Ibelieve in love! Just not with the kind of man who wears one dangly earring, trousers that sit too high on the waist, and who, after sharing a moment of intimacy, will look me in the eye and say, “Hey.” There are other things that make me uncomfortable, too. Like when men wear dressing gowns anywhere except a hotel room, when men like fizzy drinks, when men wear backpacks, and when men have games on their phone. But there is a simple ick —which, if you stick it out long enough, you can overcome—and then there is experiencing genuine, stomach-twisting embarrassment about even being in a relationship with a man.

The experience, as Chanté Joseph put it in her most recent piece for Vogue , is “culturally loser-ish.” “Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore; it is no longe

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