Hetero-pessimism?

I have to confess it: I love men. Not all of them, of course, but that’s the sex I’m romantically and physically attracted to, like it or not. I also have a bunch of male friends I’m not attracted to, and that’s been enriching for me. Why do I get along well with males? Maybe because I had a good daddy who thought I was adorable, and two excellent brothers, one of whom was my closest confidant our entire adult lives. But when I read a recent article about “hetero-pessimism,” the current trend of women rejecting the idea of dating or marrying men, I had to rethink my feelings about the male sex. I would guess this trend is mostly made up, but statistics show dating apps are less popular than they used to be, so…maybe hetero-pessimism is more widespread than I knew.

As a serial dater since a breakup some time ago, I can sympathize. There was a running joke in my family for a while when my daughter was using dating apps – her sister and I would ask how this or that date was, and she’d always say “Horrible!” (though she’s currently in a relationship with a man she met on an app). My dates have been almost all Horribles, as you know if you’ve read some of my blog posts. There’s no question that many men dominate conversations, dominate in general, place too much emphasis on women’s looks and glamour, mansplain, try to impress with achievements you’re not interested in, ghost you if you don’t excite them, and so on. Then there’s the contemporary political “bro” climate, with its poisonous elevation of so-called “masculinity” as contempt for women –  their version of it. Ugh. Definitely horrible.

On the other hand, though I love the look of both male and female bodies, I’m sexually drawn to men’s bodies much more, and while I’ve had mild emotional crushes on women from afar, I don’t think I could fall in love with another woman. I’m not proud of that – I’ve often wished I were a lesbian or at least bisexual, for the reasons above –  but that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it is. Yet I’ve found many men to like and a few to love, because although men can be egotistical, emotionally distant, or downright uncaring, in my experience, there are plenty around who are not at all like that. And there are plenty of women who are like that, which complicates the picture. 

So I’m not pessimistic about heterosexuality, and I wouldn’t like to see hetero women reject men wholesale. The men I’ve liked or loved are good listeners, are not aggressive, and would never drop you like a hot potato. Are they more checked out than women, is it more difficult for them to express emotions, or even recognize they have any? Yes, that’s not uncommon: I asked my realtor, a delightful, sweet, happily married man, while we were chatting on our way to my closing, how he and his equally delightful and sweet wife had gotten together. He said he realized he loved her when he went on vacation by himself and missed her, though they’d been “just friends”. “So I said to myself, ‘Wait, am I feeling something for her?’ ”, he told me. This hadn’t occurred to him before, which made me laugh out loud, because I have no problem knowing what I feel for someone at any moment, myself. 

The fact is, whatever your attraction(s), desire is desire, and suppressing that desire does not seem to me a good thing. It’s a real problem to distinguish exactly what we mean by “masculinity”, or “femininity”, for that matter, what makes us desire one and/or the other, or neither. Desire and the pleasure it can reap have deep roots, and ignoring it is not as easy as it sounds on social media.

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