OMG Men are the WORST

And yes, I KNOW, NOT ALL MEN.

But enough of them.

And to the men out there? If you don’t like that women are afraid of men, or apprehensive of men, then stop trying to convince women that men are good. Instead start telling other men to act like gentlemen.

This is not a perception problem, it’s a reality problem.

I keep my DMs open on Twitter and I thought I was doing a sufficient job with responding to all of my DMs (that weren’t outright sexually charged) buuuuuut I was wrong. There is a little filter thing that is labeled Requests and then there is ANOTHER filter in THAT filter labeled Other.

I am not sure why messages were routed this way when my DMs were already open? I assumed that one didn’t need to REQUEST to message me if my DMs were open but that’s how things work (or don’t work), I guess.

Anyway, I happened to look into that folder and BAM! Like a hundred requests from over the last year or so. I felt like I was in trouble, lol, like when you miss an email from your stupid boss or something. I keep my DMs open because I want to help people as much as I can and many of my DMs are girls like us asking for resources or just looking for a friendly voice.

But this is the internet after all. There’s just as many people looking for something else. Spoiler, that something else is SEX.

I started to go through the messages and most of them were simply ‘Hi’ or ‘Hey’ or HRU or WYD. My perspective on replying to DMs is matching someone’s effort. So if you message me HEY I will respond with HEY. It’s a little passive aggressive but how else should I respond? I am not super excited that LUV2STROKE420 is messaging me so it’s not like I am going to respond OMG HIIIIII or whatever.

And to be clear, I have NO idea if there is a user named LUV2STROKE420 but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Some of the messages were friendly and complimentary, some were girls asking for help or advice. Over the course of a couple days I was able to respond to everyone except for the senders who simply said I WANT TO SEX YOU or Dick Pic Senders.

But some of the HEY messagers would reply and soon what could charitably be called a conversation ensued. Hey becomes HRU and so on. My typical response to HRU is “I am very well” because it’s true, I AM very well. Usually guys don’t know how to respond to that lol. Usually it’s “That’s good” and most of the time the exchange dies there.

To be fair, I don’t mean to kill the dialogue, but my perspective is that they reached out and I feel that if they have a question or whatever they need to put in the effort to keep the person they are messaging engaged. I am fully aware that most of the men are indeed testing the waters to see if I will sleep with them or at least participate in a little e-sex (do they still call it that??) or share some erotic photos. My bio says that I am married but that is not a deterrent to these dudes.

I am not a total bitch though. If someone says that I am beautiful or they like a certain photo I will tell them thank you and I appreciate that. Again, sometimes the conversation stops there, other times it continues. I mean, it doesn’t continue for very long in most situations. A little back and forth until the guy gives up and realizes that the conversation is not going to lead to the bedroom or they just take a chance and send a photo of their penis.

Then they get blocked. Shooters shoot, I guess. Is sending a photo of their penis like a Hail Mary or something? Like nothing else is working so they just send a picture of their unerect dick and hope for the best? Does this ever work out for them?

So that’s annoying. I suppose part of me is grateful when someone makes their intentions clear and I don’t have to wonder what they want or their motivations behind their actions. It’s nice to cut to the chase. You’d think that this is what inspired the title of this post. Spoiler, it’s not.

No, the men who just absolutely give other men a bad name are the guys who just don’t take NO for an answer. I get asked to send a photo and I always say no. I mean, I post a picture every single day so if someone wants to see what I look like then maybe take a peek at my profile page and you can see hundreds of pictures.

Most men will then ask Y.

On a side note, I know that texting has made us all lazy but it’s really refreshing when someone does the bare minimum and takes an extra two seconds to type “why?” instead of Y. In the words of Weird Al:

That “be”, “see”, “are”, “you”
Are words, not letters
Get it together
Use your spellchecker
You should never
Write words using numbers
Unless you’re seven
Or your name is Prince

My response to this is that I don’t need to justify or explain my reasoning. Maybe it’s naive but I really, really think that when a girl says no, in any situation, that really should be enough.

In some cases men will back off and pivot the conversation but inevitably leads back to ‘can we have sex?’

And of course I tell them no. It’s amazing how many men will say something like “I know u r married but can we have a date?” It’s like, no??? In what world is that okay to ask someone???

Again, I am probably a little naive in all this. I suppose I am happy that the internet hasn’t rotted my brain to the point where I am desensitized to men asking a married girl out. I’m glad I don’t see it as normal, I guess.

I get a little pushback here when I discuss men behaving badly on social media. Yes, I post spicy pictures and some readers think that I am opening myself up to sexual content, or that I am inviting it in a way.

I know “boys will be boys” but that is complete bullshit. Men are capable of controlling themselves, they just choose not to. Perhaps it’s a lack of accountability in their past but they can control what they say.

If I were to wear a leather minidress and some dude came up to me and asked to fuck me, I imagine almost everyone here would say that request is inappropriate. I really don’t see a difference if I posted a photo of the same dress and men asked to fuck me in a message.

To me, it doesn’t matter if the exchange is in real life or online. What someone wears is NEVER an indication as to what is appropriate to discuss.

At any rate, I had a LOT of unpleasant exchanges over the last few days but this was one of the worst. The user asked for my picture and I responded with no, and then he asked why not and I told him that I don’t need to explain my decision and that no means no. Annnnnd he doubled down with grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes:

Clearly I felt that like most arguments this was not a winnable one. I don’t really think people “win” arguments as I feel the goal in an argument is understanding someone else and for two people to come to a solution. I had (again, probably in a naive way) thought that he would back off and maybe understand that no really does mean no and that I should only need to say no once.

But that clearly didn’t happen.

I also feel that it’s a little manipulative to suggest that someone who is a leader in the transgender community should be more tolerant of certain behaviour. I may be misinterpreting that.

When it comes to harassment it’s all about how the person FEELS, and not the intention of the harasser. This dude feels that it wasn’t aggressive because he didn’t bust a caps lock or whatever. I don’t think he should decide if something is aggressive or not.

I am willing to admit when I am wrong and I am open to other’s perspectives when it comes to how I handle and interpret something, so if that’s the case here please let me know. I don’t think I am wrong though? I mean, I really feel that when someone says no (again, in any situation), that SHOULD be the end of it. Given how he doubled down and didn’t take the hint that the conversation should go in a different direction, I don’t know if any reason would have been sufficient. Perhaps he would have doubled down on that as well.

I don’t know. Maybe I am being unfair, maybe I should be kinder. Maybe I should have said that I don’t send private photos or whatever. It’s impossible to speculate what would have happened if either of us said something different.

But the overall tone FEELS aggressive, it FEELS manipulative, it FEELS like it’s gaslighting.

But that’s all I can go with. How I felt.

And that should be enough.

Love, Hannah