11/27/2013

Out of Line

Story Sent in by Rob:

I found Helene during a weird time of my life. I was considering swearing off women for good when she popped up as a suggested match on my dating site. I wrote her and she didn't write back for a few weeks so I thought she was just going to ignore me. But then surprise, surprise, she wrote me back! And actually seemed interested! I suggested a simple first date: coffee and a walk down to the town pier, where a little carnival was going on.

Coffee went fine. Once we made it to the rides, though, she was as argumentative as anything. I wanted to ride the little roller coaster they had set up. She wanted to go on the ferris wheel. I said, "Fine, let's ride the ferris wheel," and she said, "Not if you say it like that."

I had said it like normal. I don't know how she wanted me to say it. I said again, "Let's ride the ferris wheel."

She said, "No. I want to go on the roller coaster now."

So excellent, right? Both of us wanted to hit up the roller coaster. But when we were near the very front of the line, she suddenly ducked out of the line. I thought something was wrong, so I followed her. But once we were both out of the line, she turned to me and said, "Hurts to miss your chance to do something you want, doesn't it?"

She was playing some kind of stupid mind game and so I went back on line for the coaster. "What are you doing?" she asked me.

"Going on the roller coaster. With or without you."

She trembled and said, "You can't do that. Do you hear me? I refuse to let you do that!"

I suggested to her, "Go ride the ferris wheel. I can meet up with you after." I didn't really want to meet up with her after. I wanted to ditch her for good. But she just stood there and stared at me the whole time as I waited on line, climbed aboard the roller coaster, and rode it.

When I stepped off, she was waiting for me. "Are you insane?" she asked me.

"How was the ferris wheel?" I asked her, fully knowing that she hadn't been on it.

She gasped and slapped me, right in the face. I slapped her right back! Hey - equal treatment, right?

She played drama queen and clutched her face like I had crushed her skull. I took that as my cue to leave. Never heard from her again. Thank God.

30 comments:

  1. Whoa. I don't even know what to say. You definitely did not have to slap her. And geez how old are both of you? Also you couldn't ride both rides? And...oh never mind. I give up.

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  2. He's lucky he didn't get in all sorts of trouble for slapping her in broad daylight, but she obviously had no right to slap him either.

    This whole date sounded like 2 kids in a sandbox fighting over the shovel.

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  3. That was pretty dumb, slapping her.

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  4. My faith in humanity was just restored a little since I wasn't the only one appalled by the fact that he slapped her back...

    Nothing detailed here is the action of a man.

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  5. Ugh, I feel gross just reading this. Entitled crazypants lady leaps immediately to assault when "insulted"? Guy pouting about giving up on women (*cough*niceguyalert*cough*) decides reciprocating physical assault when he's not at risk or in danger is the way to handle things? Yeah, let's all knee-jerk together over this pile of reaction-bait.

    Today's the day: Steve, you will never be more right than you are right know. Both these jackholes are a waste of skin.


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  6. Really? Her slapping him was perfectly jusitifed but him slapping her wasn't? And he's the monster?

    You guys make me sick.

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  7. This way this guy tells this story, he sounds like an immature jerk. I'd love a rebuttal to see what actually happened.

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  8. No one said her slapping him was justified. Neither of them were justified. I'm a firm believer that unless youre at risk of significant physical harm or your life is in danger, you absolutely do not need to hit back. A hissyfit slap hardly called for self defence. What a pair of toddlers.

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  9. It sounds like both the OP and his date were perfectly matched. Both of them were immature people who enjoyed escalating tactics of retaliation over trivial annoyances. I bet this is how the Israeli-Palestine conflict initially started...

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  10. It sounds like both the OP and his date were perfectly matched. Both of them were immature people who enjoyed escalating tactics of retaliation over trivial annoyances. I bet this is how the Israeli-Palestine conflict initially started...

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  11. Well, I for one feel satisfied by the fact that he slapped her back, because yes, equal treatment indeed. I get really irritated at the "a man should never hit a woman" mentality, because gender just should not matter. Neither one of them was right, but she was more wrong for assaulting him first.

    That said I do find them both irritatingly passive-aggressive. The response to her ducking out of line, certainly, if not before that, should have been "All right, this has been fun, have a nice day". But of course then we don't get any stories.

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  12. Any chap who plays the "it shouldn't matter if a man hits a woman, because equality!" card is either an idiot or a monster. It does matter, it's not equivalent, and there's something fundamentally dangerous about anyone who thinks it's OK.

    Also, the OP doesn't need to swear off women for good - it appears they're already making the correct decision for him.

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  13. I like you Andrew P. Street. ;)

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  14. Ugh, spoken like a true MRA Ankh.

    And seconded Tanette :)

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  15. View of a monster:

    Andrew, how do you know that it is not equivalent? What if she is a body builder, and he does not even weigh one hundred pounds? You simply *assume* that she is helpless / vulnerable around men for the simple fact that she is a woman, a sexist assumption indeed. The rules must be applied *consistently,* and no mentally competent adult should be allowed to think that he or she is above the law or exempt from the same rules that everybody else has to follow. :)

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  16. That, Christopher, is arse. And the argument that treating someone identically is the same as treating someone equally is also arse.

    A man striking a woman is not an isolated act: it's part of a larger culture of violence in which the victims are overwhelming female and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly male. I'm in no way saying this woman was justified in slapping the OP - she was totally out of line - but saying that slapping her back was justified because "hey - equal treatment right?" reminds me of guys who say "well, *I'd* love it if I was sexually harassed at work!"

    Pretending that hitting a woman is some sort of (literal) blow for equality is a big ol' steaming load of bollocks, and any chap who wants to argue wah-wah-wah-but-men-wah-rights should just save time by investing in a large red flag to wave in the face of anyone who takes an interest in them.

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  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. With paragraphs:

    Andrew, please cite the evidence that victims of violence are mostly male.

    Neither one of them should have struck the other. He wasn't adopting some MRA stance, he was just giving her a taste of her medicine.

    Only a seriously fucked-up person of any gender would wish to be sexually harassed, or say so. But I think you're really stretching to make that comparison.

    OP was wrong to hit her, be she was a passive-aggressive jerk.

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  19. be she = but she
    And he was also a bit P-A.

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  20. I agree that two wrongs do not make a right, but riddle me this, Andrew. If he had struck her first, would it be "okay" or "less bad" for her to strike him back? If so, why is it befitting for the woman to be held to a different standard? Nobody should take it upon himself or herself to retaliate, but my point is that if the authorities were ever summoned to deal with such a dispute, a woman that is guilty of the exact same crime should not expect preferential treatment for simply being a woman as it will (as explained by Deejae) encourage her to do it that much more.

    I respectfully disagree with your assertion that the primary victims of violence are women. The information is readily available that every year, worldwide, many, many more men are murdered than women. If it is a man's primal instinct to act violently towards women, why didn't primitive man just kill all of the women as an easy food source? The reason is that there is an inbuilt mechanism inside the brains of males that prevents them from harming their females. This mechanism *must* exist for the survival of the species, and it can also be observed in chimpanzees (the most genetically similar species to us). I also believe that violence against men is reported less since men are expected to "be a man about it" and solve their own problems, especially if the perpetrator is *just* (in the minds of the authorities) a woman. I also believe that men see little use in reporting violent women, believing that authorities do not typically view women as real threats. :)

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  21. If somebody hits me, I'm going to hit back. It has nothing to do with rights, equality, or who deserves what. If you hit me, I'm going to hit you, and I'm going to keep hitting you until I'm convinced you're not going to hit me any more. Neither party "should have" hit the other in this instance, but as the aggressor I blame her VASTLY MORE than I blame him.

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  22. Well, he could have just shaken her. :)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPboeNKMngc

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  23. Andrew, it sounds like you've been spending way too much time in walled-off liberal echo chambers where they talk about "privilege" and "victim-blaming" and "the patriarchy." Or god forbid, even the "kyriarchy." If somebody on your chatrooms actually mentioned the kyriarchy, that's a sign that you're out on the liberal equivalent of Pluto

    Let me be the first to welcome you to the real world, where you actually need to back up assertions with data, and where blithely dismissing other people's opinions with comments like "that's arse" isn't likely to gather you the ton of favorites you expected from all your like-minded friends. Can you smell that sweet atmosphere? That's LOGIC, baby! Breathe it in!

    (To everybody else - for the record, I think the OP was vastly immature, and I do not condone hitting women, but I do believe in equality about all things, and I REALLY dislike when people like Andrew come in being rude to other commenters while spouting beliefs based on empirically unproven axioms.)

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  24. Ok, I usually just lurk, but I want to weigh in on this one. I agree that slapping is assault and it is not acceptable regardless of gender and regardless of whether it was in retaliation or not. Not returning the slap would have been the right thing to do, not because he's a man but because it is just wrong, she was wrong to slap him in the first place just because she didn't get her way and her doing it first doesn't make it right for him to retaliate.

    However, I hate the idea that she thinks that kind of behavior is ok and would be allowed to get away with it, reinforcing that it is ok for her to slap men but they have no right to slap in return. I don't think "because equality" is a good excuse, but if she thinks slapping is ok, she ought to be prepared to take what she dishes out.

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  25. Sorry, been out of here for bit: sorry, Wolfie, you're right. Women really have had it too gosh-darn good and I've been making up all those stats about violence against women. You know, like all those men getting gang-raped by women in India. And how police files are just heaving - HEAVING! - with case of poor, defenceless men being attacked by violent, entitled women who are determined to keep men down. WHEN WILL MEN FINALLY GET THE RESPECT THEY'RE DUE?

    And I know women are scary and have different parts and won't even sleep with you when you want them to and everything, but honestly: if you've done as comprehensive a job as you appear to have done thus far at ignoring the reality of gender inequality, then you've already decided that evidence isn't enough to help you form your opinions.

    To make clear: hitting someone is not OK. Also, pretending that gender doesn't matter when people are hitting or being hit is being deliberately ignorant. And any chap who pretends otherwise is merely letting everyone else know that they're a risk.

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  26. Aha, I knew my diagnosis was correct! It's the traditional war-cry you hear on liberal forums when somebody points out the flaws in their logic, "WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ!" And naturally anybody who disagrees with you must be a misogynist or bigot, because nobody decent would EVER disagree with you for other reasons. You are one of the ideologically pure, and therefore you carry the heavy burden of being our morality police and lifting us from the shackles of our ignorance and savagery.

    Funny story about that, actually - my friend Ryan was participating in a feminist forum, and when she disagreed with some of the opinions she got told repeatedly that she was a misogynist who ought to "check her privilege." Apparently liberals don't realize that Ryan can also be a woman's name.

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  27. Yes, wolf, ALL liberals. Sounds like someone who'd be friends with you (and tell you about her interactions on a forum) would probably need to check her privilege just as much as you need to.

    Let's forget equality for a moment, and forget MRA (for a lifetime, hopefully, ugh.)

    This is a dude who spends an introductory paragraph talking about how he was going to give up women "for good." Gives off mad #niceguy vibes. And how does this nice guy react to an irrational woman who slaps him? He slaps her back? He sound like a great partner. Totally shouldn't give up on women. They're missing out.

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  28. Meep-Moop, this argument has nothing to do with whether the OP is a good person. He isn't. My contention is that Andrew P. Street is a dick ALSO. I'm not defending the OP is any way, and in fact I explicitly stated that upthread.

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  29. Also, I already checked my privilege, and it's totally fine - it's right where I left it.

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