This is super basic stuff, but I need to remind myself of it quite often.

Originally shared by Rob Donoghue

This is super basic stuff, but I need to remind myself of it quite often.

There is a pattern where a woman says a guy did a thing, he says he just made a mistake and it’s not a thing, she insists while he backs off and apologizes for the mistake while she presses on.

(The thing can be almost anything. This is relevant to harassment, yes, but really almost anything).

In the scenario above, if I’m not pre-invested, my knee jerk reaction is to support the guy, because he’s apologizing and being reasonable while she is very clearly being unreasonable (or perhaps a less kind word).

This is not a good knee jerk reaction because I am getting played.

We’ve talked enough about the woman’s side of it enough to be able to break this down pretty easily. Women eat a lot of bitter, and tolerate a lot of crap, so when they call something out it is usually far past the theshold where a dude would have cracked. This is just a fact of life, but it has the practical effect of meaning that when the woman does call something out, it’s already a high pressure situation, but other people may not (probably don’t) realize it, so her intensity seems disproportionate. This sucks, but if you’re mindful of it and default to listening, you can get around this internal bias.

But it’s worth noting that the guy’s end of this is also a very specific dance.

First, every guy who has been in this position knows that the aforementioned bias is in play, and so long as they can maintain that sense that the woman’s response is disproportionate, he is not really under any threat. He plays to the bias and the audience swings towards him for scoring so. This fact is one of the reasons women often wait so long before speaking up (because they know that this is what will happen) so it’s all a nasty cycle.

No surprises yet, but I want to call out one specific behavior: aggressively apologizing for the lesser offense.

This is a power move. Plain and simple. It:
- reframes discussion to whether or not it was actually the lesser offense
- earns the guy immediate social capital because he was “big enough” to apologize (tip: once you prioritize external validation, apologizing from a position of power is easy and fruitful)
- reinforces the narrative that he’s the reasonable one. After all, he admitted fault!

Anyway, I’ve made some generalizations here. This dynamic is not always along specific gender lines, and these tactics are available to anyone. And it can definitely extend beyond dudes and ladies. But the pattern shows up most frequently in that space.

And the thing is, I know all this, but my instincts are still bad. I still fall for this every time, and the only question is whether I notice I’ve fallen for it. And knowing these patterns helps me spot that, and because of that, I pass them along in case they might help someone else.