***
Simply because I don't want to leave this conversation with everyone thinking I'm a "rapey" misogynistic "angry meninist" I want to explain the lens I've watched all of this through.
I have basically lived my entire life in the social limbo between masculine and feminine. I'm not trans*, but I never identified with the attitudes and experiences of other boys as a child. I grew up outright resenting the fact that I was born male, as I sincerely felt men were the lesser gender. That's not melodrama or satire. I'm neuroatyipical; I struggle with feelings of shame, low self-worth, and think about suicide *frequently*. When I was young, most of the focus of that was on my sex/gender identity.
Because of that, I grew up with most of my friends being female. At any given time, my male friends numbered between 0 and 2, leaning heavily to 0. My parents encouraged me to participate in scouting and sports, but nothing changed the fact that for the most part, I did not like the other boys, and had no interest in spending time with them.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with being a person with mostly friends of a different gender. The world frequently segregate activities by gender, which leaves you utterly alone. People 'hang together' within their genders, so if there's ever an issue where the group has one person too many, you're the first person to be excluded, dismissed, or ostracized. You get to hear every microaggression and 'it's just a joke' that can be directed at your gender. You're told, constantly, that 'you aren't like other' people of your gender, as if that's a compliment. And of course, the entire school decides you're gay, which really sucks if you actually aren't. None of those things go away as you get older. You just take them for granted and integrate them into your world view.
In high school, I dated a girl who was strong, independent, fierce... all qualities I loved her for. Unfortunately, she was also verbally and physically abusive. She would grope me at inappropriate times simply because it embarrassed me and made me uncomfortable. That relationship finally ended when she outright punched me one day, and I nearly punched her back. I broke up with her because I was terrified I was going to become this terrible domestic abuser. Eventually I realized that I should have been willing to break up with her simply because she was a cruel person, and realized - for the first time in my entire life - how lucky I was to be male, because if our genders had been reversed, I probably wouldn't have felt empowered to end the relationship.
After high school, I went to an engineering college in the middle of nowhere - not because I was enamored with either engineering or living in the middle of nowhere, but because that's where my two best (female) friends went, and I had no real identity beyond those relationships. The college in question had four male students to every one female student, yet, still, most of my friends were female. The men I hung out with were almost all friends of my friends, and I didn't really do much with them, because even after all of those years, I still wasn't really interested in many of the same things.
After that, it was graduate school. I thought graduate school would be great - the department I was going into was female dominated - my advisers/supervisors and colleagues would be nearly all women. I thought that would be a comfortable fit for me.
I was very wrong.
Whether or not a group is marginalized on the greater scale of things, any group given power over another in even the smallest, most limited contexts, abuses that power. Graduate school was several years of watching women do horrible things, listening to them say horrible things, and not being able to do anything about it because, as [name removed] said, "you're a man; no one cares if you're offended."
'Don't take [name removed]'s class, a man is lucky to pass it.'
'We need to check those grades again, women don't fail my class.'
'Oh, I would never consider hiring a male assistant.'
'You're a man; never raise your voice in the presence of [name removed], she'll say you were threatening her and fire you like she did [name I don't remember].'
'Men aren't equipped to deal with the rigors of academia.'
'You're too hyper-masculine to fit in in this department.'
'You're here because the program's token male died.'
'Oh, you feel that men are treated badly in the department? We should definitely talk about that... some day.'
The upside to all of that, besides that lesson, is that I had years to sit through lunches, office breaks, classes, etc. and quietly listen to my female friends and colleagues. I heard their horror stories, their nightmares, their fears, and their rage. So, I haven't heard anything here that's new to me. I haven't heard anything new in years. Every meaningful conversation like this that I have had in the past half a decade has just rehashed the same handful of points.
While everyone else seems to believe they're the first person to explain rape culture, patriarchy, mansplaining, etc. to me, from my perspective, I just keep reliving the same handful of conversations. I've tried mixing things up, taking different approaches and perspectives, trying to move the conversation beyond that point. I've been polite, I've been rude, I've been academic, I've been informal, I've been self-deprecating, I've been confident. I've tried focusing on just asking questions [but that goes REALLY badly]. I avoid referencing my education so that people don't feel I'm being superior or condescending. I focus on saying what I feel or explaining what I know, and I avoid telling other people what they should feel. I stick to asynchronous text-based communication because it makes it physically impossible for me to accidentally 'talk over' a woman. The only thing I haven't really tried is stealing a groundhog and driving off a cliff with it.
But that still doesn't work, so I withdraw from the world and I write. It's literally the only thing I can do to try and make a difference. It's the only thing I'm good at. I write books to try to bridge the gender divide I've lived within my whole life. Given I sold like ten copies of my first book before just finally posting it for free - and most of those copies were purchased by women who will find nothing new in the characters' experiences - I'm sure it's probably pointless. But, it's literally all I've got that I can give to the cause.
And yes, I know that's a very, very long post about 'me me me' and people are going to see that and say, 'Oh, look how egocentric he is - just a typical entitled male making everything about himself,' but talking exclusively about my point of view is the only chance I have of getting across what I want to say without it being interpreted as aggressive or belligerent.
And, actually, it will probably still be seen that way, so FML.
