I think we’ve all heard a bad boyfriend story. Here’s one for the books: A friend of ours was seeing this guy, who (predictably) turned out to be a total tool. The final straw was when, one day, they were watching “Ted Lasso” and he said he hated the character Rebecca, the CEO, for being “too girlboss. It got her thinking.
“He said he viewed me as his equal, but I didn’t believe him. That was kind of the pattern. It wasn’t always one huge, obvious thing. More like it was constant microaggressions. Just the way he acted sometimes felt like, ‘You’re less than me.’ Strangely, in professional or academic settings, he seemed to respect me. But in intimate settings, it felt different, like he couldn’t reconcile being attracted to me with respecting me intellectually … Like he could either see women as intelligent and worthy of respect, or as sexual, but not both at the same time.”
Ari: Yeesh. We had to cut the story down a lot, but I want our dear readers to know that this guy also came in, like, ten seconds. I suspect there’s a correlation. You hear that, misogynists? You. Are. Sexist. And. Also. Bad. In. Bed. Anyways, what did you make of that, Siena?
Siena: Oh, he doesn’t hate women. He just hates intelligent women with self-respect and opinions. Rebecca’s “too girlboss?” Sir, she runs a football club. You can barely run a conversation. What our friend met was a boy sliding down the “manosphere” pipeline — an online-based society that promotes rigid gender roles and frames feminism as a threat to male identity. For more reference, UN Women has pointed out that younger men are increasingly framing equality as anti-male, which is wild considering equality literally just means … equal.
This loser didn’t want an emotional partner; he wanted physical gratification, and when our friend wouldn’t shrink herself to soothe him, suddenly, she’s the problem. There are far too many men out there who have been indoctrinated into a certain idea of masculinity that values dominance, intellectual superiority and the submission of their partner. Seems like this guy fits perfectly into the manosphere.
Ari: I think you’re right. There’s this phenomenon where men want women for the emotional and sexual benefits of being in a relationship, but don’t actually treat women like autonomous beings. This guy seems like he’s fallen into that camp. He’s attracted to women, he dates women, but he can’t fathom being equal to one.
Siena: I mean, these men — they want to fuck. Take a guy I dated for a while: He swore he wanted someone real and emotionally intelligent who could challenge and connect with him, but the second I made it clear I wasn’t going to immediately give him sex without emotional connection, he lost interest. Soon enough, he’d found someone who would give that to him.
He didn’t want me; he wanted validation and sexual gratification, and when I refused to perform on command, I became inconvenient. This is the same pattern the online manosphere reinforces: Respect is conditional and autonomy is a threat. Competence, intelligence or emotional boundaries aren’t qualities that these types of men admire; they’re obstacles to dominance, and anyone who refuses to shrink themselves becomes unappealing. The sad thing is: Most of these guys don’t know any better. This logic has been drilled into their heads by manosphere culture, whether they know it or not.
Ari: It’s an interesting point because our friend said that it was like her ex could respect her as a peer. It’s almost like women are now socially and professionally allowed, at least in some spaces, to exist at the same tables as men, but in our personal lives, it’s still the same fight for gender equality. This isn’t to say that we’ve fully made it professionally yet, either — believe me, some of the stuff I’ve heard people say about Scripps. And not just from men! Women, too!
Siena: How does this dilemma manifest in dating? Men will work alongside women, show them respect in public settings, and even date them. But somehow… they still hate women?
Ari: I can already hear the “not all men!” protests. Guys, I know. I also know three-to-five really decent men. But this phenomenon is bigger than any one individual. I think that this whole issue stems from the fact that, up until recently, having a man was seen as the ultimate prize. In a place like the 5Cs, too, where the guy-girl ratio is really off, this feeling is amplified as we squabble over eligible bachelors.
But in general, hetero women are reevaluating what they prioritize, and it’s destabilizing for men. I mean, no matter how progressive they are, they still grew up in a system designed to benefit them. If you even just glance at the rhetoric online, it’s shocking to see some of the regressive views that young men still hold — perhaps even more so than their predecessors.
Siena: It’s a weird time to be a woman. Though the manosphere has given men a regressive idea of masculinity and sex, there are men out there who aren’t like this. They just don’t brand themselves around it. They’re quieter, less interested in performance and less threatened by ambition. In a culture that rewards the loudest and most reactionary voices, it can feel like the dating pool is rapidly shrinking. But it isn’t. The decent ones are simply harder to spot because they’re not shouting over everyone else.
That’s why approaching every possible relationship with honesty matters. Being clear about what you want — respect, curiosity, mutual pleasure, emotional intelligence — acts as a filter. It scares off the insecure and draws in the self-aware. So, when you do find someone who meets you as an equal, who sees sex as connection rather than conquest, everything shifts. The intimacy is better, the conversations are better, and yes — the sex will probably be better and longer than ten seconds. We hope.
Siena Giacoma PZ ’27 and Arianna Kaplan SC ’27 are aspiring documentarians of the sexually awkward, which they consider a noble and vastly undervalued literary genre. They have consciously chosen the unstable but vibrant path of writers, betting on a future of rich inner lives and fascinating anecdotes over sensible things like 401(k)s or a basic understanding of Excel.
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