I had trouble coming up with a headline that accurately describes my post, mostly because misandry has been hot since the feminist movement really took off decades ago.
But there are cultural moments when the stars align and it pops up in a slightly new form and gets mega-amplified by the elite media, and this is one of those times.
The other day I wrote about an absurd article in The New York Times Magazine in which a horribly self-absorbed woman described how penis-obsessed heterosexual women are in despair because men are not satisfying their unarticulated sexual fantasies exactly as they demand, and yesterday John wrote about another Times article that riffed on a related point–that women are having to take on the role of primary friend for their husbands, a phenomenon women call “mankeeping.”
It’s the “emotional labor” argument with a slightly different angle.
If men wrote about their frustrations with women in the same tone that women write about men, it would be considered the height of misogyny and “prestige” publications would consider it far too distasteful to publish. https://t.co/xevRe7Gqb2
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) July 29, 2025
The arguments themselves are hardly new. They are variations, for sure, but variations on a theme: that women bear the emotional and intellectual burden of bolstering oafish, nearly useless men, and get no credit for it.
In the Times Magazine article about which I wrote Friday, prize-winning author Jean Garnett describes the phenomenon called “heterofatalism,” which apparently burdens women who desire the male penis but despise the male person due to their inherent flaws. Men are emotionally weak, incapable of wielding their penises properly, of divining exactly when to be aggressive and when to seek submissive permission. Men are so much trouble. If only their penises came attached to the minds of women exactly like them!
The essay about which John wrote has a similar theme. Women are now required to “mankeep,” which basically means to take care of the emotional needs of men because they are not out with the guys. There was a time, of course, when a man going out with the guys was the problem, but now the opposite is too. These troublesome men so burden women.
Of course, the battle of the sexes is hardly new, because men and women are different. Despite what Scientific American has said–it claimed in an article that until the 18th century, Western society didn’t even realize that men and women were different sexes–men and women have been aware not only of the genital variations between the sexes, but also of behavioral tendencies.
Men are from Mars and women from Venus. Mars, the god of war, and Venus, the god of love and desire.
What is new is the wholesale feminization of our society, with a bit of an ironic twist–women adopting certain masculine traits. Men, according to modern feminists, are defective. Toxic. Demanding. If only these women could be lesbians, but alas, only a fraction can escape. Hence, heterofatalism.
It never occurs to these women that they are exhausting to men. Far from doing all the emotional labor about which they complain, it is they who demand that men reshape themselves continually and submit to their every whim.
Why aren’t men out with the boys? Feminists made it verboten. Why are men not spontaneously passionate with modern women who want to be ravished, such as Jean Garnett? Simple: if they are at the wrong moment, they will be #metoo-ed or accused of rape. A man trying to seduce a woman at the wrong moment is harassing; a man failing to seduce a woman who wants to be is a weak, even pathetic soul.
The myth of emotional labor is that it is unequally distributed in relationships, at least on average.
Sure, men can be exhausting and needy. But so can women–especially these feminist harpies who want men to be manly and submissive in turn.
Modern feminism is determined to eliminate the complementarity of the sexes and tries to wish away the fact that successful relationships require mutual sacrifices and work. Most good things do. While no relationship is perfect or perfectly equal, men and women both have to smooth out the rough edges where their differences irritate each other.
I have often reflected that many of the memes I post each Sunday address this theme, mostly from a male perspective. It is so common that I have tried to find similar memes from a female point of view–after all, men aren’t the only ones irritated or perplexed by the opposite sex’s quirks–but it turns out that women don’t express these frustrations as memes for the most part.
Perhaps they write essays or gossip among each other. We certainly see a lot of humor on TV–too much–with women taking aim at men. In any case, memes are not the medium.
Every man nods along when they see these memes, because they ring true. Is she angry? Does “nothing” mean “nothing,” or really everything? Does she have a favorite restaurant she wants to go to, but wants me to guess? What does it mean? Why is she angry at what I did in a dream?
No doubt, men are a lot of work to live with. But so are women–because we are different and a bit mysterious to each other.
That’s not oppression. It is just a fact of life that will never change, like gravity.
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