You Can Still Be Predatory If You’re Not a Man

I have trauma with men. I don’t have trauma with people who are not men.

Nice to meet you.

I don’t know how to properly emphasize how much my coping mechanisms for this trauma have bled into my personality. It’s one of my most common conversations, my most common jokes… My issues with men almost feel as natural as breathing. It feels like something I’ve carried for so long that I grew new muscles to carry them. 

But for once, this article isn’t really about men. (Although it still sadly does not pass the Bechdel test.) With my previously mentioned trauma and fuming hatred at the modern patriarchy, one can imagine that I focus most of my energy against men and their predatory behavior.

It did not occur to me until recently that other genders are most definitely included in this discussion as well.

But back to men. My fear of men presents itself in a lot of ways. I dress down when I meet them one-on-one. I try to meet with male authority figures in public spaces. And, when I notice a guy has an unrequited crush on me (with a few rare exceptions), I promptly avoid them until they date someone else.

(And if they never date someone else, then I guess we’re never speaking.)

I’m not obliged to give anyone else my friendship, but I harbored some level of guilt over that last reaction. Eventually, although I did regret losing potential friendships, I came to understand that I didn’t deserve to feel bad. When someone likes me and I don’t like them back, my first reaction is a feeling of controlled, inescapable terror. I refuse to criticize anyone for trying to avoid that feeling.

For a while, though, I absolved myself of guilt by placing the blame on the patriarchy. “It’s not my fault men have to unlearn their misogyny” was a common self-assurance (and still true). I wanted to avoid men to avoid that trauma, which had largely been enforced by the society we live in. Obviously, I told myself, that feeling of terror was a result of systemic oppression. 

So, imagine my surprise when a girl confessed to me, and I felt that same wave of inescapable panic. 

Oh, I realized. So this is a me problem. 

After that moment, I had to adjust my strategy. I still avoided male acquaintances after sensing they had feelings, but if I was acquainted with anyone who wasn’t a man (or if I was friends with a guy who managed to gain my deep trust), I stuck through the terror. 

I told myself that my fear of men was rational, but my general fear of people-who-liked-me was irrational. So I gave a pass to people who weren’t men. After all, women and other oppressed genders understand how it feels to be victim to predatory behavior. They would not subject anyone else to that same exploitation.

As it turns out, that’s not so true!

My friend recently texted me, “It is fun when you realize… women can be extremely predatory.” As we shared experiences, I discovered that I had already arrived at this knowledge. Our conversation was the accumulation of a slow-rising conclusion; it felt more like undiscussed fact than a big realization. 

Although I always knew that women could be predatory, that information felt more like a loose, vague acknowledgment. I dismissed these theoretical “predatory people who weren’t men” as exceptions to the pattern. And maybe, for the most part, they still are. 

But they’re still common enough to be a problem.

Freshman year, one of my friends came home to tell me about a classmate with a massive crush on her. The entire description of this classmate was about three hours long and involved emotional manipulation, using a mental disorder as an excuse for shitty behavior, and a truly horrific invasion of boundaries. 

At first, the gender of this classmate didn’t concern me; I was reacting to a friend’s experience with an extremely toxic person, and I was too wrapped up in my shock and indignation to care about that detail. Later, as I arrived back at college, I processed that fact aloud to my friends.

“I used to feel so lucky knowing that I can date women or nonbinary people and avoid my trauma with men,” I said. “But my friend just went through the worst, most toxic shit I’ve ever seen, and it was with a girl.” 

After my friend’s experience, exploitative behavior in all genders wasn’t just a loose, vague idea anymore. As I watched my gay guy friends get involved in relationships with predatory age gaps, I realized this toxic pattern was relevant to the entire LGTBQ+ community (regardless of gender). In the world of heterosexuality, I also began noticing society’s horrific tendency to dismiss women pedophiles, assaulters, and abusers. (Exhibit A: SNL’s skit on a woman getting involved with a minor. Exhibit B: Emma Roberts’ still 15.1 million followers after TMZ reported that she “was arrested for a domestic violence incident” with Evan Peters, which Roberts’ and Peters’ reps claimed was an accident.) 

I downloaded dating apps and talked to women who were unicorn hunters. (Or couples who wanted me, a bi woman, to take the girlfriend and the boyfriend as a package deal.) Some of my friends actually went on dates with unicorn hunters and found themselves facing awkward, unwanted requests for threesomes. 

And then finally, in Italy, a 38-year-old woman asked about my ethnicity, called my culture (or me; it was hard to tell) beautiful, and then suggestively asked me how old I was. She struggled to speak English, so it’s definitely possible I misinterpreted her, but my gaydar was already on alert before I had that conversation, and I felt my intuition rise during that interaction. (And I have rarely, rarely been wrong about my intuition.) 

The wave of panic was back, and this time, it was not controlled. It was completely paralyzing. I was a tornado in a snowglobe -- a fragile, frozen exterior trying to contain chaos. Even though I’ve previously felt terror with women who had unrequited crushes on me, it had never, ever felt like this. Like it was inescapable. Like it was predatory, inappropriate, and demeaning. 

Like how I feel around men.

Did I mention we were staying in the same hostel? And she slept in the bed underneath mine?

For the rest of my trip, I couldn’t breathe until I was back in the airport. Again, at that point I knew that all genders were capable of predatory behavior, but that was the first time I experienced it firsthand from a person that wasn’t a man. 

I hoped -- and still hope -- it was the last.

My original this-or-that stance on men and predatory behavior was safe. Comfortable. Now, I have to grapple with this new, complicated, nuanced system of opinions. There are a lot of intersectional ideas here, which means I have to make a few final disclaimers. 

The predatory behavior of women or other oppressed genders does not somehow invalidate the predatory behavior of men. At the same time, male victims need to be taken seriously when they tell their stories. The #MeToo movement is necessary for all genders. 

In my experience, the LGBTQ+ community has a problem with predatory age gaps. However, lesbians and gay men get unfairly lumped with pedophilia and other predatory behavior simply due to society’s homophobia. Don’t let this information about age gaps confirm any harmful stereotypes you might have. 

On that note, I want to reiterate that lesbians are certainly not defined by the predatory women my friends and I have experienced. It’s actually a common joke that most sapphics are always afraid to make a move, because we hate the idea of making anyone feel the way men make us feel. 

I still avoid men, and I’m going to keep avoiding them until I feel ready. While predators can be any gender, misogyny and the patriarchy still largely benefits men, so all men have to unlearn their misogynistic behavior in order to make society safe. (I’m only friends with men who actively do that.) I firmly believe that if I lower my guard around men, I could end up manipulated, injured, abused, or even killed. 

After all of that, I only have one well-worn, long-repeated, overly obvious PSA:

Anyone can be predatory. 

Make sure you’re not.