Jean Garnett’s recent New York Times screed, "The Trouble with Wanting Men," poses as cultural critique. It’s not.

It’s a bloated confession, narcissistic navel-gazing wrapped in feminist jargon.

If heterosexual relationships are fundamentally broken, what, one wonders, is the solution? Lesbianism by committee? Celibacy as political statement?

The article reads like a therapy session conducted in public. Unfiltered, sure — but more like a late-night voicemail from an unhinged ex. And painfully personal, without ever brushing up against anything profound. It’s Lena Dunham with a thesaurus, mistaking self-exposure for substance.

Fatal attraction

The premise is absurd. Women are "fed up" with the “mating behavior” of men. So fed up that they need a fancy name for it. Heterofatalism — the academy’s latest made-up spew. A term coined to canonize female disappointment and package failed flings as compelling commentary.

The term suggests fatal attraction to heterosexuality itself. As if being straight were a terminal diagnosis. As if desire for men were a character flaw requiring academic intervention.

Consider the writer's "case studies," if you can call them that. A man cancels a date because he’s anxious. This, we’re told, is proof of masculine failure.

A lawyer takes too long to text back. Suddenly it’s a crisis in male communication.

Then there’s the polyamorous sex enthusiast — honest, up front, emotionally literate. And yet even he disappoints. Too clear. Too composed. Too self-aware to project fantasy onto. His failure, it seems, is not failing enough. In Garnett’s world, men can’t win — not because they’re cruel, but because they’re human.

Tramp stamp

Garnett’s romantic history tells the real story, though she frames it as a feminist awakening. She and her husband enjoyed an open relationship, a setup that gave her license to chase new highs under the banner of sexual liberation.

What follows isn’t empowerment. It’s a slow-motion train wreck of bad choices, dressed up as theory. She blows up her marriage for a man defined by his “incapacity to commit” — J., the sad-eyed drifter who all but hands her a warning label. He’s detached, clear about his limits, uninterested in anything lasting. She pursues him anyway, certain she’s the exception.

When it all falls apart, as it inevitably does, she blames him for being exactly who he said he was. Garnett might be a capable writer, but she’s adrift — romantically, intellectually, and morally. Deluded, self-excusing, and painfully detached from reality, she isn’t just a product of modern feminism. She’s its poster child.

Soft boys

The "good guy" phenomenon reveals the deeper pathology. Men, having internalized decades of feminist scolding, now perform contrition. They soften their edges. They distance themselves from anything deemed traditionally masculine. They over-apologize, over-communicate, and tiptoe through relationships as if masculinity itself were a moral failing.

But this softness — the very quality they were told women wanted — has become the new target. Too hesitant. Too self-conscious. Too accommodating. In trying to be safe, they became invisible. The irony is brutal: Women spent years dismantling the masculine ideal, only to mourn its absence once it was gone.

Whine tasting

Garnett and her dinner companions ask, “Where are the men who can handle hard stuff?” They drove them out. They turned strength into suspicion, decisiveness into something diabolical. Now, faced with the results of their own demands, they sneer at the men left behind.

The restaurant scene is a window into this cultural mess. Four women, past their prime, wine in hand, mocking male inadequacy, giggling over penis jokes like it’s political commentary.

This woman's work

Then comes the grievance inflation monologue. Women, apparently, are now burdened with interpreting “mystifying male cues.” They call themselves “relationship-maintenance experts,” as if carrying the emotional weight of a partnership is a modern injustice. But relationships have always required attention and effort, from both sides. What was once called being an adult is now considered a form of oppression.

And then there’s the pièce de résistance: “hermeneutic labor.” A term so overstuffed that it buckles under its own pretension. It’s academic nonsense for what used to be called understanding your partner.

Women read signals. Men retreat. That’s the rhythm. One leans in, the other pulls back. Not because of patriarchy, but because intimacy is uneven, unpredictable, and often inconvenient. This dynamic didn’t arrive with gender studies. It’s been around since the first couple argued under a tree.

Rebel without a cause

Garnett's sexual encounters reveal the true dynamic. She wants dominance from men. The guitar player who makes her wait, who calls her a "bratty sub." This excites her. Clear masculine authority works.

Yet she simultaneously resents male confidence as problematic. It never occurs to her that the contradiction isn’t societal. It’s entirely personal. She’s not uncovering a grand cultural flaw. She is the flaw.

The contradiction is stark. Feminist theory demands male sensitivity. Female biology craves male strength. Women caught between ideology and instinct blame men for the confusion. "Heterofatalism" becomes the convenient scapegoat.

Consider the broader implications. If heterosexual relationships are fundamentally broken, what, one wonders, is the solution? Lesbianism by committee? Celibacy as political statement? The heterofatalists offer no answers, only complaints. So many complaints.

The real tragedy is simpler. Modern dating culture has poisoned romantic relationships for everyone. Apps reduce people to profiles. Hookup culture eliminates courtship. Endless options prevent commitment. Both sexes suffer equally.

But women have weaponized their suffering into theoretical frameworks. Men's pain remains invisible, their struggles dismissed as weakness, their anxiety mocked as inadequacy.

Intellectualizing idiocy

The solution is not new terminology. It's old wisdom. Lower expectations. Accept imperfection. Stop treating romantic disappointment as social pathology. Recognize that good relationships require compromise from both parties.

"Heterofatalism" is not a real phenomenon, of course. It's a fancy name for ordinary human disappointment, a way to intellectualize personal failures, to repackage private mistakes as cultural critique. To turn individual shortcomings into a shared burden everyone else is expected to answer for.

Academia enables the absurdity. Professors build careers on cataloging female dissatisfaction. Students earn degrees studying their own disastrous dating decisions. The circular logic is perfect. Every bad date becomes data. Every ghosting proves the theory.

Meanwhile, actual problems go unsolved. Birth rates collapse. Marriage rates plummet. Loneliness epidemics spread. But sure, let's focus on heterofatalism. Let's give hyper-liberal women another reason to avoid commitment. Another excuse to blame men for everything.

The real fatalism is accepting this story of victimhood, thinking half the population are powerless against their own desires. Women deserve better than this pseudo-intellectual mush. Men deserve better than being cast as villains in every failed relationship. And society deserves more than recycled heartbreak dressed up in academic drag.

We need honesty about modern romance. Not another made-up term for problems as old as desire itself.