My OKCupid Tragedy

I went on a date with a (tall, white, cis-het) man who doesn’t lock his apartment door. In New York City. 

Mind you, while I didn’t see this apartment for myself, it was described, in summary, as 1. expensive 2. in a really nice neighborhood 3. equipped with a doorman (or some other type of security situation). Still, it’s New York, and other people live in that building. But this man has zero reservations about leaving it open day in and day out because presumably, in his entire scope of almost 40 years of life experiences, nothing has happened to him that gives him even the slightest twinge of fear or hesitancy about being physically vulnerable to other people. 

This blew my fucking mind.

this summer in “I am running out of reasons to keep doing this to myself”: 

1. I had a minor altercation with a partner of over a year that ended with him grabbing  me by the hair and yanking my head back so forcefully I was in pain for 2 days. He justified this by saying that I “don’t listen when [he] expresses boundaries,” with zero explanation of what said boundaries were or how that might explain his instinct to physically harm me. When I called him out on this, he responded by simply unfollowing me on social media. We never spoke again.

2. I had to defend using condoms with a brand new partner, who acted like a petulant brat in the moment and, when I broke it off, tried to pseudo-intellectualize a framing of the situation in which I was hypocritical for wanting to use condoms in our particular context but not in other contexts. 

Cishet male readers, particularly the white ones, what is it like? What is it like to be this comfortable in the world that you are free to make demands, take up space, and be completely unafraid of consequences for your words and actions? And to have the option to run away like a coward from anyone that remotely holds you accountable for them? What is it like to know that another person is choosing to be completely vulnerable with you and then still have an instinct to take

and take

and take 

and take

and take?

and be entitled to 

more

and more 

and more?