To What End?

Posted on December 1, 2014 by joey

Recently, someone from Twitter started following me on Instagram. My immediate reaction was, “So you’re hot.” Wowza! I had no idea he was hot, I just liked his tweets. But you know, I have no intention of offering him anything beyond that, so why would I tell him he’s hot?
But wait! I tell women how pretty they are all the time…and I have no intention of offering anything beyond that compliment, so why do I tell them they’re pretty?
Worse yet, there’s a realization I recently tweeted:

Women tell me I’m pretty and I’m all, “Aw, So sweet! Thank you!”

Men tell me I’m pretty, and I’m all, “I’M NOT SENDING YOU A SELFIE!”

Total Double Standard Me.

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Because, I’ve been a woman on the internet long enough to know the order of things. Usually a man compliments you and then he asks what you look like right now, asking you to webcam, facetime him, or kik him, or snapchat, or whatever — and seriously, none of that is going to happen. Usually, I’m called bad names and then I’m blocked. Sometimes men are very persistent and they employ every bit of charm and flattery to get you to give more of yourself. The more effort he puts in, the worse the bad names will be later. Even if you merely say thank you and lol for each message, he will claim you’ve led him on and get mad at you. Simply being a woman means that certain men feel entitled to objectify you and use you for their temporary enjoyment, and when you reject them for any reason, they hate you, you’re a whore, a stupid whore cunt.

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The men I like the least are the ones who make openly suggestive sexual comments and then tell me they’re just kidding around, and not to take them seriously, and they don’t mean any harm, they’re actually nice guys.
I disagree.
Nice guys don’t disrespect women.
If you don’t want to get a hotel room with me and fuck me senseless, then don’t offer. You and I both know full well that if I said, “Okay, let’s go!” you’d be down, so take your cowardly sense of humor elsewhere.
I just know these guys are someone’s creepy uncle.

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Certain men like to ignore small talk and get the sex requests out of the way immediately.

Hi.
Hi.
How are you?
Pretty good, you?
{insert dick pic}

Fuckin really?!?
Imagine how quickly a sexual encounter with an automatic dick-pic’er would pass…

But, hey, at least they’re honest, unlike the guys who feign interest in your cookware and your ear infection in the hopes that somehow this will turn into you offering pictures of your boobs.

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It’s persistent enough that you just don’t even want to open your messages and you begin to ignore your @ replies and you really don’t want to talk to men on Twitter, ever. Even when they might be nice guys, there’s just this risk that ten minutes into a chat about a television show, they’ll start telling you how pretty you are and how lucky your husband is. Ew.
So you start to cling to your online relationships with men who treat you with respect. The ones who may go five years without ever mentioning you’re pretty are especially valuable.

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So —
A couple of weeks ago, The Mister was talking about a couple we recently met and he was saying to me that he wondered what the wife’s ethnicity is, but how that’s a terrible question to ask someone.
In that moment, I felt really badly for him, because I could walk up to her, and in the midst of pleasant conversation, I could say, “Your cheekbones are just stunning,” and when she says thank you, she might offer me her heritage, or I could ask her, “Is it the Native American in you?” And she’d feel flattered and complimentary and offer me more information than my husband probably wants. I can do this. I’m a woman. I’m inherently non-threatening. Despite the benign motive of curiosity, The Mister cannot walk up to her and tell her how stunning her cheekbones are, or how beautiful her wide almond eyes are, or how her veil of long, ebony hair makes her all the more striking. I can tell her how attractive she is and she won’t question my motives beyond nosiness, but a man saying the same thing to her is another matter altogether. His curiosity is not the first assumption she’d make, and she’s lived long enough to know the odds.

I think all women will relate to this post.  But please, tell me if you’ve had a different experience. Like I’ll even believe you, pffft!

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45 Responses to To What End?

  1. meANXIETYme's avatar meANXIETYme says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:09 PM

    I relate. Which is why I no longer participate in online conversations with people I don’t know. It’s a sad fact, but I pretty much ignore conversations that strangers try to strike up with me online. I have no spare time and/or energy for those kinds of games anymore.

    Unless of course it’s Hub in disguise. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  2. hollie's avatar hollie says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:27 PM

    This is dead on. Also, I’m wondering if you have my ex-husband on twitter because that sounds just like him. Kidding. (Not really.)

    Liked by 1 person

    • joey's avatar joeyfullystated says:
      December 1, 2014 at 9:48 PM

      I hope not. (Not kidding)

      Like

      • hollie's avatar hollie says:
        December 1, 2014 at 9:52 PM

        I don’t think he has twitter…or at least I hope he doesn’t. The world does not need any more ways in which he can “reach out and touch” people figuratively. I am relatively new to twitter and not sure I like it. Thankfully, it is just my facebook that is full of creepers (both people I know and people I don’t) inbox-ing me nonsense thus far. Come to think of it, maybe I am starting to like twitter more!

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Carrie's avatar Carrie Rubin says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:30 PM

    I haven’t had too much trouble online in this regard, probably because I ‘walk’ the other way quickly if I sense that’s the direction something might take. Then again, my tweets and posts are boring and tame. I doubt I attract many seekers with my good-girl prose. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Linda G. Hill's avatar LindaGHill says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:32 PM

    No one ever comes on to me on social media… *tries to figure out what’s wrong with me*

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Susanne's avatar menomama3 says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:44 PM

    This is the LAST social media thing I engage in having given up Facebook, Twitter, et al. So far so good, but then again, I’m old.

    Like

  6. ....'s avatar harveylisam says:
    December 1, 2014 at 9:52 PM

    You’re completely right — I relate so much to this post. Thanks for sharing! (I would make a more intelligent comment, but I just agree with everything and I’m lazy haha.)

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Matt Roberts's avatar Matt Roberts says:
    December 2, 2014 at 12:50 AM

    I notice it all the time on Twitter. Find a woman with a hot avi and she’s being followed by tens of thousands of people. What I love the most is, most of the time those women have terrible or just uninteresting tweets. It’s only because of the avi. Men are such predictable tools. Sometimes I hate being one.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Dan Antion's avatar Dan Antion says:
    December 2, 2014 at 5:33 AM

    Can’t comment as a woman cuz, well I ain’t one. And, I’ll probably never compliment you on the Internet or in person cuz I say stupid stuff like “you look nice today” or “that dress looks nice” that will somehow imply you’ve never looked nice before and the dress looked good all by itself on the rack. It’s hard being an actual nice guy. It’s even harder when you tend to say dumb things. I wish I could apologize for the idiots among my half but…

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Maggie Wilson's avatar Maggie Wilson says:
    December 2, 2014 at 6:45 AM

    Thanks for the insight into the twitter-sphere. It’s a strange and foreign land to me. I don’t get Twitter. I’ve tried, but it is beyond me, I guess. Which is a handicap, since I’m supposed to be minding the Twitter feed for the non-profit agency I volunteer for.

    That said, I’ve managed to fly beneath the radar of the come-ons and attacks on Facebook. I suppose that’s because I mostly engage with people I know in the “real” world. And I wear my coveralls.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. meandcoffeefairy's avatar meandcoffeefairy says:
    December 2, 2014 at 8:04 AM

    Being from the south, I have no boundaries , I will flat out ask you almost anything without flinching. Doing deliveries, I have formed a relationship with all the regular’s, and recently a lady smelled damn good, so that exactly what I said, “Damn you smell good today” , now my brain caught me, and I started to plead for forgiveness then she said, “Aww, you made my day, and glad you noticed”. Reported to my wife and she laughed, she knows I am a big flirt and from me it socially accepted. It’s all in the delivery of a message, wink. Be nice, my ego has took years to get to where it is, ROFL.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Sherry's avatar Sherry says:
    December 2, 2014 at 9:28 AM

    exactly the same for me. But I find one solution. Talk politics and men will universally (well almost) hate your guts because if they are right wing, then I’m an uppity bitch who doesn’t know her place. Works every time. They get so mad at not being able to best me in a argument that they can’t see straight and end up doing the proverbial, “you make me call you a cunt!” which I always find comforting knowing that I have such power to make men into slavering idiots just by destroying their pathetic arguments in a couple of sentences. Anyways…..yeah I’ve raised an eyebrow or two at a few of the comments I’ve seen leveled by “nice” guys to you and others here….just kidding of course they always say…lol…covers a lot don’t it?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. My Spoken Heart - Andrea Crowell's avatar myspokenheart says:
    December 2, 2014 at 1:48 PM

    Hhhmmm I am wondering if I am just exceptionally lucky or ??? I have not had these experiences at all, yet have read about them over and over and know quite a few people who have had such enlightening experiences.
    I am quite content in my little troll free bubble and pray it stays that way.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Luanne's avatar Luanne says:
    December 2, 2014 at 4:59 PM

    It would be eye opening to navigate as a man for a day, I think. So different.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. dynasticqueen's avatar dynasticqueen says:
    December 4, 2014 at 2:06 AM

    Same experience here! Which is why me talking on the Internet at all is a miracle. *shudder* Ugh.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Britt Skrabanek's avatar Britt Skrabanek says:
    December 8, 2014 at 11:19 PM

    Spot on! I had a Yoga Instagram thing going on for a couple of months. It was always guys liking my posts and I had a feeling it wasn’t because they were die-hard Yoga fans. I was over that pretty quickly. Eww.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. G. J. Jolly's avatar Glynis Jolly says:
    December 22, 2014 at 10:33 PM

    I just tell them how old I am. Shuts the guy right up. 😛

    Like

  17. Phil Taylor's avatar Phil Taylor says:
    April 11, 2015 at 1:13 PM

    It’s like social media is the equivalent of alcohol to some men. Suddenly they have all this courage that allows them to say stupid things. I hope women don’t generalize too much. I’m sure there are decent guys on social media.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. oui.depuis's avatar ouidepuis1 says:
    April 15, 2015 at 3:44 AM

    I read an article recently about how when we meet a little girl we tell her how pretty she is, whereas when we meet a little boy when ask him about his kool robot toy. So it starts at that age already…

    Liked by 1 person

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