September 16, 2015 • 47 mins
Online dating offers documentary proof of men not handling women's sexual rejection gracefully. Cristen and Caroline talk about what happens when masculinity constructs and swiping left collide and why straight guys sometimes can't take 'no' for an answer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff. Mom never told you from house top
works not Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christen and I'm Caroline, and today I'm gonna talk about men.
We're gonna talk about rejection, and we're going to talk
about how on Mine dating offers documentary proof the guys
(00:29):
fell and students. You have a hard time getting turned
down sometimes? Heck, yeah, the internet is sort of a
scary landscape. It is. And should we go ahead and
offer a disclaimer that, yes, some women have a hard
time with rejection sometimes as well, and overreact getting turned down,
(00:50):
especially if you're being sexually turned down. Well, rejection is hard.
Rejection is the worst. Rejecting is pretty bad too, But
I mean it can rejection of any kind can really sting,
and and that is not a gendered thing. It's a
fact of life. Rejection is the worst, and we hate it.
We all struggle with it. But there are some things
(01:13):
that put certain people at risk of being a bigger
jerk than other people when it comes to rejection. Yeah,
I mean, this is a particular pattern when it comes
to straight dating and especially straight online dating, although it
is more of a thing of straight guys dating. I
should say, because the recipient of the offer, whether it's
(01:36):
to you know, have a drink bought, or a date
or sex or whatever. Um, she can be of any
orientation whatsoever. It's really more you know, straight guys processing
being turned down and what God is thinking about. This
whole thing was an incident that happened on the Internet
in late August. Yeah. I was actually on vacation when
(01:57):
this happened, and I just remember seeing, um, my internet,
my personal internet, blowing up over it. So BuzzFeed writer
and comedian Grace Spellman got a series of tweets and
Facebook messages from this guy, Ben Shane, who is a
former Harry Potter podcast host and who's also the co
(02:21):
founder of the website fem Inspire. He was clearly trying
to charm miss Spellman, and uh he I guess it's
an understatement to say that he didn't really charm her. Yeah,
the whole incident was kind of bizarre because they had
friended each other on Facebook nine years ago when Shane
(02:43):
was hosting this podcast called muggle Cast which was super
popular um and Spellman was a fan, So they became
friends on Facebook, but they were weren't in contact whatsoever.
So this time in August was the first time he
was messaging her verse so totally out of the blue,
and at first he was full of praise. So in
(03:06):
one Facebook message he sent her, he said, you do
a remarkable job of making your quirky personality shine through online.
It's hyperactively beautiful. And to to this, Spellman says, thanks,
no thanks, I've got a boyfriend, wish you well turn
(03:27):
him down politely. Well, he was not too happy about that. No,
that would be also another understatement. He responded with a
slew of of not so nice messages, including just because
you work at BuzzFeed doesn't mean you're good. Good luck
finding meaning and all of that garbage you call content,
(03:49):
and he also, I mean, he got more personal than that,
and he just wouldn't stop. He was contacting her on
all sorts of platforms just to tell her that she
was the worst. Basically, yeah, I mean, because it really
exploded when she publicized the private, incessant private messaging that
he had been doing. And then of course that only
fanned his his outrage, and at one point he wrote
(04:11):
her an email saying, I was so angry and offended
I wrote a draft putting you in your place, but
then he decided against it and wrote her this email instead.
But what was interesting to see was this white Knight
turn that it took when he issued a press statement
touting his fem Inspire cred saying I've done more for
(04:33):
the cause of advancing women's rights than any of the
people who are criticizing me. Um. Because this is after
Grace Spellman publicized this incident to her large Twitter following,
and people kind of came out of the woodwork saying,
either what a creed, but also this has happened to
me before, and also, yeah, this is why he you know,
(04:56):
I left them Inspire, or why he is not on
our podcasts anymore, etcetera. It does seem to be fair
that Ben Shane has some personal issues going on that
have led him to separate from other people in his
professional life, and that perhaps that behavior is why he's
(05:17):
no longer with the certain ventures that he had been
with before and what possibly led him to be like
incredibly creepy with Grace Spellman. But that about face, going
from you're brilliant and hyperactively beautiful and charming too, You're
no good at all. All of your work is garbage
I mean, that kind of about face is something that
(05:37):
we see happen so often anecdotally, but now documented via
online dating. And this whole incident prompted Jessica roy Over
at the Cut to relate this to the broader pattern
of straight guys, in particular fellas we love you, but
straight guys not wanting to take no for answer. She writes,
(06:01):
the whole exchange is pretty emblematic of the inherent difficulties
of rejecting men, both online and off. Women are frequently
made to tow a line between being polite enough not
to set off a suitor, but not so polite that
their manners are interpreted as flirting. And when I read that,
I could immediately relate to what she was saying. It
(06:23):
totally resonated. Yeah, and it resonated with Spellman. She agreed.
She says, you can't win in these types of situations.
Even if you're polite in your rejection, they'll demand that
you tell them why you did it. It's just a
mixture of entitlement and the fragility of ego, which, by
the way, as we will get into it a little bit,
is backed up by research. Spellman speaks the truth. She
goes on to say, because you don't know how they're
(06:45):
going to handle it, you don't know if you should
be afraid or not. So the result is this catch
twenty two that comes up often of guys asking for
women to be straightforward and honest with them, which is
totally fair. That is a very reasonable request. Who wants
to be let on? Answer nobody unless you are just
(07:06):
a sucker for pain. But if she is in fact straightforward,
you can then be punished for being too straightforward. Then
you're a jerk or a word that we you know,
can't really say on the podcast. Um, and we should acknowledge. Yeah,
I mean some women do lead guys on. Some women
(07:27):
do put men in holding patterns of you know, wanting
their companionship but not wanting to take it to a
relationship level of sort of like I'm gonna, you know,
float on you for a little bit until I find
a guy that I do want to date. That does happen,
And that's not an okay pattern either. Um. But when
I made a YouTube video about this whole thing, the
(07:50):
comments were split between guys saying he would just be straightforward,
be honest and girls saying when I was honest and straightforward.
I got so much blowback from it and sprinkled in
that too. A lot of anecdotes from girls dealing with
guys not taking no for an answer in the sense
(08:13):
of if you say you're just not interested, that's really
not sufficient. They want to know why. They want an explanation,
and typically the only explanations that shut it down completely
are I have a boyfriend, or you hold up your
hand to show off an engagement ring or a wedding band,
(08:33):
and that will usually get them to stop. Which is
interesting how the primary way to get a guy to
take no for an answer is not for you to
say no, but rather for you to present another man
next to you, either literally or figuratively. Well, it seems
that that's the only way to put a stop to
a sense of entitlement to you, access to you. I am.
(08:58):
I had an awkward him in college when a friend
of mine told me that he had feelings for me,
and when I responded compassionate, I mean, he we've been
friends for years. When I responded very you know, compassionately
that like I understand, and I'm really sorry, but I
(09:19):
don't feel the same way, like I love you as
a friend. We've been friends for so long, I just
am not on that same romantic wavelength. He got very upset.
I got very upset. We talked and we I thought
made up, but then when he offered to like take
me out to dinner for tacos to let things blow over,
(09:39):
I was like, oh, good, like things are back on track.
It was actually a ruse because he had taken me
out for tacos to demand an explanation of why I
would not date him, saying that everything we do and
we hang out together is the same thing that couples
would do or that a girlfriend and a boyfriend would do,
so why can't you just be my girlfriend? And it
made me really sad because it made me realize that
(10:02):
he must be feeling really powerless in our friendship if
he's telling me that I need to change the way
that I feel and change but I'm doing to come
over to his viewpoint of things. The old Taco ruse,
Carol Taco ruse. And the thing is, so many of
us have stories like that of having to deal with
(10:29):
what happens when when someone catches feelings. But this whole conversation,
especially when we look at in the context of online
dating and more of the hook up culture side of things.
It's not so much catching feelings, it's more wanting to
catch bodies. And if you cannot catch that body, then
you will set a series a very mean text messages
(10:51):
or okay Cupid messages that completely, you know, turn your
attraction on a dime, and suddenly this woman is just
the worst thing. Ever. It's so weird to look at
these messages because there are plenty of blogs and things
like that that now post them for all to see,
and it's so weird to see, like, Hey, you're so hot,
(11:13):
I want to date you. I'm being very euphemistic with
what I say, um and the minute the woman's like
no thanks, so she doesn't respond, the guy goes immediately
to well, you're ugly and fat anyway, and I don't
want to date you, and nobody else wants to date you,
quote unquote date you, so just never contact me again.
It's like, whoa were you just having a completely different
(11:34):
conversation than I Wait, I thought women were the crazy ones. Caroline.
What happened? Yeah? The fact that the Daily Dot published
guidelines for dudes getting rejected on tender that included quote
once someone makes it clear they're not interested in talking.
Do you stop talking to them? Kind of points out
that this is something that happens now. I'm sure that
(11:58):
your patients, if you are a straight dude, in these
kinds of online dating scenarios can wear very thin because
it is more of a woman's game, a street woman's
game with online dating, because of the whole narratives, the
broader social narratives as men as the pursuers, women as
the recipients of a gentleman's attention. Um, and a lot
(12:21):
of times guys do have to deal with a lot
of rejection, which we're going to talk about more in
just a minute. Um, but it's Alexandra Tweetings by Philippe
Instagram account illustrates repeatedly the reactions to this online dating
rejection are so severe, so many times. Yeah, and I
(12:45):
mean yeah, that might come out of a place of
anger or online anonymity making it easier to be like, well,
screw you, lady, but that doesn't make it any less horrifying. Uh.
Tweeting writing in Miss magazine says that is creating by Philip,
which of course is a takeoff of by Felicia from Friday. Uh.
(13:05):
It has become a parent that a standard trajectory of
discourse with men online is this man hits on woman,
woman rejects or ignores him. Man lashes out with insults
or even threats. Now we should say that this Instagram
account is one of those social media accounts that displays
in full glory, uh, the interactions online between men and
(13:29):
women on dating sites tender, Okay, keepid what what have you? Um?
Basically showing screen grabs of these text or email conversations
that more often than not are completely one thousand percent gross. Yeah,
they don't. They don't end well by phelipe, they don't
end well at all. There was even one where a
(13:51):
guy was sending messages to a girl young enough to
be his daughter, and she was like, hey, I am fourteen.
You have to leave me alone. Granted's sub question what
side is she on that she's fourteen? Anyway? He was like, oh, well,
my bad, like no disrespect, have a nice day. He
immediately comes back and it's like, well you're gonna be
fat when you grow up anyway, So just yeah, like
(14:12):
what what why do you need to do that? I
don't know what's power? The power grab? Um? Yeah, tweet
and writes that she started it to one commiserate with
other women who are dealing with this so commonly too,
to show guys and what it's like to be a
woman online. We have talked a lot on the podcast
before about online harassment targeted at women and three to
(14:36):
quote expose the problematic entitlement some men feel they need
to exert over women in general. And she did also
note in an interview with BuzzFeed that Yeah, online dating
is often wretched for guys because they do have to
often message a lot of women you got. You gotta
swipe a lot to get a match, and even if
(14:58):
you do get a match, it doesn't guarantee that that
attraction is going to be sustained. Well, I mean, I
think I think it's wretched for for everyone involved, because
there's plenty of anecdotes about guys setting up accounts pretending
to be women and men. There was one guy interviewed
(15:18):
in one of these articles we read where he was like,
I set up five women and five men as fake accounts,
and before I could even log back off, the women
had already received hundreds of messages, many of them gross,
many of them going straight to sex and like freaky
scary stuff at that and like most of the men
had just received absolutely nothing, and so he's like, I
(15:39):
can see how it's demoralizing for everyone involved, because he's like,
some guy might have just emailed one of these women
to say hi, and if I responded as the woman
being like, hey, what's up, where do you live or whatever,
it immediately was like super sexual, super here's what I'm
gonna do to you. And so yeah, it it immediately
(16:01):
went to like I want to come over and read
Judith Butler together, drink some tea. Yeah, and do you
have cats? Yeah? The more the merrier. Let's put on
our stretchy pants and let's read poetry. I mean, ironically,
though this is a little bit of a tangent, but
ironically Tinder like the people who run Tinder had a
(16:24):
bi Philip level melt down in response to this vanity
Fair piece that came out a couple of months ago
on Tinder hookups, this whole Tinder hookup culture by Nancy
Joe's sales, who did not paint Tinder usage, I should
say in the most positive light, it was. It made
(16:45):
a lot of guys who use it come off very
smarmie and it was a you know, one of those
bigger pieces about oh what are we doing with this
hookup culture and ruining everything and women are just being
dragged along in the mud essentially. And in response though
to this very buzzed about vanity fair peace, Tender spouted
(17:05):
out thirty tweets in quick succession, including one that said quote,
if you want to try to terrace down with one
sided journalism, well that's your prerogative, which is sort of
reminiscent of the kinds of by Phillip style post rejection
messages that women get, I mean, in folks, if you
(17:26):
haven't seen this, I do recommend you google it because
it's incredible to watch this, this Tender by Phillip melt
down happening on the internet. It almost felt unreal. Well, okay,
then maybe you can explain There have been plenty of
things online or in the media about how, like, you know,
(17:46):
apps like Tender or Signify the end of Times that
basically like no one's ever going to fall in love
and have families again because Tender is ruining life for everyone.
What was it about Nancy Joe Sales? Do you know
that it caused Tender to get so upset, as I say, Tender,
like it's a person, but the Tender Twitter person to
get so upset because she painted because Tinder was positioned
(18:11):
in her piece as instigating a post dating apocalypse essentially,
and you know, talks a lot about how these guys
that she interviewed in her story manipulate Tinder to basically
get as much sex as they want and treat women
in real life very very poorly. And it's just that
(18:34):
insto sex hookup culture that is even more troubling, it
seems like to Sales than the analog hookup culture, where
I mean, at least you're meeting at a party and
one of the things Tender, or at least this person
tweeting on behalf of Tender was most upset about was
(18:54):
how Sales did not interview anyone with Tinder for the piece,
to which Nancy Joe Sales on Twitter got the last
word in this whole Tinder Twitter melt down, saying ha ha,
this piece wasn't even about Tinder at all. So you're
(19:14):
saying that, um, miss Vanity Fair hurt Mr tinders feelings
and Mr Tinder just lashed out. It was like Miss
Vanity Fair you can go you aren't my type anyway, Yeah, yeah,
I mean it really, it really was like that. And listeners,
we will be posting a link to that Vanity Fair
piece over at stuff I've Never told you dot com
(19:35):
on the podcast post for this, So if you haven't
read it, I highly recommend you go check it out.
If you are familiar with it, um and want us
to do a podcast, look at it, just let us
know because it's I mean, there's a lot to talk
about in there. I love these weird, personified, anthropomorphized versions
of websites of dating as yeah, because I feel like Tinder,
(19:57):
who's obviously the hipper millennie, all on a smartphone tweeting things,
whereas e Harmonies at home on just on like a
rotary telephone calling you up, wondering why you're not answering. Oh,
we're gonna get so many letters from the harmony users.
And this is all it's all funny to joke about,
(20:18):
you know, if you if you can't laugh, you'll cry,
that kind of thing. But there is a darker, more
serious side to all of this, because it's not as
if this behavior and this language and these reactions are
limited to the Internet to the online world. This is
very real stuff. This, this aggression, this masculinity threat, all
(20:40):
of this is very real. And the website when women
refuse over on Tumbler, highlights that, Yeah, I mean this
Tumbler is essentially a collection of stories and graphic images
trigger warning of women who have enduredmestic abuse from either
(21:01):
partners or strangers, you know, especially in context of rejecting
them in one way or another. And and it really
does get to that quote problematic entitlement that Tween says
helped inspire by Philip I mean, and and too. That
(21:23):
kind of darker, darker, darker entitlement was also echoed in
the manifesto written by Elliott Roger, who murdered women partially
because he was so angry that he could not sleep
with them, he did not have access to them in
(21:43):
the way he felt like he should. Yeah, he felt
that women should be afraid of him. Well, that women
should be afraid of men and should be submissive to
them completely. And obviously that is a worst case scenario
kind of example. But ultimately it is all connected because
there are these common threads that run through that. And
(22:04):
we're going to talk about those threads and the academic
research that's been done on them. When we come right
back from a quick bread, so we don't have just
Instagram accounts and anecdotes from our dating lives to base
(22:30):
this whole conversation on. There has actually been a ton
of research on romantic and sexual rejection and how that
often is processed through gendered lenses, as as most things
are eventually processed through. Yeah, there was study called the
(22:50):
Prevalence and Nature of Unrequited Love, and it pointed out
that unrequited love and crushing on people was four times
more frequent than quote unquote equal love, that deep, actual,
real relationship where two people know that they're in a
relationship with each other and love each other. Um. Researchers
(23:13):
said that unrequited love was not a good simulation of
true romantic love, but an inferior approximation of that ideal,
and that it's more common among people with an anxious
or ambivalent attachment style. And this is to establish the
fact that rejection is gonna happen. I mean, this is
(23:35):
more the rule than the exception. Love and relationships are
the exception. Otherwise, I mean, how would we really get
on with our lives that we didn't have rejection happening
all the time. Yeah, But in calling it not a
good simulation of true romantic love, they're sort of explaining
the fact that it's so much more common than that
equal love, and it can be so much more intense.
(23:57):
It can stir up all of these feelings of inferiority
and anxiety, and so I think that it's absolutely important
to talk about that in relation to online dating, where
so much rejection happens. Yeah, and these similar kinds of
studies have found that men do tend to experience romantic
(24:17):
rejection more often than women, quite possibly because again of
this heteronormative role social role. As the pursuer, men are
more expected to put themselves in positions where they could
be rejected compared to women. But the thing is, while
rejection is no fun, getting rejected no fun. Of course,
(24:41):
studies have also shown that it's also painful to do
the rejecting. And this goes back to a study published
in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that looked
at both sides of unrequited love, of the person who
was having to process receive it and the person who's
dolling it out, and the authors wrote that rejectors depicted
(25:06):
themselves as morally innocent but still felt guilty about hurting someone,
but they also depicted the would be lovers persistent efforts
as intrusive and annoying, and in an article about this
in The New York Times, one of the study authors,
(25:26):
Roy Baumeister, described this experience of doing the romantic rejection
as agony, and also that if you're looking at rejecting
versus being rejected, that it's actually the people doing the
rejecting who remember that incident more than the people who
were rejected. I mean, obviously that depends and then other
(25:46):
factors go into that, but it seems like that strange
experience of having to that strange and painful experience of
having to tell someone who's being very persistent that you're no,
I'm not interested, it really kind of sticks a few
and so it's interesting to read about how people on
either side of this experience process it differently in order
(26:08):
to sort of justify their own behavior. And there's also
to this issue of rejectors, especially if there's an established
relationship between two people. This is probably happening more in
real life versus online dating um, but rejectors being expected
to not only do the rejecting, but also comfort the
(26:30):
other person's wounded pride. But speaking of online dating, though,
that can explain this common demand for an explanation, because
that is a source of comfort. That's their closure. Tell
me why I'm not good enough, the old taco ruse,
the taco ruse. Caroline Bombaster also found that men are
more likely than women to fall in love with someone
(26:52):
who does not return their feelings. And that's also another
like real life as opposed to online thing um. And
echoing that is Philip Shaver at the University of California Davis,
who said that the people who are particularly prone to
falling in love with people who will reject them are
people who are so anxious about being loved that they
(27:14):
drive their partners away through being too clingy. That anxious attachment,
that anxious attachment that the person who's doing the attaching
sees us normal and just love me. I just want
to be loved, and the rejector feels like, God, you're
pan a creep. I've been that person. I've been that
creep before, Caroline. I will own that and that creep though,
(27:35):
issue is something that we could do an entire podcast
on because I feel like, especially in today's um dating landscape,
it seems like and also from what I've heard from
guys directly, that being rejected also comes sometimes with this
(27:57):
underlying panic of of yeah, okay, I'm not going to
be able to, you know, ever get with that person.
But also, oh my god, does she think I'm a creep?
Being labeled as a creep? I feel like is so
so so triggering, you know, of anxiety and panic for
for dudes, because that's almost the worst thing that you
(28:19):
can be called. Well yeah, and it's also the frustration
and fear of being misunderstood, like no, no, no, I
was just trying to compliment you and ask you out
and and be nice and kind and I just you know,
you're beautiful enough. But I don't want to be considered
a creep. I'm not a creep. I'm just I just
like you, just like you. Um So, we already have
(28:40):
this complicated stew on the staffe, but then when you
add a dash of this thing called masculinity threat, you
have an emotional powder keg really waiting to happen. So,
masculinity threat is a sociological term referring to some men's
spectations of how they should fulfill hegemonic masculine roles. So,
(29:06):
masculinity threat is a sociological term referring to when a
guy feels like his idea of what masculinity is and
his role in that is being challenged in some kind
of way, his masculinity being threatened. I guess you could say, yeah,
so that idea of I'm the breadwinner, I am strong,
(29:27):
I must be strong and stoic for my woman, and
of course I have to and am entitled to have
access to women's bodies sexually. So what happens when masculinity
is threatened, Well, you tend to get over compensation, which
is not that surprising. Um. There was a study in
(29:49):
social psychology that found that when men's masculinity is threatened,
they go overboard in distancing themselves from femininity or feminine
attributes or women and end up amping up the masculinity
the browishness uh the study authors right. Additionally, threatened men
claimed more stereotypically masculine attributes such as height, number of
(30:13):
past sexual relationships, and aggressiveness, which is interesting because your
height is just your height. And when these men's masculinity
was threatened or when they felt threatened, they said that
they were taller than they actually were. And so masculinity
is this sort of social power, and when that power
(30:35):
is endangered, men who are threatened will react, oftentimes in
an aggressive manner. Now all of that, too, though, is
predicated on how closely a man identifies with hegemonic masculine roles.
Because there are plenty of guys who wear this masculine
(30:55):
threat is not going to be as big of a
deal for them because they don't see their role in
this you know, kind of hegemonic box right there. Um,
But for the many, many men out there who do,
this is a very real thing. And studies have also
found that provoking masculinity threat also diminishes men's perceptions of
(31:18):
sexual assault and violence as well. So again we start
to see these common threads along the spectrum of just
you know, feelings getting hurt that's totally understandable, to violent outrage. Yeah. Well,
there was also a study in the American Journal of
Sociology that found that the more testosterone a man had,
(31:40):
the more overcompensating behaviors he exhibited when told that his
survey answers indicated femininity in this particular study, Uh, when
men had less testosterone, they didn't really exhibit any real
overcompensation behavior to speak of. But key to that threat
it is that men with more testosterone aren't necessarily walking
(32:03):
around being macho and aggressive of the time, twenty four
hours a day. It was it was the threat. It
was the telling, hey, you your your survey answers when
we asked about attributes of your life and behavior, they're
they're really indicated femininity. And that's when the guys with
a lot more testosterone than the other men went into
those overcompensating behaviors. They're like, why would you tell that
(32:27):
to a six ft five men? Impossible? And this can
also happen with women in terms of femininity threat where, uh,
if you identify with those feminine roles and you feel
like that is being threatened, which would be people thinking
that you are too strong or aggressive than you might
(32:49):
minimize yourself or your role in some kind of way
to compensate, which equally is not all women, right, Um,
it's just a particular subset of women who would react
negatively to being told that they're too strong or too masculine.
So where though, is all of this coming from if
we're talking about masculinity threat um. So Michael Kimmel wrote
(33:12):
a whole book about this um and he has built
a whole career actually on on studying masculinity UM. And
in his book Angry White Men Masculinity at the End
of an Era, he refers to the erosion of white
male privilege, particularly in the US as a quote aggrieved
(33:33):
entitlement basically of guys today not benefiting as much from
the privileges bestowed to say, their dads or their granddads. Yeah.
And in the same article that was looking at Michael
Kimmel's research, UH sociologists Tristan Bridges and Terrely tober So
that men are likely to turn to violence when they
(33:55):
perceived themselves to be otherwise unable to stake a claim
to a mass skill in gender identity. And of course
this article is very specifically talking about gun violence in
the United States as it relates to masculine aggression, but
it does seem to relate back to the aggressive responses
that can happen when rejection happens online or in dating scenarios, right,
(34:19):
because again this does seem to echo common demands for
those explanations as to why a girl doesn't want to
talk to you, go on a date with, sleep with, etcetera.
Them And the fact of the matter is, some guys
are just jerks, just like some women are just jerks.
But there does seem to be something to the relationship
(34:45):
between masculinity threat and this pattern of rejection and how
we all process rejection, and also how that relates to
to this headeronormative dating dying dynamic that has really not
kept up with gender progression and which does no one
(35:08):
any good exactly, it does well, I mean I say that,
but of course the people who benefit from being on
the top of the heap, of course they benefit from that.
But for I mean, I would argue that most people
would be better served if we weren't desperately clinging with
our fingernails sunk in to these ideas that men have
(35:29):
to be a certain way and women have to be
a certain way, and that men deserve x y z
and women need and should give x y z in response. Yeah,
and it just seems like there's something fundamentally broken too
with this structure that we've built up in terms of
straight you know, attraction, sex and pursuit. Because as far
(35:55):
as I know, we don't see similar pattern earns. I mean,
of course there are incidents, but similar patterns happening with
LGBT dating. There's not the bi felepe grinder version, you know.
I mean, it just seems to be so so particular too,
how men and women get together. That just gets my
(36:18):
brain turning about what it really means, because clearly this
is not just about tender or online dating. This is
a bigger thing about how men and men and women
relate to each other. I think. Yeah, and the idea
that still that persists, that people don't believe that no
(36:40):
means no. And in pop culture too, we have loved
stories of the underdog guy who finally gets his reward
at some point for you know, hanging in there with
the girl who's dating the you know, the rich guy
who's more handsome but ultimately he'll win her, or just
(37:01):
wearing a woman down, which really only feeds into this dysfunction. Well,
one researcher quoted was it in the New York Times
article about this, pointed to all those movies and said,
like listen, Statistically speaking and scientifically, people date and have
relationships with people who are of equivalent attractiveness and life status.
(37:26):
And so that's kind of where you get this idea
of the nice guys of okay Cupid, for instance, who
voiced their entitlement to like a you know, like a gazelle,
like a freaking Cindy Crawford on okay Cupid, that they
just deserve to have this woman pay attention to them.
And so why won't you answer me as to why
you won't date me? But so, how do we change this?
(37:48):
How do we go from here? I mean I I
don't know that you and I sitting here in a
podcast studio are going to do it. What is it
going to take or will this ever change? Well, i'd
i'd like to think that one day it might change
and that we can all treat each other like human
(38:08):
people who have feelings, um and respect each other's decisions. UM.
But I don't know. Maybe it's if women talking about
it isn't gonna work, Maybe it's going to take men
talking to each other about it. Yeah, I mean that
brings up a quote from Kimmel and Angry White Men.
(38:30):
He said, American men define their masculinity not as much
in relation to women, but in relation to each other.
So guys, what's it gonna take. And also, Okay, folks,
I feel like we have a lot to learn from you,
so please please give us your wisdom. Yeah, because I
know we've heard from, for instance, some of our lesbian
(38:53):
listeners in response to our division of household labor episode
that yes, there is, sure there is a division. Somebody
might like to mow the lawn, somebody like might like
to load the dishwasher kristen um gut um, but that
there's no stereotypical gender role to fall back on, and
(39:16):
so I would imagine it's the same in terms of dating,
with the approach versus the approach e um, that there's
no real script or schema for who should do the approaching,
who should do the rejecting or the accepting. And also too,
in terms of hookups, gay men to take such a
more straightforward approach to it as well of sex being
(39:41):
sex do you want it or not? Done? And done
as well well, sure, because when it's a straight man
and a straight woman looking for each other on Tinder,
for instance, Mr tinder Um, you also have to deal
with all of the social stuff that says women who
just want sex on Tinder are gross or that they're
you know, sluts. So you've got all sorts of layers
(40:03):
of social grossness um putting pressure on everyone. We got
some baggage, and talk about some relationship baggage will help
us start through it. Folks. We're really curious to hear
from women who have experienced this online. Does this issue
resonate with you, especially in your online dating experience and
(40:24):
just generally everyone, what are your thoughts on this? Mom
Stuff at house stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. And I've gotta let
her here. Caroline from listener Andy, who writes, thank you,
(40:49):
thank you, thank you. We're doing an episode on Asian fetishes.
Is this something I deal with from time to time
and it's hard to explain to others why it's an
issue or why it's creepy. You guys mentioned in the
podcast that having an Asian fetish is similar to merely
having a type. This is an argument I hear a lot.
The difference between having a fetish and a type comes
(41:09):
down to whether you can see the person as an
individual or merely as a member of their group. For instance,
Kristen said she's only dated white guys. But Kristen, do
you immediately hit on every white guy you meet because
he's merely white? Answer? Yes, it's exhausting. I'm totally kidding,
She says. Do you quiz him on his white cultural upbringing?
(41:31):
Do you ask him where he buys his silverware? I've
been asked where I buy my chopsticks. Everyone has a type.
Mine is lanky, pale, nerdy guys, but that doesn't mean
I find them interchangeable. Once again, I appreciate you doing
an episode on an Asian issue. Since we are the
quote model minority, it's sometimes hard to convince people that
(41:52):
racism against Asians exists or matters. While it's true that
in America, racism against Asians tends to be less of,
I want the racism towards other minorities. That doesn't mean
it's not a problem and that it shouldn't be examined.
Thanks for making this world a better place. Um, thank you, Andy.
That last line to escape me goose bumps. Well, I
(42:13):
have a letter here from Elizabeth in response to our
Samurai Women episode, and I just want to say, first
of all, Elizabeth, thank you. Her email is a six page,
essentially really super well written list of corrections, and I
wish I could read the whole thing, that I can't,
so I want to pull out some points of clarification
(42:36):
that Elizabeth makes, So here we go. She says. I
posted this on Facebook as well because I felt it
was too hugely important to be glossed over, and I
was really hoping other fellow listeners would see it and
catch that. The switch from Shinto religion, two more disparaging
views of women came from Confucianism and not Buddhism. Both
were introduced into Japan at the same time and had
(42:57):
long been tied together in China because of the Chinese
traditional religion, which really meant that Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism
were all simultaneously believed in and worked together in unison
to form the belief of the Chinese people. Because of
the strong relation and tied to Confucianism, a lot of
the misogynistic ideas about how evil women were and whether
(43:18):
or not they could obtain enlightenment bled very heavily into Buddhism.
It's possible that there may have been some not very
accepting ideas about women in general and Buddhism, but at
its core that's not really part of the Buddhist doctrine.
She goes on to say, Historically, the more firm that
Confucianism took root in Japan, the less rights women had.
(43:38):
Every negative thing you mentioned in your podcast as a
cultural belief about women, those are all Confucianist beliefs. For
the hay On period. Women being behind closed doors then
was definitely a Confucian thing in part, but Confucianism didn't
have as strong of a hold then. Women had relatively
a lot of power in the hay On period and
a lot of social mobility. They were able to get
(43:59):
the means or attract the attention of the right person,
and being indoors was kind of more of a luxurious
choice for all parts of the aristocracy, because, as I
mentioned in my Facebook post, it had to do with labor.
If you're tanned and go outside a lot, it's because
you're poor and you tend to the fields. Your skin darkens.
Men were allowed to darken a little because they had
(44:19):
to run the country, so they went out to court.
Men were also the administrators for the property of the
women in their lives, since at this time period women
were allowed to inherit residences, property, and obtain income in
the form of rice. They held title and core positions.
But because you didn't literally live in the fields, you
had to send someone to go get your rice for you.
That was the job of the men, although the most
(44:40):
elite of men would still have people to do that
for them. If you are of low rank, you probably
have to go do that for yourself because you'd have
no other vassals. Low ranking women wouldn't do this just
because it'd be hard, and honestly, they'd have a better
life if they tried to become a lady in waiting
for some prominent figure. So as a social construct, they
would be encouraged to be indoors more often in as well.
(45:00):
And of course there Elizabeth is explaining our discussion about
how over certain periods in Japanese history women were basically
quote unquote like not allowed to go outside, that they
it wasn't social acceptable for women to like be out
and about um, so she's explaining the whole like women
staying in their rooms thing. She goes on to say, oh,
and as a general note about loyalty and stuff. It's
(45:22):
been noted through different parts of Asia that women are
often believed to be more loyal than men, which is
also kind of an odd side effect of Confucianism as well.
Confucianism teaches that while you should respect the leaders and
people above you for their ultimate decision, if you believe
that they're doing wrong, you're allowed to attempt to set
them on the correct path. In terms of a leader
of vassal type relationship, if you're leaders a jerk, you're
(45:43):
allowed to quit and find a new allegiance in China
and practice. I remember from one course that the scholar
had apparently remarked about the citizens in a town facing
the attack from an army. The men ran away while
the women valiantly killed themselves. Women were also thought of
as more willing and able to kill themselves because of
the social pressure put upon them by Confucianism. So because
they were subjected to so much and expected to be
(46:04):
loyal to the men in their lives, it was easier
for them to die for a greater cause, like an
incoming enemy, or even in the case of going into battle. Plus,
you know, women cheating and all that was highly frowned upon.
But because men didn't have to adhere to loyalties day
to day, they would change allegiances easily or would run away.
So Elizabeth, I'm really sorry I couldn't read your whole email,
(46:24):
but I do want to thank you for ending it
with anyway. Still love the podcast, and thanks for talking
about all of these subjects, and thanks to all of
you who have written into us. Mom stuff at house.
Stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You can
also find links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including
this one with links to our sources so you can
(46:45):
read all about that tender meltdown we can't get enough of.
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com. Thre
Welcome to stuff. Mom never told you from house top
works not Come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christen and I'm Caroline, and today I'm gonna talk about men.
We're gonna talk about rejection, and we're going to talk
about how on Mine dating offers documentary proof the guys
(00:29):
fell and students. You have a hard time getting turned
down sometimes? Heck, yeah, the internet is sort of a
scary landscape. It is. And should we go ahead and
offer a disclaimer that, yes, some women have a hard
time with rejection sometimes as well, and overreact getting turned down,
(00:50):
especially if you're being sexually turned down. Well, rejection is hard.
Rejection is the worst. Rejecting is pretty bad too, But
I mean it can rejection of any kind can really sting,
and and that is not a gendered thing. It's a
fact of life. Rejection is the worst, and we hate it.
We all struggle with it. But there are some things
(01:13):
that put certain people at risk of being a bigger
jerk than other people when it comes to rejection. Yeah,
I mean, this is a particular pattern when it comes
to straight dating and especially straight online dating, although it
is more of a thing of straight guys dating. I
should say, because the recipient of the offer, whether it's
(01:36):
to you know, have a drink bought, or a date
or sex or whatever. Um, she can be of any
orientation whatsoever. It's really more you know, straight guys processing
being turned down and what God is thinking about. This
whole thing was an incident that happened on the Internet
in late August. Yeah. I was actually on vacation when
(01:57):
this happened, and I just remember seeing, um, my internet,
my personal internet, blowing up over it. So BuzzFeed writer
and comedian Grace Spellman got a series of tweets and
Facebook messages from this guy, Ben Shane, who is a
former Harry Potter podcast host and who's also the co
(02:21):
founder of the website fem Inspire. He was clearly trying
to charm miss Spellman, and uh he I guess it's
an understatement to say that he didn't really charm her. Yeah,
the whole incident was kind of bizarre because they had
friended each other on Facebook nine years ago when Shane
(02:43):
was hosting this podcast called muggle Cast which was super
popular um and Spellman was a fan, So they became
friends on Facebook, but they were weren't in contact whatsoever.
So this time in August was the first time he
was messaging her verse so totally out of the blue,
and at first he was full of praise. So in
(03:06):
one Facebook message he sent her, he said, you do
a remarkable job of making your quirky personality shine through online.
It's hyperactively beautiful. And to to this, Spellman says, thanks,
no thanks, I've got a boyfriend, wish you well turn
(03:27):
him down politely. Well, he was not too happy about that. No,
that would be also another understatement. He responded with a
slew of of not so nice messages, including just because
you work at BuzzFeed doesn't mean you're good. Good luck
finding meaning and all of that garbage you call content,
(03:49):
and he also, I mean, he got more personal than that,
and he just wouldn't stop. He was contacting her on
all sorts of platforms just to tell her that she
was the worst. Basically, yeah, I mean, because it really
exploded when she publicized the private, incessant private messaging that
he had been doing. And then of course that only
fanned his his outrage, and at one point he wrote
(04:11):
her an email saying, I was so angry and offended
I wrote a draft putting you in your place, but
then he decided against it and wrote her this email instead.
But what was interesting to see was this white Knight
turn that it took when he issued a press statement
touting his fem Inspire cred saying I've done more for
(04:33):
the cause of advancing women's rights than any of the
people who are criticizing me. Um. Because this is after
Grace Spellman publicized this incident to her large Twitter following,
and people kind of came out of the woodwork saying,
either what a creed, but also this has happened to
me before, and also, yeah, this is why he you know,
(04:56):
I left them Inspire, or why he is not on
our podcasts anymore, etcetera. It does seem to be fair
that Ben Shane has some personal issues going on that
have led him to separate from other people in his
professional life, and that perhaps that behavior is why he's
(05:17):
no longer with the certain ventures that he had been
with before and what possibly led him to be like
incredibly creepy with Grace Spellman. But that about face, going
from you're brilliant and hyperactively beautiful and charming too, You're
no good at all. All of your work is garbage
I mean, that kind of about face is something that
(05:37):
we see happen so often anecdotally, but now documented via
online dating. And this whole incident prompted Jessica roy Over
at the Cut to relate this to the broader pattern
of straight guys, in particular fellas we love you, but
straight guys not wanting to take no for answer. She writes,
(06:01):
the whole exchange is pretty emblematic of the inherent difficulties
of rejecting men, both online and off. Women are frequently
made to tow a line between being polite enough not
to set off a suitor, but not so polite that
their manners are interpreted as flirting. And when I read that,
I could immediately relate to what she was saying. It
(06:23):
totally resonated. Yeah, and it resonated with Spellman. She agreed.
She says, you can't win in these types of situations.
Even if you're polite in your rejection, they'll demand that
you tell them why you did it. It's just a
mixture of entitlement and the fragility of ego, which, by
the way, as we will get into it a little bit,
is backed up by research. Spellman speaks the truth. She
goes on to say, because you don't know how they're
(06:45):
going to handle it, you don't know if you should
be afraid or not. So the result is this catch
twenty two that comes up often of guys asking for
women to be straightforward and honest with them, which is
totally fair. That is a very reasonable request. Who wants
to be let on? Answer nobody unless you are just
(07:06):
a sucker for pain. But if she is in fact straightforward,
you can then be punished for being too straightforward. Then
you're a jerk or a word that we you know,
can't really say on the podcast. Um, and we should acknowledge. Yeah,
I mean some women do lead guys on. Some women
(07:27):
do put men in holding patterns of you know, wanting
their companionship but not wanting to take it to a
relationship level of sort of like I'm gonna, you know,
float on you for a little bit until I find
a guy that I do want to date. That does happen,
And that's not an okay pattern either. Um. But when
I made a YouTube video about this whole thing, the
(07:50):
comments were split between guys saying he would just be straightforward,
be honest and girls saying when I was honest and straightforward.
I got so much blowback from it and sprinkled in
that too. A lot of anecdotes from girls dealing with
guys not taking no for an answer in the sense
(08:13):
of if you say you're just not interested, that's really
not sufficient. They want to know why. They want an explanation,
and typically the only explanations that shut it down completely
are I have a boyfriend, or you hold up your
hand to show off an engagement ring or a wedding band,
(08:33):
and that will usually get them to stop. Which is
interesting how the primary way to get a guy to
take no for an answer is not for you to
say no, but rather for you to present another man
next to you, either literally or figuratively. Well, it seems
that that's the only way to put a stop to
a sense of entitlement to you, access to you. I am.
(08:58):
I had an awkward him in college when a friend
of mine told me that he had feelings for me,
and when I responded compassionate, I mean, he we've been
friends for years. When I responded very you know, compassionately
that like I understand, and I'm really sorry, but I
(09:19):
don't feel the same way, like I love you as
a friend. We've been friends for so long, I just
am not on that same romantic wavelength. He got very upset.
I got very upset. We talked and we I thought
made up, but then when he offered to like take
me out to dinner for tacos to let things blow over,
(09:39):
I was like, oh, good, like things are back on track.
It was actually a ruse because he had taken me
out for tacos to demand an explanation of why I
would not date him, saying that everything we do and
we hang out together is the same thing that couples
would do or that a girlfriend and a boyfriend would do,
so why can't you just be my girlfriend? And it
made me really sad because it made me realize that
(10:02):
he must be feeling really powerless in our friendship if
he's telling me that I need to change the way
that I feel and change but I'm doing to come
over to his viewpoint of things. The old Taco ruse,
Carol Taco ruse. And the thing is, so many of
us have stories like that of having to deal with
(10:29):
what happens when when someone catches feelings. But this whole conversation,
especially when we look at in the context of online
dating and more of the hook up culture side of things.
It's not so much catching feelings, it's more wanting to
catch bodies. And if you cannot catch that body, then
you will set a series a very mean text messages
(10:51):
or okay Cupid messages that completely, you know, turn your
attraction on a dime, and suddenly this woman is just
the worst thing. Ever. It's so weird to look at
these messages because there are plenty of blogs and things
like that that now post them for all to see,
and it's so weird to see, like, Hey, you're so hot,
(11:13):
I want to date you. I'm being very euphemistic with
what I say, um and the minute the woman's like
no thanks, so she doesn't respond, the guy goes immediately
to well, you're ugly and fat anyway, and I don't
want to date you, and nobody else wants to date you,
quote unquote date you, so just never contact me again.
It's like, whoa were you just having a completely different
(11:34):
conversation than I Wait, I thought women were the crazy ones. Caroline.
What happened? Yeah? The fact that the Daily Dot published
guidelines for dudes getting rejected on tender that included quote
once someone makes it clear they're not interested in talking.
Do you stop talking to them? Kind of points out
that this is something that happens now. I'm sure that
(11:58):
your patients, if you are a straight dude, in these
kinds of online dating scenarios can wear very thin because
it is more of a woman's game, a street woman's
game with online dating, because of the whole narratives, the
broader social narratives as men as the pursuers, women as
the recipients of a gentleman's attention. Um, and a lot
(12:21):
of times guys do have to deal with a lot
of rejection, which we're going to talk about more in
just a minute. Um, but it's Alexandra Tweetings by Philippe
Instagram account illustrates repeatedly the reactions to this online dating
rejection are so severe, so many times. Yeah, and I
(12:45):
mean yeah, that might come out of a place of
anger or online anonymity making it easier to be like, well,
screw you, lady, but that doesn't make it any less horrifying. Uh.
Tweeting writing in Miss magazine says that is creating by Philip,
which of course is a takeoff of by Felicia from Friday. Uh.
(13:05):
It has become a parent that a standard trajectory of
discourse with men online is this man hits on woman,
woman rejects or ignores him. Man lashes out with insults
or even threats. Now we should say that this Instagram
account is one of those social media accounts that displays
in full glory, uh, the interactions online between men and
(13:29):
women on dating sites tender, Okay, keepid what what have you? Um?
Basically showing screen grabs of these text or email conversations
that more often than not are completely one thousand percent gross. Yeah,
they don't. They don't end well by phelipe, they don't
end well at all. There was even one where a
(13:51):
guy was sending messages to a girl young enough to
be his daughter, and she was like, hey, I am fourteen.
You have to leave me alone. Granted's sub question what
side is she on that she's fourteen? Anyway? He was like, oh, well,
my bad, like no disrespect, have a nice day. He
immediately comes back and it's like, well you're gonna be
fat when you grow up anyway, So just yeah, like
(14:12):
what what why do you need to do that? I
don't know what's power? The power grab? Um? Yeah, tweet
and writes that she started it to one commiserate with
other women who are dealing with this so commonly too,
to show guys and what it's like to be a
woman online. We have talked a lot on the podcast
before about online harassment targeted at women and three to
(14:36):
quote expose the problematic entitlement some men feel they need
to exert over women in general. And she did also
note in an interview with BuzzFeed that Yeah, online dating
is often wretched for guys because they do have to
often message a lot of women you got. You gotta
swipe a lot to get a match, and even if
(14:58):
you do get a match, it doesn't guarantee that that
attraction is going to be sustained. Well, I mean, I
think I think it's wretched for for everyone involved, because
there's plenty of anecdotes about guys setting up accounts pretending
to be women and men. There was one guy interviewed
(15:18):
in one of these articles we read where he was like,
I set up five women and five men as fake accounts,
and before I could even log back off, the women
had already received hundreds of messages, many of them gross,
many of them going straight to sex and like freaky
scary stuff at that and like most of the men
had just received absolutely nothing, and so he's like, I
(15:39):
can see how it's demoralizing for everyone involved, because he's like,
some guy might have just emailed one of these women
to say hi, and if I responded as the woman
being like, hey, what's up, where do you live or whatever,
it immediately was like super sexual, super here's what I'm
gonna do to you. And so yeah, it it immediately
(16:01):
went to like I want to come over and read
Judith Butler together, drink some tea. Yeah, and do you
have cats? Yeah? The more the merrier. Let's put on
our stretchy pants and let's read poetry. I mean, ironically,
though this is a little bit of a tangent, but
ironically Tinder like the people who run Tinder had a
(16:24):
bi Philip level melt down in response to this vanity
Fair piece that came out a couple of months ago
on Tinder hookups, this whole Tinder hookup culture by Nancy
Joe's sales, who did not paint Tinder usage, I should
say in the most positive light, it was. It made
(16:45):
a lot of guys who use it come off very
smarmie and it was a you know, one of those
bigger pieces about oh what are we doing with this
hookup culture and ruining everything and women are just being
dragged along in the mud essentially. And in response though
to this very buzzed about vanity fair peace, Tender spouted
(17:05):
out thirty tweets in quick succession, including one that said quote,
if you want to try to terrace down with one
sided journalism, well that's your prerogative, which is sort of
reminiscent of the kinds of by Phillip style post rejection
messages that women get, I mean, in folks, if you
(17:26):
haven't seen this, I do recommend you google it because
it's incredible to watch this, this Tender by Phillip melt
down happening on the internet. It almost felt unreal. Well, okay,
then maybe you can explain There have been plenty of
things online or in the media about how, like, you know,
(17:46):
apps like Tender or Signify the end of Times that
basically like no one's ever going to fall in love
and have families again because Tender is ruining life for everyone.
What was it about Nancy Joe Sales? Do you know
that it caused Tender to get so upset, as I say, Tender,
like it's a person, but the Tender Twitter person to
get so upset because she painted because Tinder was positioned
(18:11):
in her piece as instigating a post dating apocalypse essentially,
and you know, talks a lot about how these guys
that she interviewed in her story manipulate Tinder to basically
get as much sex as they want and treat women
in real life very very poorly. And it's just that
(18:34):
insto sex hookup culture that is even more troubling, it
seems like to Sales than the analog hookup culture, where
I mean, at least you're meeting at a party and
one of the things Tender, or at least this person
tweeting on behalf of Tender was most upset about was
(18:54):
how Sales did not interview anyone with Tinder for the piece,
to which Nancy Joe Sales on Twitter got the last
word in this whole Tinder Twitter melt down, saying ha ha,
this piece wasn't even about Tinder at all. So you're
(19:14):
saying that, um, miss Vanity Fair hurt Mr tinders feelings
and Mr Tinder just lashed out. It was like Miss
Vanity Fair you can go you aren't my type anyway, Yeah, yeah,
I mean it really, it really was like that. And listeners,
we will be posting a link to that Vanity Fair
piece over at stuff I've Never told you dot com
(19:35):
on the podcast post for this, So if you haven't
read it, I highly recommend you go check it out.
If you are familiar with it, um and want us
to do a podcast, look at it, just let us
know because it's I mean, there's a lot to talk
about in there. I love these weird, personified, anthropomorphized versions
of websites of dating as yeah, because I feel like Tinder,
(19:57):
who's obviously the hipper millennie, all on a smartphone tweeting things,
whereas e Harmonies at home on just on like a
rotary telephone calling you up, wondering why you're not answering. Oh,
we're gonna get so many letters from the harmony users.
And this is all it's all funny to joke about,
(20:18):
you know, if you if you can't laugh, you'll cry,
that kind of thing. But there is a darker, more
serious side to all of this, because it's not as
if this behavior and this language and these reactions are
limited to the Internet to the online world. This is
very real stuff. This, this aggression, this masculinity threat, all
(20:40):
of this is very real. And the website when women
refuse over on Tumbler, highlights that, Yeah, I mean this
Tumbler is essentially a collection of stories and graphic images
trigger warning of women who have enduredmestic abuse from either
(21:01):
partners or strangers, you know, especially in context of rejecting
them in one way or another. And and it really
does get to that quote problematic entitlement that Tween says
helped inspire by Philip I mean, and and too. That
(21:23):
kind of darker, darker, darker entitlement was also echoed in
the manifesto written by Elliott Roger, who murdered women partially
because he was so angry that he could not sleep
with them, he did not have access to them in
(21:43):
the way he felt like he should. Yeah, he felt
that women should be afraid of him. Well, that women
should be afraid of men and should be submissive to
them completely. And obviously that is a worst case scenario
kind of example. But ultimately it is all connected because
there are these common threads that run through that. And
(22:04):
we're going to talk about those threads and the academic
research that's been done on them. When we come right
back from a quick bread, so we don't have just
Instagram accounts and anecdotes from our dating lives to base
(22:30):
this whole conversation on. There has actually been a ton
of research on romantic and sexual rejection and how that
often is processed through gendered lenses, as as most things
are eventually processed through. Yeah, there was study called the
(22:50):
Prevalence and Nature of Unrequited Love, and it pointed out
that unrequited love and crushing on people was four times
more frequent than quote unquote equal love, that deep, actual,
real relationship where two people know that they're in a
relationship with each other and love each other. Um. Researchers
(23:13):
said that unrequited love was not a good simulation of
true romantic love, but an inferior approximation of that ideal,
and that it's more common among people with an anxious
or ambivalent attachment style. And this is to establish the
fact that rejection is gonna happen. I mean, this is
(23:35):
more the rule than the exception. Love and relationships are
the exception. Otherwise, I mean, how would we really get
on with our lives that we didn't have rejection happening
all the time. Yeah, But in calling it not a
good simulation of true romantic love, they're sort of explaining
the fact that it's so much more common than that
equal love, and it can be so much more intense.
(23:57):
It can stir up all of these feelings of inferiority
and anxiety, and so I think that it's absolutely important
to talk about that in relation to online dating, where
so much rejection happens. Yeah, and these similar kinds of
studies have found that men do tend to experience romantic
(24:17):
rejection more often than women, quite possibly because again of
this heteronormative role social role. As the pursuer, men are
more expected to put themselves in positions where they could
be rejected compared to women. But the thing is, while
rejection is no fun, getting rejected no fun. Of course,
(24:41):
studies have also shown that it's also painful to do
the rejecting. And this goes back to a study published
in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that looked
at both sides of unrequited love, of the person who
was having to process receive it and the person who's
dolling it out, and the authors wrote that rejectors depicted
(25:06):
themselves as morally innocent but still felt guilty about hurting someone,
but they also depicted the would be lovers persistent efforts
as intrusive and annoying, and in an article about this
in The New York Times, one of the study authors,
(25:26):
Roy Baumeister, described this experience of doing the romantic rejection
as agony, and also that if you're looking at rejecting
versus being rejected, that it's actually the people doing the
rejecting who remember that incident more than the people who
were rejected. I mean, obviously that depends and then other
(25:46):
factors go into that, but it seems like that strange
experience of having to that strange and painful experience of
having to tell someone who's being very persistent that you're no,
I'm not interested, it really kind of sticks a few
and so it's interesting to read about how people on
either side of this experience process it differently in order
(26:08):
to sort of justify their own behavior. And there's also
to this issue of rejectors, especially if there's an established
relationship between two people. This is probably happening more in
real life versus online dating um, but rejectors being expected
to not only do the rejecting, but also comfort the
(26:30):
other person's wounded pride. But speaking of online dating, though,
that can explain this common demand for an explanation, because
that is a source of comfort. That's their closure. Tell
me why I'm not good enough, the old taco ruse,
the taco ruse. Caroline Bombaster also found that men are
more likely than women to fall in love with someone
(26:52):
who does not return their feelings. And that's also another
like real life as opposed to online thing um. And
echoing that is Philip Shaver at the University of California Davis,
who said that the people who are particularly prone to
falling in love with people who will reject them are
people who are so anxious about being loved that they
(27:14):
drive their partners away through being too clingy. That anxious attachment,
that anxious attachment that the person who's doing the attaching
sees us normal and just love me. I just want
to be loved, and the rejector feels like, God, you're
pan a creep. I've been that person. I've been that
creep before, Caroline. I will own that and that creep though,
(27:35):
issue is something that we could do an entire podcast
on because I feel like, especially in today's um dating landscape,
it seems like and also from what I've heard from
guys directly, that being rejected also comes sometimes with this
(27:57):
underlying panic of of yeah, okay, I'm not going to
be able to, you know, ever get with that person.
But also, oh my god, does she think I'm a creep?
Being labeled as a creep? I feel like is so
so so triggering, you know, of anxiety and panic for
for dudes, because that's almost the worst thing that you
(28:19):
can be called. Well yeah, and it's also the frustration
and fear of being misunderstood, like no, no, no, I
was just trying to compliment you and ask you out
and and be nice and kind and I just you know,
you're beautiful enough. But I don't want to be considered
a creep. I'm not a creep. I'm just I just
like you, just like you. Um So, we already have
(28:40):
this complicated stew on the staffe, but then when you
add a dash of this thing called masculinity threat, you
have an emotional powder keg really waiting to happen. So,
masculinity threat is a sociological term referring to some men's
spectations of how they should fulfill hegemonic masculine roles. So,
(29:06):
masculinity threat is a sociological term referring to when a
guy feels like his idea of what masculinity is and
his role in that is being challenged in some kind
of way, his masculinity being threatened. I guess you could say, yeah,
so that idea of I'm the breadwinner, I am strong,
(29:27):
I must be strong and stoic for my woman, and
of course I have to and am entitled to have
access to women's bodies sexually. So what happens when masculinity
is threatened, Well, you tend to get over compensation, which
is not that surprising. Um. There was a study in
(29:49):
social psychology that found that when men's masculinity is threatened,
they go overboard in distancing themselves from femininity or feminine
attributes or women and end up amping up the masculinity
the browishness uh the study authors right. Additionally, threatened men
claimed more stereotypically masculine attributes such as height, number of
(30:13):
past sexual relationships, and aggressiveness, which is interesting because your
height is just your height. And when these men's masculinity
was threatened or when they felt threatened, they said that
they were taller than they actually were. And so masculinity
is this sort of social power, and when that power
(30:35):
is endangered, men who are threatened will react, oftentimes in
an aggressive manner. Now all of that, too, though, is
predicated on how closely a man identifies with hegemonic masculine roles.
Because there are plenty of guys who wear this masculine
(30:55):
threat is not going to be as big of a
deal for them because they don't see their role in
this you know, kind of hegemonic box right there. Um,
But for the many, many men out there who do,
this is a very real thing. And studies have also
found that provoking masculinity threat also diminishes men's perceptions of
(31:18):
sexual assault and violence as well. So again we start
to see these common threads along the spectrum of just
you know, feelings getting hurt that's totally understandable, to violent outrage. Yeah. Well,
there was also a study in the American Journal of
Sociology that found that the more testosterone a man had,
(31:40):
the more overcompensating behaviors he exhibited when told that his
survey answers indicated femininity in this particular study, Uh, when
men had less testosterone, they didn't really exhibit any real
overcompensation behavior to speak of. But key to that threat
it is that men with more testosterone aren't necessarily walking
(32:03):
around being macho and aggressive of the time, twenty four
hours a day. It was it was the threat. It
was the telling, hey, you your your survey answers when
we asked about attributes of your life and behavior, they're
they're really indicated femininity. And that's when the guys with
a lot more testosterone than the other men went into
those overcompensating behaviors. They're like, why would you tell that
(32:27):
to a six ft five men? Impossible? And this can
also happen with women in terms of femininity threat where, uh,
if you identify with those feminine roles and you feel
like that is being threatened, which would be people thinking
that you are too strong or aggressive than you might
(32:49):
minimize yourself or your role in some kind of way
to compensate, which equally is not all women, right, Um,
it's just a particular subset of women who would react
negatively to being told that they're too strong or too masculine.
So where though, is all of this coming from if
we're talking about masculinity threat um. So Michael Kimmel wrote
(33:12):
a whole book about this um and he has built
a whole career actually on on studying masculinity UM. And
in his book Angry White Men Masculinity at the End
of an Era, he refers to the erosion of white
male privilege, particularly in the US as a quote aggrieved
(33:33):
entitlement basically of guys today not benefiting as much from
the privileges bestowed to say, their dads or their granddads. Yeah.
And in the same article that was looking at Michael
Kimmel's research, UH sociologists Tristan Bridges and Terrely tober So
that men are likely to turn to violence when they
(33:55):
perceived themselves to be otherwise unable to stake a claim
to a mass skill in gender identity. And of course
this article is very specifically talking about gun violence in
the United States as it relates to masculine aggression, but
it does seem to relate back to the aggressive responses
that can happen when rejection happens online or in dating scenarios, right,
(34:19):
because again this does seem to echo common demands for
those explanations as to why a girl doesn't want to
talk to you, go on a date with, sleep with, etcetera.
Them And the fact of the matter is, some guys
are just jerks, just like some women are just jerks.
But there does seem to be something to the relationship
(34:45):
between masculinity threat and this pattern of rejection and how
we all process rejection, and also how that relates to
to this headeronormative dating dying dynamic that has really not
kept up with gender progression and which does no one
(35:08):
any good exactly, it does well, I mean I say that,
but of course the people who benefit from being on
the top of the heap, of course they benefit from that.
But for I mean, I would argue that most people
would be better served if we weren't desperately clinging with
our fingernails sunk in to these ideas that men have
(35:29):
to be a certain way and women have to be
a certain way, and that men deserve x y z
and women need and should give x y z in response. Yeah,
and it just seems like there's something fundamentally broken too
with this structure that we've built up in terms of
straight you know, attraction, sex and pursuit. Because as far
(35:55):
as I know, we don't see similar pattern earns. I mean,
of course there are incidents, but similar patterns happening with
LGBT dating. There's not the bi felepe grinder version, you know.
I mean, it just seems to be so so particular too,
how men and women get together. That just gets my
(36:18):
brain turning about what it really means, because clearly this
is not just about tender or online dating. This is
a bigger thing about how men and men and women
relate to each other. I think. Yeah, and the idea
that still that persists, that people don't believe that no
(36:40):
means no. And in pop culture too, we have loved
stories of the underdog guy who finally gets his reward
at some point for you know, hanging in there with
the girl who's dating the you know, the rich guy
who's more handsome but ultimately he'll win her, or just
(37:01):
wearing a woman down, which really only feeds into this dysfunction. Well,
one researcher quoted was it in the New York Times
article about this, pointed to all those movies and said,
like listen, Statistically speaking and scientifically, people date and have
relationships with people who are of equivalent attractiveness and life status.
(37:26):
And so that's kind of where you get this idea
of the nice guys of okay Cupid, for instance, who
voiced their entitlement to like a you know, like a gazelle,
like a freaking Cindy Crawford on okay Cupid, that they
just deserve to have this woman pay attention to them.
And so why won't you answer me as to why
you won't date me? But so, how do we change this?
(37:48):
How do we go from here? I mean I I
don't know that you and I sitting here in a
podcast studio are going to do it. What is it
going to take or will this ever change? Well, i'd
i'd like to think that one day it might change
and that we can all treat each other like human
(38:08):
people who have feelings, um and respect each other's decisions. UM.
But I don't know. Maybe it's if women talking about
it isn't gonna work, Maybe it's going to take men
talking to each other about it. Yeah, I mean that
brings up a quote from Kimmel and Angry White Men.
(38:30):
He said, American men define their masculinity not as much
in relation to women, but in relation to each other.
So guys, what's it gonna take. And also, Okay, folks,
I feel like we have a lot to learn from you,
so please please give us your wisdom. Yeah, because I
know we've heard from, for instance, some of our lesbian
(38:53):
listeners in response to our division of household labor episode
that yes, there is, sure there is a division. Somebody
might like to mow the lawn, somebody like might like
to load the dishwasher kristen um gut um, but that
there's no stereotypical gender role to fall back on, and
(39:16):
so I would imagine it's the same in terms of dating,
with the approach versus the approach e um, that there's
no real script or schema for who should do the approaching,
who should do the rejecting or the accepting. And also too,
in terms of hookups, gay men to take such a
more straightforward approach to it as well of sex being
(39:41):
sex do you want it or not? Done? And done
as well well, sure, because when it's a straight man
and a straight woman looking for each other on Tinder,
for instance, Mr tinder Um, you also have to deal
with all of the social stuff that says women who
just want sex on Tinder are gross or that they're
you know, sluts. So you've got all sorts of layers
(40:03):
of social grossness um putting pressure on everyone. We got
some baggage, and talk about some relationship baggage will help
us start through it. Folks. We're really curious to hear
from women who have experienced this online. Does this issue
resonate with you, especially in your online dating experience and
(40:24):
just generally everyone, what are your thoughts on this? Mom
Stuff at house stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. And I've gotta let
her here. Caroline from listener Andy, who writes, thank you,
(40:49):
thank you, thank you. We're doing an episode on Asian fetishes.
Is this something I deal with from time to time
and it's hard to explain to others why it's an
issue or why it's creepy. You guys mentioned in the
podcast that having an Asian fetish is similar to merely
having a type. This is an argument I hear a lot.
The difference between having a fetish and a type comes
(41:09):
down to whether you can see the person as an
individual or merely as a member of their group. For instance,
Kristen said she's only dated white guys. But Kristen, do
you immediately hit on every white guy you meet because
he's merely white? Answer? Yes, it's exhausting. I'm totally kidding,
She says. Do you quiz him on his white cultural upbringing?
(41:31):
Do you ask him where he buys his silverware? I've
been asked where I buy my chopsticks. Everyone has a type.
Mine is lanky, pale, nerdy guys, but that doesn't mean
I find them interchangeable. Once again, I appreciate you doing
an episode on an Asian issue. Since we are the
quote model minority, it's sometimes hard to convince people that
(41:52):
racism against Asians exists or matters. While it's true that
in America, racism against Asians tends to be less of,
I want the racism towards other minorities. That doesn't mean
it's not a problem and that it shouldn't be examined.
Thanks for making this world a better place. Um, thank you, Andy.
That last line to escape me goose bumps. Well, I
(42:13):
have a letter here from Elizabeth in response to our
Samurai Women episode, and I just want to say, first
of all, Elizabeth, thank you. Her email is a six page,
essentially really super well written list of corrections, and I
wish I could read the whole thing, that I can't,
so I want to pull out some points of clarification
(42:36):
that Elizabeth makes, So here we go. She says. I
posted this on Facebook as well because I felt it
was too hugely important to be glossed over, and I
was really hoping other fellow listeners would see it and
catch that. The switch from Shinto religion, two more disparaging
views of women came from Confucianism and not Buddhism. Both
were introduced into Japan at the same time and had
(42:57):
long been tied together in China because of the Chinese
traditional religion, which really meant that Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism
were all simultaneously believed in and worked together in unison
to form the belief of the Chinese people. Because of
the strong relation and tied to Confucianism, a lot of
the misogynistic ideas about how evil women were and whether
(43:18):
or not they could obtain enlightenment bled very heavily into Buddhism.
It's possible that there may have been some not very
accepting ideas about women in general and Buddhism, but at
its core that's not really part of the Buddhist doctrine.
She goes on to say, Historically, the more firm that
Confucianism took root in Japan, the less rights women had.
(43:38):
Every negative thing you mentioned in your podcast as a
cultural belief about women, those are all Confucianist beliefs. For
the hay On period. Women being behind closed doors then
was definitely a Confucian thing in part, but Confucianism didn't
have as strong of a hold then. Women had relatively
a lot of power in the hay On period and
a lot of social mobility. They were able to get
(43:59):
the means or attract the attention of the right person,
and being indoors was kind of more of a luxurious
choice for all parts of the aristocracy, because, as I
mentioned in my Facebook post, it had to do with labor.
If you're tanned and go outside a lot, it's because
you're poor and you tend to the fields. Your skin darkens.
Men were allowed to darken a little because they had
(44:19):
to run the country, so they went out to court.
Men were also the administrators for the property of the
women in their lives, since at this time period women
were allowed to inherit residences, property, and obtain income in
the form of rice. They held title and core positions.
But because you didn't literally live in the fields, you
had to send someone to go get your rice for you.
That was the job of the men, although the most
(44:40):
elite of men would still have people to do that
for them. If you are of low rank, you probably
have to go do that for yourself because you'd have
no other vassals. Low ranking women wouldn't do this just
because it'd be hard, and honestly, they'd have a better
life if they tried to become a lady in waiting
for some prominent figure. So as a social construct, they
would be encouraged to be indoors more often in as well.
(45:00):
And of course there Elizabeth is explaining our discussion about
how over certain periods in Japanese history women were basically
quote unquote like not allowed to go outside, that they
it wasn't social acceptable for women to like be out
and about um, so she's explaining the whole like women
staying in their rooms thing. She goes on to say, oh,
and as a general note about loyalty and stuff. It's
(45:22):
been noted through different parts of Asia that women are
often believed to be more loyal than men, which is
also kind of an odd side effect of Confucianism as well.
Confucianism teaches that while you should respect the leaders and
people above you for their ultimate decision, if you believe
that they're doing wrong, you're allowed to attempt to set
them on the correct path. In terms of a leader
of vassal type relationship, if you're leaders a jerk, you're
(45:43):
allowed to quit and find a new allegiance in China
and practice. I remember from one course that the scholar
had apparently remarked about the citizens in a town facing
the attack from an army. The men ran away while
the women valiantly killed themselves. Women were also thought of
as more willing and able to kill themselves because of
the social pressure put upon them by Confucianism. So because
they were subjected to so much and expected to be
(46:04):
loyal to the men in their lives, it was easier
for them to die for a greater cause, like an
incoming enemy, or even in the case of going into battle. Plus,
you know, women cheating and all that was highly frowned upon.
But because men didn't have to adhere to loyalties day
to day, they would change allegiances easily or would run away.
So Elizabeth, I'm really sorry I couldn't read your whole email,
(46:24):
but I do want to thank you for ending it
with anyway. Still love the podcast, and thanks for talking
about all of these subjects, and thanks to all of
you who have written into us. Mom stuff at house.
Stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You can
also find links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including
this one with links to our sources so you can
(46:45):
read all about that tender meltdown we can't get enough of.
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