An Immodest Defense of Heterofatalism

(Or Maybe Dhaaruni Is Bad At Marriage)

In July, a piece came out in the New York Times called, “The Trouble With Wanting Men”, and the piece itself was mediocre, I skimmed it, and found the narrator annoying and the men she wrote about even more so. However, this piece made a lot of people really angry, including and arguably especially other straight women, who rhetorically took this woman and any other heterofatalists to task. Here are some examples of pieces that were written in the wake of this one: “Gender Relations Have Made Dating a Hostile Act”, “‘Nobody is Doing "Heterofatalism', But Also, It's Good¹”, “Women’s latest dating trend couldn’t be more sexist”, not to mention, a whole lot of posts and articles and TikToks that I didn’t bother seeking out again because I’m trying to protect my peace.

The first time I saw these, I was like “I don’t agree but to each their own”. But after I kept on seeing them, over and over, with people endorsing them wholeheartedly, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’m the crazy outlier for finding these posts at best, totally unrelatable and kind of embarrassing, and at worst, a blaring alarm that we’re sociopolitically regressing and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

I just don’t really get why ostensibly liberal women are publicly taking other women to task for disliking men, and going to bat for men as a collective as well as the women who like them. I was under the impression that we all collectively accepted in like 2015 that men, including marginalized men, benefit from the patriarchy² and that’s bad. Like what do you MEAN you like men? Do you like women? Do you like white people? Do you like Black people? Hindus or Muslims or Jews? People from Cincinnati? Libras? I know you don’t like every single member of those groups, so why are you declaring that you like men? Do you really think that liking men will protect you from the patriarchy? Because by seven, it’s marginal right?

Look, I was sentient during the 2016 election, I saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I witnessed the rise of Andrew Tate, I watched the now Vice President of the United States rant about childless cat ladies and his approvals increase by 20 points thereafter, I heard grown women simper about being “just a girl”, I scrolled through long-winded screeds by pro-natalists that are really thinly veiled pleas to kick women out of the paid workforce³, and in the wake of the 2024 election, I read about boys chanting at their female peers, “Your body, my choice” in addition to a seemingly endless collection of essays and posts and sanctimonious rants about how women being mean to men⁴ is how we got into this predicament.

Okay.