[971] You Big Fat Phony

I’m a little annoyed that I feel I have to write right now as I’m a hot second from heading outside to build some walls. I subscribe to the subreddit “askwomenover30.” I came across a post that extracted a title from a 5-page PEW article on dating. It briefly describes how a majority of single women have pulled out of the endeavor for the first time since they started recording such data. The comment I left, which garnered 22 downvotes, is as follows:

“I think a lot of men have lost the thread of what it means to be both a man and in a partnership. As I read through some of these top comments I'm just generally embarrassed that these have been your experiences. Men have gotten scarier? Maybe I just live around a weird area, but I can't really tell the difference between the men and women as I'm walking down the street. I don't know if that's scary or trendy or what.

I've never been a "dater," per se. It's either been straight to the drunken fooling around or mixing with friends until something longer-term kinda spills out. The idea that there's a litany of people who just exhaust you to the point that you hold your errands up as something "better" or "more productive" to do is a travesty. There's a meek and mild level that empathizes (I'm in social work), but at the same time, I feel like the drive and motivation I have in being with someone I can do things for/with is a different kind of energy. This, provided you differentiate it from codependency and insecurity of course.

Like, I definitely think the culture has shifted into a "softer" or "whinier" or awkward and "entitled" kind of space. I do think men of a certain age probably struggle more than they should with not being aggressively sexually inappropriate. But I also think the conversation has moved away from discussing how and why we partner up or what the expectations are.

You want to be left alone to do your own thing in a way a 1950s housewife wouldn't dream of? Tell the people you date. You have a boundary a "typical man" is "unbelievable" in his willingness to cross it? Make yourself as explicit as humanly possible if only to save yourself time if not disappointment. I've spoken to thousands of people who do a really really bad job of honestly relaying their wants and needs if they can genuinely define them at all. Combine that with the myopic isolating influence of the internet, it's hard to say how deep the real person is really buried.

It can be a little too easy to pillory a given sex. I don't write off the women I meet for their mental health concerns, anxiety, children, or thickness, even if that's the vast majority of who presents as available. I like the person who highlighted the lack of social skills. That makes sense to me more than "men are x y z." I also don't think a dating app is wise enough to factor in the ways and reasons people get together. Women sexually select for the species. They didn't do so by swiping away all the unsolicited dicks, but in that the means exists, we just carry on like it's the normal or appropriate app to use.

I don't know (wo)man, I'm a dude who's been in 3 longish (1-5 years) relationships, 2 ending because we were young, and 1 over unyielding anxiety turning every interaction into an opportunity for resentment. Anymore, I just ask that whomever I try to partner with be "cool." Can you just be honest? Can you not scream at me? Can you be remotely in shape? Cus I've got a fat ass too, but only when I do next to absolutely nothing physically for months at a time. I don't need you paying the bills, cooking, cleaning, bolstering my ego, pregnant, nor sexually exclusive.

Can you just be chill? Even with this bar, which to my mind feels both fair and incredibly low, maybe because I'm meeting people in the social work realm, it's a struggle. I don't need you madly in love with me, but like, can you be nice? Can you talk and share your perspective on the day? I don't care if you like the same shit I do, it's more interesting if you don't. Please, be free, go do you, and then like maybe we can do some cool shit together and enjoy each other's company. It just doesn't seem like it needs to be as hard as people are making it.

Maybe I'm weird, but like single remotely attractive honest chill girls are few and far between. And if you do find one, settle in, because we're old, and processing the trauma of our abusive pasts has little to do with feeling sexy or emotionally available to run yourself through a new thing lol. Anyway, I just try to be a friend anymore. It's just easier all around to suck any remote expectation out of the dynamic and take conversations or time together on its face as something appreciable. Emotional investment is a risk worth taking, but maybe you know people more in touch with their emotions than me.

tl:dr no, no you cannot be chill lol.”

The only response beyond the downvotes was from someone who said, “Thank god a man has arrived to tell us to be more chill and less fat.” Then some tit-for-tat and she adds, “I wrote a flippant one sentence comment in response to your eight paragraph screed, so which of the two of us seems more upset?” I say, the person without the patience or honesty to see anything but a screed. I wake up today to a temporary ban lol.

I guess this stands out to me as indicative of my experience in general, neatly packaged. I write a whole thing with a dozen claims bred from my perspective. I’m then “understood” as a one-sentence summation extracting the most emotionally-triggering sentiments rephrased to sound more damming than intended. That’s pretty much my interactions with most people conversationally online as nutshelly as it gets. This is my former coworker when she said, “That was a lot of words to say ‘fuck you,’ just a different subject matter. This is everyone who impresses upon me how I’m overlooking how an incensed person feels when I question the facts or veracity about literally any topic of contention.

You’ll notice, the “solution” to not garnering the anger is always to be quiet. I’m over here impressing people to speak up more, and also showing them what it gets you lol. If I don’t want to get banned, don’t bother explaining lightly, but explicitly, that a man who’s not attracted to you is not by default every caricature you’ve lent to the pile-on discussion. Someone in the thread said, “I’m tired of all the men with fat-phobia.” Phobia? Just like I’ve been accused of transphobia? Like, no, not afraid, just not attracted, and don’t think J.K. Rowling is the enemy.

Mind you, I’m not “upset” by this, I’m just increasingly fascinated it’s the default setting, and how we double-down. One of the top posts on reddit today is a satirist interviewing someone claiming more people die from hammers than guns, and when they Google it and show he’s wrong, he reiterated his second amendment right and scoots right past. The “liberal” or “enlightened” reddit crowd loves the hypocrisy on the right, but is equally blind and unwilling to engage with their muddy thoughts.

Is there really anything else to be said? I hope to not be a The Daily Show analogue, where I spend my whole life pointing out the contradiction or decline, and then can only step away with the knowledge that things have gotten worse, and the best I can do is a 60-minutes spin-off and maybe help get a bill passed every 10 years. I mean, good for Jon Stewart, but he knows he can’t fix “us” anymore than I can.