I am what you might call a veteran of the internet. I know my way around blogs and threads and comments and, although I mostly consider it to be not worth my time, I’ve been known to gleefully jump in to the middle of a flame war from time to time. They are, in the right context, a hell of a lot of fun.
Still, I believe that it’s best to approach an opponent, even an internet opponent, with charity in mind. In all honesty, it’s possible that they just don’t know. Think about it. Those of us who have been to the flame wars have seen all the tricks. We can identify a concern troll, a sock puppet, or a Poe from the first word of the first comment they post. We’ve usually vetted sources, too, so we know that someone referencing Source A is probably a willfully ignorant tool and can safely be mocked in to Bolivian. But some people are sheltered, precocious souls who just kind of wander in to the middle of the line of fire. So it’s best to make sure you’re not going to create an implacable enemy out of a well-meaning fool.
With this in mind, I believe it is important to offer Kay Hymowitz the charity of considering the substance of her self-selected defenders. She may have simply entered some random search terms in to Google and accidentally wandered in to the cesspool that is the world of self-proclaimed Pick-Up Artists and Men’s Rights Activists. Hey. It happens. Some people just don’t know…um, stuff.
Let us consider the substance and not just the web addresses of the articles she chose to use to defend herself.
[A] writer at the popular dating website The Frisky titled a recent piece “Call me and ask me out for a damn date!”
And here we get to the second, more interesting benefit of offering charity: you often give the other person just enough rope to wrap one end around their own neck and the other around a convenient tree branch. I know it sounds completely crazy, but centering an argument in a William Jennings Bryan-level[1] article around the title of another article on a website called “The Frisky.”[2]
Actually, it’s really not so bad as I make it out to be in the footnote (seriously, go read the footnote now. It’s funny). Because, you see, I actually tracked down the article. Whilst doing so, since Ms. Hymowitz couldn’t be arsed to actually properly link to it, found out the article is actually called "Girl Talk: Ask Me Out On a Damn Date." Why does that matter? Because if you're gonna cite something, at least get the damn title right. It's a really simple way of making it look like you actually know what you're talking about. That's a little trick they taught me back when I was getting my history degree.
And do you know what the article is actually about? How annoying it is when a guy doesn’t actually ask you out on a date and does one of those, “So you wanna hang out sometime?” bits of half-assery and you just wish he’d fucking man up and risk the goddamn rejection inherent in actually trying. Also, it sure seems to me that it's written to a guy who said woman knows pretty well and who is apparently too damn stupid to pick up on the fact that she wants him to ask her out. Because that’s so fucking annoying, amirite, girlfriends? I love everything about this article, too, because Ms. Wakeman[4] actually refutes every goddamn thing that Hymowitz is trying to claim is wrong with both genders in one goddamn paragraph without even trying or knowing she’s doing it. Don’t believe me?
I want the date to have a place, or at least, a notion of a place. “A drink.” “Coffee.” “Dinner.” “Walking around a bookstore together.” I sincerely do not care where we go or what we do; I just want to prepare for it (eat dinner beforehand, don’t eat dinner beforehand) and know how I should dress (heels? sneakers?). You don’t even have to spend money. I’ll pay for myself if you don’t offer! Really, this should not be intimidating.[Emphasis hers.]
I’m just going to say it: Jessica Wakeman, I don’t know you and I’ll never meet you, but I think I’m in love with you.[5] But don’t worry. I’ll forget about this soon enough. Although, in all honesty, a quick perusal of the thumbnails on her collection of articles and the bit where she basically comes off as a super-sarcastic feminist-type has convinced me that, were she in Dallas or I wherever she is I most certainly would ask her out. With date, time, and location all ready to go. At the very least, I am :this close: to subscribing to her newsletter.
Why do I say this refutes Hymowitz’s entire friggin’ thesis? Well, I mean other than the bit where it’s actually excruciatingly self-declarative in its general, “Wow, Hymowitz is fuck stupid,” factor, there’s the rest of the article. This is Hymowitz’s very next sentence:
A lot of men wonder: “WTF??!” Why should they do the asking? Why should they pay for dinner? After all, they are equals and in any case, the woman a guy is asking out probably has more cash in her pocket than he does; recent female graduates are making more than males in most large cities.
Well, that handles most of the objection. But why do men always have to be the ones who do the asking and risk the rejection? I mean, if women do, truly, want to be equals they should be just as equally rejected by us poor, put-upon men, right? Let’s see what Jessica “I Have All the Answers” Wakeman has to say about that. I’ll bet she’ll be all, “Waaaaaaa, I’m just a woman. I shouldn’t have to work at it!”
Generally speaking, I think men are intimidated by women who do the pursuing/asking out, though, so I do it on a case-by-case basis. And if I can do it — and I have done it — you can, too.[Emphasis hers]
Oh. Never mind. That…that actually makes a lot of sense, Ms. Woman Who Wrote An Article That Was the Exact Opposite of What Kay Hymowitz Claimed it to be. I would, in fact, hazard a guess that the same guys who are whining about how they have to do all the work are the same exact guys who would get all whiny about those uppity ass bitches who won’t stay in the kitchen and make them a goddamn sammich.
So let’s go back to Ms. Hymowitz and see if this gets any better.[6]
Sure, girls can—and do—ask guys out for dinner and pick up the check without missing a beat. Women can make that choice. Men say they have no choice. If they want a life, they have to ask women out on dates; they have to initiate conversations at bars and parties, they have to take the lead on sex.
I’ll take the reins of this post back if Ms. Wakeman doesn’t mind. Because I think I have a few things to say on this particular topic. Because, you see, I’m the sort of guy who fits in to the category of, “Doesn’t get out much.” I don’t much like dating, so I don’t do it too often. And I still have enough baggage hanging on from my days as a babe in fundyland to be a bit squeamish talking about sex with people who are, for all intents and purposes, complete strangers. Basically, if you want to imagine me initiating a conversation with a woman I barely know about sex, just plug in a copy of 40 Year-Old Virgin and skip to the part where Steve Carrell is talking to Elizabeth Banks and she’s getting totally turned on while he has no idea he’s talking about sex. I’m slightly savvier than that. But not much.
Anyway, I have talked about sex on first dates. And, believe me, I have not been the one to bring it up. I have found phone numbers shoved in to the back pocket of my jeans before.[7] I have had everything from women strongly suggesting I should ask them out to begging me to do so to flat-out asking. I’ve been out with women who pay for themselves. Hell, I went out once with someone who paid for me.[8]
I don’t say this to brag. I don’t say this happens all the time. I’m just saying that it has happened to me enough that I categorize “women being aggressive seekers of relationships and/or sex” in to the “not terribly uncommon” category of my “things that happen” list. And I’d hazard a guess that I’m not some special, unique snowflake in that regard.
Anyway, back to Hymowitz. Because I know you want to see how far this hole gets dug.
Women can take a Chinese menu approach to gender roles. They can be all “Let me pay for the movie tickets” on Friday nights, and “A single rose? That’s it?” on Valentine’s Day.
I can’t believe that I, of all people, have to explain this one. I can’t. Fucking. Believe it. Me, of the nearly unbroken three decades of not having to give a rat’s ass about Valentine’s Day. So let me re-write this a couple different ways.
Men can take a Chinese menu approach to baseball games. They can be all “Meh, there’s always tomorrow,” when Paul Konerko strikes out with a runner on, two outs, and the team down a run in the ninth inning of a random game against the Yankees in May, and “Dammit! How do you miss that one?” when he takes a bad hack at the last pitch of Game 7 of the World Series.
Bosses can take a Chinese menu approach to employee performance. They can be all “You need to remember that next time,” when an employee forgets to report his PTO, and “We’re going to have to take disciplinary action,” when an employee sexually harasses a customer.
Feel free to come up with your own versions of this one.
I mean, seriously. Comparing a woman offering to pay for dinner on a random Friday night to a guy not putting any effort in on Valentine’s Day (with the understanding, obviously, that we’ve all agreed to give a shit about Valentine’s Day. Which, for the sake of dealing with Kay Hymowitz, I’m totally willing to do) is like complaining that a seven-course meal is way worse than an apple because it’s so much easier to just pull an apple out of the fridge and take a bite. I mean, she could at least try to come up with a proper equivalent. Actually, no. That’s asking too much.
We’re talking about a woman who actually tried to pass off an article entitled “Girl Talk: Ask Me Out On a Damn Date” that was written by a woman about guys who can’t actually do that as something that goes to prove a thesis that lead her to write a book called Manning Up: How the Rise of Women has Turned Men into Boys. I would think that if the sky were actually blue in Kay Hymowitz’s world she would realize that she and Jessica Wakeman are actually on the same fucking team.
Of course, it hasn’t escaped my notice that Jessica Wakeman doesn’t have a book deal. And she writes for The Frisky, as opposed getting published in the Wall Street Journal. I wonder if there’s some sort of single, overarching explanation that would account for that collection of facts.
Hmmm.
Nah. Probably not.
Anyway, we then have to deal with tired questions about why nice guys finish last. And Hymowitz apparently rented a goddamn steam shovel to start digging the hole faster. My guess is it’s because she was running out of space and wanted to cram as much stupid as possible in to every word. How do I know this?
At a website with the evocative name Relationshit.com, (“Brutally honest dating advice for the cynical, bitter, and jaded,” and sociological cousin of Dating-is-Hell.com) the most highly trafficked pages are those asking the question why women don’t like good guys.
I’m no expert, but relationshit.com appears to be a joke that a couple guys cooked up one weekend. And Kay Hymowitz appears to not get it. I went to the About Us and read this:
Our staff is comprised of jaded, cynical, thirty-something's who've been through a number of relationships. As you may have guessed, mostly bad ones. That's why we created this site. Not because we think we have all the answers. But because we now know many of the answers we do have are wrong. And while we don't know everything, there may be people out there who know even less and can benefit from our wisdom.[Emphasis theirs]
I’d like to offer Kay Hymowitz as someone who knows less than the guys at relationshit.com. She seems to have made it her goal not to benefit from anyone’s wisdom, though.
Anyway, since Kay Hymowitz appears to be the gift that keeps on giving (wherein “gift” = “easy blog fodder”), I’m sure this isn’t over yet. My only hope is that I’ll be able to get to the post I thought I was going to write tonight before that.
Stay tuned for the next installment, when I ask all the whiny, entitled jackasses I share the distinction of possessing a Y-Chromosome with to join me at Footnote 3.
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[1]One of WJB’s nicknames was “The Boy Orator of the Platte.” This, in turn, was a reference to the Platte River, which was said to be “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Yes, I did work that tidbit in to the most random possible post, thankyouverymuch.
[2]It doesn’t matter if you call it a “popular dating website,” either. I’d call it “a website Geds had never heard of before yesterday” rather than “popular.” I’d also call it “an entertainment and gossip website that appears to have all the intelligence of College Humor and the web design acumen of Yahoo’s OMG! celebrity gossip site” rather than “dating website.” But that’s kinda long and unwieldy. To wit:
“A writer at an entertainment and gossip website with all the intelligence of College Humor and design thoughtfulness of OMG! that no one has ever heard about before titled a recent piece “Call me and ask me out for a damn date!”
That’s just clunky.
Also, there’s a link on the front page of that website to an article called “Guys, Don’t Date Hot Women!” I have chosen not to get out of the boat, as I’m going to assume the mangoes are quite rotten. But if that’s the quality advice being offered at The Frisky…yeah. No. Just no.
[3]In fact, the “Guys, Don’t Date Hot Women” article is a response to something published in a serious journal somewhere that says some study indicates hot women are more likely to leave their lesser-physically-advantaged mates than the other way around. It’s a short blurb that basically says, “Is this for realz?” As far as random websites with dating advice and celebrity gossip go, it’s actually not all that bad.
[4]Weirdly, Wakeman is my porn star last name. So I think there’s some alternate universe where the porn star version of me is married to a woman who writes for The Frisky.
[5]Seriously, this whole hilarious chain of events caused me to giggle and wave my clenched fists about in the manner of a small, happy child while sitting on my couch. Daisy was so confused that she looked up from ripping the head off her stuffed cow in confusion. Also, now I have to sew the head back on a stuffed cow. Dammit.
[6]Just in case you have a big, important meeting to get to or something, the answer is, “No. No it does not.”
[7]Okay, that happened once. But, again, don’t get out much.
[8]Weirdly, I usually prefer to pay for everything. Why? Because that way it’s much easier to say, “Well, I bought you dinner, but I don’t actually like you very much, so please go away.” Yes. That’s right. Most men pay with the expectation it means they can force the issue of getting sex. I pay with the expectation that I can force the issue of going home alone and watching TV or something.
In retrospect, this seems like a really dumb strategy. I’m basically saying, “Yeah, so I’m going to be a really nice guy and I’m going to pay for everything and you should take that to mean I want nothing to do with you.” Tell me what’s wrong with that picture.
> Also, now I have to sew the head back on a stuffed cow. Dammit.
You actually got a snort out of me on that one.
Posted by: Fake Al Gore | 03/02/2011 at 10:27 PM
Is this gonna be one of those pics or it didn't happen things? Because I've already sewed the damn thing's ass back together. Twice.
Posted by: Geds | 03/02/2011 at 10:47 PM
when i read PF's take-down of this, i honestly that that "Ask me out on a goddamned date" was a MAN complaining that WOMEN don't ask men out.
[i don't. even guys who i KNOW wanted to go out with me got angry when i asked them out. i have NEVER had a guy not get hostile at me for asking him out. so i don't do it anymore. or maybe i don't do it anymore cuz i've been with Pete for almost 7 years, lol. maybe today it'd be better. i dunno]
but wow - i can't believe her article. HOW is she in the WSJ? how freaking stupid must one be to be a "famous" journalist for one of the biggest papers in the country?
sign
[this is Denelian - but i'm signed in thru yayoo.]
Posted by: Elizabeth | 03/04/2011 at 09:17 AM
Oh, believe me. There was a version of this post where I mocked Hymowitz for not even bothering to do enough research to notice that the article she was complaining about was written by a woman. Then I realized that she did know and literally had to figure out what her problem with the article was.
Fact is, I still don't know why she was complaining about it. I mean, the context made it clear that the request was directed to a specific subset of guys who really should just make that call and get it over with because everyone knows they want to. And I'm guessing that if you know a guy well enough to know he really, really wants to ask you out and you've been sending him signals to just friggin' do it you probably also know him well enough to know he's the sort of guy who won't take it well if you reverse traditional roles there.
Of course in some cases it's never obvious and I also see why a woman would be hesitant to touch a potentially raw nerve. Of course I'm also far less oblivious than I pretend to be, so I know that if a woman in whom I have an apparent mutual interest mentions places that seem to be the sort of place both of us would enjoy she's kinda-sorta pushing a, "Hey, why don't you ask me if I want to go [place] with you. Hint, hint..."
Posted by: Geds | 03/04/2011 at 06:01 PM