Years ago, when I was in my late 20s, I had a throwaway conversation with a misogynistic man who was trying to see me. The exchange was about three sentences each. I knew I was uninterested in him the minute he opened his mouth. But what I took away from the encounter is simple, humorous, and telling.

At around 4 a.m., I had responded to a question he asked. I then stopped responding to him when his next text a few hours later said, “I don’t know if I trust girls who respond at 4 a.m.”

I looked at the short exchange, smiled, and simply deleted the whole thing.

I had been happily up since 2:30 a.m. I’d gone for a long walk and was halfway through a workout at the gym when I’d checked my messages. I would then pray fajr, have breakfast, buy flowers, study, work, write—repeat the next day with some variation.

He, of course, had certain ideas of what women who respond at 4 a.m. are doing responding at 4 a.m. And I admire these women he’s judging. They are friends of mine. I need them in my life. Honestly, we all need vivacious energy. I don’t know what we’d do without the life of the party. It was more amusing to me that what he’d characterize as depravity, or simply undesirable to him, was all that he could recognize, and was everywhere he looked, even though he saw this personality as opposed to what he was seeking. His immediate thought about me was vastly different from the reality of my schedule. Could I have achieved everything I have in my life without waking up before the sun? Highly unlikely. Unless I instead stayed up long past its setting time. It would absolutely have needed to be one or the other, and in either scenario, the hour I responded would have been alarming to him.

The funny thing is, he may have wanted a certain kind of woman, but he had never bothered imagine what her schedule actually looks like. Most women labor at dawn or dusk, finding time in the quiet before or after the chaos of day. This is absolutely invisible to men. This man, particularly, could not imagine the reality of his idealized woman. She wasn’t human to him enough to have taken tangible shape, to have a schedule. Therefore, he will never find her.

I reflected on my own life and wondered about professional, academic, business goals. It was a good reminder to check that when you’re looking at exactly what you want—do you have the capacity to actually recognize it? This is, after all, key to whether you’re deserving of it: I can guarantee you that men who wake up and live quiet lives of going to the gym before work aren’t batting an eye when women to respond to them at 4 a.m.