The healing power of ignoring men

Most men who read my writing for the first time assume that I’m not married or that my husband — if he exists — is a Dobby-like creature who lives in a dungeon. He is tied to a lamp post (with a broken lamp) and set free only to do all the housework while I’m lounging around in a kaftan on an armchair in an AC room.

The AC room is a significant detail. If you sit in an AC room, your views are automatically disqualified. You cannot know anything about the world if you have cool air blowing on you. You are eligible to speak about any issue only if you are sweating and uncomfortable. Fans are somewhat acceptable though the jury is still out on the cooler.

Most men assume I’m a misandrist and that my hatred for men is so deep, I must be living in an AC room with one thousand and one cats, waited on by underpaid women and covered in inheritance or alimony money. I must also be ugly; it is because I’ve been deprived of male attention that I don’t want their approval any more.

For the record, I am not a misandrist. But I will confess that I’m something of an ignoandrist. It’s a term that I invented: she who ignores men because it’s good for her peace.

In my early years as a feminist writing for a digital platform, I would encounter apoplectic men in the comments section of my articles all the time. Most of them would say I didn’t have ‘sufficient knowledge’ — it didn’t matter what I was talking about, be it a film review, a menstrual cup, female sexuality or pregnancy. They always knew more than I did.

It used to bother me a great deal. Why couldn’t they read beyond the headline? Why couldn’t they take the time to absorb my arguments? Why were they bringing up points that I had already addressed in my piece? Why did they write essays in the comments section ‘educating’ me when I had said the exact same thing in the article? Why couldn’t they do some reading on their own to see if what I had said was factually correct instead of expounding their theories based on nothing? Why couldn’t they disagree without being abusive?

In the beginning, I would patiently engage with these men. I thought it was up to me to have this conversation; this was my job — not only because I had written the article but also because I wanted more men to understand an issue from a woman’s perspective. This was my burden to bear as a feminist who was invested in seeing at least the next generation of women have a better time on the planet than mine.

I would waste hours reading each comment and taking the time to respond. Needless to say, my well-meaning patience ran thin pretty fast. Engaging very rarely led to a productive conversation because we almost never operated from a position of mutual respect. As a woman who isn’t from a rural area and doesn’t have to walk 20 kilometers a day to fetch water, I was unqualified to talk about women’s rights, they would tell me. I had no ‘deep’ knowledge about anything and was assuming too much from my privileged position on an armchair. They would send irrelevant links, engage in endless whataboutery, but never actually counter the argument with facts. They had to have the last word to feel absolutely satisfied. At least an emoticon.

In real life, it bothered me when men rarely seemed interested in knowing what I did or who I was. When I was in social gatherings, I would be introduced as so-and-so and they would nod politely. The question that was immediately put to my husband — ‘And what do you do?’ — almost never came my way. The assumption perhaps was that since I was married, I kept my brain in the bank locker and only took it out for airing once a year. Perhaps they believed that since I was someone else’s property, they had no business asking these questions though I was asking them these questions myself.

Invariably, I would have conversations only with women — perfect strangers — who wanted to know where I worked, where I bought my dress, which school my child went to, what movie I had watched last, if I knew a good cook I could recommend and so on.

I don’t know when exactly it happened, but it happened. Perhaps it was just the busyness of life or watching my daughter grow up. Perhaps it’s because I have too many things in my head as it is and men take up too much space. I became an ignoandrist. I stopped caring for men’s opinions. I stopped looking at the comments section of my articles. When they made long Twitter threads to ‘school’ me about my lived experiences, I muted them and conserved my energy. I discovered that nothing angered them more than my lack of response. They say hell hath no fury than a woman scorned. Excuse me, but have you met men?

Most men in my social circle wear only shades of blue, grey, black and white, and it was difficult to distinguish among them as it is. But increasingly, I found that I was unable to register their faces since they all seemed to be saying the same things again and again. Unless a man was strikingly handsome or was particularly distinctive in some way (a giant wart on the nose, for instance), I just couldn’t recall their face. I remembered them if I had some kind of meaningful interaction with them (like a work colleague or my daughter’s bus driver) but otherwise, they evaporated from my memory real fast.

I’m being perfectly serious. This is not something I’m proud of or tried to do consciously. I remember we ran into my daughter’s friend’s father on the road one day and I thought he must be my husband’s work colleague because he knew him while I had no recollection of ever meeting him (I’d met him at least four times, my husband told me later).

It can be a problem.

But mostly, becoming an ignoandrist was quite liberating because I no longer cared what men thought about how I dressed, where I went, what I did, how I spoke, how much I ate, if I was fat, if I looked like an aunty, if I was a good mother, if I was a good wife, what I did with my uterus and so many other subjects on which they were the experts. I no longer had to worry about sounding ‘too aggressive’ when I was speaking passionately on issues I cared about. I was fine with being thought of as a bitch. I was fine with not being liked. I was fine with not winning their approval. I didn’t want it.

I’m aware that no man is lying on the ground with a broken heart because I’m an ignoandrist. But that’s the beauty of the equation. They think I’m an idiot and I don’t care that they think so.

It’s peaceful, it’s beautiful.

Most people who read me are women. Most people who buy my books are women. Most people who write about my books are women and girls. Most people who sign up for my writing classes are women and their daughters. I can live with that. I can most definitely live with that.