? Why women find date-rapey parasites who wear capes compelling must have something to do with deeply primal fears . A vampire is a monster , who looks , acts , and talks like a man . Who is passionate , romantic , and tortured . To surrender to this character is to play with fire . The vampire , in many ways , is the prototype of the bad boy . Women love bad boys - they 're exciting , and the chance to change him , to break him like a horse , must be an irresistible challenge . If self-destruction were n't seductive on some superficial level , then no one would ever need rehab . But I am like most guys in that I am a fan of zombie flicks . `` 28 Days Later '' may possibly be my favorite movie ever . I 'm also a fan of alien and robot movies , but more often than not , it seems women are more adept at dispatching those . Zombie movies indulge male power-fulfillment fantasies . We enjoy pretending to be dragon-slaying knights or bad-guy-perforating cowboys or Bruce Willis , saving our ex-wife from
-LRB- The Frisky -RRB- -- When I try to explain my ardor for HBO 's trashy-fabulous soap opera `` True Blood '' to my dude friends , they either shrug and change the topic , or question whether I 've been writing for ladyblogs for too long and am suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome . Dudes just do n't dig bloodsuckers , since vampires pretty much look like girls . We prefer zombies , because we love chainsaws , flamethrowers , and samurai swords . And because , on some level , we know that besides being vehicles for sperm , our other important , if lesser , genetic imperative is to defend our loved ones from hordes of unthinking , flesh-eating metaphors for current social anxieties . To most guys , vampires are the monster movie equivalent of that sensitive man-sponge in college who plays acoustic guitar in order to seduce chicks . They 're what you get when you cross your average Renaissance Fair enthusiast with a mosquito . And what 's with their greatest weaknesses being most kinds of Italian food , Sunday school , and the sun , which helps flowers grow ? Really