I just read this post and it affected me very deeply. The parts I found most profound are below:
“I wouldn’t feel threatened,” he’d say. “I know they could never compete.”
He meant that a woman, no matter how attached I got, could never “steal” me away from him. He meant that he’d only care about male penetration, about “sex” in the most typical terms.
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The next morning, he was angry.
“I thought girls didn’t count,” I said.
“Yeah, but you like, went on a date,” he said.
“We saw a movie,” I replied. “She has a boyfriend.”
“It was a date,” he said. He was irritated.
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“How many people have you been with?,” they all ask, adding: “Girls don’t count.”
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“I just think you’ll end up with a man in the end,” he says when we’re walking to a bar.
“That’s presumptuous,” I reply.
“I just feel like you will.”
“Because you’re threatened?”
“What?”
“Because it threatens you to know that I could one day not need a dick. That, god forbid, a woman who could end up with either actually chooses to disregard your precious penis.”
“Hey, take it easy. I was just giving you relationship advice.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
At the bar, our friends wonder why we aren’t speaking. Even he is confused by what happened. He doesn’t know what he did wrong.
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They were real. They were real and they counted. They’re not shadows among the men I saw. But I wanted them to be. I wanted to avoid the consequences, to avoid thinking, to avoid wondering what it meant. These men, they told me what it meant: it meant nothing.
I identify as heterosexual, but even so, this post worries me. It worries me because I don't want a partner who are like the men described in this post. I don't want a partner who feels the need to assert his dominance or control over our relationship. I don't want a partner who essentially sees me as inferior to him.
