It’s fair to say that Men Going Their Own Way are somewhat critical when it comes to women’s behavior. A case in point can be found in a recent posting on the MGTOW subreddit from a guy who was evidently quite furious that a woman on a date with him asked him what he did for a living.
Because in MGTOW-land, that’s not a normal thing to ask someone on a date — it’s a declaration that all she wants from you is your money. (LOL.)
Some of the commenters offered their suggestions as to what the OP could have said back to this allegedly money hungry lady.
So I’m going to present you with a little quiz. Some of the answers below are real things that MGTOW Redditors suggested as a response. At least one of the answers is one I made up. Can you tell the real from the fake?
FUN AS HELL MGTOW DATE QUIZ
A date asks you what you do for a living. Which of the following answer(s) were suggested by MGTOW Redditors, and which were just made up?
T/F “A job that gives me money for what I do, not for who I am.”
T/F “Show me some nudes so I’ll know what I’m getting for my money.”
T/F “I don’t answer questions from women. Blanket ignore.”
T/F “I work. How much do you weigh?”
T/F “Do you spit or swallow? If we’re going to cut out the bullshit, we should do it both ways.”
T/F You should have asked her the same question to see if she said professional hoe.
T/F I’ve had people ask me that before they even knew my name! The correct response is “Goodbye”.
T/F Women are not known for their honesty and truthfulness … They will never come out with how many cocks they have ridden, so why even engage?
ANSWER KEY:
The second question is made up. The rest of the quotes are verbatim from the MGTOW subreddit.
As is this lovely piece of advice:
From then on you know that it is a business arrangement discussed. Just calculate wether it makes economic sense to rent her for a few years or not. Since she is obviously not interested in you at all, i would make it clear that this is money for (young) hole.
You would, huh? I will eat my cats if you’ve ever said that or anything close to that to a woman on a date in real life. You just wish you could.
Only one commenter (out of several dozen) noted that “what do you do for a living” is pretty standard date stuff, which makes me wonder if any of these MGTOWs (aside from this one guy) have ever been on a date with anything that’s not inflatable.
Oh, one more thing, I lied about the whole “win a date” thing. I trust that none of you are disappointed, and I hope that none of you have ever accidentally gotten stuck on a date with one of these guys..
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OK, I’m confused. I thought that MGTOW were, well, going their own way. Without women. So why is this guy on a date..?
That’s a pretty standard ice breaker in the United States. If he’s going to be mad about, he should be mad at American society for being materialistic, not her for asking.
Off-topic: @Bookworm in hijab:
Are there any special content warnings you’d like over Ramadan? Food, perhaps?
David, if it’s possible for me to rescind your bet, I’m gonna do it. Keep in mind that he didn’t specify that he would say this on the first date. The tenth date or the twentieth date might be the perfect time for him to mention that he’s buying, say, a burrito and a small iced tea for “(young) hole.” Or he might wait until they’re married. Or have their third child. Some abusers play a long game.
*A manospherian who uses an opening parenthesis and a closing parenthesis correctly!
Lend her that lovely, warm jacket of yours.
So, I don’t date on account of being ace, but I will converse with people! What I’m interested in if I ask “So, what do you do for a living?” usually is one of the following:
1) Is your job something I’d find interesting to know more about? Or something I’d rather NOT know things about?
2) What jargon can I use without without making things awkward? Do you live in a similar level of acronym soup?
3) I assume that you, like me, have no life outside of work and dog, and I’d prefer not to talk about my dog 100% of the time. Even if he is the cutest dog in the history of dogdom. Also, this conversation is so awkward and I want to escape so bad but how do people converse again anyway? WHAT DO YOU DO AT WORK? THIS IS A NORMAL QUESTION NORMAL PEOPLE ASK NORMALLY RIGHT? (please send help).
Maybe if our culture was a little more set up for people to have lives outside work, we’d have more normal conversation filler questions than the traditional work & weather?
It’s called “small talk.” It’s called “she’s feeling you out.” It’s called “maybe she wants to hear your cringey workplace tales, and wants a starting point.” It’s called “hey, you’re the one jumping to transactional conclusions—or just putting your insecurity on display—here.”
But… what kind of questions does he want to be asked? Wait, I don’t want to date one of those people ever so maybe I don’t need to know.
Most people spend a very significant part of their lives trying to earn money, and a lot of their adult and social interactions are at work. It’s perfectly normal to ask a question which is basically “so what do you do most days”, it’s normal small talk outside dates as well.
Manospherians seem oddly defensive about this. I’m not sure if it’s because they are more likely to be unemployed or in marginal jobs than the rest of us, in which case I can empathise with the defensive feelings but not the hostility. It sucks having no money, and I’ve always felt like a failure when I was unemployed or in a crappy job, even when I know that’s not how the world works and I don’t think that way about anyone else in the same situation.
I suspect though, these people actually earn much the same or higher than the rest of us ( most of them seem to be from white, reasonably well off families, they are all men, and less of them are teenagers than it appears ). I’m sure it’s another self injury from measuring themselves against myths of alpha males who show dominance through buying things.
Oh no! He lied and I won’t win a date with an MGTOW! How ever will I survive?!
My hat is off to the MGTOW in the last quote and his unique way of avoiding the pitfall of getting whether or weather wrong
I remember I was at a party with an ex partner when I was about 23, and when I responded “I work at Tesco” (big UK supermarket, if that doesn’t translate!) to a man who asked what I do for a living, he said “uh” and then turned around and stopped talking to me. My mum said she used to get the same thing when she said she was a SAHM.
So I guess the question can be loaded, but pretty much like how any question can be loaded. It’s such a ubiquitous opener for conversation in society that it would be exhausting to find it offensive.
I’ve been too disabled to work for the past ten years so it’s not my favourite small talk question to have to field, but at least I can recognise that it is just a generic small talk question and not part of some nefarious plot.
I’d love if “what do you do?” wasn’t the go to getting to know you question because most people don’t have a super interesting dream job and most of the time it doesn’t actually tell you that much about a person. It also forces people who are unemployed to share that information up front and while it shouldn’t be stigmatized to be unemployed, it is. However, imagining that everyone who asks that question has some sort of nefarious agenda is just ridiculous!
Personally, I’d much rather discuss pets, hobbies, and favorite movies/TV/books/music than jobs when getting to know someone because that tells you more about them.
I don’t really understand the point of asking someone’s weight on a date. If they’re there, you can already see what they look like, so if you’re the kind of person to harp on people for being fat (or any other shape for that matter), you already have that information. Or is it to see if they’ll lie (since it’s so easy to tell a person’s weight at a glance)?
Regarding asking about working, I get that it can be a sore topic for a lot of people, which is why I usually only ask it if it somehow comes up and it’s more of a follow-up question (“You work in Helsinki, then?”). Then again I also feel like it gives you room to be vague without going full-on “A job that gives me money for what I do, not for who I am.” At a point where I mostly preferred not to name the company I worked for, I just said I was working at a company archive, which probably was dry enough to not bring up any more questions. Now that I think of it, I should probably come up with some sort of a strategy for my discussing current job too.
@Masse_mysteria : a lot of people are not able to judge weight from seeing someone, but nonetheless find very very very important to know the exact figure, in order to properly judge and shame people who aren’t in the very restricted area of allowed weight for their size.
Some try to rationalize that as “but it’s for future baby sake !”, but really, it’s because they have an almost physical addiction to following the norm.
that makes me tjin of a dating guide for men that I found it told you to come up with a pretentious description for your job so bin man would become sanitation transport enginer.
This may sound a little weird, but most of my dating experience is via Tinder and I avoid asking anything about jobs until after a few days of contact (yeah, yeah, I’m slow Jug).
To my mind, I don’t know this person and don’t want them to know where to find me until I feel comfortable with them. Based on the behavior of the women I seem to connect well with, they think similar thoughts. (Not so much for the hot to trot ones who are DTF right off, but I don’t seem to connect well with them anyway.)
@ Full Metal Ox, that is so sweet of you! I’m good; no CWs needed ?. And at the moment I am only an hour-ish away from diving headfirst into a huge amount of takeout from our local Indian restaurant…
Regarding this post, I agree that “what do you do for a living” has the potential to be awkward; classist assumptions make it kind of a minefield.
Contrapangloss, ^^THIS^^
That’s what people of all genders ask people of other genders when they first meet.
I realize that his parents know he lives in their basement, so they don’t have to ask, and he doesn’t interact with anyone else, so he’s confused by this common, innocuous question.
Obviously he didn’t want to answer with “I live in my parents’ basement”, so he took offense.
If he’s on a date (arranged by his parents), he’s not a miggie and should be banned from that subreddit.
I guessed the first one was fake.
@GSS ex-noob:
Same here. #2 just seemed all too plausible, while #1 could actually seem like an interesting (and therefore non-MGTOW-produced) answer, until you realize it’s just a whiny baby answer.
@Ginger
Me too. I thought Red Pillers were the pick-up artists who might go on dates, but MGTOWs didn’t because they were going “their own way.”
An out-of-the-wild-blue-yonder opening question I recall: “What zip code do you live in? Do you own or rent?” The querent was a woman of my mother’s generation (we were visiting a mutual acquaintance in a nursing home) and a realtor (which may have primed her worldview)—but is that a normal conversational icebreaker? It had the distinct air of a social litmus test, whether or not she intended it thus.
Where I live, the common opening small-talk question is “Where did you go to school?” meaning which high school did you attend. It is 100% a social litmus test. I ask people sometimes who have asked that question of me, “What kind of information does the answer give you?” and none of them have been able to articulate it. What high school someone attended is absolutely a social class indicator. It tells people what prejudices they should have about you and what assumptions they should make about you and your family. I imagine your acquaintances were using the answers they got in much the same way.
@bcb I’m relieved that I’m not the only reader who is confused about this.