13 things we like about men
A defense of masculinity
Content note: What follows includes GENERALIZATIONS about gender/sex. These are dangerous. Please read “men” as “collection of people who are masculine-ish and have a testosterone predominant hormonal profile” or as you please. We are not trying to enter the gender wars, we are just trying to bat our eyelashes at you and sit on your lap. Ok? We think women are also great, and listing a quality on this list is not intended to imply that women do not display it.
As lady sluts ranging from 1-2 on the Kinsey scale, it might seem obvious that we like men. And yet, we find it all too familiar to hear “Men are trash!” and “Ugh I wish I was gayyyy” from women who also spend 75% of their free time under a man. To be clear, we have also encountered very unpleasant men in the course of our sluttery. Men’s crimes against us range from petty (ghosting, failing to provide us treats, leaving us to walk home/to our cars alone) to substantial (stealthing and a variety of acts along the rape spectrum).
However, the vast majority of men we interact with are more likely to save us from a scary man than to be a scary man. Scary Man is, of course, frightening, but delightfully so, and he relishes the chance to kick potentially threatening men out of events. Some proportion of people, whatever their gender, are monsters. Bad or incautious men are more likely to kill us (because they are strong) than bad or incautious women, but good men use their superior body strength to our benefit all the time. We have found men to be a net positive in our lives, and we are not just saying that to get them to take out the trash.
13 things we like about men:
Strength. On average, men are stronger than us, even if they are about the same size. This is so lovely! We find men will use their strength for all sorts of delightful things, like: protecting us (and the wider community), building things, lifting heavy objects, carrying kids, rescuing people, wrestling us, throwing us around in bed, and helping us open jars. Also, displays of strength turn us on and make us feel safe and smol.
Thirst for adventure, challenge, and quest. We find men are often motivated to do something specifically because it is hard. Often, men come up with their own adventures. That might look like starting a company, beginning a lifting practice, planning a gangbang, trying to save the world, embarking on a new creative project, deep-frying a turkey, starting a wrestling club, trying a new type of work, going solo backpacking, learning a new skill, or brewing kombucha or mead.
We have also had great success in sending men on quests. Chesed has been accused of babying, manipulating, or other fuckery for her tendency to frame ordinary tasks as quests. However, she argues that she is actually just translating. If Chesed says “Do you mind taking out the litter?” a husband might interpret that as a real question about his preferences or a non-urgent ask. If Chesed says “The smell of kitty poop is making me sad, can you please save me?” she is communicating her actual reality (distressed) and desire (remove the source of distress).
Nurturing qualities. While nurturing is often considered a feminine trait, we have nonetheless noticed strong nurturing streaks in the men in our lives. Whether they are plant daddies, home chefs (or manning the grill), bringing us breakfast, holding babies, or providing tender aftercare, we appreciate the caring nature of the men in our lives. In Chesed’s hangry and sleepy first trimester, her partners have gone out of their way to nourish her with food and attention. Even Chesed’s most misogynistic partner has a deep love of feeding the hoes.
Collaboration. Nothing warms our heart like seeing men work together in a team to accomplish a common objective. Sometimes they are trying to save the world. Sometimes they are trying to fulfill a fantasy or make a fire. However big or small the goal is, we think it’s hot. We also think male friendship is so darn cute. Men friends often seem to ready to talk for hours about the task at hand or a shared interest (sports, video games, philosophy), and spend remarkably little time talking about sex. As far as we can tell, “locker room talk” is fake. While we talk (in depth) about our sexual experiences in the hoe group chat, the men don’t do much sex talk beyond logistics, like whether Chesed will fit in a duffel bag.
Protective qualities. While the jury is out on whether it’s nature or nurture, we appreciate that men are so often willing to prioritize our comfort and wellbeing. Whether that manifests in the mundane (e.g., lending us his jacket if we are cold) or the heroic (eg. men letting women and children take the lifeboats), men often put their bodies and even lives on the line for us. This manifests in men going to war, men doing lots of hard physical labor so that we can have homes and infrastructure and a society, and men getting into cute debates about what side of the bed they should sleep on to best protect their wives from intruders.
Bodies. Broad shoulders, muscles, height, body mass, forearms, hands! The haaands. We love objectifying men! While sexual dimorphism is real, we understand that the bell curves overlap quite a bit. But we think it’s cool that even though Pandora is tall among women, she is merely average height among men. Men are generally physically larger than us, which comes with a whole host of benefits, such as feeling small and powerless during kink scenes, and having someone to reach high corners and make sure the spiders that lurk there disappear. In the SlutStack discord, we have Forearm Friday to celebrate men’s forearms. Bonus points to men who post in a button down rolled up just below the elbow. It is so, so slutty and we love it.
We asked a slut friend what she loves about men, and she said something like “They’re so hard. And big. Why are their muscles so big? And so hard? And their penises? I love a hard dick. A hard dick is just the best.” Chesed also appreciates that many men contain within them a little factory for making sperm, and they’ll often just give it away! For free! IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars per cycle, but many men can get you pregnant for free (and they might even buy you dinner first).
“Where do I put the black thing????” Chesed cries into the phone. Patience. Chesed is mostly not dumb (citation needed?). However, she’s very dumb about a few stereotypically male skills. She has no spatial reasoning skills. Strange men sometimes help her park. She doesn’t know and refuses to learn anything about cars, AI, audiovisual equipment or any appliance. Many men have answered her phone calls, texts, desperate screams, and pitiful looks with patient and kind assistance. Even when she has asked the same question or put herself in the same situation several times before.
Things Chesed’s husband has (mostly) been very patient and kind about:
An absolute unwillingness to learn which way to curb her wheels through any method except memorization
The way she cries “Husband!” any time anything isn’t working
The many times she has drained her car battery and required rescue (eventually her big brother got her a car starter kit, which only required 2 panicked phone calls to men to figure out)
The one time she got a hard-boiled egg stuck in her vagina and he had to deliver it (while on a boat)
The frequency with which she breaks glass while barefoot in the kitchen and requires rescue
Her tendency to request that men park or re-park her car
Emotional stability. On average (average!) men are less neurotic than women. Most men are much, much less neurotic than Chesed (by the way, the most neurotic slut we know.) But even the more even-keeled Pandora feels better knowing men are within easy reach if she needs some cuddles or a deeper reset. Masculine people sitting with and holding our emotions can be very grounding for us ladies who are chained to a ~28 day hormonal cycle. Thank you for sharing your testosterone assisted stability with us. Also, when you wrap us in your big strong arms and let us nestle into your chests, we feel soothed.
Mansplaining. Look, we know this gets a bad rap, but it’s actually such a life hack to know that most men will excitedly explain topics in great detail in exchange for as little as us sitting there and batting our eyelashes. Pandora has learned a great deal of interesting things about topics ranging from investments to AI to philosophy to quantum mechanics and more via strategically triggering mansplaining instincts. Many men have lots of knowledge and competence and are just waiting for someone to share that with. As a bonus, many men have written blogs, books, and hosted podcasts, which we enjoy listening to (of course there is a lot of great media from women too!). And sometimes the podcasters have really nice, deep voices.
Directional sense. While this isn’t universal, it seems accurate in our experience to say that men often have better directional sense than us sluts. (Pandora suspects she is unusually bad at this for someone who is otherwise a highly proficient shape rotator, so maybe she is also a bad judge of whether this is a real gender difference or just a personal failing). Luckily, most men she explains this to are more than happy to play tour or hiking guide and let her bimbo brain remain occupied with more important matters (like trying to visualize the double slit experiment that he is “mansplaining” to her during their hike). Chesed always walks confidently in the wrong direction, and loves ceding navigational control to her husband when visiting new places.
Rationality. Something about the gender ratio in rationalist spaces makes us suspect that men in general are more drawn to rationality. We think it’s great that many men are dedicating themselves to clearer thinking. Because of their willingness to do risk assessments and write out STI policies, we spend more time getting fucked at orgies and less time worrying about herpes. Also, they might just save all our lives from rogue AI or similar existential threats. Valuing rationality doesn’t have to come at the expense of valuing traits like emotional attunement etc. And rationality is not the correct tool for every possible situation. But it sure can help to have competent, agentic rationalist men around for a whole array of practical reasons. Chesed notes that non-rationalist men are also often rational and are less likely to talk about AI risk during sex than rats.
Generosity. Many men are generous in a whole variety of ways. This can look like the obvious financial generosity, but can also take the shape of generosity of time, spirit, or effort. Supporting our podcasting or SlutCon hosting aspirations with technical talent and take out (or subscriptions!). Buying us ice cream, whisking us off on vacations we didn’t plan, cooking us elaborate vegan food, bringing housewarming gifts, sharing their impressive sex toy collections, sending us gifts ... And sometimes this is more outward facing. Donating to important causes, volunteering to make sure community events run smoothly, the list goes on. Pandora quite vividly remembers the first time she entered her boyfriend’s old room. She was still adjusting to the norm of men living in group houses (how could she make her weird dolphin sex noises with housemates sharing a wall?), but her skepticism was assuaged when she saw what he had taped to his whiteboard. A 10% pledge! Such generosity is not exclusive to men, but when we find it in men, we appreciate it.
Humor. Men love making women laugh and smile. Sometimes with antics, sometimes with jokes, and often by showing us their favorite YouTube videos. Having men around means more time spent laughing, smiling, and enjoying their adorable excitement to show you random YouTube video clips. Some men have great GIF/meme game too. Looking at you, Twitter husband.
We’re not alone in our love of men. In fact, we’ve gathered a bunch of women who genuinely like men to attend SlutCon. SlutCon is a celebration of shamelessness and great sex, but it is also based on a vision of mutual appreciation and delight between men and women. We believe we’re on the same team. The women of SlutCon want to enjoy men, and have men enjoy them too. We believe that “the ick”, the friendzone, and incel-dom are largely skill issues, and we are committed to helping men build skills to overcome them. Whether you show up as an already successful playboy, a wifeguy, or a virgin, we’re excited to find all the things we like about you!
I laughed out loud when I saw the still frames of “Let’s Generalize About Men” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I was a cameraman on CXG for three seasons, including the episode where we did that song.
Yes, we are awesome.
Women on the other hand... ;)