My Ex Took a Red Pill
My ex and I broke up almost two years ago: December 2016. We’d been together for 7 years. In the final two-ish years of our relationship, I watched him slowly swallow a red pill {archived}, adopting near-right-wing attitudes over politics and culture.
While his direct treatment of me was not abusive in any way, mentally or physically, he often complained that there was something wrong with our relationship, that he’d taken it in the wrong direction from the start (a point of view he never explained to me), and that I wasn’t spending the right kind of time with him. He was never able to put his finger on how we could both work to fix the issues he had with our relationship. For me, my only issue was that he had issues, and that no matter what I did to fix them, nothing was ever quite right.
I can’t be sure when it started. The moment that stands out in my mind was the night I came home after having been stalked by a strange man. I was coming home from work late, and was on the somewhat empty subway platform when I noticed in my peripheral vision that a stout man, probably in his 40s, was staring at me quite intently, mouth partly agape. This is a regular subway occurrence; New York City is full of weirdos. So, avoiding eye contact of any sort, I moved far down the platform to move out of his gaze. I relaxed, and began reading a book.
He followed me. This was not a regular subway occurrence; this man was demanding my attention. He placed himself a good ten feet behind me, just inside my peripheral vision again. This made me feel extremely anxious, unsure, and unsafe. I returned to my original spot on the platform where there was a small group of 7 or 8 people. I told them I felt threatened, and while it could be nothing, I was hoping to stand with them. A couple of young guys started joking with me about it. Others perked up a bit, looking concerned. The harasser had followed me again and heard what I was saying. He began yelling, calling me a bitch and that he can stare at me if he wants. When my train came, I got on and he stayed back on the platform. That should have been the end of that, except that I was still riled up and angry, and felt a severe lack of ability to protect myself.
I’ve learned over my lifetime that I need to protect myself because no one else will. I don’t ask for help because help is rarely given in the way I need, or it’s only given with the expectation of payments of all sorts, which I’m often not willing to give, nor able to afford. When I got home and told my then boyfriend about this subway incident, I received an unexpected response from him: He defended the creepy stalker.
We had a very long conversation about the incident, as well as other times I’d been harassed (there had been uncountable times, just like so many other women). I tried to get my ex to empathize with me, but he couldn’t seem to figure out why I was so upset, and essentially scolded me for rejecting this man who he saw as an innocent, sight unseen. My ex told me I should be thankful for getting that kind of attention, and he wished that he got attention like that from women. Even when I told him that there were times when men had approached me in public asking for sex who had not frightened or disturbed me, and that this recent stalker and other instances were negative because I’d been objectified and threatened, he still did not think I had any right to be upset. He felt bad for the guy…and probably saw himself as that guy.
My experience with my ex is not unique. Friends of mine have had similar experiences where a close friend or loved one defends the street harasser. This was the first time this had happened in my private life with a close friend, lover, and confidant, and my intellectual knowledge of the possibility became visceral. I was utterly confused that this person I trusted could be so alien.
In that conversation about the stalker, my ex tried to listen to me and understand, and had a very clear emotional reaction to our clash that he wanted to resolve. He cared for me and our relationship and wanted us to be happy. In response, he began doing research online, perhaps to get some sort of consensus, or find studies somewhere to somehow better understand me, or to better show me how wrong my attitude was.
When I see this conversation through the hindsight offered through what happened in the years to follow, I see a very different situation that makes me concerned for my current self. What do I see in the way I’m treated by those who I surround myself with? Do I actually make my own decisions? If not, who do I serve? The shaky trust I have for whatever cave wall I stare at makes me constantly search for the light, but whenever a veil is lifted, I just find another cave wall.
The “research” he began conducting seemed to be what led my ex down the rabbit hole that has recently been dubbed the Intellectual Dark Web {archived}. He came to call the people he listened to his set of “trusted sources” whenever we had a political discussion of any kind, and it had him believing that women did not get paid less than men, racism had been solved back in the 1960s, and finally, that Trump was the best candidate for the 2016 presidency (he even started calling me a “Hillary Supporter” in a pejorative way during political discussions even though I didn’t like her much more than Trump). He frequently listened to Scott Adams, and Stefan Molyneux, and there was another guy whose name I never learned, whose rhetoric was terrifyingly racist and sexist. Eventually, my ex began wearing earphones while listening to these talks in our shared apartment, not because I asked him to…I suspect he was self conscious about it.
He broke up with me twice over a period of about five months. The first time, he realized that he’d not thought out what would happen after the breakup: who would move out of the apartment? Instead of working this through, he told me he felt better, and un-broke up with me. We started to try again to fix our relationship, but things deteriorated. He broke up with me again about three weeks before the end of my grad school semester. I was under an incredible amount of stress at the time, and decided that I’d had it. When he again changed his mind, I told him that I couldn’t keep trying to fix the issues he had with me, when every effort I made didn’t appease. I’d dropped a difficult career in the arts, and had stopped spending time with a few groups of friends throughout our relationship. I couldn’t think of anything else to discard from the life I’d made for myself before I’d met him, nor could I think of any way I could change my personality for his benefit. I imagined that even if I tried to do these impossible things, he would not have been satisfied. He understood and moved out the following week. I wish him the best, and hope he finds his way without dropping that burden on someone else’s shoulders as he did mine.
I should mention, here, that at the time our breakup happened, his family was going through a terrible experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. He didn’t seem to want my support, and I obeyed as I had no support to give.
One thing my ex repeated a few times in the final months we were still together, and again a few months later, shortly before he recommended that I start listening to Jordan Peterson talks, was, “It’s a really bad time for men, right now.”
edit 2018 November 7: This interview of Peterson by British GQ provides a more specific impression of what he stands for than my earlier link:
Added 11/15/2018:
I agree with my ex: It’s a hard time for white men right now because they are in uncharted territory. To give up their power to make room for the marginalized means they have to let themselves feel powerless, and they’ve been taught that that vulnerability is wrong or bad. Many of them, like my ex, think they’re losing everything, not realizing that this is where others have been for generations. So many white men want to be good, and are good in their hearts, but are frightened that they have done something horrifying to a woman without knowing, or have acted racist without realizing because they’ve been taught all this time that their privileged behavior is normal; they are frozen not knowing what to do, so they do nothing or defend themselves from what they perceive as attack. It’s hard for them because they are experiencing something wholly unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and they’re scared.
But the hard time they’re having right now is nowhere near as hard it’s been for others for so long.
When Trump said almost that very same statement {archived} in the Fall of 2018, that it’s a very hard time for men right now, I wasn’t surprised, but it was eerie. I know from having watched my ex go through his transformation that he got the sentiment from various Intellectual Dark Web figures he follows who are strongly supportive of alt-right-wing politics and red pill communities that lack the vision to see why they’re being asked to let go of their patriarchy. The orange cheeto essentially quoted a very large cultural movement, which had a very strong, negative affect on my personal life that I’m still processing. It’s surreal and scary, and while I’ve kept in touch with my ex, I’m now frightened of him, much more so than that asshole on the subway who probably just wanted me to know he was staring at my ass.
Addendum for Clarity, 2018 October 28
Writing is hard! It forces a reader to look through a very specific lens of bias that can go wrong in many ways. Thus, I’m adding a bit of information to this post for my own sake, if not others.
I want to be very clear. My ex is a very good person who tries his best to navigate this difficult world, which has become extremely polarized of late. The uncomfortable part of his moving so far right of center while he lived with me was the vast contradiction I saw between his growing horrific beliefs and the affable, supportive person I’d grown to love. My fear of my ex stems wholly from that contradiction, how it echos (or perhaps puppets) the right-wing National Socialism gaining power around the world, and how it erodes my ability to trust those I want to let in close. Trust and empathy are the most valuable things in my life. It’s very hard to be empathetic to someone whose beliefs erode any kind of trust I want to have for them, and vice versa.
I also want to be very clear about my beliefs. It is, indeed, a very difficult time for men, right now. Those who are stepping out of their power are seeing what the marginalized have been seeing for centuries, and it’s not easy. It is certainly going to give a hard time to someone who has never experienced it before: it’s scary down here, motherfuckers! Those who deny that they need to step out of their power and allow room for their vulnerability are going to suffer more for it. Men are amazing. I know they can make the most of their new positions of true equality. Right?
It is also absolutely NOT the time for women to step up onto the top of the pyramid in place of the patriarchy. There is toxic feminism just as there is toxic masculinity; one is just as bad as the other. A woman who hates men simply because they are men feeds the monster that made them decide to hate men in the first place.
Meghan Daum states my point of view perfectly in her article #MeToo Will Not Survive Unless We Recognize Toxic Femininity. Here’s one quote that generalizes the whole writing, but the entire thing gets an urgent point across:
In a free society, everyone, regardless of gender, or any other identification, is free to be a manipulative, narcissistic, emotionally destructive asshole. So I’m not sure why men have been getting all the credit lately…. Until [we admit] that women can be as manipulative and creepy and generally awful as men, the movement will continue to send a message that we’re not really whole people. And why would anyone believe someone like that?
edit 2019 July 9 and Aug 11: Altered some things for clarity and added some thoughts
edit 2023 October 26:relatable material from Jena Friedman:
