Lauren Parker
2 min readSep 1, 2016

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Okay so couple notes:

  1. It’s not my job to teach men how to date. There are a lot of resources out there by people who have taken up that mantel. I am teaching them how to not intimidate women. That’s my gig. And your prodding to teaching of “how” to approach women feels a bit leading as a question because what that question often means when I get asked it is “when is it okay to treat a woman as a sexual object for my conquest” and the answer is that no social place like that exists. You cannot do that in bars. You cannot do that on the street. There is no public space where a woman “opts in” to that narrative. There are private spaces negotiated by consenting adults for behavior like that, but there is a lot of sexually assault in the BDSM community so again, other people do better work on those spaces.
  2. I wouldn’t recommend you run around the internet telling women on there that they aren’t being constructive. Because this is constructive. There are a lot of angry and violated women and non-binary people who have this happen to them all the time and this made them feel validated and better. That is constructive. Because it wasn’t constructive TO YOU doesn’t mean it’s spirit is without value. It’s a passive aggressive way of saying “you’re angry and it’s unattractive and useless to me” and that is a bad look for you.
  3. As you can see in my final paragraph I detail a bunch of nonverbal no’s that people employ to extract themselves from situations. I would recommend if you have the hots for someone that you respect their body language and nope out the second they shoot you an uncomfortable smile and look away because while you might not be raping them or be perfectly fine and just want to get to know them, the OP behavior is what people do when they are about to rob someone. If a man behaved like this to other men on the street it would be very unsettling to that man. So it ain’t just rape, ya know.
  4. Online dating exists. It’s a big part of our social lives. And while that doesn’t give people the right to be gross to people on dating sites, that is a designated space to meet and try to get to know people. I would recommend men explore that space for meeting people. Also your friends might be able to introduce you. Get creative. I believe in you.

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Lauren Parker

Writer. Poet. Columnist for Autostraddle. She/her. Harbinger of chaos. Support my work on patreon.com/laurenparker.