By David Futrelle
Hey ladies, if you’re so into EQUALITY why aren’t you asking MEN out on DATES? CHECKMATE FEMINAZIS.
That’s more or less the argument of one apparently lonely Men’s Rights Redditor, who recently posted his plaintive (if also slightly belligerent) complaint on the Men’s Rights subreddit today.
“Every girl knows that guys prefer to [be] asked out,” wrote TC1827, “yet so few will do it cause they can’t get that equality goes both ways.”
“It’s a straight up equality issue,” he added in a comment, “with women being unwilling to give up their privilege.”
Ah yes, the privilege of getting their DMs invaded by horny weirdos bearing dick pics! The privilege of being propositioned on the train while wearing headphones with their nose buried in a book! The privilege of, well, you get the point.
Happily, TC1827 has a solution to the problem, and it just happens to be the same as Jordan Peterson’s.
Bring back socially enforced monogamy so that dating is less about sex and more about a life partnership. And socialize equality from a young age so that each gender has an equal chance of being asked out.
So … bring back a more patriarchal system, then “socialize” boys and girls to act in a less patriarchal way? That’s sure to be a grand success.
Or, I dunno, TC1827 and those who agree with him could go sign up for Bumble, the dating app in which the women have to make the first move for any conversations to happen at all.
Somehow I suspect that TC1827 still wouldn’t get the attention he thinks he deserves.
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I have the problem with the guys I wanted to date being pretty thick and oblivious. Even my second date with my husband when were first started I was trying to read the room and leaving pretty obvious hints that “hey if you want to, we can have sex tonight”. didn’t work. Third date I wore a plunging neckline just to see if he was even sexually interested in me. Didn’t take long to figure out that was a yes, but when he was dropping me off he just went to kiss me and leave so I was like “do you want to come inside?”
“it’s late, do you have class tomorrow?”
“no and I mean you could sleep here if you wanted”
“where would I sleep?”
“….in my bed with me?”
“what?”
“I think your really sexy and I like being around you a lot so far, so do you want to come in and have sex?”
“what? really?”
smacks head on wall. Been trying to get into your pants all night my dude, didn’t pick up on that did ya.
re: the doll fetish –
My big, strapping cousin at 6’4″ married a 5’3″ lady. Years later, we were all* in Vegas for his mom’s birthday. Cousin’s wife told us all the story of how she pursued my cousin because she wanted to have tall kids (I always kind of wondered.) They have three that all went to college on basketball scholarships, so she got her wish.
That explained why Cousin always looked a tad embarrassed in all their pics together, anyway! They are still married and recent pics of them on FB show him as less self-conscious about towering over his wife.
* As in, said cousin and his wife, his two brothers, their wives, his two sisters, and their parents, along with me and my dad. The shortest in that family was a petite 5’11, not counting the spouses. I was the tiniest of the blood kin at 5’7″. We were quite the herd!
tl;dr Not all big men?
Heh, I’m hella shy (not to mention hella thick and oblivious) when it comes to inter-personal things, I’ve only had a few girlfriends but they’ve all asked me out. Which is good becuae I’m in my forties now I and I doubt I’d have worked up the nerve to go ahead and ask even by now.
@Jesalin
I’m also really shy and I have a hard time asking people out. Plus I have an unfortunate tendency to come across as very awkward when I try to ask people out.
I’ve gotten better at it, but I still get nervous about asking out.
I usually make the first move but in that bumbling way Hugh Grant does at the end of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. They take pity on me and usually cut me off with a kiss. Am a woman dating women though.
Hello Mammothers! I’m a long-time lurker, and you guys are great and I wanna comment more. Thought this would be a good place to start.
The gender inequality of “asking out” was something I thought about a lot way back in high school. I grew up in a very, uh, “traditional” sort of area, and it bothered me that I was expected to be the one to ask out the girl. (Especially since I got rejected a lot.) But I don’t even get how someone could blame that on feminism – it seems like it’s been that way for centuries, and it’s one of my favorite examples of how the patriarchy hurts boys and men.
I am also a shy person, and garbage at reading social cues, so I pretty much stopped asking people out after high school. And I have never been asked out in my life, but that’s probably as much because I’m terrible at meeting people and I never get out as much as I should.
The gender inequality in catcalling and genital pics is fascinating to me. Like, I’m not gonna question that women find them unwelcome, and I get that if women were to do it they’d get slut-shamed. But I feel like I’d kinda like it… at least for a while. Wouldn’t other hetero guys? Am I just weird?
I can only flirt when I’ve been drinking because of the shy. That’s better for casual sex than dating. Luckily I’m aro and am ok not having a boyfriend or husband, because I’m pretty abysmal at getting dates!
@Catalpa
And I honestly think that may in fact be the overall rub of the issue: for guy’s like this it’s just performative jockeying over who’s “Alphas” (a term what makes no sense and is in fact nonsense when applied to the human creature and social moors; human’s are not wolves).
The line of thinking these guys run under just seems like just major self-owns.
Maybe because some of them want to feel like the masculine protector and tiny women are perceived as more in need of protection? Or more receptive to being protected? This is probably more likely a reason among that demographic if you notice they will only date small women.
@ Hambeast: your cousin and his wife (and maybe you too) might enjoy the Webtoon strip My Giant Nerd Boyfriend (she’s 5’2″ (158 cm) while he’s over 6’6″ (199 cm)). It’s cute, and heartwarming as often as it’s just plain funny. They seem to have a pretty healthy relationship.
I suspect muscular men date small women because they think it makes them look more swole in comparison.
I’m kind of embarrassed about this because it sounds immature and I know it is but I secretly like it when if I like a guy I can find out from a friend if he’s interested before I ask him out and if he’s ok with how I like to dress and with my outfits being my art. It’s kind of funny this thread came up now because there’s this guy who I see in the coffee shop by our hair salon and who came into our salon once. He seems really cool and if he is cool he wouldn’t assume that I like him because of how I was at work because it’s my job to be sweet and attentive that way to everyone who comes in to us. So I have to find out if he might like me because if he does I really want to make an amazing outfit to be in when I ask him out and then another to go out with him if he says yes.
@Lainy and Hambeast
I know what you mean about the doll fetish thing. I see that from creepy guys who don’t understand why I dress how I do and what my outfits mean to me. For me it’s not just being petite but that combined with dressing the way I do. I am shy to admit this and sorry everyone if TMI but I like being like a doll sometimes but only with a guy I’m really attracted to who I choose. I think I can be a doll and have my own fetish of being a doll but still be a doll with a mind and be a woman with my free will who does only what she wants.
As for the main thing I LOVE tall men. I know the creeps will get mad but tough shit.
Prith kDar – I’ve been down the Webtoon rabbit hole for too long, now. My Giant Nerd Boyfriend is very cute.
I’ve actually known three other petite women who were attracted to tall men.
You like what you like. Me? I really notice men who are 5’9″ or shorter, for some reason, but they mostly don’t want to date anyone close to or over their height. So, I ended up with Husbeast; all 6’1″ of him. We’ve been married 18 years now; don’t know what I’d do without him!
Hambeast, that is so lovely. I bet you two are an amazing couple. I love hearing that kind of stuff from people.
This is helping me get up the courage to go after this guy I like so much right now. 🙂
These guys really need to know me – my mere existence disproves their theories (since 1. I’m an audio-visual technician of middling physical attractiveness on average, and 2. In high school it was my future wife who asked me out, as well as later in life being asked-out by a now-former girlfriend)
Like, where do they get these ideas, do they get them ‘ex culo’?
The one who takes initiative to ask also decides who and when they ask. That’s just how human interactions work. It has nothing to do with gender. If you chose to do nothing, you can’t complain that nothing happened.
This seems to basically boil down to yet another case of “Why do women insist on having opinions of their own? Why don’t they just do what I want? It’s UNFAIR!”
I just want to warn you guys that in less than a week my husband leave will be done and he will be going back to japan. I’m probably going to be feeling pretty low for a little while after that so if my post seem pretty despairing and kind of void of hope that’s gonna be why. This high when he’s home is so great but then the low is like falling off a cliff.
I’m probably somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum, and am almost supernaturally oblivious when people flirt or ask me out. One of my favorite personal stories: a guy working the checkout counter rang me up and said “We get a lot of really cute customers in here.”
I look around the store, see the only other customers were two women sitting nearby eating lunch, and nod knowingly. I grinned at him and tilted my head in their direction. “O-ho! I see.”
He said, “I might even, y’know, want one of them to be my girlfriend.”
I said “Woah! Nice!” and gave him an encouraging thumbs up. He deflated and kinda groaned. “Yeah. ‘Woah.'”
I took my order to my car before realizing he was probably talking about me. Beet red for the rest of the day. I regret it, because he was also very much a type I like- dry and sarcastic with tattoos and a beard- but I was too embarrassed about how hard I goofed to try and do anything about it …in addition to just being clumsy at dating and wary of men from personal experiences.
Frankly, a lot of men are attracted to thicker, stockier women, but never want to admit it openly. This is kinda weird to say because I’ve always struggled with insecurity, so anything remotely positive feels like a braggart’s lie, but: I’m built like a brick house with the facial features of a k-pop idol. I’ve described my body type as an R. Crumb girl, if that means anything to anyone here. Men across the spectrum have expressed interest, but many were ashamed of their attraction to me, and didn’t want to risk being seen by others as “a man with a ‘fat’ woman.” I don’t think it’s fair at all to put this on women, but I have always felt “being with a skinny/petite girl” is an important status symbol for a lot of insecure men.
Anyway, I’m sure y’all know it, but a person is worth way more than what anyone wants to do with or to your body. I’m happy and proud of your healthy relationships and have mega solidarity with the people who keep out of ’em entirely.
@ Kara
Thank you for sharing your story and I think your right to. I think a lot of guys are attracted to bigger size women. If the rise in thicc body type fetish thing is anything to go by lol.
I also think that a lot of men make other men feel ashamed if they date or want to date a bigger woman. There are billions of people on this planet with vastly different preferences and desires for what they find beautiful. For example I used to get teased and bullied a lot for my red hair. I was told by a lot of guys how much they hated it but my red hair is also the thing that drew my husband to look at me in the first place. He loves my red hair and after a life time of being teased for it that helps me a lot.
That’s not the same thing as body mass but my point is is what is drastically unappealing to one person is the most beautiful thing to another. This is the reason why I believe that there is no such thing as a physically ugly like people claim there are. There is only social standards and then shaming those who don’t meet that
@Definitely Not Steve
Welcome! I would have responded sooner but your comment didn’t appear until now; first comments have to wait in moderation until David approves them.
I think the main reason women find dick pics unwelcome is because it’s a form of sexual harassment. Sending someone unsolicited photos of genitals is sexual harassment much in the same way that stripping for random people would be. When you don’t want to see a penis, it’s annoying when one randomly pops up.
I think it also has to do with power dynamics. In the patriarchal society, men have power over women. Sending dick pics is a form of sexual harassment that is easy to get away with, and maintains power over women. Like you said, women can’t do this without being slut-shamed, so it’s an extension of patriarchal power. It’s a way for men to exert dominance over women. This wouldn’t exist in reverse.
I’m not sure whether most heterosexual men would like to receive genital photos, as I’m not a heterosexual man. Any heterosexual men want to chime in?
@Lainy
Thank you! It’s so true!! Men, especially younger men, from my experience, police each other’s tastes and behaviors so much. As I’ve gotten a bit older (hittin’ dirty thirty this month) and done more life drawing and portraiture, I think you really get a feel for how special someone’s body is– not because of how they conform to the standard, but because of every deviation. The way someone’s nose crinkles when they smile, how someone else’s particularly large eyes get so bright and shiny and vivid when they’re expressing themselves, or how some people talk more out of one side of their mouth than the other. The shape of someone’s arms, or ears, or the texture of their hair… it’s all intriguing, and endearing, and makes them more whole and human and exciting to be around, as opposed to everybody trying to live up to some impossible amalgamated construct of beauty. We’re all alive, dangit, and our bodies are all gross and beautiful and impermanent and should be enjoyed just like that!
@Tacticalprogressice
It’s nonsense regardless of species.
@Naglfar
You are so right on about slut-shaming. I have had to deal with that my whole life or at least since college. It’s been a long journey to learn to stand up for myself. I now see how I dress (especially at my job but also just whenever) as my own act of resistance as much as my art.
@Kara
Like Lainy said thank you so much for sharing what you wrote. I think you are wise.
@Lainy
Offer of hugs of support if you like; I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it will be to be apart but I am sure his love for you goes across time and place. As for red hair, my boss loves al her clients but she actually really loves styling hair like yours.
A little bird told me that the new Terminator film is making conservatives cry. Is there any truth to this rumor?
Idk but i saw it with my mom and it was really good! We are both fans of the terminator movies and we had a lot of fun with it. It was a good popcorn movie and the woman who is like the cyborg type thing protecting the Dani is so fucking beautiful. I watched beat the terminator with a sledge hammer and do so much cool stuff and I was sitting there like “well sign me up for scared and horny”
@Naglfar
Thank you, and I agree completely re: power dynamics. I was so frustrated by gender norms and the patriarchy long before I was socially aware enough to know what to call them.