Sorry men, we are trash.
Dear men,
We, are trash. You’ve heard it repeated by many angry and scorned women. We brush them off as man-hating femini-nazis. Maybe you hear a lot about what men should be like: strong, unwavering, the bread winner, fixer of all things mechanical, hands dirty from doing man work. But hear me out on this: Men are indeed trash as we often hear. I’m not one of those men who runs about claiming to be a feminist. I am a straight male. I date when I choose too and am not some spurned-by-women-this-is-my-last-chance prick. I’m just another dude who came to realize a few things.
One of the hardest things to realize as a man, is that we are not raised to be sensitive to the needs of women, or to even respect women. We move through the world without regard for what women need. We learn early on that a man is to get up, go to work and bring home the dollars. We aren’t just a support pillar for the house, we’re the whole fucking house, from the foundation up, and everything else just fills up the inside. A woman should have a meal ready for you when you get home. She should rub your back. Have your kids. Raise those kids. Have your back when things get rough. And most of all, do it without a single complaint.
If a woman rejects our advances, there’s something wrong with her. If we cheat, she is inadequate. If a relationship ends, we have a beer with our friends and talk shit about how much of a bitch our new ex is and how we’re better off without them, because they really didn’t care about us anyways. It’s a fucked up mindset we’re stuck with. That mindset, in order to change, either takes years of reconditioning by participating in feminist culture, or it requires deeply introspective thought that culminates in how we are the problem in our relationships. Every man needs to start asking “how can I do better for the women that are, or will be, in my life?”
But instead, so many men are stuck on thinking it’s something wrong with women.
In reality, we don’t understand that women have the same needs that we do. They also want support. They want you to father their children. Respect their rules. They want you to cook when they provide. They want you to be there for them in thick and thin and not hold them disproportionately accountable for every little snag that comes along in your life. What we fail to understand is that our needs are reflected in what our partners, mothers, sisters, and lady friends all need: respect, care, support, love and, admiration.
Without that reciprocation.
We men, are just trash. This is why:
Our most common perception of trash is that it’s something worthless that needs to be thrown away. Where this begins to make sense is in the “thrown away” part. Thinking of it as being discarded is the wrong approach. The sole purpose of trash, is that it needs to be tended to, or else it’ll rot and stink up your house. So once every week, that trash needs to go out. That trash has no concern as to what’s happening in your life, it just needs to go out. You have to go to work; trash needs to go out. You have a family member pass away; trash needs to go out. You broke your ankle; trash needs to go out. You go on vacation; trash needs to go out. Every week. Like clockwork. With no regard. You see, trash is demanding and never gives back. Trash takes you out of your own life for its own sake. When you forget to tend to that trash, it reminds you for the entire next week as you panic about it being overflowed and messy.
If you haven’t gotten the analogy yet, our constant desire to be the focal point of our relationships with women, and our habit of needing to be tended to without regard for others, that’s why women say that we are trash. That’s why we must all say we are trash. I know I have been in my life, and I now do my best to not be.
Once we do that, we can move forward into learning how to not be trash anymore.
