LilyInteractive

I used to say you could count the men I trust on two hands; now you wouldn’t even need one.

It is an ongoing bit in my friend group to inform male potential partners or boys on nights out etc. as soon as I am introduced to them that I am a misandrist and see how long it takes them to realise we were serious.

9 times out of 10 if the statement is taken seriously it is only right before the end of our interactions, when I am still yet to warm up to their off-putting & misogynistic ‘charm’ to hug them farewell; but had possessed no qualms earlier in the night moving him roughly by his hips without breaking eye contact or asking politely to get by to ensure he was receiving the same uncomfortable experience he had just provided one of my closest friends.

More often than not this delayed reaction or assumption we are joking is because their life is not at risk, and I still hold basic space and decency for them as humans, despite my overall disregard and lack of respect for the existence + generalised behaviours of their gender.

This is the key difference between Misandry and Misogyny for me:

While I do not respect boys I still view them as human.

Women have to force boys to see us as human before we can even begin to make them consider respecting us.

There a lot of other key differences between the two (which I hope to get through by the end of this post) but recently I have found myself coming up against this particular issue more-so than ever.

The men I can count on my one hand & wholeheartedly say I trust all share a few key features amongst them that if they were not in possession of – they would not be placed on said hand. One of these features is the ability to not only take accountability for harmful actions and behaviours but also an eagerness willingness to learn, have hard, honest conversations, grow and make genuine change within themselves and their environments. This is not a rule I hold specifically for them, I try to base all the important relationships in my life on the same foundations that I value most, but vulnerable, uncomfortable and honest conversations are something I have observed boys, the Elderly/Aging, and White people struggle with in particular.

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The way we perceive, process and interact with the world around us is shaped by our experiences; whether it be with people we know & meet, the places we live & visit, the media we consume or create and so-on.

Objectively, everyone knows this.

Almost every woman I know who identifies as (or gets identified as) a Misandrist holds with her a long history of very valid reasons to fear and mistrust boys who have harmed and traumatised her or her immediate loved ones in almost incomprehensible ways.

Her environment (patriarchal culture), people (misogynistic boys), and experiences (violence perpetrated by Environment + People) have shaped her to be wary of interactions with the opposite gender, as there may be a threat present.

Objectively, Misandry makes sense here; either as a trauma response or preventation/protection tactic.

I cannot say the same for the Misogynistic boys I know and their interactions with women.

The number of boys and men who have experienced serious and repeated harm from the hands of women, simply for being a man are significantly fewer, and dare I say it– able to access support and treatment easier in the circumstance in which it does.

Yet, Misogyny is much more common and often much more fatal.

I spend a lot of time wondering about the reasons behind this, and a little extra time hoping that it is not just some dark and fucked up epigenetic colonial hangover that our bodies refuse to release…Like if my Wiradyuri/Gamileroi (and dare I say it Welsh) ancestors gifted me my story telling…what are the purebred British getting in their genecoding…Y’kno…?

As a lesbian when it comes to mainstream discussion on anything- but especially topics regarding Gender, Sex and the societal + political implications of the two – I often find us sidelined; not only from mention by those participating in these public discourse but also from being granted the access and the platform to even participate and be heard of our own volition. This has not been the case only in my adulthood, and it is not just in the public sphere that it has affected me.

I was always acutely aware of the Patriarchy and it’s damaging chokehold, I vividly remember the panic and adrenaline that would rush through me on the primary school playground when it was my turn to tell the other girls at recess who I was crushing on. As young as 8 or 9 years old and my stomach was already turning at the thought of having to kiss or marry my classroom peers of the opposite gender; I couldn’t fathom how everyone else was so calm about it and after assuming we were picking our crushes on stats and pros and cons lists rather than desire to kiss or spend time together; I blurted out the name of a boy who had recently run the fastest or topped the weekly spelling test. The others would giggle and clap with glee while cooing about what a cute couple we would make, while I would sit amongst them frozen in horror at the thought of being the next girl pinned down and kissed for the sake of a ‘Truth or Dare’ dare; or worse- genuinely desired, sought for, and then captured behind a tree in the next game of ‘kiss-chasey’. I did not know what a couple was even supposed to do or be, but I knew I was not going to be happy following the path clearly already expected of me.

In high-school, scenarios like feeling excluded from playground secret sharing quickly snowballed into needing to navigate my sexual education, safety and experimentation independently, outside of the classroom. How could we have watched four (4) different videos on self pleasure, endless sources on heterosexual sex, two (2) on gay men and not even a singular mention of lesbians? You mean to tell me the boys in this room can pretend to perform oral sex on a printed paper vagina they have just confidently and arrogantly mislabelled with zero repercussion and real oral sex on genitals I am familiar with isn’t even an option worth offering or letting me enquire about?

My final straw in trusting the Australian Education System with my education was not when I didn’t see myself being represented but when I was restricted from asking about those like myself, or told that we were not worth covering as content even when students beyond me expressed curiosity. I needed to find or create a curriculum with myself on it, which I have done and continue to do in the ways I explore my existence in the world.

I have never been lonely, I have always had a strong support network waiting for me in one way or another, no matter what fuck shit I have been instigating or enduring over the course of my chaotic existence. I have been isolated, though.

I think isolation and loneliness are different; you cannot be loved and lonely. You can absolutely be isolated and loved.

My whole life has been lived in varying degrees of isolation. There aren’t that many Disabled, Blak, Lesbians in this country, despite what certain rhetorics would have you believe, so majority of my life and it’s unique learning curves have been navigated without a lot of example to go on, but this does not mean I have been alone and unloved on the journey.

It is also not to say that this is a journey that I have only undertaken with love and support…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4893898/Teenage-girl-Dubbo-death-threats-man-sex-marriage.html

At the time of the same-sex marriage debate, Dykes in Dubbo were a rarer sight than they can be considered these days, and while this is inaccurate and poor journalism, it was the only non-paywalled link I could find so please forgive me and here are some more links if you are desperate to read about the time I was 14 and a grown-man was so affronted by my existence and opinions that he wanted to shoot me:

https://www.theleader.com.au/story/4931276/teen-cops-threat-over-same-sex-marriage-support/

https://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/4929590/teen-cops-threat-over-same-sex-marriage-support/

https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/4931276/teen-cops-threat-over-same-sex-marriage-support/

https://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/4931276/teen-cops-threat-over-same-sex-marriage-support/

That was not my first, last, or worst violent and unwarranted interaction with a man who felt threatened by me for no reason. It was around this time and paired with other circumstances in my life at the time that I began to realise the power struggles of my minority identity and that they weren’t going to cease anytime soon.

I was angry, confused, and sad about this for years doing things that I thought could make positive change, such as starting Discord Servers specifically for people like me to connect that garnered 1000s of members, publishing blogs that were widely read, reading anything I could get my hands on, questioning authority even when they didn’t want me to, and a string of varying intensity vigilante activist inspired decisions and actions.

A lot of this was abandoned and became inactive, deleted, or managed by other people, as I got old enough and ugly enough to have to participate in the real world of full-time employment and study. I lost the brain-space, time and energy for my former motivating passions. I had also been successful enough in curating my social group that from roughly 17-19 I was almost able to forget how much of the world would rather see me dead than thriving.

But, unfortunately, an echo-chamber remains an echo-chamber at the end of the day.

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During my wild and rage-filled teenage activist years, not once did I ever come across the concept of Misandry online in a serious context, and not once did I ever hear it spoken in person. The defintion of the word remained (at least, to me) nothing more than a conceptual theory, or an aspiration at best.

These days it is used against me so often (and so creatively) I have taken it underwing alongside descriptors I choose to reclaim in casual, positive and powerful contexts – like my personal favourite Dyke !

_{(This is not a post on sexuality discourse so I am not going to delve into it today BUT: If you are uncomfortable with me calling myself a Dyke I would like you to sit with that for a second and ask yourself one of my all-time favourite questions: ‘Why?’)}

Over the past twoish years, I have been ramping my way back up into wild and rage-filled activism with the help from some career/study/passion cross-overs, ADHD treatment, and my friends (who historically and to my frustration have been known for political apathy. Note to self: blog post on Australia being a politically apathetic and undereducated nation??) loudly joining the party. There were a few key events in my personal life that made relighting the fire in me relatively easy, but the biggest motivating factor for me personally was a repetition of historical events.

Of the 4 men I trust, controversially, 2 of them used to be incels.

The first time I stumbled across the term ‘incel’ was when one of these men confided in me around a similar time to the same-sex marriage debate that he was grateful for my unwavering friendship and loyalty throughout his depression as he was worried that without it he would have been vulnerable to inceldom. I had no fucking clue on Dolly Parton’s Red Earth what this meant so I googled it.

At first what I came across made me feel sick and horrified, and I wasn’t sure of my comfort and safety within that friendship anymore, but I took some time to think about it and sit with it before letting it change my interactions with my beloved friend as even though I was still processing and unsettled by what I’d found I knew that it was only the tip of an iceberg, and I was worried that seemingly all it would take for someone I was regularly alone with to have these thoughts about me would have been to end the friendship; which prior to this discovery I never would have thought twice about needing to do should conflict have ever surfaced between us.

Luckily, these were the days of school and I easily avoided him for the weekend. By the time Monday rolled around I had come to the realisation that it was only because of the trust and safety in our friendship that he felt safe enough to confide that secret in me and the best way to prevent him from falling into indoctrination was to proceed with our love and communication as normal. In present times I would trust any woman alone with that man to be just as safe as they would be alone with me. Although, that is a rule for everyone in my life. I would not be able to forgive myself if a woman I loved fell victim to gender-based violence at my hands whether it be indirectly or otherwise.

The second time I came across and felt the need to investigate the term incel, was more recently when another man I trust confided in me that he was not vulnerable but that he had *been* an incel for a short period of time before coming to his senses, and that again, it was his friendship with me that had played a significant part. This was not the first time a man had told me he was a reformed incel, but it was the first man I wanted to believe (for more than just the sake of my safety) about his newfound respect and appreciation for women.

I had an ethnographical report due and a friendship to decide the value of, so I spent the better part of a year infiltrating online incel communities; that iceberg I discovered years prior went deeper than I could have ever comprehended. It was almost as if every suspicion and anxiety I had had about men in my life was being confirmed and exacerbated all at once. The result of the investigation in regards to that friendship was a very long and intense series of discussions about just how far he had fallen into the murky depths, and how that compared to how far he might have been willing to go. I had determined a list of unforgivable actions and thoughts in my head, none of which he expressed desire towards, and our friendship tentatively continued while I recovered from my world upending experience. We are both fine as of the present day, and I do believe his reform is genuine and evolving and I am yet to be made to feel unsafe by him so his on thin ice status was both reinstated and removed. I don’t know if he knew the process was this vigorous internally for me so hi, HEY, hello i love you so much and i am so proud but i am also always watching !

Between my first dip into inceldom and my second, the biggest thing that popped out as notable for me was the infiltration of everyday terminology. On my first trip I would have benefited from a dictionary specific to Incel Jargon, on my second trip the language being used was almost like overhearing conversations at a bar or on a bus. Worrying.

On top of this shift into entering mainstream spaces and vernacular I kept seeing the word ‘Misandry’ this time in more serious than satirical contexts. I wondered if that had anything to do with myself and my other boundary-enforcing and/or Dyke friends suddenly being branded with the label.

I was confused about how men so blatantly and violently targeting women with hate and abuse were still avoiding the label of ‘Misogynist’ when all women seem to have to do be smeared as ‘Misandrist’ is stand up for themselves or other women in completely firm and appropriate fashion. I began to wonder if Misandry was even real or if it was just women acting outside of expected gender roles – and if it was real could it be a valid reaction and preventative measure towards hundreds of years of gendered violence?

Knowing I was not an expert on the topic on account of literally being 21, and that my experiences and observations of the world as a Disabled, Blak, Lesbian were going to be vastly different to that of most people let alone the generalised group of women. I needed to reach outside myself for sources. Alongside extensive verbal and online discussion I have spent my train commutes and bedtime decompression time this week reading this stack of books on the topic:

Boy, oh boy, do I have things to say:

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