Why Do You ‘Exclude’ Men When You Discuss Infidelity?
A man writes to complain that Chump Lady “excludes men” when discussing infidelity on her recent podcast with two OBGYNs.
***
On the Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast this week, I interviewed two OBGYNs — Dr. Leyla Moossavi (retired) and Dr. Diane Traenkle (currently practicing) — about the intersection of women’s health and infidelity. I was curious what they see as medical professionals, how they treat chumped patients, and hardest of all — how they navigate telling someone they have a sexually transmitted disease, or cancer.
Both of these doctors have over 30 years of experience.
What they’ve seen in the intimacy of their offices honestly shocked me — and I read infidelity horror stories for a living. These women are on the front lines of domestic abuse. They work in central Michigan, to a mostly rural clientele. I was expecting the sort of stories I see here — discovering you’ve been chumped during your pre-natal STI screening.
I was not expecting to hear that Leyla and Diane have received threats. That men have tried to gaslight them that their STI lab results are wrong. Have refused to let their wives come back for treatment. Have insisted on being in the room when their partners are tested. And who have physically intimidated and berated those partners — and Leyla and Diane.
They did not sugarcoat it.
With medical precision these doctors explain what STIs can do to a pregnant woman and her unborn child.
Tracy: “What is being risked? I mean, if you weren’t running those tests and giving those antibiotics, what happens if you have chlamydia in the womb?”
Leyla: Stillbirth, blindness. Infection in the uterus of any kind can kill the baby at any point in the pregnancy.
So, you might have a woman who develops a fever and tenderness, what we call chorioamnionitis, an infection going up from the vagina. And that can cause the baby to die or be born too early.
I’ve seen this where the infection gets in her blood very quickly, and she can become septic and she can die from a blood infection basically.
So because the placenta is such a rich blood interface between mother and baby, anything that goes, goes quickly and dangerously. So if the baby is born through the birth canal naturally, through the vagina and there’s chlamydia present, the baby can be blind.”
WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT THIS?
Where is the public service campaign? The education? The public discussion? That if you cheat on a pregnant woman, YOU COULD UNALIVE HER. YOU COULD UNALIVE YOUR UNBORN CHILD.
I asked this. Surely, these men must be unaware of the risks. And Leyla replied:
“I truly don’t think they care.
I don’t think they care at all. I think they really don’t care beyond their erection. And they have a whole list of excuses.
She let herself go, she doesn’t want to have sex, she’s not fun, she doesn’t understand me.”
Think about that for a minute. This isn’t a cynical woman with an infidelity blog. Leyla is describing what she saw in her medical practice, from Detroit to rural Michigan, for over 30 years. Men’s sexual entitlement harming women — even killing them — or ending their pregnancies — and then blaming them for it.
Now imagine listening to that podcast and sending me this letter.
Dear Chump Lady,
I love your material and listen to every podcast as it comes out. But as a man, I respectfully request you give more consideration and attention to the fact that female infidelity does exist and does cause as much pain and anguish and financial impact and chaos in the family as male infidelity.
I do recognize that the significant majority of the people that contact you with their stories of infidelity are women. Women are simply more likely to take their accounts of infidelity to social media. I get that.
But that does not mean that all female hands are squeaky clean or that women are all pure and virtuous at all times. Let’s not forget that for a man to cheat, unless he is turning gay and cheating with other men, there must be someone he is cheating with.
It can even be argued that within certain demographics, women cheat MORE than men.
I really believe that your material is so imbalanced that you are actually hampering your own following by appearing to exclude men and vilify men to the point that you are turning away potential followers and people that could potentially be helped by your content if the realities if male chumpdom was given more consideration.
I especially want to point this disparity in the recent podcast feature the OB/Gyn specialists. Was there even ONE WORD spoken that there are a number of men that find out their wife’s infidelity through prenatal STI testing??????? Yes that does happen.
And since I’m on the topic of infidelity being discovered through medical procedure, I’d like to direct your attention to the fact that children’s hospitals throughout the country have actual policies and procedures for how to address when children being genetic tested for various conditions that a percentage will be found to not be the actual biological child of the father of record. They even have a clinical sounding euphemism for that called “Incidental Determination of Non-Paternity.” That is a clinical term for saying, “your wife cheated and got knocked up and is trying to pass off this sick kid as yours.”
Since you have an episode of women finding out about infidelity through prenatal testing, Would you consider doing an episode of men finding out about paternity fraud through genetic testing of sick kids that they going into debt and pouring their heart and souls into treating that find out the sick child is some other dude’s.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know that you know women cheat and that men can be chumped and destroyed as well. But for the sake of recognizing reality and not leaving half the world’s chumps out in the cold or at least some sense of cosmic balance please please please give more attention to the plight of male chumps and at recognize that women cheat in roughly equal numbers as well.
At least give more than your perfunctory, “men get cheated on too” that you say at some point once in every 3 or 4 podcasts.
Could you at least try to devout once full podcast with a sincere addressing of female cheaters and the male chumps out there? It would mean a lot to the guys that are seeking some guidance but feel further vilified when all they hear about are how awful men are and how women are the only real victims of infidelity.
Thank you!!!!
A male fan
Dear Male Fan,
Wow. Not All Men? That’s where you’re going with this? Seeing as you’d like to be centered, I ran your letter here, so we all can give it the proper attention.
Let me begin with: I’m sorry you were chumped.
It’s an absolutely devastating experience and I’m glad to know my writing and podcasts have helped you (when not angering you). I have always argued that Chump Nation is a rainbow nation. Anyone can be chumped — all it takes is a trusting heart. I wrote my book to be gender and orientation neutral. I included letters from men, women, and LGBTQ+ chumps. When people write to me here, I have no idea what they look like, where they are from, what race or religion they are, or their politics.
Cheating is a human problem. It’s an abuse of power.
Anyone with bad character can abuse power. But (and here’s the part you will not like) — some people have more power than others. And more opportunities to abuse it.
There is a gender overlay to infidelity that cannot be overlooked. Men and women are going to have different experiences being chumped by virtue of their gender. I’ll never know the pain of paternity testing. You’ll never know the pain of losing your fertility or life to an STI.
Because you do not have a uterus.
Which brings me to the podcast you’re offended by.
It’s not about you.
Literally, it’s not about you. I said from the start we are discussing WOMEN’S HEALTH with two OBGYNs. How infidelity affects WOMEN’S HEALTH. You can’t get pregnant? Sit down.
On a topic where the biological consequences are obviously sex-specific — your response was not, “Interesting episode. I’d also love one about paternity fraud sometime.” No, instead you directed the discussion back to men.
You’re arguing with claims I didn’t make:
- “Women are not all pure and virtuous.”
- “Female infidelity exists.”
- “Women cheat in roughly equal numbers.”
- “Women are not the only victims.”
I don’t believe any of those things.
I love your material and listen to every podcast as it comes out. But as a man, I respectfully request you give more consideration and attention to the fact that female infidelity does exist and does cause as much pain and anguish and financial impact and chaos in the family as male infidelity.
Feel free to start your own podcast or blog. What exactly is the metric for “more consideration”? I’ve interviewed men on the podcast, I’ve answered letters from chumped men. I’ve never argued that female infidelity doesn’t exist. In fact, I’ve been accused of being quite vicious when discussing Other Women as dick suckers of the patriarchy.
But seriously, if you don’t think you’re being represented:
CREATE YOUR OWN OUTLET.
Men’s infidelity isn’t discussed as much because MEN DO NOT DISCUSS IT. They aren’t visible. They lurk. I created this space 14 years ago because I wanted to change the infidelity narrative and give the chump experience visibility. But I cannot be all things to all people.
Visibility means risk. I’ve been threatened, insulted, dismissed as a silly “cartoonist” in the New Yorker. Please, stick your neck out and share your experience.
I’m one woman with a blog. There are different flavors of chumpdom and different outlets. For example, Christian evangelicals have been quite out there taking on the spiritual abuse of the RIC. I don’t have to be the clearinghouse for All Things Chump.
I do recognize that the significant majority of the people that contact you with their stories of infidelity are women. Women are simply more likely to take their accounts of infidelity to social media. I get that.
So, you’re conceding that women are braver than men? I don’t get an equal number of letters from men. Is that because I’m a hairy-legged femi-nazi who won’t give them a fair shake? Or is because men choose not to be vulnerable in public?
But that does not mean that all female hands are squeaky clean or that women are all pure and virtuous at all times. Let’s not forget that for a man to cheat, unless he is turning gay and cheating with other men, there must be someone he is cheating with.
I’ve spent years writing about women cheaters. I’ve written about paternity fraud and repeatedly said infidelity is not gender-specific.
You want symmetry where it doesn’t exist.
That if men and women cheat, I should cover this equally. But patriarchy (Ack! That word!) means that men and women experience infidelity differently. Sexism and misogyny are real.
It’s like, if you were mugged by a black man but refuse to acknowledge systemic racism. Yes, a black man harmed you. And racism is a thing. Both of these things can be true.
Women face different challenges after infidelity.
- If I interview divorce lawyers, I might spend more time discussing economic abuse of stay-at-home spouses because that’s a common issue.
- If I interview domestic violence experts, I might spend more time discussing violence against women because women are disproportionately killed by intimate partners.
- And if I interview OBGYNs, I’m going to spend more time discussing consequences that occur in female bodies.
Don’t vilify men?
I really believe that your material is so imbalanced that you are actually hampering your own following by appearing to exclude men and vilify men to the point that you are turning away potential followers and people that could potentially be helped by your content if the realities if male chumpdom was given more consideration.
This is such a weird criticism. And so sexist. You’re saying if I don’t change the way I write, men won’t like me.
You realize women have been bludgeoned their entire lives with this threat. Smile! Appear f*ckable! Be nice!
You should vilify men who cheat on pregnant women. Where is YOUR outrage?
I especially want to point this disparity in the recent podcast feature the OB/Gyn specialists. Was there even ONE WORD spoken that there are a number of men that find out their wife’s infidelity through prenatal STI testing??????? Yes that does happen.
Yes, but men aren’t killed by STIs like women are. And men don’t face the same threats of violence if that test comes back positive. Leyla and Diane are discussing domestic abuse — those women in their offices may well have cheated on their partners, which could explain the men’s rage and control issues with being in the examination room. But men aren’t being murdered at the rate women are.
Diane cites the statistic that the number one cause of death for pregnant women is domestic violence.
And since I’m on the topic of infidelity being discovered through medical procedure, I’d like to direct your attention to the fact that children’s hospitals throughout the country have actual policies and procedures for how to address when children being genetic tested for various conditions that a percentage will be found to not be the actual biological child of the father of record. They even have a clinical sounding euphemism for that called “Incidental Determination of Non-Paternity.” That is a clinical term for saying, “your wife cheated and got knocked up and is trying to pass off this sick kid as yours.”
Since you have an episode of women finding out about infidelity through prenatal testing, Would you consider doing an episode of men finding out about paternity fraud through genetic testing of sick kids that they going into debt and pouring their heart and souls into treating that find out the sick child is some other dude’s.
Paternity fraud is absolutely a topic for discussion. And you would’ve made a much stronger argument for it if you weren’t blind to systemic misogyny and showing a shocking lack of empathy for women’s experiences.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know that you know women cheat and that men can be chumped and destroyed as well. But for the sake of recognizing reality and not leaving half the world’s chumps out in the cold or at least some sense of cosmic balance please please please give more attention to the plight of male chumps and at recognize that women cheat in roughly equal numbers as well.
If you know that I know that women cheat and men can be chumped, why are you — in the next sentence — saying I’m not “recognizing reality”?
You’re saying I cover it, but I don’t cover it enough to your satisfaction.
You’re assigning responsibility to me to manage your discomfort. If there is a gap in the marketplace for male betrayal trauma, feel free to create that content.
Instead of saying you feel left out, or unseen, you’re leveling a personal attack against me.
- “Your coverage is imbalanced.”
- “You are hampering your following.”
- “You are excluding men.”
- “You are vilifying men.”
Not a great strategy for winning me over, Dude. If anyone needs to face reality here, it’s you.
There are gendered realities for women chumps.
Not because women are more virtuous. Not because men are worse. But because infidelity intersects with:
- reproductive health,
- pregnancy,
- STI risks,
- intimate partner violence,
- coercive control,
- economic dependence,
- social expectations.
Those realities don’t erase male suffering. But I wonder why you want to make men’s suffering more central when you erase women’s experience? Why do you think discussing women’s health with two doctors diminishes you? Why do you think it’s appropriate to scold me?
Check your entitlement.
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I’m male. In many posts, I can often just change the genders as I’m reading, except when the message is clearly intended for women. I can also change (in my head) the word “marriage” to “relationship”, as we weren’t married. It’s easy to apply the general idea of betrayal and many things that apply to both men and women. And my uneducated guess is that men cheat more often than women.
Recent stats show women cheating at the same rate as men, though. There’s no danger of cuckoldry when a man cheats either. The laws protecting men from raising another mans child are incredibly weak. You only have 3 years to challenge paternity and anytime after that it’s on you for financial responsibility even if another parent is identified. Go ask any attorney. They’ll tell you.
Thank you. What a strong stance and summary of what is really wrong with this thinking. He could’ve also wrote to you and shared his story and asked to be on the podcast and to be a voice for male chumps and been vulnerable etc. Instead- and you nailed it- made it about him.
Great episode. As a chumped pregnant woman, I was pressured to have an abortion by my FW. Completely confused and shocked by this stance given we had 2 children and just moved into our ‘dream home’ all while being cheated on, lied to, manipulated, emotionally and financially abused. Once the truth was out it was crystal clear and so was my choice to leave and to get the full STI panel at my 20 week prenatal appt.
Thank you CL & CN. Being Chumped is terrible. And it’s also not the pain Olympics.
Thank you for running my letter two summers ago (https://chumplady.com/cheating-wife-reads-esther-perel/)
Signed, a male chump
Holy tone-deafness, Batman. Incredible. Tracy, I am a man. And to whatever extent one’s gender implies collective responsibility, I’m over here face-palming.
To quote Bugs Bunny, what a maroon.
Obviously, heterosexual men get cheated on by women. I did. Egregiously. But that (also obviously) doesn’t diminish the horrifying and lopsided realities of how cheating men can affect women’s health. (Maybe I’m crazy, but I think the key word there is “women’s”.)
If I was in a group setting and this nonsense surfaced, I’d feel beholden to take this “gentleman” off to the side for a quick word. I’d tell him, “There are times when the right response as a man is to STFU and listen. Not everything affects women and men the same way, and we’re (relatively) lucky that cheating doesn’t kill us or our unborn children. If you want to be a proper man, sit down, shut up, and try to be empathetic. You’ll get your turn.”
SMDH.
Once when leading a divorce recovery group we had a new guy show up and immediately start spouting off about his wife not respecting him and how their pastor told her she had to submit to him and return to their home. Of course it was very disruptive, so I took the guy into another room while my wife continued the group. I told him he needed to be respectful of the other group members experience by being quiet and listening only for three sessions before he speaks again. He left. (Thank God!) For some people it can only be about them all the time.
Thanks. I know, right? Cheating on a pregnant woman can KILL HER. It. Can. Kill. Her. I mean, “Male Fan” didn’t even pause at that. I’m open to content suggestions, I really am. But to listen to that episode and take nothing away other than I’m slighting men is to really miss the point. Thank you for being an ally.
Yeah, but a man can be held financially responsible for raising another man’s child and only has 3 years to uncover and challenge paternity in almost every state. Why aren’t you ever talking about this? It’s always about how awful the men are, even though rates are pretty much the same for both genders now.
One of the lessons I’ve learned is there is universality to the chumped experience. It’s awful, but it provides solace. Our trauma feels individual, but what has happened is often a series of selfish, entitled choices from the same pathetic cheater playbook.
In firing up the recent podcast with the OBGYNs, I knew I wasn’t the intended audience. But I still wanted to listen.
I might say we are all the intended audience (even us women over 70 who are not going to be killed by an STI because we’re pregnant.)
All women and men should know about the dangers of STI to pregnant women and their unborn children. After all, men have sisters and daughters and nieces who could be in that examining room with an angry man.
Tracy, I’ve been reading here since your early days. You’ve mentioned the problem of men having to get paternity tests for kids they’re raising after a D-Day. You’ve published letters about it but maybe more important, you routinely mention questions about paternity as one of the horrible experiences that men go through because of infidelity. So this dude is wrong on the facts. I’ve never seen you vilify men–or women. I’ve seen you call out cheaters and affair partners as entitled, destructive f***wits, and I’ve seen you break out the 2×4 when chumps have their heads in the M**df*** blender. But you don’t vilify male chumps. Period. And while I don’t get to the podcast as often as I should, I’ve probably read every column you’ve written for 13 years, plus the comments. I’m pretty sure the dude that feels vilified can’t say the same.
This strikes me as where we are in the US right now–people who by way of gender, social class, race have a head start or simply major advantages in life are quite miffed at the idea that people who don’t have those advantages are getting something–medical insurance, help with food, equal chance at a job, representation in Congress, recognition of their experience of abuse or violence. It’s all a zero sum game. If we pay attention to women’s health, somehow that takes something away from a man who doesn’t have a uterus. And seriously, even at my age people ask me why I’m not dating. Well, find me a single man within a hundred miles who doesn’t act like this and I’ll consider it.
I think you guys are talking past each other but the guy should be fair. Let him not get me wrong, I recognize you’re both accusing each other of a “shocking lack of empathy for men’s/women’s experiences” but obviously a person of a particular gender will focus more on their gender’s issues. Even in men’s support groups they focus more on men’s experiences, of which women of course won’t relate to as much, because they can’t really relate to the female experience. So obviously you can’t expect a female author to correctly identify with the male experience all the time, that should fall on the men.
Misogyny and misandry exist and so does sexism against either gender. I don’t like the statistical comparison of who does more harm than the other because it leads to worse questions. For example if we say men kill more women than women do men therefore men are worse, certain characters can say well women kill more children than men do so who is worse? There are things that just fuel animosity that won’t end well in the long run. Each gender has their own set of evil that they can do that the other gender cannot replicate. It is impossible to be impartial all the time.
You’re engaging in a classic false equivalence, Jude.
One problem with your argument is that a podcast episode about women’s health does not mean Tracy focuses more on women because she’s a woman or that she has failed to address the impact of infidelity on men. In fact, over the 13 years I’ve read this blog, she has very consistently encouraged men to do the same things she advises women to do–get a good lawyer, fight for fair custody and child support, and pay attention to financial shenanigans. She also advises men to get tested for STDs and tell the kids the truth about what’s happening to the family.
Every day, 137 women are killed by domestic violence. 25% of domestic violence victims are men. Current statistics indicate that more men than women kill their children, but not by a wide margin. So check your facts.
I’m too weary to write an original retort to an unoriginal argument so you’ll get the copy of a copy of a copy of the stock response to false equivalencies when they crop up in civil rights forums. Your statement that “Misogyny and misandry exist and so does sexism against either gender” is one of the most common tropes along with “racism against whites.” Your dislike of statistics is because the real world lopsidedness exposes your argument as…
1. Symmetric Fallacy (or Structural Symmetry Fallacy)This occurs when someone treats a systemic, institutionalized form of oppression as if it is identical to a localized, interpersonal grievance.
2. “Both-Sidesism” (False Balance)A media and rhetorical phenomenon where an actor attempts to present two opposing positions as equally valid, prevalent, or problematic, even when one side has mountains of evidence, history, and structural weight behind it, and the other does not. It is a way to look “objective” while actually muddying the waters and neutralizing the conversation.
3. Derailment by SymmetrizationThis is a classic defensive tactic. The moment structural oppression (like misogyny or systemic racism) is named, the speaker immediately introduces the inverted concept (“but what about sexism against men?”) to shift the focus. It forces the conversation away from the actual victims of systemic harm and centers it on defending the dominant group’s feelings.
4. Whataboutism (Tu Quoque)A subset of the false equivalence fallacy that specifically attempts to discredit a position by charging the opponent with hypocrisy or demanding that an adjacent, non-equivalent issue be addressed first.
You know, a simple way of determining whether what I’m saying is true or false is simple role reversal. If we are talking statistics, what would be your reaction when certain characters say “statistically true” things about women? I’m pretty sure you’d call it misogyny. In fact you’d use the same things you’ve listed here to disprove their point. Even the things you say are inspired by sexism and misogyny can be presented with statistical truth like the red pill guys do. Pretty sure you wouldn’t say they are correct though. You’d suddenly have a “dislike for statistics” according to them.
I know you are trying to say that you’re the actual victim of the other gender and reject any victimhood men would claim to have from women. But do you honestly believe there are no areas where women morally perform worse than men statistically? I already gave you the example of killing infants. But what exactly are we supposed to draw from that information?
Should our view on women change?
In the land of Mansplainia lurks a bro-lecturer
The dread obscurantist named Jude the Obscurer
Oh the splainin’ he’ll do with his pseudoheuristics
As he whataboutizes with doctored statistics
To say up is down, right is left, black is white
And bitches be just as bad so don’t rate equal rights
What fun can be had with this circular logic
If you hand him a fact watch him yank, hump and dodge it
Tis all fun and games when debating lone trolls
But when losing a tiff these types tend to mitose
So behold as the first pass of the single brigader
Is soon followed by swarms from Red Pill echo chambers
Great stuff. While you can be misandrist or bigoted against whites on an interpersonal level, since it’s not institutionalized there aren’t a whole host of devastatingly harmful societal outcomes from it. Therefore, it’s not remotely the same as misogyny or racism against POC. I wonder if this guy is one of those “white people are being erased” weirdos too.
It’s just motivated by male supremacy and white supremacy. They see a mere annoyance felt by their group as equivalent to the horrors being inflicted on the othered groups which they disdain, because the othered ones are seen as less than human. F*** ’em all.
I’m actually black and from Africa, so no I’m the opposite of what you’re thinking. But the fact that you can’t even engage with me as a fellow human and already see me as something to hate shows where half your conclusion comes from. The reason why you think I’m indifferent to “the horrors being inflicted” is because I’m more of a victim of them than you are. Men are victims of the violence you are talking about way more than women are. It’s not a one way street where all the violence is just being delivered to the women and the men are sitting back relaxed. No, men are the overwhelming victims of it. But of course, f*** me right?
With those comments you refer to I was actually talking about the letter writer, not you. I make a practice of not engaging with obvious MRA types. I only wanted to talk to HOAC, whose posts I enjoy. The comments about white/male supremacism were general, not personal, nor were they directed at you. Since I feel it would be unkind not to clarify that, I have responded. I do not hate you as a person, Sir. That is a ludicrous assertion.
As for your other false and hyperbolic claim that I can’t engage with you as a fellow human, you’ve clearly been brainwashed by the manosphere so there is no point in trying to discuss these issues with you. You won’t be reasonable, as you have amply demonstrated in your highly emotional responses, taking great offense at very little. You have made a few good points and said some things I agree with, actually. Other things, not so much. You have dodged people who did engage with you and provided statistics which refuted your claims, which tells me your ego won’t let you acknowledge error. It is not pleasant to converse with people with the kind of personality characteristics you are showing. I am sorry if that offends you, but after dealing with a narcissistic cheater it is essential that I guard my peace and serenity. I hope you can understand that.
My advice to you is to stop listening to online grifter bros and see a therapist for the emotional lability you display. Then maybe you can find some peace yourself. All my best to you.
The POYBs will be livid lol.
An excellent summary. Thanks!
It would be unfair to maintain the image that I’m some sort of racist white supremacist yet you also know I’m black by deleting the comment I made in my defense to OHFFS. If you’re going to delete the others at least let that one through if we are to pride ourselves in our integrity.
Lifted from an Anonymous (the group) comment on a Youtube video thread regarding Red Pill rape apologism. It’s just generic analysis of logical fallacy but if the shoe fits as they say.
Men commit 90% of violent crimes. It’s not even close.
Yes, certain genders lean more towards certain crimes because of their nature and biology. For men it’s aggression and violence, mostly towards other men. Do you believe it’s because of moral inferiority?
Ah yes, the biology argument. Doesn’t hold water. Men’s aggression and violence isn’t biology; it’s because men/boys never learned to control their emotions and were excused when they acted out.
If it looks like a troll and acts like a troll, it must be a troll . . .
Recognizing gender differences in behavior does not equal “who is worse.” Recognizing that men are overwhelmingly responsible for violent behavior to women and children (and also to each other) does not make one less “impartial.”
By the way: Men are responsible for 75-90% of all pediatric homicides. That doesn’t render them “worse”; it provides useful information for women’s individual decisions and for society’s policy makers.
I think you misunderstood what I said. The impartiality was to do with the guy who asked the question, not the differences in behavior.
But my point is, if we are to apply this logic across the board, would you really support it? For example, women commit 80% of infanticide worldwide. Are we now supposed to restrict them and call for society’s policy makers to do something about women?
Another example, I’m black and the people from poorer communities of my “race” commit a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes. Does that provide useful information for white people’s individual decisions when dealing with black people? Should we also call for society’s policy makers to make restrictions?
I’m sorry that you think men killing women is such a minor thing, especially compared to that institutionalized misandry and sexism against men. Oh, wait . . . misandry really isn’t a thing.
You don’t like the statistical comparison of who does more harm because it leads to more questions like why are so many men physically harming and even killing their partners, especially during pregnancy. Misandry isn’t really a thing because women who hate men tend to just stay out of the way of men. Misandrists don’t stalk, rape, beat on or kill men, don’t send them hate mail and threaten them with violence. Don’t try to take away their rights to body autonomy, health care or voting. Don’t try to remove them from the workplace or make laws against them. You know — all of those minor things that misogynists routinely do to women.
Yes, it is impossible to be impartial all the time. But until there is systemic violence, legislated discrimination, pay disparities and gendered bias in the legal system against men, maybe stop whining about misandry and how men are being picked on.
If we are being truthful, then as a man, I’m actually more at risk of being killed. You’ll of course disqualify that by saying that it’s a fellow man who is doing the killing so it doesn’t count. So it’s pointless even addressing that.
But yes, your country does have legislated discrimination and gendered bias in the legal system against men.
Bovine feces
I agree. While personal misandry exists, institutional misandry does not. I do think there are some female cheaters who hate men, probably stemming from daddy issues, but they don’t present a violent threat to their chumps like misogynists do to theirs.
The dude has been dipping into the toxic manosphere IMO.
Huh?
Yes, true, all of your comments. Wonen can die as a result of bring cheated on. I was long past menopause when I discovered my FW had been cheating for decades. And many of the betrayal objects had a variety of STIs,/STDs. A number had developed cancer as a result of multiple infections, repeated exposure to different strains, on top of poor health habits, alcoholism, etc. Thankfully, I am here to tell the story. Women: get tested, not once, but repeatedly. Some things take time to show up. Insist on a full blood panel. Get regular dental exams. I still go to the dentist 4x/year. Even if you feel great. Your life may depend on it.
The letter writer seems like a troll, or maybe a red pill dude who got cheated on by a skank.
Men batter and cheat more often than women, those are widely available statistics.
IME male chumps egos take a hit, their sexual humiliation kicks them in the gut differently, and paternity fraud can be devastating financially as well as emotionally. Oftentimes they don’t want to learn more or go into details it’s too emasculating, painful. I know several IRL and an engaged to one so this is my personal experience.
Sexually transmitted diseases causing cancers, pregnancy / fertility loss is disproportionally a female chump issue.
This blog shows abusive power dynamics and personality disordered people are universal, cutting across gender and cultural lines. It was shocking to me when I first read here but a powerful revelation. For example a gay male commenter wrote about his gut wrenching experience of his FW going for a walk during COVID (to screw an AP per iPad data) and the incredible pity party performance FW put on when he arrived home. I related 1000% to it having experienced very similar disbelief myself. It didn’t matter that I am neither male or gay I related to the chump devastation 😢
The current stock “13% of women cheat” statistic (as opposed to the current “20% of men cheat” stat) is often presented as new findings to pretend that this percentage is steadily rising due to social factors but that’s a big, fat lie. That 13% statistic was first reported in the 70s and then stayed static for the next fifty years. But the rate of cheating by women reported in the Kinsey report in the 50s was women– 26% and men — 50%.
The truth is that it appears rates of cheating have fallen by half since the fifties which could be due to all sorts of factors. For one, rates of domestic violence were higher in the fifties when divorce or making a living or even owning property were difficult for women which could suggest that many of the she-cheaters of that era fell under what is probably the one exception to cheaters typically having personality disorders– which is that a slightly higher rate of DV victims are known to “monkey branch”(likely just to have a bodyguard on hand to make their harrowing escapes). Basically abuse survivors might never have cheated if it weren’t for severe abuse so this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re shady dark triad types as modern social science dubs most cheaters.
The fact that the number of women who cheat dropped and then didn’t budge for fifty years strongly suggests that, as long as women can still divorce abusers and make a living, the number might not rise again. In fact it might even go down if enforcement against coercive control and violence improve to the extent that at least some of the she-cheaters among that “13%” don’t represent “organic” or character-driven cheating and still reflect battering and CC stats.
As for why the numbers of men who cheat dropped by half when women had more freedom to escape abusive partners kind of fits with my theory that domestic violence is largely driven by the brutal enforcement of one-sided monogamy. When these men lost the freedom to beat their chumps into submission, they literally lost some of the freedom to cheat with impunity. It just wasn’t as much fun.
The reason we can only make informed guesses but can’t answer any of the above with total certainty is because the science to map it out isn’t being done and I suspect the reason the science isn’t being done is political.
You don’t exclude men. Not at all. But infidelity hits women harder in some ways. After children, we are more likely to scale back or end our careers. Twenty years of part-time, professional work made it really rough to get full-time work with benefits, so I ended up self-employed. That worked for me, but I realize not everyone can do that. Thankfully, I’m semi-retired now.
And STI’s tend to affect us in more life-altering ways, particularly in pregnancy. I went to a GYN shortly after my ex finally left, and her rants were illuminating to me. This wasn’t something my church friends talked about, no way. My internist was the one who sounded all of the alarms, particularly because I had already had one STI before the last separation that I refused to process emotionally despite his rants. He recommended a full exam and testing with a GYN, and then a repeat just in case something showed up later. Thank God for ranty doctors, BTW. And for me, I did have a later issue that took a while to resolve. Thankfully, I’ve been fine since, but still do a full female exam with a GYN annually in addition to my internist, who manages other issues.
Whether they want to hear it or not, I discuss these things with my adult kids.
Chump Lady, thanks for going off on this guy!
Sometimes I am embarrassed to walk around with a dick when I read about how clueless some men are. After being chumped, but then sharing the recovery process in groups with women and later leading divorce recovery groups I feel more empathy for women, not less. This guy sounds like he feels unheard. But he is also unwilling to listen.
“…he feels unheard. But he is also unwilling to listen.” So, so eloquently put Bruno.
If this male fan is so deeply triggered by a single podcast episode about women’s health, this chump really needs to sit down, take a deep look in the mirror, and his internet history, to figure out if maybe the media he is consuming isn’t helping him heal as much as he thinks it is.
Like, he heard people talk about diseases causing infant loss and cancer and that made him angry? But not angry for those women, no, that would be empathetic, but he was angry that for 45 minutes he couldn’t relate to someone else’s experience and felt that made him a victim somehow?
Look, the algorithms are sneaky. Sometimes I can tell when I’ve been reading too many “man hating” memes or catty soundbites. Or even blogs. They’re there. It’s a balancing act between having an outlet for the BS so many of us experience not infrequently, but if that’s too much of what you consume, it starts to be all you see.
Sometimes I even have to step away from this blog, to be reminded that the world isn’t all cheaters all the time. There’s time when things get very partisan, and I just don’t enjoy that permeating this space so, I take a break from this blog on those days too. Not all topics are my cup of tea every day. I am not owed that by Tracy or any other user here.
For anyone here, take what is useful, leave the rest. You find yourself becoming angrier after reading all the cheater content here? Take a break.
But mUH BoTh sIDez!!!!!
Thank you for filleting and serving this dipshit. I no longer have the patience.
“You want symmetry where it doesn’t exist,” Tracy writes. That’s all that needs to be said to a man who would write a letter like today’s.
I hope this post winds up in the official Starter Kit.
Letter writer,
If the only time you bring up men’s issues is in the middle of a discussion about women’s issues, then I question how much you care about the men’s issues and wonder if you just want to be the center of attention.
It’s absolutely wild that you would listen to a single episode about the consequences of STIs in pregnancy with two OBGYNs and respond with “what about meeeeeen?!!”
Not everything needs to be about you 100% of the time. And if you’ve spent as much time listening to the podcast and reading this blog as you claim, you know damn well men get their fair share here.
So if it’s THAT IMPORTANT to you, then start that conversation on your own, in its own time, not in the middle of a conversation about women.
Nobody, not a single person, said women are always innocent. If that’s what you took from this last episode, you have a listening problem. CL does not have an “ignoring men” problem.
Ffs…
First off, a giant AMEN to CL’s response to the NAL strawman argument. It was really helpful to read that breakdown.
Secondly, sorry to be repetitive but I think my comment from a few days ago fits this theme better than the same comment fit the earlier letter from a male chump about being able to buy a new car for what RIC therapy cost. I was digressing about gender in last week’s comment but, regarding today’s letter, it’s the headline. Copy/paste of part of earlier comment:
…Today’s letter was by a male chump and we know (and love) many guy chumps on this forum. But to me, the existence of she-FWs and male survivors isn’t a contradiction to the fact that these male chumps are actually paying for societal denialism and apologism intended to sustain male sexual entitlement.
Just to boil down the armchair conclusion I made from working in DV advocacy years ago is that most cases of domestic vi0lence may be nothing more than the brutal enforcement of one-sided monogamy.
I know it’s a “bold assertion” especially when the science doesn’t yet exist to prove it. But I think domestic abuse doesn’t just occasionally involve infidelity tangentially but may actually be wholly driven by the right to cheat while being assured that victims can’t do in kind. It even explains the typical stereotype (which does exist) of the psychotically jealous batterer: pure projection. It really explains everything.
Anyway, as we know from DV statistics, most of this is driven by men. So where does that leave male survivors of coercive control and infidelity? To steal a line from Succession, I think the rule of dah patriarchy (can’t say that with a straight face) is basically that you “have to crack a few Gregs to make a Tomlet.” Though cheating apologism generally props up and shields male sexual control and dominance, sure there will always be a solid smattering of women who take license from this to out-creep the creeps. It can’t be helped and the “femme fatale” trope can even be useful [to dah patriarchy] to pretend that most cheating isn’t about male sexual control.
As far as the politics of why these flamingly obvious, simple studies have never been done, I think it boils down to the dick wanting what the dick wants. Studies like that would threaten sexual entitlement so they’re very carefully avoided. Even studies that are incredibly adjacent– like a study of the massively high HIV infection rates among battered women in certain countries– will gymnastically, awkwardly try to avoid making the obvious conclusion that batterers cheat. Those studies don’t necessarily demonstrate that all cheaters batter but the fact that batterers cheat far more than average and in horribly high risk ways is newsworthy enough. But you won’t see that headline any time soon. Because research grants are written by entitled dicks.
If you read and follow the work of evolutionary scientist Richard Wrangham, every evil in the world pretty much traces back to male sexual dominance and entitlement. But, as Wrangham so beautifully illustrates with facts and stats and decades in the jungle hiding behind palm leaves with Jane Goodall, no one pays for this dick entitlement more than males. It’s not just that some women (Wrangham has an incredible explanation for this too) draw license from patriarchal injustice to betray. It’s that men statistically kill men at 8 times the rate they kill women and most children killed in homes with DV are male.
Today’s [last week’s] LW wonders why there aren’t more resources like CL and I always wonder why there aren’t more genuine male feminists. Clearly part of it is that dah patriarchy violently polices against male “traitors” and the manosphere reserves weaponized terms for these men who supposedly can’t keep their boots firmly enough on women’s necks: simps or cucks, whatever. But personally I think the simps and cucks will inherit the earth (and save the ecology). I’ve known decent men and there’s nothing weak about them even if they’re emotionally open enough to get hurt.
Anyway, that’s my general take on it. Hate cheating? Vote for equality, get involved with legislation to protect victims of abuse, etc.
I swear this has to be baked into the DNA of men because of income disparity (the result of men disallowing women to attend university, inherit money, vote, etc.) that makes them blind to the fact that we can now do all those things legally and therefore do not have to live with their abuse due to threat of poverty. Just read the Alcoholics Anonymous big book “Chapter To The Wives” to see how this is still being perpetuated as an ideal for RECOVERY, FFS. It is why we are seeing a rise in the “trad wife” bullshit, and the courts taking away our rights. It’s not physical violence, yet, but it’s violence all the same.
Ooh, have you read my favorite book (and now my kids’ favorite book), Demonic Males: Apes and the Evolution of Human Violence? I recommend this book way too much (imagine me approaching you like a goggle-eyed missionary asking if you’ve heard the good news lol).
I think you’re right that this “negative potentiality” for sexual violence appears to be baked right into our species. All the same, Wrangham is the first to mop the floor with the evolutionary excuse for sexual aggression (as well as cannibalism, infanticide, lethal raiding and all the other wonderful things our ape ancestors regularly engaged in) since we evolved quite differently than apes in terms of reactive violence, free will and, he argues elsewhere, probably monogamy or at least a strong preference for mates to be monogamous.
That book feels as relevant as ever these days because Wrangham’s general premise (that our species has some serious hardwired problems but no, there’s zero moral excuse for it) seem to be catching on in social sciences these days. I found this out because I’ve been running a little AI experiment lately to see if AI can serve as a tool to help victims of domestic abuse disassemble captor bonding/Stockholm syndrome discovered something surprising … aside from discovery that Google Gemini is better for this than ChatGPT or even the apparently survivor-specific AI platform, Aimee Says (this depends on what kind of support someone wants though I suspect the chronic lugubrious “get in touch with your soft inner feelings” nudges by the latter platform are probably contraindicated for survivors who are still in the heat of battle. Definitely need major tweaking.
But I digress. The BIG thing I discovered is evidence that we may be in an relative heyday of woke social science that, among other refreshing things, combats old timey victim blaming theories and studies abusers like bugs under a microscope rather than scrutinizing victims for why they “caused/contributed” to abuse.
I’m getting more and more impressed by what Gemini is fetching from the annals of science publications and throwing at my feet like a faithful retriever to back up every theme I touch on in my little experimental chat. Because even pointed searches don’t always bring up all relevant current science on most search engines, I hadn’t been aware of the sheer scope of this new “age of enlightenment” regarding forensic research on domestic abuse. In any case, I think this and how viral and global the #MeToo and Ni Una Menos movements became might explain the intensity (and, yes, violence) of the current backlash.
Read “Cruelty By Intent”. Nice little book that explodes the “hurt people hurt people” myth.
Do you mean Cruelty by Nature by Dr. Peter Salerno? I know it but, because I spent 12 years researching the foundations of modern “crime genes” theories for a group of disability rights advocacy attorneys and only found a theoretical house of cards and junk science based on really awful racialist theories, I wasn’t really moved by Salerno’s arguments. I wasn’t moved by Simon Baron Cohen’s The Science of Evil (arguing for “genetic empathy impairment”) either.
As a “science journalist” (fancy way of saying someone who reports on the “political ramifications of science” without being an actual scientist), I could only “question” the resurgence of eugenics (dubbed “neugenics” by academic critics) without officially debunking the swarm of new genetic criminality claims that began flooding science publications in the past twenty years.
Because the “political ramifications” of this trend started to scare the living sh*t out of me the more I learned about it, I’m grateful that actual science is swatting the wasp I was only able bark and snap at. For instance, according to researcher and author of Psychopathy Unmasked, Rasmus Rosenberg-Larsen, there’s little evidence that what we think of as psychopathy even exists and much less that it’s “genetic.”
Obviously Rosenberg-Larsen is not saying that violent sadists don’t exist, just that the popular conception of them as “inherent bad seeds” is mostly based on myth and junk science. There are compelling “nurture” theories of severe criminality (one example: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/2/46) that adequately confirm that really, really evil and dangerous people exist and, even if their backstories are always terribly tRaGic (Bundy and every serial killer who ever existed), it should make zero difference in terms of penal justice response because people this horrible are generally intractable.
In other words, any concern that acknowledging the woebegone sad sausage backstories of demonically violent individuals could lead to these characters being given coddling therapy and released should be rendered moot by consistent statistical evidence that anyone that dangerous will never change.
There are no psychopaths: Virtually everything you think you know about psychopathy has been thoroughly debunked. Why does this zombie idea live on? https://aeon.co/essays/psychopathy-is-a-zombie-idea-why-does-it-cling-on
I had a D-day when I was 7 months pregnant. When I saw the title of this last podcast, my stomach flipped just remembering. I know darn well that my child and I could have been unalived by what klootzak was doing. I couldn’t bear to listen to it. It knew it would hit too hard.
I appreciate men who listen and have empathy. If there were an episode about men experiencing something similar I would listen. Statistics back up that women suffer more negative consequences when they are chumped than men do. It’s a horrible reality. I have sympathy for all chumps but I can’t personally understand how a male chump feels. I can empathize as best I can and respect their feelings. And if a podcast talks about that it doesn’t negate my experience. It’s a shame LW doesn’t understand that.
As a chump who was cheated on while I was pregnant, I’m angry that this man felt the need to insert himself in this particular conversation.
Dude, I’m sorry that you were cheated on. Nothing excuses that, ever. But know when to STFU. Really, any other podcast would have been better to comment after. But you couldn’t do that, because the other podcasts all include the male experience of being cheated on. You chose this one because it wasn’t about you. Open your eyes and you’ll see that Tracy talks to all chumps. She doesn’t exclude anyone. But this particular topic is one you can’t possibly understand. So sit down and wait. The next one will have something you can identify with.
This reminds me a bit of women complaining that they don’t get equal pay for sports performance. Like women’s basketball. Women don’t support it like men support men’s basketball. It is never going draw the money that men’s basketball will until women support it. Male chumps won’t get the attention that women chumps do until men come forward and participate in the discussion like women do.
A towering concoction of whatabouttery! And of all the topics to choose. I wonder if this fine fellow has gone to his wife’s prenatal appointments and demanded, “What about meee?!”
He could have chosen a topic like My Cheating Wife Cleaned Out the Kids’ College Funds when she ran away to Patagonia”. But no.
A topic concerned with what happens to women’s insides, literally (among other things.)
I hope this is an AI and not a human writing, it’s so very very stupid.
I am a gay man and I was chumped while I was living in a committed 20 year relationship with another gay man. 15 of those 20 years were in a legal marriage.
One of the things I love about this blog is learning exactly how universal many of the dynamics of abuse and cheating are. I now understand that cheating and abuse transcend gender, orientation, socio-economic class, age, beauty and culture. Truly – I had no idea before I started to read ChumpLady.
Having said that, there are many differences too. I respect those differences, as I suspect most readers here do. My differences and your differences do not invalidate our respective experiences. I am not diminished because I experienced cheating differently – nor is anyone else diminished because your story and experience differs from mine.
As many others have said – this is not the pain Olympics. We are not in competition to see who suffered the most or the least. The objective is not to determine who scored 10.0 and who only scored 9.3. In my view, the objectives here are to share, support, learn and to grow. And for me, that often happens best when I consider the experiences and realities of others who are different from me.
Another mouthy dude who subscribes to the notion that men should always be central because women aren’t actually human.
Sounds like an MRA who got triggered hearing about all the psychopathic things male cheaters have done to these two OB GYNs and to their own children through STIs. So much so that he is actually complaining about lack of male representation in an episode about women’s health. 😄
In case he’s reading; whine on, fella. Nobody cares about your faux victimhood. The men who post here know CL doesn’t leave them out. If you were really the fan you claim to be you would have spent enough time here to know that. As CL pointed out, all you have here are silly strawman arguments. You just got your feelings hurt because you felt the episode made men look bad. The truth is what it is, bub-bub. Two things you learned that you don’t want to face; that these doctors apparently get threats from male cheaters about the testing and that women face different (and more deadly) health outcomes than men do because of cheating. False paternity is indeed horrible, but it’s not a health problem and most importantly, *it’s not something OB GYNs would have experience with.* You do get that they specialize in women’s reproductive and sexual health, right?
Quick correction to this statement: You’ll never know the pain of losing your fertility or life to an STI.
Men can and do lose their fertility to STIs. Around 15-20 percent of all male infertility comes from STIs.
I stand corrected! https://www.fertility-academy.co.uk/blog/7-stis-that-affect-male-fertility/
However Googling just now, they rarely cause sterility, which they do for women.
It’s 15-20 percent. Whether that qualifies as “rarely” or not is another story, but that’s the number.
“But I wonder why you want to make men’s suffering more central when you erase women’s experience? Why do you think discussing women’s health with two doctors diminishes you? Why do you think it’s appropriate to scold me? Check your entitlement.”
Thank you Chump Lady, for calling out this whiny, straw B.S.! You are spot on.
I’ve never once gotten the message on this blog that you think cheating is anything other than a *character problem* which affects women AND men, both straight and otherwise, of every culture and religion.
Today’s letter was very triggering to me. Having experienced narcissistic abuse in various forms – not just cheating (and yes, I had an STI which ultimately nearly cost my my life) – I recognized all the “What about ME?” oozing from the letter.
My ex literally couldn’t handle it when I got sick with something. Almost always he would end up getting sick, as well, so as not to be outdone with getting empathy and concern from others (while sending little to no empathy or concern my way when I was ill). The last major medical issue I dealt with which was so trying FOR HIM lasted for months, and involved a heck of a lot of pain and expensive medical procedures and biopsies.
They were peri-menopausal GYN issues. So he couldn’t come up with something else, to get the attention off of me and onto him. His hostility towards me just couldn’t be masked at that point in our 22+ year (by then) marriage. I don’t think it was a coincidence at all that just a handful of months later his affair started. His wife appliance malfunctioned and cost money medically, time to carry out the discard.
Hey man up and do your own blog that cheating is abusive. No one is stopping you, in fact, that would be a great thing if you did. Otherwise, you sound like another dude expecting a woman to carry your “emotional load” for you. Women are tired of that shit.
Male chump here. This dude doesn’t speak for me, I feel well represented and received in this community. Thankful for CN community.
I have read many accounts here of female cheating. Women just tend to share more I think.
I do remember when I first came on here, I gave my account and I was critiqued by someone who took my words wrong somehow, and accused me of saying something I clearly did not say. I was simply telling my story, I used the pronouns that described the people in my story. It was my story. I don’t need to include everyone in my story. Nor does anyone else need to include me in their story.
I like CLs suggestion that the writer take his story out there and focus on what he thinks is not being addressed.
CL does not need to change her focus, or who she is. No one can be everything to everyone, thank God today we have so many resources that were not available when I went through it.
The defense rests its case! Well said! I can tell you that both my husband’s thought their hydraulic equipment was SAFE!. #1 EXHC Kept having unprotected sex with OW after stating he wanted a baby with me..soon I’m pregnant. When D day came he said he was so smart to find a woman who could not have kids so he needed no protection He put my life at risk and our baby’s life too
#2Exhc said he saw a urologist who said he was clean …so all my STIs were on my own,even though he was enjoying a basement life. You cannot trust a cheater to care for you in any way. My OB held me as I cried post delivery, post D day. My second OB was so kind and affirmimg I cried during STD testing with stirrups in place. My doctors saw cheated on woman all the time!! Maybe Urologist need to chime in? I’d love to hear how cheating wives got them sick!!
That men have cheater wives and raise kids that are not theirs, write in! That you found out your wife kept her cheating STD secrets without telling you, write in! That you developed prostatitis and chronic UTIs from your cheating wife, write to Chump lady. That you were abused as a stay at home dad while your wife cheated at work, write in! That you thought your wife had a night job but it was really as a sex worker and you had NO IDEA!!! I’m all ready to read those stories…oh and that you needed safety from your wife’s beat needed a safe home. Write!! That you are caring for your kids solo with thousands of unpaid child support, email CL!!!
I can’t wait to hear the stories. If you are not in arena with us, then be silent and sit down.
Dude, when you reach the point that you are accusing children’s hospitals of a conspiracy to hide female infidelity, you’ve passed the point where you should get a therapist.
“Incidental Finding of Non-Paternity” doesn’t only happen with sick children. It happens anytime people within a family line are tested for a whole bunch of things. Plenty of older adults have found out that their siblings are actually a mix of full and half siblings when doing genetic testing for a variety of disorders.
Or you could be me and find out your mother had a secret marriage way back when.
I really wish Male Fan had done what Tracy described. Just say, “great story, any chance you could do something on the ugliness of finding out you’re not your child’s father?”
Because berating Tracy is a terrible thing to do (this is the woman who actually put together a real plan to deal with infidelity from anyone on the sex, sexuality, race and creed spectrum). That’s an hell of an accomplishment, and we’re all indebted to her.
– [ ] Second, you just made men look even more clueless than women already think we are. No thank you’s for that.
I’m dead tired and can’t continue on why I don’t want a Male Fan to act so irresponsibly in voicing his biased opinions.
But I do want to remind Tracy that there are plenty of male chumps who are very thankful she came up with LACGAL and continues to be there for all chumps. That’s what I want to focus on.
Tracy has been leading the call for chumps to reject the stupidity and hypocrisy of the RIC, the cruelty of cheaters, etc. for about fourteen years now.
Let’s give her a big hand, instead of berating her for not-well-thought-out ideas on what a Male Fan thinks she should be doing. Listen, learn, and absorb what Tracy says. Like she said, if you don’t like what she’s doing? Start your own blog, then!
Thank you, Tracy, on behalf of all the other male chumps. You are very much appreciated.😁
Oh my brothers in Christ! How do you function in this world being so obtuse? When are we going to let go of this dumb fallacy that liking one thing implies hatred of something else? Or giving a moment of attention to one thing amounts to ignoring the other? Is it sexist to talk about prostate cancer because women don’t get it? Should every mention of the topic require a disclaimer that breast, ovarian, and uterine cancer are also bad? You can hate Communism and hate Fascism. Refusing to be mean to gay people is not advocating genocide against straight people. You can extol the virtues of the humble apple without implying that oranges suck or don’t exist.
This reminds me so much of the “bean soup theory” named after a viral video of a bean soup recipe where a reader commented “but I don’t like beans” 🤣
Sometimes what you read isn’t out to exclude you, it’s just not about you.
I just CANNOT with men anymore. Done. It’s been 7 years since I’ve lived with a man. I don’t see the patriarchy falling any time soon, so I’ll be living my best single life forever- not dealing with their constant BS.
Henry VIII comes to mind in regards to blaming his wives because they could not produce a male heir for him.
STD’s wreaked havoc back then and the woman was usually blamed when the fetal outcome was miscarriage or stillbirth.
As a purchaser of your book, a fan, and also as someone who understands why you naturally focus more on your own gender perspective as a woman — just as men running a similar blog would probably focus more on men — I have to say a couple of things, partly because of some comments I see here.
First, gender bias. I absolutely do not think women cheat less — not in 2026, and not modern women. Perhaps that was true 50 years ago. I can believe that. But anyone who has regular contact today with women in their 20s and 30s should be careful about still treating women as the “fairer sex.”
In the department where I work, over the last five years, around ten women have passed through, and all but two were cheating while having husbands or boyfriends. One even cheated on her affair partner with another coworker. Another got pregnant, and although I cannot know who the father is, people were joking that the baby looked like one of my coworkers. Interestingly, the only two women I am sure did not cheat happened to come from muslim country.
So please, let’s stop sugarcoating women’s behavior.
Second, paternity fraud is underestimated. In that situation, a man is not only cheated on; he can also be forced by law — “patriarchy,” right? — to support a child who is not his. We are potentially talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is not a small issue. It is huge.
First, you are humiliated by your partner. Then you are humiliated again by the very society that obliges you to hand over your resources for a betrayal committed against you. That is why paternity fraud should not be treated as some minor detail or uncomfortable footnote. It is one of the most brutal forms of betrayal a human being can experience.
We are here and open to discussing it. I tried doing it in your discussion group and watched as anti male stuff was posted all over it. And then when I pointed this out they promptly threw me out.
So you do have a gigantic bias and quite frankly the fact that you spent all this time defending yourself on it here points to it being present. You could do a lot to help us like Sam and Rece are doing, but I find you mostly to be a female hate panderer with occasionally useful advice. And yes I did buy your book and read it and it is not that biased, but your community and podcasts pretty clearly are from my point of view.