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Archives for January 2019

Episode #106 – Did #MeToo RUIN Flirting?

January 30, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Did the #MeToo movement change flirting forever? Can men no longer approach women? What makes the difference between flirting and harassment in this day and age?

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS: 

  • The two types of complaints about #MeToo
  • The goal behind the meme that men can’t flirt anymore
  • How men are getting the point of #MeToo wrong
  • The MOST important part of flirting
  • How to avoid being yet another creeper

RELATED LINKS:

  • What Does It Take To Be A Good Man?
  • Perpetuating a Toxic Culture
  • The Difference Between Flirting and Harassment
  • Henry Cavill and Flirting in The #MeToo Era
  • Treating Men Like Idiots Is The Wrong Way To Stop Sexual Harassment

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Am I Leading On My Ex?

January 28, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

This is the first time I (she/her) am making an effort to stay friends with my ex (he/him). We’ve been together for three years, sharing an apartment for 1.5 years. I ended things 4 months ago and moved out 1 month ago.

Since the breakup, he has asked me multiple times in different ways if I could imagine some form of cuddling/sex and I have always clearly said “no”. This was even a source of arguments when we were still together because I hadn’t been sleeping with him for some months…

A few days ago we spent the first evening together as really just friends and just the two of us and contrary to my fears it went pretty nice! We cooked, talked, listened to music. To me it felt nice and friendly, not too close or boundary crossing. Two days later he messages me “I guess this still doesn’t change the fact that you don’t want us to be closer? Sure, we had tasty food, a bottle of wine, listened to some cuddle-compatible music…”

My first instinct: Shit, I shouldn’t have done that! I was getting his hopes up with this atmosphere.

On second thoughts: Wait, I told him a million times that I don’t want to get physical with him. Do I really have to engineer our time in a way it does not get too cozy or send any ‘vibes’? Can I only put on death metal when we’re together so that there won’t be ‘that kind of mood’? Noooooo? Is it simply too soon to be friends like this?

So I messaged him that I feel like I have to state clearly for one last time that I won’t ever kiss him again or anything and that it stresses me out that I have to repeat it.

His reaction (in short): Stop mind-reading me, I was asking a question! Stop projecting your worries onto me! You don’t understand me anyways.

Grrrarg. Am I overthinking this? Am I mind-reading him? In a way I shouldn’t? I have a really hard time understanding his message any other way than “Is there a tiny chance we can fuck now that we drank wine and listened to some mellow music together”? Am I crazy?

Thank you so much

Navigating Muddy Waters

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Parents Like My Ex More Than Me

January 25, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc!

I broke up with my ex-girlfriend “Sam” about a year ago. It was a super serious relationship: timeline for having kids/holidays with each other’s families serious. The official reason for said breakup is that I was tired of long distance (Sam has a temporary position in the neighboring state).

Reality is more complicated.

1. Sam was really insecure about the fact that my ex-boyfriend was my best friend as it wasn’t “normal” to stay in touch with your exes. It got to the point that she banned me from talking about him and refused to meet him and his husband/son when they came to visit. We had planned a trip to the city my ex lived in right before we broke up and I was having panic attacks about bringing it up.

2. Sam had a lot of internalized misogyny from her more conservative, Christian upbringing that led to some judgmental statements about my past.

3. I have some mental health issues that I treat with medication and therapy. They’re well managed but if anything flared up, Sam would insist I find a new therapist because the one I had wasn’t “curing” my issues. She said I was being lied to when I stated that therapy is not a cure.

4. We’d have what I took as “Let’s agree to disagree” moments about X which she’d then bring up in later unrelated disagreements about Y. She’d usually do this in front of others, with a laugh and an eye roll.

5. Towards the end of our relationship, Sam informed me she wasn’t sure how she felt anymore. She wasn’t sure she wanted to move back because there was no guarantee our relationship would work out and she was afraid she was wasting her time with the long distance. She asked me to convince her it would work.

At some point, we had a dumb argument, didn’t speak for three days. I realized I was relieved to have a break from reassuring my girlfriend about our relationship. I was exhausted trying to give Sam a kind of security no one could. I broke up with her the next time we spoke on the phone. After some time, Sam and I started casually texting. I’m able to cope as the emotional stakes were waaaaay lower. I love her sense of humor and I do take pride in maintaining friendships with former partners. I have zero interest in anything non-platonic with Sam.

Sam and my parents/brother have stayed in touch. They became close while we were together and this normal behavior for my family (they’ve stayed in touch with my aunts and uncles’ former SOs). I’ve tried to explain to my family why we broke up but they spin it some way where it’s never anything Sam did wrong in the relationship and that I’m being too picky.

Recently, Sam has pressed me to visit/come see me. My family is ecstatic about this and asked her down for the holidays. She thankfully already had plans. Unperturbed, my parents got her a Christmas present. Not just any Christmas but fancy alcohol. Which they legally can’t ship. So I’m expected to hand deliver it and I’m not sure I’m ready to be in a room with Sam.

I’ve considered the nuclear option but doing so risks damaging the close relationship I have with my parents and brother. I’ve gone with the flow up to this point. I don’t care that my family maintains contact with Sam (okay, I care a little), but I don’t want to be in the middle of it.

Questions: Is there a tactful way to extricate myself from the love fest between my family and my ex-girlfriend? Have I screwed myself by being non-confrontational up to this point? Am I being too picky? Should I have given into my instincts and chugged the 12-year-aged Scotch I’m giving Sam in two days, consequences be damned?

Didn’t Ask to be Santa’s Helper

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Become Someone Women Want To Date?

January 21, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc,

I’m a 22 years old student and I’m currently facing difficulties in my social life. Until the past 1 or 2 years, I was living a very asocial life. Even though I’m an introvert, I managed to get back on my feet quickly and I’m pretty happy with my progress. The problem is, living a big part of my life as an asocial person (Especially the teenage years) has almost permanent effects on my personality. Trying to change them for good becomes a frustrating struggle. Let me elaborate.

Nowadays I’m very good at networking and communication in general. In fact, I’m a talkative person. But when it comes to dating, since I don’t have much experience, I face with lots of problems.

After one or two dates, I struggle too much with trying to find things to talk about and things to do together. But I think I know the reason. A person with a background of active social life has lots of things to talk about because he/she have been to lots of events, met many people, gone to many places etc. But someone like me with asocial hobbies realize that you don’t have any interesting things to talk about, you don’t know much good places to take your date to. You realize how boring you became over the past couple of years.

I’m a guy and I really don’t have this problem in my normal day-to-day conversations, especially with guys since we usually have common interests. I mostly struggle during a date with a girl. I don’t have much experience with dating and I think I became too boring for a girl to spend time with. Maybe I’m too focused on my approaching career and working too hard. I need to take a break and become a more fun person to spend time with. But the process of trying to change my personality is hard. I’m getting tired, but learning a lot at the same time.

Physically, I’m not a bad looking guy but I can be considered as a shy “good guy”, which girls, especially the ones at my age, are not really into. Even worse, I’m very emotional and tend to overthink everything to an extend where it puts me in deep stress and depression. I get attached to a girl very quickly. But girls on the other hand are usually the exact opposite. Since there is always a guy trying to date with them, they don’t really care and go with the flow. This kills me because I care about every little detail and overthink everything just to realize the girl does not even remember my age (or any other basic information about me). The reason is, she knows there are plenty fish in the sea. But there aren’t plenty for me.

There are other side effects of my introvert personality such as not being able to make eye contact. But in short, I don’t know how to date. I want a girl to have fun spending time with me. And I want to be able to transition from casual coffee dates to an actual relationship. I don’t really care about casual hookups, I’m looking for a serious relationship. I know I’m young but I’ll graduate soon and I’m afraid I won’t be able to find the right person.

I fail a lot but keep trying. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
First Time Unlucky

[Read more…]

No, Gillette Didn’t Declare War on Masculinity…

January 18, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Recently, I released a video where I touched on the fact that Gillette released a new commercial that directly addressed toxic masculinity, asking men to do better and the reaction that a lot of people, mostly men, had to it.

As it turns out, I have a lot more to say about it because, well, it’s made people lose their goddamn monkey minds. This is an ad that is literally just saying “hey, men can do better” and people are acting as though this was the announcement that XY chromosomes have been made illegal and having chest hair means that you’re going to get rounded up to camps.

Now sure, there’re always going to be the outrage merchants whose brand is literally “I’m threatened by change and angry at literally everything that’s even slightly different than me”, the ones who had to work to miss the point of the ad because they have one note and they’re sticking to it and of course the people who think “hey, it’s good to be kind to one another” is the sort of thing that people only say for social brownie points and really want to you to not notice that complaining about so-called virtue signaling is, in and of itself, a form of virtue signalling.

Although I have to admit, my personal favorite are the folks who want to bring up the current right-wing boogeyman “cultural marxism”.

sensing a theme here…

I mean, I appreciate it because when someone drops that phrase, they’re signaling that either they’re taking their political philosophy from nazis or 4chan and either way, you no longer have to take them seriously.

And of course, there’s always the folks who basically look for anything to get angry about and reaffirm their own shaky sense of masculinity by throwing around “faggot” and “soy boy” to the point that you could write a troll-farm bot to do it for you with 100% accuracy.

Because let’s be honest here: the outrage isn’t just disproportionate to the supposed offense, it’s overblown to the point that if all you did was look at the comments on Twitter or the YouTube channel, you could be forgiven for thinking that the video was about drowning puppies.

When Is An Attack Not an Attack?

But part of what makes the — let’s be real — manufactured outrage so beard-stroke chin-scratch unusual is how much they’re having to work to create things to be angry about. It’s one thing when randos want to fling shit around like a roid-rage gorilla, but there are folks getting angry about things that are literally not in the video. So much so that this is starting to feel like some weird Bird-Box “makes you see your worst nightmare” experiment and they’re the only ones who took off their blindfolds.

Because if you strip out the bots and handed-down talking points, what you get down to are a lot of dudes telling on themselves. You get a whole lot of people who are taking calling out men who are behaving badly as a personal insult. Because if you’re not one of the guys who does this… then why does this bother you? The people who are calling this an attack on men or traditionally masculine behaviors or upbringing are complaining that being told maybe don’t harass people or let your kids to beat the shit out of other kids is somehow telling them to not be men.

For real, I’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’ve gone through to try to find anything that could be considered an attack on good men as a whole and while granted, I’m biased, trying to call any of this an assault on masculinity as a whole or telling men to be chicks requires the kind of reach that would impress Reed Richards.


A number of people, for example, complain that this demonizes men for approaching or flirting with women. Except there literally is no point where a man is flirting with women. Ever. What we do see are clear cut examples of cat-calling and harassment, with women who very obviously don’t appreciate it. It’s obvious from their body language and from the context of the ad that this isn’t meant to be seen as someone trying to innocently approach somebody they’d like to date.

And there’s literally nothing about it saying that any guy is harasser or rapist waiting to happen. What it does do is calls out sexual harassment and the way that society has encouraged and normalized it with the cartoon and the trope-y sitcom horn-dog.

The same thing goes with folks saying that the ad somehow stigmatizes or criticizes boys for playful roughhousing… except that’s not what we’re seeing in the ad at all. Watch the face of the boy being chased by the mob, the boy being comforted by his mother or the boy who’s on the ground at the barbecue. Those aren’t the faces of youthful horsing around, kids who are enjoying some rough and tumble play. They’re being hurt. Those boys chasing the kid we see running throughout the video aren’t just playing an enthusiastic game of tag, they’re trying to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

And the ad goes out of its way to ensure that we don’t miss the fact that bullying isn’t just physical. It’s not just being beat up on the playground at school. The crying boy being comforted by his mother under an overlay of tweets is a reminder that in this connected age, there’s often literally no escape from being your bullies.

(And if you’re about to say that kids need to toughen up, I might point out that the same folks who’re calling him a snowflake are the ones who’re screaming online about a razor commercial).

The Anger of The Bystander Effect

But if we’re going to be honest, I think what’s bothering people the most is that it isn’t just calling out the bullies and harassers or the folks who think that over-the-top drunkenness is the marker of cool. It’s the fact that the commercial calls out the bystanders. The guys who may not be doing it themselves but who are letting it happen.

Which is honestly, part of what I like about it. The criticism isn’t just at the bully at the barbecue, it’s all the fathers who treat it like it’s normal, who won’t intervene because… well,

 

“Boys will be boys”

 

It’s the fact that the criticism isn’t just levied at the over-the-top dude groping at the maid, it’s the way it’s presented as comedy, with a laughing audience literally being told to applaud. The fact that they call out the laughing is important, because those men in the audience may not be the one doing the groping… but they are signaling their approval. By laughing at it, they’re saying that making women uncomfortable and touching them without consent is socially acceptable.

And that’s important. Because a big reason why so much of this bad behavior goes on is because people and culture as a whole give their approval, both implicitly and explicitly. Laughing at rape jokes, at trans people, gay people or sexual harassment carries the message that this is all ok. And even silence, in its own way, tacitly signals approval. Which is honestly, part of the reason for the pushback. Because the norms and behaviors that this ad is explicitly criticizing can only continue to exist if the people who disagree are silent.

That’s what this ad is doing. It even lays out it’s thesis as blatantly as it possibly can with an excerpt from Terry Crews’ testimony before the senate:

Men need to hold other men accountable.

Is This The Best Men Can Be?

But honestly, the accusation that this is an attack on men and manhood is kind of absurd on its face. Because we see a lot of traditional positive masculinity in here. We see dads barbecuing over the weekend with their kids, dads propping up, teaching and encouraging their sons, nurturing their daughters. We see the guys calling out bad behavior and ending fights and showing respect for others. And we see fathers protecting other people and — importantly — teaching their sons to be brave.

It’s a little disingenuous to say that this is an attack on men when the point of the entire ad is all but literally spelled out for you:

We believe in the best in men.

They’re asking men to be the kind of person that Mr. Rogers knows they could be. And if you see that as an attack… that’s says more about you than anything else.

Now if you want to accuse Gillette of virtue signalling… well, yes, that’s exactly what this is. They’re taking an explicit stance as a brand and saying “these are the values that our brand now stands for”. Yeah, of course money is involved in their decision. They’re planting their flag because it’s good business to be a responsible corporate citizen. They’ve done the math and realized that it makes better business sense for them to ignore the screaming MRAs and promote pro-social masculine values.

Which makes the people screaming boycott all the more amusing; that’s something that would be factored in to the decision to take this stance.

It’s really no different than brands recognizing that using racist tropes and imagery in their advertising is a bad goddamn idea. They’ve put their finger in the air and saw how the wind is blowing and how society is changing. I mean, they literally say this in the ad.

And as much as folks want to try to change the script and call them out for hypocrisy, they’re literally engaging with their own history and sexism in the text of the ad. I mean you can’t really have a more direct commentary on the history of the brand and it’s own marketing than having a bullied kid come bursting through one of their old commercials.

Now yeah, I’m not necessarily crazy about trying to leverage performative wokeness and social change for capitalism, but I’m also a big believer in practical altruism and enlightened self-interest. Brands and corporations do have an effect on social norms and if encouraging better behavior from men is a winning economic strategy… well, hey, I’m not going to let the fact that their motivation isn’t pure as the driven snow get in the way of any good it’ll do to the national conversation.

And on a personal and completely petty level, I have to admit I’m kind of enjoying watching people make a big show out of chucking their razors, razors which they already paid for so hey, they already got your money. And for all the folks saying they’ll never buy Gillette and Proctor and Gamble products again and take their business to companies that appreciate traditional manly men like Dollar Shave Club… well…

Good luck with that.

Next Page »

About Dr. NerdLove:

Harris O'Malley (AKA Dr. NerdLove) is an internationally recognized blogger and dating coach who gives dating advice to geeks of all stripes. Making nerds sexier since 20011

Remember: Dr. NerdLove is not really a doctor. [Read More …]

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