I know I know, this is supposed to be a funny blog, but I need to talk about what’s relevant! It’s time to discuss emotional labor and toxic masculinity. It’s bad enough in relationships as I have personally experienced, but why are we experiencing this by male friends and acquaintances too?!
Let’s call him Mike. Mike is someone I’ve known for years but never particularly well. After running into him several times when I moved back to NYC years ago, Mike persuaded me to go on a real date with him. I obliged knowing full well that I would likely not be romantically interested. The date was nice and Mike was fun, but I am just not attracted to him and don’t feel any connection. As we’ve stayed friendly over the years, we are still acquaintances in my mind. I don’t really know much about him and we can go long spans of time without any contact. I actually don’t think I really know anything about him except his name and what he does for a living. This is not a true or deep friendship.
Fast forward to the past 6 months. Mike messages me about once a month after 8 or 9pm asking where I am and what I’m up to. He doesn’t ask me how I’m doing or tell me that he would like to meet up and wants to make plans. It is often a message that implies that I am the last person he thought of to text when he is extremely bored and feeling lonely at home. Just the other day I received a message from him that asked “Wanna bring me food?”. Huh? No, I don’t. Anything would have been better than asking me to do a chore for him. How about “Hey, wanna grab a bite?” That would have been better. I responded that I was actually at the airport. Another appropriate message would have been, “Oh nice, where are you off to?” Nope, I did not receive any response like that. See, Mike doesn’t actually give a shit about me and what I’m doing. He doesn’t care about what’s going on in my life. It’s all about him, all of the time.
Unlike men that create intense emotional labor like this (i.e. I am somehow expected to do some girlfriend or even real friend-like chore when we are not actually friends), women just don’t care. I do not text Mike because I actually do not care about him or what he is doing. So I leave him alone and don’t pretend that we have some fake friendship or flirtation. We do not have anything.
When I FINALLY said that it’s starting to get a little uncomfortable with his random texts asking me to do things for him or asking for last minute plans, he instantly got defensive, rude, and nasty. That my friends is toxic masculinity. Women are not here to serve you at your beck and call. In fact, I find it particularly obnoxious that Mike knows I wake up early for my job (unlike him), yet he consistently asks me what I’m doing last minute at night. I’d love to say what I really think – “Dude, we are not friends. I am not interested in you and I will never sleep with you.” In my mind, I cannot understand why he texts me at all. I certainly cannot understand why he thinks I owe him a damn thing.
Enough is enough. The women’s movement we are experiencing right now is about all kinds of toxic masculinity including horrific sexual assault crimes. But, it’s also about societal norms. WOMEN are not here to serve MEN. WE are not here to serve YOU. As I spend my days running from my demanding job to a comedy club, I’d like to get a text from a man that asks me how the hell I’m doing instead of asking me to bring him dinner. Go get it yourself! I’ll just be living my life over here with ONLY real men that know how we deserve to be treated – platonic and romantically.
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