Tag: humanity

Treating women with respect should not be contingent on whether or not it ‘gets you somewhere.’ Women have value even if we are too fat or too ugly or too loud or too standoffish or too homosexual to serve a ‘purpose’ for men. Women are people.

I have compassion for your social difficulties, but only to the point where they begin to impede my humanity. It isn’t women’s responsibility to bear the brunt of your loneliness, or be the means to your self-improvement. Women deal with loneliness and social anxiety and private pains too. Women deserve compassion too. If it genuinely goes without saying — as the men who write to me always claim — that you think of women as your equals, then find a solution that doesn’t hinge on exploiting women’s socialization to be passive, pliant, receptive, and kind.

There are no ‘buts’ when it comes to women’s humanity. Not ‘but’ you’re lonely, not ‘but’ you’re horny, not ‘but’ you’re nice, not ‘but’ that’s how your grandparents met, not ‘but’ she was naked in your bed. Women are people, and women just get to exist and set boundaries and say no. Always. Any time. Just like you.