Rejection, The Online Dating Edition or "What The Hell’s Wrong With Guys Today?"

Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions.

Harvey Mackay

A couple of days ago, a post was forwarded to me by a female friend asking for my opinion. The  basic idea of the post? As the article opening statement clearly mentions: “Man gives attention to a woman. Woman expresses her lack of desire for said attention. Man immediately turns hostile.” To read the full article, click here. My friend’s question was pretty simple.

What the hell’s wrong with guys today?

In actuality, her comments were a little more complex and involve several phrases that would shame most experienced seamen, but that’s neither here nor there. To be honest, I can’t really blame her comments as I have noticed how common this behavior is in the online dating circuit. It’s common enough to merit the Internet’s attention by exposing this behavior in previous articles like this one and this one. After looking this, and plenty more information about the subject I ended up with just one question in mind.

What the hell’s wrong with guys today?

Sure, we could blame a patriarchal society, male entitlement, and sexism. Everyone else seems to do it. But to be honest, every time people place blame on such abstract concept, it’s usually so they don’t have to think about an issue and find a more tangible cause and solution, it’s little more than a cop out.

So I started thinking about it, why can’t any of these guys (note that I will neither use the term men nor gentlemen when speaking about these guys) take the hint that the lady in question isn’t interested, nor why can’t they accept a simple “No.” What’s the emotional and social baggage that makes them incapable of dealing with rejection? And that’s when it hit me. The key word to find an answer isn’t “men,” or “sexism;” it’s “rejection.”

Please keep in mind as we move forward that I’m not saying that these guys aren’t sexist. What I’m saying is that they turn hostile (hurt) due to a rejection. They probably would have shown their sexist colors anyway later on. Also this isn’t your typical man, as most men aren’t like this. Unfortunately, today’s social media lives by feeding you with the worst case as if it was the typical case. We eat it up, share it out, and relate to it because who can’t relate with the idea of dealing with that one asshole who ruined your entire day?

But back to the topic in hand, why do these guys act this way? Because we trained them this way! Just take a second, stop thinking about the actual event and think about what we have been taught about dealing with rejection. They usually come in two varieties.

“Never take ‘No’ for an answer. Rejection just means you need to try harder.”

or

“It’s not that you’re not good enough. It’s that the other person failed to see what you had to offer”

These might sound like wonderful and inspiring life messages until you think about their effect on a person’s behavior. The first one teaches you that ‘No’ is unacceptable and that whenever you get that answer, you just need to try harder and more aggressively to achieve your success. Nice lesson to learn is a society where consent is so important whenever you are interacting with anyone. The second one teaches you to blame everything on everyone around you and their rejection is viewed as an attack based on the other person’s issues. Then we wonder where our current attitude of entitlement comes from.

We have these lessons drilled into our minds since we are kids. How many times have we heard a Mom tell her young boy that he’s special, and if the other kids don’t want to play with him, it’s their loss? (while glad that her wonderful son is no longer dating that tramp) How many times have we heard a Dad tell his daughter that she’s too good for the boy who dumped her? (while secretly planning the jerk’s demise)

But why do we see this behavior typically from guys? It’s not that women don’t have their fair share of assholes. It’s that in our current social behavior it’s the man who usually does the opening move. Due to this, the numeric probability is that you will see more male assholes than female assholes, at least in this specific scenario. It’s not that women don’t do the same, as there are plenty of stories of gals questioning a man’s masculinity as soon as he rejects her.

So how do we keep this from happening, or at the very least lessen the probabilities of this happening? We could start teaching our kids to deal with rejection from a positive perspective. We need to stop teaching how to handle hearing the word ‘No’ in a way that the person doesn’t feel insulted. We need to stop measuring our self-worth based on other people’s approval.

Don’t Assume I’m Broken

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Aristotle gave us a vast fountain of knowledge and wisdom. But within all those profound ideas, he had one concept which I can’t agree at all on. He, like so many men in Ancient Greece, viewed women as “defective by nature” and as incomplete or imperfect men. Women were viewed as having little control over their emotions, having a quick temper, void of shame or self-respect, and more prone to lying. His ideas were assimilated by many as society evolved as a way to justify not offering women the same opportunities as men.

Believe it or not, now we know better.

I want to take a moment to applaud the current trend of supporting the efforts of girls, one that promotes the notion that they can achieve whatever they set their minds to. They are taught to do this, not only for themselves, but as something that all other women can be proud of. We see how this empowerment, not only comes from moms, but from dads, who have become an integral part of these girls’ development. These men realize that their role as a father is that of raising a girl worthy of the spotlight that will shine on her. We see these girls growing up into strong women of character who prove that gender doesn’t hold anyone back, that girl power is powerful, and being a woman is something to be proud of…

And then we tell the boys and men that they are “defective by nature” and that men are basically the rough draft that was later polished into women. Men are viewed as having little control over their emotions, having a quick temper, void of shame or self-respect, and more prone to lying.

Sounds oddly familiar.

Have you ever stopped and thought about how we treat men, boys, and masculinity? You see it in the father who forces sports on his son, as he tries to live vicariously some kind of athletic glory, yet is angered by his child’s lack of interest. You see it in the mother who is constantly disciplining her son because he won’t follow strict instructions. You see it in the teacher who has to constantly punish a student because he refuses to sit down and be quiet in the classroom. You see it in the wife who constantly complains about her husband’s actions, or lack of.

At a grander scale you see it in comments like boys will be boys, because being a boy means that irresponsible behavior is to be expected because of their gender. We see it in the assumption that young men can’t control their sexual urges whenever we complain that a young lady’s clothing is a distraction. We see it in the assumption that every man needs a woman (be it a mother, a girlfriend, or a wife) to fix his life. We have become a society of people shaming men on everything they can’t do as we take any and every opportunity to let these men know everything they are doing wrong.

As a reaction to this attitude against manhood, instead of proving them wrong, some men have chosen to actually embody everything that society views wrong with men. They create a vicious cycle of men who behave badly because they are told that men behave badly.

So what has society’s warriors done as a reaction? They blame masculinity and the “man box” as being the toxic aspect that hurts men. There is a dangerous toxicity in the constant pissing contest, the almost universal idea that violence and confrontation will solve anything, the emotional distance as emotions are viewed as a sign of weakness, and the notion of an ever present unquenchable sexual desire. So the SJW have chosen fight these faults by condemning ALL things masculine and placing the absolute burden of fault on men, as apparently dealing with the specific negative elements is not as easy as a generalized condemnation of masculinity or realizing how we set men up to fail from the beginning as we view masculinity only from a negative lens.

What we end up is with half of society shaming men because they don’t measure up to the ideals of what a manly man is, and the other half shaming men because it’s the only way to keep them from falling into the trap of manly men. Did you notice how it’s all basically setting up men for a no win situation, where no matter what they do, they will fail in someone’s eyes? Then we wonder why boys and men have little aspirations and ambitions, or why so many become self-destructive.

Maybe it’s time that we look at what we are doing successfully with girls and do the same with the boys. Girls are outperforming boys in almost every field, and we already know that gender has nothing to do with it. It has to do with how we have chosen to empower women.

So what should we do? Stop treating men (and boys) as starting out as failures that need fixing! Instead of telling them how to live, give them proper examples by how you live. Let them learn by seeing. SHARE with them why you love something, and let them make up their mind. If they don’t like it, let them share with you what they love. Give them the space they need to fail or succeed on their own merit, instead of assuming they will fail if you don’t tell them how to do it.

Provide young men with men worthy of looking up too; heroes and role models they can emulate. Provide them with the support for them to fly on their own. Offer them the opportunity to be more, give them hope to be more. When we stop viewing someone as a problem to be fixed, they stop viewing themselves as a problem that needs fixing.

The All Too Common Hypocrisy Of Modern Social Justice

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Those who have been following me for a while or know me personally know how involved and passionate I am about social justice, equality, and empowerment. Even when I started writing online articles, they focused on discussing some of our social ills. This is the very least anyone should do. Yet, if you look as of late, my contributions as a SJW (Social Justice Warrior) have drastically lessened.

The reasons aren’t that I no longer believe in social justice or I no longer believe that what’s wrong within society shouldn’t be called out. The reason is that the current Social Justice trend of online warriors, in their crusade to condemn what’s ‘bad,’ have become just as oppressive as those they fight, and just as blind to the damage they cause.

As we fight sexism, racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, bigotry, or just simply prejudice, there are way too many who do so by being sexist, racist, homophobic, intolerant, and plain old fashion bigots. If this is a minority, as is stated over and over within the SWJ groups, wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is that it ISN’T a minority as people cheer on such actions, showing how their true intentions aren’t social justice, but rather power hunger or vengeance.

While fighting oppression, they get drunk on the power of oppressing.

We see this as we excuse inexcusable actions, simply because they are done under the flag of what’s right. We rationalize such abuse constantly. The best explanation I have heard to date explaining how this mental Kung Fu is done was given by a fellow blogger within a writer’s group as he was calling out this behavior in a post.

You are THIS and if you get mad, it proves my point. And because you're emotionally compromised because you're THIS, you don't have a say. You're the problem and someone else will be the solution, so shut up, sit down, and wait for it.

ZachRosenberg

We speak of having freedom of expression by openly shaming anyone who has an opinion different from ours. Body shaming if fought by calling models “skinny bitches” or defend the right of women not to use makeup by attacking any woman who uses makeup. Gender discrimination and sexism against women because they are women is fought by making sexist and gender specific attacks against men because they are men. Racial and ethnic discrimination against minorities if fought by making racist remarks against the majority. Even religious intolerance if fought by being intolerant with any faith (or lack of faith) different from our own. We stopped using our ideals as a means for empowerment. Instead we turned them into weapon to excuse attacking the ideals of others.

This type of debate doesn't offer conversation nor has the intention of finding a solution. It’s a way to oppress while feeling good about yourself as an oppressor, as other like-minded SJW will applaud you for it. It’s a way to be a bigot without the fear of backlash. If anyone dares to call you out on it, you are then given the entire backup needed to unleash your “righteous fury” against said person.

I should know as I have been on the receiving end of this equation enough times to realize that I no longer want to be a part of this kind of social justice. Just because you assume you’re right, doesn’t excuse you when you do wrong.

If you are unsure if your actions and comments are wrong, here’s a simple mental exercise. Before posting up that righteous attack, replace the people you are attacking with the group you are defending. If you would consider that comment hate speech, it probably is. Before posting that defense of your group, replace it with the group you fight against. Are you giving them special privileges over the rest of society? If so, then you probably are doing that for your own group.

Social justice shouldn’t be about everyone being equally discriminated or oppressed. It should be about everyone being equally empowered. It should be about using our diversity as a way to expand our ideals and our understanding.  Instead of focusing on how to knock someone down to the lowest position as a solution, we should on how to raise everyone up to the highest denominator. Instead of calling out privilege as a bad thing, we should view privilege as what should be fair for everyone, and work in that direction. And above all, we really need to stop expecting equality to happen because we are all the same, but expect it because being different is no reason for inequality.