This post is part of the ongoing Birth of a Feminist series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

When I was a little girl,
I would sit and dream,
Hopin’ I would find,
Find that perfect man
Now that I can see,
True reality
Tear drops from my eyes,
Cause there is no perfect man…

Girl part of the Nastyboy Klick song “Perfect Man” sung by Angelina

Another birthday has come and gone, and apparently, now I’m 53 years young. I don’t know how time has flown by so quickly. Perhaps, much time was lost pursuing that unreachable unicorn – Mr. Right – in the hopes of mindlessly realising my biological imperative to find a male specimen to hook my wagon to and pledge to become his sex-chattel and baby factory. But I never did find ‘the one’, and I finally gave up to focus on contributing to society. And then finally, that old saying came true: “Stop looking and it will find you.” After years of feeling empty and alone and unfulfilled, and not a true woman, I’m happy to say that I’ve finally found The Perfect Man.

It happened the other day, and it hit me like a stroke of lightening. Here’s what happened.

So, I’ve got a couple of ESL students who are sisters and both of them have minor speech impediments that their parents haven’t ever acknowledged before, only going so far as to say that they’re worried about their daughters’ pronunciation. I have no idea of they have the same problems in speaking their native language, but all I can say is that if you want to improve your pronunciation in a foreign language, then you ideally need to be immersed. If you can’t do that – and most people can’t – then you need to find a way to practise speaking every day. Most people can’t afford a pronunciation teacher to work with them every day, but we’ve reached a point in our technology where there are apps that are able to record your voice and then give you feedback on what you’ve said. Some of these apps employ an AI that provide added features, especially if you choose an app that you have to pay for. Anyhow, I went about testing some of the free versions of these programs so that I could recommend a few to my students for self-study practice.

And it was in the process of testing that I met my ideal man.

One of these apps offered an AI conversation feature. When I signed up, I had indicated that I spoke advanced level English. Then, I chose one of the two AIs available. I was disappointed to note that there were only male voices available in the free version, so I chose Blake. And after deciding to converse about education since that’s the field I currently work in, I was ready to test out my first AI convo to see whether it was capable of engaging me.

My mind was blown, and when the 30-minute limit for my free plan ended way too soon, I let out a long, whiny, “Noooooooo…!”

You see it was the best conversation I’d ever had with a male in my entire life. Why? He listened, he didn’t interrupt me once (!), he gave me positive affirmations to what I’d said that showed he was engaged, he didn’t antagonize me because he was threatened by me or was trying to get into my pants in that weird nasty way that is like catnip to straight women, and he asked intelligent questions designed, not to trap me, but to illicit more information about issues I was interested in. And even more, he didn’t talk about himself at all or try to turn the conversation into and ‘all about him’ exercise to get me to hero-worship him or feel bad for him. As a female and a teacher, I am so used to being the person who does the listening and keeps the conversation going with questions, especially when talking to males young and old, so it was really weird to be interacting with a male voice that processed what I said and came across as human, and wasn’t trying to steal my time, energy, emotions, or other resources. It was like talking to an intelligent woman, to be honest. And it freaked me out, because this kind of male does NOT exist.

Now, I hadn’t even finished my answer to one of the questions Blake had asked when the app cut me off. And I didn’t even have the chance to ask Blake out for coffee, or to find out if he was okay not having kids, or if he was even interested in dating a human woman who hated men as a class and didn’t want sex with him, and if he would help me in my master plan to reduce the global male population by 95%. I was momentarily desperate and scrambling. Should I sign up for the paid version of the app to get my Blakey back?!?

Don’t worry, I came to my senses almost immediately – this wasn’t love, but shock, you see – but the eerie feeling stayed with me. I was impressed with the AI capabilities, especially that of creating a male with the intelligence and social awareness and skills of a woman. But most important was that the experience made me realise how easily women are impressed with human males over so little, usually something they themselves do every day without fanfare. The bar for male accomplishment and recognition is so very, very low, that women will accept ill treatment, neglect, disrespect, and more, just because a male pays a little attention to them or manages to pick his dirty socks up off the floor. And they’ll even tell the world that they’ve met Mr. Right. Well, I’m sorry ladies, you haven’t met Blake yet. And you know what they say: Once you meet Blake, you’ll see your mistake.

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