Redditor Convinced Women “Have it Easy” on OKCupid Poses as Woman, Lasts Two Hours

Velvety? Like your tongue might be furry? Eww!

some evo-psych moron making the following two pronged argument:

MCJ will be here any minute.

I never used online dating myself; don’t they have the ‘block’ feature? If they don’t, they should; if they do, I imagine it has to make it manageable. Depending on the magnitude of it, of course.

Hector, you say the oddest things!

“Incidentally, women who want large families generally pick lower testosterone men, since high testosterone correlates inversely with being a good father.”

What is the socially acceptable time, place, and manner they use to ask for the biological sample for the testosterone test before deciding who will be their daddy…?

6, 13, you should probably read this link: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/08/prejudice-vs-biology-testosterone-makes-people-more-selfis/

Hector,

Why don’t you make like Alex and provide some citations? It sure beats assertions.

Honestly, I’m glad the guy learned something, but this whole thing smacks of the constant issue where men have to experience something themselves and say “wow, it really is that bad” rather than just believing women. Like the videos going round of dudes volunteering to experience simulated versions of the pain of childbirth and ending up writhing around screaming and declaring that they’d never ever ever do that again and wow all those women who said so really weren’t kidding. Yeah dudes, women as a class of people generally aren’t all lying all the time.

Matt Ski,

Because you ought to be intelligent enough to know all this stuff already.

You can assess prenatal testosterone exposure through things like facial structure, length of ring finger, etc.. Funnily enough, highly masculinized facial features are an indicator of a less reliable father, and so those types of men are less attractive to girls looking to have a bunch of babies. Which is just fine for me- as far as I’m concerned, if the nutty feminists end up with the lounge-lizard casanovas, the rest of us are all better off.

O Crooked Timber comments, don’t ever change!

NSA sex? What is that? Sex with the NSA watching?

The average woman still has a better chance of procreating successfully than the average man.

Of course. The most procreatively competent man without a fertile woman is no better than a wanker But then you’d know that.

I’m not a woman, but could someone who is tell me if being pestered for sex is less or more annoying than having every r^2 = .03 bit of psychosocial science dragged out as if it were the irrefutable secret code to understanding all my thoughts.

“NSA sex? What is that? Sex with the NSA watching?”

Hey! I already made that joke at post 2!
;-)

And it’s the fact that other men will now believe that the situation in question sucks because they were told so my another man , rather than believing women in the first place.

Hector,

Because you ought to be intelligent enough to know all this stuff already.

That’s pretty remarkable. You don’t need to demonstrate the validity of your claims because, to hear you tell it, if I don’t buy what you’re selling that just proves I’m not intelligent!

Sweet.

. . . NSA sex.

Is that like in Being John Malkovich?

[Or eXistenZ?]

Or both . . .

I’d rather that we men weren’t all lumped together

Oh, for fucks sake. No one’s saying it’s _all_ men. But the problem is widespread enough that Katherine’s phrasing (@19) makes perfect sense. Honestly, this is the kind of fairly obvious statement that, in almost any other context, all of us can straightforwardly parse without drawing absurd inferences (like supposing the sentence has universal quantification).

@Kathrine #33

That’s good and true, and it’s also true that a lot of this shit exists on the male side and is gonna have to get worked out among men. Eg, for example. Women who are game and women who aren’t.

the fact of traffic asymmetry remains

If it was an objection to attention that was being raised we’d be discussing a not-dating site.

Previous story on pollution, this story on pollution: but both worth telling.

I understand Katherine’s frustration, but that is part of The Patriarchy Experience – women’s experience is presumptively exaggerated, emotionally biased, hysterical. I mean, men didn’t end up dominating women & running the planet by listening to women, now did we?

I’m reminded of the blues I heard in the latest Woody Allen movie: ‘Un bon homme est dur pour trouver, vous toujours trouver l’autre qualité.’ Beautiful thing. Lizzie Miles.

Re: I mean, men didn’t end up dominating women & running the planet by listening to women, now did we?

I listen to women who say meaningful things, Anderson. Not the ones who don’t.

Re: Do you ever get bored posting the same thing in thread after thread?

If you folks are going to constantly whip out rhyming slogans like ‘Get your rosaries off my ovaries’ and expect it to convince people, then I demand the right to respond in kind.

Mao writes: Un bon homme est dur pour trouver

Translation: A hard man is good to find.

“If you folks are going to constantly whip out rhyming slogans like ‘Get your rosaries off my ovaries’ and expect it to convince people, then I demand the right to respond in kind.”

Who even said that here you wacko?

Who even said that here you wacko?

HECTOR did, the first and only time it’s ever been seen here.

Perhaps the forums at windmills.com are not active today.

I liked, ‘get your transubstantiation out of my midnight masturbation’ ..

“I liked, ‘get your transubstantiation out of my midnight masturbation’ ..”

Ha!

” If you are a male under 5’10″ or aged over 55 or low-income, you can fuggedaboudit! ”

Not according to Hector. You’re a baby-making machine. Check your ring finger length, my man.

Katherine @ 33,

Love all your comments about this. About 33, I’m pretty sure Dale Spender wrote about this very thing in the 1980s. Has nothing changed?

My own father was not a pre-possessing hunk of magazine masculinity. His draft card says he was 5’5″, but subsequent pictures say that must have been a self-reported figure. He and my mother produced 7 of us which is well above the average.
[We resemble each other as much a litter of Labrador retrievers does. So, knock wood, we’re all “wise children” in that regard.] He never swore or spoke of sex in my hearing. [Other than on the day of my 12th birthday a 90 second talk about the mechanics of sex and VD.] He was staunch enough in nerve to have had a field promotion to major during WW2. He saw action with the Corps of Engineers on D-Day + 1, and the air fields he was charged with building were often shelled. The pictures of him with his officers show a bantam man in Army sun glasses surrounded by lieutenants the size of NFL linemen. I learned what I know of masculinity mostly from his example, obviously, and I’m constantly amazed by the anxieties and fetishes our society evinces about it.

Evolution would suggest that a man with average penis length and testosterone level would have the most success in producing off-spring. It doesn’t take much in either regard to get the job done.

“But you can always find the other kind.”

But if biology is all, then why does feminist ideology matter?

“I don’t think there is any possible world where these sites are flooded by handsome, wealthy, caring guys who just haven’t found the right girl.”

Nevertheless, there are definitely cases of people finding husbands and wives online. It could be just a matter of website’s design, policies, and management efforts.

Mao Cheng:

The reason why women are less into casual sex is pretty obviously due to nature. But, believe it or not, you will find some clowns that will tell you it’s social conditioning, particularly among the jezebels at Jezebel.

“It’s innate. Highly ideologically feminist women don’t want many children, so they go for the sexy stud who is going to make a bad father (and this explains why so many feminists at places like Jezebel have bad dating experiences). More traditional women tend to go for the caring provider type since they want to have a large family, and no doubt they end up happier.”

Which part? The part where they’re born ideologically feminist, or the part where they confuse parenting skills with fertility? Or just the bit where they’re always measuring ring fingers? Really, this is fascinating. Do tell!

Sperm are cheap, eggs are expensive.

I just had a horrible thought about Denny’s Grand Slam.

Katherine at 32 points out that she faults Redditdude as one of the “cases where men have disbelieved the women in question, assumed that they are exaggerating, being over-sensitive.”

If this was only true about online dating it’d be bad enough. But if you’ve been around the medical literature a time or two, you’ll know that when women and minorities report pain, they are widely disbelieved, and don’t get nearly the aggressive and effective symptom management that we white dudes get. Here’s a place you can go for links to said literature, which is pretty overwhelming.

Who was it said that there was no substance so precious as a white man’s tears?

@71: from all the accounts I’ve ever seen or heard, successful dating sites (OKCupid, match.com, whatever) generally include BOTH (a) overwhelming waves of jerks sending women unwanted pictures and messages AND (b) a significant possibility of leading to a real relationship. There are lots and lots and lots of accounts of this kind of thing, many of which take place on the most popular dating sites; if it were just a matter of poor moderation, there would be sites with good moderation available where the problem didn’t exist.

“And women have and enjoy sex long after the menopause. I don’t think they become more promiscuous.”

I don’t buy the evolutionary biology either. And some women do enjoy sex. But it is just a fact that huge numbers of women – by some counts the majority – are sexually dysfunctional. That’s just reality. If your average woman hooked up with a random dickpic emailer for nsa sex, he’d have a great time, her not so much.

Sumana,

There’s no such thing as ‘man’s truth’ and ‘woman’s truth’. there’s simply truth, lies, and error. I make it a point not to suffer fools gladly, so if it turns out that most of what feminists say is either lies or error, then that’s just too damned bad. I am not into dumbing down the truth in order to avoid hurting people’s feelings.

If you can’t stand the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.

I nominate this for the Crooked Timber-est thread that Crooked Timber has had in the last 12 months? Any other contenders?

“But it is just a fact that huge numbers of women – by some counts the majority – are sexually dysfunctional.”

Maybe the problem isn’t the women Alex…

But it is just a fact that huge numbers of women – by some counts the majority – are sexually dysfunctional. That’s just reality. If your average woman hooked up with a random dickpic emailer for nsa sex, he’d have a great time, her not so much.

So… you’re thinking that a woman not having a great time hooking up with “a random dickpic emailer” is evidence of the woman being sexually dysfunctional? Jesus fucking christ.

“But it is just a fact that huge numbers of women – by some counts the majority – are sexually dysfunctional.”

Totally! Every one of them! It’s true. Well, every one of the ones I have sex with. They don’t seem to enjoy it at all. What’s wrong with them?

Sheez.

@86 ” it is just a fact that huge numbers of women – by some counts the majority – are sexually dysfunctional. That’s just reality.”
What if, perchance, mayhaps, it is our society which is so sexually dysfunctional, and some women end up paying most of the price for this because of the particular way in which our society introduces them to that sexuality. i am thinking here not just the jarring stuff like encounters with abuse or violence or being generally threatened by that aspect of yourself b/c of the *erm* boldness of others, but also worth noting is all that shifty subliminal-get-in-your-head stuff like barbie proportions and airbrushed magazine covers and catcalls on the street and just the straight up claustrophobia of the (acceptable) portrayals of female sexuality in public society.
and then perhaps it is worth considering that many men are themselves ‘sexually dysfunctional’ – i wouldn’t characterize sending out dickpics to a person you have never met (and who could very well be a man! [or whoever you have a taboo against sleeping with] ) as sexually ‘proper’ or whatever. and on that note, defining ‘sexual dysfunction’ and sexual ‘normalcy’ does not seem like a worthwhile enterprise, not scientifically, not morally.

We’re in a Meta-PoMod world. We can’t discuss sex with any semblance of the authentic, the real, the true, because we have too much cultural baggage and the realization (and fear) of that baggage on our minds. Even those who think they’re “telling it like it is” are subject to hedging, redirecting, sleight of word, etc. — not to mention just getting lost in translation.

So, how much of our online discussion about sex and gender is due to what we want people to think, within the context of what we want to think about ourselves as we think all too much about ourselves? And how much do we hold back because of that? What do we alter? How much do we tailor our speech to sound “good” whether we actually sync up with what we’re saying, or not?

In short, there’s a lot of static (and confusion and mendacity) out there, and online is one of the worst places to cut through it. More than 90% of communication is non-verbal, and we lose all of that online.

Read this article and the subsequent comments for an idea of what I’m getting at. I’m thinking we all should reread Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. Sometimes a soup can is a soup can is a soup can.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/13/jared_leto_and_michael_douglass_homophobic_golden_globes_speeches_show_the_worst_of_hollywood/

Apologies for the long link above. Next time, will use a secure short url site, like

http://mcaf.ee/

Hector_St_Clare #87: You are both arrogant and wrong: those are just facts. But you are also being insulting here. You need to stop. Also reflect, but I’m sure that’s too much to ask.

Tom Slee,

Excuse me. I believe foolishness needs to be called out, regardless of the race or sex of the person spouting it.

hec·tor (hktr)
n.
A bully.
v. hec·tored, hec·tor·ing, hec·tors
v.tr.
To intimidate or dominate in a blustering way.
v.intr.
To behave like a bully; swagger.

The story sounds right, but it leaves me with the question: how do these sites stay in business? It seems as if no woman would want to stay on long enough to deal with this kind of thing.

My depressing conjecture: the real-life dating marketplace is as bad or worse.

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear from any female commenters who’ve actually used these sites successfully – don’t think any have commented so far.

I kinda find the feminist anti-science horrifying and hillarious. How is a basic disorder like anorgasmia a definitional trick? You can do something as simple as masturbate to orgasm, or you can’t. Relative to men, shockingly high numbers of women can’t.

I don’t think you’re doing women any favors by pulling out the usual crap about idiosyncratic definitions or it rather being society that has a problem. There’s a huge literature showing lots of women actually do have problems and trying to bullshit them away because the concept of gender differences in sexual response is politically inconvienient for you is pretty shitty.

#67: “Average” for humans is, hopefully, somewhat less oversexed than a chicken is bred to be bad-tempered. “Average” in humans, actually, is quite different from many other apes. “Evolution” here indicates (or rather the cross-species comparison) that the human form hasn’t caught up with recent social innovations like atomic marriage.

Penis length doesn’t seem to be the key factor – testes size (as an analogue for semen production) is. Humans’ positioning on that scale compared to many other apes seems to indicate that we aren’t too far off from the days of every guy in the tribe chasing after the same woman.

(Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has a short discussion on this, I think, in Mother Nature. Basically, gorillas = physical strength to preclude competition, therefore small testes. Chimpanzees = larger testes. Humans are closer to chimps than gorillas, even after a long period of more social order than chimps, which indicates to me that social orderliness alone doesn’t reward males with offspring.)

@ John Quiggin: In some way, apparently, but probably not in terms of behavior: Internet psuedonymity makes every bad tendency worse and more proudly displayed. Granted, on the Internet you are potentially isolated from physical violence, but that balances poorly against “look at all the favors I am giving her” mentality-bred aggressiveness.

I think the factors you haven’t looked at are the (equally depressing) reality of urban loneliness and the feeling of many women that many males they know are next to worthless (which is certain to be partly true!) mixed in with a little hope that perhaps an online dating profile would increase their visibility to desirable males.

I know you’re all busy with the Troll circus here (and I’m not really objecting to capturing some Trolls and trying to get them to do tricks, though I wonder when PETA will show up) — but I’m curious about whether anyone knows whether that’s actually a typical OKC experience (that also goes to JQ’s question at 109). I’ve talked to a number of women using OKC, and there have certainly been plenty of complaints (carelessly crafted initial messages, misrepresentation, general quality of male profiles) but this type of NSA/dickpic harassment has never come up. I can think of three reasons:
1. If you know what you’re doing this type of stuff is easy to block and/or ignore
2. The women I talked to were so used to this that it didn’t seem worth mentioning
3. Something particular in the fake profile attracted this — before you dismiss this entirely, note that this was a guy who spends his time on 4Chan and just switched his profile, so it it may very well have attracted the weirdos in force

@111

“How is a basic disorder like anorgasmia a definitional trick? You can do something as simple as masturbate to orgasm, or you can’t. Relative to men, shockingly high numbers of women can’t.”

I’m prepared to be shocked. What is the rate of women who have anorgasmia?

alex@68 – “And look at it from the guys pov. They got some asshole trolling as a chick.”

So that’s an a**hole trolling a bunch of dic’s ? Chuckle …

Hector,

Please provide peer reviewed studies to comment on, not behind a pay wall, if you want a detailed response.

It’s a biological fact that men can’t get pregnant. Pretty much everything else about sex-linked social roles and attitudes is up for negotiation. If they weren’t so malleable, cultural conservatives wouldn’t even have a problem to bemoan or fight against — encouraging women to have professional careers or plan family size would be as inconsequential as encouraging men to bear children. Every one of today’s low-fertility societies is descended from a high-fertility society, so I wouldn’t pin great hopes on conservatives eventually winning the cultural war by attrition and breeding.

Re: Every one of today’s low-fertility societies is descended from a high-fertility society, so I wouldn’t pin great hopes on conservatives eventually winning the cultural war by attrition and breeding.

Sigh. You are aware, right, that (for example) one’s views on abortion rights are a little over 50% heritable? And that pro-life people have about 50% more babies than you folks? What do you think that says about the future of abortion ‘rights’ in America?

Of course most of our behavior is up for negotiation. You can negotiate people into doing lots of things they wouldn’t otherwise do, like invading Russia in the dead of winter, to take a classic example. But that ‘negotiation’ happens on a landscape shaped by our biological inclinations and predispositions. Of course it’s possible to encourage all women to seek career success and financial equality with men. The question is, should we, and will that be for the best all-around?

and this gradually narrows the field to people who answer those questions in the way that you do, or close to it

… this is a selling point? I thought the whole point of relationships was that they were with people who fundamentally differed from you: if I wanted to have a sexual relationship with someone who was identical to myself there’s one sitting in my chair in front of my computer.

… this is a selling point?

If you require a Mary Matalin to your James Carville I am not one to judge. You monster.

What do you think that says about the future of abortion ‘rights’ in America?

All the hot liberal chicks who like to have pregnancy-free sex are going to move to California?
You’re so deluded you’re not even wrong?
The National Academies of Science need to investigate the possibility that the women’s rights movement was caused by an alien invasion?

t’s bn mn mns snc ny f th pstrs dsmvwlld cmmnt, bt mthnks — hps — t s rp fr cmbck. Hw bt t Bll?

how do these sites stay in business? It seems as if no woman would want to stay on long enough to deal with this kind of thing.

I can give you a few answers:

For one thing, there are things you can do to reduce the amount of this kind of stuff you have to contend with. At the extreme end (which I have customarily done) is post a profile without a photo. This is a remarkably good weeding-out tool. It’s like a speed bump. People suddenly have to write a few sentences and send them to you before seeing your picture, and somehow the instinct to unload (sorry) on a total stranger seems to lessen when you can’t see a pic.

Of course you will still get furious responses from men who are enraged that you dare to “make” them write you to ask for a picture, but the upside is you can now block those guys and worry less that they can track you down somewhere else online and harass you there. It’s an extra layer of protection.

In less-extreme form, you can make your profile more “serious” (complete sentences, slightly wonky sounding pastimes, etc). This often helps to weed out men who think you look like too much work. For me this wasn’t much of a stretch, as I am by nature fairly serious and wonky. It does mean that every man I’ve ever dated seriously has been somewhat-to-very boggled by my silly and raunchy side, because I kept that almost completely under wraps in my online persona.

It also helps to be older (I was 27 when I started dating online; 34 the last time I tried). IME, just like in person, bullies go harder after people they perceive to be more vulnerable.

NONE of the above eliminates jerks and harassers, or guarantees you won’t catch the attention of a serious stalker. So some of this is adam.smith’s point #2: This stuff gets normalized.

Even to ourselves, IME, women tend to minimize, reframe, or adjust reality just so we can deal with the psychological implications of knowing that there are some men out there who are thisclose to being homicidally angry at our rejection.

As careful as I was — and I was very, very, very careful — I still found myself on a date with a guy who casually spoke of being angry enough to throw someone down the stairs. At times like that you’re just running through the mental checklist: OK, he outweighs me by 50 points and he’s 4 inches taller, BUT we’re in a public place; OK, he’s telling me something important and flag-raising about himself by this remark, but he doesn’t seem to be angry at *me* [yet]….I got home safe. And luckily he took “no” for an answer on further correspondence.

(Confidential to Katherine, Lynne, Anderson, and CJ: Thanks for being in this thread. And Matt, kudos on bringing the data.)

Re: That’s how e.g. Ireland, Brazil, and Iran can all have sub-replacement fertility rates despite having some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. It’s also how Italy, Denmark, and Poland can have substantially lower abortion rates and lower fertility rates than the USA.

That’s very true, but I’m surprised to hear such a nuanced position coming from your side of the aisle.

I don’t at all think pro-life people have more kids, at a causal level, because they refuse to abort unplanned pregnancies. I suspect there are much deeper psychological factors that lead one to both want more children, and also to take a dim view of abortion. (Also, the citation for this was an unpublished paper at some sociology conference that drew from the General Social Survey, and I don’t remember what they corrected for, or not. Less educated women are much more likely to be pro life, and to have larger families, so that could be the causal factor right there, although I can’t imagine the authors would be shoddy enough not to correct for education).

ps. I only meant to say that I’ve not heard of friends of mine who are women and have OKCupid profiles getting unsolicited dickpics. (And again, v small sample.)

@Belle – not sure why I deserved that. My post started with a question and then an observation about the actual women I actually talked to about their experience being on OKC (as opposed to some anonymous douchebag on Reddit, who no – is not going to convince me of anything). I think it’s quite clear I took and take what they conveyed as their experience at face value (so there’s the anyone: any woman I know will easily convince me of that). And these weren’t quick “oh I’m on OKC” conversations. They were 20min to 1h rants about their experiences with online dating that didn’t seem like they were trying to paint an overly rosy picture… Still, they didn’t include this. So I was wondering about the reason for that divergence. And I started out by asking (!) whether that was really the case and I posited three possible explanations. The second one of which is actually quite close to your explanation.
So for you to say

there’s literally nothing anyone could do to convince you

is just bizarrely uncharitable. It takes one sentence of my post, makes sure to interpret it entirely devoid of its context and then personally attacks me. This is now the second time you have attacked me personally in this way based on such super-selective readings. And I really don’t get it.
When you ask for epistemic humility and stuff like that — do you mean that or is it just a shtick?

Well, the thought did occur to me that this must be a little bit of what women deal with back when I was in the habit of taking a morning walk in Whittier Narrows, and occasionally (well twice) (although there was a third one whom I was preemptively rude to) (maybe with reason, maybe not) (and if I’m not, then sorry if he happens to be reading this) I would be approached by a seemingly pleasant (well the first one was seemingly pleasant, to the extent that I responded “you too,” when he bid me “have a nice day,” whereas the second simply wouldn’t give up, to the extent that I ended up flipping him off) young man, who would start chatting with me only to suddenly come out with, “I really want to suck your dick.” Later of course, I would get to thinking how odd it seemed that someone would offer such a thing to a complete stranger ostensibly for his own pleasure, I mean I always thought that was something you just did as a “favor,” I mean was there an expectation that I would reciprocate at some point? And now you’ve all got me wondering if their mouths would… but I digress.

” I would get to thinking how odd it seemed that someone would offer such a thing to a complete stranger ostensibly for his own pleasure, I mean I always thought that was something you just did as a “favor,” I mean was there an expectation that I would reciprocate at some point? And now you’ve all got me wondering if their mouths would… but I digress.”

Many people, of both genders, enjoy giving oral sex. Is that really a surprise?

FWIW – I find the comments from women on Reddit you cite a lot more convincing than the male “experiments”. But you had all but told us not to look at the Jezebel comments and not linked to the Reddit piece, so I asked.

Funny how evo psych teaches that if women liked sex they would sleep with subway flashers and street harassers with frequency, but it doesn’t teach that if men wanted sex they wouldn’t spend their time threatening women with their alleged fantasies.

Modulo,

Actually, Evo psych doesn’t teach anything of the sort.

As far as I can tell, Hector St. Clare is in favor of sending dick pics to random women.

Because. . . and I am surprised as anybody to learn this. . . it’s in Ephesians.

St. Paul, apparently, sent pictures of his dick to various women.

Because evolution!

Actually, Evo psych doesn’t teach anything of the sort.

You have to remember, “what you think” and “what positions you agree with teach” aren’t actually independent data points. There’s a subtle and hard-to-spot interaction between the two, see.

No, man, I criticized her for quoting Jezebel. keep up.

I pointed out further down the thread that, no, dickpic flashers are not a healthy social phenomenon.

Belle Waring,

For what it’s worth, I agree with you about the duck pics and obscene messages, as well as ignoring people’s stated preferences.

I don’t really participate in online dating myself, other than I’m on one site specifically geared towards age disparate romances , but on my occasional half hearted forays I haven’t ever sent a duck pic or proposed a sexual encounter. I’m generally skeptical of online dating mostly because my impression is it skews culturally liberal.

I get spam for Christian dating sites. I think there’s all kinds of specialized ones. Probably even for people who are into duck pics.

Hector St. Clare, would you please provide a link to a real study that says that women deliberately choose men with lower testosterone levels for childbearing? Googling suggests this assertion to be a speculation combining several different studies that could be interpreted rather differently. I cannot a scientific result in one study. Thanks!

Wow, an experience from OKCupid as described on Reddit and link-baited on Jezebel. It’s like a desperation inside an obsessiveness, wrapped in an inadequacy.

I don’t use OKCupid or anything similar, but I am a member of a Facebook group of friends who use it (or other dating sites) where they post their experiences, amusing and creepy alike, of internet dating. The group’s name is simply OMGLOL, and its contents are both hilarious and confronting.

This story was posted in there today to a uniform reaction of “Mmmmhmmm” head-nodding from the female members.

John Q, in response to your “why do they stick with it?” question, something about the presistent triumph of hope over experience, I think.

Well that was impressive. Try again.

Perhaps Hector meant these duck pics?

http://antiduckface.tumblr.com/

Or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wish_That_I_Had_Duck_Feet

age disparate romances

I don’t think he means thirty and fifty, guys.

May I ask, respectfully: what’s the deal with this tremendous contempt for the evo-psych thingy? Is the correct view that the whole complete thing a bourgeois pseudoscience, or is it only some reductionist version of it that is being scorned? Because if it’s the later, you probably should refer to it as “dime-store evo-psych” (or something), to avoid the confusion.

I haven’t read all the comments but my sympathies with Belle. have been exposed to way too much evo-psych for me not to comment on this. The biggest problem is that the arguments are couched in a scientific terms and some people seem to simply inhale this stuff. Furthermore, they unwittingly propagate the worst ideas in the field because it all seems so scientific – and therefore unprejudiced. It’s a general problem of pop theorization, in general, but it is a problem that is particularly acute for evo-psych .

Personally, I have no opinion on the discipline as it appears in technical journals that I don’t read. It is the pop-science version which irritates me.

Finally, I’m surprised that no one aside from the initial commenters were surprised that someone said something so gross to me in a political argument?

You’re right Belle and I apologise. It is a wider issue that deserves a lot of attention. It is also a very common experience among on the internet generally. Woman campaigns for a woman on a banknote – rape and death threats. Woman starts a Kickstarter on how women are treated in gaming – gets rape and death threats. Hey, here’s another one:

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.html
http://skepchick.org/2013/10/why-i-dont-just-go-to-the-cops/

This is just a small sample. This deserves to be better known, and talked about outside the usual circles. This affects the whole internet by sullying the experience of a large proportion of users.

@ MCJ:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

It’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot of “oh look I has a theory” amateur hour couch-based analysis going on. There is also a huge danger of the average intelligent layperson being convinced by the experts – when looking at the field more broadly reveals that there are often very profound differences from one camp to another. It is kind of like the person who goes “everybody used to think that evolution can create any structure, but now nobody thinks that.” What’s actually happened is just that the field has fragmented, with some adhering to a new view, some the old view, and probably others holding on to different views entirely.

Schisms in other “mature” scientific fields (Einstein vs. the Copenhagen School) often are debates at the very edge of the field, while what remains is still more than useful enough for writing a textbook that will get you almost all the way where you need to go. School kids and even professionals are taught simplified versions of what’s actually happening, but almost always you can use these simplifications with no problem.

That’s not true at all where psychology is involved. Especially weird psychology that says things like “fat people are dumb” or “Jews are smarter, therefore we should club them all to protect ourselves.”

However, even if it’s not clear there’s a consensus picture (as is the case with climate change science), there shouldn’t be resentment that people would have the temerity to talk about what are (at least apparently) pressing social matters (the horror!) and to want to find some scientific way of talking about such things (even if it isn’t really scientific). Probably the greatest victory in this arena has been the reintroduction of ethics and social norms into the discussion with science – these are at least baby steps since “SCIENCE!” had people measuring noggins, theorizing about the “hysterical female tendencies of mobs,” and having active discussions about forced sterilization programs (and, I need not mention, worse).

Personally I think the term “sociobiology” might be more helpful here because it’s explicitly mentioning group interactions, rather than some ginned-up lab experiment with no relevance to the world, and it doesn’t promise that level of analysis from the start. Start with the modest claims first.

I don’t think that Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is a good author because she’s a woman (although it does give her some natural insights that a man will have to ask for help understanding), but precisely because she seems to succeed in keeping assertions fairly well-grounded and close to the evidence – in general, not falling prey to many of the sophomoric failures that some tenured amateurs have. She does get into politics ever so slightly when talking about the implications of human fecundity (babies are going to be hurt if we don’t have contraception) but, you know, I can’t imagine somebody reading those passages and thinking “gee, she doesn’t support this assertion at all.”

Somebody like Geoffrey Miller, PhD, rolling headlong into other disciplines (Socrates: What is it with the professionals thinking they know everything?), and even failing to understand the basic implications of evidence in his own field, is something else.

(By the way, Noam Chomsky is obviously guilty of this as well – although, when I look at how bad some of this actually is, it does seem far worse than even the worst of Chomsky.)

Overall I am hopeful about sociobiology (or evo-psych, but not under that label), but the much increased difficulty in procuring and interpreting evidence convinces me that there is only so much that the top professionals in the field can do to ride herd over the out-to-sea ones. Anthropology and archaeology have some of the same problems (What was this dinosaur thinking millions of years ago? How do I know?) but to a lesser degree (especially where psychology is less important).

@ Katherine:

I think the moral of the story is simply that the old appeal to authority was never justified after all. People who act like wild animals when they are caught outside their range of expertise, or who surround themselves only with like-minded individuals and act like wild animals to suppress any contrary views or personalities from destroying that conformity and social order / social game (because having a “goat” can be highly motivating – often in a harmful way, but not always), are always lurking at the edges of any order or group.

Also, I feel bad for anybody who thought that Richard Dawkins was going to be the staunch defender of everything right and reasonable here. I consider myself an atheist, but after seeing the “don’t worry” campaign and many other totally unnecessary, aggressively demeaning campaigns (and the inevitable wave of thoughtless excursions into that theme) it was clear that they really don’t care about helping out other people, but just trying to shame or even repress people who don’t share the same view. There especially was little capacity for attempting to comprehend the best arguments from the other side – atheists steelmanning (as opposed to strawmanning) arguments has always been very rare.

Perhaps Dawkins isn’t naturally the kind of person who would do this – but as somebody who has taken on such a visible role I would like to be able to expect he would take a moment to try and insulate himself from being egged on to adopt the harmful methods and attitudes of camp followers who just want to smash something and believe that sketch arguments are the final word.

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/fuvxt0/-midnight-okcupid-or-serial-killer—bloody-knuckles

Ed Herdman, I wasn’t talking about sceptic communities particularly. I was pointing out that internet harassment is not specific or isolating to internet dating, or Belle’s individual experience. This is a very wide, one might even say pervasive, problem.

Anders,

The facts are the facts. Twin studies demonstrate that ones views on abortion rights are. 55% heritable . Please see Olson JM, et al. 2001. ‘The Heritability of Attitudes’. J. of Personality and Social Psychology 80: 845-860.

Why are you talking to me Hector? I haven’t said anything about whatever it is you are talking about?

“The facts are the facts. Twin studies demonstrate that ones views on abortion rights are. 55% heritable . Please see Olson JM, et al. 2001. ‘The Heritability of Attitudes’. J. of Personality and Social Psychology 80: 845-860.”

Hector finally gives a reference for one of his many ‘facts are facts’ opinions. Let’s see shall we? This study gives a 0.54 heritability factor for opinions on abortion on demand, and then goes on to say in previous studies low to no heritability was found for this opinion and that their sample different substantially from general population and you can’t generalize from their results.

Also from this study: “Attitudes toward separate roles for men and women were not heritable, replicating previous findings for similar items dealing with gender roles.”

Clearly a good citation proving Hector’s views.

Yods,

They’re using self reported scores to judge whether gender role attitudes are heritable or not. Certain key items of the feminist agenda, though, I.e. Abortion rights, are heritable . I made no claims, I think , about the heritability of gender attitudes per se.

If this kind of thing catches on, next thing you know there will be someone going into Israel Palestine chatroom to take the opposite of their usual position and being shocked at how mean his side is.

Yods,

I think gender role belief is heritable, I just don’t think asking people about their beliefs on gender roles is a good way to assess their beliefs on gender roles.

Yods,

In any case, I don’t use Evo psych to justify flashing duckpics, nor (I suspect) do many of its proponents, so I don’t see why Evo psych is even relevant here. It’s like tarring communists in Cuba for crimes that Stalin did before most of them were alive in another continent.

Ed, fair enough, I misunderstood.

Hector, I am entirely uninterested in having any conversation with you.

Yods writes: Hector, either you believe your own cited study or you don’t.

If evo-psych is phrenology, Hector is a retrophrenologist.

” so I don’t see why Evo psych is even relevant here.”

Then what the hell are you posting about?

“I also was told over lunch by a very esteemed evolutionary biologist, who’s written a textbook on evolution, that he has a hunch women are naturally more into babies than men, for biological reasons.”

What does that have to do with anything?
And is some (unnamed) guy’s hunch the best you’ve got?

Mao, the problem with Hector is that he believes something totally different from what he cited there. So yeah, it’s maybe fair game to say that you have a ‘strong suspicion’ that this-or-that is true, but how can we use science if our reasons basically boil down to compound anecdotes and self-selected self-reports?

About your second point, I think it’s relatively straightforward to say that certain traits can increase the tendency towards holding beliefs in a certain spectrum (if not in immediate details). This being said with the

Random thought on the topic:

It is interesting to note that a lot of people assume what is clearly functional – being “first to the prize” – is inseparable from what is not so clearly functional – using various behaviors in mysterious ways to try and impress the female. This is especially true on the rather socially-impoverished and lonesome person-to-person interaction of a website.

There are a lot of bad behavior apologists out there who appeal to manliness and machismo to say that “look, you need to be aggressive (and if nothing else you will gross all the other guys into fleeing / having heart attacks so that you’re the last person standing).” It’s appealing enough but not really related to what is actually doing the work here – especially in the modern context where we have a long tradition of emphasizing good behavior, common (though not universal) family-mediated courtships and the like. Yes, change is scary and nobody wants selection to be the result of a computer-optimized selection process, with every male’s balls shrinking down to nothing from the lack of competition. That said, I can’t shake the feeling that enough is enough – and there is also really is no reason to believe these beliefs are as functional as some people think. I think there’s even a possibility that these guys end up selecting in dysfunctional ways (from the standpoint of “did you have offspring”).

“…not so clearly functional – using various behaviors in mysterious ways to try and impress the female. This is especially true on the rather socially-impoverished and lonesome person-to-person interaction of a website.”

Right, social atomization has to play a big role here.

Belle @ 128:

“Finally, I’m surprised that no one aside from the initial commenters were surprised that someone said something so gross to me in a political argument?”

It’s a couple of years since I read Sady Doyle talking about the threats she received regularly, of rape and death, including from some evidence that the threatener knew who she was and where she lived. She may have linked to some other columnists writing about the same thing—I read quite a bit more at that time and you bet I was surprised. I was gob-smacked, horrified, dumbfounded….it was, to say the very least, eye-opening. These women were talking about the threats as awful but routine. What really freaked them out was the times men actually mentioned their (the women’s) addresses or some other personal detail that wasn’t up for public consumption, showing they had done their homework (which is to say the threatener had stalked them.)

So I wasn’t surprised by your statement, but I am certainly sorry it happened. And you say nine days ago you received a rape threat?! That is just terrible. I am so sorry.

I admire women who keep on posting in sites where these threats happen. I don’t do so myself (but I should! At least sometimes.) The broader issue that concerns me is how this environment silences a huge whack of the population, like half. Not that all women are silenced, evidently, but many are. We are, shall we say, under-represented.

Years ago I was walking in a Take Back the Night March. It wasn’t a big march. There were people on the sidewalks along the way. We were chanting I forget what when a man on the sidewalk stepped toward me and said, “Have YOU been raped?” If I had said “No,” I suppose the implication was that I had no business on the march. If I had said “Yes”…what then? I believe from his jeering tone that he would have enjoyed that.

Not saying he had raped anyone himself, necessarily, but the idea of my being raped didn’t seem to dismay him.

Chris Armstrong, is your friend’s project theblockbot.com ?

Belle Waring,

I also think it’s outrageous that you got the velvety mouth threat and the rape threat, I wanted to go one record as saying that. In spite of our political disagreements.

Belle Warring,

I think I will take you up on your suggestion, and at least try to be a bit less abrasive. Again, sorry about your experiences.

Re: Is it the sort where one party spends rather more…. freely…. than the other party? Please elaborate, HSC.

Not on the site per se, but I’d certainly *expect*, in any relationship, to be spending more money. I’m explicitly looking for a relationship where I’m providing for/taking care of someone financially, and thereby fulfilling the traditional gender role that I aspire to, so I’m only really looking for a girl who’s into that, and I’d like to screen out anyone who has more modernist ideals.

“To be fair the the Crooked Timber commentariat, it’s not as though any of them has ever threatened to rape me! No, fuck, hahaha, that’s not even 100% true either! ”

Now that makes me very, very sad. I am sorry Belle.

“I would contend that, for political-ish sites, TNC sets the standard. Compared to his (*heavily* moderated) comment threads, CT comments, quite often (eg, when icky giirrrrllllssss post about icky girrrrrllll stuff) almost unreadable.”

I don’t read the comments at TNC so I really cannot comment on that. I will say that in my experience CT has a large number of excellent commentors. Of course it isn’t perfect but it is FAR better than average.

“Unless you find Hector’s incessent trolling (SPECIAL CASES!) to be an example of ‘the best’ that the interwebs have to offer”
Ummm… I think my comment makes it clear that I don’t. What part of “special cases” don’t you understand?

“To be fair the the Crooked Timber commentariat, it’s not as though any of them has ever threatened to rape me! No, fuck, hahaha, that’s not even 100% true either! LOL. Someone did send me a sexually threatening email one time.”

Oh, Belle. That makes me sad. Here I’m moseying along, mostly lurking at CT and you have had a completely different experience than I have had, or that I’ve seen you have even with the GRR Martin thread.

Of course it isn’t perfect but it is FAR better than average.

“Better than average” is faint praise when the baseline comparison is so low. 2 or 3 ‘special cases’ can easily dominate and derail a discussion, no matter how great the majority of commentors may be (case in point: um, this thread). While I agree that CT at times indeed enjoys “some of the best comments on the interwebs,” one regularly has to sift wheat from chaff in order to find them. And that process can be extremely tedious on threads where the signal to noise ratio is so unbalanced.

Finally, I’m surprised that no one aside from the initial commenters were surprised that someone said something so gross to me in a political argument?

This is absurdly tardy, but I found that anecdote so gobsmackingly disgusting that I said nothing. Certainly the sort of behavior that, in my imperfect universe, merits a left hook to the proboscis.

Yeah, not that it matters I guess, but I have to agree with all the pushback TNC’s comments are getting — which are awful to my mind. Which is a pity as he’s an always interesting, self critical writer himself

Sumana @ 218 – yes, that’s it. He’s an old school friend who has had an interest in atheist debates for a long time, which debates attract their fair share of (religion-defending) crazies. Now the bot is mainly used for the kind of reasons Belle is talking about.

***Also too: There are a lot of angry, inept and lonely men in this world. They show up disproportionately on dating sites. No surprise there. Their behavior is abysmal, and it sucks.

But, speaking from a male perspective, I think dating sites are useful. I know couples–happy couples–who have met that way. I have had successful, respectful long term relationships with women I’ve met this way. And god knows, it’s hard enough to meet people in our society.

From my experience the key to online dating is patience. It is necessary to put up with many bad dates to get to a good one. Just the way it is.

We were chanting I forget what when a man on the sidewalk stepped toward me and said, “Have YOU been raped?” If I had said “No,” I suppose the implication was that I had no business on the march. If I had said “Yes”…what then? I believe from his jeering tone that he would have enjoyed that.

Ow.

I keep flashing back to the way Germaine Greer put it: “Women have no idea how much men hate them.” I think there’s a deep truth to that, even if it’s not necessarily true that each individual man is a woman-hater. It’s as if misogyny is an energy-source for men – we don’t have to tap into it, & we can go years without doing so, but when we do (and get away with it) we get an instant power-boost, or status-boost. (Compare racism.)

And if it’s not an individual hatred on the men’s side, it’s not (necessarily) hatred of individual women, either. The guy metaphorically wiping his feet on a woman isn’t doing it because he hates her personally – he’s doing it because he wants to feel better, and he despises her as a woman enough to use her in that way. It’s not so much an attack on her personhood, more a denial that she has any personhood to be attacked.

“And that process can be extremely tedious on threads where the signal to noise ratio is so unbalanced.”
I simply disagree. However I respect that everyone is going to have a different experience.

“you are either so baffled by the in-group jokes that you stick around to figure out what the hell is going on, or you are so baffled by the in-group jokes that you say, fuck this, and go away”

This is exactly how the comments at Atrios’s blog always feel to me. They might be great but I am on the outside looking in.

Balloon Juice and LGM also tend to have pretty good comments and a real sense of community.

Thanks Chris Armstrong, good to know. Surely the blockbot or iterations of it will expand, and like the various adblockers become cross-site tools.

A_y_mous,

No, I’m an Anglican, of sorts, and I haven’t had any other pseudonyms here. Which one are you thinking of?

I’ve quit reading CT once before because of comments, at the time when Zombie Economics was being done – not because of that, I hasten to add! I was really enjoying that, and was very sad to quit. But I’d had enough.

I was quite pleased to return later and find some things had improved. And I’m mentally stronger when it comes to dealing with that sh*t now.

Mao at 255

So your argument is basically that they don’t really mean it? Really?

Ed,

Doesn’t your estimation of moderation quality depend partly on your ideological viewpoint? Like, no doubt many of the ideas you want to see filtered out of the comment sections are because you don’t agree with them? as do I, of course, but which ideas we would like to see excluded is going to differ.

Lee Arnold,

Women’s preference for masculinized vs less masculinized faces varies depending on different stages of their cycles, actually, it’s not as simple as saying ‘young women in the dating market’ like one kind of face vs. another. It also varies depending on disease load in the society, possibly the economic basis of the society, and other things. I don’t see why it’s implausible what this study says, that women with a focus on childrearing tend to prefer the less masculinized face.

” Just another human being, annoyed at me for some reason, and acting like most annoyed human beings act.”

If they are annoyed why not reach for other insults? Doesn’t it say something that the person decided to use racist/sexist language? I mean you annoy me all the time but I don’t start hurling racist slurs your way.

“Doesn’t it say something that the person decided to use racist/sexist language?”

That the person is flying off the handle, and that the place is not well-moderated.

Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it Oscar the Grouch who said “Power comes out of the banhammer?” More muscular moderation for everyone! *ineffectual Ron Paul celebratory hand-waving pose*

Today I feel a bit like a Louisiana Creole. Because earlier, after someone upthread criticized Lizzie Miles’ French, I read something about various Louisiana dialects.

I have to admit I find it a bit bewildering to see the kind of praise for CT comments that comes out upthread. My experience of CT comments is about 15:1 useful:notuseful (which on any site is enough to keep reading, and why I’ve stuck around this long).

The problem is that every so often the ratio on a given thread balloons to 45:1 or so, and many of those 45 end up being a tedious re-statement of the ways in which women are less-than.

I wouldn’t mind a bit more assertive cutoff of commenters who are spending a lot of oxygen on non-abstract theories that actually affect actual human beings. Call it the bartender model. You’ve had enough, I’m cutting you off.

Shorter me: The fact that CT comments are relatively good does not make them absolutely good.

I didn’t read through all the comments, so apologies if this has already been posted. A radio article on the above subject from the On Point (NPR) folks today:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/01/15/women-internet-harassment-safety

“You can call me a wog if you like. unfortunately, English has a notorious dearth of slurs for my racial group.”

I wouldn’t call you that Hector because I believe that one shouldn’t use racial slurs.

So that’s one more. Thought it would please you.

Hector, a British friend told me that ‘wog’ is absolutely a taboo word there. And that is where this website probably is, according to the clock. And it’s bad for us to break taboos, since we are but small-minded petty bourgeois.

Re: I had an okcupid profile for a little bit and got a message from a man who was 33, far outside my age range of 18-23. I told him in my first message that he was far outside my range and not my type, but he seemed nice so I was willing to chat a little bit platonically

I’ve never gotten this. Like, I have unusual (= out of the norm) age preferences in terms of what I’m looking for in a partner, as well as out of the norm preferences in a lot of other ways, but I take people’s stated preferences at face value. If someone is categorically not interested in dating my age range, then what’s the point of trying to convince them otherwise? It’s a big world, with three and a half billion women in it, and I don’t see the point of wasting their time, or mine.

Of course, maybe some of these guys are really more interested in trolling than in looking for a date, so that could explain it, I guess.

Well I’m with MPA I guess, in general.
I mean bartenders manipulate their enviornment, water down drinks, kick you out, advertise happy hour, give you a free drink so on and so forth..so using that analogy sure, if you post a short something about that dude from that duck show who said something racist you’re going to get 500 not exactely mensa level comments.
If you write something thoughtful and more specific (no offense to J Holbo’s post btw) then you’ll get a better class of comments.
I guess it’s a case of being selective in what one reads and responds to. If one was to pay any particular attention to Mao or Hector’s general theories of everything, well then thats on them, I guess..

I didn’t know I had any general theories of everything. What do they sound like?

Re: “Help! Help! I am being oppressed.”

Eh?

@MPAVictoria

My own experience with Balloon Juice comments is that they’re positively necrotized with Blue Dog Obamabots. They hunker down further and further after every Obama drone strike or Obama spying scandal.

I’m surprised that no one aside from the initial commenters were surprised that someone said something so gross to me in a political argument

It’s hard to know how to even respond to this—that is to the original mention of the harassment, not this particular sentence. On the one hand, it’s so unbelievably horrific (and along the lines of what Phil said @246). On the other hand, having read about the consistent online harassment of bloggers who are women, it is sadly not surprising.

(Unrelatedly: GiT, that CS piece is really excellent—cheers.)

@MPAV 292,

Picking nits here:

We all, hopefully, are “democrats.” Personally, I would prefer it if all true lefties left the “Democrats” in order to make the Greens a truly viable political entity/option. Or, to at least establish a serious one-two punch that could defeat the Republicans and the right and enact truly leftist legislation — on the way toward a more serious change/alternative.

“I’m surprised that no one aside from the initial commenters were surprised that someone said something so gross to me in a political argument.”

I’m sorry people do these things to people, but I can’t say I’m surprised by it. There are lots of bad people out there, and only social convention or law serve to keep many of them housebroken. Remove those conventions, or the threat of punishment, and this will be what you get. It is especially bad for women – I can barely imagine how bad – and I’m sorry you must suffer it.

This is why I’m not entirely sure of the notion that one should ‘not feed the trolls’, if it means one should ignore them. The trolls will troll – it’s what they do – and silence does not seem to me to be the consistently right response. When people say objectionable things, without any ensuing objections, they are emboldened (to use my favorite GWB word) to say even more objectionable things. Pretty soon, you’ve got dick pics, or rape threats.

Just my two cents.

“Picking nits here:”

Pick away Plume. I should have capitalized that D.
I disagree with you about starting/supporting a third party. If all the internet leftists actually joined the democratic party and took an active roll they could shift it significantly to the left.
/Should note I am a Canadian and an active member of the Canadian social democratic party (the NDP) so I try to practice what I preach.

MPAV,

I’m guessing your party is well to the left of the American Democratic Party. IOW, it’s probably not that much of a stretch or sacrifice for you to stay with them — if you’re a real lefty.

IMO, the American Dems are clearly a center-right party, and I despise the right. It is a big stretch for people like me.

For example: you Canadians have Single Payer. The Dems here didn’t even try to push for it and shut down all discussion along those lines. Obama and the Dem leadership even caved on a “public option,” which is already weak tea in comparison. Instead, they ended up with a Rube Goldberg monstrosity, meant to appeal to “the markets” and formerly the system embraced by the Republicans. “Obamacare” came out of a right-wing think-tank, the Heritage Foundation.

That’s what passes as “progressive” legislation in America these days.

Plume,

I am not a democrat, though I am a Democrat.

Just when you thought this thread couldn’t get any worse… (No, seriously, this dumbass argument is already taking place on another thread right now! Is that not enough for you all?)

Hector St Clare #263: “I don’t see why it’s implausible what this study says”

It isn’t implausible, it just isn’t proven here, and there are other reasons to think that, really, it is neither here nor there. Yet at your comment #6, you stated it as fact. You further wrote in #6, “High testosterone correlates inversely with being a good father.” But that may be because men in fatherhood drop testosterone levels. You present a pattern of bad inferences to buttress your arguments.

Well, hell, I might as well just start talking about skull some more if no-one objects.

Re: Just when you thought this thread couldn’t get any worse… (No, seriously, this dumbass argument is already taking place on another thread right now!

Which argument? Voters versus Vanguards?

“Well, hell, I might as well just start talking about skull some more if no-one objects.”

See? Emboldened.

Re: However, there are so many reasons to not get answered

Jenna,

The most obvious reason not to get answered is that, in general, only a minority of women are going to find a particular guy appealing. Because statistics. It’s not about you, or them, it’s just the luck of the draw.

Re: I am occasionally amused at the 21-25 year olds messaging ME. You, sir, are WAY out of my indicated age range

Well, if they’re out of your indicated age range then they shouldn’t message you. I don’t think there’s anything ‘amusing’ about it in general, though. Maybe some 21 year old guys like older women. I hope they find someone who feels the same way.

Hector 310,

You make a good point regarding the overall state of the American experiment. Honey boo boo, etc. etc. But, I still believe in the wisdom of crowds.

But perhaps the biggest reason to move away from capitalism, business hierarchies and our two-party system overall is the insanity of the few ordering around the many, doing what’s best for the few at the expense of the many.

When you install a “vanguard” at the helm, you reproduce just that very same insanity.

To boil it down: You have this community garden, and 100 families make up that community and take care of that garden. They all benefit from that garden, and they would all be hurt by its destruction.

Who should make decisions about that garden for that community? The CEO of Monsanto, from his office a thousand miles away? Or the 100 families living in that community?

It’s not rocket science. And the same principle should be extended throughout the entire country.

Our revolution was ostensibly over rule from across the pond, but it didn’t go nearly far enough. It essentially replaced one ruling class with another — the home-grown one. It still didn’t let that metaphorical 100 families run their own garden. And when it came time to create a Constitution? Less than a dozen white men, most of whom owned slaves, were involved . . . . and they decided everything for millions of people who had zero input.

Uh, no. America was built upon the same mistake humans have repeated for thousands of years. Time to end that.

I think gender role belief is heritable, I just don’t think asking people about their beliefs on gender roles is a good way to assess their beliefs on gender roles.

This is an example of what I’m getting at with a lack of model. How do we tell in a principled way which types of beliefs can be assessed through questionnaires and which need other methods of detection? We are nowhere near a biological model of beliefs, and the psychological models that exist are, unless I’ve missed something, wildly contradictory and not at all suited for the kind of precise measurements that the biological model of heritability wants to impose.

That, combined with the subtleties and open questions about heritability and genetics just as a biological model, makes evo-psych results extremely hard to interpret.

Isn’t the obvious reaction to the story to recall Plato’s Republic and that a philosopher king would make sure even the less desirable got sex?

Does no one care about those men at all?

What about the ugly, unloveable, socially awkward straight, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and asexual trans and cis women, no dude on the internet ever said ever ever ever.

Fucking hell, they don’t even acknowledge the existence of trans men. Let’s get down to brass tacks, Waring: dudes who feign sadness for the plight of other straight cis dudes and their dry, unhumped boners don’t really give a fuck about other dudes, boners or no. Women who aren’t fucking them are on the internet, talking to one another, and this means misandry is now.

Furthermore, that is so 20th century. I mean its not even porn anymore if the people are attractive.

Re: What about the ugly, unloveable, socially awkward straight, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and asexual trans and cis women, no dude on the internet ever said ever ever ever.

Not really. If you have some suggestions to equalize the dating land scape and make unhappy women happier, I’m all ears.

Hector,

Well, we could re-criminalize fornication and adultery for starters.

Not quite right, Martin James. You had a theory about “less desirable” people. Later, you indicated trans men were implicitly included. Why so? Less desirable to whom?

I was talking about women, and their Right to Get Sexed.

Saurs,

I misunderstood your sentence. I don’t even really know for sure what a trans man is.
Also what does cis mean?

And out of too much empathy I assumed the online posters were less desirable also when they may just really like frequent anonymous sex or online posing.

It all just seems a bit sad, but saying that sounded too condescending and judgmental so I went with the Plato quote.

DN: That’s because China has a rich culture and civilizational roots that run deep. The English-speaking world has talent contests and gag porn.

Martin James:

And out of too much empathy I assumed the online posters were less desirable also when they may just really like frequent anonymous sex or online posing.

That, indeed, is a generous interpretation. I hesitate to support the theory, given what women have said here and elsewhere re dudes harassing them with unsolicited photographs of their penises (not to mentioned unsolicited threats of rape), that said photographs are likely to result in anonymous sex, frequent or otherwise.

Whereas out of too much experience as a woman on the interwebs, I assumed the anonymous harassers were harassers, not men we were expected to pity because of our misplaced presumptions about their sex life, desirability, et al. Harassers gonna harass, yeah?

Hector:

Not really. It’s easier for women to get * casual encounters* than it is for a man, because men are pretty unselective about casual sex, but it’s not that easy for them to find an actual relationship.

Well, Heck, we were, actually, talking about sex. The kind philosopher kings in the Platonic sense would, ostensibly, provide men on tap because they deserve it. You supplied the euphemism “dating land scape.”

Never mind. Your answer is a bit curious, though. Since we’re separating sex from relationships (for some reason) while generalizing about the hets, let’s sort out some confusion, yeah? How is it that heterosexual women can fuck easier (because heterosexual men are sluts with no standards*), but it’s more difficult for them to “find an actual relationship,” presumably with a man? How can het men have a comparably easier time of it sorting out a girlfriend, partner, wife, if we’re talking 1:1 ratios? The girlfriend / partner / wife is also party to the “actual” relationship, right? So it’s all even, right?

*again, I’m going to ask, on behalf of ugly women everywhere, where is our mandatory zipless sex? How can we sort out a program where specific men and women, conforming to our exacting physical and intellectual standards, are obligated to fuck us, free of charge?

Oh, hell, I’m just going to answer my own rhetorical, asterisked question: you get people to love you and fuck you by becoming a lovable, fuckable person. You don’t get it by complaining that the monolith that is Woman isn’t being compliant enough with her pussy (for Evolutionary Reasons).

that ain’t never stopped anyone from not caring about whether overweight queer women are getting the sexual satisfaction and love and respect each human being deserves

Belle! If I was a combination sado-masochist, this would be my band name. Try fitting that and the name of the opening number on one of those cheap little handbills.

Chalk it up to the mysteries of the Fairer Sex amirite. Strange that when a woman explicitly asks for a photograph of your dick (to masturbate to!), she enjoys it, and when she doesn’t, she doesn’t.

Saurs,

Oh, it’s possible. I still stand by the theory that they’re a scam, though.

Saur asked *again, I’m going to ask, on behalf of ugly women everywhere, where is our mandatory zipless sex? How can we sort out a program where specific men and women, conforming to our exacting physical and intellectual standards, are obligated to fuck us, free of charge?

Well, if you buy Socrates method, you start by taking away all the music and poetry and have the children raised by the village and after a bunch of selective breeding (I think?) and then a bunch more seemingly impossible stuff, you end with people who will do their sexual duty with the old, fat, citizens. It is one of my favorite parts of Plato; the fairness of it against all practical concern.

Belle: I’m not your average political animal being ambidextrous politically and fitting in basically nowhere. The trans comment had to do with not knowing whether it meant transvestite, transexual (then is a trans man a former woman or the opposite?) or shorthand for some other thing. I actually had in my mind when I first read it what used to be a labeled a hermaphrodite but that’s not a trans man I don’t think. And then this cis thing and I’m not sure if one is still cis ( I googled it) if you are a male lesbian in a man’s body or what. What are you if you are cis but don’t identify with typical cis male preferences like oral sex. Is there a name for that it because it seems both gay and straight men like that, right?

I totally misunderstood your concern with the “velvety” comment. I thought you meant by “it got to you” that you were aroused against your will and were pissed about it. I guess the reason I thought that is that I couldn’t see what the word velvety added to the offensiveness. I mean its not nice even without the velvety. Hard to keep up with this, particularly because you are no prude and use colorful and sarcastic language so its sometimes hard to tell where you are going with things.

So, being the literal guy that I am, I thought the focus of the post was still about which sex had it easiest in finding a willing partner and the guy was upset because he realized that it was even worse that he imagined and that the number of males wanting sex so hopelessly outnumbered the females that he couldn’t stand being in a woman’s shoes for more than 2 hours. Kind of like someone who thought the rich had it easy and then got sick being in a a really wealthy person’s shoes for a while and seeing how they could buy whatever they wanted and it just so totally blew their sense of fairness that they couldn’t hack it. I can see now that I missed the point nearly completely. However, it does bring me back to a question I have been wondering about for quite a few years.

You have made the point in previous posts that men underestimate the sex drive of women and their desire for it and enjoyment of it. I have wondered how that squares up with the difference in how they go about getting that need met and the reputation (at least in Woody Allen movies) of wanting it with less frequency. I think that I am understanding you (and some others) to say that it is just that they are more choosy than males. Is that correct?

Now, I realize that you are going to destroy my logic here but it would seem (first order, without the depth of think that you are likely going to say that I’m lacking) that this would make women’s sexual preference a great source of inequality and drive for status among men. If women primarily desire sex with the minority of males that are the most physically (or insert your characteristic of choice) outstanding then they have created a scarcity of a desirable good in a way that leads to considerable social trouble in terms of the drive for males to get status. Its like you are saying, yep, you pretty much do need to compete like hell to be the top of the heap or else you aren’t getting any!

What am I missing here?

Thanks for jumping in but I’m not totally understanding what you are saying.
“This combined with the fact that men struggle, as do we all, with bad feelings around sexual desire, and the social status of women being lower than that of men”

What do you mean more precisely? Bad feelings about their own desire or others or what? What kind of bad feelings? And how does that relate to the social status of women?

As for the safety issue, when men say “well, women have less sexual desire” and the response is “less desire for you is more like it”, I don’t think they are taking about safety.

I get your concern. But I’m a bit sheltered so every male I know thinks women are “other persons.” Some put more emphasis on the “otherness” but I don’t know any males who treat a women like a doll or a tree or a robot. Again some treat women as enemies, but enemies are at least persons. Why is it a “masculine” feature? Did you just mean a male should have that feature or that it is a particular quality of masculine males?

Typically when talking about classes or groups, one looks at some measure of central tendency. No reason to be obtuse about that.

What the hell just happened here?

You might not want to apologize (and how could you apologize for something you didn’t do?), but it’s still in a male’s interests to push back against this kind of stuff, too. Men have the ability to do that via social interactions. And there may be a prize for being a “good guy” here, too! (Not to mention it doesn’t seem terribly adaptive for men to do things like this.) That being said, I think women are going to have naturally more proximity to unwanted events of this kind, so many men can go along totally oblivious to this as a trend. Realistically I think that militates towards the point you’re making, but as a matter of principle I don’t see the harm in saying that I also would take action to prevent this, if I was given the opportunity.

“about as plausible as Hector’s unified dick pic theory ”

Actually it wouldn’t surprise me if Hector is right on it being a scam. And I almost never agree with Hector on anything.

Mario 01.16.14 at 10:25 am

“I don’t know how the law is in the US, but in many parts of the civilized world a man sending an unwanted pic of his crooked timber to a woman is committing a crime. As the evidence is material, all that is needed is a lawyer that files the charges. For some reason, that hasn’t been addressed in this thread.”

At a guess, the reasons that it hasn’t been addressed are the ones which are so obvious that people felt that they didn’t need to.

Saurs,

‘make yourself more lovable’ is helpful in a sense, but not as much as it would be as knowing what men and women find lovable, and how many of them find Trait X lovable compared to Trait Y. that’s where behavioral biology and statistics come in.

For example, part of the reason I’m more economically competitive and money focused now compared to ten years ago (and less into following my bliss) is because I realise that the sort of women I’m looking for tend to value social status and the ability to provide, so I need to work hard at my job so I can afford the bling that they want.

“but I don’t know any males who treat a women like a doll or a tree or a robot. ”

You are lucky, and most definitely a bit sheltered.

Layman,

No, ring finger isn’t going to change. The damage has been done, it happened sometime while I was gestating. Building muscles is a good way that men can self-improve and make themselves more attractive.

“. . . but he got to me with the velvety.”

And that got to me, too. In fact, I think it’s burned into my memory for the duration.

I feel like apologizing that so many males are, well, dicks–but what good does that do? The, well, schmucks who do this stuff will probably never apologize, never even have a glimmer of an inkling that they need to apologize–and never, ever stop doing it. There needs to be more shaming (and other social penalties) for this kind of behavior, or I fear it will never abate.

Re: This is a more extreme version than what I believe but could it not be the case that “deregulating” sexual practices and providing more liberty has the same effect as deregulating the financial sector, the rich get richer?

Yes, if the Platonic guardians chose our partners for us, things would be more equal.

Layman,

So am I incorrect that Saurs thinks other people have problems that she would like corrected? I didn’t say I was particularly good at understanding the world, but I think I know with about 75% accuracy when I’m being put down.

Also, I didn’t mean that I was personally humble in an all-around way, I meant that understanding the world is a humbler goal than changing the world.

You seem to be pretty level-headed. Why do the men(we assume) send the unwanted pictures?

It is pretty much a mystery to me.

Hector (or anyone else),

I’m not sure whether people think the people sending the unwanted pics are harassing the women for sex or just that they are harassing them because they enjoy causing other people discomfort. Is it some kind of punning, disclosure screening, that says upfront “I’m only interested in women who like dicks?”

If they want sex, why aren’t they trying harder to pass “safety” or “not weird” criteria?
On the other hand, the payoff for harassment seems too abstract and abrupt, but like I said, I don’t get it. In your terms, what is the evolutionary payoff?

Martin James,

I don’t think dick pics are a viable evolutionary strategy.

Perhaps they send dick pics because they think that this is a place full of horny women. That every woman who created an account is horny. They are horny themselves, and they get overexcited.

Martin James also thinks (if I understood correctly) that the women with accounts are horny, and that their expectations are unreasonably high.

That’s plausible. But perhaps it’s even worse: they are not all that horny. They are looking for a companion, a friend, a husband, a partner for latin dancing. Perhaps, sex is a low priority. And that’s what makes dick pics counterproductive, in a place like that. They should send videos of themselves dressed in tuxedo, dancing tango on a stage in a park in Buenos Aires.

If it’s collecting e-mail addresses, there are easier ways to solicit a lot of them

While I myself don’t think there’s a whole lot of scamming around dick pics, people who do bad things are not necessarily smart or efficient. Which has some bearing on the behaviour described in the original post.

Perhaps if some people were limited to, say, ten posts a day, it would be possible to have discussions that range widely, highlight several viewpoints, and actually illuminate the issue.

I second this very enthusiastically! As well as the rest of Zora’s post.

“They should send videos of themselves dressed in tuxedo, dancing tango on a stage in a park in Buenos Aires.”

Ok, I’m taking notes Mao. Why Buenos Aires?

Ambzone,

Frankly, I find Mao Cheng to be one of the more interesting posters here, and a refreshing contrast to the echo chaber.

Re: I’m not sure whether people think the people sending the unwanted pics are harassing the women for sex or just that they are harassing them because they enjoy causing other people discomfort.

I think more the latter than the former. But again, I don’t think *everything* has an evolutionary strategic reason behind it.

Belle Waring,

I’ll try to comment more, uh, judiciously. As you are the proprietor of this blog, I’m happy to defer to your authority.

“Why Buenos Aires?”

Well, it’s romantic, to tango in Buenos Aires. Or is it Paris?

“I’ll be happy to say to Hector and Mao: “your ten comments in my thread are used up,” the next time I post.”

And I’ll be happy to have this opportunity to increase the aggregate happiness in the world, albeit in a small way. It’s a win-win.

Is it just me who thinks that Hector_St_Clare is a bot designed to combine Poe’s Law and a Turing Test? That the trick is to figure out whether (a) his posts are satire and (b) he’s really human?

Just me? OK.

“Just me? OK.”

If you go back to some previous threads you can find multiple examples of people wondering if Hector is an example of Poe’s Law. He always denies in when asked so I guess we can assume he is serious.

If you look at the blog post by OKCupid on trends in responding:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

you’ll see that a woman’s message to a man has a 42% chance of getting a response, whereas a man’s message toa woman has a 27.6% chance of getting a response. Moreover, if you break this down by race (into 9 subcategories), you can see that that the entire distribution of women falls above the entire distribution of men. When you write to someone on a dating site, would you rather have a 42% chance of getting a response or a 28% chance? Probably 42. So there are tradeoffs.

Chris M –

Especially given the background of this post, it doesn’t seem like those numbers are of much value without first accounting for the proportion of “first contact attempts” which contain nothing but ungrammatical copy-pasted gibberish and/or unsolicited photos of body parts.

Everything I’ve ever read or heard on this topic suggests that a man messaging a woman in even a merely halfway coherent way, with a reference or two suggesting he might have actually read her profile, probably has a quite a high chance of at least getting a reply.

“When you write to someone on a dating site, would you rather have a 42% chance of getting a response or a 28% chance? Probably 42. So there are tradeoffs”

But isn’t the point that men are far more likely to initiate a “conversation” ie send a pic of their dick? So response stats will be skewed by that
Full disclosure, I didn’t read your link yet

Sorry, Jack made my point. Don’t know how I missed that

Ok, so the average man->woman contact on OK Cupid has a 27% chance of getting a reply, but your anecdotal messages have a rate of 1/3 that?

There could be any number of things going on there, but whatever is happening, I don’t find that at all a convincing rebuttal to my point that the raw OK cupid numbers are relatively meaningless without accounting in some way for content (and probably selectivity).

We lack the hard data for now, but I feel very comfortable speculating that men are rather more likely to be sending gibberish and generica. I observe that (many) men are strongly acculturated to both a) exhibit harassing behavior toward women (I expect many of these messages are the online equivalent of wolf whistles – with no actual rational expectation of a positive response), and b) to expect a positive response is owed to them by women from the merest (non-)effort on their part.

@ MPAVictoria “Are you really asking why sending someone an unasked for picture of your dick is more offensive than telling them you are athletic?”

He sounds like a charmer, eh?

“He sounds like a charmer, eh?”
It is just so appalling.

“Dickpics are bad, can we all come to a common understanding on that?”
Apparently not.
/And they are not always bad! Dickpics sent to a willing recipient can be fun! Think of it as a more modern version of phone sex. Great fun between two consenting adults.

I wonder whether the prevalence of on-line pornography effects male behavior on dating sites. Is it just that men feel able to say things to women that they would never say in person because of the anonymity granted by the internet? Or does the experience of masturbating to on-line porn make men feel like the computer is the place for porn, so that for them, dating sites become a sort of adjunct to porn sites?

And what are these men expecting when they contact a woman on OKC? Do they have even the remotest hope of a positive response? Or are they all flashers and frotteurs who get off on causing women discomfort?

I don’t see what the fuss is about ‘generica’ though. Most initial messages you send out will not get a response anyway, so it’s best not to spend more than a minute or two composing them. Initial contacts are supposed to be generic, just like telemarketing phone calls are.

To the puritans, Snapchat and dick pics would have been seen as a manifestation of God’s will, afaik.
So it’s not puritanical, afaict
Maybe common sense?

Prudish, then?

And what are these men expecting when they contact a woman on OKC? Do they have even the remotest hope of a positive response?

Net access can have the effect of concentrating & amplifying extreme behaviour. I once knew a guy who was notorious for approaching women in clubs & asking straight out if they wanted a shag. He took the view that if he ended up with nine refusals (and three slaps in the face) plus one shag, he’d come out ahead. He was the only guy we knew who took that approach or anything like it – he was talked about – but that’s in the setting of one (white collar) workplace in one city in England. So let’s say there’s ten of those guys in Manchester, ten in Liverpool, a couple each in Bolton, Oldham and Wigan… it soon adds up. Say a hundred or two hundred guys like that in the UK, and four or five times as many in the US; put one tenth of them on OKCupid and there you are.

M. James @402
Re your comment on bonobos: the picture of them has apparently gotten somewhat (though I think not completely) revised in recent years. (I have a ref. to this somewhere but can’t take the time to find it right now.)

“douchecanoues”

Can I use that word? A lot?

I tried online dating once. I set up a profile that specifically said I was not looking for casual sex, that I generally don’t have sex with someone until we’ve been dating for several months, and that I would be uninterested if your initial message to me was an obvious cut-&-paste job that you sent to every single woman on the site. I put the profile up late at night, and when I got up in the morning I had over 300 messages in my inbox. I read through maybe the first 150. About 100 of them were dickpics or offers for NSA sex. Three seemed like thoughtfully written messages, the others were obviously canned messages with no personalization at all, or were angry messages asking why I hadn’t replied yet to their first generic message. By the time I made it through these, I had received another 200 messages. Seriously, I’m supposed to reply to all of these? I had to take a break. When I got back to it the next day, my inbox was full and when I saw additional message from the three “thoughtful” guys they were invective-filled rants about what a cunt I was for not replying to them quickly enough. Killed the profile and went on with my life. So I really can’t see what use the “response rate” is when deciding who to send a message to. Perhaps she’s swamped.

“This didn’t seem to explain to me why they selected an offensive form of dominance display. ”

Describe an inoffensive form of dominance display.

Re: This didn’t seem to explain to me why they selected an offensive form of dominance display

Because they’re not intending it as a dominance display, they’re trying to be offensive and bother the recipient. I doubt they *actually* get very many positive hits from the unsolicited dickpick approach.

#423 – “I once knew a guy who was notorious for approaching women in clubs & asking straight out if they wanted a shag. He took the view that if he ended up with nine refusals (and three slaps in the face) plus one shag, he’d come out ahead.”

Yeah, well, I don’t know much about English pubs, but I tend to think that the odds of the guy getting laid with that line were not 9:1, but maybe 9999:1, and that what he was really doing was getting off on making women feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. There are a lot of men who find pleasure in making women miserable.

Well, I thought stating your height if you are tall, your job if it is prestigious, your address if it is desirable, your forty time if you are an athlete, but I admitted above that the line between polite and impolite display of social status seems a bit subjective.

To risk more scorn, precisely how different is a pic of dick from getting a breast enlargement and wearing a very low cut shirt in public? Opinions do differ on these things and not just by gender and not just for puritans.

Layman,

I probably wouldn’t believe me either, but I don’t think you will see a pattern of sneering first in my comments.

Well I’m with Mao, as an old time liberal. People should be able to send what they like to each other, all things being equal. But why associate with hector s authoritan Marxism, Mao? Because you’re just being a contrarian toll

Hector you said,

“Because they’re not intending it as a dominance display, they’re trying to be offensive and bother the recipient. I doubt they *actually* get very many positive hits from the unsolicited dickpick approach.”

Isn’t it possible that they get off on humiliation and are hoping for a response like Ronan had in 4 above “She replied something along the lines of ‘dude, what the f**k are you doing emailing me a picture of your tiny cock?” That seems to me the most likely type of response. The pleasure in offending others just seems so much easier to get without a picture.

Taking the scorched earth defense (I’m sure someone will say that I’m just projecting)

Mao,

In an ideal world no one would say no and no one would want to ask someone who would say no.

Its called true love, baby.

Two things (well, more than that, but will limit it) have made me laugh:

This from Hector @385, which I just noticed:
Frankly, I find Mao Cheng to be one of the more interesting posters here, and a refreshing contrast to the echo chamber.

And this, from MPAV:
Is anyone monitoring this thread?

Re: we do have a poster defending unsolicited dick pictures.

We do? Who?

Certainly I have not done so, MPA Victoria. I’ll point you to the evidence.

shd be: “I think”
I can’t even type simple sentences. A sign to get off the internet for the evening.

For G-d’s sake Hector. Use an i, u, or an asterisk, but not all 3 in the same thread. Puck one and st*ck with it. Consistence is imprortant!

“Isn’t it possible that they get off on humiliation and are hoping for a response like Ronan had in 4 above “She replied something along the lines of ‘dude, what the f**k are you doing emailing me a picture of your tiny cock?” That seems to me the most likely type of response. The pleasure in offending others just seems so much easier to get without a picture.”

I don’t want to make the same mistake again, so: Is this more of your comedy?

Lyman,

If they’re ‘unwilling’, then it’s objectionable. If they’re not, then it isn’t. Also, there are forms of dominance other than sexual- economic or social, for example.

Bloix : Reality doesn’t match your assumptions.

I have a friend who had a friend who literally asked every woman in the pubs they went out to if they wanted a shag, if they said no they didn’t take offence but moved on to the next woman. The last time they knew them, they were approaching triple figures in partners (they were not being choosy). They do it because it works.

The one thing I do have to ask about the OKC experiment is that two hours is very short and the experimenter seems terribly inexperienced. Two hours is not very long for a number of decently crafted messages to be sent, and if they’re single line bollocks messages, why were they even bothering replying?

I’m a bi guy, and I get hit on by ‘straight’ guys on OKC. They’re extremely obvious (short, content free messages) and I never bother replying. This is basic Internet Dating 101. There were some other guys who were much more entertaining about it and I do hope they found what they wanted.

The only thing I will question, which may be somewhat reflective of the dating style I want, is complaining about suggestive comments after a number of messages. Now, I realise this is for some people utterly verboten until after the first date, but in all honesty : Get A Fucking Life.

People are on dating sites to have sex, unless they are asexual. This may be in the context of a relationship, but you would expect a lot of fucking to be involved. Once you’ve chatted enough to establish there are no major red flags, there need to be subtle (or slightly less than subtle) indications that the other person in addition to finding you interesting, also potentially fancies you, wants to rip your clothes off and have hot sex (after you’ve got to know each other, not in half an hour behind the bushes unless you’re obviously both into that sort of thing).

This, in my opinion, is normal. For the class of suggestive, but non instant dick pic jockeys, it’s a case of establishing levels of desire and relationship expectations. You get annoyed by vaguely suggestive comments? I get irritated by conversations with no commitment to meeting for dating or friendship and the distinct suspicion my time is being wasted as they’re too polite to ignore me and not honest enough to say they don’t fancy me.

I’m not sure why were going in circles, Layman. If she expresses interest in a dominant male, and he expresses interest in a submissive female, then that’s cool. If not , then it’s objectionable.

“Certainly I have not done so, MPA Victoria. I’ll point you to the evidence.”

I was not referring to you Hector. My apologies if it appeared like I was.

MPAVictoria and Ronan,

I’ve been feeling sick and racking my brain about what I may have said that made anyone think I condoned any kind of unwanted sexual advances or domination. The only thing I’ve come up with is the post where I said no one would say no. As the rest of that post I thought made clear, that in my idea of an ideal world we would only desire those that we truly love and that we magically would only fall in love with those that also truly love us.

Harassment would have no place in a world like that.

Before the thread closes I want to follow up on my vague comment @425 on the side-issue of bonobos. What I had in mind was a 2007 New Yorker article, purporting to debunk the view of bonobos as peaceful etc., to which Frans de Waal responded here:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-08-08/
The link contains in a footnote the date of the New Yorker article to which he’s replying.

Not that this has v. much to do w the main topic but since it arose upthread and I picked up on it, I figured I should track down the ref.

Oh, I did forget one big one:

8. Women who feel that they have no choice but to tolerate such harassment.
8a. A society that makes tolerating such harassment a sadly I reasonable option.
8b. A society that socializes girls into not standing up for themselves yet blames and shames victims of sexual violence and harassment.
9. Men who are deeply ignorant of women’s experiences and take personal offense at any attempt by a woman to guard or protect herself.

I’m so curious about the dominance displays though, because not to go all Unfogged here, I’ve been watching my preschool age daughter in mixed-gender and all-girl groups, and wondering whether she’s being crowded by the slowest boys because they, like her, are slow in part because they like to group together and crowding one another because they’re fairly clumsy, or whether they are crowding her because being relatively slow they would like to assert dominance over somebody if they can.

Returning to the original text:

the worst thing anyone ever said to me in a political argument was to wonder whether the top of my mouth would feel velvety on his cock.

I don’t think there is much room for charitable interpretation and I think devils-advocacy obscures the reality and comes closer to excusing and normalizing it than I would prefer.

Clearly Belle knows more about the context than I do, but one charitable nterpretation is that the poster was trying to bully or offend Belle out of the conversation with sexual language.

A less charitable (but still reasonable) interpretation is that it was a thinly-veiled threat of sexual violence against a woman who disagreed with him.

In either case, its presumptively offensive (even amongst kinky folks) when no agreed-to relationship exists.

Layman @474: I understand what you’re saying now and I agree.

The productive response for someone who receives such unsolicited pictures is probably to block and report the offender. I don’t know whether its wiser to send no response or to send a response like “I do not want your pictures.” — sadly, I suspect that not responding is safer.

The website operator also ought to have a policy for handling such harassment and ban people who do so. Unfortunately, I suspect that they don’t do that very well (if they enforced it well, then it would be rare, rather than pervasive).

Thanks for the scathing critiques and explanations. Belle, elm and others including Hector and Mao. Really.

Belle, I’m not sure what you’re responding to or what resulted in that reply with the all caps. I see now that you didn’t actually say the incident was online, which to me suggested there was no way there was an actual proposition involved, and it was only an attempt to use sexual language to offend you or throw you off balance. I apologize if I gave the impression I didn’t believe what you said about what happened.

Belle Waring,
If by “less intentionally offensive” you mean “more unintentionally offensive” apparently I can do that, and I’m sorry. I apologize for not catching where you gave those details about the situation. I did not intend to deny anything you said about the situation or to guess. I do not believe there is any interpretation of what was said, even on the most abstract description of it, that makes it less horrendous, and if my understanding of what happened was a misunderstanding, I nevertheless did not intend to deny that it was horrendous. I do NOT think it was likely the guy was well-intentioned–I thought it was most likely at best that he was implicitly accusing you (UNFAIRLY) of overstepping a line (in a way he wouldn’t have done with a man regardless of the sexual metaphors he *might* have used with a man, maybe), and switching to inappropriate language to prevent you from contributing further to the discussion, or at least to force you to play by his suddenly gendered rules. I feel terrible that you understood what I wrote as trying to substitute a different understanding of the context for your own understanding of your own experience, and I do apologize. Please mentally ignore what I wrote and replace @477 instead if you have to.

Mao Cheng,

Now, I think you usually have interesting things to say, but that’s just stupid.

Belle,

You may not have hope for me, but for the record, I never in any way defended the velvety commenter even in a devils advocate kind of way. I did misunderstand the particular way you were offended and I thanked you for pointing it out and I apologize for not being more socially aware.

Mao,

What the F*ck?

No, when directed at women, s*xualized insults are particularly threatening, because rape exists. Being a prude has nothing to do with it.

There are plenty of other insults you can use against women commenters that don’t involve sex.

And do you really think massively harassing treatment disproportionately aimed at women is far, far less bad than one or two mentions of sex acts, as long as the sexual nature of each individual act of harassment is deniable?

Hector vs Mao: The battle of the emotionaly stunted Internet trolls!

Mao Cheng,

I’m perfectly comfortable with the assumption that women are vulnerable, and need especial protection. Suicide threats are also tasteless.

Its got to be 5 o’clock somewhere. Going to try to erase this whole mess from my memory.

Sexually explicit commentors — such as Mr. “velvety”, senders of unsolicited penis photographs, and okcupid members who rapidly introduce sexual propositions into conversations — are the online analogue of flashers, subway frottagers, and heavy breathers.

Mao, don’t you know you should only JAQ off in private?

“I am going to re-start my own blog soon..”

And this was the marketing campaign ?; )

Well Hector…
I don’t expect a reply to this seeing as you got the ban on now, but like a lot of things that inform your “positions” your idea about rape isn’t valid, and isn’t helping.
https://tinyurl.com/q9g792v
Very sad very uncomfortable story in the Guardian about the shame silence of men who’ve been raped. And how it’s under-reported as a consequence. Massively.
People like yourself don’t think through the process, don’t empathise, don’t see.
It doesn’t get reported because the telling increases the shame.
Your attitude maintains the climate of shame.
Shame on you.

LOVE the They Might Be Giants reference – cracked me up!! :)