Trigger Warning: This Article Discusses Sexual Assault

This article contains discussions of sexual assault, which may be distressing for some readers. Please consider your emotional well-being before proceeding.

Approximately one in every six American women has experienced either attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Despite of this statistic, and all of the other horror stories I heard growing up, I never believed anything bad would happen to me. Of course not, I was just a kid.

Sexuality wasn’t something I had even thought about as a concept until I was in 8th grade. I had crushes in the past on both boys and girls, but when it was on a gir,l I didn’t really realize the reality of the situation. In 8th grade, someone told me she was pansexual, something I had never heard of, so I asked what it meant. “To not care of gender, but to love the person for who they are inside” she told me. Without skipping a beat, I replied, “That’s me!”

When I got into high school, my identity was all over the place. I thought there was beauty in identifying as everything all at once. I wasn’t a boy or a girl, such social constructs couldn’t constrain me. I continued to have crushes on both boys and girls, but I started to think that maybe gender did matter to me. Maybe I wasn’t pansexual after all.

In my sophomore year, things changed. I had my period one night, and we had no pads at our house. With no one home to take me to the store, I decided to walk on my own. Even though the moon was out, I wasn’t worried, I’d gone out alone all by myself plenty of times before. I had a friend on the phone too, so what could possibly go wrong? Despite my adolescent belief of invincibility, I felt myself getting nervous as a man on a bicycle started to come closer. At fifteen years old, my world was about to change.

It was all a blur, an awful blur. My mind would drift from wondering what I was going to do about my homework due tomorrow, and whether or not I was going to die. After Two weeks, I went back to school, but everything was different. Without knowing who had done it, I started to become nervous. Is it the boy sitting next to me in health? Is it the man walking down the hallway looking at me? How could I walk home from school anymore when it had happened in my own neighborhood?

I questioned a lot, wanting to believe I was a lesbian, and feeling ashamed for any feelings I could have towards a man. I hated men, resented and loathed them. I held the belief that all men were inherently evil, and that it was in their nature, something they couldn’t control. I almost pitied them, for it wasn’t their fault they were born to be evil.

On the other hand, I put women on a pedestal. To me, women were ethereal and could do no wrong. I even romanticized the wrongdoings of women, or as some would say, “supporting women’s rights, as well as their wrongs.”

It was later in my teen years when I learned of incel communities -those who are involuntarily celibate, harboring hatred towards women- and would often cry, feeling as though my existence would never be good enough. Wondering what I did wrong, just by being born a woman. I saw videos of men saying victims of sexual assault are only considered “damaged goods.” That was what felt I had become.

I harbored even more hatred towards men knowing what they are capable of. Seeing them complaining online because of a lack of sex disgusted me, and only fueled my low opinion of them. Women were beautiful, kind, and sweet. Men were disgusting, vulgar, and menacing. Yet, I viewed myself in the same way as the men I detested.

I was disgusting. I was vulgar. I was ugly. I’d become hateful, and I resented myself as much as I resented men. I considered myself a misandrist, and I felt it was justified. I couldn’t relate to others anymore. I felt no sense of community, even in my own gender, because I felt so separate from it. I could no longer imagine myself in a relationship with a man, yet I didn’t feel I would ever be good enough for a woman.

With no one to talk to about it, these feelings became repressed, and still continue to affect me. Through time, I realized the errors of my ways. Approximately 3% of American men, about 1 in every 33 individuals, have encountered either attempted or completed rape during their lifetime.

People often say “you are not alone” in an effort to comfort others, but I had always found this term depressing. I wasn’t alone. This has happened to many people before me, and will continue to. To people of all different genders. In this instance, gender didn’t matter because it could happen to anyone. I still harbor resentment and fear towards men, but I feel empathy alongside those feelings. For the incel forums online, I even empathize, because I had too blamed an entire gender for how awful life had felt. It took me time to unlearn my misandry, and it will take time for others to unlearn their misogyny. It can never happen if there is no empathy. Of course, I no longer feel as I did when I was a kid, as if gender completely doesn’t matter. Though I learned that whatever gender a person is, they can do evil things or have evil things be done to them.

How can I harbor hatred for men who continue to display misogynistic tendencies, if I had felt feelings in a similar manner? Hate will never be eradicated if we attack it with more hate. To have conversations and try and see from another person's perspective will help us gain understanding and grow in our own perspectives, and if we completely close our minds from anything other than what we believe in we aren’t able to grow as people or as a society.. In confronting my own journey through misandry, I've come to understand the insidious nature of both misogyny and misandry. These entrenched prejudices not only harm individuals but also perpetuate cycles of fear and resentment. While eradicating such deeply ingrained biases may seem daunting, it's imperative to recognize that change is possible. It begins with fostering empathy, dismantling harmful stereotypes, and promoting understanding across genders.