"Mr. Gates and Ms. French Gates met at work. He was technically her boss. He ran Microsoft..."

"... and she began working there in 1987 as a product manager the year after she graduated from college. Throughout their relationship, the two have played up the cute aspects of their office romance. He flirted with her when they sat together at a conference, then asked her out when they ran into each other in a company parking lot, according to Ms. French Gates, who described their relationship’s beginnings during a public appearance in 2016. Long after they married in 1994, Mr. Gates would on occasion pursue women in the office.... Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’s fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Mr. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office.... Some of the employees said... he did not pressure the women to submit to his advances for the sake of their careers, and he seemed to feel that he was giving the women the space to refuse his advances. Even so, Mr. Gates’s actions ran counter to the agenda of female empowerment that Ms. French Gates was promoting on a global stage. On Oct. 2, 2019, for example, she said she would spend $1 billion promoting 'women’s power and influence in the United States.'"

From "Long Before Divorce, Bill Gates Had Reputation for Questionable Behavior/Melinda French Gates voiced concerns about her husband’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and a harassment claim against his money manager. He also had an affair with an employee" (NYT).

Imagine spending a billion dollars to promote a message — to bullshit the masses — while you are blithely violating that message within your personal business realm, where people are trying to make their own little living. What royal hypocrisy! 

I don't know the facts first hand, and maybe none of these allegations against Bill Gates are true, but it seems that Melinda Gates — Ms. French Gates — is wisely choosing to disengage her reputation from his. She wants a feminist message? She's got to lop him off.

AND: It's so interesting, these marriages that begin in a workplace setting. Do they not originate in interactions like the interactions that become the evidentiary basis for claims that there is a discriminatory hostile workplace? But the success of the relationship makes all the difference. This one interaction grew into a marriage. I think of all the professors who are married to former students. That seems so nice for the lovely couple — we participate in the playing up of the cute aspects — but what's in the larger picture? Was it just that one magic student who was perceived as wifely material? We gamely presume so, we with our enjoyment of cute aspects.

"Mr. Gates was already working on his dream home before marrying Ms. Gates in 1994.... The place was 'a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare'..."

"... with 'enough software and high-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game.'... After six months of discussions about whether the entire project should be scrapped, Ms. Gates decided to influence further construction by incorporating her preferences — and insisted on making the place a home for a family and not a lone tech wizard.... Perhaps Mr. Gates may now recommit himself to designing and building a smart house (though that may not be a challenging project for him today, now that connected devices are everywhere). Because despite the changes she made to the couple’s home, Ms. Gates recently expressed misgivings about continuing to live there. 'We won’t have that house forever....I’m actually really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 1,500-square foot house."

From "Who Gets Xanadu 2.0, the Gates Family Mansion? Melinda Gates, at least, has been open about her desire to live in a smaller house" (NYT).

A 1,500-square foot house. I guess I can give this post my "tiny house" tag. How big is the "Xanadu" mansion? 66,000 square feet. That's 44 times the size of the house she purported to dream of. In a house so big, why worry about your estrangement from the other person? So easy to avoid them. Even hard to find them. Or I guess there were electronic devices to help you find them — in case you ever want them. It's beyond separate bedrooms. You're living in a place the size of a small town. Go live in another part of that town.