Two quotes about men being rejected by women, one of which meant a lot to me growing up, and one of which moved me more deeply than I expected.
The first, from Stephen King’s classic horror novel Christine, in which the unpopular and awkward Arnie discusses how he found the nerve to ask out the beautiful new girl at school:
…Ned was telling Lenny that he’d asked her out and she’d said no, but in a nice way… like maybe if he asked her again she might try it out.
…
The other thing that got me was that Ned didn’t sound pissed off or… or ashamed… or rejected, or anything like that. He tried for a date and got turned down, that was all. I decided I could do that too. Still, when I called her up on the phone I was sweating all over. Man, that was bad. I kept imagining her laughing at me and saying something like “Me go out with you, you little creep? You must be dreaming! I’m not that hard up yet!“
There were two things that struck me deeply about that passage growing up. The first was the profound decency of the Ned character, complimenting Leigh behind her back on how gracefully she’d turned him down. I’m a real sucker for basic human decency.
The second thing, though, was that heavyweight of a line He tried for a date and got turned down, that was all. That is a transformative notion when you’re an awkward kid who has declared allegiance to the nerd tribe. The idea that one could simply get turned down and roll with it… well hot damn, that was a road-to-Damascus moment. It came in handy, too, as I’ve gotten turned down plenty over the years.
That brings me to the second quote, from Norah Vincent’s marvelous book Self-Made Man, about the year she spent passing as a man to find out what masculinity feels like from the inside. In chapter four, after a lifetime of dating women as a lesbian, she attempts to date women as a man and gets shut down hard. Later, she muses on this:
As Curtis and I said goodnight and walked away, I found myself thinking about rejection and how small it made me feel, and how small most men must feel under the weight of what women expect from them. I was an actor playing a role, but these women had gotten to me nonetheless. None of these interactions mattered. I had nothing real at stake. But still, I felt bad.
So how must men feel when it’s a true encounter and everything in the game seems stacked against them? They make the move, or the women bluff them–without tipping their hands–into making the move. The guys step out (stupidly, it now seems to me) into the space between, saying something irreversible and frank–a compliment or an outright indication of interest–and most of the time the women step away, or laugh disdainfully, and the guys are left with their asses in the wind.
Now, I do think Ms. Vincent overstates a bit for dramatic effect, but when I first read that passage, a chill went through me. The act of empathy Ms. Vincent had performed was one I’d never seen before, and I felt that strange and powerful sensation of seeing one’s own experience reflected back from another’s words.
One of my girlfriends had a terrible experience in high school: she summoned the courage to ask a boy she liked out, only to have him recoil in horror and yell “What are you doing? Boys are supposed to ask girls out, not the other way around!” That’s the kind of thing that leaves a permanent scar on an adolescent mind.
It’s not always as obvious, but we mostly all learn that same lesson growing up: guys have to initiate contact, dating, whatever you want to call it, and women’s role is to wait for this to happen, and then decide whether to permit the contact. It ties in closely with the transactional model of heterosexual relations, wherein women are the gatekeepers of sex. One walks up to a gate, it doesn’t walk up to you.
And yet again, we see this flawed gender model resulting in terrible pain for people in the real world. Always having to initiate is a hell of a lot of pressure to deal with, being socially commanded to lay bare your ego and offer it up to be kicked in the teeth. It’s a pressure a lot of guys can’t handle; they just withdraw and try to make what peace they can with loneliness.
The fact is, when you make that approach, when you lay your sense of self-worth on the chopping block like that, you’re going to fail a lot. Especially if you’re not very good at it. You’re going to be rejected, and rejection fucking hurts. It is damn near impossible not to take it as a referendum on your worth as a human being. Yes, some learn to roll with it, but just because you roll with the punch doesn’t mean it isn’t a punch.
This is an area where I think most women genuinely don’t understand what men go through. I’ve known a few women who routinely take the initiative in going after men, but most grew up in the same culture I did, and learned the same lessons. Those who do pursue men often learn how “No” somehow rhymes with “You’re ugly and disgusting and repulsive and will die alone in a ditch and be eaten by wild dogs.”
I bet some of you reading this think that sentence was an exaggeration, huh?
Part of the problem is the cultural stories we tell, the images we see in TV and movies, wherein the only guys who ever get rejected are bad guys and total failures. There’s no such thing as a basically-decent fella getting turned down, not in the stories we absorb growing up. That was a big part of why that Christine quote hit me so hard: nobody had ever told me that before. Nobody’d ever said that a woman could turn a guy down without him being a loser or her being a bitch, or that a person could take that rejection as something other than a denial of their humanity. Ironically, it was a book about teenagers that gave me my first hint that it was possible to act like a friggin’ adult. That helped me with a lot of the rejection that lay ahead; I’d been told it was possible to deal with the pain, and hoo boy, there was pain.
That pain is part of the origin story of a lot of misogynists. If you think, as it’s all too easy to think, of Women as this monolithic block of undifferentiated Smurfettes, then when you get rejected, when you feel that hurt and that pain, it’s easy to formulate that experience as Women hurt me. Unprovoked and unkind, 51% of the population lashed out and wounded you. From there, it’s a very short walk to out-and-out misogyny.
More musings on the nature and structure of rejection, and some proposed solutions, to come in part two. In the meantime, share your experiences in comments.
Has anyone here ever been given a fake phone number or email address?
@Adrian Smith I think the reason some guys (and particularly some MRAs) seem to have a lot of these experiences is that they insist on going to bars and clubs and places where people are specifically looking to hook up – “meat markets”, as we used to call them – rather than trying to meet people they actually have something in common with and then moving on from there. There are assumptions in your statement that you should consider: Not everybody has workplaces, hobbies, interests, etc. that provide an environment in which there are people you might be interested in… Read more »
Q: What gender is someone who has a vagina, drinks cosmos, and knits?
A: Jungrire gurl fnl vg vf.
…I see no reason that comment would not be well received.
This comment is probably not going to be well received, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway for the sake of representing all sides here. I am young and pretty, and there aren’t many reasons a man wouldn’t want to go out with me based on the “looks alone” assessment most people make before asking someone on a date. (I am being honest here, not trying to brag.) My personality is good, I’m funny, I like to hang out and generally I’m not a bitch. All sounds good, right? Except guys don’t come up to me unless they’re… Read more »
@Orange Indeed… and to be sure, @Gaius I’m sorry for being too close for comfort to being a little bit erasing about your non-binary-identified partner… I just wanted to identify some language that has been frequently used by subersivists to degender trans people of binary gender, and ultimately serves to prop up cissexism.
And yeah… back on topic, trying to play the male role in a male-female dating environment is hell… I’m really glad to be free of a lot of the learned standards that would’ve derailed the two relationships I’ve had before they even started.
I agree with that definition completely, which is why I figured his definition was fitting as I interpreted it as “people who identify as female-bodied are female-bodied, regardless”. With his partner interjecting that she(?) identifies as female-bodied with (occasional?) dysphoria. Though, I admit having an identity in regards to body rather than gender is not a concept I am terribly familiar with… still, I agree surgery shouldn’t be the bar for who and isn’t a woman (or man, for that matter).
And I hate to double post but @OrangeYouGlad For the most part, I agree, but that sort of identification has to be done on an individual basis by the person themselves.
There are trans women who say that non-operative trans women aren’t women… that they subscribe to a degendering model does not mean that I will humour it. As I say in that case: ”
“Surgery does not make you a woman, you already were one.”
Got it. And yeah, that seems pretty accurate, but again, to reiterate, transition should have next-to-nothing to do with whether a trans woman’s body is deemed female. To delineate between those who’re ‘done’ and those who aren’t, is to, on some level, insinuate that there’s a point at which I became a woman that wasn’t during gestation.
That’s my only sticking point, the delay of recognition until transition is complete in a way that dysphoria goes away… I will probably always be unsatisfied with my body because of my height for example, but that makes my body no less female.
@Valerie: Ah! I think I have it. I was using “female anatomy” in two ways: 1). As mental shorthand for “possessing breasts and a vagina” 2). As mental shorthand for “feels one’s body is satisfactorily female as one conceives it” Am I to understand that using the terms “female” and “male” to describe someone’s anatomy imposes an artificial or social limitation on said person, even if that was not my intent? In other words: do the adjectives “female” and “male” have connotations of which I was unaware? Am I to likewise understand that it is wiser and/or more respectful to… Read more »
Noah, yeah, quotes like the one your friend got are the stuff that stays on a teenager’s mind. My personal issues were more complicated and not merely about fear of rejection, but, yes, getting over approach anxiety to a significant degree most and learning how to be “good with women”, to have believe that I am actually worthy of female attention, that *my* attention is actually something valuable that women could appreciate definitely changed my perspective on a number of things. It’s hard to overstate the effect this had on my self-confidence. Sadly, I had to turn 30 to get… Read more »
Well, those are his partner’s words. I’m not sure everyone who is trans/has dysphoria follows the model of identity = anatomy. His definition seems decent to me as it allows for people who experience gender the way you do to say “My body is female to me regardless” and people like his partner to say, “my body is female but my identity is X”?
“I happen to be in a relationship with someone who is anatomically female but doesn’t identify as “woman” because my partner’s body is not in total accord (those are my partner’s words).” I… actually am talking about that explicitly, by your definition, your partner is not anatomically female… Your partner’s anatomy, by your partner’s definition, is not that of a woman, therefore not-anatomically-female. You can say modally-female-genitalia if vagina is for some unfathomable reason too loaded to you. There’s no magical point at which I became female bodied, I always was, but the world spent a lot of time cissexistly-constructing… Read more »
@Valerie, Pardon me for offending — like I said, my intent is to speak respectfully to and of all genders, sexes, and subjectivities equally. I simply don’t know all the words to do so. That being said, I believe you might be misrepresenting me. To quote you: “But to say my body isn’t female because it’s not what cis people tend to construct as female isn’t just erasing, it’s irritatingly inaccurate, which bugs a pedant like me more than anything.” Going back to my original comment, that is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I said: “Were I to encounter a… Read more »
Midnight: “”When I said that men (or to be fair boys in that case) have in the past gone out of their way to make sure I knew they weren’t interested I was thinking of middle/ high school when I frequently had the experience of one boy telling me (giggling) that his friend was interested in me while the friend in question, who was standing next to him, screamed “no, no, no”. “” I actually figured you meant that because I’ve experienced that. Which may be part of my confusion here, I did not realise that was atypical from my… Read more »
Noah, this series is great. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to talk, because rejection hasn’t been much of a problem for me personally–I’ve gotten turned down some and ignored some, but I’ve also had enough success to make me happy. It really bothers me, though, that so many of my absolutely wonderful, sexy male friends are convinced of their own unattractiveness. After high school I turned out to be adequately good-looking, and learned to turn people down politely. (I wish I could go back and apologise to the couple of boys I rejected rudely when I was a… Read more »
“(*Using the term “jerkcircus” to replace “patriarchy,” which is a valid concept, but kind of a misandrist way of expressing it… and “kyriarchy” is kind of overly intellectual for my tastes. Is there an accepted term on this blog, or can I just use “jerkcircus” and be done with it?)”
Kari, a term is born! Whether we know it yet or not, we all thank you, all over the gendersphere. This is superior to all the others you list. Thank you.
@Gaius, my anatomy is female… to say that it isn’t is essentialism. If you like female-identified-people-with-vaginas, only, which are the vast majority of the female-identified, fine. Women-with-vaginas/genitally typical women would work fine, women who present in a way that I read as female, or cis or post-operative trans women… or just women if you like women regardless of genitalia. There are lots of options that don’t repeat the myth of the male-bodied trans woman. But to say my body isn’t female because it’s not what cis people tend to construct as female isn’t just erasing, it’s irritatingly inaccurate, which bugs… Read more »
when i was fourteen, i asked a boy i’d known for years and like-liked for probably about half that time if he would like to go to a dance with me. he was polite in his refusal, but his friends made fun of me for the rest of the year over it. like, the mean girl cliche with the haughty plastic making fun of the inept nerd “behind his back” where he was meant to hear it? yeah, that happened to me with the genders flipped, and it was awful. i never tried it again with a dude, when i… Read more »
Thanks, Noah! Your posts always give me food for thought, and help me to recognize ways in which men are marginalized that I hadn’t previously thought about — or hadn’t thought about very articulately, or in the language I’m used to as a feminist and ally. I bet that the pressure on men to repress their emotional experience also contributes to the stress of rejection — if you get rejected, society encourages you to feel like complete shit, while at the same time forbidding you to express how shitty it feels! I guess that’s why it’s easier for a lot… Read more »
“Jim – thank you. ” You’re welcome. And the rest of that paragraph tells me why you were able to craft that first comment so well – it wasn’t crafted; it was heartfelt. “I find it more interesting how non-straight people handle rejection, approach and the probabilities of their hunt. The risks of cold approach are way greater than with straight interaction and the culture is less understanding and encouraging towards homosexuals expressing their interest. “I’m not against gays but I would not want to get hit by no goddam’ fag…” I kind of have this idea, that stereotypical gay-behaviour… Read more »
OrangeYouGlad – Well, women also sometimes ask men out and get rejected. But on average, they probably experience “passive” rejection (i.e., just being ignored – often enough not just as a love interest but also as a human being) and/ or unwanted harassment while men more often experience “active” rejection (i.e., being told in a hurtful way that whoever they approached is not interested), simply because men are expected to ask and therefore do it more often while women are expected to wait for being asked. Both types of rejection hurt. Also, I don’t know if it helps to illustrate… Read more »
Ah, I was of course, referring to Gale-Shapley solution to the SMP. Not the problem itself.
Well there is also a pretty clear benefit for cis-males who can cope with banging their heads to the wall enough. You learn by your mistakes, handling rejection and failure is an amazing trait to have and eventually, if you are the one moving down in your “preferred mates” list via rejection, you end up being the one who pairs up higher on average than the passive other-gender. The stable-marriage problem is a common example for computer scientists, that illustrates how “initiators” win if other party is purely seen as “selectors”. It’s quite an interesting model. I don’t think the… Read more »
So to sum midnight’s comment up. Yes, rejection does hurt and being a man does not grant you profound insight into the female lived experience just as being a woman does not give grant you profound insight into the male lived experience.
I am glad it hasn’t derailed into a discussion about male sexual entitlement, and the fragile male ego.