Men have pushed me to the breaking point and I am sick of it.

Post made 20/7/26

Men have ruined my life in such a large variety of ways that I can't even begin to elaborate upon.

I am one of those raging feminists. Sure. I am a lesbian; my understanding of my sexuality is really a fairly new phenomenon, but I know that even if I wasn't born one, it doesn't really matter because the concept of dating a man and being intertwined with one forever disgusts me to my core. And I'm sure that there's men I know reading this post, thinking "oh my god, is this really how my good friend MAFC views us?". I put up such a great number of walls and I have to be overly sure that they are a good person before I decide to let them into my life. So, if you are a man that I know and you're reading this post, congrats. You made it in and you have nothing to worry about. But while none of this may apply to you, I still think you should read; I want you to understand your own peers from the eyes and experiences of someone on the fringes of society.

I'm writing this post because of a Tiktok I made. I was complaining about the job market and my inability to find work, and I've had men (many of them seemingly Boomers) berating me and calling me horrible things and implying that it is my own fault, because I have piercings, or because my voice is too nasally, or because I "look like a walking HR violation", and all sorts of useless reasons. Many of them called me entitled. But it dawned on me that men cannot comprehend that a leather dyke with piercings can be an intelligent and qualified individual. Men cannot comprehend non-men to be holders of authority, creators of knowledge, or in any way above them in any social hierarchy.

I wanted to begin by saying: I don't consider myself entitled. I am very grateful for the little I have. I am grateful for the sun rising in the morning, I am grateful for the books on my shelves, I am grateful that I have fruit in my kitchen, I am grateful that I have a good relationship with my parents, and I am grateful that I am no longer getting sexually abused by handfuls of individuals. I have never wanted more in life than my education, my career goals, and the amount of respect that I deserve for how much work I put into the former two. I am SELF-CONFIDENT. These men are conflating the confidence of a non-man with hostility and thus label it as entitlement, something that the masses can properly villainize. Men are threatened by non-men who can mentally resist the challenges that they give us. They are threatened when someone they put on the fringes of society is able to advance.

I have had horrible things happen to me throughout my life. I never wished to make it all public, but I want men to truly understand the fear that we live with and how we come to resent them. I do not wish for this to be a sob story, I want no one's pity, and even if I have no support in making this post, I will not regret it.

In middle school, I was sexually assaulted nearly every day for two months, oftentimes in front of others. No one ever stepped in. His friends never told him to stop what he was doing. I was 12 years old fearing for my life. He is now studying engineering in Utah, and I cannot imagine how many women he's assaulted. Fuck you, Jack Lane.

I would go on to be sexually assaulted and coerced by others during high school. Both my first kiss and the loss of my virginity were due to coercion. I never made a single report.

I was also raised in a very particular way that essentially set me up to be dependent on another. I never got to decorate my room until I went to college, really. I was never properly taught how to drive. I was never taught to be competent financially. As a teen, I would severely restrict my diet out of fear of gaining weight and no longer being seen as attractive. I was catcalled before I turned 13. I had men asking for nudes of me knowing I was 14. I was coerced into losing my virginity at the same age. I had people making rumors about me, that I was making out with XYZ man in the bathrooms, and they had no idea that he had been doing horrible things to me behind closed doors (and sometimes, out in public for the world to see).

Upon entering high school, I saw the friends that I knew become increasingly more affected by male socialization (I say this not to sound like a TERF), leading it to nearly destroy multiple decade-long friendships I had had with men. I saw them turn into people that I didn't even recognize. And it took multiple fights with these men for them to change their behavior, and luckily our friendships remain.

As I entered college, I had no idea how to be independent. My parents had pushed marriage so heavily on me. They pushed for me to date a good man who could take care of me. I had to learn how to navigate new social circles, and in my first, I was the punchline. I was never taken seriously and never supported emotionally through one of the most difficult times of my life (and if you contributed to this and are reading, fuck you).

I soon met a man that I started to befriend. I believed him to be one of the good ones. He then proceeded to physically assault me, cut me off from the only support I had, accuse me of stealing from him, and spread more lies and rumors about me. I mustered up the courage and reported him to the police, and they did nothing. He then proceeded to continue to terrorize the circles around me, even going so far as to kicking a woman in the side of the head and spreading rumors about my now partner. Today, he's still on the periphery of my social circles, saying "why can't MAFC just leave me alone?"

Afterwards, I would begin to be harrassed and stalked on social media by random internet strangers. I had people offering me money just to buy porn of me or have sex with me. One user, who I had never interacted with before, begin to say things like "guys! My girlfriend who doesn't know she's my girlfriend is online!" and would post about flying me out to California. I would try to scare off these men and/or tell them I was a lesbian, and they only tried to force me into sex with them more. They liked the resistance. It turned them on.

Last year, I would work for a deli in a grocery store chain. My manager once dragged me into a two hour long debate on my right to marry instead of letting me do my assigned tasks. He would constantly spew homophobic and transphobic rhetoric behind my back. I was never able to blow up at him how I truly wanted to, because he was my superior. I attempted to gather evidence so that I could make a report, but it never came to fruition. Meanwhile, I had customers wolf whistle me and tell me how much they were thinking about me (middle aged men, mind you).

I then went to Portugal for a study abroad program. My group was mainly comprised of men, which scared me. It took a while for me to warm up to them. Eventually, I would warm up to them. They seemed to be well-rounded individuals. As I was flying home to the States, I found out that one had been expelled from his previous college because he raped a woman, and another had been mistreating the girl he was seeing.

These are your peers. These are your brothers. These are your classmates, your friends, and your study partners. I have not experienced one moment of peace because of men. I have been harassed en masse. I have been stalked. I have been raped. I have been sexually assaulted more times than I can count on my hands and toes, probably more than double that, if not triple that. We like to pretend that bad men are 1% of the population, but I can tell you right now that it is far, far, far more.

I have not included all instances of abuse from men in this post. This is only part of it.

After all of this has transpired, I have slowly rebuilt my sense of self and begun to achieve a greater sense of independence, in a large part with the help of my amazing partner. She has showered me with so much love and support that I can't even begin to put it into words. However, I have overcome so much solely on my own. I have grown into a person who prides myself on my skill, intelligence, emotional maturity, and the work that I put into things. I like to believe that, at the end of the day, I deserve a little bit of respect for what I've been through and how I continue to push through. And besides that fact, I am a really cool person! I dress how I want (piercings, black, and leather, to ward men off and let them know that I'm a threat), I don't have the time to entertain their bullshit, I work as hard as I can to give back to my community, and I have very high ambitions. There is nothing than a man can offer me in life.

Men cannot accept the fact that they do not have anything to offer us. We are no longer dependent on them, and thus we don't have to entertain them anymore. We don't have to accept the lowest of the low as being normal; it is clear what normal behavior looks like because I see women and others modelling perfect citizen behavior all the time. They do not know how to model perfect citizen behavior because, generally speaking, men aren't socialized that way. Men are socialized to believe that they are the most important person in their lives. Women are socialized to consider the group, consider their future husband, consider anyone but themselves. But I AM the most important person in my life. I don't dress the way I do for validation. I don't work hard so I can get a man to notice me and think I'm "high value"; I AM high value. Men tend to not agree with me because I'm not conventionally attractive. But I'm a polyglot, a researcher, a creative, a writer, a networker, a highly intelligent person, and highly involved in my community. I just happen to be more butch, more dykey, more blunt, more ugly (good! Scares them off!), more punk, and more stubborn. I'll be damned if any sweaty, no-brained, incel, skuf, uneducated, unhygenic, and inconsiderate man convinces me that he contributes more to society than I do.

I have no pity for men who believe that they are entitled to a higher position in the social hierarchy because they happened to be cursed with a dick and balls. I have no pity for men that don't put any effort into being good people and complaining about the "male loneliness epidemic". I have no pity for men going through divorces because they couldn't put in the effort and work to help their partners. I have no pity for men who whine about how their parents divorced when he was young, and how that's why they mistreat women, because they were children of divorce, or got bullied, or were rejected by a girl one time. Frankly, I don't want to fucking hear it!

There are some good men out there still. My former professor and good friend is a Boomer, bourgeois, white, cisgender, straight, retired man and is a well-known name in the field of literary studies, to the point where he has his own Wikipedia page. Over coffee, I told him about how I don't trust men, how they have done too many terrible things to me, how the men I know have time and time again turned out to be horrible people, and how nervewracking it is to rarely be able to trust men for that reason. Instead of hitting me with the "not all men", he simply told me how he worries for the next generation of women. And then we moved on.

Another man I know used to be my coworker. I would complain about the things men would say to me, about how management treated me, and he never denied my experiences. We would laugh about how unlucky I am, and then we would move on.

Another man I know was a colleague of mine in my department. He was a grad student taking the masters' program that I want to pursue. He would help me with any linguistics questions I had, we would go out drinking from time to time, and he would encourage me to pursue what I wanted without feeling threatened by the fact that I have incredibly high ambitions. He never judged my appearance, but he had faith in my character. He graduated, and we still keep in touch.

It is not impossible to be a good person. What is impossible is having to justify every choice and action of mine to a group of men that have nowhere near the same level of ambition, skill, morals, or kindness. I am not entitled. I am tired.

Women and nonbinary people: it is not empowering to consider yourself equal to men. It is not empowering to play into their system. It is not empowering to choose to submit to them. It is not even empowering to use their attraction to you as a means to get ahead in life. Men will fuck cars, animals, McChickens, holes in the wall, and dead bodies. They will use you and oppress you no matter how much of a "good one" you are. Princess Diana still got cheated on, Eartha Kitt still got her career ruined by the government, Thewizardliz still was used as an incubator, and Gisèle Pelicot was still drugged and raped by her husband. You will never be considered respectable enough to not be oppressed. Fight the oppression and not yourself. No amount of starving yourself, or staying silent, or painting your face, or getting plastic surgery, or being a tradwife, or helplessness, or dependence will ever get you out of this system. Do not center your life around a man, ever. Do not get married to a man, do not become financially dependent on a man, do not give up on your goals because a man doesn't like them, do not answer for a man's shitty behavior, do not defend your shitty husband, do not sleep with men, do not give them access to yourself. They are vampires who seek out the best people to tear down. Do not eat the fruit of a poisoned tree. Hunt the elk instead.

M.A.F.C., July 20th, 2026.

If you would like to support my work and well-being while I'm looking for financial independence and stability, my Cashapp account is $tuesdaymorning10am. Either way, I appreciate the time you took to read.