Every so often, some knuckle-dragging throwback to the stone age decides that her her sexual taste for bottoming/submitting gives her the right to speak for all women, and posts some unspeakably stupid drivel about how a ‘real man’ is supposed to act (and by extension, what a ‘real woman’ is supposed to want). Sometimes this shit gets posted on fetlife, sometimes it ends up on the good men project. Either way, it fills me with rage. Not only is it extraordinarily insulting to tell me that either I’m too stupid to know what I really want or I’m such an abject failure at being a woman that I should just go on Testosterone and get top surgery already, but it’s actually abusive to tell submissive men that they are such failures at being men that no ‘real woman’ will ever want them.

If it’s not okay to bully women for failing to perform femininity ‘correctly’, then it’s not okay to bully men for failing to perform masculinity the way you prefer. If you don’t like random strangers telling you to smile, or how pretty you’d be if you’d just put in a little effort, then kindly shut the fuck up about how men are doing it wrong when they act like they care what women want. Newsflash: men aren’t psychic, and it’s not fair to ask them to be. In the absence of a woman having the ovaries to take the bizarre and unprecedented step of asking for what she wants, the only ethical thing for a man to do is to go slowly and tentatively try things until he figures out what his partner likes. Lori Ann Lothian, your problem is NOT that men aren’t manly enough. It’s that you’re a spineless child who thinks that communicating like a grown up will ruin your fantasy.

Fuck you and fuck your bullshit about what it means to be a woman. It’s great that you know what you want in a man and what kind of sex you like. It’s fucking stupid that you can’t understand that not all women want what you want, and that *gasp* not all women are submissive. I have just as much right to ask for my kind of man as you have to ask for yours. You and your ‘real man’ can fuck right off, I want nothing to do with either one of you gender-essentialist wastes of space.

Here’s the real way to be a man. I know it’s the real way because it turns me on, and obviously what turns one woman on does it for absolutely all of us, no exceptions. I, uh, don’t know how queer and/or asexual women are supposed to fit into this stupid gender-binary straight jacket, but who cares about what people other than me want? I’m obviously the only important one. Me me me ME!

Without further ado (but with plenty more sarcasm):

Be a man and let me make the decisions. I’ll tell you if I want you to perform the service of making a particular decision for me.

Be a man and learn my preferences so that you can make good decisions for me when I ask you to. Notebooks and/or spreadsheets may come in handy. Tools are manly, right?

Be a man and lean on me when you need to. Real men admit it when they’re having a rough time.

Be a man and give me some space to initiate sex. I can’t jump you if you always jump me first.

Be a man and let me know how much I turn you on. Tease and denial isn’t any fun if you just wander off and play World of Warcraft all night.

Be a man and beg me to hurt you. I absolutely love that, and thanks to the female hive mind I can be sure all other women feel exactly the same way.

Be a man and do what you say you’re going to do. Lying is for the ladies! (thanks roo-roo)

Be a man and submit to me. Men who want to dominate women are doing it wrong and are destined to die alone, missed only by their many cats. Get over your vagina envy, learn your place, and maybe some woman will take pity on you and show you how a real woman loves a man.

I’m deliberately being a little bit ridiculous, but insisting all men should be dominant is just as stupid as insisting all men should be submissive. How about we stop letting people get away with that shit?