Dinkaltranen

There’s some popular idea that universities and workplaces have this giant HR culture that makes approaching anyone a good way to find yourself putting in 2 weeks or having a meeting with HR.

They’re right, it technically is. But not as much as people like to pretend.

“Men don’t approach women anymore.” Say women.

“Yes but that’s because of (what I described in the first sentence).” Say men.

Both of these things aren’t true. The people saying them just want them to be true. The only thing you should know when looking to meet someone is that dating apps are bullshit, and if you use them you don’t believe in love. Put a pin in that, we’ll be back later.

There is some “heads I win tails you lose” bullshit going on here, rather infamously shown by this comic that gets plastered every time this conversation comes up.

But, what people fail to recognise is, that this is how it’s always worked. People reject those they aren’t attracted to. The only difference is that we now have a large number of co-ed work environments. It’s worth thinking about that after the inevitable emancipation of women in the US, one of the first things that happened was prohibition. Suffrage was about becoming equal, but one of the first thing that happened after it was the banning of something that had and more importantly could hurt women, the subtext of this being that women can’t protect themselves, so they must ban the thing that is causing them danger. It didn’t just backfire horribly, it also failed to protect women. This is a good parallel to modern social environments.

Women want equality, and the best way to have equality is to make the rules borked. People will say this is equity, but really, it’s women rightfully wanting to be treated like adults. Men and women are different. There are people who’ve discussed this more than me. What do you do with the difference? Well, you agree to treat each other like adults. The reason that HR becomes a problem is because it simultaneously presents that men and women aren’t equal (there is a power imbalance), that they are adults who should be treated the same expectations of another adult, and that despite the fact that you are meant to treat each other as adults that if they fail to stand up for themselves they require third party intervention. These all can’t be true.

Either they are adults, and are in a professional environment, and are responsible for their actions and their regulation the same as everyone else. Or despite this they cannot resolve issues on their own, and need preferential aid. You might say this is a false dichotomy here, and yes, that’s the point. The point is the system is rigged, and the reason it stays rigged is because it serves both men and women. The asymmetries provide their defence.

What is the benefit of not being able to approach women? You don’t have to be someone who is attractive or valuable. It’s an excuse to be a loser who works 9-5 and is ‘too tired’ to date or study 4 days a week and do nothing but jerk off and play video games. It’s an excuse to not be an adult with responsibility for their actions (autonomy) and how they affect others. If you can’t say anything to a woman, as you claim, then it isn’t your fault that you do nothing to be attractive to them, that you give them the ‘ick’. You don’t have to approach because you’re doomed to fail, and therefore trying is a waste of your time.

What is the benefit for women? Well, the obvious one – you don’t have to deal with creepy weirdos trying to exploit you. But also, now you don’t need to be autonomous. You get all the benefits and protection of the system which is built on the idea of autonomy, whilst not having to be someone who is actually autonomous. You have fled into the victim/individual grey area. You can’t be touched in the grey area! And if someone you do actually like engages you, that protection allows you to engage with them under the category of autonomous adult, and if things go wrong, you can go swap to the victim category.

Heads you win tails they lose.

The narrative around consent (and approaching) is precisely the same. The amount of men I have talked to who say, oh, I’m afraid that women will claim I raped them post-hoc. These men probably haven’t had a conversation with women in years. The fear is not what if she lies, it’s what if she rejects me. But that’s vocalised as “what if she lies and does something incredibly ill faith.”

Yes, you could be killed by a drunk driver tomorrow, but you are using that risk as an excuse to not go on the road. This is sort of how agoraphobia works. Consent isn’t what you have to worry about, that’s a pretence, what you worry about is getting rejected.

Now to turn the tables again. There's a video, almost certainly staged, of a woman at a bar, and she is approached by a guy off camera. As they begin to talk, she gets out a cover for her drink, which understandably gets brought up. “What are you doing?”

A few options:

The first, is that she’s spineless and wants to tell him him to fuck off without having to reject him, and she does this by implying she thinks he’s a drink-spiking rapist.

The second is that, she has immediately categorised herself as a potential victim, and him as a potential perp. Note that he hasn’t even sat down yet. She’s not seeing him as an individual, she’s seeing him as a threat before they’ve each said a sentence to one another.

The third, ‘good-faith’ interpretation, is that she’s looking out for her safety.

But look at what she’s actually doing. The conversation starts, she isn’t even looking at him, she’s covering up her drink, talking to him is secondary, and, most telling, this is recorded. But for who? The same reason anything is recorded, for an audience, and most notably she isn’t capturing him, she is capturing herself. “I am a victim.” is what she’s actually saying whilst pretending autonomy and responsibility. You can say “It’s to tell him someone else is watching and will see whatever you do to me.” Okay. But it’s a club. Or a bar. There’s already witnesses.

“See, I’m looking out for myself, and I want others to see, I refuse to be a victim. Why are you getting mad at me for protecting myself?”

But the opportunity hasn’t even arose yet. You’re just like the man who’s claiming to be afraid about consent, you have to actually be on the road to get hit by a drunk driver. This is true regardless of whether it’s staged, the medium is the message.

The logical conclusion to all of this: Dating apps.

Yes, precisely. When people stop seeing each other as individuals with autonomy, as adults, they get reduced to things, representations. Physicality, assets, political leanings. These aren’t arbitrary in terms of mate selection, but on dating apps it is used, again, to filter in a way that is self-serving and self-defeating. You can now filter out anyone that is missing a certain criteria, and do it from the safety of your bed, and you can even make it a social ritual where you and your friends look through what spawn of Beelzebub has put up as their profile.

If you think people can be represented by a dating profile, you are not choosing someone to potentially fall in love with, you are signing up to fall in love with a character sheet. By setting requirements of love, you have immediately dismissed its possibility, because love isn’t for your sake. It isn’t to fulfil your needs, to fill a hole in your heart, to heal you. Love is for its own sake.

You are not just putting yourself in a category, you are selection for someone else in one too. You are dehumanising one another, and then wonder why you can’t experience one of the most innately human things. It’s no wonder we get absolute gems like this, which encapsulate modern dating discourse in a single image.

Woman: Assumes he wants a whore, or maybe wants to be treated as one. To her, he is either immediately debasing her in her mind, or she wants him to debase her.

Man: Assumes that her being sexually forward means that she’s crazy, because to him women can’t desire sex the way men can. Or wants to assume she's crazy anyway.

Result: Both are cowards, so instead of a blow up of rage from being dehumanised, they both bow out. We already knew they were cowards, because they’re on dating apps, instead of meeting people and risking being seen as individuals instead of character sheets. And that’s precisely the point.

Go out there and talk to the opposite sex, and assume they aren’t who you think they are or want them to be, but an individual with autonomy. Get on the road. You might get hit by a drunk driver, but you shouldn’t let that get in the way of getting somewhere worthwhile with someone else.