Dating is hard, but blaming all men for your horrible choices is easy.<\/p>\n
A new New York Times piece, \u201cThe Trouble With Wanting Men<\/a>,\u201d by Jean Garnett, posits that the trouble with wanting men, is \u2026 men.<\/p>\n Like, all of them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of a genre of man-hating thought pieces that turn hetero love and dating into an all-out gender war \u2014 and totally absolve women of any agency or responsibility in their relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n An article in the New York Times, titled \u201cThe Trouble With Wanting Men,\u201d has gone viral.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no accountability or introspection, just the big diagnosis that men are the problem, from a woman who has decided to pursue open relationships, casual sex and situationships into middle age.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a sad, sickly post-millennial take on \u201cSex and the City\u201d that\u2019s further evidence of just how bleak the modern romantic outlook really is.<\/p>\n The piece, which is mostly autobiographical sexual navel-gazing, argues that many women are experiencing \u201cheterofatalism,\u201d a term Garnett borrowed from UPenn academic Asa Seresin<\/a>, which describes the way straight women are \u201cfed up with the mating behavior of men.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a word that reeks of misandry. Garnett\u2019s own heterofatalism manifests in lamenting with a female friend that they can\u2019t just be gay with one another and declaring that \u201cmen are what is rotten in the state of straightness.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean Garnett is the author of the controversial autobiographical piece about modern dating.<\/p>\n It also rears its ugly head when she walks past a couple holding each other close outside a subway and audibly gags.<\/p>\n What has left this woman so hurt, so bitter, so \u2026 heterofatalistic? <\/p>\n Well, her dating past is colorful, to put it kindly.<\/p>\n Garnett reveals that her open marriage<\/a> fell apart because she \u201cfell in love with another man\u201d \u2014 in fact, \u201ctoppled the whole structure of [her] life for a man\u201d \u2014 who told her from the outset \u201cthat he did not know how to \u2018do\u2019 relationships.\u201d Ah, yes, the classic.<\/p>\n Garnett argues that \u201cheteropessimism\u201d is a common experience among straight women today. vgstudio \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n Later, she reveals she sometimes brings her daughter along on dates with this man, who won\u2019t commit to anything more than a sexual relationship. <\/p>\n She also recounts getting a text from an actual adult male who she went on a date with, reading, \u201cI was really looking forward to seeing you again but I\u2019m going through some intense anxiety today and need to lay low :(.\u201d<\/p>\n Apparently, among her friend group, this is a common experience, and they laugh over brunch about \u201cmen\u2019s inability to \u2018man up and [expletive] us.\u2019\u201d Garnett asks, \u201cWhere were the men who could handle hard stuff? Like leaving the house for sex?\u201d<\/p>\n Garnett compares her friends to the characters of \u201cSex and the City,\u201d chatting about sex over a meal.<\/p>\n