My Viral Note Brings All the Butthurt Boys to the Yard
You wanted milkshake, right?
“Feminism” and “feminist” have been used as dirty words ever since the internet turned its underpants inside out to get another week’s use from them while expecting “Mom” to foot the broadband bill. What, you want society to stop treating women as second-class citizens? Feminazi!
It’s a fun trick, and I get it. Paint abolitionists as evil and you don’t have to free the slaves (the ones who in most cases used to cook for you and clean up your literal shit, and without exception carried you for several months inside their actual bodies so you could be born, eat nachos, feel the sun on your skin, or watch Jordan Peterson on Youtube.) Yes, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
What feminism really means (wanting women to be treated as equal human beings) is very different to what insecure men think it means (hating men).
Annoyingly for me, I love men. #Notallmen, obviously, I’m not a moron. I don’t love the men who try to oppress, control and dominate other humans. (Although on a spiritual level, I even work at this, too; go figure). But I love my sons, my husband, my brothers, my uncle, my male cousins, my close male friends, and several ex-lovers who left an indelible impression. And honestly, it’s ridiculous that I even have to say this.
Some feminists might hate men, sure: get exposed to enough shit, and you might develop a shit allergy. Rape is a very common cause of misandry, so maybe look to the rapists if you want to lodge a complaint (but get in the queue because they have a really crap ticketing system).
A lot of (great) men are signed up to my mailing list. I know this because they write to me, say lovely things to me, and buy my books. Several even send me money without expecting me to take my clothes off! It’s a marvel, the internet, and the way it can put you in touch with people who appreciate what you do.
Until you go a bit viral, and your reach suddenly expands to people who have no idea what you do and are frightened of feminists. To me, it seems reasonable to be unhappy about being treated like shit just because you’ve got labia. I don’t think anyone should be treated like shit for the body they were born into. But these guys? If there’s one thing they really, really hate, it’s a woman who isn’t making them a sandwich. Worse, she is opening her big mouth on the internet, and people are applauding her for saying…
okay, what was it that got their goat? Let’s recap. Here’s the note that is so far at 2,900 likes.
In short, my stepfather was a dick and said something sexist when I was 14. I proved him wrong with my writing career. This Note was adapted from a longer piece I wrote, last year, for International Women’s Day.
99.8% of the response has been positive, but it has brought a few butthurt boys to the yard.
There’s one whacko nutjob who is now so obsessed with me that he sends streams of furious messages every day, new identities popping up like whack-a-mole each time I block him, getting madder and madder, comparing me to Hitler (oh no, not Godwin’s Law, you shouldn’t have! I’m so flattered!).
The real reason why this one has decided to make targeted harassment of a domestic abuse survivor his new hobby is not the Note itself but the fact that I made a sleepy mistake early on Sunday morning.
I responded to him in good faith when he sent me a DM after I smacked down his dumb “Were you raised under the Taliban?!” response in the comments. He (under a gender-neutral pseudonym, but everything about his response and his writing was male) sent me a link to a Substack story he had written. Like a total twonk, I started reading it, realised it was tediously opaque and overindulgent, and against every natural impulse and my usual rules of engagement, I gave him some unsolicited writing advice.
I know.
As if I still had a job, and he was one of my students, I said he needed to hook the reader from the first paragraph and that I didn’t owe him another second of my precious life to read 5,000 words of his tedious drivel unfortunately he hadn’t hooked me.1
I’m not sure what possessed me. Universal forces, I’m guessing. No doubt I need some training in how to handle Becoming A Public Figure, and my subconscious thought it would catch me off guard while I was literally half-asleep and trick me into enrolling in the programme.
I know not to give unsolicited writing advice. Hell, I don’t even give solicited writing advice, not even when they beg me and promise me they can take it. For the last 27 years, teaching writing has been what I do for an income. I don’t advise people on their writing for free because that is work. It takes time away from things I enjoy doing much more, like writing, hanging out with my family, and stroking my dog. Plus it’s a high-risk venture involving the navigation of fragile egos, which, like flying a jetfighter through a narrow canyon at 600mph, is the kind of thing that you must never, ever do while still technically half-asleep in frog pyjamas.2
As I said, Subconscious. Thanks, mate. I know you have my best interests at heart.
So ill-advisedly (there was no ‘advice’; wise Ros was still unconscious), and completely against any protocol I have formerly devised for myself, I gave him what half-awake me thought was helpful advice and thus lit his fuse. To be honest, the way he went off even while I was writing a response, I think his fuse was already lit, but I blew on it. Or something.
You know the acronym THINK? Is it True, is it Helpful, is it Necessary, is it Kind?
Yes it was True
It would only be Helpful to someone a) looking for and b) prepared to receive feedback so No
It definitely wasn’t Necessary
From his perspective? absolutely not Kind.
He’d already (falsely) decided I hated men, so that was it, he was off, wasting huge amounts of time and energy for the rest of the week setting up new identities with AI-generated profile pics and sending mad-sounding messages to a stranger instead of doing something useful with his intelligence, like bettering his writing skills so that eventually he might create something that enriches humankind.
I don’t know why exactly he hates women so much, but I’m guessing it is either something to do with his mother, or the fact that he’s not getting laid.
said, “If it helps, Deepak Chopra says hate is just a desperate cry for love.” So, mother problems/not getting laid both make sense.
The handful of other men disturbed by a tweet about my stepfather’s classic 1970s sexism were very interested in whether or not I’ve utilised my womb:
Clearly, some people aren’t aware of any mothers who have had successful creative careers; they have never heard of Margaret Atwood, Rachel Cusk, Elizabeth Gaskell or….
look, here’s the data:
Of 1,115 British women who lived between medieval times and the present and who wrote at least one book, half (49 percent) were mothers.
It would have been higher: this includes all the centuries without birth control, when, as this article puts it,
The choice for most women who had sex with men and who were born before the 20th century would have been to have about seven children, or none.
Finally, birth control arrived in the 20th century, and
women writers became mothers in greater numbers, with 63 percent having at least one child.
Many of the women responding to my Note state that having children enhanced their creativity (even as it — initially at least — gave them less time and energy to indulge it). Certainly, for me, being “stopped” for several years by being unexpectedly dumped with 100% of the childcare by my then-husband and post-divorce, knowing the preciousness of my minimal hours without children, was the impetus to using every raw minute I had to write.
Another way in which motherhood actually led to my writing career is this: motherhood had de-skilled me as far as the workplace was concerned. From earning £750 a week as a programmer pre-motherhood, I was earning £60-100 a week max as a combined waitress/office temp/part-time creative writing tutor) once the youngest was at nursery school. Programming had been an intensive job with an intensive post-work drinking culture, and I’d not written a single story during my childless programming years. Once I’d been “deskilled” (in corporate eyes) by motherhood and was on minimum wage, writing became my only viable means of climbing back to some kind of reasonable financial reward for my intelligence. A bit like a modern-day Christine de Pizan (mother of three).
Did my viral note really “bring all the butthurt boys to the yard”? No, of course not. But I reserve the right to use comic hyperbole and pop culture references in the name of fun titling.
ALL the butthurt boys? That would be way too many boys to fit into my yard. Only a tiny proportion of butthurt boys are on Substack. Hardly any of them came to my yard. The Note has so far nearly 3,000 likes and only about 6 off-colour responses, so only 0.2% of the Note’s respondents are (maybe) a little bit sexist and even less (0.02%) if we’re going by reach (35,000 impressions). Having crunched the numbers, honestly, this is quite refreshing. Only one of the people who saw that Note proved themselves a bonafide misogynist, and as I say, I criticised their writing, so that is the true reason for the targeted harassment.
On the upside, nearly 600 people have joined my subscriber list this month — 275 in the last week! —and I swear I love you all. Being appreciated for my words is, truly, everything 14-year-old me hoped for.
Thank you.
Now, do you need to calm down a bit? If you do, listen to me talking to Joe Riley on the Sketch Poetry Podcast about my poem How to Leave the World that Worships “Should”, beloved by pressured people everywhere, and 21 years old this month. Joe does a terrific job of talking about it before he even gets on to talking about it with me, and do check out also his other episodes, previously featuring only the poetry greats; yes, I am the first Sketch Poetry featured poet still in possession of a pulse!
Over to You
You know I love to hear from you, so answer me these questions three:
What are your experiences of combining creativity and parenthood?
Have you ever had more attention than you can handle?
If you were a politician, what one thing would you do to reduce misogyny?
Yes, he will probably see this. Yes, if he does, he will probably kick off in the comments and compare me to Hitler and call me a ‘cult leader’ and all the other stuff he has been throwing at me this week. He craves attention, so best not to reward him.
I inserted ‘frog’ in tribute to Tom Robbins, who died last month. His Still Life With Woodpecker influenced me profoundly at 18. There are no frogs on my pyjamas.
Per your question #1, Ros: I wrote 75 computer books as a single mother of three. Most of my first book, The Little Mac Book, was written with my baby daughter, my third child, in my lap propped on my knee, nursing, while I typed over her head. ;-)
A book I read years ago about women's work showed that a [single] woman's work historically has three requirements: it is safe, portable, and interruptible. My own work made me realize I was part of the continuum of women throughout history who have to find a way to take care of their little ones on their own—fortunately I could write instead of bringing in laundry and mending.
This is brilliant, Ros. I'm sorry you've got a misogynist on your heels though. When my three were little I was more focused then I've ever been since. If I had half an hour I got straight down to writing, no room for procrastination, and that's how I wrote my novel, in tiny bits of time that I managed to grab here and there.