Dear Coquette,

My friend Joe says he wants women to discuss how they “don’t have to make an effort” regarding “sex, dating, sports, lifting things, buying drinks.” What should I say to him?

If at all possible, ignore him. If you can’t do that, challenge him. Whatever you do, don’t discuss anything with him. All Joe really wants is the debate. He wants you to counter his opinion by saying that women do have to make an effort. He wants you to validate his ignorance by establishing that this is an argument that naturally has two sides worth defending. It doesn’t. Joe is simply wrong.

If you choose to challenge him, the trick is to come at him with a barrage of Socratic questioning. Force Joe to justify his own opinions with something more than anecdotal evidence. He won’t be able to do it, because idiots who are wrong can’t make a rational argument based on facts.

Practice saying the phrases, “What’s your point?” “Where are you getting your information?” and “Why do you believe that?”

Remember, don’t let it become a debate. He’ll want to know your opinion so he’ll have something to attack, but you should never feel like you have to defend a position. You are not responsible for proving the opposite of his opinion. The burden of proof is on Joe.

You don’t have to prove that you’re right. Joe is the one who has to prove that he’s not wrong, and if he tries shifting the argument to you, simply say, “It doesn’t matter what I think. You’re the one who has to justify your beliefs.”

Inevitably, he will try and rile you up by pushing your buttons, because once you’ve backed him into a corner of his own ignorance, the only thing he’ll have left to do is get you flustered with comments that are rude, mean, or personal.

Stay cool, and don’t get emotional. When it starts to break down, just say, “It sounds like you still have a lot to think about,” and gracefully exit the conversation.

Don’t expect to change Joe’s mind, and don’t expect to “win.” There’s not supposed to be a winner, just one loser talking himself into a circle.

Dear Coquette,

How do you know when to let your guard down? How do you know when to stop being a guarded bitch and actually let someone in?

You shouldn’t have a guard. You should have a filter. There’s a huge difference, and I promise, it’s a much better way to live.

A guard is a fear-based defense mechanism that you put up and take down over and over again to protect yourself from your own vulnerability in intimate relationships. It’s an exhausting exercise that can weigh down your soul.

A filter isn’t fear-based. You don’t have to put it up or take it down. It’s a permanent part of you that requires a certain amount of inner strength and a well-defined set of personal standards, but it allows you to embrace your vulnerability.

The real trick is accepting the fact that a certain amount of emotional pain is inevitable. Sometimes relationships are gonna hurt, and there’s no getting around it. People who keep their guards up are living in fear of that emotional pain. When they let their guards down, they’re just living in denial of its inevitability.

People with filters accept the inevitability of emotional pain, but they have the self-discipline to mitigate chaos and negativity by either processing it, or cutting it off at the source.

I’m in an open marriage with a man who only respects logic. I don’t like it when he goes and has playtime with his partner when we have the kids. I’ve asked him to save it for when the kids are with their bio mom, but he refuses. I’ve said that the sentiment applies to me, too. He says I’m being emotional and not asking him in a way that makes sense, so he’s going to keep doing it. He’s right, though; I *am* emotional. I also think that it’s not an unreasonable request. What should I do?

Your husband is being a jerk. He doesn’t respect logic, not really. He’s just found a way to convince you that your emotions are invalid whenever there’s conflict in your relationship. Well, guess what? Logic is not the opposite of emotion, and being emotional does not mean you’re being irrational.

In any open relationship, both partners get to set ground rules. You’re not trying to set a double standard, nor are you being unreasonable. The kids are more important than your open marriage, plain and simple. The bottom line is that neither of you should get to put playtime over parenting.

Don’t let him fool you with his line that you’re “not asking in a way that makes sense.” It makes perfect sense. He just doesn’t like restrictions being placed on his playtime, and he’s reacting like a spoiled brat.

Don’t put up with his selfish behavior, not for one more second.

What do you say when somebody tells you they’re a part-time model?

Just smile and nod. The world is full of average people eager to display their manufactured identities. It’s best to allow them their minor delusions.

Dear Coquette,

I just did some reading about men’s rights activists and I’m a little freaked out. What are your thoughts?

I don’t want to paint all men’s rights activists with the same brush, but most of what gets labeled as men’s rights activism tends to be a very crude form of reactionary gender politics fueled by flagrant misogyny, (metaphorical) impotence and narcissistic rage.

Gender dynamics in Western societies have been slowly and steadily shifting towards legitimate equality over the last century or so. After four waves of feminism, there was bound to be some blowback. That’s all this is, really.

It’s toxic stuff, but there’s no need to let it freak you out. In the grand scheme, the dark side of men’s rights activism is little more than a temporary subcultural side effect of broader social progress. 

I’m not saying it’s harmless. It’s potentially quite dangerous, but as long as no men in your life have made it a part of their identity, it’s not something you have to fear.

That’s kind of the point, really. These men are pathetic. They aren’t worthy of your fear, and deep down, a lot of them resent the hell out of the fact that they aren’t feared (or loved) by women. It’s not that women don’t want them. It’s that women don’t need them. Women are indifferent to them, and that indifference is worse than rejection or betrayal.

Pay close attention to the rhetoric coming out of the movement and you’ll notice that it’s fundamentally a reaction to indifference. To the ego, there’s nothing worse, and to the male ego, female indifference transmutes into emasculation. That in turn develops into a sort of chronic narcissistic injury where all women are to blame for the loss of their manhood.

It’s twisted, but that’s really what’s at the emotional core of these guys. Their involvement in men’s rights activism is based on a very personal and individual reaction to their own wounded male egos. The politics is just window dressing.

That’s an important distinction to make. Despite what the most vocal men’s rights activists would have you believe, this isn’t a collective movement based on a set of unifying ideals. Not really. Any unifying ideals are an afterthought, mere packaging to wrap around a lot of repressed anger and misogyny.

In that regard, the movement as a whole is not greater than the sum of its individual members. It’s just a bunch of dudes who happen to be resentful of approximately the same thing. They aren’t really victims of some greater societal injustice, so ultimately it’s all bound to fizzle.

That being said, it’s not fair for me to summarily dismiss all men’s rights issues because of the questionable character of certain men’s rights activists. A number of the issues themselves have some merit, especially those in regard to gender neutrality in the practice of divorce, paternity, and child custody law. 

Of course, the legitimacy of any particular issue doesn’t legitimize men’s rights activism in general, and it sure as hell doesn’t excuse the movement’s undeniable undercurrent of hatred towards women.

Dear Coquette,

So, I’m 22 years old and I finally lost my virginity last weekend. I’m not dating the guy, but we have been seeing each other for a few months. I was raised to believe your virginity is a gift that should be saved until marriage, and my parents even gave me a purity ring, but over the past few years my own religious views have evolved and changed and I don’t identify with Christianity anymore.

That being said, I still carry a really messed-up view of sexuality. Somewhere along the way, I began associating sex with something dirty and shameful. My first kiss was with a stranger and we were both drunk. The only time I’ve given a BJ and the first time I was fingered were both against my will. I was never raped, but when I was scheduled for my first gyno appointment, I broke down crying so hard she decided not to examine me.

Clearly, I have issues, but back to last weekend. Despite my own messed up view of myself, I am very anti-slut shaming and I admire women who are confident with their sexuality. I think part of the reason I had put off losing my virginity so long was because I was afraid of feeling dirty, regretting it, and the like, but I feel like it was a healing thing. It was consensual, the guy asked several times if I wanted to, and despite the fact that it hurt like hell, I enjoyed it. I feel like it was a really cathartic experience, if that makes sense.

I’m not asking for any particular advice (unless you have some to give), but I don’t feel ready to talk to someone about this on a personal level and I feel that reading your columns (all of them, not just the ones about sex) has really helped me on my road to feeling good about sexuality. Thanks for the free therapy!

This breaks my heart, and we need to be clear about a couple things up front. If someone forces you to perform oral sex against your will, that is rape. If someone penetrates you against your will — even with a finger — that is rape.

I understand why you feel the need think otherwise, but telling yourself that you were never raped is a certain kind of denial that is at the heart of what you call your “issues.”

I’m not saying you should start considering yourself a victim. You shouldn’t. I just want you to recognize and accept that what you experienced really was sexual trauma. That’s okay, though, because you’re right about the healing.

Part of the reason losing your virginity was so cathartic is because it was willful and deliberate. You had control over the situation and your own sexuality. That’s a powerful experience after having carried around so much guilt and shame about your early sexual encounters.

You’re not done healing, though. You still have a lot of complicated emotions to process, and it’s not made any easier by an upbringing filled with purity rings and religious sexual repression. That’s also okay, though, because you’re on the right path.

You’re starting to realize that the “really messed up” view of sexuality you’ve been carrying around isn’t actually yours. You’re letting go of the unhealthy aspects of your past by taking control of not only your own sexuality, but of your own sexual values.

Keep doing what you’re doing. Continue healing, and continue strengthening your own personal set of values. You’ll get there.

Dear Coquette,

After a year and a half, I finally realized why my roommate’s boyfriend bugs me: He’s boring. He’s a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult, but he has nothing terribly interesting to say, or at least not to me. Then, when my roommate is together with her boyfriend, she feeds off his Wonderbread loaf of a personality and ceases to be an exciting person with creativity and dreams.

Am I wrong to think like this? Am I just a jealous single bitch? Am I just as equally boring for hanging out with these boring people?

Yeah, it’s all about you, isn’t it?

Your roommate’s boyfriend isn’t boring. You’re just bored by your roommate’s boyfriend. See the difference? Of course you don’t, because you’re the center of the whole damn universe.

After a year and a half, what you should have finally realized is that you’re an incredibly self-centered girl who gets annoyed when the people in your life stop playing whatever role it is that you’ve assigned to them.

You don’t seem to care how your roommate actually feels. You just care that she continues playing the role of the “exciting person with creativity and dreams.” Whose dreams are we talking about, anyway? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess yours, because it sounds like your roommate is pretty darned happy in her relationship with a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult.

Take a step back and ask yourself, why would a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive, perfectly successful functioning adult have nothing terribly interesting to say to you? Is it because he’s boring? Is it because you’re boring?

Nope and nope. Shocking as this may seem, he has nothing terribly interesting to say to you because he doesn’t exist to hold your interest. Sorry, babe. He’s not there for your entertainment. Neither is your roommate.

I know your type. You don’t feed off of chaos and drama. You’re not an evil person, but still, you quietly exist as an emotional singularity around which everyone else in your world revolves.

Unfortunately, your roommate’s boyfriend doesn’t love you or hate you. He does nothing to piss you off or make you laugh. It’s not that he’s boring. It’s that he’s in your world and yet totally indifferent to you.

That’s the real reason he bugs you.

Dear Coquette,

I’m interested in so many fields. From bartending to chemical engineering and journalism and law. I get that no one cares about your degree, but since these areas do all kind of require some kind of credentials, how should I prepare for them?

Sincerely,

An Enthusiastic High School Junior

You don’t want to be a bartender. You want to be a hipster mixologist rocking out signature martinis for a bunch of starry-eyed hotties at the coolest bar you’ve never been to.

You don’t want to be a chemical engineer. You’re a fan of “Breaking Bad,” and you want to be a modern-day wizard who secretly has the knowledge to whip up a fresh batch of blue crystals.

You don’t want to be a journalist. You want to be a truth-chasing, gut-following investigative reporter with a reputation for integrity and a show on one of the cable news channels.

You don’t want to be a lawyer. You don’t even know what it means to be a lawyer. You just like the idea that if you stay in school long enough, one day you’ll be able to wear a suit and tell people that you’re a lawyer.

See what I’m getting at here? You’re not really interested in those fields. You’re interested in those identities. You’re fantasizing. You’re playing dress-up and make-believe with your future self. That’s fine. You’re a teenager. It’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

The problem is, there are a lot of twenty-somethings out there with dust gathering on their liberal arts degrees, still doing the exact same thing that you’re doing at sixteen.

I’ll give to them the exact same advice I’ll give to you: Don’t create an identity for yourself that isn’t rooted in the real world. You can bartend for a few years while putting yourself through engineering school, but whatever you end up doing, recognize that it’s gonna be a grind.

It doesn’t matter what kind of credentials you earn or what field you eventually choose. You’re guaranteed to spend at least a half-decade paying dues at the entry level. You’ll work longer hours, doing harder work than your bosses for significantly less pay. Nothing will be handed to you, and in all likelihood, the experience will be degrading and a little bit soul-crushing.

If you want to prepare for a career, then don’t pick your field based on the fantasy. Make an honest assessment of your talents, and pick your field based on the reality.