Contempt for Innocent Men

scattered thoughts and a half apology

I noticed the other day that I’d been hiding something from myself.

I am far from a misandrist. I love men; or, I love them as much as I love women. I am not woke. I am not a third-wave feminist.

And yet, I often feel a sense of insurmountable disgust when men I’m not attracted to hit on me. I get attacked by intrusive, unkind thoughts. Not with all men, but enough. And it doesn’t really seem to matter how nice they are. Niceness absolutely influences my reflexive and endorsed response, but not my guttural one.

It would be simple to mistake this for rage. I feel uncomfortable. I feel upset. But I think what I’m experiencing is closer to the impulse that bullies get toward their victims. It is misguided and unjustified contempt. And it is me, not them. At least for the most part.

Being afraid of women wouldn’t have flown in the ancestral environment. Men couldn’t afford that fear — and in some sense, it’s relatively new. I could try to pin down exactly when it emerged, but I don’t think it matters now.

By evolutionary design, men have an overperception bias — which is to say, they see more sexual opportunities than there actually are. The best reproductive strategy for males was to hit on as many women as possible and see what lands.

I wonder if women therefore needed their rejections to be completely unmistakable. Who knows. But the visceral feeling in my body when I’m responding to unwanted attention feels ancient.

Perhaps I am an unusually unkind woman. But I think this is reasonably common. I want men to find love. I want them to be desired. And yet, I want it to happen far away from me somehow. Not receiving attention at all would also undoubtedly be crushing. I want to know men like me and not bear the costs.

Part of me wants to give these men a hug and remind them that I’m getting older. In a few years, I’ll be thirty. I’ll grow increasingly invisible over the next decade, until I am every bit as unseen as they are. At which point, the remains of my sexuality will disturb them, too.

Women have their own unique struggles. But it isn’t quite the same. One isn’t necessarily worse than the other, but they aren’t equal.

For most of human history, only about 40% of men reproduced, compared to around 80% of women. During the mid-20th century baby boom, male childlessness hit a historic low of around 15%. Today, it’s back up to about 25%. It seems rough. I don’t know what could even help.

But the odds that some of the single men out there will just never find someone are decently high. I feel quite sympathetic. I give men dating advice semi-regularly, and for most of them I feel pretty hopeful.

But I do think women are judging them. And I do think the current culture has made it such that these judgments are perceived as aggressions. And the broader odds aren’t exactly in their favor.

I feel so much guilt in my contempt for innocent men.