Harassment from violent men

I’m upset. And scared. 

I have two close friends who are around the same age, in their early-mid forties, both single mothers of two girls and both have the tendency of getting in relationships with violent (and usually much older) men. 

With one of these friends of mine I haven’t been able to talk, not even on the phone, for months because of her violent husband who’s jealous and scared of me, irrationally considering me one of the main causes of their dysfunctional relationship. He’s an extremely violent man, verbally, psychologically and even physically, and has been violent towards me several times. He sent me such insulting, violent messages in February that I thought about looking into issuing a restraining order against him. 

And this morning something similar happened with my other friend’s partner who started texting me out of the blue last weekend — this is that cousin with whom, albeit being close friends, we had a fall out last August-September, probably partly due to her (then new) partner. So his text out of the blue last weekend was a shock, especially since my cousin gave him my number without my permission. His first text message was friendly but still an unwanted surprise to me so I forwarded it to my cousin instead of replying to him. My cousin and I agreed to leave each other some more space for another month or so before being in touch again — all via peaceful text messages. But this morning I received a very insulting and extremely violent (verbally & psychologically) text message from her partner. I was so shocked and upset that I instinctively deleted it, but maybe I should have kept it as evidence…? 

Is this harassment? 

I know exactly what’s going on here, I see a pattern common to both scenarios: these are violent men who are not used to, and cannot accept, women (or persons they see as “women” — they both stubbornly misgender me) standing up to them. In that way I am a threat to them, even if I don’t actively do anything against them but just am myself and model something different from their ideal “acquiescent woman” both to their partners (my friends) and their daughters. 

Although I can understand this rationally, it still is extremely upsetting, and frightening. I am feeling attacked now, like I did the other times with my other friend’s husband.

This is an attack, isn’t it?