Why is misogyny so insanely triggering?

[ChipmunksRunFree]

(I know I have a horrible habit of making some posts and then not replying for a long time, but.... I need to make another post, with this one question, in a safe space, because the other online place for survivors I've been going to does not feel safe...)

Why is being exposed to anything misogynistic so triggering? Is it just a given for AFAB survivors of childhood abuse? Or is it just me? Why does it feel eerily similar to the abuse I experienced, why (all the abuse had nothing to do with misogyny in it, however - which is what is puzzling)?

I spend hours upon hours upon hours absorbed in reading news, debates, or articles about how women's rights are under a threat in the USA... I think I dissociate and disappear in that world for hours, from noon to late evening... I try to get into the heads and hearts of those that want to take these rights away... I hurt myself by going to places where such men and women congregate, to try to understand.... I pick fights with anti-choicers and become the worst version of myself. I instantly cuss them out and tell them that they are pieces of doodoo. It's just that the pain and terror inside of me doesn't know where to go. It sees that these people are unyielding, unfeeling, unthinking. So all it can do is explode and wish them ill.
But in the end, I am badly shaken and despairing, wishing of not wanting to live in such a world. If I'm forced to live in it, I'm afraid I'd become violent for the first time in my life. I seriously cannot see myself living in an openly oppressive world to women. Maybe in lifetimes past I could have. But I can't anymore. Not after I've seen the power of my own mind and how much potential lies within. Not only mine, but that of all other women and girls.

Why does it hurt so much? Is it just me here, who is maybe being hypersensitive to this issue? My molester (f) isn't/wasn't particularly misogynistic, I don't think. He's ok with abortion (but not birth control ). We are from a country where equality is integral. Maybe he had some unspoken misogynistic vibes I picked up?? - he's from a small country village where women mostly take care of the home and raise kids. After he started abusing me, he did say that women are like children. But he never put me or my mother down for being women, so I don't understand myself. (My first boyfriend was sometimes misogynistic - the most painful thing he ever said was that men are obviously smarter than women since they've been the ones to create masterpieces of arts, advance science, invent engineering, etc), which hurt me a lot, and for this reason I couldn't love him, but thought that I did.) Anyway, nowadays my abuser is a staunch registered Republican (I found out this year from a website), and I hate him even more.

WHY IS IT SO TRIGGERING????

[earthhorse]

Oh Chipmunksrunfree!

Misogyny is a big trigger for me too. Even though rejecting misogyny is quite rational, I can really overreact and feel super threatened. I feel despair and degraded, sometimes like I just never had a chance. It's obviously, in my case, related to abuse.

I know boys were sexually abused in my family and in the ring I was sold into and abused in. So it's not JUST the sexual abuse and incest. It's not like I don't see that hate and inequality really works out for anyone. But there was hierarchy, low, lower, lowest. It's all about power.

It messes with my head, because the abuse I was told, it was because I was a 'girl'- I asked for it. All girls are evil etc. And it messes with me because it has always felt like the threat comes form within, from who I am. That in the words of my father I bring it on myself. That girls are marked for degradation, for submission for service. To be silent. To be harmed, because we are evil incarnate who make men do bad things. To remain unheard. To not matter as much, to not be worth as much or to be worthless, useless, only good for sex and then too ugly to be desirable, good for nothing. To be unseen. To stay in our 'place'. To obey. Our bodies do not belong to us, but to the 'society', the patriarchy. That it's even an offense to God, if we should be or do, or dare to want otherwise.

To say these things trigger a sense of powerlessness and rage is an under statement. I also hate being enraged. And I hate myself for it. For someone who has always wanted so much to be and do 'good', but also needs to be heard and to heal and respected in the choices I needed to make to survive, these messages really mess with my head, my heart. Like I didn't have a right to exist in the first place and who am I to offend creation? How can there be sin against me when I from nature am so wicked? Misogyny makes women into monsters, it steals our voice and leaves only echos. The weight and the shame of the oppression crushes without and within.

I also think a lot of the propaganda, especially on social media is designed to reach us on an emotional level. One we don't really even know is there. And that our emotions are being manipulated and people are being set up against one another so they won't look to common interests or notice other things happening that are harmful to us all.

Right now women's rights are being weaponized to serve other agendas. Polarization is deliberate, it means that a consensus on who holds power is reached on ideological grounds, not on facts, so people react out of loyalty not based on evidence. And this is convenient for those who are doing a lot of harmful, unpopular things they'd like to hide - or more accurately escape accountability for. Which shows a lot of contempt for women if you ask me.

I don't have any easy answers or answers at all to be honest. But I do think the abuse you experienced definitely has a lot to do with why misogyny triggers you. It's about your autonomy, your inviolability, your right to choose.Your consent.

Sending solidarity and validation,
EH

[Scars]

((((( Chipmunksrunfree )))))

Why is being exposed to anything misogynistic so triggering?

I think it is triggering because it comes from a place of hate and separation ... any group becoming singled out to be mistreated makes my spine tingle at the recognition of evil, whether it's women, Hispanic, black, Christian, Jews. I can't stand to watch the news because of what is going on in my own country.

<3 scars

[Redisfinallyfree]

What Scars said! Me too.