I want to talk about this a little bit, because this could have been me.

I was an angry spiteful little fuck when I was a teenager, and while I didn’t understand then that I hated women I do now. https://twitter.com/commaficionado/status/1289854645150470146

I didn’t have any support. I was undiagnosed with either adhd or autism. School and home were hell. I wanted to date, I was horny, I was interested in girls, but I had no idea how to talk to them.

(That was misogyny. Turns out they’re just people - but nobody ever helped me to see that. Male advice in my life treated them like The Desired Enemy. Still does!)

To me, girls obviously had it easy - especially pretty ones! They could do or say anything and still be popular! How unfair, to someone who couldn’t figure out how to make friends without offending or upsetting people.

So I can see where this bitterness can come from. Life is hard in specific ways, and beautiful people seem to have it easy in those specific ways. That breeds resentment.

Then I learned about feminism. I learned the cost to maintain that appearance, the cost of never expressing a real opinion for fear of judgment, the cost of never being taken seriously.

And I realized that I was getting taken seriously, given jobs, treated as smart.

Made me realize that the angry teenager routine was just about misinformation, for me. Things WERE hard for me, harder than they were for some people.

But nobody had it *easy* exactly, teenagers are figuring shit out — even the NT ones.

Those girls I wanted and hated and wanted to be liked by? Each of them has a full human life of challenges. Few of them ever got the opportunities I did.

I’m so glad I found my way out of that pit of resentment. And I can easily recognize those dudes that are stuck there.

Look I’m still doing the work of unpacking the toxic masculinity that got installed into me. So are you, I hope!

None of us are a different kind of being than the anusive assholes - we’ve just healed different damage and learned that the pain of others is real. They haven’t.

This isn’t an excuse for them so much as it is a warning to the rest of us: when you stop doing The Work you can end up like them. Look at JKR etc.

Do the work. Don’t harm others. Believe people. Etc.

And for fuck’s sake nobody owes you sex. Think about that, please.

When I say I hated women as a teenager I don’t mean I bellowed abuse at them or anything. Again, I didn’t even know I hated them.

I saw them as deaireable and happy in a time when I was undesirable and miserable, and like anyone with no emotional skills blamed them for my feels.

When you see some young autistic troll directing vitriol at some innocent woman online, HE’S the villain!

But maybe we can find a way to help our community’s villains heal a bit? What would that even look like? It’d be up to the autistic men here to step up.

I wish I could remember the thing I read that opened my eyes. It may have been Vonnegut, who radicalized and humanized me in general. It may have been Les Miserables, which taught me that other people are real.

Maybe it was a very tired ex?

Why can’t I recall when I woke up?