Women on women violence

There is something I need to share as part of my healing journey.

There is a lot of talk of violence by men.

And of course there is a lot of that. Physical violence by men on men. By men on women.

But the lack of talk of physical violence by women makes me feel underrepresented. Makes my experience feel unacknowledged.

Most of my life I have had just one parent.

Most of my life, even with the presence of a grandfather who was like a father to me, even with my mother's ex-husband, I have been abused in all sorts of ways... By a woman.

She hit me, pinched me, pulled me, threw me, broke things around me, threatened to break things around me. Humiliated me.

Made sure to use methods that wouldn't bruise and silenced me.

Made me feel like my body isn't mine, because in her eyes, it wasn't.

For years when I studied and adapted myself to her to help take care of my baby sister (now 7 y.o.), I gaslit myself. It was puberty, the reason why we had had so many fights when I was younger. I exaggerated. I flinched around her because I was sensitive to sound, and she yelled a lot, not because she'd regularly abused me.

Then there is a former high school class mate who has been permanently maimed because a girl had hit her with a glass bottle.

Then there is the many stories of how mothers hit sons and they have to take it because you "do not hit a woman".

Breaking things you love.

Spreading rumors that a girl is easy so boys feel more free to make advances without clear body language.

Who knows what some girls and women are capable if they feel safe to act as aggressively as men do?

I just don't know.

And I also think there are men who want to paint women as pure and harmless, and the aggressive ones as exceptions rather than more common, because it would make them feel less powerful. Similarly to how homophobia works.

But I digress.