Online dating is like childbirth: you forget how bad it is until you’re in the throes of it. After receiving my umpteenth unsolicited dick pic last spring, I swore off any app that promised a match; however, after realizing that between school and work a vast majority of the men I meet in my daily life are either man-children or profs, I decided to give it another whirl.
I was hopeful that with the upheaval of the patriarchy and the massive amount of whistle-blowing on sexual harassment, menfolk would have calmed down. And, I will say, I was pleasantly surprised that some of them have.
The amount of polite “you seem interesting, and I’d like to start a conversation with you” messages has increased. However, there are still the others: the ones that make me want to throw my phone in the toilet and become a nun.
I don’t even have the energy to clap back at the ones who greet me with the mildly (but online standard) misogynistic openers, the ones that only comment on my looks or refer to me as “sexy” or “baby” in their greetings.
Because the sad truth is, while they’re groanworthy (and not in a good way), they’re nothing compared to the ones who ask if you will suck their toes, or the ones who wonder if you’d be interested in hooking up with a married man to get back at his cheating wife, or the guy whose first message to me informed me of his preference for a lack of downstairs grooming habits in his partner (I should have connected him with the guy who thought a request to see my lady bits was an appropriate opening line).
The saddest part is not that these men are sending these messages, but that, based on personal experience, calling them out on their behaviour only seems to fuel them. If I clap back, they take it as an invitation to either continue the behaviour (FYI: “fuck you” is not flirting) or call me out for being a prude, or for needing to lighten up, or for being “a man-hater.”
How? How is this still a thing? There is one plain and simple rule: if you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online. Because one time you’re gonna send that message to the wrong girl—the kind of girl who will screenshot that shit and post it on social media with hopes that it will go viral, and you’ll become the poster boy for sexism.
Seriously, menfolk of the interweb: smarten up. It’s 2018. Sexual harassment is not flirting. Learn the difference.