She’s Not Going Out With You for Free Food

Just stop it

Amber Fraley
4 min readSep 17

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Photo by SJ 📸 on Unsplash

Many straight men in this country feel as though they’re under attack lately. They’re not, but when you’re not accustomed to constant criticism, it can feel that way.

These guys are getting angrier and angrier, and many of them assert today’s women are choosier and more into playing games than dating. I tried Googling “Have women become choosier in men,” because I wanted to be fair and balanced, and what came up were a string of articles going back to the 1980s insisting women have always been choosier about sexual partners than men, since the beginning of time, because it’s in our evolutionary interest. (I’m not so sure about that, though, because I know of a lot of women who’ve had kids with worthless dirtbags, but I digress.)

The pure vitriol coming out of these guys is truly baffling, until you understand where they’re coming from, which is somewhere from batshit left field.

I wrote a piece about how I despise it when men say women are the “gatekeepers” of sex. I hate it because it puts all the onus, and shame, for sex and unwanted pregnancy on women, and lets men off with zero consequences for not taking responsibility for their own emissions. A couple of furious men have now gone off on me because they firmly believe women are the “gatekeepers of sex” and because women (supposedly) have more sexual partners to choose from, men are actually the victims because these poor souls have to spend money on meals that might not result in sex. The horror!

Stop twisting his words, you’re going to such an extreme extent it’s downright toxic and borderline slander.

That wasn’t his point, but you know full well and you’re obfuscating to distract from how much easier women have it.

Buying prospective partners expensive dinner isn’t part of the sexual mating process for women. You can twist it anyway you want. But it comes to this.

For every one woman that wants to have sex with a man, 9 other women will also insist on using him as a wallet and getting dinner from him, by just dangling the prospect of interest. That’s not something women ever have to deal with. You’re never treated as a walking ATM. A cash-dispensing object.

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Amber Fraley

Writing about abortion rights, mental illness, trauma, narcissistic abuse & survival, politics. Journalist, novelist, wife, mom, Kansan, repro rights activist.