Seeing as I am one, no. We are not.

If a boss is repeatedly manipulating underlings into sleeping with him that feels pretty predatory to me.

Manipulative plus being the boss is what makes it feel predatory to me. If there is a serious power differential, it's hard not to see that word as likely appropriated.

No worries. :-)

Thank you, Genji. Not irrelevant. It means a lot.

I'm just saying I understand how someone reads that it it raises familiar predatory red flags, because it certainly does for me. I have heard some very, very similar words from a person who assaulted me a long time ago.

I feel like he's positioned himself as a voice for the cause. But it's true that others have pushed that narrative harder than he has. However, if his ex-wife's claims that he used his reputation for feminism as a way to enable and hide serial cheating behavior are true then that would be something closer to self…

But this isn't someone saying, "Joss is such a feminist, I want to sleep with him." It's Joss allegedly saying, "you can trust me, I respect women, I am such a huge feminist" and then acting like a huge creep.

To be fair, I said probably not definitely a creep.

Telling your wife that your close friendships with all these female colleagues (who were actually your lovers) is central to your life, because your feminism makes you closer to women than men means that he used feminism as an excuse to lie to and manipulate his wife.

I don't find the article very well written. It makes mistakes when it should be exceedingly careful.

I honestly was pretty apathetic about this whole thing until I read that bit he wrote, which just creeped me out to the max. It echoed so closely the words of a sexual predator I knew personally.

Bingo!

Cheating on your wife alone does not make you a bad feminist. But using your feminist bona fides to seduce other women and also to gaslight your wife about your serial cheating puts you somewhere on the crappy feminist spectrum. Being exposed as a shitty feminist also doesn't make his work any less meaningful, but I…

No.

Yes! Everything in your second graph. The gasslighting and predatory language here are the problem, not the cheating. I don't get why tbat isn't obvious.

Is not being a "true progressive" really anywhere close to being a creep toward women? Or was that the joke?

Absolute truth. Anyone who has experienced this kind of excuse being used to justify their having been assaulted will recognize how predatory that language sounds and feels.

I read it as "I was surrounded by emotionally vulnerable young women susceptible to the attentions of a father figure-type, it was so difficult for me."

I guess we have to agree to disagree. There are a lot of reasons people cheat and while it is always hurtful and inconsiderate, it is not always calculated or manipulative, and it doesn't always use high ideals as part of the technique. I've known people who cheated out of stupid drunken decision-making. I've known…