You are an eight year old boy. You know that there’s a difference between boys and girls, but that’s about it. Girls are your friends, your peers, and often your competition for good grades.

Your parents are regular Obama-era Democrats. They present a united front and love each other very much, though they enforce gender roles a lil bit. Your older sister is 13 and loves you unconditionally.

You are a precocious reader and a sweet kid. You get along with almost everyone. You tell your friends you love them.

You are a thirteen year old boy. Your mom makes little jokes about how her food bills are increasing. You spent the summer swimming five days a week — you love swimming and you’re really good at it! — and suddenly you look different? Your shins hurt? Your sister makes a passing comment about how you smell. Your face is itchy.

People start getting weird with you. Adult women especially. It’s something like avoidance. Strange looks. Your aunt pointedly tells you to play gently with your cousins, as if you haven’t done that your entire life.

Your parents had the birds and the bees talk with you years ago, but you haven’t exactly gotten “updated guidance” since then. You know (kinda instinctively?) that you should keep your suddenly-hard dick to yourself. You figure out how incognito mode works.

You are a fourteen year old boy. You suddenly realize that dating girls is a thing you would like to do. You have no idea how to do that, but you are quite clear that it’s something you have to figure out, because that’s How It Works. What you find on the internet is either unhelpful or hateful. Inaction wins because that’s the default.

You’re a little sheepish but you ask your sister for advice, because a woman probably knows better than most. She says that the best way to meet girls is to be yourself and treat them like people. You don’t know a lot but you know that ain’t it.

You are okay at competitive swimming, but you’re well-aware that swimming is not a prestige sport. You wonder if you’d be more popular if you played football.

You notice that your honors and AP classes have more girls than boys. You ask your mom if girls are better than boys at school, and her answer is so long that your eyes glaze over.

You are a fifteen year old boy. You use social media like all your peers. Your groupchats are pitched with memes about stonks, even though you are fifteen and cannot stonk.

The friend you’ve had since elementary school — your main competition in AP English Lit — has started remixing socially aware clips on tiktok. She shares one remix where she looks at the camera and says if you are male, you are the oppressor class.

You joke-comment that you’ve never taken that class. She does not like that joke. You feel a little guilty, but your comment got a bunch of 😍s.

You interacted with her video, so the algorithm starts recommending more feminist content and some bizarre DUDES ROCK stuff. The feminist videos generally make you feel bad about being a guy, and The Masculine Mystique Pickup Dude looks like a douche.

You continue to consume social media because that is what everyone else does. You still swim, but your heart isn’t in it. You just want an extracurricular on your apps.

You want to understand why the girls in your class share those memes, so you go on reddit and find women’s boards. You read several posts that make you feel very, very bad about being male. You close the reddit app and dissociate a little.

You get annoyed at yourself, re-open the reddit app, and type “men” into the search bar. You dig around for a while.

You are a sixteen year old boy. Your feminist peers now actively fight with the dumbest, most hateful dudes on social media. The memes that get passed around are either boys suck or girls suck. You’ve noticed that the guys at your school with the worst boundaries are the ones who end up with girlfriends?

Adult women have started to treat you coldly. You don’t know how to articulate how that feels, even to your mom or dad or sister, but it feels really bad.

You visit your uncle. He gives you your cousin’s copy of 12 Rules for Life. You read it on the way home. You start to stand up straight when you walk.

You said “may the best man win” in class and a couple classmates got mad. You keep saying it because it’s funny to watch them get annoyed and some boys snicker along.

Your classmate starts a different group chat For The Boys. You can finally just post whatever memes you want. You feel a little bad laughing at some of them, but the feminist girls get their gc and this one is For The Boys.

You are a seventeen year old boy. You’ve dated several of the girls in your class with One Simple Trick you learned on reddit: asking a ton of girls out like they’re interchangeable. It works.

Your AP classes are now about two-thirds girls. You wonder why. The simplest explanation you find on the internet is that all the women you have as teachers hate boys. You’ve always had a nagging feeling that your teachers prefer girls, so that makes sense.

You smirk internally when you notice that you got a better test grade than all the girls in your science class, because you know that you didn’t get any special treatment to earn it.

You pride yourself that you can accept the “good” parts of media you consume and disregard the “bad” parts, even if the same person said both.

You are an eighteen year old boy. You get into your second-choice college.

You pride yourself on being an Independent Thinker. You actively disregard others’ opinions if they don’t align with yours, because you trust your gut and your intellect.

You notice that the girls at your school are so extreme. You know the truth is usually in the middle.

You notice that the girls talk about their experiences, which almost always make you feel bad. You prefer instead to discuss the facts.

You tell a couple of your closer friends about the dating advice you learned from reddit. Your closest girl friend tells you those ideas are problematic. You know better, because the advice worked.

You’ve taught yourself not to get upset if girls and women see you as a threat. You’ve closed off that part of you. You get a little rush, instead, because you realize that just existing affords you power.

Your newest girlfriend sends you a WhatsApp asking how your day was. You say “fine”, then follow up with “wanna come over”. □