Savage OKStupid

Since Jamie left, I've been doing a lot of things I don't usually do. Daily routines have shifted. Eating alone more, sleeping alone, masturbating a lot, and generally being a recluse from the world. Which is fine by me, for as long as it feels good to be that way. This new shift has left me with a lot of internet time, and a lot of walking-with-headphones time, which means a lot of OKCupid response rampages, and listening to podcasts. Specifically, new-to-me-recently, the Savage Lovecast with Dan Savage.

And I like these two things. I like meeting new people and I like listening to (mostly) sex-positive advice shows. But between them I've gotten pretty frustrated over some recent events (errrr, maybe not so recent - it's been a while, I suppose), pointing out once again, I guess, that's it's that much more heartbreaking when something almost not shitty does shitty things (as opposed to things you knew were shitty from the beginning).

I get a lot of messages on OKCupid. Lots of women do. And for the most part, they're just sort of... boring. Unoriginal, clearly copy pasta, a general form message sent out to every mildly compatible person. Sometimes they're especially weird, or creepy, and sometimes they're just very, very boring.

A while back, before he left, Jamie and I were talking about the trends on OKCupid, and how the vast majority of women don't send many messages, and the vast majority of men do. It's a self-reinforcing cycle, which even knowing about, I experienced first hand. Getting three or four shitty messages a day, I don't even want to bother writing back, which means my response rate goes down, and I don't want to bother looking in a proactive way, because I'm so exhausted. A nonexistent offense for the necessity of a good defense. Gender essentialism of the internet, a feedback tornado.

So I decided to change it. I decided to try and write back to every message I got, even if it was just a "fuck off, thanks." I wasn't about to let some stupid gender paradigm drop my internet percentage response rate. Nobody can take away my 100% but me, dammit.

And this is one of my favorite examples of that endeavor. 

(I know the initial response seems pretty harsh. And it is. I was probably cranky. I don't think it actually matters - pretend his initial message was shittier, if that makes it work for you. I'm in the red, he's in the grey).

I am, I think, as clear as I can possibly be about not wanting to talk or interact with the fellow. I'm downright rude. And what do I get back? A "hey, I like your energy." Like what I had said doesn't actually matter at all.

Keeping that in mind, I was listening to the Lovecast this morning, and while my issues with Dan Savage cover a broad range of misogynist flavors, he hit on one this morning that was particularly... shitty. Not to excuse my own exasperation (I'm exasperated: no apologies about it), but I will say that Savage is, a lot of the time, great. Which is part of the reason why I wish he was better when it comes to women. Because there is the possibility there. Because he isn't a shithead. Most of the time.

A man called in, describing a situation wherein his wife and he were at a bar, and the wife went off with a lady friend of theirs to the bar next door, saying she was going to "get into a little trouble." The lady friend and the wife ended up making out in front of a random dude (let's call him dude number two), and dude number two made a pass as this guys wife. It's unclear (but doesn't really matter) whether or not husband and wife and lady friend know dude number two prior to this interaction. The wife declined, and then dude number two tried again, at which point wife left. End of situation.

(I know it's shitty language to use - "wife" and "lady," but for differentiations sake, I'm gonna keep it there. I use "husband" too, so I think I'm alright).

The caller expressed, at first, frustration with dude number two (understandably), and after a while, frustration with his wife. For not talking to him about kissing someone else, I assumed, but after a bit more listening to the call, it came out that he was in fact frustration with her for "putting herself in that situation." And in defense of the caller, there could be a lot of complex emotions going on with why he was mad at his wife. Which he could confuse for victim blaming, I guess. It's super shitty, but emotions are complicated. Although what the caller posited feeling, and why, isn't actually so important.

As the call ended, I expected a two-part breakdown from Savage, as he sometimes does. I expected a "you and your wife need to talk about what your boundaries are, so that's number one, and that's probably why you're mad at her," as well as a "nothing about that was her fault, and I don't know if you need to be worried, but that guy sounds like a dick, and if you know him, maybe you don't want to know him anymore."

The first, yes, that happened. As he tends to be in areas of poly, Savage is right on point. But the second, not so much. Instead, he said something along the lines of "Yeah, your wife probably should have known, making out with a lady is the sort of situation where you might get hit on by dudes. They think the ladies might be down to fuck, which is understandable, because that situation sometimes means that. So don't be too hard on him."

No, Dan Savage. Just no. That is not understandable. That is victim blaming, and you don't have a complicated emotional standpoint to come from. Granting the shitty state of our culture around consent, sexuality, and women, a first pass *might* squeak by. But a second? A second after a clear "no"? That's assault.

Which brings me round to the big philosophical point of all this. And it's sort of beyond the pointing out of "no means no," in both cases. It's more a sort of wondering of... where this comes from. The complicated and interconnected reasons behind all the shitty. This idea that sex, or consent, or conversation in the dating world, is contingent upon vagueries. The idea that when someone is clear about what they want (or in these cases, don't want), it is ignored, or that ignoring it is somehow part of what's hot.

I think the ambiguity is a combination of things. I think it's gendered, for sure. I think we take "no" as an answer as much more definitive from men, and I think (as evidenced by the OKStupid conversation), we ignore what women say outright, most of the time, and just focus on (as that person did) that they're responding at all. But more than this, I think it's an attitude we have about sex and dating. That push-pull is sexy, that ambiguity is hot, that the human mating dance is one of intentional ignorance and charging blindly forward.

And I just think that's bullshit. It's a feminist issue, surely, but it's also a people issue around sexuality, I think. Part of sex positivity, for me, is acknowledging that these kinds of instances are what's wrong with our view of sex, and trying to find a way to change that. Because sex if fun and pleasure is good for you, and so is basic decency and the agency of humans.

Negotiated ambiguity? Super hot. But like all things kinky, it's based in explicit, enthusiastic, and clear consent. It's what separates kink from abuse, full stop. Anything else is bullshit.