OPENING CAVEAT: this is purely a rant about my own experiences as a not-rich leftist cis man in a mostly liberal city trying to date women. I cannot speak to any other experiences but mine.

I’m an occasional poster, mostly lurker here posting on a burner acct cause I don’t want to get at all personal on main.

all that out of the way….I am in my mid thirties, living in a large city, strongly leftist (maybe not by hexbear standards but certainly those of….virtually everywhere else), and holy shit does straight dating fucking suck in the 2020s. or at least it has for me.

over the course of my adult years I have rejected one way or another pretty much every structural advantage cis white men typically enjoy (especially higher income) in search of somewhat more ethical ways to get by. I quit my old “real” (bullshit) career and switched over to physical labor work that lets me completely unplug and helps me stay (relatively) fit but also keeps me perpetually on the edge of broke. when I tell women what I do there is a total incuriosity about it, as opposed to when I had a relatively well-paid bullshit career with a ladder - that, strangers can respect. now I scrape by but I no longer have panic attacks wondering what the fuck I’m doing. a personal win that has nevertheless rendered me a lot less dateable in the eyes of my peers. I am not imagining this change in perception, I don’t think, nor did I anticipate it. I guess I should have.

that’s when I even get to the stage of chatting someone up, mind you. when I walk into a small venue or party surrounded by strangers, to steal a line, “I do not light it up.” a single man (or at least a single me) at a social gathering or event is like a fucking wandering fart. (I have described this phenomenon to a couple of female friends and they didn’t disagree.) I guess this helps explain the enduring “wingman” concept but p much all my friends are partnered women I would never dare ask to help me in that way.

I’m slightly below average height which rules out dating basically all women over 5’7 due to idk internalized misogyny or whatever (ftr I would have absolutely no problem dating a taller person if they were attracted to me, and in fact was with someone significantly taller for several years, but since the advent of the apps I get the sense I’m getting filtered out altogether, whether on an app or in person). I know there are a lot of jokes about this but it really is just statistically measurably more difficult in my experience to date women as a short-ish guy (unless you’re rich I assume).

in theory I could end my misery of abject singlehood by submitting myself to the mercy of The Apps - I met my last partner there a couple of years ago after a fucking shit ton of swiping - but I am too full of spite to consider going back right now. I hate hate hate using them, hate the feeling that I am entering a highly competitive meat market in which I am clearly a below average cut due to the above mentioned reasons, hate being reminded every time I open them up. also as mentioned I’m fuckin broke and at least as a man, ime, you gotta pay money to make them usable/useful (AKA shoot enough shots to even get a response before you hit the paywall).

that’s all beside my philosophical/political objection to using them which is that I fuckin abhor having to give my extremely personal information to some evil company. that’s why I have tried to manufacture as many scenarios/activities as possible to meet ppl IRL, but it’s been a couple of years of this with barely a hint of a spark anywhere.

here’s another major problem specific to my age bracket and gender: I emphatically DO NOT WANT to try to date significantly younger women, but ime they really do seem to make up the majority of women interested in dating a man my age who lives the way I do (that is, sans any sense of upward mobility or interest in “traditional” ways of doing things).

lastly, I wanted to add something about the cis aspect of all this….most of my friends and associates are women and nb folks, and virtually all of them are some flavor of queer. I’m not really, or certainly not enough to comfortably identify that way. it really seems like all the cheap and no-cost speed dating events and mixers I’ve spotted, or at least the ones that would theoretically be good for meeting other leftists, are queer-centric or queer-exclusive. great for you folks! not very helpful for me tho…

also before anyone chimes in with “it’s cool/ok/fine to be single” or any variant thereof….I’ve already spent major chunks of my adult life, years at a time, on my own. I’ve reaped all the benefits there are from singlehood, and I’m grateful for them, but I’m just so fucking lonely and it gets harder every year.

thank you for entering the leftist cis man rant zone. I invite other hexbears to share their grievances as well. I’m not really looking for advice tbh just wanted to yell somewhere

EDIT: shout out to all fellow hexbears struggling in this area I very much like you all!

  • TraumaDumpling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    its not ok or a good life to never or only rarely have your sexual and emotional and intimate needs met. not every person can just be ace comfortably and its frankly ridiculous to imply that you have to either permanently repress your sexuality, desires, and needs or else you are an incel.

    • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      jesse-wtf

      Maybe it’s not a healthy state of mind to measure your self-worth in getting your dick in someone. Back in my day when dudes in high school were getting into all kinds of rapey situation in order to get laid and out of fear of loneliness and we called it toxic masculinity or something. Did something change in the last two years?

      Edit: I’m not even fucking ace i just know that the earth doesnt revolve around my fucking sex life. Really, fuck me for not getting myself into a depression spiral over this.

      • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        no, the “fuck that” is for telling other people just to accept our lot. It’s not about my self-worth, it’s about whether or not suffering through life is worth the pain, and if you could peer into the future and tell me i would live decades without any companionship then fucking put me right into the ground.

      • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        JohnBrownNote’s original comment saying that partners are the only way to get “peers who actually care about you” is not correct. But platonic love is not romantic love. I think it is entirely reasonable for alloromantic/allosexual people to want romance/sex in their life and to feel bad, even to be depressed, without that. (This may not help them find romance/sex, but that’s a practical matter.)

        • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          You’re right but

          This may not help them find romance/sex, but that’s a practical matter.

          Is what the most important aspect of the whole problem is and why “stoicism” is actually very important and why “it’s okay to be single” has to be explicitly said, especially to young people, especially to young lonely people, especially to the people who are snapped up by the right.

          Anyway im gonna disengage from this thread because i was just pissed at first but im starting to spiral now.

    • TheDialectic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      I agree that society should have some way to keep the edge off. Sex workers as thereputic services would be something Interesting to see a healthy society try. However we know our society I’s deeply flawed so we have to kinda limp along.

      • TraumaDumpling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        i was thinking more along the lines of addressing stuff like housing access, food insecurity, public transit, medical care, education, and non-profit public social spaces, and any other ways to fight capitalist alienation. i don’t really know what to think about sex work especially under hypothetical socialism, its something so far removed from my reality or desires, so i don’t really take a strong stance personally. obviously persecuting people who do sex work doesn’t help anyone, but i would hope it would be unnecessary in a more egalitarian, socialist society.

        • TheDialectic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          That is all the requisite of having a healthy society. You are right that it is getting a little close to angels on the head of a pin to imagine it. Still after the revolution I would be down to do my part and be cool and fun and the center of attention and to help some comrades have a nice time. I have enjoyed situations. there would be a section of the population that would always be down for a little adventure especially if they were safe and free to experement.

      • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        i feel like this would be solved without sex work with better coordination mechanisms and destruction of patriarchy. There’s few people inexperienced/annoying/unattractive enough that you couldn’t find some other inexperienced/annoying/unattractive person to pair off with. Right now they don’t because

        1. sucks to use an app mostly full of hot people that don’t like you, so they leave
        2. objectification of women means men “get” something from sex; sex for pleasure is a labor parallel to sex for reproduction. Hence highly-gendered sex work for hundreds of years
        3. there are more male “bad partners” than female because of socialization under patricentricity. this means no-strings sex is dangerous for women

        So sexless men search and find nothing (or resort to economic coercion) and sexless women don’t search. We see healthier sex “economies” under socialism, e.g. GDR. I think that when people can fuck without getting stalked or hurt they will do so freely.

        • TheDialectic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          This trend is observable. Even here in the great Satan if you find yourself in a sex positive community so much of people’s behavior changes. It is one of the first little ways I ever experienced a better world being possible.