The short version of this story is that I am a privileged person: a highly educated white male, who has survived abuse at the hands of a self-identified fat, neuro-atypical, queer woman of Native American descent who had suffered immense trauma in her life. I am also a member of various social justice communities who identifies as a feminist, an anarchist, and a radical. I am choosing to be more public about surviving abuse because I believe that visibility matters. However, I also know that people like me are inconvenient survivors: there is not an easy way to understand and deal with those who have had social justice weaponized against them and who are privileged people who have been abused by the less advantaged.
I have no idea how to maintain the ethical imperatives of believing survivors and rightly privileging the voices of women, POC, LGBTQ+, and other minoritarian subjects while recognizing that there are some instances, such as mine, when the situation gets far more complicated and can be weaponized as a form of abuse and manipulation. I am writing this because I want people to know that this happens and to be aware that this is a part of our radical communities. I know men who live in terror of this happening (or happening again if it has; or continuing to happen if it is happening) to know that they are not alone. Dangerously, the loneliness that comes from such experiences may push men toward “men’s rights” communities, which are regressive, reactionary, and potentially fascist pseudo-movements of frightening misogynists and rape-apologists. We need to find alternatives for men who survive abuse if we want to offer something better. We need a place for those of us who are inconvenient survivors. I don’t know what that is though. I hope this post contributes to a conversation about figuring that the fuck out.
I have no idea how to maintain the ethical imperatives of believing survivors and rightly privileging the voices of women, POC, LGBTQ+, and other minoritarian subjects while recognizing that there are some instances, such as mine, when the situation gets far more complicated and can be weaponized as a form of abuse and manipulation. I am writing this because I want people to know that this happens and to be aware that this is a part of our radical communities. I know men who live in terror of this happening (or happening again if it has; or continuing to happen if it is happening) to know that they are not alone. Dangerously, the loneliness that comes from such experiences may push men toward “men’s rights” communities, which are regressive, reactionary, and potentially fascist pseudo-movements of frightening misogynists and rape-apologists. We need to find alternatives for men who survive abuse if we want to offer something better. We need a place for those of us who are inconvenient survivors. I don’t know what that is though. I hope this post contributes to a conversation about figuring that the fuck out.
If this matters to you, I hope you will read "the long of it" to get the big picture. But first, I must be abundantly clear about something: this is not a "men's rights" page. Men's rights activists are an abhorrent group of misogynists, rape apologists, and fascists who should be rightly banished to the furthers recesses of the internet.
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