Why Do I Have to Endure Your Hatred Just Because I’m a Woman?

Male aggression and bullying shouldn’t be an accepted occupational hazard for female writers

Every now and then I get emails from men who are trying to find their way to woke, but who are stumbling on some deeply rooted patriarchal mental blocks. They ask me questions about women like, “Why are you all so angry?” or “Can you read this article and tell me if you think this woman is justified in her rage and if so, why?” or “Do you think it would be okay if I said ___ to my female friend, or is that inappropriate?”

As much as I appreciate the fact that these men trust me enough to ask questions that I imagine make them feel very vulnerable, I also laugh at the idea that anyone would think I could (or should) answer such questions. I can’t speak for every woman. And god knows, I’m just a fucked up human, too, who is also trying to unplug from the patriarchy — and as such, I don’t have the right answers, either.

Sometimes, though, I have to admit to feeling somewhat annoyed when they worry about being criticized or taken to task to by women. Don’t get me wrong — I get it. This is a sensitive time for men when women are finally challenging the status quo and demanding better behavior and I understand that many men might feel anxious about doing or saying the wrong thing and being called out — especially publicly.

But when men write to me to complain about this — that they want to write without fear of women criticizing their articles, or say what they want to say without women pushing back or protesting — I have stopped trying to sugarcoat my response.

I remind them that it took me years to build up the courage to write what I write because I knew I would receive insults, harassment, and hatred from some male readers who are still deeply entrenched in the patriarchy. I remind them that all women know they will face this when speaking honestly in public because this is the way it has been for a very long time. Our mothers faced this vitriol and aggression. Our grandmothers faced it. And on and on.

I remind them that it took me years to build up the courage to write what I write because I knew I would receive insults, harassment, and hatred from some male readers who are still deeply entrenched in the patriarchy.

I remind them that I had to choose to write under a pseudonym because I’ve been harassed and stalked in the past and I have deep fears about that happening again. I remind them that I came to this decision to write openly knowing what awaited me. I chose to use my voice, even in the face of fears around my safety.

I say to them, “With all due respect, how can you complain to me about being afraid of a woman criticizing a perhaps unintentional sexist remark you might make when so many female writers don’t even feel safe enough to reveal their real names?”

Yes, I came to writing here with the expectation of being trolled and harassed. I know what kind of cesspool the internet can be. And I know how desperately some men cling to the white supremacist patriarchy, determined to hang on to the power they think they have by doing everything they can to push the “others” down.

I was pleasantly surprised when I first started writing as Yael that I received very few hate comments from men. I have seen so many of my fellow female writers get battered by cruel and aggressive sexist comments.

But it’s inevitable. It’s as predictable as a math equation. The more I write, the more men troll me.

I got so much hate mail, hate comments, and hate tweets in December, that for the first time, I lost count. I also got not one, but two comments that I can only describe as “death threat adjacent.” Here’s my favorite of the two:

Idiot SJW’s [social justice warriors] like you are obvious. Wish the Joker would shoot someone like you in the head, because morons like yourelf [sic] don’t deserve to live.

The other comment, also from a man, explained that I was a “guest” on “his” planet and that I needed to understand that women like me won’t be around for much longer (whatever the fuck that means) and that men shouldn’t have to pay for women’s dumb mistakes (again, whatever that means). I immediately blocked that guy and hid his comment, but on Christmas Eve, I found that he had searched for me on Instagram where he left another hate comment, reiterating that it was essential that I listened to him “before you leave MY planet.”

I was terrified when I read that — was he threatening me? — and I’m sorry to say that in my fear, I deleted the comment and blocked him without first taking a screenshot so that I could report him.

It’s as predictable as a math equation. The more I write, the more men troll me.

When I wrote about Hallmark’s homophobic decision to pull a commercial featuring a lesbian couple, I got tweets from white, self-proclaimed Christian men who said I was a “dumb liberal bitch.” (Way to go, guys. You make Jesus proud.)

A male Medium reader left a comment on the story in which he called me a “whiny tween who looks for ways to pick fights at the dinner table.” He said I was just looking to shock my conservative family by being “different.” It made me laugh that he assumed my family was conservative or homophobic. Actually, they would love it if I came home with a girlfriend, a trans partner, or a thrusband. They don’t give a shit who I date, so long as I’m happy. But this reader’s intentions weren’t lost on me: He wanted to take away my voice, put me in my place, and ignore the real issue by acting as if my words were just a spoiled little girl’s temper tantrum.

But it wasn’t that or even the comments that expressed certain male readers’ desire for me to die that hurt the most. It was the lovely man who trolled my very personal article about an emotional affair and had this to say, among other things:

This new genre of narcissism dubbed social activism is mental diarrhea. Your experience can’t even be honestly called an ordeal.

I don’t know why, but this one was the one that made me crack. I had to walk away from my computer to keep from responding to him with something like:

Fuck you, you fucking shit-brained gorilla. How dare you come into my space and attempt to define my feelings and my experience. Get your misogynistic ass out of my face and go find the guy who wants to shoot me in the head. Let’s see what happens when you two Cro-Magnon imbeciles play with firearms together.

Of course, I didn’t say that. Because a) there’s no fucking point in engaging with assholes like that and b) I don’t want to lower myself to their level of scum and c) I genuinely fear responding even in peaceful ways because some of these guys, as I’ve discovered, won’t hesitate to find me on social media and continue the harassment.

Because this is, as they reminded me, their planet.

I know the harassment will never stop. But you know what? I fucking hate it.

It gets under my skin. It sometimes scares me. And thankfully, it also enrages me. I say “thankfully” because somehow, the anger helps. I can’t use it, mind you — god forbid I threaten the masculinity of one of these cavemen by actually standing up for myself. But it feels good to burn and to know that I have the spirit in me to fight.

Ultimately, though, I wonder: Why the hell do I have to endure this just because I’m a woman? Why should any of us? Why the hell do so many of us have to write under fake names in order to protect our safety and reputations? What the hell kind of madness is this?

I know what it is, though. I know exactly the madness it is. It’s about certain men being terrified of losing the power they think they were given by their male god. It’s about their terror of losing their place in the hierarchy.

I know it’s not personal. I am nothing to them but a threat to the status quo that supports them and their privilege. All I have to be in order to draw their ire, contempt, and violence is female. All I have to do is to speak out against the systems of power that oppress everyone but them.

I wish I could close my eyes and summon the power of lightning out of Zeus’s hand and into my own so I can fling those electric pikes at the men who dare to step into my castle and demand to take control. I wish I could wield a sword with the same courage and determination as Eowyn, destroying these Witch Kings and beheading their toxic, prehistoric rhetoric. I wish I could rise from the volcanoes that tower on the horizon outside my window and, with the sheer force of my rage, pour the lava at these monsters’ feet, and watch them burn just as their great-great-grandfathers burned my great-great-grandmothers.

I am nothing to them but a threat to the status quo that supports them and their privilege.

I don’t want to accept a world in which a man thinks he can decide whether or not I am worthy enough to live. I don’t want to tolerate having men tell me how I feel or defining my experiences. I don’t want to hear one more man call me a whiny child, a slut, a moron, a bitch.

But I know I have no choice but to endure this. This is the way it is. And all I can do is keep pulling the poison of the patriarchy out from within me, where it resides so deeply, and to keep speaking out against sexism, racism, transphobia, and homophobia.

It is our duty, I believe, to heal ourselves and in the process, help others heal — even the pigshit misogynists who are so poisoned by the patriarchy, they don’t even notice that they’re dying.

© Yael Wolfe 2020