Sick dudes or a sick society?

[Second Summer]

I was just reading a story about a dude who set up a fake dating profile, posing as a woman, and the kind of messages he received on that dating site:

Man Poses As Woman On Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours (Rebecca Rose on Jezebel, 13. Jan 2014)

So that's a bit disconcerting. At the same time, there are all these news stories about sexualized violence against women. Is there a link? (Personally, I take that for granted.)

Are these problems limited to a small number of mentally disturbed dudes, or are there deeper issues in contemporary male culture, or even in general society, that produce this kind of behaviour?

This is not a thread to complain about and demonise men (or women!), but instead I thought we could discuss what exactly are the problems. How do little boys grow up to become so twisted, sleazy and dangerous to women?

 

[Envy]

I would like to say "because dating and social interactions isn't a simple task for everyone", but much of that is obviously a result of knee-jerk reactions and entitlement.

 

[ledboots]

I've never been on a dating site, but on forums, I purposely use a gender neutral or sometimes even male-sounding sceenname to avoid problems. In the olden days of chatrooms, what a nightmare for women it was there, no matter what the topic.

I think it's a combination of the anonymity and a kind of mob mentality that makes for this kind of behavior.

 

[beancounter]

I think we need to avoid taking one story from the media and extrapolating it to the entire population.

 

[das_nut]

I think we need to avoid taking one story from the media and extrapolating it to the entire population.

Why not? Oversimplifying things and stereotyping based on gender has never steered us wrong before!

 

[Calliegirl]

This reminds me of another recent fake profile story. This person tried to create a profile for a female so vile that no one would contact her.

...I've been using one of the major dating sites, OkCupid, on and off for about five years now. While it has its perks, being a woman on a dating site means immersing yourself in a disgusting cesspool of exposed nerves, unfiltered testosterone, and daily propositions to engage in sex acts so horrifying, I hadn't even heard of them before, and I'm from the Internet.

I got the feeling that a lot of men on that site would message literally any woman who had a profile, but the optimist in me wanted to believe that there was a limit. Maybe there was a woman so awful, so toxic, so irredeemably unlikeable that no one would message her, or if they did, at least they would realize they never, ever wanted to meet her. So I made the OkCupid profile of the Worst Woman on Earth, hoping to prove that there exists an online dating profile so loathsome that no man would message it.

I did not accomplish my goal.

The Profile
In making this profile, I made sure my creation touched on every major facet of being truly horrible: mean, spoiled, lazy, racist, manipulative, and willfully ignorant, and I threw in a little gold digging just for funzies. I maintain that there is not a human on this planet who would read this profile and think, "Yes, I'd like to spend any amount of the fleeting time I'm given on my journey around the sun getting to know this person." This profile is my magnum opus; it will be engraved on my tombstone. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair:...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-online-dating-profile-ever/

 

[Blobbenstein]

This reminds me of another recent fake profile story. This person tried to create a profile for a female so vile that no one would contact her.



http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-online-dating-profile-ever/

I think he couldn't convince people he was horrible, because he wasn't. That's why he kept on going on about faking pregnancy.

 

[Freesia]

Ive never made friends easily, and I am unmarried in my mid thirties. However I dont feel entitled to friends or a partner, so I think that that is the key thing in these kinds of behaviours. Sometimes you have to accept that life doesnt endow people equally, and there isnt really much you can do about it, and going out and harming people will have the opposite effect you want (as opposed to getting more people into your life).

 

[Moll Flanders]

How do little boys grow up to become so twisted, sleazy and dangerous to women?

What is your opinion on the subject?

 

[Second Summer]

What is your opinion on the subject?

As both men and women can agree, the female form is beautiful, which is why it's used universally as a tool to generate money and/or popularity. Unfortunately, as a result, our culture has an unhealthy obsession with bodies, attractiveness and sex. It gets imprinted in the minds of teenagers, especially boys, that sex is the ultimate pleasure and a measure of success in life. (For girls, it's the perfect body, I guess.)

So this exacerbates a desire that would otherwise not be as strong.

But there is a segment of the male population that, for a number of reasons, has meager success with the ladies. Maybe they lack the necessary social skills, or they lack success in life in general, maybe their interests are not entirely socially acceptable etc.

These guys, combined with testosterone, plus macho culture, are some of the reasons why women have to wade through all this crap.

Well, that may not be the full story, but I those are my preliminary, not quite fully developed thoughts.

 

[Freesia]

For me now, if any guy I go out with says to me that "women have it easier" it is an instant red flag. Because I now know that it means that they dont understand what it is even like to be a woman and they dont want to try.

 

[Blobbenstein]

Maybe the men just like being disgusting, and they think that the woman chose to be on the site, so they don't mind what they say to her. They probably don't think they are going to have sex, so talking like that is the next best thing. And perhaps they are also drunk.

Pretty toxic though.

 

[Clueless Git]

But there is a segment of the male population that, for a number of reasons, has meager success with the ladies. Maybe they lack the necessary social skills, or they lack success in life in general, maybe their interests are not entirely socially acceptable etc.

I have witnessed the public humiliation of such men, by women, on many occasions.

Seen the same thing done to women who don't make the grade, by men, on many occasions too.

That, imho, is the coarsest example of a sickness in society that ensures us a constant supply of both sick dudes and dudettes.

Both equaly wrong, obviously, but also not equal in one significant respect ...

****** off from constant humiliation men, sick dudes, are far more dangerous to women than ****** off from constant humiliation women, sick dudettes, are dangerous to men.

That, of course, is why topics like this one can safely ignore the existence of sick dudettes and focus exclusively on sick dudes.

Imho, that's another sickness of society by itself.

An 'unsick' society, arguably, would be one that cared equaly about both.

 

[Clueless Git]

For me now, if any guy I go out with says to me that "women have it easier" it is an instant red flag. Because I now know that it means that they don't understand what it is even like to be a woman and they don't want to try.

Purely out of curiosity ...

If a woman says "men have it easier" is that the same "they don't understand ... don't want to try" red flag in reverse or an entirely different thing?

 

[kazyeeqen]

Why, CG? He's talking about a link between sexualized violence against women and the possible link in specifically male culture, because of the vast majority of the perpetrators of the violence being men. Why can't the thread be about that?

OT: I don't know about male culture and violence, I have little experience with it. But I do have an issue with this:

As both men and women can agree, the female form is beautiful,

(edited to only quote the part I take issue with)

This is not a universal. There's nothing about women that is more beautiful than men. Our culture sexualizes women more than men, probably, but not because of any inherent beauty, it's just societal habit. I'm sure the Greeks wouldn't agree that ladies were more beautiful, objectively, than menfolk, because they had a stronger tradition of admiring men physically (and in every other way ) than we do.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I wonder how it goes on gay dating sites. Is it just as bad?

 

[kazyeeqen]

I'm gonna guess yes.

 

[Envy]

Think it's just as sexual, but perhaps a bit less hateful.

 

[Second Summer]

This is not a universal. There's nothing about women that is more beautiful than men.

That wasn't exactly what I said, I just said the female form is beautiful. Although, yes, I personally think it's clearly more beautiful than the male form. (Duh, just look at it! ) But you may want to consider this:

As you can see, girls are on average physically more attractive than boys are. A majority (56.03%) of the girls are either “attractive” or “very attractive,” whereas the comparable figure among boys is much lower (41.75%). In fact, a majority (51.21%) of the boys are “about average.” Nearly twice as many girls (19.53%) as boys (10.51%) are “very attractive.” It therefore appears that, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, women are indeed more physically attractive on average than men are, at least partly because beautiful parents are, and have been, more likely to have daughters.

From this article: Women Are More Beautiful Than Men (Satoshi Kanazawa in Psychology Today, January 23, 2011)
So at least there are more beautiful female models to choose from.

 

[beancounter]

That wasn't exactly what I said, I just said the female form is beautiful. Although, yes, I personally think it's clearly more beautiful than the male form. (Duh, just look at it! ) But you may want to consider this:

From this article: Women Are More Beautiful Than Men (Satoshi Kanazawa in Psychology Today, January 23, 2011)
So at least there are more beautiful female models to choose from.

Well, except, beauty is highly subjective...