I Agreed With Most of It. Then Came the Murder Part
I read Girl on the Net’s “4 reasons I will instantly swipe left” and agreed with quite a lot of it. There are sensible observations about dating profiles, making an effort, protecting children’s privacy, and knowing whether you want kids.
Reading it as a man, I recognized several of the same frustrations. I’ve encountered them in women’s profiles and in conversations that never became dates. There was plenty there for me to nod along with.
Then I reached the part about auditioning men for the position of potential murderer, and it became harder to appreciate the rest.
Apparently, my concern is my ego
She invokes the familiar saying about men fearing women will laugh at them while women fear men will kill them. She follows it with a statistic about women being killed by romantic partners, explains her need to make basic checks, and closes with:
Your ego is less important than my life.
Of course her life matters more than somebody’s wounded pride. Who could reasonably argue otherwise?
But that sentence also decides what my objection must be before I’ve had the opportunity to explain it. If I dislike being discussed as a prospective murderer, apparently that’s my ego talking.
I find that dismissive. I can respect someone’s precautions and still have feelings about how she describes the people she is taking precautions around.
I’m trying to meet someone, too. I have concerns, boundaries, and reasons to be careful. Reducing my side of the experience to a fear of being laughed at makes those things disappear.
What does that statistic tell us about a first date?
The statistic she cites concerns romantic partners. That matters, but I’m reading a post about dating profiles and deciding whether to meet someone.
A statistic about who kills women who are murdered does not tell me how likely a woman is to be killed by a man she meets for a date. It certainly doesn’t tell me whether the man with his shirt off is more dangerous than the man wearing a jumper.
Yes, someone you meet could become your partner. I understand the connection. I still think there’s a considerable distance between acknowledging that possibility and describing dating as an audition for your future killer.
I don’t have a percentage for the danger of a first date, and I’m not going to invent one. I don’t need one to question whether the statistic supports the impression that paragraph creates.
Take time getting acquainted. Meet somewhere public. Decline a date if something feels wrong. I have no objection to any of that.
What bothers me is the suggestion that accepting those precautions also means quietly accepting the characterization that comes with them. Otherwise, I’m apparently putting my ego ahead of somebody’s survival.
That’s a pretty shitty position to put a reader in, especially one who was agreeing with you.
Most of these frustrations look familiar from my side
The photographs are a good example. Angry-looking profile pictures put me off, too. A photo might not tell me someone’s whole personality, but if the impression is that you’re already annoyed with me, I’m unlikely to want an introduction.
The shirtless pictures are more subjective. If they do nothing for her, fair enough. Nobody needs to defend what they find attractive. But I’m less comfortable with the move from displaying muscles to implying a desire to overpower someone. A photograph showing off a body doesn’t give us that information.
Then there’s the pen-pal issue, where I think we part ways more than I initially realized.
She reads statements about wanting to meet as an unwillingness to put effort into conversation. I read them with the experience of having put effort into conversations that went fucking nowhere.
I’ve had long chats. I’ve tried to arrange meetings. I’ve encountered the difficulty of finding any time when the other person could actually show up. Eventually, I start wondering why someone is on a dating site if dating has no realistic place in their schedule.
I don’t expect an immediate meeting or access to somebody’s calendar on demand. I do want some intention behind the interaction. Getting acquainted should eventually help us decide whether we want to meet.
I can accept that an irritated warning in a profile is an unattractive way to communicate that. But the frustration underneath it is legitimate. Wanting a date doesn’t automatically mean I’m trying to avoid making an effort.
On pictures of children, I agree with her. I’ve seen plenty of women’s profiles featuring their kids, and her concerns apply just as well there. Being a parent is relevant information. Putting children’s photographs into a dating profile is a separate decision.
And on being over forty and not knowing whether you want children, I understand why she wants clarity. That answer has consequences for the person considering a relationship with you. The same concern applies from my side, even though the biological timelines differ.
These are useful subjects. They’re worth discussing. Much of what she says made me feel we were looking at the same frustrating process from different sides.
I wanted a little of that recognition back
I don’t expect a woman writing about dating men to interrupt every point with a matching criticism of women. It’s her blog and her experience.
But as a male reader, I noticed the difference between how much of her frustration I recognized and how little room that paragraph seemed to leave for mine.
She gets to explain the fear behind her approach. My possible objection gets filed under ego. A man’s desire to meet can be interpreted as avoiding effort, even when he may be exhausted by how much effort he has already spent.
That imbalance is what stayed with me.
I liked much of the post. I still think it contains good advice. But I came away frustrated that agreeing with her boundaries seemed to require swallowing language that made me feel regarded with contempt.
I can respect a woman’s need to feel safe and still want to be spoken about with some generosity. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to bring to the dating table.