I got a random message on OkCupid today, and checking it meant my status got reset to "Online Today," and that meant that I got clusterfucked with messages from dudes. (I'm hot. Oh yeah.) Which led to making one date (Wednesday, and it's more of a "let's be friends" thing, but hey, I like friends) and ignoring about fifty guys in disgust.
Why? Because they wanted to fuck me, and nothing else. They were, to be fair, very clear about this. On some level I appreciate that. But on another level I can't help but be insulted by guys offering their cocks but specifying with a sort of terrified urgency that this doesn't mean they would date me or anything.
It made me realize that, at this point in my life, I don't want cock. Whaaa? That is, I don't want just cock. The offer of vanilla sex without strings means nothing to me. Not to call a thousand MRAs down on my ass, but I can get laid. (That's Thursday night.) If "laid" comes with absolutely no other benefits--BDSM play or a relationship that's at least friendly--it's really not interesting to me.
I also have issues with any guy who's too vociferous on the "but I wouldn't date you, are you crazy?" I'm not opposed to friends-with-benefits arrangements, but that means friends with benefits, not frosty strangers with exactly one benefit. I also like my friends-with-benefits to find a way to negotiate the arrangement without practically spelling out that I'm not good enough to date but this is my exciting consolation prize.
I have an OkCupid account to meet people. I've got two penises in my bedside drawer already, and I guarantee you at least one of them is bigger than yours.
They're bigger AND they vibrate :-D
ReplyDeleteMine can't. But they do stay hard all night and they never tell me they're "almost there" when I want to stop.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought you never wanted to stop, Holly. *grins*
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assertions, though. It's a problem on OkCupid, especially in the Baltimore area (that, and people for whom the extent of social interaction is defined by consumption of alcohol).
Not to mention that if someone isn't willing to at least put a moderate amount of getting-to-know-you effort into it, they're probably not going to be the most fantastic of partners. And mediocre sex is, well, mediocre.
Not to call a thousand MRAs down on my ass
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a spell. "Should she besiege this castle, I would smite her with a rain of fifty score MRAs!"
Unconnected to MRAs but connected to amusing spells:
http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F126.jpg
Wow. Because I'm dying to know how that terrified urgency gets expressed, would you consider reprinting some of these messages? I don't mean to ask for mocking some dude who's just out there honestly looking, but this sounds pretty insulting.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the mention that I'm looking for casual sex as ONE of my relationship possibilities makes the responses I get kind of fucked up. I don't know why people assume I would prefer not to have anything in common with a sex partner, or want to see them twice.
ReplyDelete-Katie
Two-ish years ago I recommended that my straight (female) roommate go on OKC to meet guys. I'd used it for years and generally gotten a couple messages a month from other really cute queers (a few dates, some nice enough friendships, etc.) and felt like at least it'd give her an opportunity to meet folks in the area. I was a little chagrined to learn that straight women (or at least women who are looking to meet men) get a few dozen messages a week all from assholes (or just about) who have literally nothing in common with them.
ReplyDeleteWhoops. (Happy ending so far as I know, she met a nice boy through it, they got a cat and moved away a year ago, don't know if they're still together.)
That sounds like a spell. "Should she besiege this castle, I would smite her with a rain of fifty score MRAs!"
ReplyDeleteMade me spit my drink. XD
I somehow missed what an MRA is, so I keep parsing it as Methicillin-resistant asshole. I assume that's close enough?
ReplyDeleteI never much liked OKCupid (or online dating in general) as a dating tool (it's up there among the best internet timewasters out there). It seems more like a catalog of qualities than an opportunity to meet *people*. It encourages me to look for the perfect 'on paper' match, rather than the right person. Obviously compatibility is important, but it's not the end all.
My current girlfriend probably wouldn't have even come up in my okc searches. There are a few differences that I thought might be an issue at first, and if I saw a profile instead of meeting her, that would've been enough to move on when there were thousands more profiles to look at. I liked the person I met, so I gave it a try and said differences are total non-issues and we're extremely happy together.
I never actually joined OkCupid, but I did take the entry test thingy some years ago. I don't remember it exactly, but there was a handful of questions which were unanswerable at that time (I think they were mostly about experiences I'd never had and were not allowing "n/a" or something similar as an answer) I tried taking the test multiple times, giving different responses to the unanswerable ones each time, and always got a completely different result in the end. So either those were *very* important questions or I'm too borderline to reasonably be classified by their system.
ReplyDelete@zeeke42: MRA = Mens' Rights Activist. Nothing wrong with the concept per se, it's just that quite a lot of them want to do away with feminism on the grounds that it "oppresses men".
You can't fool me with your shit testing, Holly; I will not be ignored!
ReplyDeleteJust kidding...I don't even have an OkCupid account.
zeeke42, I sympathize with the MRA movement in a lot of ways; I think that here in the Western world, there are a number of social facets where historical gender inequities in favor of men have been corrected, but the mechanisms to advance women are still in place and producing inequities in favor of women. For example, at this point women are getting more college degrees than men, but there are still more scholarships for women than men. And I think it's depressing as hell that with girls doing better than boys in school now, you keep seeing people asking if girls are just smarter, so soon after people thought boys were smarter in male-oriented education scenarios.
ReplyDeleteHowever, like feminism when it started, like all movements good or bad when they started, the MRA movement is currently mostly composed of cranks, lunatics and weirdos. It's almost a tautology: it's not well-adjusted people who start movements to change the world.
While I was attempting online dating, I contacted literally hundreds of women, heard back from maybe 20 percent, met maybe 75 percent of those, and got a handful of second dates. I never got a relationship or anything other than a kiss.
ReplyDeleteI'd never suggest that "you're just a warm hole to me" is a "good" approach, but if my goal was to get laid, it's conceivable that it could have been more effective than whatever I thought I was doing.
It's a lot like PUA stuff -- when nothing works, every approach feels equally valid.
A lot of guys claim that they hate the whole subterfuge women do re: sex; that they wish we'd just state our interest in fucking outright so it could all be out in the open. But when my OKCupid ad said I was open to a FWB situation, I suddenly got bombarded with the crudest, vilest, skeeviest messages you ever saw.
ReplyDelete"Friends with benefits" is not the same as "I will exchange exactly two pleasantries you online and then take a cab to your house and fuck you." Also, "I'm open to casual sex" does not equal "I like it when total strangers tell me all the stuff they plan to do to me using the crudest language possible." Pleh. I always had the best luck finding FWBs by doing the usual subterfuge thing: put up an ad saying I'm interested in "dating" and if a date went well (but not "I could fall for this guy" well) I'd jump him.
On the flip side, though, apparently a lot of women are repulsed if a guy mentions sex in his ad whatsoever, and I don't get that. If a guy seemed interesting and smart and cool and mentioned that he was open to casual sex, or put "sex" as one of the things he spends a lot of time thinking about, that wouldn't deter me from replying at all. Actually I'd find it reassuring; I like smart boys, but I don't want someone who's stuck inside their head all the time, nudge-nudge wink-wink.
It should also be noted that if a guy were to message me saying "Hey, can I interest you in some casual sex? Please let me know" I wouldn't have minded that at all (I wouldn't necessarily say yes, but I wouldn't be offended). There's nothing inherently offensive to me about a guy being interested in sex or wanting to have sex with me in particular. But the thing is, nobody ever messaged me like that. They messaged me saying "I wanna blow my load all over ur tits whut do u say?" and that is NOT THE SAME THING.
Have I mentioned how happy I am to be off the dating scene? :P
Perversecowgirl - YES. There's a huge difference between saying "I'm interested in a friends with benefits situation" and the one-handed typing of very specific inquiries about my anatomy and proclivities without so much as a "hello."
ReplyDeleteI do mention sex in my profile a lot--I kinda feel I have to considering how much kink and sexblogging define my life and how disastrous it would be to conceal them for too long--and a lot of guys seem to interpret this as "FREE SEX JUST ASK." Silly boys, a sex blog means I'm already getting laid, and thus offering me a penis sans any other attractions is ice to Native Alaskan Peoples.
I don't mind if a guy mentions sex either in an otherwise intelligent profile; sometimes it's something that's important to you, and I certainly know how that is.
Just a random thought on economics:
ReplyDeleteIf group A makes $0.67 for every $1 group B makes for comparable work, and group A and group B have equal college opportunity and equal need for money, you'll see more of group A in college. It's just economics. I need $X to have the lifestyle I want, I'm female, I need more training than if I were male.
I'd be much more worried if the college disparity were still there after the income disparity goes away. With the income disparity in place, college equity would be a bad sign--something would still be keeping women out of college against their economic self-interest.
Mary Kaye, if group A and group B have unequal scholarship opportunities, do they have equal college opportunities?
ReplyDeleteIf group A makes $0.67 for the same work as group B makes $1 for, any company that has a 50/50 mix can slash their payroll costs by 11.5% without losing productivity just by hiring all group A. This is way larger than most companies' profit margins. Do you seriously believe that they give away that much cash, even the companies owned by group A, because they love hiring group B so much?
Mousie00 - Part of the college issue is also that men often have more opportunities to get a decent job out of high school.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "why don't companies save money by hiring women?" question, it's because:
A) Companies can't hire the absolute cheapest person for a job (I'm sure you could get street people or new immigrants to run your corporation for minimum wage), they have to hire people who are qualified and experienced.
B) This is as much a job disparity as a wage disparity--there isn't 33% difference in pay between male and female CEOs and male and female housekeepers, but guess which gender gets which job more often.
Part of the college issue is also that men often have more opportunities to get a decent job out of high school.
ReplyDeleteErr, mmm, I can see why one would say that if men get a better job without college we ought to encourage women to get degrees more, but I really don't like the idea of trying to balance one thing with a different kind of thing. Remember the idea that the honor of childbearing was so great men had to be compensated in other areas?
they have to hire people who are qualified and experienced.
We've established that the woman is more likely to have a degree. When experience dominates, we are definitely looking at legacies of historical sexism but no longer dealing with the scholarship/education issue I'm talking about. Unless you think that since your mom has less marketable experience than my dad due to sexism in the past, it should be balanced by my daughter having an easier time getting a degree than your son.
The job disparity I can believe. Mary Kaye specified comparable work, a wage disparity, which is a different beast entirely, and interacts with education differently, and is the thing that capitalist greed would eliminate in short order.
I also suspect that with messages like that that don't say anything except poorly-typed phrases about "want fuk now," the guys in question aren't actually very serious about finding a woman to meet for casual sex. They're jerking off while typing the message, is what they're doing, & once they're done they will forget all about it. A guy of average intelligence who actually wanted to find casual sex would be aware that (a) it takes some effort to set yourself apart from all the other horny dudes, (b) you have to spend some time building rapport and trust with a woman before she'll want to fuck you. If you've ever looked at straight men's Craigslist Casual Encounters ads, it's all like "I need you to come over and give me a blowjob right now." Not very effective, & not really even intended to be.
ReplyDeleteOr to put the above in another way -- guys who "just want sex" get a bad rap for allegedly being shallow jerks. But a guys who was really looking for a just-sex relationship, and determined to go about finding one in the most effective way, wouldn't behave like these "terrifyingly urgent" OKCupid creeps. He'd seek out a woman with whom he had sexual interests (& some other stuff) in common, and be considerate and informative in his online interactions. Frankly I wish there were more guys like that around.
ReplyDeleteMousie00 - I really don't like the idea of trying to balance one thing with a different kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteNeither do I, but... you guys go first. Open up construction work and public safety and "learned everything on the job" business opportunities to us, and then we'll stop going to college so much. We might get in kind of a tight spot if we try it the other way around.
We've established that the woman is more likely to have a degree.
That's very different from being "qualified and experienced," especially in jobs that require industry connections rather than just credentials.
Anyway, I don't want fewer girls going to college under any circumstances; sure, it would be nice if more boys went, but that's different. "Men's Rights" issues always seem to tromple awful close to the zero-sum game where everything has to be taken from women to give to men. I never hear them at prostate cancer rallies or supporting male combat troops. "MRA" always seems like a euphemism for "anti-feminist" rather than an actual male equivalent to feminism.
the guys in question aren't actually very serious about finding a woman to meet for casual sex. They're jerking off while typing the message, is what they're doing, & once they're done they will forget all about it.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I don't think it's that they get off just on the writing process, though; I think they seriously believe that women don't like sex (except as bait to get a guy into a long-term relationship). And if women don't like sex, then nothing you ever do will talk them into having it, so why waste time trying to woo anyone?
However, on the off chance that some lone woman out there is into getting laid, these guys will fire off 500 hamfisted "want fuk now" messages. Gotta cast a wide net if you wanna find that one horndog chick.
Perversecowgirl - I think these guys also don't get that there are a lot of conditional horndog women out there, who can be tremendously horny for the right guy--even an okay guy--but don't sit around in a state of "I'll do literally anyone who offers, I'm just waiting to be asked."
ReplyDeleteHolly said, Neither do I, but... you guys go first. Open up construction work and public safety and "learned everything on the job" business opportunities to us, and then we'll stop going to college so much. We might get in kind of a tight spot if we try it the other way around.
ReplyDeleteOK. So after that you'll open up positions in primary school education to men, and it should be a major corrective to the problems of boys doing badly. Except how do you do that? Men aren't exactly hammering on the doors of the grade schools demanding to be teachers, and I've never actually met a woman who had ambitions to be in police or construction work for it's own sake. I work in the male-dominated field of computer programming, and most of the women I know in the field had only gone into it with the intention of using it as a stepping stone to some kind of management or administrative position. So I think the fact is that the current crop of humans have a considerable gender bias built into their ambitions, and in most cases we can't just "open it up". If we were spending on programs designed to get more boys into police academy and vo-tech schools, we could do something. There'd probably be value in some education dollars going to get more girls into police academy and more boys into grade-school educator majors.
(Now the CEO thing is different; I've met LOTS of women with management ambitions, and 488 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are men? There's a much clearer problem.)
then we'll stop going to college so much
Not a goal.
Anyway, I don't want fewer girls going to college under any circumstances; sure, it would be nice if more boys went, but that's different.
Absolutely. My first reaction is to think I want more scholarships for men, and men agitating about the imbalance is the way I think of raising awareness. Some of those 488 CEOs should be able to cover it when they hear about the problem. However, that isn't exactly what I want, because scholarships can last a long time and I don't want a whole pack of men's scholarships around if it ever happens that women need them again. A matching program? I don't much like the idea of scholarships that select by gender at all, and a matching program pretty much means an escalating gender-based scholarship competition forever. Change them all to non-gender-selective? The people who endowed them have a perfect right to select by gender whether I like it or not. I don't have a solution, though I do want the next Mrs. Rockefeller to hear of the situation before she writes her will.
Mousie00, if you've "never actually met a woman who had ambitions to be in police or construction work for it's own sake" then I can't imagine you've met many women.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that of the 2 women I know well who studied to be engineers (my mother and my best friend from college), NEITHER of them went into it to get into management. And in fact both of them have seriously discussed the sexism in the industry and their own frustration trying to fight against that and internalized notions of whether women are "allowed" to be engineers. My mother has a particularly depressing story she tells about when she was imagining herself as an engineer and she realized that her own imaginary self was a man, because she just couldn't conceive of a woman being respected enough for the position she was dreaming of. Not to mention that she was forced out of feeling comfortable in the engineering field after she gave birth to me and guess what she does now? She teaches freaking grade school science. She's good at it, but she was also good at being an engineer, and she LIKED THAT.
Let's not make sweeping generalizations about what "women want" (or don't want) that go in direct contradiction of WHAT THEY SAY THEY WANT, and what they actually do. Mkay?
TheDeviantE, I've met a lot of women, especially since attending a college with a 7:1 female:male ratio. Now that you bring that up, however, I realize that a very significant proportion of the women I met were at that liberal arts college, hardly where they would have been had they been preparing for police or construction work, giving a skewed perspective.
ReplyDeleteStill, the men I've met with police ambitions have been in martial arts schools; you'd expect that to be just as fertile for meeting women with the same ambitions, as long as there are lots of women there (there were).
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother's problems. I can't speak to "real" engineering, which is a somewhat different environment, but software engineering seems to me to be wide open to women. I did work with one boss who seemed to think male Italian-Americans were much better than anyone else, but I can say as a contractor with about two decades experience of many companies that he was a real oddball. As well as the many women with management ambitions, I have also known one woman who really did love programming, and was an active feminist, and she never seemed to notice any sexism in that particular field, though she pointed it out frequently in daily life.
Let's not make sweeping generalizations about what "women want" (or don't want) that go in direct contradiction of WHAT THEY SAY THEY WANT, and what they actually do. Mkay?
I don't deserve that. If a woman I knew said she wanted to go into construction or police work, I would hardly say I haven't known women with such ambitions. In my experience, WHAT THEY SAY THEY WANT isn't swinging a hammer.
Absolutely you should go on a case-by-case basis. Sure there are women who I haven't met who want to nail frames, and men who want to teach second grade. And actually I'm pretty sure that there is sexism helping to keep men out of grade school teaching and women out of carpentry. "Isn't it a little odd that an x wants to do y?" It would be great to eliminate that. But if it were eliminated, I'm pretty sure you'd still see skewed gender demographics.
(Formerly Mousie00 but my number was unavailable)