4 Signs You're Dating a Feminist Man

“Don’t ever marry,” my mother told me.

“All men want is sex,” she told me.

“They never help out, and when they do, they boast about it for a month as if they did you a huge favour,” she said as she was ironing my father’s shirts.

My father never did iron. He said it was a women’s job. When he cooked, he was being a chef – when my mom cooked, it was her duty. My mom worked longer hours than he did, yet it still wasn’t his place to be a responsible adult in his own house.

He told me I couldn’t dress too sexy because boys would get ideas, and he knew what boys were like. All boys were the same. Because all boys were like him.

So many people have shitty fathers who instil sexist misogynistic views in their children and who screw their lives in a way where they find it difficult to navigate any intimate relationship. Thanks to my father, thanks to the small town full of sexism that I grew up in, I didn’t think there were good men. I promised myself I wouldn’t marry, I wouldn’t have children. I wouldn’t end up like my mom.

Nobody deserves to date or marry a man like my father, and no man deserves to think that’s the norm they should adhere to.

I’m dating a feminist man now. Men like him shouldn’t be an exception, they should be what’s considered normal. They should be the minimum of what you expect, not the absolute rare maximum glistening in a pile of rubbish.

These are the 4 signs that you’ve found a feminist man, too.

He does house chores automatically

Lots of men grow up to only become extra baggage for their future wives. They're the plus-sized children. They aren’t full adults responsible for their laundry and dishes – instead, they trade their mother for a younger version who gets to have sex with them as a bonus.

I don’t know what’s up with that.

We are way past the point when men were the main breadwinners and women were mostly housewives. There’s no reason why this old-fashioned hierarchy should continue nowadays, except for the fact that it makes life easier for men at the expense of women.

When my parents divorced and my dad spent a few months on his own, he had to iron his own clothes. He hated it so much that he decided to date someone he didn’t fancy for over a year, just so he could be taken care of again.

Men are not grown-up babies. They’re not helping out when they cook, do the dishes or take care of the baby – no, they’re being adults. That’s what adults do. They take care of their house.

Watch out for these early signs of sexism:

Does he not wash up after himself? Does he throw his clothes everywhere, especially socks, and never cleans it up? Does he never offer to cook? Does he act like he expects you to take care of everything?

If your answer to these questions is yes and you’d rather it wasn’t, you either need to have a serious conversation with him or get out of there.

Unless you want to end up like my mother, telling your daughter never to marry.

He doesn’t manipulate you into having sex with them

My mom recently confided in me that when they were still together, my dad saw cooking once in two weeks as a huge proof of his being the best husband in the world. He boasted about it to everyone they met.

That’s not all, though.

When he cooked, she knew he expected to get laid that night. “I cooked, I’ve been so good, and you don’t even want to sleep with me,” was how he manipulated her into offering him her body while feeling absolutely empty inside.

Her no meant nothing. He only kept on pressing, emotionally manipulating her, whining and winging about blue balls (which, by the way, many men actually don’t suffer from – basically every progressive man I talked to about this said they had never experienced pain simply because they didn’t get to have sex). If she insisted, he got angry. It was a good excuse to go get drunk in a pub with friends.

A feminist man understands that no means no. What’s more, he doesn’t blame you for it. Sometimes he’s the one to refuse sex for various reasons, and he knows that it’s okay to not be in the mood 24/7.

He always makes sure you actually do want sex, and if you want to stop in the middle of it, he respects it and simply stops. He wants to sleep with you because you both enjoy it, not because you’re a means to an end. He doesn’t want to fuck a hole.

He wants to fuck you. Because it’s you, and because he respects your body as an entity that belongs to you only.

And he certainly won’t cook just to beg sex out of you. If he wants it, he just asks if you’re up for it.

Which is very hot, if you ask me.

Watch out for these early signs of sexism:

Does he get a bit edgy when you refuse to do something sexual with him? Does he connect everything to sex, does he seek every opportunity to touch you intimately? Is he too firm on having sex very regularly, without exceptions? Does he say he needs regular sex to be able to function?

Men aren’t always sex-crazed beasts who think only with their penises. Don’t let them fool you – it’s completely normal to be a man and have a laid-back healthy approach to sex.

He understands he doesn’t own you

It’s okay for women to be friends with men. A feminist guy knows that. He respects your friends, whatever gender they have, and he trusts you wouldn’t run away with anyone who has a penis.

Your body is yours, you might have shared it with other people in the past, and he’s fine with that – because he knows it’s not his place to mark every single aspect of you. You’re your own person, with exes and memories of nice dates and sexy clothes that you like to wear sometimes.

If a man stares at you, it’s not because of something you’ve done wrong, because of a t-shirt with “too much” cleavage. And if your partner is jealous of that, it’s not your fault – it’s his.

You let your partner enjoy your body as you do his, but that doesn’t mean he automatically has some innate right to it. You can still break up. You can still sleep with other people if that happens.

It doesn’t have to come to that, of course, but it might. At the end of the day, the only certainty you have is that your body will always be there with you, no matter where you go in life.

You can’t say the same about your partner, because you can simply never be sure. And he gets that. He loves your body, he loves you – and he also loves that you are your own, first and foremost.

Watch out for these early signs of sexism:

Does he want you to dress according to what he likes? Does he want you to cover yourself more when you’re in public? Does he dislike your friends just because of their gender, does he get easily jealous? Is he deeply insecure? Does he always need to prove his masculinity?

That’s some toxic behaviour right there. Not a feminist. Nope.

He respects you

Know that guy who always interrupts you when you speak?

Yeah, that one. Either he’s lost in his own little world and bad at socializing, or he’s not a feminist. He thinks he has the right to speak because he knows better. Because he’s a man. Because he’s inherently smarter, more ambitious or more respectable (guess what, he’s none of those things).

A feminist man gives you a space to speak. He waits for you to finish. He listens intently to what you say because he knows your words have value. He knows he can learn a great deal from you. He acknowledges your intelligence, your talent, your personality.

A feminist man is not scared of you. His masculinity isn’t threatened by a strong woman. He regards you as equals. He has a deep respect for you – he wouldn’t ridicule you, mock you or laugh at you, he wouldn’t lessen your problems, he wouldn’t wave your counterarguments away like bothersome flies.

A feminist man doesn’t put you down.

Watch out for these early signs of sexism:

Does he interrupt you when you speak? Does he treat your remarks as useless, does he ignore you when you try to tell him something? Does he never inquire about your opinion on things, for example politics? Does he dismiss your issues because you’re “a hysterical woman”?

That’s some proper sexism, my friends. Stay away from a man like that.

Final thoughts

Men can, of course, work on their sexist behaviour. These kinds of opinions have been drilled into us from an early age, and it’s often not so easy to get rid of them.

Anyone can be a better person. Anyone can change.

When I very firmly told my dad I didn’t want him to comment on my weight and my body hair ever again, he actually stopped. It’s not much as a whole – he still has many deep-rooted sexist views – but it’s something.

And something counts.

It’s important to know when it’s time to step away, though. I can’t change who my dad is, but I can never date men like him, which is exactly what I decided to do. Yes, some men suck. But there are lots of them who are progressive, kind, respectful and secure in themselves.

Don’t let the ones who gave up on men fool you. When my mom told me I should never marry, I silently gave up alongside her without realizing it.

I’m changing the narrative now. I’m taking things into my own hands, and one day, I’ll come up to her and say, “Mom, I did marry. Turns out, it’s not about never marrying a man. It’s about marrying the right kind of man. That’s all there is to it.”

Give men a chance.

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