If you had asked me whether I thought my family were toxic before I moved away from my home city, I would have said no. Half of them have ADHD, they love to drink, but that’s part of the culture they come from.
On my first day back my uncle said my Aunt needs a “bullet in the head,” when I insisted on pulling the car around for her, at her request, and his objection, when she has a pre-existing injury and is in her 60s.
Why did he have a problem with her needs being accommodated, when she has spent her entire life accommodating the needs of everyone else around her?
Why should she be threatened with death for causing him an inconvenience?
My uncle isn’t a violent man. I have no concerns for her safety, and it was said in jest. If I had heard it 2.5 years ago, I would have been annoyed but I would not be experiencing somewhat of an existential crisis/threat to how I perceived them, like I am now.
I don’t know what I wanted to gain from this post, and there are other (some worse) things I’ve witnessed about the men in the family since coming back home – thankfully I’m only here for a week.
All to say, fuck the patriarchy. It is alive and well. It is in our families, our social systems, our research, and our policies.
Comments
A teacher i follow the other day said everyone in our society behaves like addicts who aren’t getting their hits all the time they’re not on their phones and it explained so much of our current situation to me.
I’m constantly amazed at the stuff I used to see as normal before I had, like a redditor called it, The Thought.
Most, if not all, of the people in my life with adhd (a lot of them, it’s genetic) are wonderful- so let’s not associate it with toxicity- does nothing to help the stigma. It does sound like toxic masculinity and addiction are alive and kicking, however.
Nothing like that distance and freedom from it (in your personal life if not overall) to see how much it sucks and how prevalent it is.
It’s disconcerting when you realize it’s coming from people you’re supposed to try to respect.
ADHD doesn’t come from a culture…it’s a neurodevelopmental condition. It doesn’t come from a specific country or culture. So it’s not responsible for misogyny, but is responsible for behaviors seen as rude like interrupting and interjecting irrelevant conversation additions.
That said, it’s good that you recognize subtle but toxic behaviors. The more women notice these in their families the better. Hopefully it will lead to more women calling it out
I hope you’re feeling up to the task of calling some of that shit out. Even if they’re going to say “it was just a joke,” you can then begin to challenge their behavior further by asking what was funny about it? Aunt has spent her life accommodating the needs of everyone else… It’s time for someone to think of her first.
Gentle nudges and gentle questions can do wonders. So can pointing out what love really looks like.
Ask him those questions. Loudly. The “why” toddler stage is my go to for people’s crappy actions because they think no one else will see it. Let him explain why he thinks she doesn’t deserve anything.
that’s so violent and not in any way funny. geez. what is wrong with men, literally.
I spent almost 12 years moving every 1-3 years. Only speaking to my family on the phone, same with my husbands family. My mom stayed with me for 2mos at one point but other than that, I saw them twice for a weekend each time when I visited.
When I moved back, the rose colored glasses were gone. I grew and changed and learned, I wrongly assumed my family grew in any way. It left me with a bitter pill to swallow: that I had been like that and thought nothing of it. Annoyed here. Dismissed there. Joined at times. Or thought no harm of it.
Yeah. We don’t speak anymore. I cannot stand being in the presence of that behavior because they refuse to grow or learn. I will not backslide into that behavior by surrounding myself with it.
My husbands family is kept at arms length because atm its not feasible to go NC completely, which will happen eventually.
This The Thought moment you had will go one of 2 ways:
You speak up, they hear you and make adjustments, they remain in your life.
You speak up, they dismiss it, argue with you and then start doing it more to make it uncomfortable on purpose, you decide that they don’t deserve the benefit of a relationship.
Once you’ve had The Thought, even if you don’t find your voice just yet, it will come and you’ll speak up. And then they will tell you who they are. Believe them.
Men say things shockingly blithely . They need to be called out by other men. “Really cousin/uncle/dad/bro? A bullet? You want your wife dead because someone is helping her? Her value is gone because you are such a cowboy and all she is to you is some lame horse? You think so little of your own wife? I heard you. You should apologize. Otherwise I am going to invite her over to stay and call the cops because you sound lime you want to hurt her. It’s not funny. No one is laughing.”
Because they don’t even hear women. Which is why the men who also hear it need to speak up.
It’s weird how, once we’re older, we notice things that seemed normal to us in childhood. I visited my grandpa (not willingly) last year and when he told my husband about how I had a lot of adventures with my granny (helping her cook basically since before I could speak) my husband, in an attempt to keep conversation, said “You must have eaten good.”
Grandpa proceeded to tell him how granny was raised to be a wife by her family, to do the things men can’t do, like chores.
Let that sink in.
Men can’t do chores, according to my grandpa.
Knowing him we didn’t want to get into the whole thing where my husband is actually the one doing the dishes at the time. Might have made him croak of a heart attack.
But he did, ultimately, die all alone in a hospital a month later. He was my family’s tormentor and the world is better for not having him in it now.
The older I got as a child the more I saw how toxic Grandpa is and how he affects others, but it took until my 20s and 30s to realize just how horrible he is. Things that were “normal” (like him groping my mom in front of me) but borderline uncomfortable have me flabbergasted now. Don’t wish that on anyone. Glad that some of us can at least break free from it, the dream is that nobody has to have those realizations anymore.
“Dear, could you pull up a bit closer so I don’t have to walk as much”
“You should be shot”
What the actual fuck