05/31/2026
Another Pride Month kicks off this week, which means the usual rainbow colored corporate virtue signaling, parades that look like rejected Cirque du Soleil auditions, and every media outlet reminding us that straight people are basically the human equivalent of plain oatmeal.
How exhausting.
For those of us normal folks who just want to grill, complain about taxes, and maybe hold hands with the opposite s*x without hearing a TED Talk lecture us about it, it is the annual reminder that the culture has declared heteros*xuality problematic.
Again.
A somewhat recent installment in this festival of gloom came from a viral New York Times Magazine piece by a writer we will call the Heterofatalist (because “The Trouble With Wanting Men” was too on the nose). In it, our heroine chronicles the horror of modern dating: men who flake, men who get anxious, men who “can’t” commit or emote or whatever the therapy speak flavor of the month is. It is framed as profound feminist insight.
Poor straight women trapped in a hellscape of inadequate males who refuse to be emotional support tampons.
The subtext? Straight relationships are doomed, men are trash (but please keep swiping), and the whole heteros*xual enterprise was a mistake.
Gender war! Patriarchy! Send help, or at least more cats.
Lady, please. You are not the Trojan princess warning about wooden horses that nobody believes. You are just confused. The dating app equivalent of that friend who orders the kale salad, hates it, then writes a 3,000 word Substack about how lettuce betrayed her.
This Ain’t New, Sweetheart
The big “revelation” peddled in these pieces is that men and women have conflicting values. Young women lean left, young men lean right. Shocking! Next you will tell me politicians lie and beer tastes better cold.
Newsflash: Men and women have been at cultural opposite ends of the spectrum since Adam blamed Eve for the apple and Eve replied, “Well, you ate it too, dummy.”
History is littered with these supposed “gender wars.”
Victorian ladies clutching pearls over suffrage while their husbands clutched newspapers and grumbled about “hysterical females.”
Flappers in the 1920s bobbing their hair and smoking, scandalizing traditional men who preferred wives who did not look like they escaped a jazz asylum.
The 1960s & 70s had bra burners versus “male chauvinist pigs,” complete with protest signs that make today’s TikTok meltdowns look tame.
Even the ancient Romans had poets whining that women were too independent and men too soft. This is not an unprecedented apocalypse. It is Tuesday in human civilization. Every time technology, economics, or fashion shakes things up.
Boom, another round of “the s*xes are doomed.”
And here is the hilarious part the heteropessimists miss: All this data “proving” men and women have different values does not debunk traditional gender roles. It proves them. Men and women are different! Biologically, psychologically, on average, in ways that evolution did not ask social media for permission to create. One s*x built most of the civilization; the other kept the species going by being selective about who gets to contribute genes.
Complaining that young men want competence and respect while young women want emotional security and provision is like complaining that the sun is hot. Traditional roles were not some evil plot. They were survival software that worked for a millennia until we decided to uninstall it for the false promise of “personal empowerment.”
Actually, This Is the Best Time Ever to Be Straight
Strip away the performative despair and the apps that turn dating into a dystopian vending machine, and straight life is thriving in ways our ancestors would envy. You have more freedom than any generation in history.
Want a traditional setup with a breadwinner dad and stay at home mom raising kids? Go for it. No feudal lord will stop you. Want dual careers, adventures, and splitting chores like weird egalitarian roommates? Also fine. No arranged marriages, no mandatory corsets, no dying in childbirth at 28 because medicine was leeches and prayer.
Men can be providers without being drafted into wars started by kings. Women can pursue careers without being property. You can meet people the old fashioned way (bars, churches, mutual friends) instead of algorithmically optimized resentment factories.
S*x is abundant if you are not a complete disaster. Marriage, when chosen wisely, still delivers companionship, kids who look like both of you, and someone to split the mortgage with. It is not doomed. It is optional, abundant, and full of upside for anyone with basic social skills and low time preference.
The “gender war” is mostly online rage bait for manosphere clicks and OnlyFans subscriptions. Real life? Most men and women still like each other, hook up, pair off, and muddle through. The pessimism is a luxury belief for people with too much therapy and not enough real problems.
So this Pride Month, while the usual suspects turn June into a month long scold about how your normal desires are problematic, remember: Being straight is great. Men and women complement each other like steak and bourbon.
Heteropessimism is the lie sold by people who turned their personal dating fails into a political identity. Ignore the noise, delete the apps if they are toxic, talk to actual humans, and get on with building something real.
The s*xes have always clashed. They will always reconcile. That is not a bug. It is the feature that kept humanity going.
Now excuse me while I go be happily heteros*xual somewhere the rainbows cannot find me.
