I'm older, gay, and hopelessly intellectual. Over the years I've had many close relationships with similarly intellectual straight guys who liked me for my smarts and conversation. You'd be shocked how often girlfriends or new wives put a stop to it.

I'd known one such friend (platonic) for more than 20 years. He divorced a rare understanding woman to marry a younger woman who'd worked for a year to reel him in (he is 6'3" and extremely handsome). The new wife was a classic narcissist. Her only interest was fashion. My friend, it spite of his alpha qualities, instantly devolved into a beta. He became her fashion accessory. She changed his wardrobe and his hair. To flatter her interest in fashion, he started a blog about fashion. He asked me to comment on his blog. I told him it was the silliest damned thing I'd ever seen. After all, he and I had an always-be-honest policy that had worked for us for more than 20 years.

The narcissist wife was furious. She ordered him to throw me out of his life. Criticism of her interest in fashion was not to be permitted, and no more gay friends allowed. He yelled at me on the phone for an hour, saying everything she'd told him to say. It was like he was suddenly an alien.

Second case: For nine years, I had a covert non-platonic relationship with a straight-identified alpha guy, 6'1" and extremely handsome, ski instructor, graduate degrees, all that. A new girlfriend was snooping on his computer and found our emails. She ordered him to throw me out of his life and stop communicating with me. She even wrote the go-away email that he sent me. I went away. But to his credit, two months later he got back in touch with me. By then I had moved across the country, but he and I still exchange emails and fantasize about the good times we used to have.

Third case: A new straight co-worker fell for me (intellectually). He had invited me to dinner or drinks a few times, and we were beginning a fantastic new platonic relationship. He was (you guessed it) 6'4" and extremely handsome. His girlfriend didn't like it and told him to cool it with me. I never saw him socially again.

I could go on, but you get the idea. You might ask why such tall, handsome, smart alpha guys allow themselves to be controlled this way. The answer: brutal gay shaming. In my experience, women, not men, are the primary enforcers of sexual prohibitions. Most men (except for uber-Puritans like preachers) are usually pretty relaxed about it.

For the past four years, I've had a part-time housemate who is a writer and adventurer and is only here about half the time. He is very smart and very handsome and is semi-famous for his books. He has to beat women away with a stick. He says he is terrified every time he introduces a woman friend to me, partly because he knows how women have treated me in the past. So far, we've not had a problem because he is nowhere close to committing to a female and is only interested in pussy. But if he ever wants to get serious, our friendship will be in danger, and we both know it.

It didn't use to be this way. I could go on and on about this, because cultural history is one of my semi-academic interests. But it goes back to Rome and the Roman religion. Before Rome and the puritanical Roman religion, men ruled. Women had no expectation of controlling a man emotionally or sexually and no cultural tools with which to control men. A marriage contract was not very different from a real estate transaction.

Now women rule. We are all Puritans now, but some men are finally wising up to how radical feminism is one of the key refuges of Puritanism in our time. Women love Puritanism because it gives them monopoly power over men, with the power of the state and the coercive power of culture fully behind it. All male orgasms have to occur inside a pussy. Anything else is brutally policed (think pornography).

All men pay the price, including us gay guys. I'm glad you straight guys are pushing back. When you push back, remember how things used to be before Puritanism took over the world. It's not really necessary to re-invent the wheel, because historically and anthropologically, our Puritan culture is pretty much the only one that has allowed women to rule and has given them police power over men.