there is nobody left to date

pun intended, i think

(This essay isn’t an attack on your political views. Nuance is important. Plus, no matter what your beliefs are, I’m in no place to exercise righteousness or discredit what you feel is right for you. I do, however, have the right to call out bigotry, even if I’m not here to educate. Both can coexist. Take this post with a grain of common sense💋)

!vulgar/offensive language disclaimer!

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The soft music goes well with Tyler’s face. With his jaw, specifically, framing it from all the right angles. It’s the golden ratio or the martinis, I can’t tell. I’m staring at him competitively, the way predators look at prey right before teeth meet tender flesh. Some may call my desire crudely unfeminine. Which one of us is better at this game?

“I’ll tell you one thing, though.” He leans in closer. “The world is messed up right now.”

“Oh yeah.” I nod and roll my eyes. I mean — totally. War crimes beyond comprehension sandwiched in between glossy Ssense ads, Wicked press tour memes, and Jacob Elordi’s new beard¹ discourse broadcasted in and out of our phone screens. It has felt like we’re on the brink of nuclear war for a few years now. The world is turning into an ethnonationalist state ruled by dangerous figures and their billionaire cheerleaders. The climate catastrophe is still pending validation in the minds of many despite its unraveling in real time. Twitter is X now and filled to the brim with reply bots, each probably using up a gallon of water as we speak. Yeah, I’d say we’re pretty over as a species. I wonder if this is what Tyler is referring to. At least I get to enjoy this evening with him.

“All these weirdos... The wars, the queers and the transgenders, like, it’s crazy. We’re past the point of no return, you know. But I’m excited about January, we’ll see.” Tyler lowers his voice, preliminary assessing the severity of my reaction.

“Wait.. What?” I stop him mid-sentence. Tape rewind sound.

“You don’t agree the world sucks?” He scoffs.

“It does suck. That’s not what I was referring to. The queers? The transgenders? Are you serious?”

“Yeah. What’d I say?” He’s so ruthlessly unapologetic I would almost dismiss the ridiculousness like one would at Thanksgiving dinner to spare the drama. But we’re not in Oklahoma and Tyler is not a senior citizen relative of mine. We’re in Western Europe, and he’s my age. And he’s excited about January. Of course he is.

So, this is where the unmistakable silence settles in. Attraction meets terror at the intersection of the vulgar mid-convo reveal that one of you is a moron. Naturally, both of you think the moron is the other person. Repulsion has the right of way when there’s no priority signs around. And both of you sit there, mourning what could’ve been. His body language, now colored with a certain disgust, is evident by his pulling away and breaking eye contact. Because, well, the girl sitting across from him is a libtard — how could he possibly think she was normal? He’s angry he bought her a drink and won’t be getting any tonight. She’s angry both one of her best night-out tops and one of mother nature’s most chiseled jaws have been wasted on the same asshole. All’s fair in love and politics, except when it isn’t. Unprovokingly so, this love story, frequent in our days, is over before it begins. Who could’ve known, and who’s to blame?

Tyler and I do not have a second date. Even this was merely 75% of the first — upon resorting to the bathroom to reapply lipstick and, bending over the sink to have a pep talk with my reflection up close, I realize I’m past the age where sitting next to somebody who fundamentally doesn’t believe in the things I believe in is something I ought to do — free will is a thing, you know. They say your options decrease as you get older or whatever, tick tock biological clock, I say my threshold for ignorance has gone down way lower and way before. I get back to our table and tell him I need to go home. I refrain from adding I have satanic pride rituals, three transgender operations on illegal aliens², and destruction of family values via tradwife bullying on the agenda so I better get going. Booked and busy. The joke wouldn’t land, so I leave in silence.

I think Tyler is stupid. That does not take away from his jaw. Tyler thinks I’m stupid. That does not take away from the fact he was all over me right before he found out I’d been radicalized toward the opposite end of the spectrum. Authentic connection is lost, the little voice tells me. Dating is ruined. Am I part of the problem? Am I doomed? Should I allow for a little more compromise and nuance in my life? Is this how every childless cat lady story begins? Is my inner monologue an incel podcast host? Ugh… I guess I’ll just keep contributing to the male loneliness epidemic.

You’d think this is a singular instance I’m blowing out of proportion. I wish you were right. This is the state of the contemporary manhood. I notice it around me, more frequently and acutely, in whispers and jokes, online and in person, on the ballots and at rallies, in election outcomes, slowly but steadily creeping in. I don’t think men have magically changed overnight. What’s changed is they’ve gotten increasingly more comfortable openly expressing and eternizing their bigotry because the world is currently safely cushioned to protect that expression. Freedom of speech and all. And that’s so much worse.

***

At home, nestled in my little feminist cave of feminist pillows and a feminist weighted blanket, the fear starts bubbling up, mental acid reflux. I think about all the statistics proving we’ve reached the greatest divide, politically, between young men and women.³ I think about the 4B movement⁴. My neurons revolt against me as I question if I’ll ever find someone who isn’t a moron. I wonder if I’m a bad person. Maybe I’ve taken this too far? My views, I mean. Would I have met the love of my life already if I wasn’t so firm and rigid in my leftist nature? I’m in my mid-twenties and not getting any younger. Why do I have to take things so personally? Sure, he adores Trump, but maybe that’s a green flag showing me he could one day adore me, too… The limitless capacity of his adoration. Plenty of women are allegedly happily partnered with conservative men, canceling out their votes or whatever.⁵ Right? Right..? I’ve seen it on Insta, I’ve read about it in The Cut. Must be true, then…

I’m brought right back to my senses before I go down the guilt-tripping route. I’m suddenly reminded of a viral Substack essay by a well-known author who frequently gets away —receives a generous amount of positive attention— with thinly veiled conservative takes under the guise of caring for women and the state of girlhood at large. I’m going to paraphrase heavily because I’m not trying to start beef and I have no doubt the author comes with the purest of hearts and intentions, but the consensus goes like this: The girls are all alone, abandoned and scared of commitment, refusing to trust men, opting for solitude for the sake of not “taking the risk” because… *checks notes* liberal philosophies have destroyed the idea of connection, family, and partnership. Look where all the propagandized independence has gotten us — we’ve been kicked to the side of the dead-end road for self-actualization and sufficiency.

The essay and the general concord around the topic never sat right with me because they’re barking up the wrong tree, fully dismissing the problem at hand, which is the kinds of ideologies the men around us growingly hold. Throughout the essay, the author repeats how worried they are for girls — but not for the fact that boys are increasingly graduating from the J. Peterson / B. Shapiro / A. Tate school of life? Hm. Interesting. Once again, women are painted as the cornerstone of not just our own loneliness, but men’s too — and everything wrong with society today. We’re pigeonholed into conversations designed to work against us, expected to offer “love” as a solution to problems we’re neither responsible for nor equipped to or should be striving to solve. Coupled with the velocity at which the conservative renaissance is happening, it’s almost as if we’ll need to double our efforts to neutralize, or even supersede, the disease that is the current landscape of reactionary, angry, provoking, near-violent manosphere. To “connect” with men despite their ideas, to singlehandedly absolve them of the pain inflicted by patriarchy, to kill them with kindness and forgiveness. And if we refuse to do so, well, good luck to us sitting in our uncommitted, solitary chambers with no partner or community. Bored and alone scrolling TikTok into oblivion. And you’re not allowed to complain — you chose this sad lonely life. You rejected all the men around you. Where male loneliness is acknowledged, female loneliness is pathologized. Yes, I may be lonely, but that doesn’t mean I’d rather get involved with the Tylers of the world. That is not the better option.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the hyper-individualist hostile environment we’re witnessing depriving us of the very last threads of connection either. I’ll even go as far as admitting I don’t particularly enjoy being alone. Yes, most of the independence talk is typically neoliberal girlbossery bullshit I have no interest in perpetuating⁶. But this isn’t about my disdain for what late-stage capitalism has turned us into. This is about the ridicule we face for standing strong in our convictions and our values. In our standards, if you will. Even the concept of standards has been reduced to superficial notions like a man’s height and income when that’s the last thing we’re worried about. But what do I know, a liberal woman, too feisty against the laws of nature? Now my brain, flooded with microplastics and rainbow flags, no longer responds to the biological mating signals. Good luck with your standards.

Consider the fact that the average young man’s views today are rooted in principles that are actively harming women. If only I could afford the obliviousness of centrist views or apolitical neutrality, the kind of apathy that doesn’t get entangled in the rights and wrongs of it all, then, of course, putting my politics —and my pride— aside to engage with the people around me regardless of theirs would be possible. Unfortunately, everything in my life is political. Art is political. Feelings are political. So is sex. I’m a woman and an immigrant⁷, part of the very demographics conservative men tend to either dismiss or, in some cases, actively despise, and I can’t picture myself with someone to whom my whole identity is a nuisance or a debate topic, one they would violently oppose in the streets if not for their fleeting attraction to me specifically. So, why should I bother? With this in mind, is it our fault that withholding sex and affection is making men miserable and contributing to the loneliness epidemic? If yes, then, maybe, some of them deserve it. Just a thought. Maybe it’s one of those instances where correlation does, in fact, imply causation. Bring on the tiny violins.

The fun thing about the modern conservative man is that he consistently struggles to put two and two together, to see how his views fit within the larger framework of his life — that is, he’ll happily take you on dates and sleep with you all while nurturing, albeit secretly and in private bro-to-bro discussions, his dearly held chauvinist beliefs. He’ll have gay friends and engage with ragebait homophobic content online. He’ll have casual sex, no regard for protection in sight, and then vote for Trump. You get the gist. He’s inconsistent and couldn’t live in alignment with his principles if his life depended on it. Not because he doesn’t know where he stands, but because to him, politics are divorced from personal affairs. “Immigrants,” “gay people” and “women”, much like any other vulnerable group, are merely non-personified, faceless concepts of what he dislikes. Abstract modern art. This is dangerous because it is that precise abstract dehumanization that breeds the most harmful ideologies. I, on the other hand, can’t and won’t separate the art from the artist or the D from the dickhead, because if my sole identity is something he’d rather see less of, his views a threat to my personhood, then I don’t know what I’m even doing here. To him, “other” demographics are about numbers and concepts, something to use as a scapegoat for his dissatisfaction with life. But my belonging to those demographics is what makes me who I am. I refuse to compromise on the things that make up my identity in the name of love or partnership. In the name of anything, really.

You can call me uncompromisingly childish or selfish. Some things are non-negotiable, and my views are among them. No, that doesn’t mean I’m looking for a yes-man to take to protests on a leash, force him into unionizing, and drain his wallet for my leftist GoFundMes of choice.⁸ Being challenged intellectually doesn’t scare me — I think, in part, it would be an exciting add-on to an already healthy relationship. I don’t ever want to get so comfortable in my echo chamber that the learning pathways of my brain crystallize and atrophy. But when I say it’s important for me to find a partner I can fully align with politically, for whatever reason that is seen as too picky, too exclusive, radical even. What gives? I don’t believe in relationships established on a value mismatch so fundamental it spoils and rots everything in its proximity. I don’t believe that the love offered to me by someone whose politics are an attack on my personhood is real love. I can’t entrust my body to someone who may not even agree I have the unequivocal right to keep my reproductive health matters to myself. To someone who thinks that people’s pronouns are a direct threat to his manhood, not an individual choice that doesn’t concern him in the slightest because it’s not about him. To someone so ignorant and intellectually depraved behind his picket fence, his worst fear is the liberation of the oppressed. To someone who yells “Not All Men” from the rooftops just to drown out the voices of women that need to be heard. To someone who’s a couple Reddit rabbit holes or podcasts away from becoming the worst person I’ve ever met if I don’t monitor his search history diligently. I’m sorry, I just can’t do that. If that’s the culprit that’s going to drive me into forever loneliness, so be it. If that means my standards are too high, then I don’t wanna know what low standards would look like.

To quote Cynthia Enloe’s feminist work Bananas, Beaches & Bases, “Every time the conversation slips into abstractions, one of the women pulls it back to women’s complex everyday realities.”⁹ Nothing is abstract when it comes to human rights. I embody my politics, my principles, and I live by them. I’m not perfect, but I do try my best to practice what I preach — with vigor and virtue, too. I still have empathy and I’m all for active communication with somebody willing to learn and listen, but not at the expense of self-respect basics or divorcing my personhood from love. It’s not our job to educate, to heal people out of their extreme views, to compromise for the sake of restoring, establishing, or preserving relationships. It’s a zero-sum game, all this compromise, leading to more compromise and no resolution. And I’m not so sure more essays on how lonely and broken we all are will help if we don’t address the obvious first.

1. I don’t mean Olivia Jade, I mean his actual beard

2. A look at Trump's 'transgender operations on illegal aliens' debate claim

3. Why the political worldviews of young men and women are increasingly diverging

4. After Trump’s win, some women are considering the 4B movement

5. The Best I Can Do Is Cancel Out His Vote

6. Capitalism is destroying us and our connection. But patriarchy is destroying us too. I wish I could talk about both simultaneously and how they’re intertwined, but that would be less effective and too much to cover in one piece.

7. Some may want to use the word “expat” instead for that pedigreed je ne sais quoi, but let’s call a spade a spade. I moved to Europe for a better life — that makes me an immigrant.

8. Would be real nice though. A girl can dream.

9. https://archive.org/details/bananasbeachesba0000enlo_u8e3