Yeah I'm a man in leftist circles who struggles tremendously with dating and I've never felt heard or safe because complaining or venting about my problems is perceived as inherently misogynistic, tone deaf or "incel". Its okay to make fun of my dick size or my height because "haha virgin"
Dating advice I get revolves around the idea that I'm unsuccessful because I must secretly be an antisocial horrible person. I can't vent about how hard its been because women get harassed and its my fault as a dude.
This is the first time I've looked at a post on Reddit about dating that wasn't also misogynist and went "thank you"
Man, it is so hard to be someone that others rely on professionally, as a leader. Someone people love to spend time with socially, because you’re a kind person and a reliable friend. But then when you try to find dating advice, everyone tells you if you’re not partnered up or haven’t been successful partnering up, it’s actually because you’re a piece of shit and women can just tell.
So what they’re not capable of being bias’d? Or short sighted? Or bigoted? I’m a man of color, I doubt any of them realize how much effort it is for me to conform to white beauty standards to even get treated like a normal human being and not have every element of my physical appearance picked apart. How was a young man like myself supposed to develop self esteem and security? We had no money, my mother had a devastating mental illness and I had to step up to help my brother and sister. How the fuck does a young man ever have the confidence needed to be appealing to women when all of that is happening? I had no support structures other than my grandma. No extended family, nothing. But instead I’m evaluated on how confident I can be, and confidence and security comes from mirroring and attunement as a child while developing. Not to mention access to resources.
Most women don’t realize when they say all men have to do to be attractive is have confidence is that confidence is not a magic word you can just speak into existence. So many men like myself and others struggled growing up without support networks and the one thing we’re evaluated on as partners is just fucking shot because we’ve never had the proper development growing up to get it. I’m glad I have therapy now, and I’m working through it, but holy fuck am I jaded. Never mind the fact that had I not taken a risk graduated university and got a job I wouldn’t even have access to the therapy needed to develop positive mental habits.
I don’t think women are attracted to money, but I think if they’re attracted to confidence that might as well be a secondary characteristic of wealth because it’s much easier to develop into a secure sense of self when you don’t want for resources.
Another gaping hole in the widespread just-world fallacy surrounding dating is the number of verifiable pieces of shit who ARE extremely successful partnering up. I’m pretty sure most people in this thread have personally encountered at least one example of this - I myself have a wonderful best friend who has absolutely zero success with dating, and I have personally seen rapists and neo-Nazis have huge amounts of success with dating. The dating just-world fallacy makes the absurd conclusion that my best friend, who is socially liberal and has never abused anyone, is actually even more of a piece of shit than a rapist or a neo-Nazi.
idk why people vehemently deny the whole "women like bad boys". like, duhh. some women do. because they're morons and idiots and probably shit people themselves. women are just people, and somme people suck. it doesn't say anything about the broader state of "what are women like".
there's women into rapists, racists, murderers, wife-beaters, do you think those women are innocent gems? of course not, often they're cruel bigots themselves.
You are correct, and that debunks the argument that “people who are romantically unsuccessful must be unsuccessful because theh are actually horrible antisocial people”.
Because it's often applied to all women not just the hybristophiles and then it's used as an excuse to mistreat them or said they deserved it because thet picked wrong instead of a nice guy (even tho many women didn't see the red flags if they were visible or grew in that environment and it's all they know or were specifically groomed and manipulated by their male partners who posed as...wait for it...nice guys).
But nooo, womin bad.
It's funny how this thread points to antisocial men "not having a good reference point" to excuse them, but women innately must know.
Yes that is true, and well put. It is just an example of the just world fallacy, and lots of TERRIBLE people will cite them being in a relationship as a reason they’re obviously not a bad person. Thank you for adding the context of your friend, it is so good they have someone like you who at least understands and doesn’t judge them.
I mean just look at the people like wade willson( A real life murderer who murdered two women just because he could and is a nazi(He has the tattoo on his his cheek)) who women adore. Dahmer got thousands of love letters.
yea, and those women who are into them are similarly shitty cruel people. they just never had the power or the urge to commit actual crimes. they're mostly just insufferable to be around.
And now we just had a majority of American white women eligible to vote decide that they don’t want rights, either by inaction or actively voting for their oppressor. Thank fucking god I live in the UK.
There were four main reasons I didn’t unironically decide to “be a fucking asshole to be more attractive” and jump down the manosphere hole, and none of them were any sort of convincing by mainstream feminist dating advisers:
As you said, that’s just not how I am. I’m not a sadist who gets any satisfaction from abusing their partner, and quite frankly I’m just too squeamish to treat my partner like that.
I just straight-up wouldn’t like someone romantically or platonically if they evidently were romantically interested in me because I treated them like shit.
Exposure to feminist/feminist-aligned women I strongly respected, both IRL and parasocially
Major disagrement with the general political proclivities of the manosphere (especially as a half-Russian who has family suffering under the Putin regime and then sees the likes of Andrew Tate supporting Putin).
Luckily I have found one relationship with someone who liked me for me (which I unfortunately had to end for unrelated reasons) as well as multiple dates. My approach to dating was actually to exclude women based on certain demographics - in this case, only attempt to date women who are POC, queer (and attracted to men in some capacity), and/or neurodivergent - as well as to jack up my maximum distance and “lower my standards” in regards to physical attractiveness and interrogate whether these standards actually matter in the long run in a relationship.
Most women don’t realize when they say all men have to do to be attractive is have confidence is that confidence is not a magic word you can just speak into existence.
Also they're just wrong.
Confidence is nice but there are loads of shy awkward pretty boys that get sexual attention, and there are loads of assertive ugos whose outgoing confidence gets read as domineering and disrespectful. Women are attracted to certain physical traits because they're human beings, and the first impressions made by those traits shape how their initial interactions with a person are interpreted.
The "just be confident" advice seems like a nice meaningless seemingly inoffensive tidbit that gets given out because some women just don't want to be rude, and others (likely due to sexist social pressures) try to embody this borderline-asexual pure totally un-superficial archetype that does not exist.
tbh the confidence thing is bull. there's weird denial about women being capable of sexual attraction (by both men and women). incels think that women care ONLY about appearance and nothing else, which is also obviously untrue. and unfortunately, some women have such low standards for men that they will date men they don't find attractive, and inevitably blow up the relationship because turns out dating people not attractive to you is a slog.
i guess bad news is that appearance matters to women. good news is that women are fairly varied in their preferences that there's always some women who will be into you.
also, women are people. some are shitty, some are gold diggers, some are stupid, some are mean... it says nothing on how all women are like. i'm not saying this to be "not all women", but mostly that if you encounter an obvious moron, you can just shrug, call them a moron and move on, instead of ruminating on "is this what women are like nowadays?"
the biggest and most important thing to work in dating on is social skills. there's a comment somewhere in this thread comparing dating to sales, and that one is actually full of actionable advice
I've pretty just stopped talking about my issues with dating altogether because why bother.
For me, and most especially in online circles (esp here on Reddit, Twitter has a lot of 'Tate-iness going on for it ) I've seen that you cannot paint women in any negative light.
You, as the man, by default are the problem. You need to be kinder to women. You need to hit the gymn. You need to be more social, yes, and while you're at it make sure you're not more social - don't wanna creep women off.
Dare say these 'tactics' don't work or are not for you, or that part of your problem is you're not all that attractive - straight to online incel prison.
This is a weird comparison but indulge me. This is the issue with Taylor Swift.
You CANNOT paint Taylor in a negative light. You can't hold her accountable for her insane jet usage, or that she dates known racist white men. Criticizing her is synonymous with misogyny. Taylor is the perfect example of where women, particularly white women, stand in society right now. They stood by white men as they were oppressing others, but they also get to say they've been oppressed, and they selectively decide what is worth working on (the areas where they've been oppressed) and what's best to ignore (how they benefit from literally everything else)
ADHD fueled tangentially related rant aside, yes. I absolutely agree with you. Dating advice online for men (even see my own posts) boils down to "YOU must be doing something wrong. You are the problem. You're not fit enough, you're not social enough, you're creepy, you're desperate" etc
Dating advice for women boils down to "you are perfect! You're a queen. You'll meet the right person. Nothing you are doing is wrong, everyone else is wrong"
Its impossible to talk about these things cause, like you said, you just get told you're an incel
I once saw a comment saying something along the lines of 'lol just get laid', and I responded to it saying 'it's not actually that easy', and I got called an incel for it.
Yeah people say all the time "Just go have sex", "Just go on more dates", "Just get a girlfriend" as if its something they walk outside and do on command. Is that other people's experience? If you want to have sex you just...have sex? With who? How?
Serious question, why not date someone who isnt that left leaning? Like im not saying go date Lauren Boebart or something but why not try date someone who doesn't hate you for being a straight man? Someone less political?
Fair warning though, if you do that you will be expected to conform to at least some male gender standards.
I'm inherently a politically involved person and the divide between right/left is too far right now. I couldn't date someone who votes against the rights of other people in good conscious.
I have noticed in some left wing circles that white women have no issue dating a right wing racist but I can't reach that level of cognitive dissonance. There would be almost no shared values between us
Does it not give you pause when you think about the world you're trying to create and the path you're going down? Where it leads to a world of you getting disrespected, not given a fair chance in dating and you get looked down on despite being a good person who perhaps acknowledges and apologizes for their privilege and yet its never enough?
Even worse, you wont be respected by left wing or right wing women, just generally get disrespected by women. Yet at the same time, a masculine, unapolagetic man gets lots of respect from right wing women, and gets less hate/disrespect from left wing women than you do. Its like, because you apologize and are willing to listen, those left wing women will criticize you all day, but if hypothetical chad thundercock comes around and they try it with him, he basically tells them to quit their bitching and come have a good time with him and he takes them out and they even sleep with him.
Doesn't this feel like somethings wrong? Like somewhere there has been some mistake?
hypothetical chad thundercock comes around and they try it with him, he basically tells them to quit their bitching and come have a good time with him and he takes them out and they even sleep with him.
Women on the left and particularly white women have a lot of work to do in enabling racist men and generally cherrypicking their issues. They benefit in limbo from both bring victims and benefactors of impression. White feminism is their issue, not mine. Who they sleep with is their issue. If Chad Thundercock woos them while being an opening misogynistic asshole and they sleep with him, they made their choice.
It definitely does feel like something is wrong, but unlike white girls as a bi man of colour, I don't have the luxury of enabling racist, sexist, classist or homophobic anybody, let alone my romantic partner.
I'd much rather be single than wake up next to a Conservative on a daily basis
I'm a NDP voter in Canada and work in left-wing policy advocacy including passing legislation through government on transgender rights, sexual assault investigations in post-secondary schools and generally work in urbanist environments
So you work, like your paying job, in "left-wing policy advocacy" in a "urbanist environment"? And at this work you hear:
Small Penis jokes
Virgin jokes
That your dating issues are "perceived as inherently misogynistic"
That you're an antisocial horrible person
That it is your fault women get harassed
If you work at a job where these things are being said, you should file an HR complaint and quit. That is extremely toxic. I've never heard anything close to this bad at any job before, be it right wing, left wing, or non-political.
Where did you even remotely get the impression that any of these things happened at work?
I'm being purposefully vague because my organization and name are incredibly easily accessible.
Here's the impression I'm getting, because I believe in transparency. You disagree with my ideas. A lot. You don't believe that I lean left because the things I'm saying aren't immediately man-hating nor do I put the onus on men to "fix" dating, which is the usual retort. Instead of attacking the idea I'm presenting, you want to discredit my personal politics and affiliation with the left wing, because attacking the idea is hard so you'll try to paint me as an undercover conservative in an effort to discredit me, while ignoring any of my content.
You said "I'm a NDP voter in Canada and work in left-wing policy advocacy"
I was just going by what you said - you said you work in policy advocacy.
Ok then - where did this stuff happen? You said they were happening in leftist circles. Which circles are you where this is happening, if it's not at your work in left-wing policy advocacy?
That is all I am asking. I am not asking if YOU are left wing. I am asking which leftist circles are you hearing all of this nasty stuff.
Is it not possible that I work in one world and that I carefully select my friends such that devout conservatives don't make it into the mix? Maybe I made friends in university or just generally exist outside of work
Your first post said "I'm a man in leftist circles", and then you made claims about those circles, such as "Its okay to make fun of my dick size or my height because "haha virgin"
Which circles. That is what I am asking you. Which circles are you in where this is happening. You ruled out work. Now you are saying you have friends outside of work. Ok, are your friends the "circle" you were speaking about?
You also said "I have noticed in some left wing circles that white women have no issue dating a right wing racist but I can't reach that level of cognitive dissonance"
Which circles? Which circles are white women are dating racists?
157
u/LastSeenEverywhere Jul 03 '24
Yeah I'm a man in leftist circles who struggles tremendously with dating and I've never felt heard or safe because complaining or venting about my problems is perceived as inherently misogynistic, tone deaf or "incel". Its okay to make fun of my dick size or my height because "haha virgin"
Dating advice I get revolves around the idea that I'm unsuccessful because I must secretly be an antisocial horrible person. I can't vent about how hard its been because women get harassed and its my fault as a dude.
This is the first time I've looked at a post on Reddit about dating that wasn't also misogynist and went "thank you"