I enjoyed the read, Dave! There was a lot to like: the genuine curiosity, a plausible observation about men's egos, and your willingness to be vulnerable about your own faults and missteps. But I did have to get past the offputting initial setup of "so many women get this wrong", followed by an awful lot of equating your opinion with being right. I can see why you ruffled more than a few women's feathers in the comments (and hopefully you can too). But the more I read it, the more I enjoyed your process of thinking through this common bit of social chicanery. And the bottom line is while I may quibble with the setup and some of the tone, I think you are right to find the quoted tweet misses the mark (badly) about how most men think.

One thought that also occurred to me while reading this: a woman who says "I have a boyfriend" is also staking out the fact that she has a close protector. I think many men indeed *do* care about the fact that their actions may be answerable to another man, and perhaps with the consequences of physical force. And I say this as a practical consideration that I think does go through men's minds, not as a statement about how the world should be. A woman should neither have to have "a protector", nor tell a mistruth just to save herself from the risk of an aggressive response to rejection.

I'm with you in hoping we get there. Thanks for considering my response.