In her appearance last year on Two Much with Kajol and Twinkle, Jahnvi Kapoor confesses how much she has to dumb herself down to navigate the ‘male egos’ in her profession, even as a privileged Indian actress. “I am still picking my battles … I will just say, ‘mujhe samajh nahi aa raha (I am not getting it)’, instead of saying this is f***ed up!”

Twinkle Khanna, on the other hand, said she faced the same problem in her time, but “never understood the need to be diplomatic.”

Now, I’m a somewhat privileged woman who has navigated the male ego through multiple careers—I’ve been a software developer, a marketer across tech, media, consumer goods, and startups, and also a non-fiction writer and author; I’ve also seen my mother, a lawyer, getting stalled in her profession by a single big male ego, her husband’s—so I can relate to both Kapoor’s and Khanna’s approach.

There have been times when my rage at being automatically assumed as less-than by the other sex, even if unconsciously, demanded conscious recognition, so it could be channeled into a battle worth fighting productively, either for myself or the feminist idea at large.  Men have looked at me and, because I’m a woman, assumed that I cannot be given the steering wheel of a car, or that I do not know how to drive a bike (I do), or that I don’t work in tech as a developer (I don’t now, but I have before).

Over my career, men have ‘mansplained’ the basics of my job(s) to me, in ways that felt more patronising than helpful. They’ve assumed I’m not good at math, that I’ve gotten where I am because I’m pretty or have connections, as if these perceived advantages didn’t come with traumatic experiences at the hands of predatory men in positions of power, or that my success didn’t involve intense hard work and real intelligence, which I’ve chosen to nurture and cultivate every day.

Even in the modern workplace, in poker rooms, which I love to frequent, on dating apps, which I frequent with less love, and in intimate relationships, men have felt free to tell me that ‘they hate feminists’, that women are not ‘naturally’ funny; one even sent me reels where the woman is the butt of a ‘joke’ that ended with accidental violence against her. Naturally, I ghosted this person. In my own home, though, I’ve sat through oblivious male relatives laughing at ‘rape jokes’. In social settings, I’ve seen women get berated by men for small mistakes in ways that they never do to other men. Why, only last weekend, when I booked a handsome profit at a poker game, two men smirked behind my back and called it ‘beginner’s luck’. 

Despite the fact that I have earned my stripes repeatedly in male-dominated spaces, even in the ways that conventional society (i.e. men historically) define ‘raw intelligence’, men don’t always take me seriously or offer me the respect I’m sure my raw intelligence deserves. 

I once read a tweet by a mathematician dude in the same Twitter circles that said that ‘actually smart people don’t care about proving they’re smart all the time’; I’m living proof of a certain kind of ‘actually smart’ person who cares more than she should having it proven, about being seen for it, because I’ve never gotten the respect that more idiotic and less competent men than me automatically get. 

The world has never been the same for all of us. Women aren’t allowed to feel equal to men in most spaces, even when they more than deserve to.

What’s worse is how much men have weaponized their defensiveness at these patterns being pointed out against the very women they have offended from their conditioning. There have been times I’ve had to not only bear these insults but also muster the courage to stand up for myself, only to be called “aggressive”, “abrasive”, “nasty”, “harsh”, “intimidating”, “crazy”, “arrogant”, “blunt”, “difficult”, and other unnecessary adjectives. 

Like Kapoor, this sometimes makes me want to shut down, to be more strategic about when my anger gets the stage, if at all, to police how I voice my discomfort, which means I’m constantly subjecting myself to an internalised “male gaze”. At my lowest, I sometimes feel like giving up on those of my interests that are male-dominated, from the sheer exhaustion of all this contortion.

But even thinking this way fills me with sadness. I remind myself that women in every field have had to overcome such ignominy to do their work with the sincere love that I know I feel for science, for poker, for boxing, for comedy, for driving cars, independent of the fact that to choose to be in these spaces as a woman demands a kind of daily heroism. I think of the women who choose conventionally feminine pursuits, like cooking or interior decoration, who have to fight for the respect that even those who do well in conventionally male arenas are not easily given anyway.

I want the comfortable access, the automatic assumption of competence, the strength in numbers that makes everything so much easier for men.

Talented women have historically had their excellence and contributions invisibilized. They have also been dissuaded from their natural inclinations and gifts by dickish behaviours from the men around them, some of whom may have claimed to care about them. And they say that women are “emotional”, but I’ve seen as many men being unable to regulate their emotions as I’ve seen women using their emotional capacity to process difficult feelings and make something useful come out of it for everyone involved. Hopefully, this article is evidence of that.

But the more visibly feminist I become—I wonder what it takes to get profiled as such; perhaps the fact that I’m a writer who looks like she writes about these things has something to do with it—the more some men have felt it’s alright to jokingly trigger me about the woundedness that such writing comes from.

Here’s a fun, ‘funny’ fact: Research has shown that men bond through misogyny. The dismal truth is that there are no signs of this slowing down, even in these advanced years of the 21st century. Thanks to the internet and its various subcultures and the offline effects of this, it is more normal than ever for men to have spaces where their insecurity about the ‘fairer’ sex can not only survive but can thrive.

So, it seems to be time to set a new standard for men. Just as women have always had to to fight, overwork, and outperform the average man to earn the basic right to vote, to work, to occupy public space, and be respectable members of society, men today should have to prove they’re not misogynistic before we trust them with our bodies, our time, our conversations, the basic but many tangible and intangible forms of value women add. 

Yes, #NotAllMen, but #EnoughOfThem need to prove they respect and value us. Some simple ways to do so: Stop belittling women. Don’t disrespect them, accidentally or otherwise. Don’t make little misogynistic jokes, especially not in mixed gender settings, especially not ‘ironically’. You have lost your audience for this amongst any sane, self-respecting, aware population. 

Before you think about triggering women for the laughs, to be edgy for an audience of none, or slandering someone’s career or intelligence or accomplishments, or to defend the people who do these things casually or otherise—ask yourself where your desire to do this comes from. 

Is she really incompetent, or “too much”? Are most men so harmless that you’d rather defend them all, or are you simply threatened, forced to change, because you’ve been taught to believe you’re automatically right, always?

Challenge yourself, perhaps think before you speak. It’s really that simple. If you even care, that is.