We've partnered with Bookshop.org to giveaway some copies of the complete Letters from Maynara series! Be sure to enter here before August 7th for your chance to win.

I've always loved horror movies. Before I was allowed to watch them, I'd wander the Horror aisle at my local Blockbuster and take a minute with each VHS cover, allowing myself to savor the titillating mix of curiosity and fear. When friends who hate horror movies ask me how I can sit through them, I explain that living vicariously through the characters and surviving terrifying scenarios is a balm for my anxiety.

Now, as a new mom to a son, I have a different experience when it comes to identifying with fictional characters.

I finally watched the much-hyped horror movie Obsession this past weekend. Before the premise kicked into gear (man is granted wish, and it goes badly like every fictional wish ever) I was already freaked out. The film's first 10 minutes introduce us to the protagonist: Bear, a scruffy, sheepish man in his early twenties. We get a glimpse into his home, his relationships, his inner life. What we see is bone-chilling. 

Bear lives in a home he inherited from his grandmother. It's clear from the outdated decor and dim lighting that he hasn't changed a thing about the place. He chooses to live alone in what is essentially a tomb. 

He has nursed a romantic fixation on his friend Nikki since high school. Now in their twenties, they spend almost every day together as co-workers and friends, but he's never shared his feelings with her. It's clear from the way he talks about this choice that he views his hesitation as reflecting how considerate and sensitive he is. He prides himself on not being pushy or aggressive. He's a Nice Guy! He doesn't do anything to hurt anyone! But that's because, uh, he doesn't do anything. His cowardice is on full display when Nikki gives him the most gentle and warm opening to share his feelings, and he STILL doesn't. Instead, he makes a doomed wish that she loved him "more than anyone in the world" and thus effectively enslaves her.

I intuit that, like all the Nice Guys I've encountered, Bear believes that simply by virtue of not being an abusive bully, he is entitled to infinite reward. His own personal Hollywood happy ending. Surely his decision to refrain from being an asshole means he deserves the life of his dreams?

The Nice Guy's entitlement is usually accompanied by a lack of responsibility for his feelings. If he finds himself disappointed with how long his dream life is taking to unfold, he views himself as a hapless victim of this sadness. Where did all these bad feelings come from? And, more importantly, who is going to help me with them? (In most cases, Nice Guys look to the closest attractive woman and think, "She'll cheer me up!")

Okay, so Bear isn't a real person. Why do I have so much vitriol about him?

It's not just that I've had my fair share of run-ins with Nice Guys in my day. It's that, as a quote unquote boy mom, I now see all male characters as omens. Beware, I think with a shudder as I watch, this what your delightful baby boy can turn into if you're not careful!

In a world where Vogue published an article asking Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? and reels like this one

have gone viral, I feel like raising a son has never felt more high stakes. My son cannot be a Nice Guy. An embarrassing boyfriend. A mid loser manchild. A bad guy.

The specter of the bad boyfriend has loomed large in the books I've read over the last decade. Some of my favorite writing is women writers inflicting their protagonist with terrible male partners.

I think of A's boyfriend C in Alexandra Kleeman's You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Although he isn't explicitly rude or dismissive, all of his responses to A's concerns undermine her trust in herself. Ultimately, I think he, more than her copycat roommate B, pushes her to the edges of her sanity.

In Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke gave her tradwife influencer protagonist Natalie a challenging husband.

In a LitHub interview, Burke explains:

Since one of Natalie’s main frustrations in her life (according to her) is that she has too many masculine traits, I thought it would be really fun to give her a husband who (again, according to her) has too many feminine ones. They both are people who don’t naturally or comfortably fit into the traditional gender stereotypes, and this is an issue that plagues them increasingly throughout the book. Poor Caleb just wanted to become a kindergarten teacher! My toxic trait is loving him.

I think Caleb's issues are more pernicious than gender non-conformity. He is spineless, allowing himself to be easily swayed and manipulated by anyone around him. His transformation into a domineering and abusive husband demonstrates how readily he adopts misogyny as a governing ideology.  

My Favorite Bad Boyfriend Award goes to the one in Ottessa Moshfegh's short story The Weirdos. He's not only condescending and immature, but also unnervingly strange: 

If I turned my back during breakfast he’d say, “I noticed you spilled some of your coffee, so I wiped it up for you.” If I didn’t thank him profusely, he’d put down his fork, ask, “Was that okay?” He was a child, really. He had childish ideas. He told me he “walked like a cop,” which scared off criminals on the street at night. “Why do you think I’ve never been mugged?” He made me laugh.

The narrator asserts "I hate my boyfriend" right before exhaustively detailing all of his peculiarities. She seems almost aroused by how repulsive she finds him and how unaware he is of her disdain.  

My fears about my son's future are not unusual. Content about how moms are shaping their sons to be good partners has become more and more popular.

I study these, taking my job to raise my son to be a vocal feminist capable of emotional regulation and domestic duties very seriously. 

The more energy I put into shaping my son, the more I remind myself of this other genre of content I see with increasing frequency. Perhaps you've seen it too: the viral trend "Because I didn't marry a loser." 

The brilliant Tracy Clark-Flory wrote about this phenomenon that she calls hetero-exceptionalism:

I’ve been thinking about this concept of hetero-exceptionalism.

I’m envisioning it as a variety of heteropessimism. It’s a perspective that recognizes that heteronormative love and sex can be punishing for women, while emphasizing exceptions (happy heteronormative relationships) that are attributed to men who are unicorns or women with discerning taste and romantic savvy. Crucially, it comes along with a sense of blame, specialness, and superiority, as opposed to solidarity.

It is part traditional romantic fairytale around The One and Prince Charming, and part neoliberal feminism with its focus on individually navigating systemic oppression (in other words: getting yours within patriarchy).

I’ve been thinking about this concept in part because I came across this from Moira Donegan:

Gotta love the new genre of tweet from millennial women that's like “I can't relate to all these divorce books because unlike you losers my husband is a perfect kindly angel who does all the housework.” As if patriarchy is merely a skill issue.

The genre of tweet that Donegan references is a perfect encapsulation of hetero-exceptionalism: it implicitly or explicitly paints women’s romantic and sexual unhappiness as a personal failure. That is the water in which we swim. So much hetero dating advice for women ultimately reads as instructions for personally navigating patriarchy.

So much of my concern and the concern I see in my fellow boy moms' reels is heteronormative. We're worried about how our sons will show up as a partner to a woman. What if my son is gay or asexual or aromantic?

Also, I recognize that I'm taking all the annoyance and frustration and disgust I feel towards Bear and other Nice Guys he reminds me of and channeling it into constructing my parenting approach. I shouldn't center my thirst for vengeance against toxic masculinity in my mothering journey…right? 

My biggest concern is I'm making the mistake Clark-Flory points out in her critique: focusing on an individualistic solution to a systemic problem. So I believe If I successfully complete my mission to raise my son to be a feminist and an ideal husband to a straight woman, I will have done my part in taking down the patriarchy?

As I've mulled this all over, a thought buzzes around in my skull that I can't swat away: 

Is having a child an inherently individualistic solution?

Becoming a mother has strengthened my desire to fight for justice in the world, to invest in my community, to be kinder and more empathetic to everyone I meet. But it has also sapped me of time and energy. Since giving birth, I have had to abandon everything I used to do that could potentially ask me to over-extend myself. I now pour all of my resources into one person. That's why it makes sense that my new primary mode of combatting misogyny would be mothering my son. However, I can't pretend that he alone could defeat the patriarchy. To believe this would be childish.

As I've puzzled over this, I've thought about one passage from the poem On Children by Kahlil Gibran:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

(I highly recommend listening to Sweet Honey in the Rock's song of this poem.)

I appreciate this poem's lesson, and I want to surrender to its wisdom. But I don't know how I can stop myself from wanting to accompany my son to the world of tomorrow. Maybe it's a deluded grasp at immortality. Maybe it's a desperate bid at feeling like I have some control. Maybe I simply can't bear the idea of being parted from him. Installing in him a strong vein of feminism feels like the only guarantee that he will carry me with him always.

I am beyond excited to be sharing this announcement with you! I am bringing the community vibes of the You Can Sit with Us event page to my very first online BOOK CLUB!

I've enjoyed leading as well as being a member of a few different in-person book clubs over the last three years, but, as grad school demands more of my IRL hours, online has become the ideal setting for book yapping. The launch of my Bindery Books page could not have come at a better time.

What you can expect from YCSWU Book Club:

• Monthly book pick from one of my favorite genres (romance, fantasy, historical fiction). Most books will be newer releases, and genre will vary from month to month.

• Private Discord chat for book club members

• Monthly virtual book club meetings

So, without further ado, I give you the August pick for the You Can Sit with Us Book Club!

A Tangled Magic by Andrea Eames is described as:

"Rapunzel meets Six of Crows in this darkly imagined high fantasy for fans of T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone, The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, and Disney’s Tangled, as a woman with amnesia—and magical hair—searches for her lost memories while navigating a web of royal intrigue, bone magic, and secret monasteries.:Rapunzel meets Six of Crows in this darkly imagined high fantasy for fans of T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone, The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, and Disney’s Tangled, as a woman with amnesia—and magical hair—searches for her lost memories while navigating a web of royal intrigue, bone magic, and secret monasteries." (PRH)

Hop on over to Discord to join me for this month's read!