This may be the most ironic comment I’ve read in years. It’s from a discussion about Rebecca Watson’s recent takedown of a man’s approach to her in a hotel elevator in the wee hours. This commenter is male, and wants to prove that the rejection men face in asking women out is ever so much worse than anything women deal with from men. The irony is, I was just skimming the comment thread at first, and read his facetious paragraph entirely at face value, nodding along in agreement with what I assumed was a woman trying to make the point I made in Men Are Also Picky About Dating, which is that when you have to wait around to be visually noticed and asked out, you can reasonably interpret every instance of men ignoring you – or stepping on you to get to the hottest hottie at the bar – as “rejection”, so boy-men really need to STFU and stop whining.
But they never do. Here we go:
Women.. imagine a world that you can’t even remember the last time that a guy even so much as smiled at you, for any reason.
I don’t have to. I know that feeling. Who else does? Even attractive women living in extremely isolating urban workaholic hellholes like L.A. often know this feeling.
Imagine that every time you walk into a room.. no one notices.
Yep, I would guess that every woman who’s significantly far from looking like Angelina Jolie et al knows this feeling. Am I right?
Imagine that no guy checks you out.. EVER.
Actually, it’s more that they check you out then register boredom on their faces and move on to check someone else out. Just going unnoticed would be relatively painless. Having someone check you out and obviously conclude they can do better is fucking hurtful. But it’s a part of life, so grow up.
Imagine if men don’t even know you exist (at least in any kind of sexual/romantic way). Imagine that if any guy ever actually approaches you it’s to ask something benign as “Do you happen to have the time?”, and truely that’s ALL they want from you, and once you tell them, then you go back to being invisible.
Okay, seriously, who at this point is not going, “Yep, I so know that feeling.” He honestly thinks this doesn’t happen to women. Unbelievable ignorance level, there. Unbelievable privilege.
Imagine you lived in a world where men rated 80% of women “below average” when it comes to their looks (like women do men: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&source=hp&q=eharmony+study+80+percent+of+men+below+average&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=bb9a4fba297be287&biw=1532&bih=658).
I don’t have to imagine. That’s my life experience. Men judge one another’s social status on how hot a chick they’re dating – like women sometimes judge each other on how expensive a handbag they carry (think of girlfriends and wives as fashion accessories for men, and the world begins to make so much more sense). So women who don’t meet a traditional beauty mold are second through 200th choice, and men who have to settle for 200th choice? Tend to be childishly resentful and hateful about it, and absolutely clueless and unconcerned that they were your 600th choice but you’re trying to be graceful about it.
Imagine a world where you can have a dry spell (forget about sex.. just going out on a date) that can last not just days, not just weeks, not just months, but YEARS.
Oh, my word. Women and girls going years without dates happens all the freakin’ time. They don’t advertise it or talk about it with douchebags like the commenter here (which, presumably, is why he assumes it never happens), but if you are non-judgmental and let people know you think sexuality is nothing anyone should ever feel ashamed about (for all the douchebags reading and thinking I just included rape among things no one should be ashamed of, sexuality and rape are as different to each other as taking a swim is to having someone cast concrete around your feet and throw you in a deep river to drown), they open up. I can’t count the number of women I know who haven’t had a date in years. Or never had a date until they were 30 or older. Or are very old and have never had a date, ever. Happens all the time, peeps, get over yourselves.
And when you think about it – think about the fact that men are allowed to charm women in various ways and get protected even when they stalk and pressure women in creepy ways, but women have to somehow get noticed (almost always visually) before they even have a chance with a particular guy – it’s kind of really obvious who’s got problems getting dates, right? I mean, sure, attractive women may have it easy (not in L.A. – more on this in my upcoming “Hot in Cleveland” review), but attractive men also have it easy. Leaving conventionally attractive people aside, women have it worse, and you don’t see us whining all over the internet like a babies denied lollipops.
Imagine a world where you see/meet a guy you are incredibly attracted to, so much so that your heart leaps to your throat.. and you can hardly speek and your only chance to try to get to know them better is to make an awkward, unfortunate pass at them and not only do you get rejected, but you find out that you made the guy incredibly uncomfortable and he saw you as a creep and then in later discussions people see your attempt as a potential sexual assult.
Okay, it’s my understanding that some women – mostly Gen Y – have had good success with asking men out. I so totally have not. Men I’ve asked out found it insulting: either they thought the gender role reversal meant I thought they were effeminate, or maybe they were insulted that someone at my attractiveness level asked someone as hot as themselves out. I don’t think I’ve ever creeped anyone out, but gee whiz, maybe that’s because I made the effort to develop a few fucking social skills. I assure you, they don’t come naturally. But having been raised as a GIRL with a naturally commanding personality, and therefore taught my every natural instinct on interacting with people was wrong and “too bossy” and “bitchy” and so on, I actually learned how to modify my behavior in ways that suit me and not the Gender Police. You boys don’t usually get that training, because every little thing you want to do is just fabulous and society should bend over backwards to accommodate your very important ass. You’ll want to take that up with society instead of whining like toddlers at women. Unless of course you’re just too cowardly to take it to the source, and that’s why you’re really whining at women for all your widdle pwobwems.
Imagine a world where the only way to catch a man’s eye is to win the genetic lottery and be in the top .1 percent of incredibly good looking women, and if you’re not.. your only second chance you have to catch a man’s eye is to be unbelievably confident. And you have to develop this confidence.. considering the world that you live in as described above (not remembering the last time a man ever smiled at you.. and so on).
Yes, he appears to be serious, and I’m not sure where to start on this one. First of all, women do have to be really good looking to get asked out by a nice array of men. Women who could never be mistaken for starlets really have their work cut out for them, because they are perfectly invisible to men and they’re not handed a nice menu of un-creepy ways to convince men to date them. The best option for women who don’t look like starlets is to be uber-confident – sometimes this bluffs men into thinking you’re hot, and then by the time they realize you’re not hot in any traditional sense, they’ve already found the true awesomeness within you. Sometimes.
God, I want to be a woman on Whiny McWhiner’s planet instead of Earth.
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What’s REALLY funny is that I read this, and was like, Whoa, is the end point going to be that street harassment sucks? Because I generally find unsolicitied male attention nerve-wracking… so that whole walking around being ignored? SIGN ME UP.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I have never been street harassed. I have spent the vast majority of my life being ignored by men. It’s actually not as lovely as it sounds, especially when you don’t know what it is (“Maybe I’m fat – no, there’s a fatter woman than I with an adoring husband – maybe I’m ugly, no, there’s a definitely uglier woman than I having a blast on a date – maybe I’m just obnoxious, no, there’s a far more annoying woman than I with a crowd of admirers”).
But as much as it sucks, it’s important to remember that most people have really shitty experiences with dating/romance/sex, even the people who get lucky and also have good experiences with it, and to put it in perspective: there are worse problems than not getting a full menu of potential dates to choose from.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
@Jennifer Kesler
I’m really surprised about you never getting street harassed. What’s stressful about it is that EVERYBODY (both women and men) counsel you to take it as flattery, as something you’ll miss when you get older, or as something that you’re somehow encouraging. I get it a lot, depending on what city I’m in, even when it’s not a city where I typically get asked out a lot.
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
I was thinking along the lines of Maria as well, although I too have previously been in a position where i felt terribly unattractive because other girls got it and I didn’t (until I started wearing makeup and more traditional clothes for unrelated reasons, which I think says a lot). Really, the whole idea that it should be seen as a compliment needs to die. The women who get it almost never see it as anything other than annoying (unless they lack confidence) and the women who don’t end up feeling slighted and hurt because society tells them there is no greater compliment than to be harassed by a stranger when you’re out doing chores.
Jaynie(Quote) (Reply)
Wow…I can’t believe that commenter…what he describes sounds so much like most of my life (with a few exceptions in certain contexts) that it almost makes me laugh out loud.
Street harassment makes me angrier than almost anything else, these days, but when I first started getting it I was so used to being invisible that I did feel a little flattered. I was much more insecure then in general, though.
Also, for what it’s worth, many guys I know have said (at least when asked hypothetically) that they would be happy and flattered to by asked out by a woman.
Cara(Quote) (Reply)
All I can ever think with this kind of claptrap whinging is “cry moar”.
I was in the security line at the airport recently. There was a TSA “greeter” man going along the line and saying, “Hi, how’re you doing?” to apparently keep us appeased while they inefficiently invaded our privacy, etc. The women in front of me got the hello. The women behind me did too. I … was apparently wearing my invisibility cape, as I didn’t even get eye contact, let alone a pleasant greeting.
Seriously. I’ve been invisible most of my life and yet still have been street harassed (yes, being asked if your breasts are real is harassment, fwiw). Do I get a special prize? Can I comment ad nauseum about poor widdle me and how I have it so tough?
Haha, I just did, didn’t I?
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I only got asked out exactly once in my entire lifetime, when I was 18, by a total creep. He picked me up because he saw me going to highschool and thought (hoped, in his own words) that I was 15 (I look very young for my age). He was 20 years old.
It’s been over three years since then, and nobody has ever asked me on a date. This suits me fine, since I’m asexual, and I don’t know why anyone would think it’s such an oddity.
Azzy(Quote) (Reply)
Maria,
I’m surprised too. Maybe I’m failing to identify some incidents of it, but every time women describe their harassment experiences, I’m all, “…nope, got nothing.” It’s not as if I didn’t spend years walking Sunset Strip on a near daily basis when I was younger. I can’t explain it.
Yeah, I get the flattery angle from the other side – upon learning I never get harassed, or upon watching someone harass everyone around me, women have given me PITY for not getting harassed, or tried to reassure me I’m not desperately unappealing. Seriously? Victims of sexual assault get very poor sympathetic response, but victims of “not getting street harassed” receive unsolicited pity? Fuck!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
The whole comment I was waiting for the “so what?” moment. So people don’t want to date you…so what? So you’re entitled to go up and bother somebody you already think isn’t attracted to you? So you’re entitled to make them give up their preferences in exchange for yours?
And as for women not having to suffer the horrors and indignities of being ignored by the opposite gender…HA. HA. HA. I’m female, my last date was an impromptu coffee date…what, three years ago? More? The only time in my life I’ve ever been checked out was when I dyed my hair pink and lavender. Even then, the guys looking me over and smiling didn’t come over and start up a conversation. When I dyed my hair back, instant shut-off valve, back to being invisible. Hell, by some definitions I’m still a virgin and I assure you, my fun parts haven’t shriveled up from lack of use.
Sylvia Sybil(Quote) (Reply)
Um, wow. Yeah, I am not feeling exceptionally sorry for men.
(As a data point, I don’t think I’ve ever been street-harassed, although I have been harassed in other contexts, like school and hobbies. And stalked, once, although by another girl (in high school). Nothing inappropriate in several years, though, and I couldn’t even begin to guess why.)
Mel(Quote) (Reply)
Seems like for that guy, the only women who exist are the inordinately hot ones out of his league. Which, really, explains a lot.
DM(Quote) (Reply)
I suspect street harassment might have something to do with what region you live in, how often you tend to walk, and where you’re walking. When I’m walking on the sidewalk, I get harassed by guys in cars who are too far away to see if they find me attractive or not. I have long hair, so they identify me as female and that’s all they need to start yelling. I would probably get the same harassment if I was a bloke with long hair, since they are far away, and often coming up from behind. The same guys yell insults at elderly women and fat women. If you haven’t seen this happening, it’s got to be that you’re not walking in the “right” places.
Ida(Quote) (Reply)
Okay, I’m a little confused…is this is an ironic comment that doesn’t realize it’s own irony?
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Sylvia Sybil, and you are so very not alone. Unwanted celibacy is VERY common because loads of people do not have the conventional attractiveness or conventional personality types/worldviews we’re all encouraged by this culture to seek out in mates.
Mel, the harassment issue could be as simple as they have a particular personality target and we don’t fall into it. Like, I’m pretty serious generally, and I think I look even more serious than I actually am. Maybe harassers target personalities they perceive as more easygoing?
DM, exactly.
Casey, yes, he seemed to think he’d given an irrefutable example of something that only men experience, that women couldn’t even imagine, and that we should all immediately recognize how unfair the world was to men.
Ida, oh, I’ve seen it happening to other women. It’s happened to women I was walking with. Like I said, I spent a lot of years walking on Sunset Strip in the evenings when the clubbers were out, and they yelled at other women. Just not me.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Count me as another one who’s busy reading through this guy’s thing and saying “yeah, I call this my life”. I’m female, I’m fat, I’m forty, and I have next to no experience of having a guy check me out (I really notice when my partner does it, because novelty value!). I had serious plans in my twenties: if I was still a virgin at age thirty, I was going to take a holiday in Sydney or Melbourne, and hire me a male prostitute, so at least I’d get some idea of what this whole “sex” thing was about (because it sure as hell looked like I wasn’t going to get some any other damn way, and Perth, Western Australia, is a parochial little town at heart).
Meg Thornton(Quote) (Reply)
Heh, as a 20-year-old involuntarily celibate virgin who’s only been on one date all I can muster is just rolling my eyes ’til they practically fall out of my head. ALSO! Even as a 20-year-old involuntarily celibate virgin who’s only been on one date, I HAVE been street harassed multiple times since I was at least 12 years old (mostly it was people yelling at me for being fat and ugly), and I’d take utter invisibility over that shit any day o’ the week.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer Kesler,
Ages ago, I was informed by a friend of mine that when I’m not doing my invisible wallpaper impression* my default is apparently to broadcast a strong Don’t Fuck With Me Field. I have no idea what it is or how to control it, but over the years I’ve come to suspect it’s true. It’s very unusual for me to get harassed in regular life — and 90% of the time it’s when I’ve leaned over and someone took it as an invitation to stare at my chest — but almost always happens in airports despite the fact that I travel rarely: I think the exhaustion and disorientation dampens the Field. It’s either that or the lighting at Dallas/Fort Worth makes me look stunning, which seems highly unlikely.
* (In a really, really uncomfortable locations on several occasions my own mother has walked right by me without seeing me. Once while actively looking for me.)
MaggieCat(Quote) (Reply)
Girl in her late 20s who’s never had a date here. So, yeah, a big ol’ “don’t have to imagine it” to every one of his points. Sometimes being perpetually single kinda hurts. Sometimes (most of the time, at this point in my life), it’s completely awesome. But not in a million years would it make me wish some strange man would start invading my space. Not. Ever.
I haven’t been street harassed (that I know of), but I have been stared at and told things like “you should smile more”, and I would trade those moments for the solitude he seems to think would traumatize women so much that they would beg men to treat them like sex objects.
My main thought when reading this guy’s tirade was “what’s your point?”. This is my life…and I’m okay with that. No guys are checking me out? No one notices when I walk into a room? No guy approaches me wanting anything other than the time?” GOOD. Because the alternative is being made to feel like a non-human whose boundaries don’t deserve to be respected.
Dani(Quote) (Reply)
Gal in her early thirties who’s never dated here!
Honestly, I’ve never been interested in the dating scene. It never really appealed to me.
The first time I was ever approached by a guy was while I was in Boston back in college. A guy called from his van and at first, thought i was someone he knew. When he realized I wasn’t, he asked me out!
Now being the first time, I was, on some level flattered because let’s just say I don’t ‘fit the mold’. But I was far from stupid. I was very polite and turned him down. he wasn’t creepy, but I don’t go on dates with random strangers. I didn’t get it why they started laughing when I wondered aloud why he stopped me. Something similar happened again, this time in my hometown and the guy said I ‘looked so sweet walking down the road’. Again, I turned him down.
I guess I’m cuter than I realize. To me, it was both flattering and disturbing. I’m glad that there are men who find me attractive, but DON’T approach me thinking you’ll score a date, especially if I don’t even KNOW you.
Red(Quote) (Reply)
Meg Thornton,
Er, nothing to add but *wave* at fellow Perthite
Gabriella(Quote) (Reply)
Wow, my reaction to all this is extreme eye roll. I agree with most people that we all have had trouble with dating. I really can’t understand why this commenter thinks that the only option when you think a girl is attractive is to yell at her on the street. It is called being civil and talking. Treat someone like a human being and they might actually see you as a human being as well. Isn’t that pretty much talk in kindergarten?
Also, I have never been street harassed in the states, but I was extremely harassed when I studied abroad in college and I never found it flattering. It was awful.
And, I asked my husband out on our first date. He really liked that about me. There are definitely men out there that find that attractive and IMO those are the ones I’d rather spend my time with.
Meredith(Quote) (Reply)
Wow. Is this guy serious? I’m wondering if he even talked to a girl/woman after having surpassed the age of four. Clearly he’s so big of a douche, he hasn’t even had girls-as-friend, or he’d know that we go through just as much agony. Sheesh. Unrequited love? Check. All friends with boyfriends except me? Check. Asked out a guy and been rejected? Check. Spent many a slow dance in junior high and high school hiding out in the bathroom so as to avoid being the only one of my friends NOT dancing with even just a guy friend? Check.
It’s called growing up. For some people. Some of us are late bloomers. We get over it. We find the value in ourselves, and we realize that we are not what others see us, but we are as we see ourselves – that’s the important part. I am who I am whether I am attached to another person or not. That guy sees himself as a loser. And, he expects women to see him as anything else?
I did have a guy friend in uni say that men were intimidated by me, because I am a straight-talker (I had to evolve into one, because I never really got the SuperFlirt gene”). Lol! Seriously, if that’s all it took to scare men away – being honest with them and me…
Also, I apparently have a good “Don’t Fuck With Me” face, too. It doesn’t work in airports, though, when I apparently have an “I’m just too tired to deal and am sitting here wanly grimacing into space” and am a magnet for every single Jesus freak in the vicinity. I think they’re immune, though.
eviltwit(Quote) (Reply)
What DM said.
I actually feel sorry for men who work up the nerve to come up and talk to me because they’re attracted. I admire their courage in coming up to a complete stranger, especially a cold fish like me. And I feel sorry for them because I have a disability that makes casual conversation hard, so it’s hard for me to let them down nicely. But of course, if they have to work up the nerve in the first place, they (we) have no chance at all, because I’m obviously out of their league, as I sadly know from experience. (I’ve tried the dragon-playing-with-kittens thing before and it really just doesn’t work. At all.) I’m really only looking for someone who is easy to be with, and when someone is easy to be with conversation just seems to happen. Effortlessly. Even for a crip like me.
That doesn’t mean I feel sorry for this particular person, though. I suspect he’s not the type I attract. He doesn’t seem nice enough.
Anemone(Quote) (Reply)
All that “imagine a world” made me think that the twist was going to be that the woman’s stumbled across an alien brainwashing plot. I wish that had been where he was going.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Reading this, it sounds like his biggest problem is empathy. Getting rejected by women hurts, and the commenter is focusing on that. His pain *is* real, it just doesn’t have anything to do with any of the stuff he goes on about for the rest of his post. The rest of his post is an effort to make the hypothetical woman that rejected him empathize with his pain of rejection and fails to in any way understand that his behavior and his defense of his behavior is painful to to others. He is so bound up in his own discomfort he fails to understand the discomfort of others, which is a pretty good definition of privilege I suppose.
To crib a line from a movie that tends to get embraced by all the people it is actually making fun of, he is not a unique snowflake and he needs to get over it.
Jhamin(Quote) (Reply)
When I was around 20 I was pretty hot and that led to attempted rape and a lot of scumbag attention. Now I’m 37 and about 100 pounds overweight and no one even looks at me.
Both states suck. They are both bad for self-esteem.
Sylvie(Quote) (Reply)
DM has it exactly. I think it’s highly likely that he doesn’t even notice the women who are plain or UNattractive (to him), so it really seems to him that ALL women get that kind of attention/non-rejection. He literally doesn’t see the other women. (Think of the Gorilla basketball players experiment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_gorilla .)
I’ve experienced this being invisible phenomenon and am really aware of it because I USED to be one of those “hot” girls. (I really hate saying that — I know it sounds like I’m bragging; I don’t know how to phrase it so that it doesn’t sound like that.) Fast forward 5 years and 50 lbs. People don’t see me. I never used to have to point out that I was next in line. I never used to get actually walked into walking down the street and no, I’m not SO large now that people can’t help it. I’m invisible.
My point, anyway, is that, yeah, he’s unobservant, but from his viewpoint there is no gorilla on the basketball court.
Heather(Quote) (Reply)
I think my favorite part is where he seems to think attractive men just exist! and get dates. Not seeing appearance as any kind of work or skill kinda says a lot about how he sees the world.
Appearance is only part of avoiding attention from potential romantic partners, and it has less to do with being born ugly than just looking like you don’t care, but I think the real key is avoiding engaging socially. Going out and looking like you are friendly and available for talking and getting to know new people, keep that to a minimum. Being terse, and reserved, that’s been my main strategy for not getting asked out in my entire life.
Quib(Quote) (Reply)
Totally out of the blue, a bud just emailed me this link, which is hilariously pertinent:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/local-man-ruins-date-by-just-being-himself,255/
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
So I’ve been reading various blog posts about this and — to the detriment of my blood pressure — the attached comments as well. Has anyone else noticed or commented on how certain men (and I’d be willing to bet they’re white) play the old divide et impera card by bringing racism into this whole mess and comparing women who speak out about harassment/rape and situations which could easily have turned into rape to white supremacists? It really upsets me. It’s smart too, trying to stir up two groups of “lesser beings” against each other. I’m horrible at putting my thoughts into words, but it would be great if someone who can actually write picked the issue up and ran with it.
Or maybe it’s just such a toxic, deliberate, transparent asshattery that the only useful reply is to call the person out for being a toxic, deliberate asshat and refuse to play his game.
Korva(Quote) (Reply)
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