Dating men is a nightmare. There I said it.
I blame TV for making us think that men online are the way they are because of stupidity. We’ve all watched a hundred sitcoms where the protagonist is just a well meaning buffoon. He’s always beloved. He’s always got a hot (and usually smart) wife.
I know it’s not funny so there isn’t really a place for it on TV (at least not in the comedies about relationships), but the way so many men actually hate the women they’re trying to date would’ve been a good thing for a girl to grow up knowing. It would’ve been nice to be prepared.
I’m no longer bothered by shit like this on a personal level. This POS doesn’t affect my life. Ironically he came back years later without even a hint of awareness at his past cruelty. I confronted him about it and he apologized but how do you forget being capable of saying something like this? How do you unread it? You don’t. The bad ones are not yours to heal and not yours to forgive.
Sometimes they’re hatred is harder to comprehend.
He’s just flirting with you.
It’s just locker room talk (said with zero awareness that we’re not in a locker room).
Men will say anything online.
This man hates women. I don’t know how else to explain it to you, to men in locker rooms, to men who say anything online without ever asking themselves why they thought those things in the first place. A man wants to fuck my jugs. Someone call the president. What news! A man says to a woman online, I want to fuck your jugs and then adds they should go for wine afterwards. He thinks this is a compliment. He thinks she exists for his dick and desire. The audacity to speak so loudly while being so stupid is one thing (an unforgivable thing but that’s another topic for another day). This man isn’t stupid, he’s full of hate. Women are objects for his consumption, his pleasure, his use. I am not a person in his eyes. His words are not about sex but domination. He doesn’t realize how pathetic I’ll find his attempt so he tries regardless. It is me who is being too sensitive.
The confidence of men is unparalleled. I cannot understand it. This man with this face and this hairline and this desire to cheat on his wife as if he deserves anything but sadness and paperwork. The audacity fills me with rage. This man thinks he loves women (except his wife it would seem). This man thinks he loves women (except for me whom he wants to use to fill the hole in his life). How can a man with so little to offer think he has so much to offer. I’ve spent my life making sure I was funny, and intelligent, kind and considerate, have ethics beyond reproach, am interesting, and can suck a dick like nobody’s business and this fucking schlub with this terrible picture and even worse personality thinks I will love the ‘experience’ of being with him?!? I’d rather drive into a lake.
Spoiler alert: he never got there. I never expected he to be interesting. I knew a man who would ask about a threesome before asking about my weekend wouldn’t have the conversation (or personality) skills to be interesting. Plus, as seems to be habit, this man sees me as something to fuck, something to arrange his desires with, something he hates but wants to use. He asks questions about my use not my self. But the more problematic thing I find is the trend (in men?) to think that questions are harmless. People who think questions are inherently harmless will forever trespass across your boundaries. People who aren’t afraid to ask for too much, too soon will never have your priorities in mind. They will never keep your comfort at the forefront. The same goes for people who say things like “I’m just straight forward” or “I’m just blunt” in response to you chastising them for their uncouth behaviour. A man will say I want to put my dick down your throat and think he’s just being honest. Truly honest men understand context and timing and power dynamics.
A man messaged me once back in the early days of using gifs on apps with the image of a whale jumping out of the ocean. The words read “Whale hello there.” My fingers, working much faster than my mind, types back “Is this a fat joke?” As it turns out, it wasn’t. I had missed the pun and we’d lost any hope of fun. I told him it would be too hard to recover from this awkwardness and I unmatched. I imagine that’s what this man thought. He didn’t get the joke and just said the roundest thing he could think of (I guess?). The thing is, though, when my fingers worked too fast, I asked a question. I guess a watermelon isn’t really an insult though. Maybe they don’t all hate us women.
Oooop! Nevermind. There’s the hatred. I thought we’d escaped it for even a single second. I truly hope that one day he finds his perfect pick-me and they spend their life together learning about just how misogynist and fucked up they both were. I hope they help each other realize that misogyny actually hurts all of us and that we are, in fact, on the same team. Or, I hope that he gets hit by a car. Either or. I have a lot of hopes. #believewomen
You heard it here first: Men who think they’re nice guys are actually misogynists. Men who feel entitled to the time and attention of women are misogynists. The hate is in the anger. The hate that they feel for women manifests in overconfidence and entitlement. If you had bread in your hands and held it out to ducks in the hopes of attracting them and no ducks came. Would you start a youtube channel about how ducks hate eating? Or would you think to yourself, hmm…I wonder if ducks like something other than bread to eat? Anyway, Brad, the audacity to be a short king and instead act like a short tyrant is beyond me. You’re not nice Brad (no matter how much your mom tells you that you are).
Perhaps the most insane part of encountering men who hate women on dating apps is the overall stupidity of them (sorry, I know I said earlier that I was only going to talk about the misogyny and not the stupidity but here we are). I’ve received hundreds of messages like this (feels like thousands to be honest). Do you think I’m they’re first message ever on the apps? Do you think I’m the first woman they’ve ever encountered that wasn’t interested? Of course not. Which means that this man, and all the millions of men like him, keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, which is the literal definition of insanity. (jk that’s an Air bud quote).
Morteza sits with his phone in his hands. Sportscentre is playing in the background. He wants to write poetry. He wants to flirt with swagger. He wants to impress. He types his message twenty times and nineteen times he hits the delete button. An hour goes by. He calls his mom for support and advice. “Just tell her how you feel,” she coos to her beloved boy. He smiles to himself, mom always knows best. Morteza types his message one final time: would love to fuck u. He sits and thinks. It’s still missing something more violent, more possessive. He adds: really hard. That feels better, he thinks before adding one final detail, a winky face emoticon style. Perfect. He imagines my response and giggles to himself—I bet she’ll really love this. Women love hearing about how you’d like to use their bodies.
I fucking quit.