The other day, a friend of mine told me about someone on Twitter who had been tweeting all sorts of nonsense about men. 

Twitter user @JmaalJusta_Jedi asserted that men are not psychologically built to be with just one woman. According to Jedi, no matter how much a man loves a woman, he will eventually cheat on her. 

“You don’t cheat on your gf you’re probably gay,” @JmaalJusta_Jedi said, initiating a stream of tweets and arguments about the subject. 

As some readers may know, I am both a psychology and women’s and gender studies student, so this guy’s sentiment disturbed me deeply. 

First of all, what if a guy che at s on his girlfriend with a man? Still gay? @JmaalJusta_Jedi cited a Psychology Today article as evidence for men’s innate need and tendency to cheat. The article, “Are women more sexually faithful than men?” drew few connections between male biology as compared to female biology posed against societal relationship standards. 

The article hinges on the idea that, because they produce a lot of sperm, men must be made for a polyamorous lifestyle. Evidently, according to the article, husbands have more opportunities to cheat than their wives and are more inclined to do so. 

Yeah, that’s society. 

Just because there is a tendency for something to happen within a culture doesn’t mean it’s biological, innate or instinctual. 

I’m sure every college student has heard correlation does not prove causation. Yet, we have people such as @JmaalJusta_Jedi and his Twitter followers who agreed seeing trends in society and deducing that because they are trends, they are natural. 

I’m not going to explain why our sperm count, which varies drastically between every man, or our testosterone, the biological fallback for many false sex-based claims, have little bearing on our tendency to cheat, there are myriad resources and scholarly articles that explain it better than I could. 

However, I will point out that there is some vague pointlessness in saying we are innately inclined to behave any way within social constructs such as relationships. 

I will not grace the idea that men are nothing more than sentient beasts born to have sex with anything we find attractive — willing or unwilling. 

So if it isn’t biology, what ma ke s us men cheat? It’s probably something to do with people like @JmaalJusta_Jedi insisting we’re supposed to. It’s probably something to do with our shaming of men’s mistresses more than the men. 

When we think of the ideal man, we think of a Don Draper figure. He’s tall, dark, handsome, mysterious, cunning, smooth and, above all, promiscuous. 

Albeit a great show, people fail to understand that the gender roles put forth in Mad Men are supposed to be representative of the ’60s — not of today. 

I’m not saying the AMC show is responsible for patriarchal double standards, nor am I attributing men’s higher rate of promiscuity to television. I’m pointing out that we still, for some reason, think of manhood as defined largely in part by our sexual prowess and detachment from giving a heck about romance.