Every woman I know who’s tried online dating has gotten all sorts of weird and sleazy messages from guys, from crude sexual come-ons (“sorry for being forward but id love to cum on your glasses :)”) to terrible “sexy” jokes (“So ay girl, you looking for a stud? Because I got the std, all I need is u :)”) to fetish-tastic examples of Too Much Information (“I WISH I WERE A DOG SO I COULD SUCK MYSELF OFF”). (No, guys, appending a smiley face emoticon does not make it ok to be a grotesque douchebag.)
You always wonder what guys like this are thinking. With the dog lover at the end, it’s clear he was trying to rattle a woman who hadn’t replied to two earlier messages of increasing creepiness. With the others, I suppose they think there’s always a tiny chance that some woman out there is as desperate and horny and undiscerning as they are.
What’s stranger are those who lead not with sexual come ons but with blatant misogyny. Do men really think that women melt at the thought of dating a man who hates half the human race? Or are they just looking for yet another chance to mansplain their Men’s Rights bullshit to the world?
Here are a couple of examples of this strange and unsuccessful approach to winning over women which I found on the delightful and disturbing blog The Ladies of OkCupid, which documents the quests of three women searching for love online.
Sometimes the misogyny sneaks up on you, as in this OkCupid profile from a “laid-back” slut-shamer (who was clearly not an English major):
This fellow, by contrast, launches into the misogyny right from the start, suggesting that the woman he’s writing is exceptional, simply because she’s not stupid and illogical like the rest of her gender:
This “edgy” fellow tries to break the ice with some lovely rape jokes:
But the strangest one I’ve seen so far comes from this dude, who uses his OKCupid profile as an opportunity to mansplain why feminism is eeeeeevil:
Oh, and that list keeps going; it’s one hundred items long.
As Jasmine from The Ladies of OKCupid writes,
Delusional and repulsive takes on a whole new level with this one, because I really don’t think he’s kidding. He has every social media outlet known to man with all the same crap, and his profile is HUGE. So either he’s attempting to become the ultimate Canadian troll, or he really thinks there’s a woman out there who exists like this AND would be interested in him, of all people. Really? He offers little more than a receding hairline and an outrageous sense of entitlement in return.
To paraphrase Animal House, delusional and repulsive is no way to go through life.
Happily for The Ladies of OKCupid, and the rest of those ladies seeking love online, not all the messages are like this. For example, take this message about a basic but delicious foodstuff:
Also, the woman who got the message above about that thinking-outside-the-box use for her glasses? She stayed on OkCupid, and is now in a happy relationship with a dude she met there who is not a shitlord.
WAAAAAAAH, THEY TWEAKIN’ MAH PRIVILEGE
Kindly shut up, you vile, hypocritical, pusher of double standards, revolting misandrist sack of shit.
“Kindly shut up, you vile, hypocritical, pusher of double standards, revolting misandrist sack of shit.”
And also, stop using shaming language! You vile misandrist sack of shit!
loll.. this coming from Mr “You go ahead and be racist son, don’t mind the mean misandrist feminists”. I misspoke, I meant to say LOLLLL
Nanasha:
My view is, you can have whatever, and however many, dealbreakers and preferences you like, as long as you realize that such a list is a fact about you, not about the people you’re pursuing, and that if it narrows your options a bit (and 100 preferences, let alone dealbreakers, will whatever they are) that’s something you’re doing, not other people cruelly depriving you of sex/partnership/etc.
Also, as long as you restrict the list to its intended domain, and don’t declare anyone who doesn’t meet the requirements bad or unworthy.
I have a feeling that our friend here doesn’t meet any of those as-long-ases.
ozy:
I wonder if he even knows the difference. Does it even occur to him that it’s possible for a man to like a woman?
Cliff:
That’s only harassment if you’re a puling whiner. If you were tough like Jean here you’d shrug it off like high-class people do.
(My girlfriend reports very little street harassment, presumably at least in part because she keeps her earphones on and literally doesn’t hear it.)
The thought occurs to me, when Jean mentions London and NYC are we supposed to be impressed by the exotic locales zie’s been to and zir jet-setting lifestyle? Because you know New York is exclusive and posh and shit; they certainly wouldn’t let the likes of me in there.
(Though Jean is Pell, so I guess so)
Varpole:
I’m not sure Jean has ever been to New York. The knowledge on display looks supiciously like what you’d know if you’ve only read about the city, along with (neighborhood-)name-dropping that comes across as … a little too desperate. But I admit there’s really nothing Jean can say that would prove otherwise.
Now then, Varpole, what is Jean’s gender, do you think? Because you’ve used both male and female pronouns.
Ugh:
Nineteen Eighty-Four was written by a man. Men can’t write fiction, Ergo, Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn’t exist. QED.
Cliff:
OMG! I’ve come up with this exact analogy! We don’t say “you’re not allowed to have that name,” we don’t say “you don’t know what your name is,” we don’t say “that’s not really a name” (much), etc.
captainbathrobe:
Tell me about it! It’s now over an hour after I swore to myself I’d stop reading this and do my job.
Though I’m freelancing at home, so it’s not like my boss knows what I do on the computer.
Unlike “mangina”, which is totes meaningful and important and not used to do any of those things.
Joe: All this zie / hir / cis / womyn bollocks is just a load of Newspeak horseshit that only exists so the user can be all smug about their ridiculous political correctness. Just stop it. You’re not fooling anyone but yourself.
That sounds just like the rants against the dropping of thee/thou in favor of the generic “you” when speaking to people who aren’t one’s social equals.
Viscaria: Since we’re talking linguistics, Varpole, maybe you should look up the concept of “linguistic inflation.” It might help explain why, when you use the word “vile”, it no longer produces any sort of emotional response in your audience.
He can’t have been talking about linguistics… that’s something obtuse morons do to pretentiously show how educated they are.
Ah should have joined this thread earlier…
First, as a genderqueer borderline intersex person, we can damned well speak for ourselves about what marginalizes us and what does not. Zie is a term that we often prefer for ourselves, Joe is a fucking transphobic oppressive assface who should fuck off.
Onto Marxism, I am also a Marxist. Of course, as Joe is too fucking much of a fuckhead to actually read Marx (typical), we’ll get into steps for poorly formed anti-Marxist attacks:
Step One: Harp on Stalin and Mao as much as humanly possible, even if you need to invent or exaggerate grossly at times to do it (Mao typically gets blamed for famines and the weather, this is conflated with shit that he actually did do)
Step Two: Employ a massive double standard and ignore the violence and crimes of capitalists and capitalist countries. Genocide of Native Americans? Corporate human rights abused in Africa? Segregation? Colonialism? Remember, it isn’t a human rights abuse if the US gov’t sterilized up to 40% of an ethnic minority and allows you to knock out part of the brains of disabled people with an ice pick for most of the 20th century…that’s not oppression, genocide, violence, or evidence that capitalists do damage. But don’t you dare not blame Mao for bad weather.
Step Three: Ignore whenever Marxists and Socialists do good things or struggle against oppression. Not only was Orwell a socialist, but he wrote 1984 as largely a response to a leftist Russian writer who had been amongst the anti-Stalinist and anti-Leninist Bolsheviks (Orwell wanted to point out that Capitalist Totalitarianism could result in the same evils as Stalinist type totalitarianism). We also won’t mention the involvement of the Communist Party in the US in organizing sharecroppers, how the Socialist Party of America lent heavy support to the Civil Rights Movement, etc.
Step Four: Ignore oppression and violence whenever it’s targeted at Marxist or Leftists. Red Scare? What Red Scare? Communism is still grounds for deportation in the US. Marxists and other leftists were rounded up by the tens of thousands during the 1910s and 1920s in the US for jailing and deportation. The Socialist Party of America ran an entire campaign for a candidate who was incarcerated for speaking his anti-war views in public. Most of US modern US Free Speech law is built on cases of Marxists opposing political and human rights violations. Marxists were one of the groups targeted by the Holocaust. None of this is worth consideration, because Marxists are evil so oppressing them is okay, right?
Congratulations, by ignoring history and reality, you’ve reached your goal of trying to badmouth Marxism without actually having to think about it or deal with it at all! Success!
Also, re: Orwell and Catalonia, this is how Orwell characterizes it in “Why I Write” http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw/:
Okay, this is the bit where I ask if Joe knows what a “Trotskyist” is. Is that some sort of non-Communist, non-Marxist thing being defended there? Do tell, Joe, do tell.
Realize also that “Communists” can refer to a specific political party or to communists in general. Sort of like republican doesn’t mean the same thing when discussing the French Revolution as it means when discussing the last US election. Referring to the Communist Party as “The Communists” doesn’t make the Marxist leftist parties with other names not communists somehow.
But… but are we vile, though? Is there any way to be sure? Could someone ask Steele if he thinks we’re vile?
Well, regardless, here’s the situation: gaslighting is a real thing. It points to an observable behaviour in the real world; one that almost all abusers have in their toolbox — it was definitely a go-to for my abuser.
Now, you might argue that a given incident is not actually an example of gaslighting, and you’re probably an asshole for doing it (depends), but at least you’re acknowledging that gaslighting happens. If you claim the word is meaningless, you’re denying that it’s even a real thing; and by doing so, you’re empowering abusers to continue gaslighting without any consequences. If you really cared about the rights of men, you wouldn’t do that; because abuse may disproportionately affect certain genders, and it may occur in gendered ways, ultimately anyone could be a victim of abuse. Including men. Why would you make it harder for them to escape than it already is?
@All, please forgive my overuse of semi-colons. It’s bed time.
Because while abuse may disproportionately affect blah blahdyblahdyblah.
Amazing how one missed word can turn a clunky sentence into a nearly indecipherable one.
I’d argue the Holodomor was genocidal in intent. It was certainly designed, and it’s purpose was political, and the effects of it are still being felt today.
But Joe is appalled that people don’t think exactly the same things about what happened under Lenin and Stalin and Kruschev. He is, of course, willing to gloss the Spanish and Portuguese and English and Dutch and French in the Americas.
Not as if they did anything evil in the name of capitalism.
Nope, that was just good clean fun.
This is the same guy that said, Seriously, if you have political entity X that adheres to doctrine Y and slaughters millions of people and it happens over and over again in multiple instances where political entities adhere to doctrine Y, it is asinine to deny that doctrine Y leads to / facilitates / is an apologia for mass murder.
Joe: @ugh – No, I haven’t read Marx. Life is too short. I’ve judged Marx by the deeds of those who claimed to be following him. I judge most people by their deeds rather than their words.
So you are not only a moron, but a hypocritical one. You aren’t judging Marx by his deeds but by the deeds of others. Others whom you can only associate to Marx by their words
If I have done Marx a disservice, and he wanted to abolish the state (altho’ thats the first I’ve ever heard of it, so I suspect you may be full of shit)
If you’d actually read any of his words, you might have some idea of what he was about, but no… you are too pure for that, you have other people’s actions to judge Marx’s ideas by.
Joe: @Ugh – you are conflating english traditions that were bundled up altogether as “socialism” with Marxism. Orwell inherited traditions that were started by people like the Diggers, the Levellers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs etc. etc.
And when Marx was sitting in the British Library he was drawing on his knowledge of all those movements. How? Because he read.
Varpole: I also find said butthurt in this thread more than a little ironic, and Joe’s comments very hard to get worked up over in the context of Boobzland itself. From a utilitarian perspective, it is orders of magnitude worse to be misandrist than transphobic, because men make up 50% of the population, whereas folks who identify as transgender make up a fraction of a percent.
Ignoring the stupidity of the last sentence in that nonsense, the issue of worrying about the group which is smaller is is that they are smaller, and so more easily abused, marginalised, and oppressed.
Men, as a class, aren’t any of those things. As a man I am not scared that someone who finds out I am a man will try to kill me, and get away with it because of “gay panic”.
Which is why, as ever, you are wrong.
Jean: . I can assure you that upper class white men never harass people and that even their children are well behaved.
I can assure you that (being an urban creature, and living in three of the great urban centers of the US, in my adult life) you are full of shit.
Because I’ve been harassed by “upper class white men” who thought I was a woman (long hair and a slender build), unless you want to tell me that a $2,000 bespoke suit from Savile Row, outside the Pacific Stock Exchange was being worn by a poor dude.
Jean: lol Don’t hold your breathe pal. The proles never revolt or do much of anything in life.
That’s why France is still a monarchy, the Romanov’s still rule Russia, Iran is run by the Pahlevi’s, and the Philipines are under Marcos, and Nicaragua is run by the Somosa family, Libya is under Qaddafi’s control, Mubarak is runnoing Egypt, Syria is at Peace, Vietnam, Morroco and Algeria are part of France, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile are parts of Spain and Brazil belongs to Portugal.
India is part of Britain and Ceylon, Pakistan and Bangladesg are part of India, while the Manchus are still in charge of China.
Joe: I knew about Farsi already, obviously, but why learn one language that will only allow you to communicate with the inhabitants of one country when you can learn another that will allow you to communicate with the inhabitants* of the whole region (albeit some of them in their second language) see also Portugese vs. Spanish.
Actually… most of them in their second language, because the Arabic Language family is so broad that the various, “dialects” are mutually unintelligible, and the “common language” isn’t used for actual communication.
Classical Arabic is a fossil, much as Latin was in the 18th century.
and jean is pell… how many bites at the apple has Mr. Clift taken?
@Hershele Ostropoler – Oh totally, if I were to make a list of qualities I was looking for, I’d have three categories- “things that are dealbreakers,” “things that are cool that I like that would be fun if you liked too but are not mandatory or anything” and “things we’ll find out about each other and probably see whether or not they are positive, neutral or negative to any potential relationship.”
And to be fair, these are qualities IN A RELATIONSHIP that I would be looking for- not necessarily appearance-based stuff. Things like being trustworthy and kind or respecting others and having similar beliefs when it comes to things like religion, parenting style, and monetary budgeting.
And obviously, I do have a couple physically-based things like “must adhere to a certain level of hygiene” but I also know people who don’t mind being with people who don’t like bathing. There are all types and that’s the beauty of relationships- not any two are alike.
But yes, “requirements” especially requirements that assume that if someone does not fit them, that they are bad and icky, are shitty.
It may not be good for ME, but at least I’m not pigheaded enough to think that everyone must conform to what *I* want to justify their existence.
And PS: I’m not quite sure I’d ever actually use this newfangled online dating thing if I were to find myself single. I tend to find it hard to connect with someone unless I’ve met them in person- there’s just something about face-to-face contact, hearing their voice in proximity (and not through digital devices like phone/skype), and smelling their innate scent (I have a very strong olfactory sense, which is why basic hygiene is so important to me in a relationship), so it would be hard to feel comfortable meeting someone for express dating purposes without actually knowing them in person because while it’s easy to make friends online, there’s a whole bunch of physical things that go into how I become physically attracted to an individual, and I would hate to hit it off online and then find that we had absolutely no hope for a relationship in person.
But that’s just me. I probably wouldn’t go looking for love- but instead look for companionship and friendship in those around me, and from there maybe meet someone who I find appealing and vice versa. If not, that’s really not a big deal for me- I’ve got many friends, family members, coworkers and other social contacts, my children- plus I love some good ol’ fashioned time to myself. I love my husband and feel blessed to have him in my life (and, as we both joke together, we hope to go out of the world at the same or semi-same time because a world without us being able to be together would really suck for a really long time), but I wouldn’t say that having a romantic/sexual relationship is mandatory for me.
That’s one thing that strikes me as odd with these MRA types. They hate women, yet they expect women to be EVERYTHING to them- mother, caregiver, best friend, etc. They want to treat women like dirt, like objects to abuse and use and throw out, yet they want women to treat THEM like all social contacts rolled into one. There was actually an article about this awhile back- how a lot of men who divorce or break up from a long-term relationship often have a harder time of it because a lot of men do not diversify their relationships with platonic friends or family members- they just tie everything up in their relationship partner, so when things go bad, they don’t have as much of a support group as the average woman, who tends to have the kinds of familial and friendship bonds to cope better. This is obviously not true all the time, and has quite the heterosexual bent to it, but I have found that to some extent, it can be quite true, especially if said guy has internalized a lot of sexism.
Varpole of Steele: Kindly shut up, you vile, hypocritical, pusher of double standards, revolting misandrist sack of shit
AWWWWWW! WAS HE TWEAKING YOUR PRIVILEGE?????
What I find odd about the “requirements” conversation is that everyone has some. Nobody is truly willing to accept just anyone, we all have preferences, and as long as those preferences are about “this is what works for me” rather than “if you are not like this you are worthless as a person”, then why is it a problem? Nobody needs to be attractive to everyone, or attracted to everyone – it’s a matter of finding a good match.
@CassandraSays- I’ve always found that anyone who says they don’t have “requirements” inevitably comes out with long lists of incredibly detailed requirements the second that someone shows interest, and then goes back to complaining that “nobody wants them” when the interaction inevitably falls through.
When I was a young girl, I used to wish that someone would like me, anybody really, because I wanted to prove my mom wrong when she told me that I was fat/unattractive/would never be loved by any guy. But then I actually *had* the experience of guys pursuing me who I wasn’t actually attracted to, and I finally understood, ‘Ohhhhhh, that’s what other people were talking about when they were annoyed that someone they didn’t like liked them.’
And as I grew older and realized that, hey, I am actually an OK person! And hey, there are lots of cool things to do in life that don’t revolve around being in a relationship with someone to prove I am a Worthwhile Human Being, I finally relaxed about this stuff a lot more.
But it was pretty harrowing as a young person to feel inadequate and incomplete because I was willing to be loved by anyone, and felt like no one cared, which made me into a non-person as far as I was concerned.
Personal requirements are good. Mandates for what everyone should have to be like in order to be treated with basic human dignity and respect are bad. At least, that’s the way I see it. >_>
It’s definitely been my experience that it’s the people who themselves have a 50-point list with footnotes who complain about how unfair it is that other people have dating requirements. Which is hilarious. I bet the guy in the OP has complained bitterly about how unfair it is that women have requirements that end up meaning they won’t date him, and that he doesn’t see any conflict between that and his own list.
25 DATING REQUIREMENTS FOR MANBOOBZ TROLLS
1. Your life’s main objective should be to grow Western birth rate.
2. You must be obsessed with proper grammar.
3. You must be an anarchist.
4. You must not be Mu5lim, Ch15t1an, but 6udd1st is acceptable.
5. You must not be Chinese, Iranian, African-American.
6. Must love GB.
7. You must adore 1984 because—Julia! –That back-stabber!
8. You must not be vile.
9. You must not be from Podunk. Podunk is not New Jersey.
10. You have never experienced any street harassment.
11. You are unsure which wave number of Feminism we’re on.
12. You think Feminist plots are trying to undermine population growth in the West.
13. You must believe I am upper class when I tell you I am working the night shift in a warehouse in Jersey.
14. You are able to mentally sustain through long and rambling diatribes on Spain and Stalin and Econ.
15. You must agree to rate genocides on a scale of best to worst.
16. You must indulge my fantasies of creating a cooperative and peaceful Anarchist society using non-coercive tactics.
17. You must be against Marxism! 🙂
18. You believe The Patriarchy is a thing of the distant past.
19. You must believe that the fall of Rome might have been prevented if it wasn’t for the gains in equality of ancient Roman women.
20. You must read the books I tell you to read.
21. You must stfu if I have a strong opinion on books I have never read.
22. You must speak for trans folks, even if you do not know jack about the trans plight.
23. You must be informed that in China the law is no girl babies ever ever ever…
24. You must not be PC or even own a PC.
25. You must go to sleep at a decent hour.
OMG I can think of more, but I forget why I even started!?
As for harassment on the street: I am from St. Louis, so I am sure y’all trolls think it’s the ‘country’, but I assure you, it is full-on urban. **Shout out to home-g from Joplin earlier in the comments!! I have been ‘hollered at’, as they say out in the Midwest, but mostly people scream “FAT BITCH!” or some variant. It has always ever been a white man. By Missouri standards, I think I am an average fluffy 33 year old Mom! WTF? Damn MRAs.
Ooh, that makes three of us from Missouri now. *is a KC girl* 🙂