Me too. I was abused as a child. I was raped as an adult. So yes, I can say me too.

I also have male relatives that were molested as a child. And male friends who were asulted or abused as adults. I had a friend who was being stalked by his ex. I watched her beat him, throw things at him, and make him bleed. I watched him defend himself by begging her to leave, telling her she wasn’t supposed to be there. Do you know how ineffective begging your attacker to stop is? Pretty damn ineffective.

The outcome of that situation…she called the cops and said he broke the restraining order he had. All she had to do was say “I saw his truck pass by my place” and they went to pick him up, and put him back in jail. No proof. Often he was on the other side of town, nowhere near her, and they just picked him up.

But that restraining order was awesome. For an answer is perfect ammo to control your victim. She was able to get it in no time flat just by saying he hit her, even though he didn’t. And he felt so guilty for just holding her wrists so she couldn’t punch him that he just let it happen.

This is a culture where men have been told so often that they are the aggressors, they are the problem, they are the abusers, that when they are abused they can not see it. And when they speak out they are either ignored or told to shut up.

So, me too. I was abused. And I know a lot of women, and men, who have been abused. I know men and women who have been abusers. And I know that the law often is used as a way of abusing men because we are trained to believe women, not men.

I was abused, but the abuse that was done to me does not define me. I define me. And I will keep saying that, keep shouting that from the roofs, keep encouraging others to say that until we stop being sexist to men. Until we start treating women as actual human beings who can heal and grow instead of fragile flowers that must be protected from every little thing.

We can not move forward unless we acknowledge that humans are humans, and it does not matter what sex you are, what race you are, what religion you began with. Those things have more to do with what you were born to, and what genetics you have, then what mind you have inside you. None of those external things define you as much as your mind and heart do. And until we learn that, until we learn that we can be more than what others define us as, we can not move forward from this place.