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Notes -
Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe:
https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11of65g/i_21m_asked_my_friend_21f_to_be_fwb_and_now_she/?sort=confidence
A clearly very socially awkward nerdy literal virgin (despite being 21 years old) guy thinks a cute girl in his study group is flirting with him. He takes her aside privately after a study session and asks her… does she want to be his FWB (friends with benefits)? He reasons that he wants to have fun like many young men and isn’t looking for a relationship right now.
The girl is shocked and taken aback. She turns him down flat and appears uncomfortable. He feels uncomfortable too and apologizes to her and leaves.
Over the next few weeks, she doesn’t say anything to him at study sessions. He tries to make contact again, not to proposition her, but just to resume their friendly acquaintanceship. She tells him directly that she doesn’t want to speak to him. He is hurt but understands and leaves her be. Soon enough, he learns that she has told her friends and extended social circle what happened, and he is widely reviled as a creep. He feels hurt and violated. He laments that he has lost a friend, and now feels like he’s being lambasted for an innocent error, and he wishes the whole thing would just end and go away.
My take on OP is sympathetic. He comes off as extremely awkward and clearly isn’t well versed in the endless myriad of opaque and seemingly contradictory rules of modern dating. He wanted an FWB, and he didn’t understand that the socially acceptable way to get one is to ask a girl out on a date (usually through Tinder), then hook up with her, then either stay as vague as possible for as long as possible about your intentions while continuing to periodically fuck, or to sort of half way shrug after a fuck session and say, “yeah, I’m just really not looking for anything serious right now.” OP genuinely thought he was being upfront and honest with another person, and assumed that he was proposing something mutually beneficial.
Yes, it’s not a good idea to outright proposition a girl to be an FWB in a library. It’s awkward and weird and I can see how it made her feel uncomfortable. But all signs point to OP making an innocent error. He didn’t know any better. When he became aware of his mistake, he immediately apologized, gave the offended party space, and only later attempted to reestablish contact in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He made an innocent mistake and responded in the best possible way.
And Reddit’s response to OP is… calling him a massive piece of shit in every conceivable way.
What I find interesting about the overwhelming criticisms of OP is that they split in two completely opposite directions, but seemingly from the same critics.
On the one hand, OP is relentlessly slut shamed. He is accused of treating this woman like a “flesh light,” of feeling “entitled” to sex, of creepily trying to fuck an acquaintance, of pursuing sex with a girl instead of trying to date thine lady like a proper Victorian gentleman.
On the other hand, OP is relentlessly virgin shamed. He’s an incel, a fool, a creepy moron. He’s daring to try to have casual sex when he hasn’t even lost his virginity because he is SUCH A MASSIVE FUCKING LOSER. OP doesn’t understand that casual sex is only for chads who have fucked a bunch of girls, FWBs are an unlockable perk, not a privilege of the sexually unworthy.
Fortunately, there is a minority of Reddit commenters backing OP up, but it is a small minority. Meanwhile, many more posters are saying that OP is well on the way to becoming an incel or Andrew Tate fan, and unfortunately, they’re right, just not in the way they think they are.
I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.
I feel some sympathy for OP that he's so clueless and has had so little experience or advice that he thought "Hi, we've had some positive interactions in class so... wanna fuck?" would be an acceptable approach.
But my sympathy is limited - unless he's literally impaired (i.e., autism spectrum, and even then, most folks on the spectrum are able to learn some baseline rules, particularly when it comes to asking people for sex), this was just unbelievably stupid.
I've seen a number of posters suggest that he was done in by bad/disingenuous feminist dating advice, implying that women will tell men "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" and that means you can approach a woman for sex the same way you wish a woman would approach you for sex. But I don't recall ever seeing dating advice, even from feminists, suggesting that any woman wants a proposition like "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" That's a relationship that usually develops from mutual attraction and having hung out together enough that clearly there are some sparks, but neither one (claims) to want a "relationship."
(Do I think "FWB" is generally a stable kind of relationship? No, and I believe that very few women really want to be someone's FWB, it's something they settle for while trying to secure a real commitment.)
So this poor guy wasn't ill-intentioned, but he made an absolutely horrible social blunder, one that anyone, man or woman, could have told him was a blunder, and unfortunately he's suffering the effects people usually do when committing a massive faux pas. It sounds like the consequences for him are that she's told all her friends (and realistically, would you expect her not to?) and he's probably sunk what dating prospects he had at that school. This is sad, but unless this becomes a story of him being charged with actual sexual harassment and academically punished (which I'll grant is certainly within the realm of possibility), I don't think he's suffering more than you'd expect. He fucked up, and fucking up has consequences.
I did a quick Google search for the phrase "Women want sex as much as men". On the first page I came across this article titled Science Proves Once and For All That Women Want Sex Just As Much As Men Do. Now, this article is not framed as dating advice, but it is the kind of thing a naïve young man trying to understand female sexuality might stumble across. Here are some choice quotes our young hero might focus on:
"Breaking news: Women like sex. Furthermore, we're pretty cool with having it outside of marriage and we're increasingly becoming more comfortable demanding it include (at least) an orgasm."
"according to a recent survey from the fertility awareness app Kindara, what they want is to get laid — not only at least as much as their male partners do, but actually more often."
"In terms of basic desire, though, most women want more sex than they're having. More than half of respondents said they weren't entirely satisfied with the amount of sex they currently have"
"As the journalist Daniel Bergner described in his seminal 2013 book, What Do Women Want? scientists have begun to uncover what could be "a new, unvarnished norm" for female sexuality, which could confirm that women's libidinousness is, "at base, nothing if not animal." All of that is to say, it's distinctly more similar to men's than was previously thought."
"A study released earlier this year, for instance, found women were as likely as men to be interested in casual sex — but only when there was no threat of sexual violence or of social judgment."
"Women were as likely as men to be interested in casual sex — but only when there was no threat of sexual violence or of social judgment," Hmm, I have an idea. I'll show her that I am trustworthy and nice and nonviolent by being totally honest with her what I want, and I'll show her that I won't socially judge her for having casual sex by acknowledging that FWBs are perfectly ok to have.
NO NO NO NO NO
You know why this is obviously wrong. I know why this is obviously wrong. It is not obvious from first principles why this is wrong. The reasons why it is wrong have to be learned. I would have expected someone 21 years old to have figured it out by now, but do also consider that he was 18 (the age I was when I finally put it all together) when Covid hit. He was locked down while he should have been experimenting.
Also, people vary dramatically in their exposure to information about how dating works. Some people have close knit groups of friends where it is a constant topic of conversation while others have rarely spoken about it with anyone.
Where is the quote from? It's not in the post you're replying to, nor either of the links it contains, nor the OP.
Fixed. It wasn't meant to be a quote. It was just something I wrote and then thought I deleted. I meant to quote something else. I should stop posting so much from my phone.
Ah, pity. I asked because I liked it and wanted to see it in the original context.
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Yeah, feminists have certainly pushed the idea that women enjoy sex (as opposed to the traditional view that sex is something women grudgingly, reluctantly provide in exchange for commitment, and that women who actually like sex are sluts), but like all fraught social interactions, people have to learn how to actually navigate the territory. I feel sorry for the OP that no one ever taught him anything, but I still feel like even passively observing people and popular culture, you have to be pretty socially oblivious to reason from "Women like sex" to "Women like being propositioned for sex by their classmates without even being offered a date."
(emphasis added)
I think one of the big issues in this particular case is that the very same feminist messages we talk about also emphasize that things like pop culture and more generally just modern social norms are irredeemably drenched in patriarchy and thus shouldn't serve as things to learn from. It specifically pushes social obliviousness as the right thing to do; instead of learning how to socialize from observing and experimenting in one's culture, one must follow those aforementioned prescribed rules in order to behave in a truly just and equitable way, lest they be a horrible misogynist. Some people take these messages seriously.
"Don't believe your lying eyes... No! Not like that!"
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This is certainly a problem. A lot of "not being socially oblivious" is figuring out which messages you should take at face value, and which ones you shouldn't.
Also understanding nuance, which a whole lot of people who seem to think the only options are "Yes, asking women to be your fuck buddy is totally appropriate" or "Let's go back to chaperones and all women are virgins or whores" do not seem willing to grapple with.
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