(My changing definition of respecting women)

When I was in my 20’s — I’m 53 now—I was a textbook Nice Guy. I was raised to be as unthreatening as possible, to be on high alert to notice men being dicks toward women, and to stay as far away as possible from the toxic masculine paradigm.

Nope, no misogyny or chauvinism here! Me? C’mon! I love, adore and respect women! (In fact I kept them waaaaay up there on a pedestal.)

At the time, I lived and worked with people who loved to talk about things like this. For some these debates were philosophical. But some of us were much more personally invested, seeing these discussions about gender and sexuality as a foundation for the work we were meant to do with our lives.

Once or twice a trusted friend told me I had a chauvinistic streak. Skeptical but intrigued, I decided to ask the women in my life to point out whenever I exhibited chauvinism or misogyny. If they were experiencing it, I should at least understand it.

They pointed it out a lot.

At first, I didn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t see anything in what I was doing that was the least bit chauvinistic.

Eventually though, I began to experience my own behavior through the lens of someone on the receiving end of it.

And I found it appalling, embarrassing, and deeply repugnant.

It was excruciating. I was shocked at myself.

Everything out of my mouth seemed profoundly insulting or condescending. Knowing it didn’t help. It wasn’t a matter of simply deciding to change, deciding to stay vigilant. This was fucking deeply ingrained.

Here are a few things I noticed:

I didn’t really see women as people. Not… really. I mean if you asked me, or I thought about it, of course I did. “Women are the most amazing creatures on earth,” I’d insist.

But my behavior was worlds away from my words. If you saw how I treated women — particularly women I was attracted to — compared to the way I treated men, you’d see the problem in an instant.

I didn’t treat women like people. People like me.



Men were friends, colleagues. I related to them, and so I related with them. Women were puzzles to solve. They were like complicated video games: mostly what they got from me was my best attempts to perform the right moves, at the right time, in the right sequence, to get the reward.

And I literally thought they wouldn’t know.

There were the ones who I figured would never, ever love me or fuck me; the ones who might love me or fuck me if I cracked the code; and those I wasn’t interested in for love or fucking. Only the middle tier got much of my attention. (If you can call it “attention.”) I saw other men who were successful with women and wondered what tricks they had that I needed to learn. My tactical approach to relating was broadcasting just how dumb I thought women were.

I treated women as a possessor of a thing between their legs that could give me pleasure. I certainly didn’t treat them as a possessor of a thing between their legs that could give them pleasure.

And I mansplained. I can’t speak for other mansplainers but I did it out of an urgent desire to impress. I held forth on a variety of topics that were (to me) fascinating. This failed for two reasons. First of all, trying to impress women by mansplaining the world to them just exposed the extent to which I didn’t take them seriously as intelligent human beings. Second — and even more importantly — in a world where women generally aren’t listened to, it would have been so much more impressive to listen rather than to know.

And I actively, almost desperately, sought out instances of women being mistreated, as opportunities to demonstrate my value. This created something of a conflict of interest. It’s a bit like someone having all of their self-worth tied to fixing flat tires, and driving around town publicly championing the eradication of flat tires everywhere, while, secretly, urgently needing there to be a flat tire for them to heroically fix. My own need to prove myself left no room for the idea that a woman can handle herself just fine. I had personal attachment to their need to be saved. Their strength was my loss. I was not conscious of this, or its effect on my view of them.