Okay, I admit it—I hate the term “chick flick.” I don’t necessarily hate the movies themselves (although sometimes I do—Kate Hudson seems to have made a lot of stinkers lately), but I hate the idea that they’re somehow a lesser species than the “real thing.”

What inspired this particular rant is the news that the second Sex and the City movie is going to be made. I haven’t seen the first one because, frankly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the series (I kept finding myself going, “No, no, not that guy, you idiot!!” which is no fun for those watching TV with you). However, I found the reaction to the movie sort of…interesting.

So many guys hated it. Not just hated it—abhorred it, despised it, wanted to grind the film into dust and scatter it to the four winds. One day on NPR, I heard an interview with a columnist for a Chicago paper who was organizing a male boycott of the movie, telling his guys to refuse to go with their girlfriends if they insisted on seeing the thing. When you asked these guys why they were so dead set against the movie, their reasons were a little, well, confused. “Too materialistic,” they’d say, as if they’d suddenly become devotees of the simple life (so I guess that means forget about that 50-inch flat panel plasma screen, eh sweetie?). “Anti-male,” they’d mutter, although they were hard-pressed to explain what they meant by that. “Boring,” “awful,” “dumb.” All value judgments that obviously weren’t shared by the huge audiences that actually went to see the movie. And then, the final put-down—“It’s a chick flick.”

Now the obvious response to this should have been “And this is bad because?” Many of the men who were complaining loudly about having to see Sex and the City probably wouldn’t think twice about asking their girlfriends along to see the latest installment of Friday the 13^th or Superbad. And their girlfriends, knowing when to choose their battles, would probably go along, although they might do a quick eye-roll when the guys weren’t looking.

My point is that there are lots of “guy flicks” out there, and most women will allow themselves to be dragged off to see them without making a big deal about it because they 1) want to make their partners happy, 2) don’t care that much about what movie they see, and 3) can sit through ninety minutes of something gross, knowing that at least they’ll get dinner or a snack afterward. Guys, on the other hand, throw hissy fits. It’s as if they’re somehow convinced that seeing a movie designed for a female audience will reduce their manhood.

So okay gents, let’s put this out there where it can be addressed. If your manhood is so shaky that it can be undermined by Sex and the City, you’ve got bigger problems than your girlfriend’s taste in movies. The next time she wants to go see something with Matthew McConaughey or Owen Wilson or Colin Firth, think about the last time you took her to see a movie that featured vomit humor or jokes about someone consuming bodily fluids unaware or decapitations, impalements, and zombie lunches. Then just guts up and zip it. If you absolutely can’t bear to watch it, take a nap. Or eat a slice of pizza. Or, if you’re in a place like the wonderful Alamo Drafthouse, have a beer. Have two. It’s only a couple of hours.

And trust me, she’s worth it.