I cannot stand it when people don’t recognize that the sidewalk is a public–ie, shared–space. One half should be for going in one direction, the other half for the reverse direction.

I get that it’s a show of respect (or that it’s supposed to be, anyway — somehow a whole lot of men* are always very quick to hold doors, etc., for they young, attractive women but none of the others), but treating women as somehow more worthy of respect than men is, pretty much by definition, treating them as…

At my university we have quite a few male students from countries where women are...how can I put it nicely...pretty much viewed as property and expected to be out of sight at all times. They will walk five or six abreast on a sidewalk and are ASTOUNDED when a woman won’t move off the sidewalk for them. This is…

Can you talk to the women that apologize to me for walking near them? Women say ‘sorry’ for stepping out of an elevator I was waiting to get in, and I’m standing to the side. A woman drove near me yesterday, meekly mouthed ‘so sorry’ evidently for driving in a garage. These women need your help.

I don’t think expecting men to treat women differently because they’re women ever works out well for women, even when the actions themselves are beneficial. It places women in a distinct “other” category. I’d much rather that “real men” treat me like they treat everyone else. Which is not to say that they shouldn’t be…

Do you also get the most incredulous faces? Like WHOA I AM A MAN YOU SEE ME RIGHT?

In a similar but unrelated note, I now bump into men who walk right into my path instead of moving to the side as we pass on narrow sidewalks.

Post-wine texted this to the ex-husband who keeps contacting me

Straight down hill from the auspicious “The gal” start.

“From now on, I respectfully ask you to refer to me as Jen, Jennifer, Ms. Herold, or your opponent.”

The PUA/MRA view of women’s sexuality is just the mainstream view turned up to eleven. In short, women have sex for every reason other than actual carnal desire and that it’s something men get from women as opposed to something we do with women.

What an idiot this guy is!

Right?? I’m not withholding sex from you in the hopes you will come around to my way of thinking. I just don’t want to have sex with jerks.

What baffles me is why a gay man is telling straight men that not being nice to women is a good way to have sex with them. How would he know?

But... what about MEN’S feelings?

A profound sense of entitlement to all sorts of things is pretty much what defines this crowd. Sex may be #1 on the list, but it extends well beyond that.

That passage is one of those things that says far more about the author than about his purported subject. You just know his relationships with women throughout his life had to be seriously dysfunctional, most likely because he’s just a self-obsessed jerk.

I’m always baffled how MRAs view sex as something women control for nefarious purposes, like it’s a physical shiny toy we’re holding just out of their reach. We aren’t hiding something that rightfully belongs to humanity in general; we simply want to control our own bodies.

I refer to men who are shrouded in this fog as FUMs, fogged up men; other terms come to mind. They may might not be feminists but as they wander through the mist of politics and polemic about women, they feel like they should be feminists. They think feminism is good for everybody and they want to be nice to women.…