I Target Women

Responding to “Quora’s Misogyny Problem”

Violet Blue has recently written a piece about misogyny at Quora and in online forums in general, it’s very good and you should read it: http://www.zdnet.com/quoras-misogyny-problem-a-cautionary-tale-7000030762/

As I was reading it myself I decided that I wanted to respond, but not in a way that would take attention away from the article itself. She makes very astute points about the needs of women to be able to block jerks and jackasses from contacting them online. As she says, we need robust blocking systems that protect women from men who have decided to cross safe boundaries and stalk them, both online and in the real world.

She describes the gender distinction in terms of people who are “targeted” and “not-targeted.” Women, she posits, are targets. Men are not-targets. As she says:

As women, we’re targeted just by showing up. Every time we go on Facebook or leave a comment with a female name attached to it, we’re given a snap “hot or not” assessment, judged accordingly, and the aggressive non-targets act on their judgment. Many young women aren’t even aware that they bear target status.

This is absolutely true. And men do it all the time. That’s why I titled this piece after it, because I do it as well. It’s an awful thing we do, but it’s also baked into our society in ways that we can’t really fight until we know more about it.

I had a psychology professor who talked about the ways men deduce the presence of women. In libraries, for example, he could observe groups of men who would stop what they were doing and turn their heads to look at a woman who had just walked in, even though the only thing they could see were her feet and heels, visible beneath the bottom of the bookshelf separating the students from the visitor.

On Facebook, Twitter, or various online forums, from my workplace to my favorite bars and restaurants, I am always keeping an eye out in case an attractive, interesting woman comes by. I absolutely target women in this instance, everywhere I go, everything I do.

The reason for that is fairly simple: I want to meet a woman, be interested in her, have her be interested in me, and let all those wonderful, magical things happen when two people meet and stars align.

We’re taught this from birth. From every single movie with a romantic plotline, to the stories that our elders tell us growing up, to “How to Meet People” guides, we’re constantly fed this idea that, one day you will be out doing something you love, meet that special someone in the right place at the right time, and everything will be wonderful. While it’s not everything that I want in life, it’s a large part of the things I want in life.

My parents used to tell me the story of how they met. When she was a young woman, hitchhiking in England, and my dad, the Air Force recruit, picking up her and her friend. They talked, sparks flew, and a couple of months later they embarked on a 30-year marriage.

How many times have we been given the advice that, when lonely, the best way to meet somebody is to get out there and do something you love? And then you’re supposed to meet someone who’s also out there and then, hooray, we both love making pinocchio sculptures out of bacon, we should totally exchange numbers and then awkwardly make our way to the stage of our relationship where I don’t fear dying old and alone.

None of this excuses the predatory nature of men who are out looking for targets. I share this story because I want to better understand Violet Blue’s perspective. I want to better understand what’s safe for me and what is safe for women. I want to better understand how I can achieve my goal of meeting somebody while balancing that with not making women uncomfortable or intimidated when I first meet or engage with them.

Society has changed a lot in the last few years, with women becoming far more empowered than they were even a generation ago. I see a lot more equality in the interactions between men and women, which makes me really happy and I think empowerment has done a lot for building healthier long-term relationships in that vein.

Some things, on the other hand, haven’t changed. I’m not a particularly attractive dude, so the idea that I would be the one who is asked out is pretty far-fetched. If I want to go on a date with somebody, it’s going to be up to me to ask them out. If I were to look at it in a more mathematically abstract way, the more women I ask out, the more chances I have to date. That’s not the way I work, but it is for a lot of people for whom being single is a bigger problem than being unsuccessful at other endeavours.

Part of that is targeting. If I’m at a restaurant and a particularly cute waitress is laughing with me and leaning in, my lizard brain is going “Maybe she’s the one! Ask! Ask!” It sets up systems wherein I’m either sabotaging a potential friendship for the possibility of romance, or I’m making myself look like an idiot asking out a woman who’s definitely not interested.

Some people talk about things called “the friend-zone” where women supposedly place men they are not sexually interested in. This “Friend Zone,” in addition to being misogynistic as hell and the creation of people who have no idea how to have meaningful relationships with women, does bring some insight into the perspectives of men who worry about it.

I’ve read dating guides over the years that talk about how to meet and win over women, and they’re often filled with advice like, “Act fast before she friend-zones you.” Because when you show up and treat people like your equals, they expect to *be* your equals, and the idea of romance really isn’t on the table. The system of targeting & “friend-zones” incentivizes men to act quickly with a potential interest, lest they feel like they’ve missed out on an opportunity. Don’t even get me started on “ladder theory” and the idea of “breaking out of the friend-zone” where people don’t even acknowledge that the woman has a say in whether or not she’s interested in the man.

Again, none of this excuses the way men treat women, the way men objectify women, the way men abuse women, or the way men use male privilege to view women as objects for collection. There’s an entitlement that men have in the idea that we “deserve” a woman, as if they exist merely to be found by us and brought home to be ours. That isn’t how it works.

That kind of perspective enables people like Elliott Rodger, like misogynists on Quora, who feel their “right” to a woman is somehow being denied by a woman’s independent agency. That entitlement absolutely must be taken down and destroyed. Nobody is “entitled” to anybody. Nobody has a right to be angry at a person for not being romantically or sexually interested in them. If you want to be loved, you have to earn it, the same as the rest of us (except the beautiful people, I hate you all).

We have a sick, screwed up system that is, thankfully, getting better. I want to do my part to help continue making things better, and hopefully I can do that by better understanding my own faults. Understanding that I target women is one of them, and though I don’t have any answers on how to fix that right now, maybe this conversation will bring about some of those answers. I know that, were I to have a daughter some day, I would want her to be raised in a world where she is not a target.