Why “Mean” Women Get the Respect Nice Girls Beg For

I was always an assertive little girl, so naturally, I grew into an assertive woman. It probably does not help that my birth chart is mostly made up of fire and air signs. I came into this world with opinions, follow-up questions, and a mild resistance to authority.

Growing up, I was often told that I needed to be less assertive. I needed to be softer. Girls were supposed to be sweet, agreeable, and ladylike. Funny enough, my father never taught me any of that. My dad taught me that I had a voice, so I should use it. Share my opinions. Ask questions. Ask for what I want. Speak up when something does not feel right.

I remember being at the park with him once and overhearing another father call his daughter “princess.” I asked my dad why he never called me that. He said, “Because you’re my reina. My little queen.”

Period, King.

Now you have some context for why I am the way I am. To this day, I still use the line, “My daddy wouldn’t do that,” or, “My daddy would never speak to me that way.” I really lucked out with him. Love that guy.

I was also an overachiever. Ambitious. Competitive. I loved being the best. I genuinely believed that second place was simply first-place loser with better public relations. As I got older, I began to notice that these same characteristics were celebrated in young men and scrutinized in young women. A competitive man was driven. A competitive woman was insecure. An assertive man was a leader. An assertive woman was difficult. A man who knew what he wanted was confident. A woman who knew what she wanted was apparently overcompensating or trying to compete with men.

Ick. Please.

I was never trying to be like a man. I was trying to be myself. Thankfully, my father always celebrated me as an individual. He loved those qualities in me, even when the rest of the world seemed determined to squeeze me into some tiny, polite little mold.

Naturally, I found myself drawn to subcultures. I am a goth, queer kid with a lot of Aquarius energy—the rebel of the zodiac. Of course I gravitated toward people who had already decided that society’s rulebook was more of a loose suggestion.

There is a great deal of overlap between goth culture, queer culture and the kink community. The first chosen family that embraced me exactly as I was came from the LGBTQ+ community. The second came from the kink community.

One of my most memorable birthdays was spent in a dungeon surrounded by respected Dominas. I remember looking around the room and thinking, Whoa. I am standing among superheroes dressed as supervillains.

That era of my life taught me so much about power, trust, communication and self-possession. It also taught me that the traits I had spent my life being told to silence were not merely tolerated there. They were celebrated. Encouraged. Worshipped.

I was home.

There was something incredibly comforting about sitting at brunch discussing different styles of play, scene dynamics and the proper care of latex. You know, normal girl talk. I had spent years being the resident kinkster among my vanilla friends, which I never minded. But there was something different about being surrounded by people who shared my interests, my language and my understanding of power exchange. People who could discuss administering discipline, receiving it, and how you should never mix gold with latex.

Being part of that community gave me a perspective that many women are not often exposed to. So much of what women are taught about what quality men want is completely backward. You do not need to be involved in kink to understand this, but witnessing it so openly can be startling. The very men other men admire, envy and attempt to emulate often adore women who are dominant, opinionated, exacting, and completely uninterested in making themselves smaller.

It dispels so many of the lies we have been taught about men, women and attraction. You begin to wonder why women spend so much time shrinking themselves. If she only knew how many men would beg to worship her, perhaps she would stop auditioning to be chosen. You also start to wonder why so many men cosplay as a caricature of masculinity when the reality of desire is so much more complicated.

I already know that if you are not part of the kink community, you may be thinking, “Kelly, that’s nice that you’re into shiny things and whips, but that is not my gig.”

I hear you. But listen closely: we are always participating in some form of power exchange. Our relationships already contain negotiations around access, attention, trust, care, responsibility, and control. You do not need whips and chains for that to be true.

Women are taught to whisper, absorb the responsibilities of others, take up as little space as possible and remain pleasant while doing it. A woman who takes up space, maintains boundaries, holds people accountable, expresses her needs and can comfortably say no is often described as “mean.”

But what we have been taught to call mean is just self-respect.

Having standards is not the same as being difficult. Expecting consistency is not demanding. Refusing to tolerate disrespect is not being unreasonable. If being mean means refusing to accept less than basic consideration, then being mean is not an insult. It is the baseline.

Am I saying that you need to become a dominatrix to attract a man of value? No.

Unless you are into that, of course.

On a smaller scale, however, you should be willing to take up space. You should expect to be heard and seen. I watch too many girls and women ignore their own instincts because they are more concerned with appearing easygoing than protecting their peace.

A man you are seeing becomes inconsistent. He disappears, but continues liking your Instagram Stories. Instead of taking that behavior as useful information, you start wondering how you can regain his attention. Maybe you should post a thirst trap. Maybe you should send a casual text. Maybe you should find a way to remind him that you are desirable.

A Domina would not do that.

She would not create a small marketing campaign designed to convince an inconsistent man that she is worthy of attention. She would take his behavior as a signal that they are not aligned and move on. She is not performing indifference as a tactic. She is genuinely uninterested in chasing someone whose behavior has already disqualified him.

She removes access.

I felt a collective heart drop among the submissives as I wrote that.

People often mistake spanking for punishment, but let us be serious: they like that shit. Sidebar, there is an entire conversation before a scene about consent, expectations, limits and safety. I will save that discussion for another post.

The real punishment is losing access.

You do not get continued access to me while lacking the basic skill of respect. Once I no longer respect a person, their opinion of me carries very little weight. Why would I post something hoping to get the attention of someone whose judgment I do not even value?

Then, a month later, Mercury goes retrograde and he calls again. Some of you immediately decide this must be a sign. He misses you. The universe brought him back. Perhaps this is your second chance.

No.

If we are going to use Mercury retrograde as part of the argument, then let us use the entire lesson. People from the past often reappear so you can see whether you have learned anything or whether the universe needs to run the same curriculum again. The test is not whether he returns. The test is whether you still answer.

A “mean” woman might simply let the phone ring. Of course, she could block him, but I personally find it amusing to watch the phone ring while imagining how badly he wants my attention, only to be met with silence.

Hehe. It tickles me pink.

“But what if he changed?”

Highly unlikely. And if he did, that change would be reflected in his actions and in the way he approached you. A lazy “hey stranger” text is not personal transformation. Personally, I think texting after disappearing is a soft bitch move. At minimum, you should be sending a nice gift.

“But what if something happened and he did not have time to contact me?”

That does happen. People go through difficult periods. Life becomes chaotic. Emergencies exist. But communication takes a moment. Someone can say, “I do not want to leave you in the dark, but I have a lot happening right now and will not be very available.” Then you get to decide whether that arrangement works for you.

The issue is not that people must always be perfectly available. The issue is whether they respect you enough to communicate.

A confident, quality, and secure man wants a partner who knows what she wants, has standards, and maintains a life of her own. An insecure man sees those standards as a personal attack because they force him to confront the possibility that access to you is not guaranteed.

“What if my standards scare him away?”

Good. That means they are working.

Boundaries are not designed to make everyone comfortable. They are designed to reveal who is capable of meeting you with respect and who benefits from you having none.

When people hear me tell women to “be mean,” they sometimes assume I am encouraging cruelty, manipulation or unnecessary games. I am not. I am telling women to stop rewarding behavior that makes them feel small.

He was bold enough to ghost you while continuing to watch and like your Instagram Stories. Diva, there are people in this world waiting for the opportunity to meet you, know you and earn the privilege of standing beside you. Why are you trying to impress a man communicating through Story views like he just added you to his MySpace Top 8? (remember that 👵🏽)

Many years ago, a book called Why Men Love Bitches became incredibly popular. The title alone is provocative. Men hear it and immediately think, “No, we do not.” Women hear it and think, “They absolutely do not.”

But author Sherry Argov was not using the word “bitch” to describe a cruel or aggressive woman. She was describing a woman who values herself, maintains standards and refuses to abandon her own life to secure a relationship. She is confident, independent, emotionally grounded and unwilling to accept disrespect.

The book’s central lessons are straightforward: do not overinvest before someone has earned it. Match effort instead of taking responsibility for the entire relationship. Maintain your own friendships, routines, ambitions and interests. Stop trying to prove that you are girlfriend material through excessive caretaking, accommodation and availability.

Argov also argues that boundaries should be communicated through behavior, not endless speeches. You do not need to explain your standards repeatedly to someone who has already demonstrated that he does not care about them. You enforce them by changing the amount of access that person has to you.

Do not chase mixed signals. Do not reward bad behavior. Do not become so focused on being liked that you forget to ask whether you even like the person in front of you. Most importantly, be willing to walk away from situations that do not meet your standards.

That does not mean playing games or pretending not to care. In fact, the point is the opposite. It means caring enough about yourself that you do not need to manufacture indifference. You are genuinely capable of leaving because you know that losing an inconsistent person is not the same thing as losing love.

Some of the book’s tactics feel dated now, and parts of it focus too heavily on decoding male psychology. I do not believe women should build their lives around figuring out the perfect sequence of behaviors to produce a desired reaction from men. That is still a form of performance, even when the performance is pretending not to perform.

The most useful message of the book is simpler: do not manipulate men, but also stop manipulating yourself into becoming smaller, easier, quieter and more accommodating just to keep one.

A healthy relationship should add to your life. It should not require you to audition for basic respect.

You do not need a whip to command respect. You simply have to stop handing your softness to people who mistake it for permission. Women have been conditioned to believe that boundaries make us cold, standards make us difficult, and walking away makes us mean. Fine.

Be mean.

Let them call you difficult when what they really mean is that you are no longer easy to disappoint.