22 Things That Men Should Be Required To Do

1. Learn what the female orgasm is, how it works, why it doesn’t have to happen every time, and how you can up your chances of making her feel generally good in bed.

2. Read up on rape culture, what it is, and how you are complicit in it while still being a good, normal, pretty much healthy person.

3. Learn to remove the strong, often false different between the “pure, maternal” women and the “dirty, undeserving-of-respect” women.

4. Work on finding a woman who can be both of those things simultaneously in your eyes.

5. Understand that blanket statements like “women aren’t funny” or “women are too emotional” ultimately only make you look like the object of pity, and not your intended target.

6. Stop calling them “chick flicks.”

7. Get over the fear of looking like “that guy” when you call out your friends for saying really fucked-up, sexist shit around you.

8. Definitely stop saying these sexist things yourself.

9. Eradicate the words “slut” and “whore” from your vocabulary entirely.

10. Only judge a woman’s personal and sexual history if you hold yourself — and every other human — to those same standards, and know that they are only your own, and not objective.

11. Realize that the kind of body pressure we all are faced with is only eradicated if we stop treating certain bodies with extreme shame and degradation, and sayings like “No Fatties” only add to that.

12. Understand that women who don’t fit into society’s ideal beauty standards face a kind of uphill battle that you will never face.

13. Work with competent, strong, thoughtful women and have nothing but respect for the work that they do.

14. Realize that the love and respect that they extend to their mothers, sisters, and daughters, should be extended to every woman, because their family members are not some magical creatures who are exempt from the realities of womanhood.

15. Understand the difference between a sexual preference and fetishizing a certain group of people.

16. Try to make sure that women feel comfortable and safe in your presence, by demonstrating that you are not a threat and have every intention of treating them with respect and care.

17. Do not be offended at the idea that a woman might be scared being alone with you at night if she doesn’t really know you.

18. Feel grateful that you don’t have to live with the same kind of fears that she does.

19. Get rid of the idea that some activities are wholly “feminine” or “masculine,” and accept that there is nothing wrong with a man who does housework and raises children, if that’s what he loves and what his family needs.

20. Be giving and honest with your emotions, because you realize that life is short and that keeping it bottled up or playing cat-and-mouse with it only hurts everyone.

21. Imagine what it would be like if your body were regarded as an unavoidable catalyst to bad things happening that you must now prevent.

22. Lose your fear of weakness, of crying, of showing love. Because all of these things, if they do anything, make you more of the great person you already are. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

image – Thomas Leuthard

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