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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 would seek him out and look him in the eye. If he's a fuckboy he'd get a warning to stay away from my daughter. If he's a social retard, he'd get a primer on dating including a warning about second chances.
You would be very kind. Ordinarily these lessons are taught by peers. He needs you to tell him that as an awkward man he is fundamentally disgusting and transgressive for wanting a relationship - or at least that he is seen this way and that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.
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The traditional perspective of the father on his daughter's sexuality is extremely protective, anachronistic, and colored by psychosexual status games, with incestual overtones. He's the last guy I would trust to have a fair opinion on the topic, like a mother-in-law's view of her daughter-in-law, although probably even more so.
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Only a universalist could ask this. I can simultaneously believe that capital punishment is a bad policy that often unfairly harms the undeserving AND that anybody who so much as lays a finger on my loved ones should die in agony. The emphasis is on my here.
I just think that it is not a very good exercise, because for some, fatherly duties override almost all other moral concerns. The answer will therefore always be maximally protective of the daughter and maximally hostile to any perceived threats or slights. Regardless of the sympathy the threat may deserve in the abstract.
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Tell her to cut him off completely and avoid him wherever possible. Followed by a lecture on Western degeneracy and how we (as a group of people) have our own culture and proud history and most importantly are absolutely not like them at all. Finally ending in a promise that if she desires we (our family) will happily find her a good man from a stable family and a similar belief system to us that she will with high probability be happy with (but first, finish your studies and graduate with good marks).
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I'm going to say something perhaps inflammatory: If I had a daughter and that happened, yes, I would feel some sympathy for the guy who propositioned her, and I would expect her to understand that. In order to explain my position, I'm going to relay a personal experience of mine.
Many guys tend to not have the experience of being approached since they are the ones typically expected to initiate and take on all risk. However, I'm a guy who's had an experience of being propositioned by another guy, and though granted his advance was less direct than "do you want to be FWB" it was done by a random dude in a park who I had never met before (and I was admittedly a bit flustered by it and politely rejected him). My initial reaction wasn't really "What an asshole, fuck that guy", instead it was worry about the fact that perhaps I could've cushioned the blow of rejection a little further. My primary emotion was in fact a feeling of sympathy (and a bit of confusion about how he figured out my orientation on sight alone).
I did not think I should be offended simply because he suggested to me something we might both enjoy, and I did not envy his position. Being the one who initiates is terrifying, opens you up to the inherent humiliation of rejection and could end up with you on the receiving end of a claim of harassment. I felt an obligation to respect that. And while I did tell some people I knew about what happened (which I felt comfortable doing because we definitely did not hang out in the same social circles and in fact would likely never see each other again), I never provided any identifying information that would have reasonably allowed anyone even in his social circles to know who he was off my account alone. I certainly did not go blabbering about how terrible he was and in fact made it a point to stress to people I told that I did not think of him as a creep.
I would expect from any daughter of mine the same conduct I expect from myself. No amount of "but physical strength differences, though" works here, because I am unusually small and thin (I barely weigh 100 pounds) and the guy propositioning me was much larger. Furthermore, any claim that the consequences of unwanted sex for women is greater than it is for me also has to contend with the fact that women now have a huge amount of control over their sexuality even after the act has occurred as they have access to things like the morning after pill. As an aside, it is easier for women to escape the consequences of PIV sex than it is for men (whose financial obligations will be enforced even if the sex was against his will).
And yes, women have a different instinctual reaction to these things than men do because of the historic reproductive risks and costs of sex for women which no longer holds up under modernity. Humans are full of evolutionary baggage that isn't necessarily rational under modern circumstances. However, I expect women to deal with their feelings in a way that doesn't blow back on others who have according to all objective criteria done nothing wrong. Managing your emotions and not capriciously doing things that would cause others harm simply for offending your sensibilities is part and parcel of mature behaviour.
If I'd found out my hypothetical daughter had gone and told people about it, and found out it had blown back on the guy to the point he was being treated like a predator, I would definitely at least be telling her that her actions matter, and that she should have thought twice before badmouthing him in a social group where it could result in actual consequences for him.
EDIT: added more
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I would unironically tell her to cut all contact with him and not do anything to piss him off too much. Things such as gossiping about it.
Not out of sympathy for him but because there are crazy motherfuckers out there and you dont want to be on the wrong side of someone with nothing to lose all the while being the reason he lost everything, justified or not. Not making unnecessary enemies is usually a good policy regardless of who you are. At the very least Id tell her to tell her friends to keep their mouths shut.
Complete social suicide like this makes rapists and school shooters and assaulters.
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This is a leading question because the obvious answer that you want to get ("fuck that dude, you are right to shame him sweetie") is obviously going to conflate people who think OP is wrong because he is not conforming to traditional sexual norms (no casual sex, period), with those who think OP is wrong because he didn't play the game properly (casual sex is fine, OP just went about it the wrong way).
The issue is that if you accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture, OP didn't really do anything morally wrong he just committed a massive faux pas so he doesn't deserved to be permanently ostracised and labelled a dangerous incel. After all, all he did was believe the advice liberal society gave him to be honest and treat women like men.
Most people sympathetic to OP are addressing the fact he is operating in this sexually liberal environment, and judging it on that basis (and finding it hypocritical and treating OP unfairly on its own terms).
This does not mean I think a sexually liberal culture is a good thing. If it were up to me, all these young adults would be pulled away from casual sex. OP would an idiot lecher trying to defile a maiden with premarital sex, and the girl would rightfully scold and shame him for trying to take away her chastity (and I presumably would be the father with a shotgun threatening OP). But that's not the cultural environment this is taking place in, and the girl isn't shaming OP for trying to take her chastity, but for being an incel creep loser.
You can still accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture while arguing that some (mentally sound) people are morally wrong for being interested in sex or relationships at all, or for being interested in certain ways.
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Absolutely based. Under my ideal belief system this dude did a lot wrong and deserves to be punished, but the reasons for that punishment aren't the reasons he's being punished for under modern western sexual degeneracy where Women Can Do No Wrong.
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