The ostensible inferiority complex of the stereotypical “bad boy” is downright embarrassing and wholly unattractive, manifesting itself in a quality of adolescence in that it panics to destroy whatever obstacle to dominance it perceives, marked by a pathetic sense of whiney distress at the face of threatened undeserved power. There’s nothing less appealing than a grown man perpetually throwing a violent tantrum; when he is chastened by the reality of the world, it is only humorous. Contrary to what patriarchy claims, citing the supposedly biological motivation that women are drawn to aggression to seek protection, I’ve experienced gut repulsion toward this “type” ever since I had first been aware of attraction to the opposite sex. I highly suspect that women, generally robbed of the thrill of the chase since we are positioned perpetually as the objects of it, pursue men who exude counterfeited strength because women are substituting this thrill for a hard win and the sense that they must be somehow special; of course, she is ultimately unfulfilled and has compromised her directive.

I’ve never had an issue relinquishing of the thrill of the chase, partly because I’ve never seen the point in taking pleasure in it from either direction (I don’t mind at all or lose interest when men admit they find me attractive, despite what obnoxious pick-up artists will claim about women) and partly because whenever men do disclose this, they seem to have an ludicrous tendency to believe they’re beneath my league (which is nothing short of bewildering and maddening) and so a type of chase is absurdly still manifest in convincing him otherwise. I’m not talking about the self-absorbed obnoxious Nice Guy who’s really a jackass who believes he’s entitled to your adoration just because he’s “nice” and doesn’t realize he’s passively a carbon copy of the sexually aggressive asshole—I mean the man who’s genuinely convinced he’s “unworthy” of you (not to play games), and you’re caught in a flurry attempting to bring him to the realization that he is equal and valuable, breaking your heart a thousand times in the process at his placidity, rawness, and gentle deliberation. There is a strange ensnarement of compassion that surges out, unbridled and irrepressible, beyond what you believed you could ever harbor as a human being, at encountering the occasional sentiment that surfaces from him and realizing it is literally the tip of an iceberg to an impassioned chasm of suppressed, conflicted feelings. It’s strange how feeling loved can often hurt very deeply.

It baffles me then, not that there is a perception that women are drawn to domineering immature aggression when it is possibly the least alluring, but that this perception is prevailing. I suppose whether there is any such thing as sincerity anymore is questionable. There are too many stratums of nonsense, manufactured facades, counterfeit labels, and people buying into an imaginary paradigm that supposedly dictates who someone is to the core, and all of these have become artificial “conditions” for affection. Superficiality is the ironic attempt to simulate closeness. (I am nowhere near above this.) Irritatingly, men who accuse women of oversensitivity are far more sensitive than they think they are—and contrary to the counterfeit force of the “bad boy” it is constantly women who have adjusted themselves to the acrimony of the world who exhibit genuine toughness and machoism.

This ridiculous trope even has its inadequate hipster version; sitting in class one day, the man beside me (who was about a few years my senior) remarked that he had cheered when Reagan died. Shocked, I asked why. He stated with a tone of half-laughter that he had problems with authority, as though celebrating the death of a human being is the most casual and normal thing to do. I turned away in disgust. Coming to terms with the fact that those whom we oppose are full human beings worthy of respect and compassion (if one even has to try such a thing! why should this require effort?) is the most basic sign of maturity—and humanity. Too young to have known Reagan through anything but the letters he wrote to others, my heart shook for him at this man’s pitiful exhibition of wayward spite. Reagan (not overlooking the areas one could validly criticize him) was certainly much more commendable than to be used for a tool for someone demonstrating how so very ruggedly reckless he is.

The thing men don’t understand about themselves is the same thing they don’t understand about women: whole, complex people cannot be compartmentalized. There aren’t clear cut boundaries between what men identify as the asshole and what they identify as the good guy, any more than there is between the virgin and the whore. These are not people, they are “slices” of people, and when a man catches a glimpse of another man behaving a specific way it does not mean the woman he is with is attracted to assholery. The artificial “categories” will seep into each other, and it is only those who judge and compartmentalize their own sex (PUAs with that alpha beta nonsense), poignantly believing they are liberating it (often times from imaginary oppression as do MRAs), who have ridiculous and limiting contraints.