Eat Your Man Before He Eats Your Sanity
(Nature’s Been Telling Us to Eat Men for Centuries—Why Did We Stop?)
The male anglerfish sees the light. He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t wonder if it’s a trap, or if the glowing, beckoning form ahead of him might mean imminent, brutal death. He doesn’t even take a second to process the fact that he is ten times smaller than her, that she is literally built to devour things like him, that this is a suicide mission dressed up as destiny.
No. He just swims toward her with the confidence of a man who’s never been told no before. (It’s giving "texted her four times, she must be busy." It’s giving "I don’t need a jacket, I never get cold." It’s giving "I’ll just park wherever, it’s fine.")
She waits. She glows. She is a beast in the darkness, a deep-sea apex predator, a stomach with teeth. She is huge, powerful, carnivorous, the kind of woman men write entire Reddit threads about because they’re terrified of her but also weirdly into it. And still, he bites.
This is his first and last mistake.
The moment his tiny, insignificant little teeth latch onto her body, it’s over. His flesh begins to melt into hers. His organs disintegrate. His autonomy collapses like a man whose girlfriend just told him she earns more than he does. Soon, the only thing left of him is a pair of pathetic, permanently-attached testicles, dangling uselessly from her side, providing sperm on demand while she continues ruling the ocean like a lone, glowing god.
David Attenborough explains all of this in his usual, soothing voice, as if this isn’t the most unhinged, horror-movie romance in existence. As if the female anglerfish isn’t the final boss of dating, the original girl dinner, the reason "alpha male" podcasters should actually be worried.
And yet—this isn’t even rare. This is nature.
Black widow spiders mate, then immediately kill and eat their partners because if they’re going to endure sex with a man, they should at least get a meal out of it.
Female praying mantises decapitate the male mid-sex, and somehow, he keeps going. (Evolution really made them headless and still obedient. Tragic.)
Certain types of sea slugs have sword-fighting penis battles to determine who gets to be the “man” in the situation, and the loser has to carry the babies. (Tell me why this isn’t a global policy yet.)
The deep-sea "wedding cake" worm has one single male born into an entire colony of females, and once he’s done his only job, they absorb him into their bodies for sustenance. (A perfectly reasonable employee benefits package.)
Male bees explode the moment they ejaculate. Just—BOOM. Detonated dick, immediate death. (No notes. We should bring this back.)
Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, human men escaped this fate. They stopped being prey. They got cocky. Now, they swagger around in LinkedIn bios, barking about the Roman Empire, thinking they own the world, completely unaware that every natural law suggests they should have been consumed by now.
And that’s why they fear us. Not because we’re weak. Because biologically, we should have digested them centuries ago. Women have been called "maneaters" for centuries, but if anything, the real tragedy is that we stopped. Nelly Furtado understood this. Nature understood this. And yet, here we are—pretending this was ever meant to be an equal playing field.
The Day a Boy Nearly Vomited Over Periods but Had No Issue Drawing Dicks on Every Surface
It happened during Year 6 Sex Ed. The teacher was explaining periods, her voice steady, clinical, the way someone might read aloud an IKEA instruction manual—just facts, nothing emotional, nothing alarming. And yet, across the classroom, a boy started dry-heaving. Like actual, audible, gagging sounds. Like he’d just witnessed a live autopsy or seen his own reflection for the first time.
The mere concept of menstruation had sent him into a full-body spiritual crisis. By the time we had our second Sex Ed lesson, the teachers had decided it was best for everyone if the boys were removed entirely. They were escorted to a separate classroom to learn about their own biology in peace, away from the horrors of female bodily functions. (Imagine being so fragile that the literal mechanics of human reproduction have to be censored for you.)
And this? This was the moment I learned that my body was considered offensive. That it wasn’t just something that existed, but something that had to be managed. Contained. Spoken about in hushed tones. Educated separately. The same boys who spent breaktime making fart jars and pissing on the bathroom floor for sport simply could not handle the idea that, once a month, a girl might experience minor blood loss (but sure, tell me more about how men are the logical, rational ones.)
And let’s talk about the double standards for a second. Boys in primary school were allowed to be openly disgusting. I mean proudly, shamelessly, biologically revolting. They were drawing dicks on every surface like it was an Olympic event, flipping girls’ skirts because they thought it was funny, and yet somehow, it was my leg hair that was considered unacceptable.
They were talking about wanking like it was their national duty, proudly announcing their favourite porn categories over lunch, but God forbid someone mention the natural inner workings of the female reproductive system. One is banter. The other is repulsive. (Men are out here growing fungal ecosystems under their toenails, and I’M the disgusting one?) And that’s the root of it all, isn’t it?
Women are not allowed to simply have bodies. We are expected to fix, shrink, cover, deodorise, apologise. We are told that everything about us needs work. We must shave, pluck, exfoliate, whiten, tighten, smooth, correct. Meanwhile, a 35-year-old man can walk into a date smelling like wet concrete and self-importance, and somehow, that’s socially fine. Men exist. Women are expected to perform existence.
A Male Therapy Session About How Scary Women’s Bodies Are
The horror genre is just men working through their fear of female biology—and doing a really terrible job of being subtle about it. Seriously, look at the evidence. The moment a woman’s body does something outside of being sexy and decorative, it’s framed as a full-blown existential crisis.
A teenage girl gets her first period? Telekinetic rampage. A woman’s vagina has autonomy? Literal teeth. Pregnancy? An alien life form bursting out of your stomach like a demon projectile from hell. Horror movies don’t even try to hide it. If a woman bleeds, births, ages, or desires anything other than male approval, she is, by default, a MONSTER.
Look at the classics:
Carrie – A shy girl gets her first period in the school showers, is mocked relentlessly, and immediately develops god-like powers and kills everyone. (Basically, what men think happens when women discover their own strength.)
Teeth – A woman has vaginal dentata (yes, actual teeth in her vagina) and suddenly, men panic because actions have consequences.
Alien – The entire franchise is one long metaphor for the horror of pregnancy. A parasitic creature implants itself inside you, takes over your body, and violently rips its way out of you, leaving you permanently traumatised. (Relatable!).
Jennifer’s Body – A hot teenage girl is possessed, becomes bloodthirsty and unstoppable, and uses her sexuality to kill men. (The male gaze’s worst nightmare—an attractive woman who doesn’t exist for their benefit.)
Horror movies treat female puberty like the beginning of a demonic possession, and honestly? Maybe they’re onto something.
Women are allowed to be grotesque in fiction, but only if it makes them villains. The minute a woman bleeds, sweats, leaks, or exists in a way that isn’t dainty and controlled, she must be stopped. Because female bodies are terrifying when they do anything other than sit still and look pretty. And that? That says more about men than it does about us.
Women’s Bodies Are an Economy. Men’s Bodies Are Just… Bodies.
Society teaches women that their natural state is a crisis. Not a mild inconvenience, not a personal preference, but an actual, full-scale emergency requiring immediate, expensive intervention. You wake up with a face? Unacceptable. Here, have a 12-step skincare routine, a jade roller, and an ice bath that promises to erase your sins. Got hair in places that aren’t your head? Laser it off, wax it, pluck it, thread it, suffer. The goal is simple: eliminate every trace of biology until you resemble a freshly unwrapped baby dolphin.
Meanwhile, men’s hygiene routine consists of splashing water on their face like a labrador and calling it self-care. They exist in their natural state, and no one questions it. They can be hairy, wrinkled, crinkly, saggy, grey, smelly, sweaty, flaking, crusty—and at worst, someone might call them "rugged." Meanwhile, a woman who forgets to shave her legs for two weeks is apparently "giving up on herself."
Men don’t even wash their arses properly. Why am I paying £40 for an eye cream?
The beauty industry is worth $532 billion globally. That entire empire exists because women have been convinced they need fixing (…something males pushed). We are told to spend our entire lives erasing every trace of the things that make us human. Meanwhile, a 42-year-old man with a face like a deflated rugby ball will confidently rate women on the internet. Make it make sense.
Women Are Terrifying, and That’s Exactly the Problem
Women shed, grow, mutate, adapt, consume. We are not still. We are not neat. We are walking horror films of transformation, bleeding on schedule like some eldritch ritual, growing entire humans inside us like flesh-woven 3D printers, then snapping back, healing, and continuing on with our day. This is why history has spent centuries trying to contain us. Because when left unchecked? We are terrifying.
They burned witches because they knew how to heal. They banished midwives because they knew how to birth. They ridiculed women who aged because they refused to disappear. A woman who bled without dying was unnatural. A woman who knew too much was dangerous. A woman who could survive without a man was a crisis. And so, they shamed, shrank, silenced, erased (if we ever stopped being ashamed of our own grotesqueness, we’d take over the world in a week.)
And that’s the real fear, isn’t it? Not that we are weak, but that we are too much. That we do not break easily. That we stretch, change, endure. That we are, at our core, impossible to control. And if that’s what it means to be grotesque? Then maybe grotesque is the most powerful thing we could ever be.
A post about how traumatic it is to shave your legs. Meanwhile, men’s bodies are treated like machines or expendable assets. 400,000 American boys died in Vietnam. Average nineteen, nineteen, ner ner ner, nineteen.
Excellent piece! Love this so much!