Oh please, woman, stop being so cringe

Michael, let's go to the races with Ovid...

Recently, I met Michael*. He’s not a fan of mine at all. I met him on Substack when a fellow writer tagged me beneath one of Michael’s notes. Here’s the note:

Michael was annoyed about an introduction I posted a couple of weeks previously. In his responses to his commenters (one of whom accused me of “e-begging”, another of being a “bot boss”), he reinforced how much I “made his skin crawl” and how “cringe” I am. He thought I was playing the “damsel in distress”.

One poor soul bemoaned the fact he’d “fallen for the one on the right” (fallen for…what?) and another mistook me as a “needy Gen Z” (I’ll take it, thanks – I’m 36). I was named “ugly and childish”, too.

At first, I found the debacle mildly irritating. I thought perhaps Michael might have just suffered an error in judgement (I am not, in fact, a bot, but a real person). So, I responded like this:

But Michael was not to be deterred. His mission to purge Substack of insidious cringe-woman-boss-bot behaviour is vital and important, after all. I should have known better. This was what he came back with:

After a millisecond of careful consideration, I passed on Michael’s “deep analysis”.

Ah. I saw where Michael was coming from. He’s averse to “attention-hacking”. It’s just too cringe for a man on social media using my post to garner attention to bear. Cringe, cringe, cringe.

I tried to explain a couple of things:

Of course, as Michael would soon teach me, I’d missed a key bit of information. Michael could never participate in problematic behaviour because he has a heap of women friends, see?:

Oh gosh sorry, if only you’d said you had friends who were women before…

What’s a damsel in distress to do in response? I wished him well…

Michael helpfully sent me lots of links to resources that taught me how not to cringe him out.

Oh, and he didn’t like me responding to him, either. My “pout” is just not his thing, it turns out:

Apparently – in the face of undeniable fact – we are real pouty people.

Obviously, Michael’s got bigger fish to fry than worry about me. He’s making “so much money” on Substack and is working not on his first, nor even second, but his third novel. He’s a woman-befriending mover and shaker, undoubtedly. 

Apart from, he is worried about me. I know this because he bothered to find time – somewhere in his busy schedule – to screenshot my face, upload it to his notes and write about me. He didn’t, I might add, find a moment to do even the least bit of cursory research beforehand. 

More insights from Michael. These aren’t directed at me but at someone calling him out. I’m not sure I’d do well on Onlyfans tbh.

And I’m worried about the fact he’s worried. Why should he care that I list my interests? Why should he care that people respond? I mean what I said to him: this is about people preferring to write their discourse about women, rather than letting women write their own. 

When I was at school, I had a near-physical (not good) reaction to the Latin poet Ovid’s poem At The Races. The entirety of the Amores (of which this poem is a part) may as well be the paradigm for projected narratives.

Ovid moons about Rome obsessing over a woman named Corinna. It’s, at best, unclear whether Corinna even knows he exists, or if that is her name at all. In one particularly creepy instance he attends the horse racing and spies her in the crowd with another man. What follows is a full-blown, fevered rewrite of reality. Ovid inserts himself into their experience and imagines Corinna is really there to impress him:

“You watch the course, and I watch you: we’ll both

see what delights us, and both feast our eyes.”

Ovid is the one who feasts his eyes with his make-believe, self-serving agenda. Corinna? We’re actually never told. 

Ovid, Michael’s new bromance.

There are countless examples of such behaviour throughout history and the arts.

Classics is my specialism, so I can name a couple more from antiquity: how a speech about the courtesan Neaira’s shameful behaviour was used as a prosecution against her husband in 4th century BC Athens to suit the law court’s needs. How Cleopatra has been overwritten, morphed and moulded to anyone who needs to use her character for their purposes.

Jumping ahead, I was recently at the National Portrait Gallery’s “Six Lives” exhibition about Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. I was struck at how their portraits – their images – were dealt as bargaining and propaganda tools during their lifetimes. 

Ann of Cleeves. Look at her: just cringe-worthy.

I’m certainly no object of desire to Michael (if I am, he’s gone about things in an unconventional manner). Nor is he using me in a prosecution speech. As far as I know, he’s not commissioned a portrait of me. He did, however, use my image, my name, and overwrite who and what I am for his own gain in comments, subscribers and followers. 

People like Michael will argue that this is a tired response (in fact, this is exactly what he said); it is. It’s tired because it’s happened for far too long. It’s tired because it’s never-ending and all-encompassing.

I’m tired, Michael. You’re right. 

Thank you so much for reading, as always! It’s a tough world sometimes (and I don’t pretend that my exchange with Michael is really that tough at all). I’d like to try and spread a message of kindness and tolerance.

You might not like everyone. You might really dislike some people. But it’s generally good to act with an open heart, I think. Michael, if you’re reading this, I’m always available for a sensible and calm chat.

*This is the only information about him I will share: his first name. I’m not in the business of shaming people publicly.