"Manchild" is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days...and I think that's correct. But few employed adult men perform weaponized incompetence quite as brazenly as the anti-abortion Slenderman himself, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
It feels cruel to insist someone keep attempting something they "can't" do-or to hold them to a standard they claim they cannot meet. Weaponized incompetence exploits that reluctance. It misattributes strategic failure as a skill deficit or honest mistake, allowing the offending party to avoid responsibility, discourage future requests, or exert control. In this dynamic, the offending party is framed as the victim, while their frustrated partner is recast as unreasonable, demanding, or a "nag."
We all know someone who seems to "forget" how to do something they've done a hundred times before: a partner who can't figure out the laundry settings, a colleague who somehow never learns the new scheduling system, a friend who always "means to" organize the gathering but never quite does. The term " weaponized incompetence" has emerged to describe this pattern: when someone exaggerates or performs helplessness to avoid responsibility and, consciously or not, shifts the burden onto someone else.
'You know everything, inside and out, about your favorite car. All the things that you truly care about, you know all the details,' Mila recalled thinking about him. 'But when it comes to basic necessities like getting groceries, buying stuff for our child, remembering things about us, you act as if you're incompetent.'