to fund her life. Pay for an apartment. Pay bills. Pay for groceries. Pay for tuition. And she would get mad whenever I tried to get her to back off with the demands, because it’s not “gentlemanly” to trouble a woman with finances.

Now, she was living in a bad situation. And I wanted to get her out of that. I wanted to badly. I would’ve in a heartbeat if I could’ve. But you know what? I’M the one who was fucking troubled by my finances, not her. I’M the one who didn’t know how he was going to make ends meet. How he was going to finish his degree or pay for grad school.

As an Indian woman, she doesn’t believe in “men’s rights” movements. I’ve tried to explain that: a) I’m not Indian, and b) she’s not a man, so not only does she not know what she’s talking about vis-a-vis western feminism’s role in perpetuating men’s gender issues, but she couldn’t POSSIBLY understand. Yeah, she got offended by that. SHE got offended by a struggle that was NEVER and never WILL BE hers. It’s the same damn story with most women I’ve ever tried to talk about these things with. I’m not allowed to have problems as a man, because women have largely decided the very notion of gender issues actually being inclusive of all genders is absurd.

The sexual trauma a woman living here could expect get all the support in the world for was made a sick joke out of for me because I’m a man, I’m subject to the expectation that I shell out money like I don’t need it for anything else except pleasing women who treat me as though I don’t deserve them, so many women I’ve spoken to have gotten upset and crucified me at the mere SUGGESTION that men should be seen to have gender-specific issues, and I’m not allowed to talk about the stress ANY of this bullshit is resultant in.

Because I’m a man. And no matter what, men are supposed to shut up and take it. I might even be okay with that if I were actually treated as though I mattered as a man, as opposed to as as though I were a cash cow, or a puppet whose only joy and purpose is for the convenience of women, and who’s cut loose when I stop being fun to play with.

I’m only human. I can hurt. I can cry. And if you bend me far enough, I can break.