What men really think about women

Based on the ridiculous things they say and do, here's what men really think about women (and why you should think twice before your next relationship with a man).

Women spend a lot of time thinking about what they owe the men in their lives—whether they have given them sufficient chances, forgiven enough, done enough to earn love.

But men don’t have to devote nearly so much effort to obsessing over women, because our entire culture is built around their needs, their preferences, and their norms.

It is this disconnect that lures so many women into bad relationships. It starts with just a single problematic behavior or two. But she really likes him, or she doesn’t want to be alone, or he tells her she’s crazy and overreacting. So she ignores it. Maybe this is just the way men are. Maybe it’s her fault. Maybe she can love him out of it.

She listens to terrible advice from sexist people who center her male partner’s needs. And pretty soon, she’s married to a shitty man whom she’s rounded up to a “good guy,” overlooking more and more of his bad behavior. This is how women get stuck in bad relationships. This is how women’s lives are stolen and destroyed.

Men show us exactly what they think of women every day. They tell us, too: on their podcasts and message boards, on their Facebook rants, in their conversations where they treat the humanity of women as novel or up for debate.

We just choose not to listen. That needs to change. So let’s look at what men have explicitly told women, over and over, they really think about us.

As always, these are generalizations about sexist men (and the majority of men are indeed sexist). Men can and should do better. Nothing about this is innate, which means you don’t have to accept it—and you don’t have to spend years educating the man in your life to do better, either.

He knows what he’s doing. They know what they’re doing, because when women aren’t around, they’re very clear about what they think of women.

Women owe men sex

You need only look at the rape rates to know that men think women owe them sex. On message boards, men assert that women must have sex with them—risking pregnancy, disease, and death—in return for a meal. Because women’s lives and bodies just don’t matter as much as men’s wants. In relationships, men think sex is a right—and that they don’t owe good sex, basic hygiene, or even the absence of abuse to get it.

Men always frame the problem exactly the same when their partners stop wanting sex: “How very dare she stop having sex with me?” The women I talk to tell stories of husbands threatening them into sex, telling them they’ll have to give in eventually, insisting that it is the duty of every woman in a relationship to put out on demand. The way we culturally frame sexless marriages—women “withholding” or “refusing” sex instead of men being unfuckable because they are bad at sex, bad at relationships, just bad—tells you everything you need to know about the male perspective on sex.

Men shouldn’t have to sacrifice for women

Men’s excuses for household labor inequality, for not being quality parents, for not celebrating birthdays, for well, everything, abound:

• “I’m better than my father was!”

• “You’re impossible to please!”

• “At least I have a job”

• “It’s just your hormones talking.”

On and on the list goes. At the core of all these excuses, though, is a very simple belief: Women owe men. Men do not owe women shit. This is why men are so unwilling to participate equally in household labor. The idea of giving up something for a woman is unfathomable. After all, women are interchangeable. He can just get another woman who won’t demand so much. So why should he have to compromise?

Lest you doubt this, just spend a few minutes on any dude’s dating podcast. You’ll hear all about what women owe men, and absolutely nothing about what men should offer. To them, a relationship isn’t a relationship at all: it’s a one-sided transaction, with women giving and men taking. They’ll take until women realize the scam, then move onto their next victim.

Even though the research tells us that marriage benefits men, not women, men participate in the mass delusion that they’re doing women a favor by being with them. And for some reason, women buy it—even when their relationships make them miserable, even when their partners bring absolutely nothing of value.

Women are property

Women, in the minds of most men, are not individual human beings with their own wants and needs. Women are accessories designed to serve men.

This is why so many men think women aren’t allowed to leave them (and react violently when they do). It’s also why they get so angry when women demand anything at all from them. It just wouldn’t make sense for your dog or your couch to insist that you treat it as an equal.

Women are property. Their utility ends with their ability to serve men.

Women are interchangeable

Because women are property, and because their job is solely to meet men’s needs, they’re also interchangeable. If one woman breaks by becoming a feminist, demanding equality, or insisting that her partner should give her decent sex (or for that matter, decent hygiene), he’ll just go out and get another one.

Men set the terms of relationships

From birth, we socialize women to pursue relationships with men. So it comes as no surprise that they so heavily prioritize these relationships, in spite of the immense harm they often cause. Men, in turn, come to believe that they’re doing women a favor by having relationships with them, and that they should therefore get to set the terms of the relationship:

• He gets to decide what’s sexist and what’s not.

• Hey gets to decide how to parent the kids.

• He gets to decide when and if to talk about problems.

• He gets to decide how she spends her time (because he’ll steal it from her so he can sleep and play video games).

There’s not a right way to treat women

Spend a little time on men’s forums, and you’ll quickly see the same thing over and over: a man self-identifying as a “nice,” “good,” or “high-value.” He never identifies why he is these things. Just call yourself a good guy and you are. Decree that you should be of high value to women, and women should see it, too.

This is because men fundamentally believe there is no entry level requirement for how they treat women. Being “good” is not the product of a person’s behavior. It’s an identity. He’s good because he’s decided he is, and if she questions that, she’ll pay.

It matters what men think of a man, not what women think

Men aren’t interested in actual intimacy with women. They want it from men. That’s why so much of what men do is about earning respect from other men, and why so few men actually love their partners.

Just spend a few minutes reading one of the many worthless manfluencers advising men about how to become appealing to women. Almost all of them talk about money. Kevin Samuels specifically states that a man must be impressive to men, and have many men friends. Completely absent from the discourse is anything that typically has value to women, such as emotional intelligence, the ability to participate equally in family life, the skills necessary to be a good father, problem-solving, or a belief in the full and fundamental humanity of women.

Most men would scoff at the idea that these are necessary for a relationship. That’s because they don’t actually care about what women think of them. They care about impressing men. They want romance with their bros, and sex with women.

Having a job is all it takes to be a good father

Post a complaint about a man anywhere, and sooner or later a bunch of dudes will show up to tell you how you don’t get to complain because he works oh-so-hard at his paid job. Often they’ll do this when the woman works, too (remember, 70%+ of mothers work outside the home).

But somehow, working for money—something everyone has to do in a capitalist society, kids or no—is enough. We’re supposed to believe that a man can make literally no change in his behavior or life once a kid arrives, and we’re still supposed to call him a good father.

In most families, the woman endlessly researches parenting. She develops schedules and routines. She consciously parents. And the man parents by impulse and instinct. But we’re supposed to believe the bullshit line that these two parenting approaches—informed, research-based, challenging and uninformed, emotionally based, and impulsive—could possibly be equal.

They’re not. Yet men balk at being told this, and many women, too, will assert that men and women “just have different standards.”

In a patriarchal society, almost every woman has routinely been accused of being a bad mother. But call a man a bad father—even if he doesn’t know what bus his child takes, or how to feed his kid, or how to take his child to the doctor, or how to keep his child safe out in public—and you’re some kind of monster.

The hilarious irony of this all is that the same men who insist that being a “good provider” is enough will fight you to the death if you assert that they should continue being providers after a divorce or breakup. A man’s worth as a father is wholly determined by having a job and nominally supporting his kid, but he doesn’t even have to do this if the relationship ends.

More dads need to be told that they’re bad fathers, because they are.

I hear a lot of women wondering if they should give a man a chance, if they should try to teach him, if they should overlook just this one bad behavior. And now this one, and now this one, and now this one.

My response: Do you want to live the rest of your life trapped with a man who thinks this way about you? They want chance after chance so they can exploit you as long and as much as possible.

Unless he make explicit his feminism, his ability to value women, and his ability to contribute something meaningful to your life, he’s not worth the pain he will cause.