If anyone wants to know why I centre women in my feminism - regardless of how difficult it might be at times - and why I have no patience or respect for women who do not, read on.

In my 20s I was in a relationship with a man who sexually abused me. I had many female friends and colleagues at the time, but not one of them wanted to hear me, speak to me about it or help me. My story was met with silence and withdrawal of friendship.

When I was drugged and raped by another man, which finally broke me, not one woman - and I told many, including several lesbian friends and two mothers of friends - told me it wasn't my fault. I was shunned, rejected and gossiped about. One even put me in danger by telling my ex.

I became a ghost. A non-entity. Dissociating constantly as my abuse escalated, I felt like I was living under a glass bell. The rejection by women was the ultimate desolation of my spirit and it cemented the insecurity, self-loathing and guilt which should have been anger.

If it wasn't for my dog, I'd have felt alone on this Earth. When we had to flee my family home due to severe mental illness in the family, not one woman in my life took me in. So I went back to my abusive ex in order to not end up on the street. It was for my dog more than me.

Three years have passed before a random woman - an admin in the Dean's office in the teaching hospital where I was studying, really saw me. At that time I felt about 75% transparent, like if you used photoshop and faded me out. She brought me back to life.

And for many years afterwards, she had been the only one to have shown me sisterhood. I had a female therapist for a year (all I could afford) and one female friend who was there for me but turned out she wanted a romantic relationship. I left the country and lived with my shame

While trying not to let it show, and for the most part it didn't. It wasn't until I met radical feminists circa 2012 that I experienced being seen and heard by women. That I learned why, in the past, women treated me way they did. I have forgiven them all.

And have been centring women in my feminism ever since. Now, it breaks my heart and it makes me very angry when I see women ostracise women who are hurt by men, and pander to the needs/demands/reputations of men instead. How can they be so cruel? So selfish? Do they think

What happened to us can never happen to them? That they will never feel like a ghost, living under the glass bell, a reanimated zombie, alone in the world, because no woman wants to see their pain or stand with them and against those who hurt them? I have no answers, just anger

And disappointment. And I don't talk to such women anymore, because from personal experience, which gets reinforced constantly, they can be vicious to those like us. We are depressing. Suffocating. Not fun. Definitely not good for their careers.

There is nothing we can say or do, nothing we can endure, that would make them see us as anything other than an unfortunate inconvenience. So that's it. That's the rift, and only one side can heal it. I don't really have words to dispassionately analyse this, it just sucks.