The Heterofatalism Trap

On a summer evening in downtown Manhattan, four professional women gather at a vegan restaurant to perform a ritual as old as consciousness itself: the airing of romantic grievances. “Aww, poor baby!” cries one, a historian, as they mock a man too anxious to show up for sex. The women work themselves “into a frenzy of laughter over men’s inability to ‘man up and [expletive] us,’” and ask in a “smug, chauvinistic” way: “Where were the men who could handle hard stuff? Like leaving the house for sex?”