Recently, while perusing the hell-site formerly known as Twitter, I came across an amazing video clip of Lily Tomlin on the Dick Cavett show. Dick Cavett was interviewing a man I’d never heard of before named “Chad Everett.” Cavett asks him about his animals, and this forgettable man says, “I have three horses, three dogs… And a wife.” I’m not completely sure if he was trying to be funny? But the crowd responds with stunned silence. And a palpable embarrassment for this… man.
As an aside, I was tempted to put “man” in quotation marks. As if he is not REALLY an example of a man. As if a REAL man would never say something this ignorant and inhumane. Many times in the past I’ve had this same inclination when writing about Christians… the urge to put “christian” in quotation marks to distinguish them from REAL Christians. As if REAL Christians would never… Whatever. Be so cruel & uncaring… Embrace racism & bigotry & fascism… Vote for a human as objectively horrible as trump. But—with both Men & Christians—I’m learning that no distinction is needed. Or particularly helpful. With both groups, experience shows us over & over again that REAL men—just like REAL Christians—are just as harmful & toxic as people have come to expect. And attempts to distinguish the harm they do as representatives of those groups only serves to compound the harm they do.
ANYway… Here is the video of Lily Tomlin walking out after Chad Everett says of his wife, “She’s the most beautiful animal I own.”
For those of you unable to stomach the toxic mixture of sexism & cringe, after Tomlin walks off the set, he goes on to say of his wife, “It’s alright. She’s very happy being taken care of by a man… And she has no, uh, uh, aspirations to be taken care of by a woman.” And then he smugly adds, “But that’s HER kind of woman,” referring to Lily Tomlin being a lesbian, though she was not yet publicly out. SO gross.
If you type the words MALE LONELINESS into a Google search you will find scores of articles about what people are calling an epidemic of loneliness. It seems everyone is lonelier than they used to be… But ESPECIALLY men. If I’m going by what I have seen online, there are two main ways men seem to react to their growing loneliness. Some respond with an Eeyore-ish “Oh, woe is me,” looking for sympathy because of their solitude. Others respond with a frightening anger at their isolation, reciprocating their rejection with all the rage and resentment they can muster. Both, it seems, place the responsibility for their loneliness squarely on the shoulders of the only ones they can imagine are to blame: Women. And then dorks like the guys that run The Babylon Bee claim it’s because people are turning away from God…
Earlier this month, a TikTok a woman made (where she talked about being happy to be a single, 29 year old woman) was shared by the bearded bowel movement known as Matt Walsh. His followers harassed her for DARING to be publicly happy without a man in her life. This was her brilliant response…
Many of the lonely men who showed up to harass a happy, single stranger are convinced that the reason for their empty beds is because they have been WRONGED. These guys very much like talking about “being an alpha.” They use words like “simp” (not the GOOD “simp,” which is obviously the Squirrels In My Pants acronym from the Phineas & Ferb song, but instead a “simp” meaning “a guy who does too much for/pays too much for/vigorously defends a woman”). They are dudes who DESPERATELY want to respond with “Not All Men” whenever men, as a group, are criticized. And if—God forbid—a woman expresses fulfillment in life that does NOT involve the desire for a husband or children, these men will almost certainly respond with some attempt at shaming women by saying something about them ending up with cats and drinking box wine.
But think about it for a minute… I don’t think this is quite the burn these incel-adjacent dorks think it is. If women are choosing box wine and cats over men, what does that say about the quality & character of the men they are experiencing? If you being around is not a better option for women than cheap wine, a pet, & maybe a vibrator, then… try to follow me here… You might NOT be a very good option. Maybe it’s time to read a book… Maybe one that was NOT written by THIS GUY. Seeking out voices like Joe Rogan or Matt Walsh might bring men closer to a brand of masculinity, but it’s a brand that is so wildly broken & toxic & harmful that most women in the world (who are clearly more emotionally intelligent than us) can see it from a mile away. So they champion some “trad-wife” fetish, or they try to shame emotionally mature, confident, independent women who don’t feel like lowering their standards.
Men are afraid of being seen as “weak,” and we’ve been taught that anything even remotely feminine is showing weakness. They’re afraid of being vulnerable (I realize I’m going back & forth between “we” & “they” when talking about men, but there are some parts of toxic masculinity that feel so foreign to me… I’ve got my toxic parts to deal with, but vulnerability is not one of them). For so many men—especially men in my generation—being called effeminate was one of the worst things you could be called. Imagine a youth spent hating & avoiding things like being emotional, sensitive, warm, empathetic, caring, helpful, affectionate, and tender. Now imagine the kind of deep brokenness that hatred and avoidance breeds in adults… Let ALONE the kind of deep misogyny. And now these broken, misogynistic man-boys are angry at the idea of women deciding they really don’t need us.
Many men are longing for a nostalgic and often imaginary time when men were in charge and systems encouraged & enforced female dependence. Social media has done a lot of things, but one thing it has done very well is allowed men to fully show their asses. Before the internet, women might have thought they might have just had some bad luck with men… But Facebook & Twitter have proven that the brokenness & toxicity really is endemic to men. In reality, this male pushback to not being needed (with all its cat lady jokes, box wine shaming, & nonsense about “the sin of singleness”) is a sort of masculine MAGA. “Oh, to be back in the good ol’ days… before that silly suffrage, those evil equal rights, and that beastly birth control!”
Seriously—Talk to a woman who has been on dating apps. There is literally not enough time in the day for them to reply to all the creepy weirdos trying to bang… down their doors. Women are not staying home with their cats because they have no other options… They are home with their cats because there are so few GOOD options. And all these potential suitors insist that they are such “nice guys.” But here’s the thing about “nice guys:”
If I’m being honest—and this might be showing my ignorance—I have wondered if some women who end up being into women didn’t make that decision out of discovering they are a lesbian, but instead out of a natural repulsion to the sad state of men these days. I mean, if you are somewhere on a spectrum of bisexuality, and your experience has been that most men are broken & immature & angry (or you come across as another child to take care of), who could fault a woman for saying, “You know what? Even though I’m attracted to both, I think I’m going to lean way more toward finding a relationship with another women.”
So men, listen: If you’re lonely, consider the fact that YOU might be the problem. Maybe work on becoming more interesting. And perhaps you working on being more compassionate, loving human beings who actually listen to women might be a better remedy for “male loneliness” than attempting to shame women who are so tired of our bullshit that they’d rather enjoy the company of a pet or a box of wine. And if that doesn’t cure your loneliness, remember you can always buy yourself a couple cats to keep you company.
I’ll leave you with this wisdom…
In writing about this topic, there are many women’s voices that have helped educate me. One of my favorite is @JessPected on Twitter (which I refuse to call “X”). Elon Musk has ruined Twitter, but until all the voices I value agree to leave for another platform, I’m feeling stuck. Anyway—Thank you so VERY much for reading! I’m very aware of how long it’s been since I’ve last written a blog post. The reasons for this are way too long to list here, but I will say that one of the ways the antidepressants I was taking affected me was that it made my thinking very cloudy. And when I got creative (as I very much NEED to do) I got very sleepy. But I have weened myself off of them, I am feeling a bit clearer, and regular writing is one of my goals to increase my own healthiness. If you’d like to support me, this blog, & my writing, you can do that on PATREON or PAYPAL, or you can leave a tip by Venmoing me at chris-boeskool. Love y’all.
The Boeskool 
Great post, good to have you back, missed you.
Gary Blinn
Wow, that’s a pretty off comment. Cats are just lovely though. I want to be a cat lady one day
Haven’t read in a while, this was a great one to start with 😂