Being a woman can be tough. We’ve only got a couple decades of legal equality under our belt at best, and even that is shaky most of the time. Getting ahead at work and balancing a family is a life-long battle, and one that men often never have to consider. We deal with harassment just from having the audacity to leave the house in normal clothes, and are encouraged to take “WHAT’S UP WITH THAT ASS BABY” as you’re walking to work as a compliment. Our reproductive rights are constantly under attack, and even when we do have children, it often means the unceremonious death of a career we’ve worked hard to build. It’s definitely got its cons, and can sometimes feel like not a lot of pros.

But if there’s one thing that is super fucking sweet about being a woman, it’s being able to turn down Nice Guys. I’m not talking about a kind human being who happens to be a man — we all know plenty of those, and I happen to be with one for years now, and they’re great — I’m talking about Nice Guys. I’m talking about the simpering, sad, eternally entitled men whose hobbies include seething with a misplaced sense of injustice, and trolling women’s blogs to congratulate one another over their reactionary and hateful comments. They’re apt to weave yarns about the hordes of women who spend their 20s plowing through a series of dicks like Sonic collecting gold rings, only to realize at 30 that she has suddenly fallen four rungs on the Ladder Of Perceived Societal Value, and needs to hook up with a software engineer who can buy her a Honda SUV. They are blind with anger over our ability as women to spend our hottest years making mistakes and dating men with chest tattoos, and then use our last few years of relative attractiveness to get our asses on eHarmony and find a beta in Dockers.

And you know what? They should be, because that shit is great.

It’s unclear what feminism is going to do in the next decade or so, but with any luck, it will bring enough equality that our purchasing power will be much closer to equal with men, and we won’t have to rely them societally as much as we do today. And with that increasing independence, combined with the liberation of our sexuality, dating will become a much freer and more egalitarian thing, and not confined to outdated notions of “he chases, and she decides when to give.” But for now, we’re still living with the remnants of a patriarchal society that puts financial power with men and puts a high premium on the chastity and selectiveness of women. For now, we still experience a huge disparity in the power dynamics in terms of dating, and are in a situation where women clearly have the upper hand when it comes to who she has sex with, or dates. And while we may not have much, we still have that, and it is sweet.

Because it means that even a woman who is of mediocre attractiveness and low earning power can have her pick of the goddamn litter when it comes to dateable males. And beyond giving her a wide range of options (any woman who has signed up for a dating site knows that even if your profile is nothing but racist jokes, you will have a full inbox in six hours), it means that she doesn’t have to deal with bitter, spiteful assholes. She gets to turn down nice guys until she damn well chooses to marry that guy who tells strangers he’s in MENSA and can’t look people in the eye when he talks to them. She gets to experience as much glorious D as she wants to until she changes her mind, and if she thinks your petty, insecure ass will judge her for it, she can just lie! She never has to tell you about all the awesome sex she had with that guy at the coffee shop who was functionally homeless, and you’ll never know about it! :D! And that’s awesome, because that’s one of the few “privileges” she truly has.

And honestly, if I were an angry guy on the internet, I’d probably be salty as hell about it, too. But I’m not! I’m a woman of average attractiveness who is financially independent and can therefore do WHATEVER THE FUCK SHE WANTS in the dating world, although I have chosen to diverge from the ~*~typical slut life~*~ Nice Guys describe, and have been with the same guy forever :(. Point being, I would be upset if I got the raw end of this deal, but the problem is, our society built this deal to begin with, and putting half-baked notions of morality on women’s dating life only increases that deal by making the ~*~virginal value~*~ of the Good Girls astronomically, artificially high. So I’m sorry that you Nice Guys got fucked over here, and I totally get your anger over it, but remember that you created it. And that when it comes to nearly every other deal in life, you’re doing pretty good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go let a guy pay for me on a date even though I earn my own money! Tee hee. ;)