Men, it’s going to take you getting involved, too.
It’s not good enough anymore to stand back in the shadows and claim innocence because there isn’t blood on your hands–when you are literally driving the getaway car.
It isn’t good enough to let things slide by because “he didn’t mean it like that” or “he’s harmless” or “he isn’t like that to me” or “that’s just him”. You do not know him in his entirety–you know a fraction of that person that he manufactured to make you like and believe him. That isn’t him if it’s only performative and in public. That isn’t him if he just waits 'til he can do it behind closed doors. What you know of that man; is a very small part of him. What his victim(s) know of him, is a way bigger, darker, and deeply more terrifying version of him. That is not manufactured. It’s in him. Deep inside.
Anytime my abuse was witnessed by others, it was by men. There was only one time it was in front of one of my closest friends, and her life was in danger too–we were both helpless. Do you know who was fully capable of pulling that man off of me? The 6’2 man behind him watching all of it. I begged and pleaded him to do something, anything, while a man screamed inches from my face with his fist raised, that he would “show you what abusive really is and bash your fucking teeth in bitch.” Repeatedly. Over and over again.
His victim the year before me reached out to two of my closest guy friends at the time telling them to reach out and warn me what he really is like. I never heard a word about it from either, and I hold no ill will towards that as I don’t even know what I would have done with the information at the time, but by the time the honeymoon stage ended and the abuse started, it sure would have been nice to know that I wasn’t alone.I wasn’t the first. I wasn’t the only. I was just another young girl he was working so desperately to control, manipulate, and hurt.
The ONLY time my abuser stopped what he was doing to me for a night was when a man who had spent time in prison for DV, pulled him aside and told him to stop hurting me and get some help. That’s it. That’s the only man that ever said or did anything. And it helped, but only for that night. That weekend I was locked in a truck, scared for my life, while he beat on the windows and doors trying to get to me so he could drag me back into the house. A man watched this unfold from across the parking lot. I remember praying and pleading with God hoping He would move this man to call the cops, because my abuser had already taken my phone and threw it across the yard after he realized what number I dialed. Nobody ever said another word to me. Not the men I didn’t know, not the men I did know, not his closest friends who have witnessed him do this to other women too. I truly felt as if I had no one, and that isn’t because of a lack of community and good people, but because I was cut off from them and turned against them. I was so scared to tell somebody even a little bit of what was really happening behind the smiling social media posts. I knew he would justify the punishment he always threatened me with, and that if I finally did do what he was so scared of and told someone, I didn’t know if anyone would even know that I was missing until it was too late. I have never been so isolated in plain sight.
I was raised by a good man. A great man, truly. He’s been my best friend since I was a baby and he’ll be my best friend til the end of time. I’ve been madly in love with an amazing man for the last three years. Both of these men stand ten toes behind me and every other single victim out there. They have no tolerance for abuse, for they know that an inch in public usually means a mile behind closed doors. I KNOW there are good men out there, and I need y’all to hear me when I say it’s not good enough to sit back anymore.
It’s going to take you getting involved, too.
My following has always consisted of a lot of women, but when I started posting about abuse, men unfriended and unfollowed me in the hundreds, every day.
Why?
Are the stories of the trauma and abuse these women and children have lived through and survived too uncomfortable to read?
Imagine how uncomfortable it was to go through.
Imagine how much that not only hurt their body, but their mind and soul for so, so, so many years. All because a sick man did horrific things with no remorse, no accountability, and full support and protection. If you think your brain reliving this trauma over and over again would be hard, imagine your body never being able to fully forget it.
Men, it’s going to take you, too.
It’s going to take you calling out your buddy for always hitting on underaged girls (imagine how young they are behind closed doors), it’s going to take you raising an eyebrow and asking questions. It’s going to take you getting involved.
Women and children alone cannot change a system that has deeply hurt and traumatized them for so many years. Who set this system up? It wasn’t women or children.
It’s going to take you too. Don’t for a second think that it’s okay as long as you aren’t doing it, because if you are not a part of the solution then you are part of the problem.
It’s going to take you, too.
There are women and children all around you that desperately need your help.
Please, stop making them walk alone through this hell.
We need you behind us, too.
