Page 111 of Stags

The squirrelkin and foxkin exchanged a look.

“What I mean is, it’s a fact that women don’t need men, that’s a fact,” Athos plowed on. “But that’s painful, so men don’t want to face it. They assume that men must be necessary, and—you know—we are. For one teeny, tiny thing, and that’s reproduction. Beyond that, we are pointless and we can just die, and nature, in fact, predisposes us to kill ourselves off—”

“Kill ourselves off?” broke in the foxkin.

“Oh, yeah,” said Tawny, nodding, quite serious. “This is his theory that the men are just there to attract predators.”

“They are,” said Athos. “Why else is the male of the species bigger and more brightly colored and stronger? It’s to be a—”

“Noble sacrifice,” she supplied.

“Well, huh,” said squirrelkin.

“Okay,” said the foxkin, “and it’s not as if predators don’t also get preyed on, you know? There can be only one at the top of the food chain.

“Exactly,” said Athos. “Exactly. Look, I get this is depressing. It’s much nicer to assume that nature gave us each equal purpose and equal value, isn’t it? That’s a very nice thing to assume. But, look, it’s not true, and men have always had a chip on their shoulder about it, and that’s why we’re dicks to women. It’s envy.”

“Envy,” Tawny scoffed.

“Totally,” he said, nodding. “Totally.”

She just shook her head.

The squirrelkin’s eyes were wide.

“Envy,” said the foxkin.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Tawny got out of her chair. “This is like the weirdest way on earth to say that you’re inferior and also superior and that everyone should feel sorry for men.”

“That… no.” Athos shook his head. “No, not even.” He paused. “You’re going to say, like, men have superior physical strength and we’ve used that to subjugate women in a number of civilizations, like, almost every single civilization, since the dawn of civilization? You’re going to say that?”

She sipped at her soda. “I was not going to say that, in fact. Do you simply like having arguments with yourself?”

The foxkin snorted. “Ouch.”

Athos held up both hands. “But, see, that’s part of it, that’s part of the whole thing. If you look at it like that, like ‘superior physical strength’ instead of, ‘being honed to fight off predators since you are the dispensable gender’ it hits different.”

She folded her arms over her chest.

“And everything we do, men, it’s all a rebellion against this,” he said. “It’s this weird, stupid drive, deep down, to prove we’re more than body fodder, to prove that we, in fact, matter, in some way. And more than anything, what we want is to be absolutely indispensable to a woman, to trick a woman into thinking she needs us for anything at all. Did we, in history, keep women ignorant and refuse to educate them just so we could feel important? Yes. Did we try to make women out as weak and fragile just so we could feel as if we were necessary in some way? Yes. And this is right in the face of the fact that women are obviously stronger and sturdier than we are—they give birth, they live longer, they are less susceptible to all manner of diseases and ailments. Women are superior; men know it. Sexism is envy.”

“Whoa,” said the foxkin. “You’re kind of blowing my mind right now.”

Athos continued, “And when those guys on podcasts try to further their little agenda that there’s some great and wondrous reason for men to be alpha-strong-men, like men matter all that much to the grand scheme of the natural world except for two ways, which is fucking and fighting… they’re just playing the same game. They’re just sad, sad little boys who can’t accept their place in the world.”

“Fuck, man,” said the squirrelkin, downing the rest of his drink. “That’s kind of heavy.”

Tawny threw her hands up. “Sun and moon,” she said. “Sun and moon.” Then leaving her drink on the bar, she just walked off through the restaurant.

Athos winced.

“You, uh, going after her?” said the foxkin.

“Yeah,” said Athos. “But I need to pay for this first.”

The squirelkin and foxkin both thought this was hilarious.

Athos paid for their meals, for their drinks, and then went looking for her. She was nowhere to be found.

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