"A clear sign of an ignorant misogynistic heathen."

Internet troll Scott Wittevrongel of Vista, California, just unloaded on me because he found out I smoked cigars. His exact quote was:

'As progressives go....you're an ignorant heathen. BTW, the long recognized
male habit of cigar smoking is also a clear sign of an ignorant misogynistic
heathen."

In response, I merely want to post a few photos of some of my misogynistic cigar buddies.

This is my cigar buddy Ramona Brown, who runs Ramona Brown's Place fan page on Facebook as well as the Ramona Brown, the Cigar Lady website where she reviews cigars and promotes positive images of women who smoke cigars. She's clearly a misogynist.

This is Brenda Scott, a hard-working mother of five who works at American Airlines and still finds time to work with the charity HopeKids--which is important to her since her young son suffers from a heart defect. When she has a spare moment to herself, however, she enjoys indulging in the "long recognized male habit" of "ignorant misogynistic heathen."

This is Racquel Hill, a tobacconist at JR Cigars. One of the comments Scott Wittevrongel made to me in his rant was "Our new wave of millennial progressives is embarrassed by your old school ignorance." Racquel Hill is just 24 years old, but she hasn't told me yet that she's embarrassed by me. I guess that makes her a misogynist.

This is Denise Cruz Figueroa, one of the managers at Holt's Cigars in Philly. Holt's is one of the finest cigar stores in the country, and Denise is a tireless promoter of the cigar industry. The man standing next to her in the photo is Don Carlos Fuente, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago. I always tell Denise that she and I have almost identical taste in cigars as she's always tempting me with photos of our favorite sticks. I guess that makes her misogynistic.

This is Janny Garcia. She's part of a very famous cigar family, the Garcia family, that produces such brands as Don Pepin Garcia, Jaime Garcia, My Father's Cigars and her own special line, La Duena. Her family's factory also produces Tatuaje, which is one of my favorites. Heck, I have many Garcia faves. I met her once at a cigar event--she was smoking a cigar and I was smoking a cigar so I don't know if that makes us cigar "buddies" or not, but I still admire her contributions to the industry even if she is a misogynist.

This is Marquitta Grant Jackson, who has been friends with me on Facebook for many years. She's been spending a lot of time building up her brand, Dallas Cigar Art Queen, and her outspokenness and honesty and classiness has been entertaining me for a very long time. Too bad she's a misogynist.

Or, maybe...cigar smoking is not a misogynistic pursuit at all. Over the last few years I've heard a lot of dumb things about cigar smokers...that's we're neanderthals, that we're conservatives or rednecks (yeah, that describes me to a tee), that we're inconsiderate of others, blah blah blah. The funny thing, of course, is that saying cigar smoking is misogynistic is in and of itself a misogynistic statement because--as you see above--it fosters an attitude that it isn't ladylike to smoke cigars. Smoking cigars is for knuckle-dragging brutes, and that's what Scott Wittevrongel is ultimately calling all of these accomplished women.