The Further Adventures of Spyro - and the dubious joys of being a simp

This morning, Tyger compelled me to look up a word. Here it is:

simp (plural simps) (slang) A man who foolishly overvalues and defers to a woman, putting her on a pedestal (Wiktionary)

The reason I had to do this involves the further adventures of Spyro who is now on heat. (And a lazy aside here, on heat in British English, or in heat in American English - why would they want to be different about this too?)

Anyhow, the back story to this is that all these months - almost a year now - Antaeus has been the gruff alpha male who was not willing to engage with this  playful little puppy. Even when she grew into a playful big puppy, and in fact became taller than him, he would still growl at her if she tried to play with him. There have been moments when he has snapped at her and literally pinned her to the floor. 

For the last couple of days, however, the roles have been dramatically exchanged. He follows her around everywhere. There is not a bark nor a growl anywhere in sight, and in fact she is allowed to playfully bite him. All he does is follow her around.

Tyger, in his infinite wisdom remarked, "I knew this happened with people. I did not know that this happened in the dog world as well! He's being a SIMP!"

Just as he learnt that the animal world is not so very different from the human world, I got to learn a new word - SIMP.

Of its many definitions, this one caught the eye:

a word that everyone overuses w/out the correct definition. it means a guy that is overly desperate for women, especially if she is a bad person, or has expressed her disinterest in him whom which (sic) he continues to obsess over. They're usually just virgins that will accept coochie from anyone regardless of who they are. respecwaman ≠ simpery (by yovishi April 09, 2020, in Urban Dictionary)

At face value, this meaning is imbued with every nuance of patriarchy. "A man who foolishly overvalues..." - indeed, it is really very foolish to value or even overvalue a woman. This is the subtext of the first available meaning from Wiktionary: women must be undervalued. If you overvalue her, you are, as they say, a "simp".

The Urban Dictionary takes it a step further in adding a label - "especially if she is a bad person" - inadvertently using the stereotype of the "bad woman". These men, says UrbDic, are "usually just virgins that will accept coochie from anyone". This, of course, dissolves the woman's worth further, because by association with a "simp"-guy, she is now labeled "anyone". 

Let us be done with machismo and embrace simpery for a bit, shall we? What would the world be like, if power relations tipped over in this manner? Imagine that a woman is valued whether or not she is seen as "bad". Visualize, if you will, that "bad" doesn't play a role. Further, think about those "just virgins" willing to accept "coochie" from anyone. We could wonder about why being "just a virgin" is considered a problem in men, to the helplessness portrayed in the tag that they don't have the ability to discriminate and appear to accept "anyone regardless of who they are".

If we can embrace simpery, the world would have women who are considered worthy "regardless of who they are". Men would find the freedom to moon over "anyone regardless of who they are" without feeling the need to discriminate between "good" women and "bad" women. Especially "just virgins". Imagine how much pressure we would take off of both genders, and other genders as well, if we could stop frowning upon a chap being nice to a girl every now and then.

Let go of the macho! Embrace simpery!