Meet Kyle, Dumbass of the Week

In case you've been living in a cave with no WiFi, let me introduce you to Kyle.  At midnight (better known as save-in-draft-mode-until-morning-o'clock) on Thursday, Kyle decided that the world needed to hear these words of manly wisdom:

Kyle personifies 2017.  Kyle has never seen a female orgasm so, instead of asking women about it, he mansplains that female orgasms must not exist.  Social media now guarantees he will never see one—by noon on Thursday, Kyle's asinine, patronising post had gone viral.  In football (soccer) they call this an "own goal."

Yes, instead of asking women about the female orgasm, he tells women they're a myth. Instead of considering that women might know more about our sexual experience than he does, he says we are wrong not to be sexually satisfied sans orgasms.  I can't wait for his next post telling us we should be satisfied as helpmeets without education and careers.

Even if chauvinist Kyle refused to believe women about their own orgasms, a quick Google search would have informed him that male researchers have documented the physiology of the female orgasm. But he couldn’t be bothered because clearly his own research on the subject is definitive, and finding evidence that the female orgasm exists would mean facing what a loser he is in bed. I guarantee that Kyle has never fucked the same woman twice. No woman makes that mistake more than once.  One commenter noted that apparently Kyle hasn't even had a woman bother to fake an orgasm Katz's Delicatessen style, implying he made so little effort that no one ever felt obliged to spare his feelings or give him some credit for the attempt.

Kyle's post is such an obvious indictment of his own skill that one can't but wonder if he is trolling.  Who in their right mind would advertise, using his real name and photo, on a worldwide public billboard, "I AM TERRIBLE IN BED."  To be fair, it was midnight, and we don't know what he was drinking/smoking, or if his roommate hacked his account.  His post is reminiscent of Ryan Williams, the 19-year-old British assclown who, just over a year ago, tweeted "If a woman ‘cannot hold in her period until she gets to a toilet’ then it is her problem, not the taxpayer’s.”  Last fall, the UK was considering removing the VAT (sales tax to Americans) on feminine hygiene products because they are a necessity.  Three weeks later, after what he claimed were "death threats from feminists," he said his Tweetastrophe had been a hoax.

Ryan initially invoked a tiny amount of sympathy from people who thought he was ignorant due to poor education rather than assholery, but Kyle has no such excuse.  He richly deserved the unlubricated public ass-reaming he received.  Unless he is currently incarcerated in a maximum security single sex prison, in which case he would not have access to the internet, he could have simply asked a woman.  Heck, even in Supermax, his fellow inmates would have told him he was full of shit.

Perhaps, like most men of his generation, Kyle's sex education has come mainly through internet porn.  There are female-friendly porn sites (trust me, I have them all bookmarked) but you can count them on your one (free) hand.  99.99999% of porn focuses on male pleasure.  When women are depicted as having orgasms, it is not to showcase female pleasure but male prowess, and they are transparently fake, with none of the physiological signs of a real orgasm, which are delightfully apparent in the real deal.

Those of us who had the luxury of misspending our youth before the internet but after the sexual revolution reached sexual maturity at a time when women expected to both give and receive sexual pleasure.  From the time of our first awkward kiss onward, we never got our boyfriends off without extracting quid pro quo orgasms.  Even the most fumbling, bumbling 80s teenage boy understood that pleasing his partner was non-negotiable.

We assumed that subsequent generations of women would be even more sexually demanding; instead, they seem to be regressing.  Boys raised on internet porn form their sexual expectations based on what they see onscreen.  Since porn focuses exclusively on male pleasure, young men today don't consider female gratification.  For a guy, being a good lover used to mean the ability to please his partner; now it means having lots of selfish, meaningless porn-style sex, parroting the anal, blowjobs, and degrading insults.  No man under 40 has ever seen pubic hair.  They don't see it in porn (where it is treated as a fetish) so young men don't expect to see it in real life and women have complied.  In a recent survey, 62% of women under 40 reported removing all of their pubic hair and 40% of men admitted to asking their partners to do so.

Consent is now emphasized on college campuses because the old double-standard survives in uneasy juxtaposition to hook-up culture.  Women can have casual sex like men but they can't want it—they can't have sexual agency.  It's the tired, old Madonna/whore complex but updated for the 21st century: Women aren't expected to be chaste—then they are harangued as prudes and of no interest/use to men—they just aren't expected to like or want sex themselves.  College sex looks a lot like rape: Men initiate it and order women into the porn star contortions they've grown up watching.  Young women comply but they are not saying "yes," they're just not saying "no."  Depressingly, studies of high school and college women show that the idea that they should get something out of the experience never crosses their minds.  Women over and under 40 give starkly different answers to the question, "Do you expect to have an orgasm during sex?"  For younger women, sex seems to be more about pleasing the man than reciprocal.  I'd like to think that as women have made progress towards economic and social equality that progress would manifest in the bedroom but the reverse seems to be happening.

Although the female orgasm indisputably exists, it usually takes more time, effort, skill, and communication to bring off than the male version.  There are doubtless evolutionary reasons for this—the biological purpose of female orgasm is still hotly debated.  (Alas for that brief era of medieval history when it was thought to be as necessary as the male orgasm for conception.)  In today's Tinder-driven hook-up culture, couples sometimes don't copulate more than once and it can take some practice together before even the most willing and considerate man learns how to get his woman off.

Those willing and considerate men are few and far between.  When a recent survey asked college-age men if they cared if their partner orgasmed, they responded that they sometimes cared in a relationship but never in a hook-up.  "I don't give a shit" said one.  Hook-ups are understood by both men and women to be exclusively about male  gratification. Women report not feeling comfortable asking their partner to help them cum, as if it is unreasonably demanding.

Kyle's mansplaining chauvinism indicates that he assumes sex is all about him:  In his mind, women should be satisfied with being desired but not experience desire ourselves.  We should be happy to settle for letting the Kyles of the world get off any way they choose to use our bodies and not expect any more from sex.  Kyle's attitude fits perfectly into the culture that produced Todd Akin, the Missouri Rep. who thinks women can't get pregnant from rape, and the growing list of rich and powerful men whose history of viewing women as objects without independent agency is coming to light.  And let's not forget the pussy-grabber-in-chief, who famously said on the Howard Stern show that "I couldn't care less" if the women he slept with got any pleasure.  You're in great company, Kyle.  Go fuck yourself.

It's Not Me, It's You

In recent posts, I have lamented the quality and types of responses I have gotten to my profile on an online dating site.  A friend noted that I seem to attract an unusual amount of hate mail.  I view my profile as honest and straightforward, detailing what I want and don't want to avoid wasting everyone's time.  Isn't the purpose of online shopping to facilitate meeting someone who fits your criteria without all that tedious dating and getting to know someone only to find out they double dip their chips or loathe giving head?

I've received a few messages of awed appreciation from men praising my profile as unique and refreshingly blunt.  But these men have all been quick to add that they are just admirers, not contenders.  Most messages are from guys who have not read my profile; they neither know nor care they don't fit its criteria.  Their usual practice is to send a generic message to every woman whose photo they like, without bothering to check profiles.  There is almost zero chance of getting a response, but it is also low risk/low effort.  What I am waiting for is a message from a man who has read my profile and fits my criteria.  That's the only one I want a response from.  But I also get voluminous hate mail, and a friend opined that my profile's bitter, virulent misandry is pissing people off.  There are also likely to be men who fit my criteria but who find my profile so off-putting they don't contact me.  I could potentially be missing out on these guys who think, "I fit the bill, but I don't want anything to do with this cold, sarcastic bitch."

If I ostensibly want a relationship, why is my profile so hostile?

It's a cliché that women form their expectations of male behaviour from their parents' relationship, and other relationships they observe in childhood.  If dad's a dick, they gravitate to dicks, confirming their expectations.  Nice guys finish last...because they're polite.

<rim shot>

Seriously, nice guys finish last because women throw up defence mechanisms to avoid being vulnerable and because we don't feel we deserve them.  Women also like a challenge—that broody, moody handsome guy you had a crush on in high school, who never gave you the time of day, got you wetter than that nice plain guy you barely noticed who was always waiting at the door on rainy days to hold an umbrella over you on the way to the bus stop (cue every 80s John Hughes movie).  It's human nature to want what we can't have.  This does not mean women want to date jerks—science has thoroughly debunked the myth that nice guys really finish last—just that women will try to save the difficult guy from himself, perhaps unconsciously trying to rewrite narratives they observed in childhood.  I have never been attracted to macho bad boys but one could find traces of the theme of "choosing a guy you need to remake into what you want rather than one who already is what you want" in my relationship choices:

I spent 7 years with someone who made it clear from the first date that he didn't want a long-term relationship or any responsibilities.  I told myself he'd change, he'd want these things with me.  He tried repeatedly to leave, assuring me that it wasn't my fault ("it's not you, it's me"), it was just time for him to move on, before I finally got fed up, gave up, and let him go.  If he had stayed, it would have been to my detriment since he was incapable of meeting my needs.  13 years later, he contacted me out of the blue to say that the only problem in our relationship had been that he wasn't ready to settle down and now he was ready so would I come join him.  I replied that it was presumptuous of him to assume that was the only problem, that a depressive sociopath was not the sort of partner I want, regardless if he was ready to settle down.  We've kept in touch lightly since then and it's clear he hasn't changed and never will; I was naive in my 20s to hope he would.  But my point is that I chose someone who didn't want to settle down and who couldn't meet my needs and tried to hold onto him for a long time after both those things became undeniable rather than trying to find a guy who did want to settle down and who could meet my needs.  My expectations of men were low; I didn't believe that I could leave him and find someone better because I didn't see him as problematic as an individual, a situation that could be remedied by finding a different individual.

Oh, no.  She'd be the one calling "Next!"

As much as I tried to choose someone very different in my next relationship, I again succumbed to the tyranny of low expectations.  I knew you can't change someone, yet I saw my younger, insecure partner as another type of work-in-progress.  I believed he was the opposite of my previous partner, who was all surface charm with nothing underneath.  This one was a diamond in the rough; he just needed polishing, literally and figuratively.  Because it is the M.O. of narcissists to make you feel like the centre of their universe at first, reinforced by everyone he knew who told him how lucky he was to have me, and because we were intellectually compatible, with many shared interests, taste, lifestyle preferences, humour, etc., I overlooked the fact that he also did not want to settle down nor was he capable of meeting my needs.  As a narcissist, he was a slave to his ego, and his life was devoted to feeding it.  At first, when I was feeding it, he was devoted to me, but that didn't last.  The monstrous ego of a narcissist is a gaping, bottomless well of need, and because you only exist to meet their needs, you will never get any emotional support in return.  But I stayed anyway, because I didn't expect any man to meet my needs.  When he left me for a woman young enough to be my daughter it seemed predictable and fitting: that's what men do.  I blamed myself: I had failed to feed his ego and meet his needs, whereas his self-centred, gaslighting, immature behaviour was just, to my jaded perception, being a typical male.  As in my previous relationship, I did not identify his faults as individual.

Of course relationships are more complicated than a simple Freudian reduction to our basest motivations, but both relationships, as dissimilar as they were, fit a narrative of having low expectations of men and low expectations for what I deserved.

I've had a few friends-with-benefits situations with married men that were textbook older man/younger woman mutual ego stroking.  Of course they were going to cheat, that's what men do (low expectations for men, although women cheat nearly as much).  According to this narrative, participating in a situation like that means that I don't think I deserve a man who belongs to me.  I'm reluctant to accept that because there are features that make these situations appealing without resorting to a self-deprecating explanation.  Frustrating as they could be at times, some of the constraints were useful because I got the best parts of a man—romance, affection, hot sex—without having to put up with all the crap in a full-time relationship.  It was a fantasy veneer of a relationship, untainted by the familiarity of day-to-day living that kills desire.  I never lost sight of that nor deluded myself that we could be a couple if they were single.  Yes, it's unlikely such a relationship would survive being together full-time with no impediments, but then most relationships don't.  It mightn't be as hot without the limited contact, the clandestine nature, but then no full-time relationship stays hot indefinitely.  For the married person, having the benefits of a full-time partner and also getting that excitement in your life is understandably appealing.  You get to have your cake and lick it, too.  A lover keeps you in a better mood and helps you put up with your partner for the long haul.  These situations save many marriages:  You can express facets of yourself that you can't in your marriage, which lessens frustration with your partner.  In France they take a civilised approach, where it is understood that both partners in a long-term relationship will have lovers.  They view it as helping, rather than harming, the primary relationship.  For a single woman, having the benefits of living alone but still having sex and romance in your life, is heaven.  I don't think one needs to justify its appeal with the belief that you don't deserve a man to yourself.

I can add one final relationship that fits the script:  My high school boyfriend was a total mensch: devoted, considerate, generous, cute, crazy about me.  He assumed I'd go to university locally, we'd move in together, eventually get married.  He was devastated when I left for a faraway college and broke up with him.  We remain platonic friends and there is nothing he wouldn't do for me.  He has carried a torch all these years.  30 years after I left, he'd take me back in a heartbeat if I'd have him and devote himself to me completely.  Yet, I have never had the slightest interest in getting back together.  This is "nice guys finish last" on steroids.  But that doesn't mean I want a partner who is an arsehole, and there are plenty of valid reasons why my high school boyfriend and I would not be compatible as partners now.

All this is to say that my bitter belief that men are dicks may be self-reinforced by writing a profile that labels them as such preemptively and pushes them away.

When I was a child, I loved The Chronicles of Narnia.  Of course I became disenchanted with the books as soon as I was old enough to recognise the religious allegory.  I wasn't the only one—the collective disillusionment of secular readers who had grown up hopefully feeling the back walls of their closets became such a thing that it spawned The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

One of the religious references Lewis made in The Last Battle stuck with me for entirely secular reasons:  When the dead characters are exploring the book's version of heaven—a warm, sunlit, endless, idyllic landscape of plenty—they see a group of dwarfs huddled together, convinced that they are in a dank, dark stable.  The sceptical dwarfs believe that the delicious food and wine are hay and water.  Aslan explains that they are prisoners of their own minds.  The message that Lewis was imparting was about religious faith, but the scene can be interpreted in an entirely different fashion.  In every area of life and human interaction, we view the world through our own lens of expectations.  If, like me, you don't trust anyone, you will see all around you confirmation that people are untrustworthy, but the reverse is also true.  How can two people find proof of opposing views?  We ignore information, not least in politics and relationships, that contradicts our biases and expectations.  Thus, it stands to reason that in holding a cynical attitude about men, I attract men who confirm that critical view.

Am I going to revise my profile to overcome confirmation bias?  No.  I am who I am.  They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  But I'm not trying to catch flies, and flies aren't that picky:  They'll swarm around shit as readily as honey.  I'm looking for someone who prefers the tart sharpness of the vinegar.

More Tales From The Trenches

(You can read my first post about online dating, in which I explain the dick pic phenomenon, here.)

"Is racism a deal-breaker?"

The genesis of this post lies in the moment I observed that I was asking myself that question in all seriousness.

It happened after speaking with an online suitor who ticked so many of the boxes (even ginger!) that I found myself unusually hopeful and optimistic.  But over the course of a two hour conversation, during which he asked me zero questions, it became clear that he held some racist views.  We left it that I would call him if I were still interested and I found myself considering it.  I mean, if he ticked other boxes, was believing that other races were intellectually inferior to whites something I could overlook?

It was one of those step-back-and-look-at-yourself moments that makes you question your entire life path since conception.

I have already explained in another post that I embarked on this online dating lark for two reasons only: 1) I want financial security but I have no chance of achieving it on my own; and 2) I want biological children before ye olde eggs spoil and I cannot afford to be a SPBC—new acronym I just learned: Single Parent By Choice.

Dating in such a time-sensitive, calculating way has proven distasteful.  One of the best pieces of advice my mother ever gave me was never to be emotionally or financially dependent upon a man.  As a feminist, the idea of needing a man for his money is anathema. On the emotional side, "I've had enough so-so for the rest of my life" but the dictates of biology and finances don't give me the luxury of waiting.

Add to this some recent discussions about men amongst friends and online:  Increasing numbers of women are describing themselves as "happily" widowed or divorced, declaring themselves "post-men" or otherwise not seeking out relationships.  The general consensus seems to be that men are not worth the hassle—if you don't need one to co-parent or help pay the bills, then you are better off single.

If I am questioning whether I would seek out a new relationship if I were independently wealthy, and if many women are choosing not to date, that is a pretty depressing indictment of half the population.  There have to be some advantages to being in a relationship, right?  Most couples are together for financial reasons, but surely not all of them?  I could think of a few possibilities:  I occasionally have to move heavy objects.  It would be nice to get a lift when I have to take my car to the garage for repairs.  It would be useful to have someone to watch the house, take care of the cat, and water the plants when I go out of town.  I need daily massages.  I like to have someone to cook and bake for who appreciates it.  But none of those things requires a romantic partner, or even a male.  (And I've never met one willing to reciprocate a massage.)  Sex?  Horniness is a constant problem but I've only fucked four men in my entire life, so clearly I am not the casual sex type.  I've never had a one-night stand but one obviously does not need to be in a LTR to have sex.  Intimacy?  I've yet to date a man capable of it so that's not guaranteed in a relationship.

I posed the question about the value of relationships in a private, candid online forum populated by thousands of thoughtful women over 40.  I expected a poignant stream of responses describing the joys of coupledom that were eluding me, anecdotes, and odes to concerned, supportive partners that would restore my faith in relationships.  Or, at the very least, give me some less cynical views on dating.

I think you can guess what happened.

At this point, I don't expect to meet anyone online.  I am overwhelmed with messages (I respond to about one out of 100) but it's easy to dismiss anyone who does not tick every box on my list.  A 51-year-old man from CT messaged me yesterday and his profile reflected a well-earned cynicism about online dating: "What's so frustrating is that [after 7 years on this dating site] I have to qualify myself to mostly antisocial, contemptuous, vainglorious, standoffish, superficial, narcissistic, aloof, fickle women...Which I refuse to do. Ladies, you should be lucky to meet/date me." I can understand his frustration; I'm yet another woman who is going to see that he is only 5'8" and balding, and never write back to him.  Yet, if I met that guy in another context, perhaps he would have some qualities that might inspire compromise or there might be chemistry that overrides every other consideration.  Well, not him, he's clearly an asshole, but I mean any guy to whom I don't deign to reply based on a 5 second glance at his photo and profile. 

OTOH, I could have great chemistry with someone I met in person who turns out to be unsuitable – maybe he doesn't want kids or he doesn't have enough money.  That would suck, but at least I have a better chance in person of meeting someone whom I like rather than who ticks boxes, who inspires me to view a potential relationship other than as a necessary evil.

"You have great hair. Can I see your tits?"

Why, sure, strange man on the Internet viewing my online dating profile, I'd be delighted to send you nude pics.  Would you like a blow job as well?

Where do men get their sense of entitlement?

This recent post in my opera group inspired an outpouring of similar screenshots and tales from other women:

A female barrister posted a reply to a man mistaking LinkedIn for PornHub and it went viral.

I respond to about one out of 50 messages I get on the online dating site I am using.  Guys I don't respond to sometimes message me angrily with some charming variation on "Fine, don't answer, you stuck-up cunt, guess I ain't good enough for you, well, fuck you, bitch."  Gosh, missed a gem there.  My loss I didn't take him up on his request to send more pics.

Apparently, when a woman posts a photo on the Internet—whether a professional headshot along with sound clips by a singer, a suited and suitably dour LinkedIn pic, or just your bog standard profile photo on Twitter or your blog (no, I don't have one here, but that's less to avoid the creepers than because this blog is deliberately anonymous to keep me at least nominally employable)—she is inviting men to make unsolicited comments on her appearance, request more photos, and excoriate her as a lesbianfeministmisandrist (or is that redundant?) if she doesn't respond, or responds negatively.  And I haven't even gotten into the dick pic phenomenon.

Actually, since what I want to know here is why men feel this sense of entitlement, the dick pic thing is instructive.  A journalist actually conducted an (admittedly informal, unscientific) survey of men who sent unsolicited dick pics to learn their motivation.  Were they just trolling, attempting to annoy and get a rise out of random women?  Did they actually think the women would want the photos, that some positive contact might result?  In some cases, it was the former: “I think that 'lashing out' towards women on online dating sites, whether harmless annoyance or genuine harassment, is caused by being ignored so thoroughly by so many women. After a while, women on these sites aren't people with feelings; they're just thousands of profiles who all seem to dislike you for completely unknown reasons."

But for the vast majority, it was the latter: "Anais Nin once said, 'We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.' I would be over the moon if some woman sent me a picture of any nudity whatsoever, so I assume that women feel the same way.”

I suspect that is also part of the reason for the inappropriate compliments on professional photos.  Men aren't known for their empathy; women tend to be better at seeing the world from another's viewpoint.  A man wouldn't mind getting unsolicited nude photos, or having strange women tell him he looks hot in his professional headshot.  He wouldn't see it as threatening, nor as denigrating his professional abilities or trivialising his worth in any way.  So, it simply doesn't occur to him that women might view it differently.

But that's only part of the story.  There is also an overriding sense of entitlement that seems to be pervasive amongst men of all races, classes, and cultures.  Cat calls and online harassment are its most benign manifestation; it is exhibited throughout the world via rape and the subjugation of women.

Where does it come from, this sense of entitlement?  It seems to have been an indelible part of the male psyche since the dawn of recorded history.  Was it an evolutionary adaptation that tracked with some useful traits for survival?  Confidence may be sexy, but entitlement is a turn-off.  Yet, entitlement is rooted in narcissism, and some amount of selfishness is undoubtedly linked with an instinct for self-preservation.

Entitlement also manifests outside of the battle of the sexes, in behaviours like cutting in line, road rage, cheating on tests, stealing, etc.  And women are certainly not immune—I have a shocking sense of entitlement in certain areas of life, and I don't know anyone of either sex who doesn't.  But what mitigates it in dealing with other people is empathy.  A lack of empathy is at the root of an obnoxious sense of entitlement.  Men, stereotypically, do not develop empathy.  Is that nature or nurture?  The jury is still out on that, but it seems to be a little of both.

Digging for the cause might help us find a solution.  In the meantime, occasionally a creeper gets what's coming to him: