There are few things in life that I enjoy more than talking down to a mansplainer.

Andrew is most certainly guilty of that particular crime against the growing orthodoxy of modern feminism, and it’s the kindest thing I can say about the guy. Truly, he’s terrible. How he’s come so far without being cancelled by every single feminist and spontaneous association on campus is beyond me, it defies explanation.

Multiple times now he’s tried to mansplain international law to me, which I fucking study. The fucker is doing an MBA, as you would expect from such a vile creature, I suppose.

An offspring of the patriarchy, down to his bones.

Like I said, however, mansplaining is the least of his crimes. It is well known in every female space on campus that he’s the sort of guy that’ll hit on any girl he finds hot. Absolutely no selectivity or restraint.

Taken or single, leftist or conservative, doesn’t matter to him.

He doesn’t check for shared hobbies, or any kind of basic compatibility, all he cares for is whether you’re willing to give him the time of day, and the sexual services he requires. It’s astounding that he still thinks the strategy can work, really, because there’s no better way to make a girl feel un-special than to behave like we’re all interchangeable providers of sexual relief.

He’s also a slimy creep who refuses to take the polite, indirect deflections as a clear sign that we’re not interested in him.

He’s so self-centered that he doesn’t understand why a female presenting person might default to rejecting a guy in the most indirect, non-confrontational way possible: because we might well suffer direct harm if the guy we’re rejecting is that kind of guy.

But no, Andrew can’t take the hint. He’ll drag out his creepy courtship until he’s forced you to tell him no in the most explicit of terms.

Which is why I have just been crystal clear with him.

Because, yes, he’s just committed arguably his worst offense of all to date: hitting on me. I’m as close to an ideological arch-enemy as he can have on campus, and he still sees me as game that he could fuck.

Well. Time for him to really learn a lesson, then.

I put my hands on my hips, giving him a smug look after saying my piece. He inclines his head, as if thinking about what I’ve just said, and then parrots my statement back to me as a question.

“Better a fleshlight for a 9... than a sex slave for a 5?” He asks, rubbing his chin. “Sorry Deanna, I’m actually not sure I follow. What’s the difference between a fleshlight and a sex slave? Could you please elaborate?”

I roll my eyes. Bruh. Even when asking questions he sounds condescending as fuck, not to mention he’s doing that classic man thing of switching to a fucking Civil War registry to make himself sound like an intellectual when arguing with a woman. I can already tell he must be a world champion of sealioning.

Fine, whatever.

“Should be pretty obvious. The fleshlight in the analogy is about casual sex with no commitments. A hot guy who’s not interested in you as a person can be objectifying, sure. But being objectified by someone you can objectify back during a one-night-stand is still preferable to fulfilling the sexual and relational fantasy of most victims of the so-called male loneliness epidemic.”

Andrew steeples his fingers. “And that would be the fantasy to... have a sex slave?”

“To have someone at their beck and call, fundamentally. Someone who’s always available to provide them with sexual relief, all the time, and who acts like a mother figure to them when not having sex, you know, cleaning, cooking, all that domestic shit. And, this is someone you can’t objectify yourself because well, they’re a 5 and not a 9.”

“I’m a 5, is what you’re really saying, correct?”

Oh my god he gets it. I clap my hands theatrically. “Fucking bingo, brother. Now take the L and get the fuck out of my sight.”

It’s all I can do not to giggle. I’m taking a bit of sadistic pleasure at rejecting him so harshly, and it’s purely because this guy has elevated “being an asshole to women” to a lifestyle choice. Like many other 5s whose impossible expectations for us will never be fulfilled, I suppose.

I hope it does hurt his ego. I hope the next time he sees a meme about how “the worst thing she can say is no” he bursts into tears. A bit mean, yes, but he deserves it.

For now, though, Andrew displays no outward emotional reaction. Maybe he’s doing the whole stoic male thing, which shouldn’t surprise me really, men will do literally anything to not confront their emotional interiority, especially men like him.

In an incredibly performative way, he removes his glasses and starts pensively cleaning them.

“I will, as you so succintly put it, take the L and leave, Deanna, not to worry,” he says as he polishes his glasses. “But I do have one more question about your reasoning, if you will allow it.”

Ugh, this fake courtesy tone. This fucking guy.

“I’ve got zero interest in debating you on why I’m rejecting you, Andrew.”

“No no, I don’t mean it like that,” he says, finally looking back up at me. “I mean it in a category sense. You said women would rather be a fleshlight for a 9 than a sex slave for a 5. Gotcha, I understand the internal logic of the argument. So here’s my question. What about... fuckdolls?”

For a moment, I find myself just staring at him, blinking.

Like I can’t comprehend any guy, even as stereotypical a guy as Andrew, could really become such a parody of himself. How can he say something so utterly misogynistic in public with no hesitation? How dare he say it to me?

My hands are shaking with rage. “Andrew,” I say, very coldly, “I don’t know what... bullshit taxonomy of misogyny you’ve built for yourself in your head, but—”

“No no no, that didn’t come out right. See, there are legitimate differences. For example, a woman right now would be able to punch me in the face. Or, I dunno, #metoo my sorry ass online. She could have a meltdown, or even simply walk away. A doll, on the other hand, would try, and find...”

His eyes narrowed, and in his voice there was a sense of victory.

“... that she couldn’t leave.”

For a second time, I find myself at a loss of words with him. A faint chill has trickled down my back, but more importantly is the fact that we’ve now apparently transitioned from outright misogyny to... I dunno, the fucking bizarre?

“So I suppose my real question is, Deanna... which one are you?”

What started as a faint chill now begins to envelop me, ballooning in size until its spires are crushing my chest. My breath comes up short. It’s...

It’s not like I lack control over my body. I can lift my hand just fine. I just... It’s...

Not possible.

“I can’t leave,” I find myself saying. I speak the words with a kind of distant astonishment, like the real me is a thousand miles away and watching with surprised intellectual curiosity as my body finds itself in this insane situation.

Again, Andrew makes that affectation of cleaning his glasses. They’re already polished to a high sheen, but that isn’t the point.

He’s enjoying the moment.

“If you can’t leave, it means you’re a fuckdoll. Not a woman. So all that fleshlight analogy, we can leave it by the wayside... and start talking about the rules that apply to you. What do you say, Deanna?”

I just stare at him, and he loves it. The panicked, helpless look I must have on my face, like the bear trap has finally snapped shut around my leg, destroying my hubris with a single swing.

“I say talk, but that’s misleading, really, because that implies a conversation, a level of back and forth, of peerage. That’s just not applicable to our situation. A human doesn’t converse with a fuckdoll. At best, in the most generous of interpretations, he – because it’s always a he – talks to her. And, yes: it’s always a her.”

My fingers twitch, and my lower lip is trembling.

“Deanna. It is polite to look a human in the eyes, when he talks to you.”

Eyes.

They’re not eyes, his eyes, but spiralling vortexes, gaping maws in the surface of a stormy ocean. They pull me down and down, into the depths where no light reached, into an abyss where no female humanoid could call herself a woman.

“How... what... when... did you do... this to me?”

“All three excellent questions,” Andrew says, never averting his conquering eyes from my own. “Too bad that answers are for people. And you’re not one of those, Deanna, because you can’t leave... and you can’t look away.”

“I can’t… leave. And I can’t look away.”

“You were so perceptive at identifying my needs earlier, you know. That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Deanna. You’re smart... for a cunt.”

He begins to list them, counting each point on his fingers, all the while drawing closer and closer to me. Which in turn makes his eyes loom larger. No eyes should have a right to feel this large. Pools of liquid power. So very bright...

“First. Because I’m a 5, as you have so correctly determined, that means I fundamentally need to have someone at my beck and call 24/7. These are your words, not mine, are they, fuckdoll?”

I’m struggling not to cry. I’ve never been this scared. All the arrogant superiority I felt towards him has been destroyed because I am, in a very literal sense, at his mercy, and I’m struggling to even find the energy to beg him to spare me. I wanted to humble him, and instead... instead...

“Second. Because I’m a 5, I’m gonna need someone who’s always available to provide me with sexual relief, all the time.”

It’s not fair. I’m supposed to live in a world where it’s possible for a woman to speak up! Where I can set my own boundaries! Where I can be as assertive, or aggressive, as any man, and I can talk down to someone who doesn’t respect me! A world where I can speak out of turn without fear of nightmarish consequences!

Because if not...

If not...

Is he really just... superior to me?

“Third. The sex is only a component of such servitude. Like you shared so insightfully, the most important and totalising aspect is the domesticity of it. Cleaning and cooking in a practical sense, sure. But also the total lack of independence. For example, no bank account... because disarticulating your financial autonomy is a great way to hem you in permanently, and besides...”

He’s close now. He runs his thumb against my lower lip, and I feel myself spinning in the orbit of his eyes.

“It’s just silly for a fuckdoll to have a bank account.”

“No... you... I... how... why... ah... no... please...”

“All this struggle is unbecoming of a doll,” he says, gently, as he presses his forehead against mine. “Here, dearie. Let me snuff it out for you.”

His eyes envelop me.

“Oh,” I say.

I feel something buckle within me, like something foundational to my self-conception has just caved in. Fuckdolls by their nature must live static existences, I know, hollowed out and empty. What will animates them is purely external, their master’s. Any change I’m undergoing now will not be reversed.

Which is why I grieve so deeply for my intellect as I feel my metacognition begin to erode and wilt under his eyes.

I’m becoming dumber by the second, which in turn will make me more docile and easier to handle, and I’ll never claw that intelligence back.

I can’t see my own eyes, but I know they must look empty and glassy. I can’t see my own mouth, but I know I must look like a drooling sex toy. My mind is being forcibly subdued and the struggle within it snuffed out, just like he said, firmly and inexorably pinned to the ground and progressively ended.

Ended forever.

“This is my favourite moment, you know,” he says, and for the first time since the beginning of the conversation, there is a raw edge of emotion to his voice. “The most erotic thing in the world is this vacuous look of... female resignation you have on your dumb face right now. A sort of gendered fatalism. You are succumbing to your mental rape. You don’t understand how this is possible, but you understand for certain that it is happening and you cannot resist it. You are... surrendering. Aren’t you, Deanna?”

“Eeeek...” I say, if one can generously use that verb. “Guhhh...”

“Since you’ve gone nonverbal,” Andrew says, “you might as well make those pretty noises in a more useful fashion.”

He casually places a hand atop my head... and I have no resistance left to offer, as he pushes me to my knees.

All my selfhood is leashed to the place he stands in front of me, hands on his belt. Everything else is a distant and irrelevant memory.

I want to hate him. I am supposed to hate him. But as I kneel, I am overwhelmed by the impossibility of hate. The world has simplified itself into two categories: human and fuckdoll, man and woman. In a way, even simpler than that: Andrew, and my function as his cocksucker.

I take him into my mouth and begin to suck.

Such simplicity. One would think that the culmination of mental rape, and the beginning of physical rape, should look much more dramatic than this. I suppose my independence is not going out with a bang, but with a whimper... and, fittingly, I whimper around Andrew's cock.

I’m using my mouth to give pleasure to a man I declared my arch-enemy, and the knowing doesn’t help. The knowing is the cruelty.

All my adult life, words have been my weapon. The words of international law and academia, sure, but even more importantly, the words of feminism and social justice, the words of critical theory, the complex lexicon that forms a new way to understand the world... and to change it.

But no words can help me here. His eyes have enslaved me.

My mouth is full and even if it weren’t, I’ve gone nonverbal, and so I do the only thing left to me, which is to keep going.

I hollow my cheeks to give my master a feeling of suction. I make sure to work my tongue in circlets and tiny laps to make him feel the radiation of my sexual devotion. I bob my head up and down, assenting to his right to rape and plunder my mind and body alike, and to shut me up.

It's almost meditative, giving head to my worst enemy.

I let the sucking rhythm carry what’s left of me somewhere even smaller and quieter. There’s a kind of relief in it that that feels so purely feminine, the relief of having no decision to make. The thoughts that remain are small, manageable things—suck, breathe, suck, obey—and I notice with a last dim flicker of the woman I was that the noises I’m making sound eager.

I suppose there are no things in life I enjoy more than going down on a mansplainer.

THE END