Thought about this after a recent event at work. In brief, I work in a highly competitive law firm as one of the glaringly few ethnic minorities there; had to work ten times as hard (and my resume reflects this) as my male and/or ethnic-majority colleagues. I had a mutually respectful relationship with most of my colleagues, except for two ethnic-majority men who had my same position, who kept their distance. There was a new promotion open, and the chatter among the office was I was a shoe-in for the position purely based on my track record at the firm.

Out of the blue, the supervisor promotes my male, ethnic-majority colleague (same ethnicity and religion) who is basically a softboi, let's call him Fred, despite the fact that I had a more successful track record with cases. Now that there is this power dynamic, Fred has suddenly become exceptionally flirty; it later comes out in office gossip that this colleague and his friend clandestinely went to the supervisor to discourage him from promoting me. A few weeks later, I snatched a promotion in another department and now Fred has returned to despising me (yay!).

I have been neutral this entire time (i.e. I know I haven't been rude, given Fred pretext to behave this way). So the conclusion I have to come to is that some men and pickmes despise successful women, especially women of color. The question is, why? And what can be done to prevent them from damaging your career?