Think of this as a sort of companion piece/follow-up to my piece last week. I wrote about getting hurt because of other people’s actions and inactions. Now, I’d like to take the time and refer to the women I’ve f**ked up with.

And I don’t mean “got rejected by”. Sure, the women who’ve turned me down romantically are often also the women who I’ve made uncomfortable, and I’d like to address that in earnest.

It’s a hard world for women. Most men are vicious animals who want nothing more than to ravage your body and then kill you. I wish I could say that was strictly metaphorically, but as you know more than I ever will, it’s clearly not. So it really doesn’t ease your worries any more by having some douchebag asshole make you feel uncomfortable.

I used to be a “nice guy” back in middle and high school. You know, the kind of guy who believed himself entitled to romantic compensation just because he was nice to girls and gave them attention. Let the record show I would beat the shit out of me back then for that. That, and a lot of other things, but mainly that.

Of course, back then, I didn’t see women as people. I saw them as objects to be won, tools that would help me fix myself, make me better. I was obsessed with the idea of the manic pixie dream girl. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, I’ve been single for most of my life.

Then I read an article about a 33-year-old dude who’d been single for all those years. And he wasn’t mad or frustrated by that. He was happy to be working and interacting with women simply as colleagues and friends. Because he was a decent human being. Because he viewed women as people. Not as fleshlights. Not as magical people who make the bad go away. But people with flaws and hopes and ambitions.

That, and my increasing number of friendships with women, was the turning point in the history of my being a douchebag. I had a lot of internalized misogyny, mostly stemming from my parents’ divorce, that I didn’t quite recognize.

Here I thought women were the ones at fault for rejecting such a “wonderful, nice guy” (read: absolute asshat) such as myself when the reality of the situation was much more complicated. It wasn’t so much me personally as it was the culture I was born into. Women aren’t so scared of me as what I am capable of.

I perpetuate rape culture, because I am a man. There’s a wonderful article about that written from a man’s perspective that goes into further detail about it, and I wish I could recall the title of it.

So I’ve fucked up with women because I thought certain gestures that I perceived as sweet or romantic came off as creepy or uncomfortable. A touch of the hand, an uninvited conversation, a comment or two… all of these things can be interpreted as very, very different things depending on what gender the person identifies as.

So I’ve wronged a lot of women in my past. And I’m sorry. Truly. I know I can never remove the negative feelings or the pain I’ve wrought, but I’m trying to get better. There’s so many bad things a man can do because he feels entitled to a woman’s emotions, and I’m putting a lot of effort into changing my mindset and my behavior about these things.

I don’t fully understand the dynamic, because I will never be a woman, and therefore I’ll always be a little clueless about what I’m doing wrong. But I’ll keep trying to improve this aspect of myself.

I don’t want to continue to be a contributor to this ridiculous, misogynistic culture I live in. I’d like to make the world a safer place for women in any way I can. Not because I want to sleep with someone or because I want a certain girl to leave her boyfriend for me (I’m an asshole. Seriously. Don’t bother with me). It’s because I’ve begun to really understand the dangers simply being a woman poses in this world, and I believe all people deserve respect and dignity in any and all regard.