“Men are trash” is the millennial feminist adage on social media: the saying aims to hold men accountable for exercising patriarchal dominance over women through coercion, violence, manipulation, power-plays, and outright fear. While cishet feminist activists and theorists discuss the numerous ways that men dally in the power that patriarchy affords them, they neglect to mention how they themselves frequently uphold patriarchy values in their own social and romantic interactions. Most appalling in the glaring parallels between cisgender heterosexual women and cisgender heterosexual men is their equally disdainful treatment of queer people — especially bisexual, bi-curious, pansexual, or sexually/romantically questioning men.

Patriarchy and heterosexism are intrinsically linked — dual systems of social subjugation. Patriarchy asserts that cishet men must display dominance by fucking a plethora of women, while heterosexism renders them effeminate, sissified, and socially deviant if they fail to attract women, or worse, feel deep pulls of attraction towards other men. While patriarchy and heterosexism package women’s bisexuality as a sexy, exotic male fantasy, it renders bisexual and pansexual men as morally reprehensible. Patriarchy and heterosexism seek to control the erotic activities of women — by rewarding value to women according to their sexual purity and demanding sexual conquests from men. Queer people, those who are gay, lesbian, gender-nonconforming, and trans fall under the sexual degenerate category under patriarchy and heterosexism as people who aren’t “worthy” of respect in society or in relationships.

Certainly prior to the establishment of Western society, the expressions of men’s sexualities weren’t so oppressively binary. Greek mythology featured themes of same-sex love, particularly among the gods and mortal men. In what is now called Senegal in Africa, gor-djiguen people, a Wolof term for folk with alternative sexualities, lived harmoniously among the rest of people in townships. In Japan, queer folklore abounds with stories of Shinu No Hafuri and Ama No Hafuri. With the establishment of white supremacy, colonialism/settler-colonialism, and capitalism, the nuclear family became the paragon of relationship models to aspire to. Patriarchy, with its insistence on gender binaries, men’s sexual dominance, and women’s sexual subjugation, enforced the normalization of heterosexuality, and dismissed the legitimacy of a sexual spectrum and the existence of numerous gender identities. The right to queer experimentation is something that numerous cishet women, even those who call themselves feminists, continue to deny bisexual, pansexual, bi-curious and sexually/romantically questioning men.

The motive behind cishet women appallingly arguing, “We both can’t like dick!” or “I can’t date a nigga that’s fucked more men than me,” is demonstrative of their deep-seated social and romantic investment in patriarchy and heterosexism, and their belief that acceptance of both systems enhances their ability to find a fulfilling relationship or achieve ultimate attractiveness. Cishet women who tout these twin patriarchal and heterosexist beliefs secretly see their only value as an object who must buy into the social contract of meeting a nice straight man, dating and then marrying said straight man, and being the wanton prize of a straight man. In their rejection of bisexual men and restriction of men’s sexual identities, they are wrongly seeking to secure their romantic futures by maintaining the status quo.

Behind cis women’s refusal to date bisexual or pansexual men is the archaic anti-queer notion that fucking men or dating men makes a man less masculine, and therefore, less attractive, according to the social contract. While cisgender heterosexual women playfully joke about having a girl crush or fooling around with that cute girl at the party when she was drunk, it’s often a different story if her lover, boyfriend or husband is discovered to have ever experimented with men before. Bisexual and questioning men undermine the very system that cisgender women were taught to believe in regarding masculinity and the social contract of romantic relationships dictated by patriarchy and heterosexism.

Women must not only challenge other men on their internalization of patriarchy and heterosexism, but they must examine their own ideas concerning men’s bisexuality, pansexuality, and their deep-seated hostility of male queerness in their own romantic relationships. Men may benefit the most from patriarchy as a system, but they certainly aren’t the only ones who uphold it. By refusing to romantically associate with bisexual men, women are undermining centuries of feminist efforts seeking to overthrow the very system that represses their own sexual and romantic happiness. In noting how cishet men are trash, we must also be aware that some cishet women are in the garbage heap right alongside them, subverting their own opportunities for liberation.