Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

xpost

But...I mean, that's a thing that's largely determined case-by-case. Sure, a lot of couples fall into heteronormative patterns of romantic behavior, but that's a decision (or, probably more generally, a distinct lack of decision) made by that particular couple. If anything, I've encountered resistance/weirdness from women because I don't tend towards those heteronormative patterns. But just because some people want to cling tenaciously to those patterns doesn't mean they aren't mutable or that you can't find people who want to transcend them.

People do have individual expectations of romance, though, they have qualities or ideas or behavioural patterns that they think of when they think of "romance" otherwise how are we even discussing this as a thing?

Yeah, and all I'm saying is that those qualities/ideas/behavio(u)ral patterns need to be compatible with another person's for romance to occur. It's a boom goes the dynamite thing, not like something that requires bending and contorting your own ideas of romance to accommodate others'.

way xp, but VP -- seems kinda datey? is there baggage (like friendship or work together) that might make either of you hesitant to "culminate" the evening??

culmination makes it sound like an assassination attempt

The little assassination attempt.

so i've scheduled two dates during my vacation in maine next week and one date before my vacation (well technically on the way out of town with an on-again off-again person) so i think i'm all set for getting through the danger period of temptation to hook up with the guy that dumped me last week (i can't even call him "my ex" since he was never technically my boyfriend). the only thing i'll really have to contact him for is to get my wire dvds back. i don't feel like he makes the "exes i want to remain friends with" cut, or at least i'm too pissed about his jerkiness at the moment.

i'm still annoyed at my previous ex, the guy some of you met at my birthday, because he keeps posting about how he "just discovered" ursula k. leguin in some remote bookstore in colorado and how everyone needs to read her NOW (you may remember him as the guy who said that the only good sci-fi writer was borges when i recommended sci-fi stuff to him all the time and was always too cool for it...was really hard for me not to make a snarky comment on his facebook to that effect). think it's time to unfriend him or at least hide him. not every ex can be a good friend!

Too true. Some exes are great people I never want to fall out of touch with. Some exes could not have possibly been more quickly or firmly ejected from my life.

bg, that fb post would drive me NUTS.

That guy is a pointy-haired twerp.

i really don't relate to people who think they "discovered" things that other people have known about for years with their unique snowflake spidey sense and feel the need to tell everyone the must read it from their lofty mountain of taste.

oh hey guys, i just the most amazing book while yak farming in the subsaharan desert purchased from the dusty knapsack of a traveling apothecary - it is called the chronicles of narnia and you simply MUST read it or surely you will perish.

LOL oh that is infuriating.

i feel like it's a predominantly male characteristic. the same reason that i get a zillion messages telling me i should check out ____ band because i would like them...uhm why do you assume i haven't heard them? because they are ~so obscure~ surely only you have heard them?

Yikes, I feel like I have probably sent a message like that. I just wanna chat music! No snobbery meant.

Oh, I have known girls who do that. I may even have been a girl who did that, when I was younger and more arrogant and filled with mine own self importance. I hope I have grown out of it, mostly. I suspect it's more a maturity thing than a gender thing - though lord knows some men never ever grow up.

Yikes, I feel like I have probably sent a message like that. I just wanna chat music! No snobbery meant.

well how about try - "based on your tastes, it sounds like you would like ____. are you into them?" instead of something that presumes that they've never heard the band.

also not cool: quizzing women on their interests to see if they are a "real fan" which you will never convince me is not a gendered thing. wayyyy too many women music fans and musicians deal with this constantly.

Haha, as if even teenage Bieber fans don't interrogate one another to make sure that they are ~real~ Beliebers? In fact, I think girl-fans sometimes give each other a harder time, to make sure you're a "fan" and not a "groupie" etc.

Which... don't get me wrong, it's still a totally sexist thing, and coming from totally sexist presumptions (women cannot be real music fans, we're only into lusting after cute boys, as if the two things are mutually incompatible.)

But I think in point of fact, I think I may actually have experienced *more* "are you a ~real~ fan or a groupie?" from other women than from men even? (Not that I haven't experienced it from men. I totally have, all the time.) Depends on the scene, I guess, and also the fandom.

it's jerkstore ego-centric behaviour no matter who does it, but a lot of people do it anyway, consciously or more often not. totally fine to call them out on it imo.

i've never had a women try to tell me how to use my own gear at a show or approach me to talk about how i could have improved my playing. or commented positively or negatively on what i LOOKED LIKE when on stage. but it's happened a lot coming from the other direction. sayin.

have u listened to the shins they will change your life

a women = a woman sorry so many typos today, multitasking

girl have you listened to wolf eyes
*puts headphones on her head playing music at proper volume*

blood seeps out her ears

i've never had a women try to tell me how to use my own gear at a show or approach me to talk about how i could have improved my playing. or commented positively or negatively on what i LOOKED LIKE when on stage. but it's happened a lot coming from the other direction. sayin.

Yeah, sure, OK, this one I will agree with you 99% (though I totally have had women come up to me and tell me how I rocked whatever outfit I was wearing, but it was in a "I love what you're doing" sense rather than a "you are your appearance" sense and nothing more.)

I didn't realise you were talking about "are you a real musician?" rather than "are you a real fan?" because I cannot tell you how many backstage conversations I have sat through with ladies who insist "I am a ~real~ fan, while those other ladies backstage, they are groupies!"

I just don't want every thread on ILX today to turn into "men, they are so awful!" because a lot of this stuff is, actually "arrogant people, they are so awful!"

Lots of men do not do this stuff. Some people who are not men do this stuff. Rrrrobyn's right, it's arrogance, not gender.

aw poor men :(

Well, that essay that Crabbits posted on another thread did kind of tweak me a bit. Because I don't want them to be able to use that eyerolling "gawd, *men*" as an excuse to justify their arrogance with maleness? Which they totally will, if they think it's a "male" trait?

Anyway, tomorrow is going to be painful in a kinda delicious way because I am going to have to walk the Yorkeian boy in the office through the process of what I need him to do on the stuff I work on. And his prettiness is just stupidly distracting. And I have to really be a grown-up - especially because I am in the senior, managerial position towards him - and not let this affect me. But even just today, as he was kneeling by my desk as I was trying to explain something, and I just turned and looked straight into his ~lips~ and just GAAAAAAHHHH, like, this is SO inappropriate to be feeling at work. Must concentrate on spreadsheets and databases.

And I have to put these thoughts out of my mind and just be businesslike about dealing with him. When my brain just looks at him and helpfully points out "Lips!"

When inside, I am thinking "but why but whhyyyy - my lust-bone just SHUT DOWN for like, three years, and it has to come back *now* in this situation I can do nothing about? why?"

This is all timed so perfectly with the "Men Who Explain Things" article that was just reposted online/in the feminist theory thread here.

http://yorkiegear.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/yorkshire-terrier.jpg

http://www.awesomelols.com/wp-content/plugins/watermark-hotlinked-images/watermark.php?img=wp-content/uploads/2011/12/thom-yorkeshire-terrier.jpg

those japanese dog breeders really can select for any trait no matter how recessive

GOD WHAT DID I DO WRONG IN TRYING TO POST THAT IMAGE ARGH SEE, HE HAS WARPED MY BRAIN

i guess i just think that a lot of men (or other arrogant people, fine) don't realize that they are being obnoxious when they do these things and that it should be pointed out (same with the "minimum age 20 years your junior, max age ends at your own age or younger" thing that people don't realize makes them look like an enormous douche). but i am horrible at actually doing this to people i know intimately which is why i'm probably just going to hide that ex on facebook rather than tell him i think he's a major dork :/

you should start commenting on the post with awesome recommendations

"Have you heard of.... Ray Bradbury? Someone told me he is ok. Or Margaret Atwood, I think she may have written a book or two."

Why are you still friends with your ex on Facebook is more the question I would be asking. (But I admittedly do not understand Facebook and its etiquette)

I think I need to find and read some handbook about "how to not sexually harass new employees at work" because I am so socially inept I worry I will slip up and completely freak out this poor lad.

everything's a really big deal

you should start commenting on the post with awesome recommendations

"Have you heard of.... Ray Bradbury? Someone told me he is ok. Or Margaret Atwood, I think she may have written a book or two."

i had to stop myself from doing this! like, literally back away from the computer.

Maybe I will look at London folks on OkC and try and arrange some daets.

tell him that Jurassic Park is a really awesome book

ok, I am going to stop now

While I understand the frustration towards douchebags, the idea of trying to thwart preconceived gender biases that I don't feel fit me is thoroughly exhausting and sometimes doesn't feel worth the effort. It's a real bummer being painted with the same brush as half the population of the earth just because you also happen to have a penis, particularly when you don't seem to occupy a whole lot of the same brainspace as them. Meanwhile, douchebags don't really care if you think all guys are douchebags, and they'll keep putting themselves out there. Which probably goes some way towards explaining why the straight male dating pool is apparently more like a dating cesspool (amirite, ladies??).

Ok, now I'm feeling "aw. poor men"

I don't mind being painted with that brush because I'm pretty sure I've been able to do some things due to male privilege. I also don't mind if people bash on white people, either.

nothing worse than a bunch of white dudes, really

Yeah, it's really hard not to feel some ~tildes of eyeroll~

(I have to admit I am sort of enjoying the semi-delicious terror over this work scenario. Which is ridiculous, and yet.)

I cannot find anyone at work sexy. I haven't had a 'work crush' in like 4 years. It's kinda great this way, but sometimes I think it'd be nice to have one again... now that I am in management I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to have one, though :/

I mean, it's cool to hash this stuff out all symposium-stylee, and I agree with all of the white male privilege arguments, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of dating, I'm just pointing out on an anecdotal level that I couldn't and wouldn't date anyone who viewed me as emblematic of Maleness And Everything That's Wrong With It. Because, like I say, I don't really relate much to stereotypical maleness and I've gone to great lengths to be as respectful and undouchey as possible. I'm not looking for sympathy or admiration or whateverthehell, I'm just trying to draw attention to the fact that some guys are super gunshy about dating anymore because of the increasing prevalence of turdy, PUA dudes and the awreness that women increasingly have their hackles up as a result. It's a vicious cycle that seems to be getting more vicious.

It's good to have a work crush, gives you a reason not to wear your pajamas to the office. Or that may just be me.

I have one now. I will proceed to mope in a self-pitying way because when the phone rings it isn't him.

It's been so long since I had any kind of crush on a ~real person!~ I had forgotten how powerful they can be. And yet how inconvenient.

It's not just that I'm in a senior level position to him. In a tiny office with about 10 people in it. And also he is, like, 12. Maybe 13 because his voice has broken. And it is ridiculous and inconceivable in every way possible. And my work thought it would be hilarious to seat him opposite me so I have to look at him every time I get up from my desk. And I completely hate myself for being flummoxed by this.

And yet, Jesus Christ, is he pretty! I just can't imagine what it must be like to go through life with a face that beautiful. And have creepy disgusting women like me letch over you. Ugh.

Laurel, I don't *like* having to get dressed nicely every day for work. I like being able to go in wearing my pyjamas with my hair unwashed because who cares who sees me. And now suddenly I have started washing and even *brushing* my hair and putting on proper clothes. It is absurd.

I'm just pointing out on an anecdotal level that I couldn't and wouldn't date anyone who viewed me as emblematic of Maleness And Everything That's Wrong With It.
--Old Lunch

What would someone have to say/do to come off as someone who viewed you as emblematic of maleness?

Xp

I went years and years without a crush. Right now I am still sorta obsessing over a couple of people from the past, and I'd like that to be over with. I'd like to be a bit crushless for a bit. Or have a new obsession.