My cousin who was once told he was like a girl, but better is absolutely a misogynistic man. I thought he liked to listen, but it turns out that is only is he thinks he might get in your pants. I thought he stood up to bullies, but he really just wanted an excuse to threaten others and get away with it. I thought he was all ‘woman power’ because he loves River from Firefly, but really he just thinks Summer Glau is hot. I thought he appreciated meaningful dialog because he liked “chick flicks”, but he really was just going for the attractive actresses. He always said that was the reason, but I thought it was a cover to protect his fragile masculinity. I know guys sometimes over compensate, so I thought his talk was bravado. I was wrong. He really did watch Mean Girls just for glimpses up their skirts.
I recently worked up the courage to ask my facebook friends
to either unfriend me or Zac. This is hugely important for me for two reasons.
1.) It will protect me from surprise triggers of seeing him
tagged in the same posts as me and have to read his comments. For some reason,
even though I had him blocked, I still saw things when we were both tagged in
them sometimes. The worst were the memory pictures. I was especially close to
my grandmother. The older cousins called her mom (probably because that is what
they heard their mom call her), but when I was born, my mother asked her what
she would like to be called and she chose Grannie. I’m not sure how the
spelling came about, but Grannie always spelled it with an IE and never a Y. I
liked it because it made it more like a name than a title. I lived with her for
11 years of my life (until I was ten and then one more when I first started
college). It was torture getting tagged in photos of her after her death and
having to read Zac talking about how much he loved his "granny". I’m not saying
he shouldn’t be allowed to express his love for her, but I am saying it was
very hard on me to get smacked in the face with it unexpectedly.
2.) It is a clear and public declaration of which side people
are on. You cannot support both a rapist and his victim. It can’t be done. I
have no idea why so many people believe it can, but you absolutely cannot be
what the victim needs if you are also trying to be what the person who tortured
her for 13 years and stole her childhood needs. They have conflicting needs.
They both need to feel validated and the victim cannot feel validated if you
are validating her abuser…and if you validate the victim, the abuser isn’t
going to feel validated because the only way to validate her is by telling the
abuser he was wrong.
It was one of my least angry posts and borderline polite:
I tagged everyone in it, both so they would get a
notification and therefore see the post, but also to spread the word of what Zac
did and make sure as many people as possible who might know him, know what he
really is.
I did catch a little flak from people for including deceased
relatives in the list, but those relatives’ pages were the most likely to hold
family memorial pictures that both of us might get tagged in. When the
daughter and niece of those two relatives let me know that she couldn’t alter their pages since they were
memorial pages I thanked her, took them off the list, and simply unfriended
them to be sure I wouldn’t have to remain connected to Zac through them. I
wanted to give people every opportunity before just unfriending them because
these people were my family.
My misogynistic cousin told me that he didn't "do ultimatums or demands" and commented about my "utter disregard"
for the deceased family member's daughter’s feelings while offering her no support himself. He was
unaware of when or how the tragic deaths occurred and didn’t care. He was just
using her pain to be a dick to me and hide from the responsibility of owning his choice to support a rapist. The
daughter assured me she hadn’t been offended in the slightest and expressed
heartfelt regret that my cousin was behaving so inappropriately. She and I have
our differences of opinion now and again, but she always handles everything
with such poise that it is impossible not to have the utmost respect for her.
I unfriended the misogynist and wished him luck in his
choice, while expressing my continued concern of him allowing his daughter to
be endangered by his relationship with a pedophile rapist. I also messaged him
privately, to explain to him the issues concerning the memorial pages and
assure him that I meant no harm to anyone in regards to my post. Then I
carefully explained to him the reasons I would no longer be speaking to him and
keeping my son as far away from him as possible. His response was to own his
choices with pride and declare that he never said he was a good person to begin
with, that nothing I said had any effect on him, and I was really quite sad and
had evidently not been “fixed” by getting married and having a child the way
he had. It was honestly one of the most deluded things I have ever read.
I hadn’t expected him to reply at all, as my note was a
goodbye message and didn’t require any sort of follow up, but he made sure to
let me know not to respond to him in any way. I understand that immature and
controlling people need to have the last word. I myself have trouble ending
arguments, but that is because I find a point I feel the need to counter in
their replies, not because I need to be the one to end things. He didn’t
counter any of my points, he merely congratulated himself in his terrible
choices while trying to convince me that nothing I said mattered to him. That’s
really believable…
I have no need to message him again, I already said my
goodbye, but I do truly fear for his daughter. Zac isn’t the only terrible man
he is exposing her to. His other best friend is a man who routinely uses women.
This man steals their rent money and credit card information while mooching off
of them for months and sleeping around. He verbally abuses them and degrades
them every time they are alone. These men that he is bringing around
his daughter are going to distort her view of how men and women should
interact. I sincerely fear for her physical and emotional well-being and I hope
my cousin realizes that before it is too late.
What I learned from marrying an abusive asshole and having
an amazing little boy, is that you need to be selective about who you allow into
your child’s life. Children really are little sponges and they will soak up all
the information you give them and they are shaped by the choices you make. He
might be proud of not being a good person now, but he will surely regret it
when he sees the pain it is going to cause his daughter.
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