Why I Used to Hate Women (pt.2)
So, last I left off on this subject, you heard about half a hundred stories about how all the females in Canada had disappointed me. As such, it’s natural to wonder if it was any better after I moved to Europe. Let’s explore that, shall we?
Depicted here: not me
So I moved to Finland…
You’d think switching countries and continents and cultures would change things, but did it? Well, yes and no. Insecurity and projection are universal, after all.
Amongst my first close friends in Europe was a German countess who went by Krizzy. Nice girl, generally, but it’d be a lie to say she wasn’t a groupie at the time, so despite being drop-dead gorgeous, she was massively insecure because she only dated guys from metal bands and they pretty much all cheated on her eventually.
Eventually, she clued into the idea that maybe being a groupie wasn’t good for her self-esteem, and then scorched the earth when leaving the scene. I guess she decided to throw all her metalhead friends in the trash alongside her corsets and cargo pants. I had thought our friendship was based on more than our just taste in music, but I guess I was wrong.
My early friend group in Finland was nice because it had a few of us foreigners in it. Some were lifelong and totally fluent in Finnish, while others were like me and had more or less recently moved to Finland, but either way, it was a very English-friendly gang. I met these people — as foreign metalheads in Helsinki used to do back in the ‘00s — at heavy karaoke on Thursdays. If you attended regularly enough, you’d probably end up as one of us.
One of these fellow newbie foreign girls was Kati from Belgium or somewhere nearby (I don’t remember because who cares), who moved here not too long after I did.
Kati was that stereotype of a girl who was so deeply insecure that it was embarrassingly obvious how desperately she needed to be the center of attention at all times. Kati was also the type who would super obviously string men along, surely for the same reason. For example, she still had a boyfriend back home, but she’d bring one of my guy friends with her everywhere, kiss him, treat him like a boyfriend, have him over to sleep in her bed, and just generally breadcrumbed him. She did this to a few fellows when she moved here.
So, because my friend was a sweet guy, I wasn’t particularly fond of her per how she treated him. But I was also aware that I didn’t know her at all and so I withheld any conclusive judgment of her character. I was always friendly and never mentioned my distaste to anyone.
Nevertheless, eventually I heard a rumor going around that we hate one another — I guess insecure people can clock when someone doesn’t buy their bullshit? Either way, in high school, I had also heard a rumor that some girl wanted to kick my ass, so I walked up to her and said, “Hey, I heard you want to kick my ass. Is that true?” Her response was, “Haha, what?” With that memory in mind, one karaoke night, I found myself behind her in the bar queue and, wanting to clear the air, I said, “Hey, so I’ve been hearing this rumor about how we hate each other and I just wanted to tell you that, at least from my end, I don’t hate you. I don’t know you at all.” She gave me a cold glare and said, “You’re right, we don’t know one another,” and then turned her back on me.
Now, thinking back on Aleah in grade 9, this ended up being more funny to me than anything, because deciding to hate me based on nothing gave me infinite power over her. You see, for about 6 years, I didn’t see her 364/365 days, but she hosted a joint birthday party with a friend of mind and some nice twins that were also part of the same friend group. Every year for 3-6 years, she’d spend a great deal of time and energy trying to convince my friend not to invite me because I was “such a drama queen and had to pick fights with everyone.” Which is interesting because I’m fairly sure that I had spent my entire life at that point being so nonconfrontational and submissive that I wouldn’t pick a fight if my life depended on it. I’ve also always been allergic to drama.
But the funniest part was how she would constantly ruin her own night by hating me. She would spend her own birthday party in a big angry huff, dividing her time between soaking up all the friend validation she so desperately thirsted for and stalking me, glaring and fuming from the ears, while I just existed with a smug smile. I didn’t provoke her much because I didn’t want to be petty, but it was impossible to be mature because it was just so textbook. The happier I looked, the madder she got.
Notice the used of the the word “textbook”? Because this is what I was conditioned to think was just normal behavior for women.
The riproarin’ rants of Ravin’ Rachel…
I met Rachel in 2011 and she was the easiest person in the world to like at first. She was bubbly and magnetic. She was fun to be around. My parents visited in 2012 and called her a “firecracker.”
But after a while, you’d start to notice weird things about her. She’d tell a story twice and it wasn’t remotely the same. You’d ask her one week if she’d seen Pirates of the Caribbean and she’d say that she hadn’t, but then you’d invite her to come watch it and she’d say, “Why? I’ve already seen it.”(1)
I cannot begin to tell you the amount of damage this girl did to so many people. I’m no couch psychiatrist but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if she had some sort of narcissistic personality disorder and mythomania. She’d been r4ped once. No it was twice. No, more than three times. She’d had cancer. She had some other rare genetic disorder. She was a Jew, but only when it was convenient. The rest of the time she was a pagan, but all that meant was Christian rhetoric but swapping out “god” for Odin and “Jesus” for Thor. Lying seemed to come as naturally as breathing. She was god’s gift to photography because she bought a DSLR and had no art education. She was a qualified mental health diagnostician because she took one psych class in college.
This was the kind of girl who told everyone a magnificently fabricated falsehood about a very magical marriage proposal. The same story from her now-ex-husband was that she was having residence permit issues and he offered to marry her so she could stay in the country. Very different from the dropping to his knees “I can’t live without you” version she told.
This was the girl who told her husband a tall tale of one of his best friends confessing his undying love for her. That friend and I were super close friends and I can attest that he hated Rachel pretty thoroughly and was wondering why in the hell one of his close friends suddenly wasn’t talking to him anymore.
And I’ll throw this one in for fun for anyone who will get it: she also used to talk about how Kai Hahto (a Finnish drummer known from many very well-known bands) was obsessed with her and wanted to leave his wife for her.(2)
This is a girl who, once the aforementioned marriage fell apart, started airing her ex-husband’s mental health issues publicly on Facebook for attention. When someone called her out by saying that was maybe not the kindest thing to discuss in public, she told everyone this woman had sent her death threats. Fun story — I reconnected with that woman a decade or so later. She’s a ton of fun and we still laugh and tell horror stories about ol’ Ravin’ Rach.
Though I suppose I should thank her, because she’s the reason I learned to clock when someone was desperately trying to hurt my feelings.(3)
I have more stories from university, starting with Kreeta…
I had a pretty varied friend group, gender-wise, at university but you may not be surprised that my two biggest fallings-out with college friends were with younger women.
The first was Kreeta, who was 19 to my 27 and deeply insecure. She was perfectly good looking but the ugly duckling of her hometown friend group, and they treated her weirdly and judgily and it showed. I spent a lot of time reinforcing self-confidence and combating the insecurity in her that seemed largely caused by her so-called “friends,” or her roommate. She once heard that roomie mocking her nose through the walls, so I told her that only douchebag assholes judge people based on their appearances. Unfortunately, it seems that sometimes, when you buff someone’s ego enough, they overcorrect in the opposite direction and go from being forever insecure to being forever the victim.
Kreeta was the type of girl who thought she was asexual and “forever alone” because she hadn’t dated by the age of 19 (and remember, all her friends were “hot chicks,” and I know from experience what damage that does to one’s ego). One night, I invited a bunch of very random friends out to see a band that I worked with once in a while, her amongst them. One of the guys I invited, Marcus, apparently thought Kreeta was cute and it took him literally a year to work up the courage to ask her out, but he did, and she agreed. Having a boyfriend who’s crazy about her, it turned out, proved that she’s not at all asexual (4) and, as far as I know, they’re still together.
Now, in the third (and my final) year of university, Kreeta and I both found ourselves with apartments we were paying too much money for. I was only going to class in Tampere 2 days of the week, and her student flat was pretty expensive considering she was spending most of her time at Marcus’ place, but she distinctly said she wasn’t ready to move in with him yet.
At that point, I offered her a potential solution: what if she put me on her lease and I stayed at her place for 1-2 nights a week while I was in town. If she wanted to hang out with me, fine, and if not, she could spend her time at Marcus’ place. Her response was something along the lines of, “That’s an idea, sure, maybe,” and she didn’t really give me more to work with.
If she hadn’t been interested in considering it as an option, it would have been nice if she had communicated that to me. Naturally then, I was a little bit surprised and concerned to hear out of nowhere that she had moved in with Marcus.
I’ll admit that I was a little bit “excuse me wtf” about this, because if someone offers to work with you on something, and you give a noncommittal answer and never return to the subject, you are leaving someone on the line because you’re too insecure to admit that you’re not interested. That’s a dick move. She left me hanging and then made a decision that affected my life and didn’t fill me in at all. Also, I was concerned that she moved in with him before she was ready.(5)
This is where the original argument began. All I was asking for was a bit of accountability for her lack of communication. My motivations were pure: yes, I was looking for an alternative to my apartment, but I had options. The suggestion of sharing her flat was meant to benefit both of us, not just me. I take it seriously when people say “I’m not ready to move in with my significant other yet,” because I’ve been in that situation. Her response to me was, “It’s my apartment and what I do with it is none of your business.” Well, it kind of was my business because I was considering moving there to help you out…
The other big accusation from her was that I talk endlessly and never let anyone else get a word in edgewise. While I’m sure that was probably true when I was a child, I’ve received enough feedback on that front to have developed a fair degree of self-awareness. Normally, I would be deeply upset to learn that someone feels steamrolled by my tales, but it felt different with her. I did give space for her to talk, but I don’t think she was listening. I’ve been watching my talking patterns ever since and I do give space for others to interject. In fact, I’m prone to letting interrupters talk over me. Either she just didn’t like me and the things I talk about, and was making that my problem, or she was so insecure that she didn’t feel comfortable being in conversation at all, and was also making that my problem.
The reason this friendship couldn’t be salvaged related to one simple thing: it became extremely evident that Kreeta didn’t give two shits about my side of anything. She was constantly explaining my motivations back to me in a way that would fit her image of herself as the victim of every situation. I recall her saying, “You don’t care about me, you just want my apartment.” No, honey, I have a condo in Helsinki. I can just take a train to Tampere two days a week for class. I don’t need to help you with rent at all, actually. I just wanted to help out the people I cared about. But something I cannot tolerate is having my motivations incorrectly mansplained to me by someone who spent our entire friendship leeching my love and energy and giving next to nothing back. I guess it’s fine to whine all of your insecurities out to me, but I wasn’t allowed to talk about my troubles or struggles.
I remember our last conversation ending with me saying, “Look, if this is how you treat your friends, I’m happy to no longer count myself amongst them.” And blocked her because apparently she didn’t know when it was time to stop being petty and start being an adult.
Let’s not forget Riia…
Riia and I were even closer than Kreeta and I, and that says a fair bit. In much the same way, Riia was also 19, deeply insecure due to heavy elementary school bullying, and I dedicated a lot of my life to being there for her and supporting her and helping establish some confidence and self-esteem.
I remember such a clear moment that described her in a nutshell. We were English majors and were taking a mandatory Romanticism class, and Romanticism was definitely one of the more interesting literature classes on offer. Most of us liked it better than the other stuff we had to read that we weren’t particularly interested in. But Riia admitted one day that she felt extremely insecure because everyone liked Romanticism so much, but she didn’t. She said she realized that she’s really easily crippled when other people’s opinions don’t match hers.
Would you be surprised, then, to learn that, when our interactions were exclusively me being supportive or us talking about things we both liked, we were super close friends, but the moment I began to confidently express differing opinions from hers, the foundation of our friendship began to crack and crumble?
I clearly remember the first time it happened. She told me she was really getting excited about a newish pop band called Haloo Helsinki!. So, because she recommended them and I was a music journalist (mostly in heavy metal, don’t forget), I told her I’d give them a listen. After the weekend, I told her that I didn’t think they were for me. I told her the music wasn’t my style and I didn’t think the singer had a very good voice. Remember this, because it gets relevant later.
Some time later, less than a week I’m sure, she contacted me and told me how devastated she was after that conversation, how horrible and judged she felt. I was mortified that she was so hurt because I had really tried to express myself as softly as possible. We talked it out and moved on.
But… when I’m confident about an opinion, I express it very firmly. It happened again when she told me she had started reading the Dumbing of Age webcomic in third year. I told her that I had read an older webcomic6 from David Willis, the same author, and hated it, but was willing to give him another chance per her recommendation. It didn’t even matter that I hadn’t read the comic she had recommended. The fact that I didn’t like the author’s previous work already made me a horrible judgmental monster in her eyes. Fun fact: I read Dumbing of Age daily for 8 years thanks to her recommendation.
Not long after that one, by the time we were in thesis class together, I noticed that her attitude had notably changed. She’d gotten dark, snarky, and she kept passive-aggressively insulting me. I’d tell her I liked something and she’d make a vague, dismissive comment. It became evident that she was trying to hurt my feelings (and failing, because I’m not insecure the same way she is… I was mostly wondering why my friend was suddenly being a dick all the time).
Guess what, these two decided to join forces…
Evidently, these two were shit-talking me behind my back over their newly-found thing in common — disliking me — and then ganged up and ambushed me during my lunch break during exam week so that they could break up with me together. They seemed to think they were doing me a favor by sitting me down oh so maturely to tell me everything they didn’t like about me, while expecting me to apologize and say sorry for being confident in who I am, and change everything about myself to suit them.
I literally told them, “If you don’t like me, stop hanging out with me. It’s that easy.”
One of the most notable things I recall from that conversation was how Riia told me what a monstrous jerk I was, using the time she recommended Haloo Helsinki! as an example. “I told you I liked them, and you said that they were a terrible band with a shitty singer.” I looked her dead in the eye with my most disappointed-mom face and said, “Those aren’t the words I used and you know it.” If she’d had a tail, she’d have tucked it between her legs.
Nevertheless, the two friends that I had dedicated the most love and who had taken the most energy from me with their insecurities ultimately abandoned me because they refused to examine themselves and work on their own problems. They also accused me of having inferior problems to theirs, but I think what that meant was that it was okay for them to trauma dump on me whenever they wanted, but if I wanted to tell them about what I was going through, that wasn’t allowed.
I even asked Riia at one point in that lunchtime breakup, if she recalled feeling insecure about other people’s opinions and referenced what she told me before about Romanticism class, asking if she thought maybe that was the problem in our friendship. “Nope,” she responded in a snap second, clearly taking no time to think about it, instead insisting that we had just “grown apart as people.” My only regret was being a good person and not embarrassing the fuck out of her in front of Kreeta by telling my side of the story. Not because I’m a dick, but because she might have actually learned something if I had been honest. I had no reason to protect her at that point, but I did.
Ultimately, I’m pretty sure I did embarrass them a bit with how I responded to their accusations. They told me, “This conversation didn’t go the way we expected it to.” Why? Because I’m confident in who I am and am not willing to apologize for being myself because someone else doesn’t like it?
I wonder if they’ve grown up at all since then, nearly 10 years later…
So, what about now?
Funnily enough, my close friends nowadays are a pretty gender-neutral gang. One of my besties is a cis woman. One of my besties is a nonbinary guy. One of my besties is a trans woman. And that’s not all. I have a lot of besties and they come in all forms and flavors, which is why I love them so much. They can all teach me cool perspectives, tell me unique tales, and share fun insights.
So why did I stop hating women, then?
It’s not because I make better and easier choices with friends. I met another Kati-type in the 2020s who really had to get creative to find ways to dislike me for no reason. I lost another close girlfriend just last fall.
I’m grateful, however, that I’ve never gotten so jaded that I’ve stopped being willing to give new people a chance. And the older I get, the easier it seems to be to find women that I can relate to, and the more female friends I start to have.
I make friends with a lot of women who are also fed up with how they’ve been treated. I make friends with a lot of women who are very self-aware about their insecurities and who work hard on them. I make friends with a lot of women who care about compassion, kindness, and communication, and who think drama is for assholes, not females. Turns out I have quite a lot in common with women.
Simultaneously, though, was realizing that all of the men that I preferred and actively considered superior weren’t actually very good friends either. Most of them abandoned me once they realized that they couldn’t have me in some way, shape, or form. But that’s another series of stories for another time.
I’ve come full circle though now! I love women. Not only have I met some rad women over the years, but I’ve reconnected with a lot of women that I knew back in the day, like an old coworker from my medical transcription days, or the soon-to-be-ex-wife of an old friend, who turned out to be the coolest person on earth.
And to kiss ass a little, for all of the annoying things about Substack, I’ve met and connected with and learned a lot from a ton of amazing ladies over there! The powerhouses of being amazingly yourself like Abbey Wade and Candy Downs, the literary badasses Olivia/O. J. Barré🪄🌎 and Nikki | Nocturnal Narrator , the feminist queens Alice Wild and Evie Gray, and kindred spirits, Esther Stanway-Williams and G.E. Wells (who disappeared after I read a life-changing article and I’m devastated).
I was conditioned to believe that women were lying, cheating, emotional backstabbers, and like 95% of my experiences with women did nothing but reinforce that narrative. If I met a female that I liked, I’d consider her an exception to the rule, not a proof that I was wrong about women. And it’s true that the hard majority of the women in my life turned out to be that: negative stereotypes that proved the point. But I never considered why women are that way, and are they perhaps unpleasantly conditioned by society as well?7
So I’d like to give a shout-out of appreciation to all of the women in my life these days. Turns out, women are actually fucking brilliant, and a lot of the negative stereotypes are conditioned by society, not “natural” or “biological,” like a lot of idiots believe.
Nowadays, I’m reading more great literature, like “Come as You Are” by Emily Nagoski and “Women Living Deliciously” by Florence Given, and I’m loving it. I’m learning to appreciate my own gender so much more and while I think I’ll always be gender-fluid AF, I definitely have a much healthier understanding and perspective of women these days, for which I’m extremely grateful.
I guess, for me nowadays, people come and go. It’s even more common in the internet age when you can be friends with anyone anywhere in the world online. We can grow together and we can grow apart. I’ve gotten accustomed to letting people go, but that means there’s always room for new people in my social community, and I’m always happy for fresh blood!
So if you’re a woman who’s in my life, thanks for being a part of what’s proved my entire past wrong, and I hope you know that you’re amazing!
Stay balanced, my friends! ❤️🐻
1 Also, fun fact, just because you’ve seen a movie doesn’t mean you can’t watch it again, you fucking weirdo.
2 I’ve met his wife and I can assure you, no one in their right mind would leave her for Rachel. His wife rules.
3 She failed, and her attempts were laughable.
4 Remember how I said her friends treated her weirdly and judgily? This was one of those occasions. She felt safe and comfortable and in love enough to sleep with him, and her friends all reacted by demanding to know if he had r4ped her, because, “she always said she’d never have sex!” As if it wasn’t obvious that her “asexuality” related more to insecurity and lack of interest/opportunity than actual disinterest in sex. I enthusiastically endorsed her sexual awakening, yet I was somehow the terrible friend.
5 It’s happened to me and my friends, where relationships that could and should have been great moved too fast, moved in too soon, and everything imploded because no one was on the same page about things yet. It was a valid concern, and since it was her fragile first relationship, that’s why I was looking out for her.
6 Shortpacked — it’s one of the worst webcomics ever written and I’ll die on that horse. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy Dumbing of Age though.
7 Patriarchal conditioning is the worst thing you can do to both women and men.
