I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you …
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
The indiscriminate anger towards men in your comments makes me think a particularly terrible one or ones probably did some awful things to you at some point. I can pretty well guess how you’ll receive advice from a guy, but it can’t hurt to try.
There’s a saying that goes “The best revenge is living well.” I hope you’re younger than I am, as I’ve reached an age where I seem to get daily reminders of the reality that life is short, and the one good thing about those reminders is that I can use them as opportunities to check in with myself and see if I’m living in a way that I won’t regret. I’ve come to believe that one of the worst things a person can experience is coming to the end of their life and realizing that they wasted it, in any of dozens of ways, and that it’s now too late to do anything about it.
I bring all that up because, while you have every right to be angry and resentful about whatever was done to you, if you stay in that mindset forever, I believe that someday you’ll wish you hadn’t. With the right help, which Lord knows we all need sometimes, we can heal from just about anything. Many times those things were inflicted on us by others who had no right to do what they did and to change our lives so dramatically for the worse and make us carry a burden from that day forth simply because they were never taught right from wrong, or couldn’t / wouldn’t control themselves, or were re-enacting something that happened to them, or were simply sadistic monsters. I probably cannot accurately imagine the level of anger that I would feel towards someone who did something truly unspeakable to me, particularly if it involved a power dynamic and broken trust (it being done by a caregiver, for instance), and left me the unnecessary and undeserved burden of picking up the shattered pieces of my life and trying to make something out of them.
Healing can be very hard, and you should never have been put in the position of having to do it, but you can only ever start from where you are right now, and in the long run I don’t think you’d ever regret making your best effort at it and trying to reach a state of mind where you can actually even forgive — forgiveness being for you, not for the offender, a gift to yourself to allow yourself to move forward with your life and make it what you want it to be, as opposed to remaining mired in endless anger, as understandable as that anger may be.
In any case, I realize this is all very easy for me to say, what with my hard-won status as “some guy on the internet” and the fact that I haven’t been through what you were put through. But that doesn’t necessarily make any of it untrue. I think there’s a happy life waiting out there ahead of you if you if you can climb over the rocks in the foreground to see it and reach it. I know you can and hope you do. Life is too short to do otherwise.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
“If women didn’t want to be abused, exploited, and harassed then they should go hide in a deep corner somewhere so I wouldn’t have to learn how to respect boundaries”. -Your incel ass.
This isn't a woman only space, it's not a women's club, it's not a women's toilet. It's a public space, there are plenty of forums which are only for women. I can recommend you some if you want.
She has every right to be hateful, and even be hateful in public. I just disagree with the notion that a public space online can be segregated. Segregated spaces online exist, but either through moderation, through verification, or through being invite only, Substack is none of these.
> You end up liking women much more when you banish the nasty ones from your life.
I like women very much, and she won't make me dislike women. I'm friends with actually misandristic women IRL, that's why I know about the women only spaces online.
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
The indiscriminate anger towards men in your comments makes me think a particularly terrible one or ones probably did some awful things to you at some point. I can pretty well guess how you’ll receive advice from a guy, but it can’t hurt to try.
There’s a saying that goes “The best revenge is living well.” I hope you’re younger than I am, as I’ve reached an age where I seem to get daily reminders of the reality that life is short, and the one good thing about those reminders is that I can use them as opportunities to check in with myself and see if I’m living in a way that I won’t regret. I’ve come to believe that one of the worst things a person can experience is coming to the end of their life and realizing that they wasted it, in any of dozens of ways, and that it’s now too late to do anything about it.
I bring all that up because, while you have every right to be angry and resentful about whatever was done to you, if you stay in that mindset forever, I believe that someday you’ll wish you hadn’t. With the right help, which Lord knows we all need sometimes, we can heal from just about anything. Many times those things were inflicted on us by others who had no right to do what they did and to change our lives so dramatically for the worse and make us carry a burden from that day forth simply because they were never taught right from wrong, or couldn’t / wouldn’t control themselves, or were re-enacting something that happened to them, or were simply sadistic monsters. I probably cannot accurately imagine the level of anger that I would feel towards someone who did something truly unspeakable to me, particularly if it involved a power dynamic and broken trust (it being done by a caregiver, for instance), and left me the unnecessary and undeserved burden of picking up the shattered pieces of my life and trying to make something out of them.
Healing can be very hard, and you should never have been put in the position of having to do it, but you can only ever start from where you are right now, and in the long run I don’t think you’d ever regret making your best effort at it and trying to reach a state of mind where you can actually even forgive — forgiveness being for you, not for the offender, a gift to yourself to allow yourself to move forward with your life and make it what you want it to be, as opposed to remaining mired in endless anger, as understandable as that anger may be.
In any case, I realize this is all very easy for me to say, what with my hard-won status as “some guy on the internet” and the fact that I haven’t been through what you were put through. But that doesn’t necessarily make any of it untrue. I think there’s a happy life waiting out there ahead of you if you if you can climb over the rocks in the foreground to see it and reach it. I know you can and hope you do. Life is too short to do otherwise.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
Like most men, you don’t seem to know when you’re not wanted.
If I wasn't wanted, then the discussion would be behind closed doors, not be done on a soap box in public.
There are websites online which are restricted to women only, you a free to use them.
“If women didn’t want to be abused, exploited, and harassed then they should go hide in a deep corner somewhere so I wouldn’t have to learn how to respect boundaries”. -Your incel ass.
You love putting words in people's mouths.
This isn't a woman only space, it's not a women's club, it's not a women's toilet. It's a public space, there are plenty of forums which are only for women. I can recommend you some if you want.
I'd recommend not engaging with hateful women. You're not improving the quality of your life, and you're feeding their addiction to strife.
The best way to deal with these females is through hard boundaries. In other words, no unnecessary interaction with them.
You end up liking women much more when you banish the nasty ones from your life.
GET THE MESSAGE, WE DONT CARE WHAT YOU THINK BILL
She has every right to be hateful, and even be hateful in public. I just disagree with the notion that a public space online can be segregated. Segregated spaces online exist, but either through moderation, through verification, or through being invite only, Substack is none of these.
> You end up liking women much more when you banish the nasty ones from your life.
I like women very much, and she won't make me dislike women. I'm friends with actually misandristic women IRL, that's why I know about the women only spaces online.
Ok just don't marry one of those misandrists!😂
Speaking as a woman, you're not wanted here either. Men are entitled to give their perspective; they are half this equation.
Like most women, you have grossly over valued yourself.
You don't need to care about my opinion, but I expect the fact of your own self-contradiction is evident enough to those reading our exchange.
Maybe this comments section isn't for me, but is it for you? It seems like the article was aimed at women who want to be in relationships with men.