I’ve known these guys for a long time. We have similiar intrests, a similiar sense of humor, and the knowledge of when to agree to disagree. Do I worry about hanging out with them? no. Crashing on one of their couches when I’m too tired to drive home? no.

Granted, these guys are pretty remarkable. They don’t actually call girls sluts, hos, or anything demeaning. Actually, we mostly call guys whores, when we call people whores. That’s gay–I won’t say we don’t use it, but we only use it in a context where we know everybody’s cool with it.

The truth is, I trust them because I know them as people, not as Generic Men. The one who’s the closest to wanting a stereotypical relationship, wants a wife who’ll work outside the house, so he can play 50’s housewife. It’s kind of cute, really.

The single simplest piece of advice I can give you is to watch out for any of these words or phrases.

“Such-and-such woman is crazy/shrill/hysterical/emotional/irrational/psycho/stalker/needy” – ie ‘I don’t see her point of view as equally valid to mine and dismiss it in particularly gendered terms’. If he disagrees with a woman it should be with her opinion, not the fact that she is a woman who has an opinion. If he thinks she is wrong it should be because the facts are otherwise, not because she is too damn female to get it right. It may be that the woman in question IS insane or horrible, but there are non-gendered ways to say so; he should use the same language if he is talking about an insane man.

“X throws like a girl” or similar – ie doing something like a girl means doing it less well.

“That’s gay” – or any other homophobic slur used to describe something as being crap. Men who are afraid of being seen as gay are insecure, and vulnerable to being pushed by macho culture into other ‘manly’ pursuits such as getting drunk, talking trash about women, and treating woman inappropriately when it comes to sex, such is their determination to be seen as virile.

“X (a girl) is a slut/whore/slag/trash/used” – only watch out for this if he does not ALSO call boys sluts. If he only uses it about girls, he is pushing the double standard and he may act hatefully toward any woman who lets him sleep with her, because he will see her as diminished, as used. If he also uses it about men, it may be that he is just conservative about sex, or thinks X person was irresponsible (ie a slut) because say, they didn’t use a condom, not because of the sex itself.

“X is frigid/lesbian” – 99% of the time this means ‘that bitch refused to shag me’. It means he can’t gracefully accept a woman’s right to reject him, and again, he believes his right to be with her trumps her right to turn him down. He’s probably not a rapist and he can’t buy her from her father like in the olden days, so he takes his powerlessness out by trash-talking her. Not a good sign.

Also as well as the women others have told you to watch how he treats (his mother etc), watch out for how he talks to cab drivers, waiters, cleaners at your school or if there’s one at his house, etc – people who society says are below him. If he is kind to them, makes eye contact, thanks them, and recognises they are individual people, then he is aware of his privileged position and not abusing it. If he doesn’t, he may simply be unaware, and that’s OK as long as he is open to learning.

Good luck. There are some great boys out there, and I’m sure you’ll find one.