Thoughts on a culture of sexual violence... (Trigger Warning?)
I don't know what should have a warning or not so I left it on.
Just something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while, and that I think would be best put in writing here, where hopefully people will understand a bit better.
About a week ago, my longtime friend and now ex-girlfriemd and I broke up. She's someone I've known for a long time, and I know her better than probably anyone else. During our conversation that night, however, she said something that surprised me.
She's been through a whole lot of hell growing up, having had health problems from a young age and then having been raped and beaten some years ago by an ex-boyfriend. She's...always been tough. I don't know how she gets through the shit she does. But she's made it so far. With luck she'll make it some time longer.
During our conversation that night, she told me one of the things she was really going to miss about me was that, "[She] never worried that I was going to hit her" and that she doubted she'd find someone else like that. When I responded that she would, she said that I didn't understand, that "That's just the way things work".
At that point, I cried a bit. She truly doesn't think she'll be able to find someone who will treat her like a human. When I responded, she told me I didn't understand...and at that point I realized I hadn't understood, not even close. I knew what she went through. I knew it had affected her hugely, how could it not? But I also knew she for whatever reason felt comfortable around me, and I felt good about that. I still do.
But I didn't think further. There is an entire culture layed out against her. I ride in friend's cars and hear a popular song about tying a woman to a bed and burning a house down around her (or something like that--I was trying to block it out). I see media that portrays her as nothing more than a bit of flesh to be owned by a real human. I see websites teaching people to do things that would at best be considered harassment and rape at the worst. I tried a new show on Netflix tonight and dropped it 20 minutes in because it already had so much blatant misogyny and worse in it that I couldn't watch. I hear a culture around me tell me that it's weird for men not to want to watch porn, not to want to watch degrading and abuse of women. That I'm wrong to even consider them as people.
I have no idea how she's not scared of me. I'm a big guy, tall and with a mostly shaved head. People have walked to the other side of the street to avoid me walking the other way with a leather jacket on. I don't understand how she doesn't feel threatened by me with everything around her telling her that I should, I own her, that she's nothing but a woman. When I was with her, I thought it was good she felt comfortable around me, and abouti why she felt that way. But I never really thought about why she wouldn't feel comfortable around everyone else. When she said that "That's just the way the world works" I finally got some of it.
I don't think she was thinking any of this when she said it
I don't know if she's that aware of it herself. But there's a culture permeating everything around us that tells her she should be afraid. It makes me sad. But it also makes me furious.
I can speak out against this culture whenever I hear it. I can protest for awareness, fight for the rights of women, do what I can to help victims of this culture. I don't know how much I can do against this huge, barely visible, insidious enemy. But I sure as hell want to fight it.
I don't know when she'll be able to be comfortable around another guy. I hope sooner rather than later, and hopefully he won't fall prey to everything telling him not to accept her as another person, another human.
Anyways, it's late and I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, so I'll leave it here.
Strength to all victims out there. 
= new reply since forum marked as read
It is so sadly rare to find men who get it and don't make excuses for it.
Fuck, not exactly easy to find women like that either now that I think of it. 
If you do appear (on the outside) to be a rough around the edges hyper masculine guy, you'll have that much more credibility with males to begin to nudge them to greater awareness of their privileges, mistaken assumptions, and range of better behavioral choices. I don't know the sphere in which you live and work, and obviously that "nudging" can take a lot of different forms, but I've noticed well-placed regular humor (of the Will Ferrell kind) when you see bad behavior in other guys helps to create a stereotype in their mind of an asshole, entitled guy that most guys don't want to be and motivates them to change their behavior a little.
I'm a pragmatist about social change and support the work that changes attitudes even 10% (as if that could be quantified) in a healthier, less objectifying direction as much as that which pushes for much more radical change. It all helps.
I think a lot of men somehow feel that the emotional intelligence and sensitivity you have toward women as human beings is somehow impossible to have and still retain "masculinity," which sadly for them must be predicated to that degree on being not-woman, meaning their subjectivity is more valid and real and they have to participate in all sorts of casual ways of objectifying women (e.g., the daily, unquestioned "right" to violent and degrading porn).
If someone with your "scary" appearance gives otherwise oblivious, casually abusive guys a way to critique the worst of masculinity without feeling that they're being effeminized, I'm all for it. People move in fits and starts toward better treatment of others and sometimes the most important thing is the experience of that first attitudinal change. It provides momentum and an experience with tolerating and resolving cognitive dissonance that makes the next change more palatable and likely. Glad we have another ally. 
Sorry about your loss, btw.
