I woke up in the middle of the night tonight and have been having trouble getting back to bed. As a result, I ended up getting online for a bit. (That makes no sense from the perspective of needing more sleep, but hey, I never claimed to make sense all the time.) I ended up having some guy contact me on MeetMe. He said hi, asked me how I was. I told him I was fine but was trying to get back to sleep and would catch him some other time.
He messaged me back “ok,” then almost immediately followed up with this little gem:
I’m sick of all the women.
My first reaction was “wow.”
My second reaction was “all what women”? Because seriously, I doubt he’s met every single one of the roughly 3.5 billion women on the planet.
My third reaction, related to the second, was “Really dude? Who pissed in your Wheaties and why are you blaming it on all women?”
My fourth reaction, related to the third, was “You really sound like you might be one of those heterosexual men who feel entitled to get something (affection, sex, admiration, whatever) from women. If so, I don’t blame any woman who might’ve taken issue with that or any behavior you exhibited that is rooted in such thinking.”
My fifth reaction was, “You know, I have a lot of female family members and friends who I absolutely adore. I also have talked to and met several women who I don’t know well enough to adore, but think are pretty damn spiffy. I’m offended that you would expect me to diss those women in my life by joining in your ‘women are such total pains’ bash-fest.”
Realizing that any of those statements, if expressed to the guy, would simply result in a protracted argument. That’s definitely not something that’s going to help me get to sleep. So I sent back a simple response:
Just so you know, that statement is pretty much a conversation stopper for me. I’m back to bed now. Good night.
Hopefully he gets the message. But I was so gobsmacked by the whole thing that I had to share my full thoughts with someone. Thank goodness for blogs.
As an aside, this experience reminds me of Melissa McEwan’s wonderful post on finding women likable and how society makes it difficult to do so. I highly recommend it — along with just about everything else she writes. Melissa is one of those women that I don’t feel I know enough to claim to adore her, but she’s gone well beyond “pretty spiffy” in my book, too.