My ass is so swollen that I need to sit on a hemorrhoid pillow.
The idea of being "a man" is a very kitschy, pop culture thing these days. You need to be Nick Offerman, or the Dos Equis guy. You need to have a sturdy beard and eat bacon and drink Scotch. You need to be a sexual Tyrannosaur. You need a muscle car and a fine suit. And you can still have all that, if it's the weird ideal you want to portray to the outside world, without marginalizing an entire half of our species.
The easiest way you, as a refined gentleman, can assist women in this endeavor is to speak out the same way they are. They tell women that if they're attacked, they should yell "fire," because more people will respond to that than they would if they hear a cry of "rape." That's fucking repulsive. All of us need to learn to start caring for others, just on a basic level. We live in fear that every stranger is a potential freak or deviant (and of course you know why you feel that way), so we don't connect any more with people. You don't say hello to strangers, you don't chat up people in line at the movies, you don't interact. You isolate, we all do. We listen to MP3s, we text, we hide away. But we can't. If we want a better world, we can't. We have to see the shit that's going on and say something if we don't like it. And not just online, but out in the world.
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Let's stop pretending and just kiss.
If you see a man raising his hand, not just to a woman, but to a child, to anyone who isn't in a position to equally and reasonably engage in an altercation, say something. Do something. Be the voice of reason, common sense, and human decency. If you hear guys going way over the line with the things they say, let them know. There's a world of difference between you and your friends seeing a hot girl and saying "holy shit" while you stare in awe for a moment, and screaming at her about how you want to choke her on your dick. The second one makes you the dick who probably could benefit from a light choking.
You need to help, because if all of these stories from women can teach us nothing else, it's that these kinds of men don't want to learn that they're wrong, and women saying no or telling them to stop doesn't work. You need to work with them to let the shitstains of the world know that this is ridiculous and we don't need to tolerate it as a society any more. And once that happens, then we can all have hot tub parties and basement raves in a harmonious, non-sexually-terrifying and comfortable way. Don't act like you don't want that.
For more from Felix, check out 6 Types of Gender Inequality That We Need to Just Accept and 4 Ways We Don't Realize We Suck at Coping With Adversity.
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