Something strange happened last week on Chuck Palahniuk’s Tumblr. It’s unclear to me if the blog is run by fans of the Fight Club novelist, or by the novelist himself—but what is certain is that Palahniuk did at least stop by recently to answer some fan questions to promote the release of a new novel in October.

That’s when this strange exchange happened, in which Palahniuk appeared to argue that men are—brace yourself—an underrepresented and underserved demographic in the literary world. The post has since been deleted, but Internet, ever reliable, has kindly provided me with a screenshot.

As Flavorwire notes, there’s a lot that’s odd about this exchange, starting with the titles that Palahniuk cites to support his argument that the lit scene is dominated by women. I mean, The Color Purple and The Joy Luck Club? He couldn’t come up with any more recent examples? When’s the last time Palahniuk actually read a book by a woman?

Also, and perhaps most obviously, “the dearth of novels that explore male issues” is a phrase that’s laughable on its face. Palahniuk clarifies later that he’s talking about “books depicting social models for men”—which, I don’t know, giving him the benefit of the doubt or something, maybe he’s saying that the picture of masculinity we get in most contemporary lit is antisocial, or something? Which is defensible, I guess, given the prominence of the male antihero in Western lit—though I can think of half a dozen titles right off the top of my head that explore male relationships. I mean, the Bechdel test exists for a reason, right? There aren’t a whole lot of novels in which men don’t interact with other men.

Now, I’m not big on the “someone said something dumb on the Internet!” school of criticism, but when I read this from Palahniuk, it made sense to me. I’ve never been a big fan—I’ve read maybe two of the novels, and have of course seen David Fincher’s film adaptation of Fight Club. But I’ve always detected a whiff of something a little crypto-misogynist, crypto-fascist, crypto-whateverist about his stories. And so, when I read this post on Tumblr, my first thought was: “Oh, of course that’s what he thinks.”

Fight Club, for instance, begins as a lamentation of the death of hyper-violent masculinity in the modern world, before maybe kinda implying that it was a critique of that thing all along. (Except maybe not.) Meanwhile, looking though the books I’ve read, I come across this little gem in Choke:

I mean, I’m just tired of being wrong all the time just because I’m a guy. I mean how many times can everybody tell you that you’re the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy.

I mean a male, chauvinist pig isn’t born, he’s made, and more and more of them are being made by women.

In the past, the author and his fans could defend this stuff with protests that whatever nastiness he served up in his books was offered in the spirit of critique. Now, I think we’ve got pretty good evidence to the contrary: that Palahniuk actually believes a lot of this stuff.

Given the depth of his fandom—especially how beloved Fight Club continues to be in some quarters—that’s a little disturbing.