Dear men who approach me like that boy is approaching that mud puddle right there,
I am not a mud puddle. I am not the ground. I am not an inanimate object because I am not an object. When you try to prove your heterosexuality by aggressively fucking me, it hurts. When you try to assert your masculine authority by controlling my actions or punishing my genuine emotional responses, it hurts more.
I am not a mud puddle. I am not a thing to be used to increase your social status or validate yourself in the eyes of other men. I am not inanimate.
And you? You don’t really want to fuck me.
I promise you.
It’s been said that men think about sex approximately every seven seconds. That may be true. But other things are true as well, like the fact that to men, sex also means fitting in. It means acceptance. It means social approval. It means that other men will like you. Whether or not the women you screw like you is really beside the point, isn’t it? If you have enough social status, enough power, she’ll pretend to. She won’t want to piss you off.
She’ll hope she can get a job or a raise or a big house in the suburbs out of it. She’s been taught that sex is the path to these rewards so don’t worry about it. She’ll smile like she’s been taught to do. She’ll say the right things at all the right moments. She’ll make your ego feel really good. Isn’t that what sex is for? Isn’t that what you think? Who cares what your body feels — certainly neither of you do.
I do. I care what your body feels. I care what your heart feels. I care. I do.
So I am going to tell you again: you do not want to fuck me.
At least, not when and why you think you do.
You approach me aggressively because you are filled with aggression towards other men that you dare not show. You hit on me like you are hitting a target because you are in a prolonged fight in which other men are your enemies and we women are the evidence you have won.
Winning is important. Winning will keep you safe from them. You hope.
I understand.
It must be terrifying to be a man. Other men mock you and make jokes about any even vaguely feminine quality you ever express. You hold your breath when they’re around, you close your eyes, you wish for the best. You swallow down your fear and you hope they won’t hurt you. Or, you puff yourself up and you act just like they do. What else are you supposed to do?
It must be lonely to be a man. Your best friends are barely real friends at all. You hang out with them once a year and go to strip clubs or out to fancy restaurants where you sit and stare at the wall, or talk about work and climate change and politics. You are both afraid to talk about something real. That would be gay, wouldn’t it? Can’t have that.
Much better to be all alone, and miserable.
If feelings are feminine, and femininity will get you hurt at the hands of other men who think they are merely disciplining you into manhood — what else can you do, but mortgage your heart to save your life?
Maybe by some miracle you held on to a shred of self in all that agony. Maybe you tried to keep your sensitivity and kindness alive, hoping that someday a woman would love you for yourself. Not the performance.
Pretending to be someone else all day hurts. Wearing the mask is one thing. Marrying someone who requires you impersonate the Terminator 24/7 is something else entirely.
You try to survive. You try to believe that one day you won’t have to lie in order to be accepted or be loved. You try.
I see you. I see the person you are, deep inside.
I see how hard you have tried to protect that person. I see how impossible other men have made that goal. I see that you are doing your best to ignore the things they say about men like the kind of man you are down deep. I see what it costs you to still be yourself in this world in this life. I see that you are a special kind of hero, the kind of hero we need.
So please, my darling. Stop trying to fuck me.
I’m here, and I care about you. We women who are waking up, we’re here. We see you. We’re not here for you to fuck, we’re not here to raise your social status. We’re here to protect you by helping keep you safe. We’re here to identify for you which men are evil, and why they are evil, and how misogyny is at play in their behavior. We’re here to help you fight back against them. We’re here to help you reclaim power from them. We’re here to fight beside you in the battle to keep something real between men and women alive.
We’re here for something much better than fucking to assert your manhood ever could be. We’re here for something much deeper than approval for your foot-perfect gender performance could ever go.
We’re here. Us warrior ladies. We’re here, and you’re not alone.
And now that we are with you, if you want, if you fight with us, if you love us back as we try to love you whole? We promise you-we will never let you go.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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