Are you stupid for loving the man that hates you?

Why women get shamed for staying with toxic men

A TikTok creator recently went viral for sharing the story of her “gym crush.” She began the video crying telling us that the man she’s liked for several years goes to the same gym as her.

Soon after running into each other, he invited her over to his house. While there he proceeded to make many impassioned romantic remarks. Namely that he thought they would make cute kids together and that he wanted her to be the mother of his cats.

Considering the woman was extremely attracted to him, she was enthralled by these comments. The next day she messaged him detailing her feelings towards him. In this message she says that his “masculine energy” puts her in her “feminine energy” and that she wants to “melt into his arms.” He gave a sweet but distant response to this. When she saw him again at the gym he ignored her and talked to another girl. This left her greatly distressed and led her to upload to TikTok pleading for advice.

The main response she got was mockery. Her comment section was filled with women saying she was desperate and coming off too strong, those comments got thousands of likes. I was shocked by this reaction and watched the video several times to ensure I got the story correct.

To me, it was extremely clear that he had led her on. He made explicitly romantic remarks, leading her to believe the attraction was mutual. When she spoke to him in the same fashion he did, direct and romantic, he ignored her. At no point was her behavior misplaced or inappropriate, her actions were understandable for someone who thought she had a mutual crush.

The response to her video got me thinking of a trend in how women who are victims of mens poor behavior get treated. Often, they’re blamed.

Many women are made to feel bad because they withstand poor treatment from men or are not able to immediately see it as poor treatment. Often girls make videos sharing the distasteful things their boyfriends or husbands have done and the comments will be filled with “girl, leave him,” “could never be me!” and “this is so embarrassing.”

Time and time again, women who don’t immediately leave after the first red flag are laughed at when they later admit to the treatment they accepted in the relationship. But I ask, is this reaction fair?

It seems to be the assumption that a woman accepting toxic behavior from a man means she lacks self-respect and for that reason should be ashamed of herself. But I find this reaction rich considering the double standard women are held to: you’re made fun of for being single then also made fun of for staying in a relationship.

Truth is, most women stay in toxic relationships. The majority of relationships stay together after infidelity. From regular women to wealthy celebrity women, all of them who are victims of cheating are shamed for staying. Yet clearly this shame isn’t translating to any of them making a different choice.

Women experiencing mistreatment in a relationship is a widespread issue, women are disproportionately the victims of infidelity and domestic violence. An issue this widespread can not be the product of individual women not having enough self esteem.

Under a patriarchy, women are produced as subjects for men. For a long time marriage to a man was the only way a woman could secure safety and financial provision for herself. Still, women are seen as beings that exist solely to serve men. This reality greatly impacts the way women date. Many women are shamed by friends, family and society at large for being single. When a society thinks a woman has no use outside of men, it will of course view women without men as failures.

Additionally, women are often greatly rewarded for being self-sacifical. The more a woman suffers for the betterment of others, the better of a woman she is.

With this in mind it becomes easy to understand why women stay with toxic men. They’ll do anything to avoid being single. Since women are supposed to be subservient to men, the choice to stomach whatever treatment men give you feels like an obvious one. You’re not taught to do anything else.

Shaming women for choosing to stay with a guy that’s not treating them well as if every facet of society hasn’t told her that she has no value outside of a man and should tolerate whatever treatment he gives her, is ludacris. These women are acting exactly how they’ve been socialized to act.

The only thing gained from shaming women for staying with bad men is that a woman feels bad about herself and men get away unscathed when they were the one that did all the bad behavior.

I do think getting women to leave toxic relationships will require conversations around self-respect but so long as men are allowed to treat women however they’d like with no repercussions and women are still made to feel that they have no worth outside of men, the issue will remain.

The idea of decentering men and encouraging women to have a sense of self and aspirations for the future outside of men is an excellent first step that I encourage more women to take. In conjunction, I encourage more women to stop themselves before the knee jerk reaction to shame a woman arises.

We’re all products of our conditioning. We start moving towards a better world when we can more accurately identify the issue: male perpetrators of abuse. If anyone deserves shaming, it’s them.