The Quiet Ones Are Worse

“Everyone fears or attacks the loud misogynist, the one who tweets nonsense and throws cheap insults. But the real danger? The man who won’t even argue with a woman because, in his mind, she doesn’t qualify for a debate.”

I say that out loud in conversation and watch faces change, some nod, some look uncomfortable, some pretend they didn’t hear. I don’t say it to be edgy; I say it because we have normalized a form of gendered erasure that wears civility as camouflage. The loud misogynist is obvious, offensive, and easy to call out. The quiet one is slipperier. He doesn’t raise his voice; he simply chooses not to engage. He smiles, he shrugs, he “stays above it.” But what he’s really doing is deciding, without conversation, that your opinion is not worth his time.

We are too quick to mistake that silence for respect. Especially in our African spaces, where composure is taught as a virtue and disruption is read as disrespect, the man who doesn’t argue is often praised as mature. “He’s calm,” people say. “He’s not like those noisy ones.” And in that praise there is a dangerous erasure: he doesn’t argue because he already disqualified you mentally. He does not debate you because in his mind you don’t belong in the arena of his ideas.

Isn’t the man who argues at least acknowledging your intellect? The act of arguing, of disagreeing, of correcting, of challenging, assumes you exist as an interlocutor. The man who won’t engage has already decided you don’t. That’s not respect; that’s dismissal dressed as dignity.

The Polite Disrespect — When Indifference Becomes an Ego Tool

Many individuals would call it restraint and mutual respect; I call it ego with manners.

We’ve all met that one guy: the colleague who says, “I don’t argue with women,” like it’s a badge of honor. He’ll talk over a woman in a meeting, interrupt her, and when she calls it, he’ll smile and say, “I prefer not to argue.” He won’t insult you, but he’ll ignore you into irrelevance. That’s the polite form of contempt. It’s a kind of social engineering: if you can’t make someone small with a slur, make them invisible with omission.

This civilized misogyny thrives in boardrooms, in lecture halls, in family prayer meetings, in church councils, and yes, even in mosque gatherings and traditional councils. The quiet misogynist has found a safer playbook: don’t give offense, but also don’t give platform. He hides behind logic, professionalism, or moral superiority. The loud misogynist makes noise on social media and becomes a trending villain, easy to spot, easy to blame. The quiet one is more dangerous because he sits on panels, chairs committees, and decides whose ideas get airtime.

He holds power not by shouting but by curating silence. He chooses which questions are worthy of debate and which aren’t. In doing so, he writes women out of the conversation without having to explain why. The consequence is the slow shrinking of women’s authority: fewer invites to speak, fewer promotions, fewer chances to be seen as thought-leaders.

I’ll say something blunt here: I’d rather deal with a loud misogynist. At least he acknowledges the existence and impact of women by fighting them. The quiet misogynist has already decided you don’t matter, and that erasure is harder to fight.

The Loud Ones vs. The Quiet Ones

There’s a perverse logic in public life: the loud misogynist feeds our outrage machines. He fills comment sections and gets headlines. The quiet misogynist sits in meeting rooms and shapes policy, sometimes with far worse outcomes. The loud one’s stupidity is visible; the quiet one’s is structural.

Think about it: the noisy antagonist is the one you can block on Twitter. The quiet antagonist is the one who sits on hiring panels and votes certification down. The noisy antagonist trends for a week. The quiet antagonists design systems that last generations.

So yes, we fear the brash insult-maker, but we should fear more the man who believes his silence is civility while quietly controlling whose voice gets amplified. That’s not leadership; it’s gatekeeping.

The Cultural Commentary — The African Context

In our African homes and spaces, this behavior is groomed. Boys are taught to be “leaders” and girls to be “respectful.” Respect often becomes shorthand for submission: speak less, smile more, preserve family harmony. That’s how subtle misogyny becomes a cultural creed.

“He doesn’t hate women — he just doesn’t think they should speak first.” I have heard this phrase used as justification in elders’ circles, at weddings, and in workplaces. It’s a quaint euphemism for a belief system that trains men to see women as secondary participants in every civic conversation. The result? Women are applauded for being pleasant and criticized for being vocal.

We celebrate silence in men as maturity and deride it in women as weakness or emotional drama. A woman who raises her voice in a meeting is “aggressive.” A man who disengages from the same debate is “mature.” The double standard is so normalized that many of us don’t recognize it until we see its outcomes: women sidelined, promotions delayed, mentorship denied.

This pattern is visible everywhere: churches where men chair committees and women coordinate the refreshments; family meetings where men make decisions and women are asked to “support”; public forums where women’s opening statements are shortened or edited. The culture that frames male silence as dignity is actually weaponizing it to deny women access to power.

Imagine a guy telling another guy he is stupid because of caring for a woman, things like this might go unnoticed but they show a pattern that these individuals do not see the female gender as worth anything, even though they are told as jokes or subtly in conversations.

The Flip Side of the Coin

I will not fall into the naive trap of saying men are the only problem. The reality is messier. Some women have internalized misogyny to the point of replicating it. They can be gatekeepers to their own gender, policing language, style, and ambition, sometimes cruelly.

It pains me to say it, but I’ve watched women mirror the same dismissive tactics they one day complain about. I’ve seen older women in positions of power treat younger women as challenges rather than colleagues; I’ve seen women ridicule each other’s ambitions with the same venom reserved for men. Feminism—at its core a movement for collective liberation, sometimes gets muffled into a competitive posture, where the success of one is used as a cudgel against another.

The phrase “you de follow woman dey argue” or “men can follow anything in skirt—the thing in skirt is their fellow gender” is tossed around like a joke, but the effect is corrosive. It teaches younger women that power is zero-sum, that they are some kind of commodity with varying standards and prices, that authority must be hoarded, not shared. When women adopt the same dismissive stance toward their sisters, they contribute to a cycle that ultimately weakens us all.

So yes: call out male behavior, but also call out women who weaponize the same attitudes. True progress means confronting misogyny wherever it lives, even in the mirror.

The Psychology of Dismissal

Why do men avoid confronting women? The answers are partly psychological, partly cultural. Engagement requires risk. To engage is to admit the possibility of being out-argued, of being wrong. For some men, that vulnerability is terrifying, because masculinity has been equated with infallibility. Dismissing a voice is easier than facing the possibility that your assumptions are wrong.

Research tracks this. Interruptions and dismissals are not just anecdotal; they’re measurable. Studies show that women are interrupted and talked over at higher rates in meetings, and workplace surveys report that being interrupted is a common experience for many women. For example, one workplace survey found that 19% of women report frequent interruptions or being talked over in meetings, while 42% say it happens at least sometimes.

There’s another phenomenon: after movements like #MeToo, some male managers pulled back from mentoring or traveling with female colleagues, because they were anxious about being accused of wrongdoing. A 2018 report found that many men felt uncomfortable with previously normal interactions like mentoring women one-on-one or attending work dinners. That avoidance, though well-intentioned by some, can have the effect of further isolating women from critical career opportunities. Dismissal is a coward’s strategy. It masks insecurity as composure and protects one’s ego by shrinking the field of debate.

Reframing Respect

We need to be honest about what respect actually looks like. Respect is not silence. Respect is engagement. Respect is listening, responding, disagreeing without denigrating and being willing to change your mind because someone gave a better argument.

If you only accept a woman’s perspective when it aligns with yours, you don’t respect her. You control her. The real test of respect is how you treat disagreement. Do you shut down conversation because it threatens your image? Or do you lean in, ask questions, and allow your views to be shaped by others?

Both genders must be called to order if we want to uproot misogyny. Men need to stop viewing silence as virtue. Women need to refuse the temptation to police one another. Role models must not be male gatekeepers who “allow” women to speak; they must be allies who amplify and defend women’s space.

True progress requires structural change, mentorship programs that include men and women together, meeting norms that prevent interruptions, and policies that ensure equitable representation on panels and boards. And just as importantly, it requires cultural change: teaching boys that being challenged is not humiliation and teaching girls that being outspoken is not scandal.

Conclusion — The Quiet Ones Erase, the Loud Ones Offend

I will repeat this because it matters: the loud ones offend your ears; the quiet ones erase your existence, and at least you know what the loud ones are capable of.

If you want to target misogyny, don’t only shout at the man with the nasty tweet. Pay attention to the one who doesn’t bother to tweet at all, the one who edits you out of records and invites and then calls himself mature. At least the man who argues recognizes you as an actor in the world. The man who won’t engage has already decided you shouldn’t have lines in the script.

So next time someone tells you, “He’s not like the others, he’s calm,” listen carefully. Calm can be virtue; calm can also be contempt in a tuxedo. At least the loud ones argue, you can see the line; you can fight back. The quiet ones have already drawn the line for you, and it runs through your right to be heard.

At least the loud ones argue — the quiet ones have already decided you don’t matter.