/lit/ - Literature

I would completely respect a woman for plainly stating her preferences and understanding the ugly underbelly of gender relations, namely, the fact that both men and women frequently get lost in the ambiguous gray area between "man having actual interest in woman, as a human being" and "man having interest in woman because she's a woman."

But one thing would still bug me about what she said and did, so my response would be: "If you knew these things ahead of time, why didn't you say all that at the outset, to preempt the possibility that I AM weak, stupid, or cynical enough to do the work for you just on the off chance that I might get laid? Even if I had done that, and it reflects poorly on my intelligence or my character, it would have been out of weakness or stupidity, i.e., at least partly unintentional, and you'd be a bad person for exploiting it. Probably a much worse person, because you would have had more knowledge and wherewithal to understand what's going on, and you'd be choosing to exploit it on the basis of 'well, he should know better' or something similar."

Even worse, it could well have been the case that I'm actually a decent guy, or at least have the potential to be one, but that I still have some weakness or stupidity when it comes to women, e.g., because I'm living in a society that habituates men to act unconsciously on the premise that you should establish an initial rapport with women by being their toady. So, even if I were liable to fuck up by trying to get in your pants in this way, in the larger scheme of things I might have become more self-aware about it, fixed it, and even helped to change the culture so that other men become more self-aware too.

Instead, you waited until AFTER everything was said and done to give me the sort of "legal technicality" that you don't owe me anything. Which is fine, you're within your rights from a self-serving, individualistic perspective, but it still makes you kind of a shitty person. You gambled on the possibility that someone was being sycophantic and propitiating you in a degrading way. Why would you even take that chance?