“Do you just…hate men?”
When my (now ex) long-distance boyfriend asked me this question during a (literal) Netflix and Chill session, I was so stunned that I nearly dropped my phone.
It was not the first time a man had asked me this question. And despite the fact that I’m not one to ever be silenced—especially by such a cheap, clichéd trick—this time was different. My partner, who’d asked me to teach him more about why women need safe spaces, was the one derailing the conversation. During sacred Netflix and Chill time. Over my thoughts on a terrible Bruce Willis movie he liked.
Talk about fragile masculinity.
“That’s why The Story of Us is my favorite love story,” he said, beginning the film analysis part of the Chill session. “It’s just so real.”
I shuddered.
“I think you’re saying that because Ben Jordan (Bruce Willis’ character) gets a happy ending. But it’s not that great a love story from his wife’s perspective.”
“How so?” he said, and I mistook it for intrigue.
“Ben Jordan is a complete infant. All his wife asks is for him to grow up, and be an equal parent and partner in their relationship. He says ‘no,’ she threatens to divorce him, he makes no changes whatsoever, and then she says, ‘Okay, nevermind!’ That’s just patriarchal coercion.”
“Coercion?” he asked in a tone I now recognize as disgust.
“In this patriarchal society, women are socialized to coddle male egos and not to ask ‘too much’ of men or risk losing everything society says a woman should value, i.e. male attention and approval. Better not to rock the boat by asking for ‘unreasonable’ things like maturity and an equal partnership.”
“What a nightmare,” I continued, “to be stuck in a relationship with someone who will never sacrifice or change for your benefit but will expect you to do so for him while you suffer in silence.”
Oh, my prescient heart.
I half-expected him to ask how we could prevent that from happening in our own relationship. What I got was, “Do you just hate men?” followed by months of his own exhausting Ben Jordan impression.
For all the unpaid emotional labor I spent trying to “work” with him, trying to help him understand that the microaggressions I faced in the world weren’t tiny, insignificant problems, as he thought the word “micro” implied (“I mean, I could understand your pain if they were macroaggressions…”) I’d probably go back in time and answer his question with a frustrated, “If all men are like you, then YES! Maybe I do!”
But that’s unfair. It was just a poorly matched relationship that was fortunately short-lived.
Still, it stirred up a fear in me. What if most men really are Ben Jordan? “Nice” guys who love their partners but only in ways that keep themselves comfy? Was Rev. Run right when he tweeted from his bathtub, “Just pic 1 and move on”?