Nature

Even Dragonflies Are Sick of Toxic Masculinity

When the girls play dead to avoid you, it’s time to re-think your behavior

An article caught my attention this morning. It’s about what scientists call sexual death feigning — faking your own death to avoid mating.

Looking back over my own mating history, I wondered if this tactic is ever used by humans. It could explain some female behaviors I’ve experienced. In the end, though, it didn’t add up.

For one, dragonflies only use it to avoid males with actual mating potential, which is not exactly how my sex life has played out.

Let’s just say I’m not what you’d call a chick magnet. For example, I thought students would do anything to avoid a math class. But in all my years of teaching at colleges and universities, no one ever offered me sex for a grade. I would have declined, but still. What am I, chopped liver?

Apparently.

If anyone asked why, I’d claim it was female intuition. A primal recognition of my high ethical standards. But the more likely explanation is just unwillingness.

“Hit that? Hell no. It’s less demeaning than a job in the service economy, but eww. Sure, for five minutes of work I’d be done with math for the rest of my life, but I’d rather retake the class. If anybody needs me, I’ll be at the student loan office. Or selling a kidney.”

A second clue the article doesn’t apply comes from this line:

When the scientist approached these “dead” females, the insects flew away — which means they were perfectly alert the whole time.

If I had to describe women’s general reaction to my presence, “alert” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. We’re talking about beings with the acting chops to fake an orgasm, I’m sure they could pull off sexual death feigning without snoring.

To be clear, I’m not particularly bitter about it. With certain professions and activities, it comes with the territory.

In the sites where he worked, male dragonflies greatly outnumbered females. That’s for an obvious reason — the females were trying to steer clear of males as much as possible.

See what I mean? When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. And drink it, alone. You get used to it. Sort of.

Or at least most of us do. Some of the seedier corners of the Internets, such as incel sites and other right-wing habitats, are also male-centric. There, men gather to complain they can’t get dates while acting in ways that definitely aren’t helping.

You’ve probably met some, the kind of guys whose own X chromosome wants a divorce.

Unfortunately, the gender-relations ecosystem has been damaged by this overpopulation of Homo sapiens shitheadii, commonly known as the male fuckwit. Even as new attitudes try to chip away at the old forms of misogyny, a violent hatred is oozing into view — like too many kinds of douchebaggery in these deplorable times, these men aren’t shy about saying the quiet part out loud.

I hear you saying, “Hey, I’m not that guy!” But times and women are changing. Once we let them into school, it turned out they’re better at it. As far as jobs go, if I needed an employee, I’d hire one. Listen to them, and you’ll notice they’re progressively less tolerant of male bullshit.

I remember when the average 21st-century Republican woman would have been called a feminist.

But there’s good news. It turns out a mating strategy known as don’t be a dickhead can be successful if applied diligently. I’m old, fat, and funny-looking, but not single. If I can make it work, it should be a snap for you.

If you have doubts, watch some nature documentaries and notice just how expendable males are. In the era of sperm donors, most of what else we bring to the table can be accomplished with a Babeland account and batteries.

Add a roommate to split the rent and a tolerable guy or two to help move heavy things, and a permanent male presence is just a nuisance.

They used to warn girls away from extramarital sex with the saying, “Why would a man buy a cow if milk is cheap?” Sticking with the cringe-worthy bovine imagery, “Why would a woman buy a bull when all they do is crash around and break stuff? If you do happen to need one short-term, they’re all over the place and not hard to get.”

After a lifetime of studying females in their natural habitat, I’ve observed they can be patient creatures. But we’ve been over-reliant on that, and it’s not an unlimited resource. If you keep up the grand mal assholery, you’ll experience sexual death with no feigning.

On the upside, most of your options afterward won’t need batteries. So you’ll have that going for you. Which is nice.

John Werth is a Medium Top Writer in Humor, Satire, and LGBTQ. He’s not a real person, merely a sufficiently large number of monkeys typing randomly to string together a few coherent sentences. Please read “his” stories. Our credit with the fruit stand is running out, and we need the bananas.

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