“I have a crazy idea: what if we just watch a movie on Saturday night and hang out?”

I was 25 years old, sitting in a Santa Fe restaurant across from my fling-du-jour, an insanely handsome, charismatic musician from Denver named Jay. While exploring my creative side at one of the best liberal arts colleges in the west, far away from home, I’d given myself the green light to be as slutty as I wanted.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t having as much fun as I’d thought I would. For instance, Jay was getting a lot of oral sex…and I was getting nothing, at all. He told me he couldn’t sexually reciprocate because he didn’t want me to become emotionally attached.

My request for a movie night was my way of compromising — I’d give our arrangement a little longer if I could get a nice, long makeout session out of the deal.

Jay heaved an aggrieved sigh and leaned back in his chair, staring at me. Then he launched into a speech explaining why this request was entirely unreasonable. He was young, he said. He just wanted to have fun, he said. “I have no interest in settling down,” he finished.

Settling down? Did he think I was talking about marriage? I was stunned.

I told him I was surprised by his response, pointing out that watching a movie together on a Saturday night didn’t mean he had to put a ring on my finger.

“Jesus!” he yelled, attracting the attention of everyone sitting nearby. “I never said anything about marriage! I said settle down! As in, I want to be out in the world doing something, not sitting around watching movies!” He went on to chastise me for trying to push him into a commitment, and how that was so typical of women.

Later, I asked him why he had blown up at me, trying to understand how we’d gotten into such a terrible argument about marriage when that hadn’t even been on my mind.

“All women are biologically predisposed to want to get married and have babies. You can’t help yourselves,” he said. “But men are biologically programmed to fuck as many women as possible — that’s how we keep the species going. I don’t blame you for being the way you are, but I’m not going to let you or any other woman trap me.”

All women are biologically predisposed to permanently settle down with a mate and pop out babies. All men are biologically predisposed to fuck every vagina within the vicinity and never settle down.

All women are emotional and irrational. All men are logical and emotionally detached.

We argue that feminism isn’t natural because women are supposed to be passive and receptive. We argue that male aggression, anger, and even violence is normal because men are supposed to be powerful, driven, and forceful.

Our biology proves this, we’re told. After all, the egg passively receives semen, awaiting fertilization by the aggressive, invading sperm cells.

Over and over again we are told these “truths.” We are programmed from birth to understand that male and female humans are so different, we might as well be two different species.

And then we repeat what we’ve been told. Men and women can’t be friends without sex getting in the way. Men and women will always struggle in heterosexual romantic pairings because men only want sex and women only want love. It’s even difficult for men and women to work together because women are so goddamn emotional and irrational, while men are trying so hard to exert a little logic and order into the office space.

But what can we do? Our hands are tied. This is biology, after all.

Except…it’s not. It’s actually a whole lot of nonsense.

Did you know that the female ovum is actually not a passive partner in the process of fertilization, just sitting there awaiting the penetration of whichever sperm cell proves itself to be the most persistent?

In actuality, the egg takes a very active role in the process of fertilization. One of the most important discoveries recently made is that the egg actively screens out sperm with unsuitable genes — a finding that has upended what was considered “law” in the world of genetics.

So why have we spent so long teaching people a wildly inaccurate understanding of the process of fertilization? How is it possible that scientists might have been wrong about Mendelian genetics for over a century?

This is largely thanks to sexism and gender biases that have long shaped our understanding of the world. As University of Virginia researcher Kodi Ravichandran noted, we’ve historically relied upon “a very sperm-centric version of fertilization.” Emily Martin, a New York University anthropologist noted back in 1991 that these inaccuracies about fertilization were the product of a “male-oriented view of female reproductive biology,” and that these views are, in the scientific community, “pervasive.”

Indeed, 31 years later, it’s still widely accepted among the public that the female egg cell is totally passive…and thus follows the “logical” assumption that female behavior would (and should) reflect that.

If you don’t think that re-framing the egg as an active partner in fertilization is revolutionary enough, then by all means, let’s keep going. Let’s talk about a little something called neurosexism.

Have you heard that term before? No? Didn’t think so. But I’m pretty sure you can guess what it means.

Yes, neurosexism refers to the biases that have instructed our understanding of neuroscience. In other words, it refers to the myth that women have different (inferior) brains than men, or that, at the very least, male and female brains work in opposite, complementary ways, reflecting our culture’s views that men and women are opposites.

However, many neuroscientists are challenging these notions, including Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain, a book so named because she posits “a gendered world will produce a gendered brain.” She goes on to assert that much of neuroscience’s findings are based on bad science. “The history of sex-difference research is rife with innumeracy, misinterpretation, publication bias, weak statistical power, inadequate controls and worse,” Lise Eliot, professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, confirms.

There is, Rippon asserts, no conclusive data confirming the differences between male and female brains. Yes, you read that right: the male and female brain are, in actuality, indistinguishable from one another.

Again, you might find yourself asking how it is possible that we could have been so indoctrinated with the idea that male and female brains are not just different — but total opposites. And why does it seem they should be, seeing as men and women think and act in totally opposite ways?

Rippon believes (among other things, because nothing is simple enough to boil down to nature vs. nurture) that children’s brains differentiate according to gender by soaking up our culture’s indoctrination into gender-based stereotypes that begin the moment we start choosing pink or blue for the nursery walls.

Still not convinced? Let’s talk about our alleged sexual differences, then.

There’s a pervasive notion in our culture that men think about and desire sex all the time — and that women don’t.

However, as a woman who has always had a robust interest in sex, I haven’t been surprised to see that emerging data is proving that “differences between the sexes may actually be more nuanced or even non-existent, depending on how you define and attempt to measure desire.”

Researchers are finally beginning to understand that studies on sexuality are often flawed due to the social stigma women face when it comes to sex that often affects not only the way women engage with their sexuality, but the amount of information they are willing to share even in the anonymous settings of a study.

Sarah Hunter Murray, PhD, a marriage and family therapist, reminds us that “our social norms and the ways we’re raised to either lean into our sexuality or repress it have a huge impact on how we experience our sexuality and how we report it in studies. People raised as men in our society have been typically given more permission to speak openly about wanting sex, while young women have often been told not to express their sexuality.”

Further, recent studies have revealed that women are not passive and asexual as our culture has taught us to believe. “Women don’t have lower sexuality than men. What they have are more variable patterns,” Lisa Diamond, professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah states. (And even their “variable patterns” might ultimately be found to be inaccurate as we continue research on female sexuality.)

And the assertion that high sexual desire and an aggressive pursuit of sex comes from testosterone? Absolutely untrue. Sari van Anders, associate professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan calls this notion a “falsehood,” elaborating further by pointing out that “hormones have such small — if any — influence on desire.”

So there you have it: when it comes to sex and gender, we’ve had it all wrong.

A few weeks after our bizarrely pointless argument about marriage, I realized I hadn’t heard from Jay for a while and called him with the intention of inviting him over for a little “fun.”

His roommate answered (yes, this was a landline, folks, because cell phones really weren’t a thing in 2001) and told me Jay had gone back to Denver…and wouldn’t be coming back.

Off to sow those wild oats, I thought, as I hung up.

I sat there for a moment wondering how I was supposed to feel. Heartbroken that he’d left town without saying goodbye? Grateful for the time we had had together even though he had never made any effort to reciprocate the sexual pleasure I’d given him? Was I supposed to move on and find someone “serious” to “settle down with?” Succumb to my biology and look for someone to impregnate me?

All I felt, in that moment, was annoyed. Frustrated that I had been pigeon-holed so severely. Forced into accepting being something that I didn’t feel reflected me, at all.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had any relief from that feeling, even all these years later. I’m still regularly shoved into neat categories by boyfriends, male coworkers, and society in general, all who insist I’m naturally emotional, lacking in rationality, marriage-minded, pregnancy-obsessed, soft-hearted, and sexually disinterested. I’m expected to be forgiving, suppress my anger, hide my sexuality, and pretend to be a lot dumber than I actually am.

All because this is how biology made me. Or so I’ve been told.

Turns out, all of this nonsense is really just a great way to rationalize the patriarchal power hierarchy. It sure is easy to explain away sexual assault and harassment when you insist that the male body has sexual urges that cannot be controlled. It’s convenient to silence demands for gender equality by calling feminism a “perversion of biological womanhood.” And hey, you can even try to use biology as an argument for maintaining the gender pay gap and keeping women out of male-dominated industries. Though, be prepared — there might be enough people around who are actually paying attention to the facts that might not let you get away with it.

The good news, however, is that all our determination to characterize men and women as vastly different from one another is nothing but cultural propaganda backed up by bad science. Men are just as emotional as women! Women like sex just as much as men! And neither gender is inherently more intelligent than the other!

Hallelujah!

But when are we going to start acknowledging this? When are we finally going to stop the idolatry of these false gender stereotypes and start seeing each other as equals?

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Yael Wolfe is a writer, photographer, and creator of Howl. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com.