Some men seem compelled to go to the utter extremes of dickishness when faced with women who obviously are way beyond them in terms of development as human beings. The same guys who Julia Hubbel described as “invariably older white men who are easily threatened by People Who Think, and especially Smart Women Who Think.” From what I have been reading by other Medium writers like Shani Silver, Ann Litts, and pretty much every other woman of substance who writes on Medium and other platforms that those same guys are infesting dating sites, online forums, and god knows what else.

Apparently they have nothing better to do with their time. Ann Litts made a parallel between trolling for fish and trolling on the internet by envisioning “a middle-aged white guy on a bass boat. He’s lazily sitting in his chair — not doing the real work of fishing — disdained and shunned by his own tribe of true fishermen. He’s wearing a fluorescent green fishing shirt and a MAGA hat. He has let his bait drop to the bottom of the lake and it’s sitting right there — in front of me.”

Ann doesn’t take the bait, and these are men who are not even good at being real men. They seem to be everywhere, but I am hoping that rather than being pervasive in the population of men that each of them is casting a wide shadow that greatly exaggerates their true lack of importance.

If you weren’t able to savage your grad student ex during your defense, then I hope eventually he gets his karmic due!