internet dating = the antithesis of radical

[keryx]

When I get an idea in my head, I have to go research it. This explains why, when my mother asked me if I'd tried dating on the internet (I hadn't), I immediately went and checked out several different dating sites.

Want to know what I learned?

They suck.

The mainstream sites like those Match.com & eHarmony places actually won't let you use the word 'fat'. I'm not kidding. It's a forbidden word. Because $DEITY knows no one would ever want to claim to be fat! Let alone *eek!* want to meet any of those horrible fat people (except to make fun of them, of course - and we must protect the fatties!)! Egads!

Yeah. So, my first act of internet dating was to sign up for both sites (they have a free version) in order to send them each strongly worded comments about how ridiculously stupid banning the word 'fat' is. Particularly when you're totally cool with words like 'overweight' and 'big & beautiful': can you say disgusting hypocrites, kids? Yeah, you can be 'big & beautiful', but for $DEITY's sake, don't talk about your fatness! Euphemize it! Hide it! Diet it away!

The other way in which dating sites appear to suck is that many of them assume you have one gender preference in your seeking: you are either a man or a woman, and you are looking for one, not both or either. I realize that there are certain programmatic limitations in the common dating engines, but couldn't everyone just add a 'gender is a continuum' or 'either' option to their stupid databases?

Yeah, maybe not the folks who bring you those over-the-top Middle America "look, I found my husband on the internets & I'm completely normal, I swear" teevee ads... but it wouldn't be that hard for the peeps on the more liberal/young/cool sites (I'm thinking that OKCupid place that everyone gets the tests from, or the Nerve/Salon/Bust personals) to take gender out of the equation, or at least make it a more complex variable.

Hmmph.

On the other hand, they've given me opportunities to proselytise: a random guy sent me an email wherein he called me "girl", and I sent back something like "dude, you're cute, but I'm a grrrl not a girl - or did you miss the Big Hairy Feminist subtext in my hastily written profile?" - so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Comments

[mabjustmab.livejournal.com]

You are awesome! hee. I am jaded and bitter to the online dating scene. it wasn't until I tried it briefly did I realize that there are many many many maaaaaaaaaaaaaany mundane folks out there. did I mention many? many many. wow. how hard can it be to read? "Circus Girl looking for Freak". I hear ya about the "read my profile before you send me ignorant statments that clearly indicate you incompatibility" ooops, sorry, I used big words.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Good point... internet dating is a great way to confront the vast 'normalcy' of the world. The sites almost made me want to dress up in a Totally Ordinary Girl, I Swear costume and create a whole fictitious life on them. Like performance art.

Which dating kindof is, no matter what, come to think of it.

[ex-lexydee113.livejournal.com]

Internet dating - I met my boyfriend, duddy_kravitz, right here on Livejournal! He added me in January of last year because he saw me in toronto and liked my listed interests. Hah. Then in November he posted a picture of himself in his journal and I said "Damn, boy is as hot as he is smart!" and we went for drinks and well, fell ridiculously hard in a rather short time. I thoroughly recommend sleeping with your f-list!

[cyprinella]

Heh. My boyfriend met my exroommate though a blog or forum of some sort. I came down to VA with her to meet him, we were all friends, I hooked the both of them up with LJs and when they broke up, he and I were really good internet friends. So when I moved down to VA we ended up dating. And that was all almost four years ago. :)

[ex-lexydee113.livejournal.com]

I love it!

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I will neither confirm nor deny having slept with anyone on my f-list. :)

[ex-lexydee113.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha.. I've slept with quite a few livejournallers. But I'm that kind of girl. ;)

[jane-ire.livejournal.com]

eHarmony is VERY christian based, as I'm sure you figured out. I'm pretty sure the founder is actively homophobic.

[jane-ire.livejournal.com]

P.S. lawlesslawyer and I met on friendster...

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Is that actually part of the point of the site, if you know? And here I was just thinking that was one of their many insane biases. I had a great time with eHarmony's "values & ethics" thing as well as their take on "fitness" in their little opening poll.

[jane-ire.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the point of it is christian match-making. I read a few reviews of the site and one does indeed say "eHarmony online dating service features matching based on Christian principles." http://www.clickfire.com/affiliates/eharmony/

[vagal-nerve.livejournal.com]

Focus on the Family and Billy Grahm Crusades have endorsed eharmony.
Zoiks, that's enough for me.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Aha! Well, that certainly explains their creepiness.

[ehrgeiziges.livejournal.com]

There has to be some other reason why they won't allow people to use the word "fat."

I think society tends to lean towards the fact that the word "fat" is too degrading. I guess others would call it "robust."

Who's to say that a man or woman wrote in to say that using the word fat was too degrading for the site?

You can only please part of the people, part of the time. :(

[keryx.livejournal.com]

That's really kindof my point - venturing out into these sites was like... whoa, Middle America is so very not me. And disturbing. And anti-fat.

[chubbyninja.livejournal.com]

it would be totally awesome if they emailed you back and said "oddly enough, only one other person has ever complained about the banning of the word fat, so we took an interest and found that he is a bazillionaire feminist harvard grad with a passion for dance and has seen every movie ever made. Here's his link, go forth and fall in love, and make many smart little fat fat fatties."

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except it'll turn out to be you, lying about your income, education & cinematic experience. :)

[chubbyninja.livejournal.com]

you overestimate the time id be willing to spend for such a pointless, though excellently thought out prank...

im really more of an idea guy with stuff like that.

[puzzlement.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's so that people can't say "no fat people need apply": ie it's to stop them describing other people (negatively) as fat, rather than describing themselves as fat.

[enchochada.livejournal.com]

I had to send a guy on OKCupid a message the other day reminding him that it said 'lesbian' in my profile and that his heartfelt promise to woo me wqas falling on stony ground. That said, I have seen some hot (wo)men on Nerve, and many of them have seemed quiye intelligent, so don't give up!

[enchochada.livejournal.com]

I should add that all of them could spell and type much better than I can, too!

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually interested in finding a date currently by any means (see, it really is a research project!), but I recall also seeing some hotness on Nerve. I suspect I'd go back there in future.

[hope-persists.livejournal.com]

check out planetout.com. i'm pretty sure you can choose either or both (or all) genders there, even though it's a queer site (or i guess because of it). i'll be interested in what you think; i used to use it many years ago.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I just zipped over to check it out, and their sign up gives you the ability to post a variety of genders and preferences, but the search is still man/man, woman/woman, woman/man. How odd. I mean, how do you categorize the people who don't categorize themselves into a gender for search purposes?

my sources tell me

[luguvalium.livejournal.com]

http://www.mate1.com (which I never heard of before), has an "either" option. http://matchmaker.com allows you to check male & female for searches.

[riotkat.livejournal.com]

next I want a full report on speed dating. GO

[keryx.livejournal.com]

If speed dating were readily available & cheap here, I would totally do it. The idea of trying to dislike someone in 8 minutes or less sounds fun.

[riotkat.livejournal.com]

I know they do it in Richmond, I can't remember the website. I would be oh so tempted to join you on speed dating.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

You find me a speed dating place, and I'll go. Unless it's going to cost me money. Cause I can freak most people out for free.

[riotkat.livejournal.com]

here is what I found with a google search
http://www.singlesinthecity.net/Main/index.html
http://richmond.friendsearch.com/dating/virginia.htm

[luguvalium.livejournal.com]

http://richmond.cupid.com/ advertised speed dating, but I see no events currently scheduled for Richmond.

[varsil.livejournal.com]

My suspicion is that the reason for the ban is that they got tired of people sending in complaints about profiles that said things like, "No fat chicks".

Course, I'm not a big fan of the modern ethic that says that you have to prevent people from saying anything that might offend anyone--especially on a dating site. Personally, I'd much rather that any idiot who wanted to put up "No fat chicks" on his webpage could announce his idiocy to the world, and thus prevent any fat or sensible women from having to deal with him. Similarly, it'd be much better to see some racist fuck putting up "No kikes" (or whatever) on his profile than having to find out he's a racist fuck in person.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

That's my perspective, too. If you want to use 'fat' (or anything else you might take to saying as a slur) as an insult, that just lets me know in advance that you're an asshat I shouldn't bother speaking to.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

PS - Did you see this: lj-feminist proves you and me both right on the sexism against men front. That is, some feminists have the sense to recognize that sexism can be found in situations that specifically seem to attack/affect me (I'm right!), and others... um, spend a fair amount of time debating semantics (You're right; the generalities just confuse people!).

Also, you should read the comments to my comments, where I suspect I'm about to get banned from the community for arguing the sexism (even using their prejudice + power definition) of "tiny dick" remarks.

[varsil.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I'm heartened a bit that there are people agreeing with you, and disheartened by the fact that there are people for whim what you had to say isn't blindingly obvious, but instead taken as an attack. And even more concerned about the fact you might get banned for speaking your mind earnestly and honestly in a board that should theoretically value open discussion.

But hey, let's look at the grand history of social rights movements, be they racial or gendered.

In the beginning, you have a cause; a problem that needs addressing. And in the beginning, you have oppression. At this time you will get a very few brave individuals who stand up and make a difference.

Once they start to make headway, you will get a movement, when various people who suffered under the oppression but lacked the firm character to stand up at the beginning signing on. This is where things start to get rolling, and this is where you see the real backlash, where supporters are getting targeted by organized establishment groups.

After the movement starts making real gains, you get an action network, where the structures established during the movement phases are used to exert power to try to solve as many of the existing problems as they can, and to achieve parity.

After this, you will get the original, wiser individuals who started things either dropping out because they have achieved their goals, or had already passed out of the movement for other reasons (for instance, old age). The moderates join them, and what you have left is the institution, a bureaucratic entity that exists solely to further itself. At this point it is no longer a force for good, but merely a cancer--a mutation of what was once a healthy and necessary system into something that will grow endlessly, consume endlessly, and destroy everything in its own name.

At this point you will see a reaction, which will come about via the same pattern set out above.

Mainstream feminism has degraded to an institution. It is being attacked by a reaction (not a backlash) that is trying to correct many of the insanities spawned by an organization whose sole purpose is to justify its existence.

I'd love to pretend I was one of the great people standing up in the cause phase, but I'm not. That started awhile ago. Now is the movement, which, when it comes down to it, is where shit really starts to get interesting.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I agree with some of this in theory, but I certainly don't consider lj-feminist to be the mainstream feminist movement (even inasmuch as one single mainstream feminism can even be pointed to). It is, for the most part, composed of women learning about feminism still - some with strictly academic experience, some activists, and some who've vaguely heard about the idea of feminism. They're trying to be right-thinking, but in doing so sometimes set forth rules without everyone in the community fully agreeing or even understanding them.

[varsil.livejournal.com]

The fact that there's such a thing as "right-thinking" in the debate is horrific, really. The established modes of thinking are corrupt, and need to be opposed, as does anything when it becomes an ideology instead of a set of ideas. It is like a religion, where people are told what to believe, and that independent thought on the issues, except along certain pre-defined lines, is heretical and wrong. It's all about the need to simplify the debate to put it within the abilities of the everyday person to handle--the everyday person who is incapable of sitting down and seriously trying to understand an issue, who is incapable of understanding issues that are shades of gray, that have no answers that will fix all of the difficulties. The people who are incapable of avoiding hypocrisy just because their moral reasoning is no such thing, not a series of universal ethics, but instead a perverse framing of each issue in terms that make it sound moral, like a parrot taught to quote Mill when it wants seed, and Ayn Rand when it doesn't feel like performing a trick.

There is no answer for this problem, this is just a fact of the way people think, the fundamental flaws inherent in the average human. This is why Ghandi was killed by his own followers, and why a feminist forum feels the need to tell its readers what is the Doctrine, and what is the Heresy.

I dream of a day in the future where feminism does not feel the need to ask "Is prostitution good or bad?", but instead asks, "What can we learn about prostitution, and how can we use that learning to make the world a better place?"