What I Mean When I Say All Straight Relationships Are Unequal
Even in "equal" relationships, the inequality is everywhere--but it can be fine.
I wasn’t going to publish today, but after publishing The Problem With Being A Straight Woman is You Have To Like Men yesterday, I realized I missed an opportunity to provide a good example of the everyday, nearly universal ways that straight relationships can be inherently unequal in a way that’s at odds with feminism, but isn’t violent, harmful or hateful. (If you haven’t read the aforementioned article, I strongly recommend it—but you can read this first if you want.)
Yes, some people were offended by the article (especially on Twitter) but if I edited, apologized, or deleted every time someone was offended, my more straightforward feminist work (such as DOGE Is About Sex) would have been dead in the water long ago. Part of subscribing to this Substack is the fact that you are almost guaranteed to see something with which you strongly disagree from time to time. I have some disparate opinions!
Perhaps because I love to default to the personal essay format (such as my entire book of personal essays, right here on Substack!) the main example of a “favorite problematic” component of heterosexuality I gave in my article was the fact that I thought I wanted a relationship where I ran the show because it would be less misogynistic, but found myself fed up with passive men and much more attracted to my naturally dominant husband. I don’t regret using this example because it’s offensive (I don’t think it is, as I repeatedly pointed out this is a “me” thing) but rather because it’s a “me” thing. It was an apt example of how this conflict of “men and women are different and attracted to different things, yet also I believe in equality” happened for me, but given that I’m on the extreme end of things, it wasn’t a great example.
So here’s something far more applicable. I haven’t polled straight men on this, but I have a feeling the vast majority of straight men would be bothered by a woman who grows out all her body hair. Maybe a majority would be fine with pubic hair, but growing out your leg and armpit hair is going to be a turnoff for a good proportion of straight men.
Is this fair? Not really. Women aren’t generally turned off by men’s body hair, and men don’t have to do nearly as much to get rid of it in order to attract women. But women are turned off more often by other things about men, which men don’t mind as much in women—like social awkwardness, or being short. All in all, men are less picky (the results of my dating app simulator show this, by a mile!) but when it comes to body hair removal, yes, the woman bears more of a burden than the man.
If you believe men and women are interchangeable and that any acknowledgment of our differences is sexist, then you might find it problematic to know that a particular man might not be attracted to you if you have hairy legs. You might even draw a line and say you would refuse to date such a man—which is fine, but you would limit your dating pool. This is what I’m talking about. Women have to make these choices. Do we tally up all the things we must do to attract a man, make sure men are doing all those exact same things to attract us? If we decide that any pandering to the male gaze is bad, then our sex lives will suffer. And I don’t see this as anti-feminist framing, because this logic puts men in a much easier spot than women! Men can do whatever they want to attract women, and never have to worry about whether they’re “centering the female gaze.” They can just do things.
Is it “centering men” to dress to attract them? Yeah, kind of. I’ve made that point before. It’s why I, despite not being a radfem, take the radfem stance that wearing high heels, sexy clothes or makeup is not an empowering thing women do for themselves. Why would it be? Why would something be “empowering” for us and only coincidentally and conveniently appeal to men? Let’s be real about what’s going on here. The thing is, I just part ways with the radfems because I think that there shouldn’t be an equivalence between “for attracting men” and “bad.” Yes, you shouldn’t let an obsession with appealing to men rob you of your autonomy, or force you into horrible and harmful relationships, but it makes perfect sense for women to want to attract men, the way men want to attract women.
Curiously, men who follow me seem far more obsessed with attracting women than the reverse. Men were the ones who wanted to have their outfits rated by women in my fashion study, men were the ones who wanted a guide on how to attract women by dressing better, and men overwhelmingly submit more personals ads than women. It’s the men, not the women, who ask me for dating advice. Men center women’s opinions and female attention constantly. As long as they don’t let it take over their lives, I think it’s fine—and basically, as a feminist, I think it’s fine if women want to attract men too, even if the ways we attract men are different because men and women find different things attractive. If you find that inequality oppressive and sexist, then it will be impossible to decouple heterosexuality from sexism, full stop.
My argument, of course, is that it’s fine to have some inequality, as long as both people are happy. I remove my body hair and my husband doesn’t. That’s fine, because I’m attracted to body hair and he isn’t. I do more childcare than he does, and he does more lawn work than I do, and that’s fine, because I don’t want to do lawn work. I would not advocate for a relationship predicated on one person being superior. Yes, my husband is the main decision-maker, but that’s also fine, because I’m not a natural leader (not because I’m a woman, just because of who I am) and it works out. If my husband refused to let me earn an income, or wouldn’t let me see my friends, that would be a different story (and likely, not one you’d be hearing, because he wouldn’t be letting me write this Substack.) When I say you can be happy in an unequal scenario, it’s that you can be happy while accepting that men and women typically aren’t interchangeable and are attracted to different things.
While my article was more of a personal essay and not meant to be a takedown of radical feminism (I admittedly am not a scholar of radfem theory, if that wasn’t painfully obvious) I think that any ideology that prevents people from doing things that make them happy, which don’t harm anyone, is not going to appeal to a lot of people. I especially dislike any ideology that’s going to give women fewer options than men! This is why I believe full separatism is much easier for women if they’re also attracted to women—wanting a partner is a pretty universal thing, and most straight women don’t want to be single forever.
So sometimes we shave our armpits and wear heels for date night. Nobody should be required to do those things, but many of us do them because it’s part of attracting a partner, and men have their own, different versions of these things—at least in the case of my male Sims, developing their gardening skills.
Your Kink Can Be Cringe (And That's Okay)
As a writer, I feel like I’m under the obligation to write things that haven’t been written before, or at least contain some degree of unique insight (I’m aware some people would argue I succeed in neither of these pursuits but my article The Goon Cavemen
"Not Wanting to be Alone" is Okay
One of the first tweets that ever got me in trouble (and by “in trouble” I mean “getting yelled at by the maladjusted weirdos of Twitter”) was a tweet where I said that the acceptable options for young men who want to find partners have shrunk to basically “be at a party with your big, vivid network of close friends who all happen to know single women” (a situation in which almost no young man in 2024 finds himself regularly.) People will tell young single men to “get off the apps” (apps aren’t stacked in their favor anyway,) but in the same breath, tell them it’s creepy to cold-approach women in public. And trying to escalate a friendship into romance? Well, that’s neckbeard behavior—clearly, you didn’t value the friendship at all if you want to take it in that direction. And what about joining a social club to meet women? Well, that’s dishonest. You should be joining a pickleball league for the pure love of the sport. If you flirt with a woman there, you’re making it an “unsafe space.”
A lot of ideologies seem to forget that people sometimes like doing nice things for other people. Not every relationship between two people (or even groups) is some zero-sum power struggle. And you'll definitely have issues in a relationship if you are constantly worried about maintaining dominance.
I'm with you on not getting why "dressing for the male gaze" is bad (though I'm admittedly a man). Relationships are a big part of life. It's also an area where there is a meaningful competition, so why not make an effort. No one would advise you to not "dress for the employer's gaze" and start wearing a t-shirt and ripped jeans to job interviews.
I also assume that most people find it nice when people find them attractive - on the rare occasions I've gotten a compliment on my attractiveness, it's been a plus.
Separately, you note that men are more obsessed with appealing to women than vice versa. I think this may be true, or at the very least, feminism misses the extent to which men try to appeal to the female gaze, even if the men often miss the mark. Women may not be attracted to a man for driving a fancy car (or maybe they are), but I suspect that men who buy fancy cars often do so to attract women (not my thing, I drive a Subaru Forrester, so I'm only attracting lesbians). But, particularly before I was married, I spent plenty of time trying to figure out how to dress or act or otherwise present myself to increase my chances of attracting women.
The problem for men, and perhaps why you see them obsess over it more than women, is it's less straightforward. There are some tried-and-true ways for women to appeal to the male gaze. They are also generally descrete acts - put on the right outfit and makeup, try to be thin and you're good, you can then go about your day basically acting however you want. For men, there's less of a clear path. It's the rare outfit that a man can wear that is going to turn heads, and while you probably don't want to look like Jabba the Hutt, being in shape only gets you so far. Instead, the way for men to attract women is mostly just being some ineffable form of "cool," which isn't something you can just go buy at a men's version of Saphora or Forever 21 and which you don't just put on before you go out.
I constantly hear feminist critiques about how hard the dating world is for women, only to think "men deal with that exact problem, or at least something entirely comparable." The truth is that dating is hard for both sexes. You just only see if from your side.