‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’: A Loser’s Guide to Dealing with Rejection by The Guyliner

‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’: A Loser’s Guide to Dealing with Rejection by The Guyliner

(Link): ‘It’s not me, it’s you’: a loser’s guide to dealing with rejection by The Guyliner

Excerpts:

Advances in technology, and the urge to express ourselves as loudly as possible, mean rejection has never been so easy to dole out. Swiping left on Tinder, blocking on Twitter, marching to the polling booth: a firm no is never far away, but the bitter sting never fails to shock.

We’ve witnessed an unusually high level of public rejection over the last few turbulent weeks, from politicians discovering their posses were lacking compadres and feeling their ambition turn to ash in their mouths, to the much-maligned EU, sadly opening its Dear John letter from 52% of the UK, all calls going straight to voicemail.

Rejection can teach you a lot about yourself and those around you. “No” may never be music to your ears, but you can learn to take it with dignity. Or, at the very least, store up ample fuel for your revenge.

….On a dating app

“Why don’t they love me?” I’d cry when I was single, throwing myself on to a fainting couch whenever someone I’d contacted didn’t reciprocate.

Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (from The Atlantic) / Men Who Mistake Platonic Friendliness For Flirting – So Annoying

Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (from The Atlantic)

Some people confuse what this article from The Atlantic terms “persistent pursuing” with courtship. That is, men do it all the time, and some women, due to Hollywood Rom Coms, have been conditioned to view this as normal, romantic behavior.

May I add another related issue: men who mistake platonic chit chat with flirting?

That drives me up the wall. It’s one reason I am usually loathe to enter into pleasantries with men I don’t know when I’m in stores or sitting around in waiting rooms, because many men mistake idle, polite banter for,

• “Oooh, this lady is into me, she is warm for my form, she wants to marry me and make babies with me, I am one sexy beast, grrrrr.”

So these men ask for your phone number or they get all flirty back. And you, the woman, are like, “I did NOT send this dude any sexy signals, where is this coming from?”

No, dude, my romantic interest is only in your imagination. (Duran Duran (Link): sang of this very concept.)

Me saying stuff like, “Wow, some crazy weather we’ve been having lately, huh?” as we’re sitting in Wal-Mart’s auto care center waiting for our tires to be rotated is not me hitting on you.

Me hitting on you, men of the world, consists of me putting one hand behind my head, one hand on a jutted out hip, head tilted back, eyes narrowly parted, and me saying something (in a seductive sounding, cat like purr), like, “Hey there big boy, you come here all alone? Mama likes what she sees! May I have your phone number? Are you free for a date this Saturday?”

Think (Link): this.

Yes, (Link): this is what a woman who is flirting with you looks like, the facial expression and mannerisms.

About men who refuse to take “no” for an answer from a woman they are interested in, who confuse pursuing with stalking: other than entitlement, I wonder if what drives some of these men is a sense that they HATE to be alone and MUST have a romantic partner to “complete them.”

I know this sort of thinking is very common among a lot of women. I think secular society (and Christian culture) does try to convince people there is no way they can be whole and happy single. There is a lot of pressure on people to pair up and date or marry.

Culture (especially through movies and TV shows) and churches need to stop sending this bogus message that there is something wrong, flawed, or second class about being single as an adult.

There is no disgrace in being single. I understand if you are single and lonely and pine for a significant other how hard it can be at times, but you are okay on your own.

You are not some loser or in-complete if you don’t have a mate, contrary to the messages Christians and Hollywood like to send us all.

(Link):  Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending by Julie Beck

Excerpts:

Overly persistent pursuit is a staple of movie love stories, but a new study shows that it could normalize some troubling behaviors.

…Reasonable people know that rom-coms aren’t what love is really like, just as reasonable people know that porn is not what sex is really like. But these movies still create an image of romance that leaks into the atmosphere and may subtly shape people’s perceptions and expectations of love.

One troubling way they may do that is by making stalking behaviors seem like a normal part of romance, according to (Link): a new study by Julia Lippman, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of communication studies at the University of Michigan.

…[Lipman says] “Indeed, they may be seen as reflecting one of the great cultural myths of romantic love: that no matter how big the obstacle, love will conquer all.”

The website TV Tropes, which tracks, wiki-style, frequently-used narrative devices—not just on TV, but in all kinds of fiction—has a page for this. It’s aptly titled (Link): “Stalking Is Love.”Lippman files stalking under the broader umbrella of “persistent pursuit,” which can also encompass “more benign and even positively regarded behaviors such as some types of romantic courtship,” she writes.

This Is Why Being a Nice Guy Just Isn’t Enough by E. Tatum / Double Standards By The Anti-Celibacy Crowd About Friendships and Sexualization of Everything

This Is Why Being a Nice Guy Just Isn’t Enough by E. Tatum / Double Standards By The Anti-Celibacy Crowd About Friendships and Sexualization of Everything

You’ll have to use the link below to read the entire page entitled, “This Is Why Being a Nice Guy Just Isn’t Enough”, because I don’t want to copy their entire post here on my blog.

One thing I want to point out is a bit of a double standard going on here.

First of all, I first became aware of this “Nice Guys” article by way of Facebook group SCCL (Stuff Christian Culture Likes). Sometimes I agree with some of this group’s views on some issues, sometimes I do not.

SCCL is a group that regularly mocks or criticizes the traditional Christian position of upholding or defending the notions of celibacy, or of being a virgin until marriage – sometimes these concepts are all lumped together by them, and by others elsewhere on the internet, under the term “purity culture”.

I have argued on my blog the last few years that it is possible to be celibate, to refrain from having sex, and for men and women to be platonic friends.

I have also argued that it is society, both secular culture, as well as conservative and progressive Christian culture, and most secular feminism, which perpetuates the sexualization all male-female relationships (or even male-male, or female-female relationships).

For doing all this, for defending my choice, or the choice of others to be celibate, and for pointing out that not everything in life has to be sexual or is about sex, I sometimes get insulted or mocked by other people on the internet.

Everyone from secular feminists, to ex-Christians, to conservative Christians, to atheists (yes, ’tis so, click here to read), to political liberals, to political conservatives insult me or ridicule me for all this.

All these groups, who normally loathe each other – the atheists cannot stand conservative Christians, the liberals don’t like the conservatives and so on- all never- the- less totally agree that there is something bad, wrong, or weird about adults who choose to stay celibate, whatever their reason.

All these disparate groups fight like cats on dogs on many other topics, but they all come into agreement on this: they despise and ridicule celibacy (and sometimes, asexuality).

Do these people in these groups ever stop to consider, “Hey, other groups I normally disagree with on fundamental life choices happen to share with me a suspicion, dislike, or fear of celibacy, does this mean something, like maybe I’ve been wrong in my views about celibacy?”

I think it does. That your arch enemy chooses to fight with you on all other issues yet mocks celibacy right along with you might indicate that both of you are either misinformed about celibacy or terribly biased against celibates. Yeah, you might want to ponder that one for awhile.

There are more comments by me below this long excerpt:

(Link): This Is Why Being a Nice Guy Just Isn’t Enough by E. Tatum

Excerpts:

• There are a lot of really wonderful, well-intentioned men who have a difficult time understanding the difference between being nice to women and being an ally to women and women’s causes.
• Then there are other men who pretend to be nice in order to validate their manipulation of women for sex and romance. These are the people who I like to refer to as Nice Guys™.
• While this article is dedicated to helping nice men become better feminist allies, I want to take a second to clarify the difference between an authentically nice guy and a Nice Guy™.
• (Link): Nice Guys™, as many of you know, have become the object of  (Link): much loathing in feminist circles and among women and girls in general.Online, this is the guy who posts hashtags like #NotAllMen and (Link): #ReverseSexism, whenever we publish articles about (Link): street harassment,  (Link): rape culture, and (Link): male privilege.
• He is the exaggeratedly faux timid (read: passive aggressive) dude who still complains about the girls that didn’t date him in high school on message boards and in every other status update.
• Though the most stereotypical incarnation of the Nice Guy™ is a fedora-clad dudebro who spends too much time on Reddit and would probably push a six-year-old girl out of the way to get his hands on My Little Pony merchandise, the more garden-variety Nice Guy™ can be more difficult to spot. 
• Basically, he’s anyone who regards sex as the ultimate goal of interacting with women, and in turn views the idea of a nonsexual friendship with a woman as an abysmal failure.
• Trademarks of a Nice Guy™ include trying to guilt trip women into having sex, claiming that sex should be the inevitable reward for basic acts of friendship, and only being interested in building a friendship until the woman in question rejects them romantically.
• When he gets rejected, he cites every single time they did something nice for her, repeatedly asks her out (as in stalks her), and calls her a coldhearted bitch if she refuses to magically reciprocate his feelings within an almost instantaneous period of time.
• A Nice Guy™ truly cements his status as soon as he begins to complain that (Link): “women only date assholes.”