Saturday, 26 December 2009

• "He's Just Not That Into You": I Highly, Highly Disagree

  
  

  
  After hearing a bunch of hype about the book, and seeing that they made a movie about it, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I'd heard summaries that definitely gave me a weird idea of it - basically, it says that if a guy likes a girl, he'll jump through hoops for her and let nothing stop him from going for her - and this appalled me.
  
  After sitting in a Barnes and Noble, and flipping through a few chapters, I felt a loss of faith in the human race overall. I feel as if too many times, women assume that guys don't have emotions, fears, or insecurities. Either that, or women know that, but choose to treat the male gender as a species or breed of animals, and categorize them as lower-class or higher-class, and decide to "weed through losers" in a process of tests, "screening methods", and the like.
  
  We live in a world where, as ModernBunny pointed out once, women are supported, complimented, and have various resources available to them to help them feel better about themselves, to improve their self-esteem. Dove's natural beauty campaign, various Chicken Soup for the Soul books highlighting how women who weren't the "conventional" standard of being beautiful learned to feel worthy, and various various other outlets. Women are taught that they should never be uncomfortable in relationships, and too many times, men are villainized and always blamed for what went wrong in the relationship.
  
  A man who is good-looking is told far, far less often that he is such, than is a good-looking woman. A man is teased and taunted with articles online that try to intimidate him, saying that women size men up in the first 5 minutes of talking to them, or that if his belt and shoes don't match, then it speaks volumes about his character. If he walks into a room, women don't stare or smile and wave. Generally, they take a quick glance and resume their conversation. (Yet they always want him to come up to them.)
  
  Jokes about women are actively rallied against as being chauvinistic, yet cries of "men are stupid", "most of the crimes committed in this world are by men", "all men want is sex", etc, are all just tolerated and left unretaliated against, yet if men make complaints about the things women do at times, they're told to grow some balls and man up.
  
  Many sitcoms or cartoons featured an often-used gag of a man trying to come onto a woman, and having a drink thrown on his face. That's been shown as an acceptable defense to women. If we see a guy walk up to a girl and flirt, it's a commonly associated stigma that there's a good chance she can get away with kicking him in the nuts. Strangely, if that's not what women are complaining about, then they're complaining about why men are pansies these days. They ask "Where did all the REAL men go?", or "why are men becoming so girly these days?", if they're not talking about what scum we are.
  
  Now, what does all this have to do with the point I'm trying to make?
  
  "He's Just Not That Into You" portrays a horribly inaccurate extreme: Men have no fears, insecurities, or lack of self-esteem. If a man doesn't possess these qualities, he needs to "grow some balls" or "man up". But in this world, men hardly ever feel attractive since women are taught to suppress such an opinion. It's commonly said that confident men are attractive, yet it's been hard to be just that way in the face of so many jokes at the expense of a man's self-worth. Because women are told that expressing their attraction towards a man is too "eager" or makes them look "easy", men are left questioning more and more these days if women even like them at all. Yet, men are told all the time that you should give a woman compliments, call her beautiful no matter what. etc.
  
  The truth is, men have PLENTY of reasons in their minds to be nervous or afraid of approaching a woman or taking the relationship a step further, even if the reasons aren't always true - just as women have various fears that they shouldn't be having. The truth is, men are just as afraid that they're going to screw something up as women are when it comes to given situations. Men also fear rejection. Men also fear getting their hearts broken. Men are afraid of being seen as "players" or "womanizers". And once rejected, a man is told to keep going and learn not to take rejection personally - but the truth is, this can drive a lot of us to think that if it keeps happening, something must be wrong with us!
  
  Now, to some extent, the idea of the book goes for both genders - if they're not returning your phone calls, or giving you a cold shoulder when you two are just meeting, that's a sign they may want you to leave them alone. But women, come on - if a man isn't calling you first after the date, or walking across the bar/coffeeshop to hit on you, or proposing to you after a few years, that doesn't AUTOMATICALLY MEAN he's not that into you!
  
  It could mean a number of things: He could actually be shy! He could be speculating about when he should call again, or wanna know that you're as interested as he is. He could actually be concerned about wrecking a friendship ( every man will have been friend-zoned at least a few times and he doesn't want to turn a good friendship into a "friend-zone"). He might want to commit but doesn't know if YOU want to be serious (how much does it suck when you propose to your girlfriend, she doesn't want to do it, and your relationship crashes?). He might think that you're really popular and have a bunch of guys hitting on you, and wouldn't recognize someone like him. You can't just be saying "maybe he's not that into me" as an automatic-catch-all for everytime a guy isn't bold or making his moves.
  
  I have plenty of anxieties when it comes to the girl in question that I'm interested in. I've been burned plenty of times in the past - women used to give all the signals, behave the ways those "articles" suggested that a woman acts when she's interested, and if I made a move, it turned out she wasn't trying to flirt, but was just being friendly, and didn't mean to give off the wrong impression. Other times, they behaved totally normal, acted totally platonic, yet turned out to be angry at me later on because I didn't "pick up on the signals" they were giving. I've also known women who'd be freaked out if a guy tried to ask for her number after the first 5 minutes of meeting her, as that'd give off the impression that he was trying to seduce her. Apparently, not all women "size men up" in the first 5 minutes of meeting them, or test them.
  
  It doesn't take me the first 5 minutes of meeting a girl to decide whether or not I want to get involved. I have no idea how she thinks of men. I have no idea what her family history's been like, what her father was like, what her religious or political beliefs are, what her ways of social interaction are, what her turn-ons or turn-offs are, how many other guy's she's been with, what her interests are, what her media preferences are, etc etc etc... you get the idea. So usually, if I'm going to be TRULY attracted to a woman and consider her dateable, or perhaps relationship material, it's going to take me a few days, if not a couple of weeks of talking/chatting with her.
  
  It highly, highly saddens me that in the process, she's going to think that I'm just not that into her, because I'm not asking her out, or hitting on her, because I haven't yet decided if she's a safe match, and don't want to risk leading her on, or mistakenly fueling her ego and letting her know how attractive she is when the next day, she might turn out to be socially manipulative and I regret having shown her attention.
  
  Various of my friends think that I'm funny, I'm smart, (and dare I sound conceited, they also think I'm pretty good-looking), caring, wise, a great listener, warm, affectionate, and a bunch of positive adjectives. So let me say, I'm no loser. I'm no scumbag. I wouldn't call myself a "catch" (as that word implies a man must be special or rare in comparison to most others, like some trophy), but I'd say I'm definitely dateable. So let this come from me: if a woman were to come up to me, talk to me, take initiative and actually ask me out, I may or may not accept (just as a woman may or may not accept). But I too, would be absolutely flattered, just as a woman would. I too, would thank the girl, just as a girl may thank a guy. And let me tell you, whenever I hear of a girl asking out a guy, I don't consider that desperate. I don't consider it needy. I don't consider it unbecoming of a woman. I consider it assertive, strong, and very, very impressive. (According to "The Rules", I'm not supposed to think that!)
  
  On the other hand, when I walk through a store, and I see that there's a girl inching up behind me and then turning sideways to look at something right after she abruptly (not naturally) stopped looking at something else she was interested in, I find it pathetic that she thinks I can't sense what she's up to. When I walk past a girl in an aisle and I see her take a deep breath - through her nostrils - when my head's past her shoulder, I roll my eyes thinking that she doesn't think I know she's trying to see how I smell so she can make judgements. When I'm talking about a particular interest of mine and a girl goes "OH, I TOTALLY LOVE THAT SHOW/BOOK/SITE", etc, and doesn't even quote or talk about a scene from it, I can tell she's just pretending to like some of the things I do. It wouldn't be fair to "size them up", but let's say I think the chick at the register MIGHT crushing on me and I can't tell. If I ask for her number, she may be weirded out and future transactions at the store could be awkward. If I leave it alone, she may be disappointed. It's basically lose-lose! And how was I supposed to know that I was different from most of the guys who hit on her at work? It seems a bit ridiculous to expect me to just not care about that. Don't women also worry about if the guy who asked her out, is also tapping two other girls on the side?
  
  Now, a good deal of dating advice columns for men say that an attractive woman has to face similar situations like that, everyday - she knows when guys stare at her as she walks through a bar for the male attention, or she knows when a guy walks by her in a certain aisle at the store clumsily that he's into her but afraid to make a move - and what do they prefer? A guy who actually knows how to chat her up. People don't realize that this exact phenomenon happens to men, too - yet why is it that taking initiative is strictly a masculine thing and not a feminine thing?
  
  Maybe there's an explanation for this: NOT ALL GALS/GUYS ARE THE SAME!! I know plenty of women who are reading this must be ready to proclaim "I do NOT size men up in the first 5 minutes of meeting them or think that men are scum! Women are NOT that superficial!" Well, maybe the same principle is happening on the other side: Not all men see women as desperate when they're the ones taking initiative! Not all men are superficially obsessed with the "chase"!
  
  I don't want to get more off-topic than I already have, so let me wrap things up here: Asking guys out, is not always "desperate", or "needy". It's no worse than trying to manipulate him into coming to you. I mean, if you're stalking the hell out of a guy or trying to push it when he's told you he only wants to be friends, then that's basic common sense, but when it comes to taking initiative after some time of romantic/sexual tension between the two of you, it may just set you aside from the rest of the pack - and which girl doesn't like being just that?
  
  Thoughts?
  

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