Do Women have it 'easier' then men?

[Ae****]

September 16, eyemblacksheep said:

I probably had come over more critical of men than I'd meant to.

I think a lot was disassembling some "women have it easier" comments I'd seen.  And that ultimately I think everyone has challenges (my 'not many men' was about a thread I'd started about challenges men had)

But. It is true that everyone has bias and blindspots.  But, I don't think this stops empathy.

I do also agree people in general are good.  But they sometimes choose to do things which are not - for example, I dunno - "Hey, wanna fuck", "No thank you", "Well you're a stupid fat ugly bitch" - which is a scenario which happens with variance all too often and somebody through whatever motivation ultimately decided they were going to respond to rejection to their abrasive opening message with insults  and so on.  And whatever empathy we have at those steps, someone decided to resort to an insult when someone said no to them, rather than trying to work on stuff.

Bias and blindspots clearly do stop empathy, understanding, fairness and the ability to take on concepts that clash with a person's world view 🤯 They also enable mental gymnastics leading to unfortunate conclusions and oblivious hypocrisy 😶 Ideas like - "Most everyone here thinks this certain way, so if you disagree, you're obviously wrong," and the one I mentioned earlier "Few men have answered this post, that's telling". Bias/blindspots allow a person to find it baffling and ridiculous that a post that is presented as satire about men in general, but which is actually pretty grim, has men posting in it and saying "Hey guys, this isn't actually that funny if you think about, please think about it." 🧐 They allow people to feel its ok to shut down a conversation by describing men putting their views forwards as moaning or whining or "mansplaining" 😳🙄😂 - and all the while the people saying these kinds of things think they are very fair minded/kind/understanding. I've seen these in the past week or so, they're all off the top of my head 🤷🏻🤦 It's plentiful.
The threads are an echo chamber, in the main. This stuff is viewable all over the place.
Just FYI, the way it is, it's not worth arguing against or having a discussion about, in my view - it's hard to change the minds of people who don't want to be changed, and there's less incentive when people are so dismissive and rude, and then on top of that, they're Internet strangers 🤔🤦 Lastly - it's all pretty predictable and therfore pretty boring! 😂 So while there may not be very good pushback about this stuff, that's not because the prevailing view is correct - it's because some people have better things to do than argue with people who cannot discuss things nicely. And because sadly as a result such discussions are a very fast ticket to a bad reputation, and whether it's deserved isn't a factor at all 🤣 predictable. But c'est la vie! 😭😭😅

[ey****]

7 minutes ago, Aeonova said:

a post that is presented as satire about men in general, but which is actually pretty grim, has men posting in it and saying "Hey guys, this isn't actually that funny if you think about, please think about it."

I think depending on what thread that was - I don't think a lot have been about men in general, but certain behaviours in men

I think there's sometimes cases where people take things as an attack and rather than a little of "shit, I do this, do I need to do a little better?" they take it personally, or as you say do forms of mental gymnasts 

9 minutes ago, Aeonova said:

it's hard to change the minds of people who don't want to be changed,

that is very true

but these forum threads are of course open to all - and while there are people who don't wish to change their mind for whatever reason.  There are people who might be more open. There are then people who will be new and haven't yet formed a view - and they might gain a view one way or another.

13 minutes ago, Aeonova said:

Bias and blindspots clearly do stop empathy, understanding, fairness and the ability to take on concepts that clash with a person's world view

They do

and this is something I can't be perfect on.  But there's stuff where; I am fortunate to have experience. I've been about a bit. I've met and spoke with a lot of people of a lot of different views.

This is kinda why... I think online websites are difficult for everyone. I don't think anyone has it easier - but have different experiences.  

Someone who argues someone else has it easier is blind to their own biases - because they lack the full context. 

[StickyTrickster]

So one of the earlier comments asked how genderfluid people see this and whilst I’m right on the very periphery of non-binary (spend like 99.9% of my time masculine) and seeing as the topic has been revived I thought I’d toss in my 10 pence…

 

Being the oddball that I am I’m spread across platforms like a politician attempts to court screen time during an election campaign to be able to spot the few similar oddballs that appear.  For most I’m presenting in my profile picture as the magnificent mound of man-flesh I’m using in my profile pic here, on a few appropriate platforms I lead with my glamorous femme persona and where sites that permit it I go with a collage featuring both.

 

SOOOO I’ve had the benefit of experiencing the worst for both genders, so much so that eventually you get to see the sad irony is that the entire dating scene is one giant ecosystem in which everyone’s bad behaviour is making it worse for everyone like people peeing in a swimming pool.  It might just be a few doing it but as more people decide to do the same because of the other gender’s bad behaviour then the pee level rise.  Many of the people doing the worst behaviour probably have nothing better to do with their time and that nobody is in a rush to take them off the dating market they’re gonna wind up contributing a significant amount of pee to the pool.  Factor in that some dating sites have realised it is better keeping people on the site rather than actually find a decent match then like ripping out the public toilets in a leisure centre they’ll use design choices to maximise pool peeing (seriously if a company wouldn’t hire someone from a picture and a profile limited to 200 words then why the fuck should they expect you can find a good match from the same) or resort to installing bots to pee directly into the pool.  Eventually even though it may very well be the majority are doing little to no peeing in the pool we all wind up swimming in something that ceased being water a long time ago.

 

Whilst some behaviours are much more common amongst one gender than the other I’ve yet to find a bad behaviour that one gender can claim a monopoly over.  Indeed much of the last week I’ve been pestered by one professional domme demanding I become a slave to her and her live in female slaves and my trying to remain polite re-iterating that I’m not a slave and that I have standards for those I dom or sub for that I don’t compromise on which her approach repeatedly violated including the fact she was taking no for an answer.

 

Sure online dating can suck as a male.  Rejection doesn’t really bother me.  Got used to that a long time ago.  What I struggle with is knowing that given the volume of shit many women have to put up with from men online I don’t want to accidentally add to any of it such that I’m extremely picky about who I approach to minimise the chance that I’m wasting their time.  In truth I’m probably passing over quite a few people that we might have been able to happily find a mutually enjoyable dynamic or relationship with.

 

It can also suck dating as a female in a different way.  Just having to wade through the sheer volume of people that don’t give two fucks about you or anything you are looking for is demoralising, having to wade through all that sludge for the possibility something close to what you are looking for out there is a cruel blend of hope and dehumanisation.  The number of times I’ve put up a personal advert and had a guy respond saying “I know in your ad you specifically say this but I thought…”  Yes I absolutely took the time to type out those specific words not because they matter but because I was under the influence of a spell that now that you have broken it by questioning those words I’m now only interested in that one thing I said I wasn’t because you were able to question it… Come on WTF!

 

Indeed dating as non-binary has its own reasons for sucking.  Something that used to bother me a long time ago dating as non-binary was when women would include with a rejection looking for a “real man,” knowing very little about me.  Firstly my feminine side is an extra, not a substitute for my masculine side.  Just as many women have a side they wish to be respected and celebrated for who they are personally and their professional achievements and another side that is wildly sexual that may even get excited at the idea of being a personal secret “slut” for someone.  The presence of my femme side doesn’t mean I don’t also have the masculine wanting to also explore your fantasy of being ravished or whatever.  Now however I’m not bothered by such rejections as where they choose to cite not being a “real man,” instead of just saying not interested in femininity or crossdressers it reveals to me that they define masculinity based on the fantasy of willingness to own, control or ravish them rather than things like living with integrity and purpose that it conveys such a lack of understanding that I probably dodged a bullet as undoubtedly they will wind up questioning whether their partner is a “real dom,” at the first sign of appearing human than the fantasy they have in their head.  Granted the pursuit of BDSM and kink is primarily about the pursuit and acting out of fantasies but we all also remain human.

 

And it is for that reason I’m not going to pronounce a winner in this debate of whether men or women have it worse in online dating.  The experiences are different, like comparing apples to oranges and whilst I could come up with some metric upon which to judge them the question itself has issues.

 

At it’s worst it gets people to focus on all the negative things that have happened to them and potentially prompt an argument for why my suffering beats your suffering and at its best approached with more compassion and sympathy still treats each gender as a single monolith which it is not.  I mean I’m sure there are plenty of guys for whom my earlier mentioned pro-domme interaction would have made their year.  For me it was a giant arse ***.  Instead I’d think my answer is the sooner people can develop compassion on an individual to individual level in online dating the sooner we can all get out of the piss pool – unless you’re into that sort of thing that is…

[Deleted Member]

18 minutes ago, Aeonova said:

Bias and blindspots clearly do stop empathy, understanding, fairness and the ability to take on concepts that clash with a person's world view 🤯 They also enable mental gymnastics leading to unfortunate conclusions and oblivious hypocrisy 😶 Ideas like - "Most everyone here thinks this certain way, so if you disagree, you're obviously wrong," and the one I mentioned earlier "Few men have answered this post, that's telling". Bias/blindspots allow a person to find it baffling and ridiculous that a post that is presented as satire about men in general, but which is actually pretty grim, has men posting in it and saying "Hey guys, this isn't actually that funny if you think about, please think about it." 🧐 They allow people to feel its ok to shut down a conversation by describing men putting their views forwards as moaning or whining or "mansplaining" 😳🙄😂 - and all the while the people saying these kinds of things think they are very fair minded/kind/understanding. I've seen these in the past week or so, they're all off the top of my head 🤷🏻🤦 It's plentiful.
The threads are an echo chamber, in the main. This stuff is viewable all over the place.
Just FYI, the way it is, it's not worth arguing against or having a discussion about, in my view - it's hard to change the minds of people who don't want to be changed, and there's less incentive when people are so dismissive and rude, and then on top of that, they're Internet strangers 🤔🤦 Lastly - it's all pretty predictable and therfore pretty boring! 😂 So while there may not be very good pushback about this stuff, that's not because the prevailing view is correct - it's because some people have better things to do than argue with people who cannot discuss things nicely. And because sadly as a result such discussions are a very fast ticket to a bad reputation, and whether it's deserved isn't a factor at all 🤣 predictable. But c'est la vie! 😭😭😅

A few years ago, I even set up a female profile on OkCupid to see how much harassment I got. I'm not saying this experiment was conclusive or that it was ok to do what I did but I got absolutely no harassment online. I just set my location to a posh part of town and did not put anything provocative in the profile. Actually I could have gone even further and set gender as male so that no male could find me to initiate discussion and harass but I also wanted to see how many messages I got as a woman. It was not as many as I thought but every day I had several polite, well-thought out messages in my inbox.

And everything I had put on my profile was really vapid airheaded stuff like "oh you know in the mornings I wake up and do some pilates before I get take out breakfast at my local vegan cafe then do admin stuff at a centre for preventing climate change". Even going long periods of time without responding to messages I got maybe one or two messages from guys saying they were frustrated with me. So if I'd been a young straight white woman it definitely would have been about 10 times easier to form connections on that basis.

So why do women receive all the harassment? I'm not justifying it but maybe all the stuff they put in their profiles that comes across condescending or reactive like "read the profile first ya creeps", "feminist or gtfo", "womanizers need not apply" and so on just rubs some guys the wrong way. I really don't know why some women attract negative attention online but others don't if it's not just their personalities.

[ey****]

Perhaps one thing that does make thing difficult for men

That there is a risk that the person they are messaging is a guy with a female profile as a social experiment - which means no matter how good their message(s) are they're either not going to get a response, or, are going to get ghosted when the experiment is over.

[Deleted Member]

13 minutes ago, eyemblacksheep said:

Perhaps one thing that does make thing difficult for men

That there is a risk that the person they are messaging is a guy with a female profile as a social experiment - which means no matter how good their message(s) are they're either not going to get a response, or, are going to get ghosted when the experiment is over.

I just figured that most of those guys were going to struggle anyway - I remember one guy saying that he rarely gets any female responses, how pleased he was just to get one. I didn't say it was the right thing to do but I had to see what online dating was like from the female perspective and honestly, it was not bad at all. I got one message asking if I wanted to chat on kik, "babe" and that honestly was the absolute worst of it. Maybe I should have changed location somewhere really ghetto and put loadsa crap on my profile to provoke bad reactions. But I didn't wanna see a tonne of dick pics and if I proved anything it's that it is possible to navigate online dating safely with just a modicum of common sense.

[ey****]

I seem to recall I didn't do badly on OKC - it being a bit more kink and poly friendly.  Though, ironically the person I best connected with had someone in the polycule that really wouldn't have worked for me.  But, c'est la vie

I do think it is important, however, your language seems to be veering into "women get bad messages and harassment because it's their fault" kinda territory - and - nobody deserves that no matter how good or bad their profile is.

One of the failures of a lot of experiments mind, is they're often ran over short time spans, or, lack how a woman would actually respond.

Which in reality might be a bunch of not responding, "sorry not interested" or actually chatting back to see if ended up being you expected to carry the conversation or how quickly the other person tries to push things sexual.

 

[StickyTrickster]

59 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

A few years ago, I even set up a female profile on OkCupid to see how much harassment I got. I'm not saying this experiment was conclusive or that it was ok to do what I did but I got absolutely no harassment online. I just set my location to a posh part of town and did not put anything provocative in the profile. Actually I could have gone even further and set gender as male so that no male could find me to initiate discussion and harass but I also wanted to see how many messages I got as a woman. It was not as many as I thought but every day I had several polite, well-thought out messages in my inbox.

And everything I had put on my profile was really vapid airheaded stuff like "oh you know in the mornings I wake up and do some pilates before I get take out breakfast at my local vegan cafe then do admin stuff at a centre for preventing climate change". Even going long periods of time without responding to messages I got maybe one or two messages from guys saying they were frustrated with me. So if I'd been a young straight white woman it definitely would have been about 10 times easier to form connections on that basis.

So why do women receive all the harassment? I'm not justifying it but maybe all the stuff they put in their profiles that comes across condescending or reactive like "read the profile first ya creeps", "feminist or gtfo", "womanizers need not apply" and so on just rubs some guys the wrong way. I really don't know why some women attract negative attention online but others don't if it's not just their personalities.

OKCupid's question filtering makes it probably the second hardest site for toxic males to just scroll through pictures firing off messages right after Bumble's women message first approach.  I wouldn't compare OKCupid to any of the kink dating/matchmaking sites out there as far too dissimilar.  Personally I'd think it would be better if the kink dating sites went more like OKCupid but the trend has been to become more like Tinder, such that even OKCupid is becoming more Tinder like.

 

Whilst not a vegan myself it is not fair to say people following a particular lifestyle choice or someone working for a cause they might believe in regardless of whether you agree with it or not as being "really vapid airhead stuff."  I know plenty of intelligent people that have taken jobs below their mental abilities for one reason or another.

[Deleted Member]

7 minutes ago, StickyTrickster said:

OKCupid's question filtering makes it probably the second hardest site for toxic males to just scroll through pictures firing off messages right after Bumble's women message first approach.  I wouldn't compare OKCupid to any of the kink dating/matchmaking sites out there as far too dissimilar.  Personally I'd think it would be better if the kink dating sites went more like OKCupid but the trend has been to become more like Tinder, such that even OKCupid is becoming more Tinder like.

This was during a time before all the changes to OkC that meant you had to match with someone before you could message them. I don't think I have even been on the site since they introduced this question filtering thing your talking about unless you just mean the question system where you can check compatibility through which questions you answered the same as someone else. That doesn't prevent "toxic males" from failing to check question compatibility then going ahead and messaging women regardless.

 

Quote

Whilst not a vegan myself it is not fair to say people following a particular lifestyle choice or someone working for a cause they might believe in regardless of whether you agree with it or not as being "really vapid airhead stuff."  I know plenty of intelligent people that have taken jobs below their mental abilities for one reason or another.

I was referring to people who just do that kind of stuff to look cool on social media.

[Deleted Member]

28 minutes ago, eyemblacksheep said:

I seem to recall I didn't do badly on OKC - it being a bit more kink and poly friendly.  Though, ironically the person I best connected with had someone in the polycule that really wouldn't have worked for me.  But, c'est la vie

I do think it is important, however, your language seems to be veering into "women get bad messages and harassment because it's their fault" kinda territory - and - nobody deserves that no matter how good or bad their profile is.

One of the failures of a lot of experiments mind, is they're often ran over short time spans, or, lack how a woman would actually respond.

Which in reality might be a bunch of not responding, "sorry not interested" or actually chatting back to see if ended up being you expected to carry the conversation or how quickly the other person tries to push things sexual.

I'm aware the experiment may have been inaccurate in some senses. I was just trying to get a feel for how it *could* be like, online dating for women. I did get the sense some of the negative experiences may have been exaggerated.

[ey****]

The question, of course, is why would someone exaggerate their experiences?  

The kinda problem is men when presented with a choice of believing women OR setting up their own half arsed experiment to try to prove women wrong - go for the latter - that the initial response is to try to invalidate experiences. 

[ey****]

Like - I guess - if someone set up a profile posing as a man and then said "well, nobody tried to scam me" it doesn't really prove scammers don't exist.

Or, "I messaged a bunch of women and got replies from most" wouldn't alleviate that some men struggle to get replies (or, when they do - might find the conversation trails off) 

[Deleted Member]

13 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

I'm aware the experiment may have been inaccurate in some senses. I was just trying to get a feel for how it *could* be like, online dating for women. I did get the sense some of the negative experiences may have been exaggerated.

Personally I've never had any negative experience on OKC. I have on Bumble, Plenty of Fish and of course various kink sites. No doubt I've imagined them. Or deserved them if I didn't imagine them. I can't be arsed arguing with you. Your disdain for pretty much anyone on this site is ingrained.

[Deleted Member]

1 minute ago, eyemblacksheep said:

The question, of course, is why would someone exaggerate their experiences?  

Because either they want to be the victim and/or because they know it's difficult for so many men with dating so they find a way to rationalise it away so it becomes "their fault, not mine", despite being entitled to their own standards.

 

Quote

The kinda problem is men when presented with a choice of believing women OR setting up their own half arsed experiment to try to prove women wrong - go for the latter - that the initial response is to try to invalidate experiences. 

Well I would have done more to get a more rounded picture but believe it or not I don't enjoy setting up fake female accounts.

[Deleted Member]

Just now, Dragonflylover said:

Personally I've never had any negative experience on OKC. I have on Bumble, Plenty of Fish and of course various kink sites. No doubt I've imagined them. Or deserved them if I didn't imagine them. I can't be arsed arguing with you. Your disdain for pretty much anyone on this site is ingrained.

That's odd because Bumble is a "women message first only" type of dating site. So I'd assumed there would be a lot less harassment there than OkC. Keep in mind that I did this experiment before they introduced the "message on match only" basis a few years back.

[Deleted Member]

4 minutes ago, eyemblacksheep said:

Like - I guess - if someone set up a profile posing as a man and then said "well, nobody tried to scam me" it doesn't really prove scammers don't exist.

I think you can, at the very least, prove that it's fairly easy to identify a typical dating site scam though (where men are the target).

Edited September 25, 2021 by Deleted Member

[Deleted Member]

7 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

That's odd because Bumble is a "women message first only" type of dating site. So I'd assumed there would be a lot less harassment there than OkC. Keep in mind that I did this experiment before they introduced the "message on match only" basis a few years back.

Well according to your logic, I must have made it up or exaggerated it or asked for it in some way. Do you think harassment only occurs in the first message? 🙄

[Deleted Member]

Just now, Dragonflylover said:

Well according to your logic, I must have made it up or exaggerated it or asked for it in some way. Do you think harassment only occurs in the first message? 🙄

I didn't say "must have", I said "could have" and that may only apply to certain women. You personally, I have no idea about.

[ey****]

I've found for example scam attempts come in waves - I've had a couple recently where actually the site removed the users pretty quickly

And, I'm sure there was like a 2 month period where there were no scam attempts at all

So if someone set up and had like, 1 attempt in the time they were running the experiment, of a profile they got annexed fairly quickly, some guys might feel a bit.... put out... if the person concluded it wasn't really the problem men said and they just exaggerate. 

 

[Deleted Member]

1 minute ago, eyemblacksheep said:

I've found for example scam attempts come in waves - I've had a couple recently where actually the site removed the users pretty quickly

And, I'm sure there was like a 2 month period where there were no scam attempts at all

So if someone set up and had like, 1 attempt in the time they were running the experiment, of a profile they got annexed fairly quickly, some guys might feel a bit.... put out... if the person concluded it wasn't really the problem men said and they just exaggerate. 

 

I know what you're saying, that's why I haven't made a big deal of the experiment. I only presented it as a small piece of anecdotal evidence.

[Deleted Member]

3 hours ago, Aeonova said:

Bias and blindspots clearly do stop empathy, understanding, fairness and the ability to take on concepts that clash with a person's world view 🤯 They also enable mental gymnastics leading to unfortunate conclusions and oblivious hypocrisy 😶 Ideas like - "Most everyone here thinks this certain way, so if you disagree, you're obviously wrong," and the one I mentioned earlier "Few men have answered this post, that's telling". Bias/blindspots allow a person to find it baffling and ridiculous that a post that is presented as satire about men in general, but which is actually pretty grim, has men posting in it and saying "Hey guys, this isn't actually that funny if you think about, please think about it." 🧐 They allow people to feel its ok to shut down a conversation by describing men putting their views forwards as moaning or whining or "mansplaining" 😳🙄😂 - and all the while the people saying these kinds of things think they are very fair minded/kind/understanding. I've seen these in the past week or so, they're all off the top of my head 🤷🏻🤦 It's plentiful.
The threads are an echo chamber, in the main. This stuff is viewable all over the place.
Just FYI, the way it is, it's not worth arguing against or having a discussion about, in my view - it's hard to change the minds of people who don't want to be changed, and there's less incentive when people are so dismissive and rude, and then on top of that, they're Internet strangers 🤔🤦 Lastly - it's all pretty predictable and therfore pretty boring! 😂 So while there may not be very good pushback about this stuff, that's not because the prevailing view is correct - it's because some people have better things to do than argue with people who cannot discuss things nicely. And because sadly as a result such discussions are a very fast ticket to a bad reputation, and whether it's deserved isn't a factor at all 🤣 predictable. But c'est la vie! 😭😭😅

I agree it is a bit of an echo chamber. And I see the same things again and again and I find myself saying the same things. Partly why I took a break. I need to reply to your reply which I asked for, sorry about that. I was very willing to hear from you about a different perspective. And I like both men and women and have both as friends - I do want to see both sides and appreciate the difficulties that both have.

[Deleted Member]

41 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

I didn't say "must have", I said "could have" and that may only apply to certain women. You personally, I have no idea about.

On the basis of your test a few years ago, you've suggested that some women exaggerate and that some women's profiles contribute to their harassment. Why are you even going down this road? How does it help anyone of either sex enjoy the site better or get what they want?

[Deleted Member]

1 minute ago, Dragonflylover said:

On the basis of your test a few years ago, you've suggested that some women exaggerate and that some women's profiles contribute to their harassment. Why are you even going down this road? How does it help anyone of either sex enjoy the site better or get what they want?

I've suggested it could be the case and I explained why already to eyemblacksheep:

Because either they want to be the victim and/or because they know it's difficult for so many men with dating so they find a way to rationalise it away so it becomes "their fault, not mine", despite being entitled to their own standards.

[ey****]

Just of course. To remind.

In general terms - I don't think any side has it easier even if it might (sometimes) seem that way.   I just think the difficulties are different.

In specific terms - there is different factors which can give individuals advantages.  Some of this can come down to things like geography (particularly depending on the size or vibrancy of a kink community in the local, whether or not the individual wishes to partake)  disposable income (this doesn't necessarily mean people with higher income have it easier - but not having much *** can be a big disadvantage to dating in general) and their free time 

I do not wish to downplay struggles that anyone may have.

[SexxyMoeFoe]

So much to unpack in these replies. It makes me a bit sad if I am being honest...

I think one of the best replies that can sum up the dating experience for everyone is:

2 hours ago, eyemblacksheep said:

In general terms - I don't think any side has it easier even if it might (sometimes) seem that way.   I just think the difficulties are different.

Your personal definition of "having it easy" will depend on your personal experience and what you think you might prefer instead...

For instance

• If you never get replies you may think a bunch of replies is awesome regardless of quality (even if it doesn't results in a single additional date)
• If you often get scam message you may just want replies from genuine/real people (now imagine they are all OF content creators chatting to get you to subscribe)
• If you think different profile content is the answer, consider that you may be asking the person to misrepresent themselves or leave out important details. (For instance for me personally, not saying I am a kinkster - since that seems to be a trigger - which would get me vanilla guys I would never date) ... because leaving out that detail *might* stop *some* unwelcome messages
• Etc etc (I am not going to address point raised in all these posts)

Yes I am generalizing a bit but the point is, "the grass is always greener"  seems to be the theme with many taking issue with common complaints because having that same experience would be a more welcomed one for them than what they experience now.

 

My 2 cents