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Notes -
There’s certainly something to this.
I’m certain some percentage of people on the acquaintance level with me assume I’m a bit misogynist, but no one who knows me even modestly well thinks that.
Although it depends on your perspective, I’ve always been “successful” with women; at this point I’ve been in a good marriage with children for several years and before I was married my had a string of long and generally healthy relationships which generally ended due to outside life circumstances. I have a very satisfying and active sex life and I have since I was a teenager.
I’m not handsome at all, just somewhat tall and very strong and muscular.
I also have a lot of women in my family which I have strong and loving relationships, having many sisters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, etc…
my parents are still alive, still married, and still in love. I grew up seeing them be kind and loving to each other despite sometimes trying circumstances and very different personalities.
Why do I bring all this up? What does this have to do with anything?
Because despite all that I wrote above, to the women (and men) that occupy maybe the furthest 20-25% of the Feminist memeplex, I’m still “incel-coded” and always will be.
It’s not my politics, I’ve long mastered “hiding my power level” in public as it’s basically mandatory in my line of work and community.
It’s likely 100% how I talk to women, especially in the workplace as my coworkers are often 50% or more female.
I talk to them like they are normal human beings; not men, mind you, as I’m very aware of the differences, but just normal fallible people. The “women are wonderful” effect is simply not active in my brain. I’m incredibly familiar with women and their experiences, and familiarity breeds contempt. I have exactly zero issue criticizing women for poor choices or behaviors, even in public. I’m not intimidated in the least by women or femininity, and that can easily read as misogyny for those who either are motivated to default to that view or lack the intuition to understand what makes me tick.
In my career I’ve actually mentored a lot of women who have gone on to do well for themselves. Part of the process is frank criticism of their work, which many are not used to before they meet me. Most women realize quickly I’m trying to help them and not shit all over them, and that I am actually very fond of women in general. The exceptions tend to be, almost without fail, deep feminist types who are primed to hear any criticism as woman hatred.
The most notable exception was a very privileged young black woman who was clearly very intelligent but intensely arrogant. I think she thought because we shared a skin tone and roughly the same level of verbal intelligence she could avoid criticism, and she was wrong. She blew up at me in narcissistic rage one day, and I mostly avoided her from then on and went back to cultivating talent elsewhere until she transferred to another job and then quit.
She works in publishing in Brooklyn now.
I’m not sure who said it but I’ve always found this amusing; “A misogynist is just a person who hates women as much as women do.”
I've generally seen it attributed to H. L. Mencken:
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