Originally published November 2022.
Once, not long ago, I told the truth on the internet. The way you can tell you’re telling the truth is when the people you want to help agree with you and the people you want to stop hurting the people you’re trying to help have a big problem. Men who are making the dating space a reeking cesspool set aflame really had a problem with me telling the world (or like a few thousand people) they were doing that, while the women who read my essay raised a glass in my direction.
Typically, if I receive a notification saying that a traditionally male name has left a comment on this essay, I delete the notification without reading it, they do tend to be repetitive. But today, for some reason, the Universe made sure to send me something to write about. I received this comment at approximately 11:47am today Central Standard Time:
Look at this goldmine.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that you should have to have a license to use the internet, can we focus on the fact that someone who doesn’t show his face is intent on insulting mine? As usual, may whatever hurts my feelings make me money, and even if it doesn’t actually hurt my feelings my skill sets involve weaving donkey shit into Egyptian cotton so let’s swaddle this motherfucker, hmm?
The juiciest part, my absolute favorite morsel of this insult and many that have come before it, is that it’s lying. It’s not lying because in reality I’m attractive, though I fucking am, it’s lying because it’s perpetuating the false narrative that it’s a woman’s responsibility to be beautiful. We must be beautiful to be worthy of a life free from verbal abuse, and not just beautiful, beautiful enough (or whatever attribute someone with a collection of Gatorade bottles in his room wants to focus on today) to “make” a man want to be with her. It’s a woman’s responsibility to present a desirable package to the male species as a whole, and if she doesn’t, that’s her fucking fault and she shouldn’t be shocked by the insulting comments, she should expect them—because it’s a man’s right to judge a woman however and whenever he likes. Anything less than a man’s ideal is akin to a pile of warm feces on a sidewalk and she will naturally be treated as such. By the way, she’s not allowed take offense, or we’ll report her to the relevant social media governing body for bullying even though we bullied her in the first fucking place, ugly bitch.
Partnership, through the narrow lens of someone who owns one towel, only belongs to women who publicly present perfection, perfection as outlined by a different gender who would prefer its retinas were never offended by anything less than a lingerie model. Sorry, a thin lingerie model, you know how “inclusive” brands are getting now, gross.
I guess I’m just not enough, eh friends? I’m not pretty enough to deserve the love and companionship literal billions of people, with all their types of faces, have already found. What a shame! Guess I’ll just get in my bed, which no one is farting in, and sob while enjoying an abundance of peace and freedom. I haven’t tripped over a man’s shoes, keys, or ego in 15 years what a tragic life I do lead.
If my work to expose how men are actively making life worse for women actively seeking men hit a nerve with this anonymous bumblefuck, to me that is a certain sign I’m good at my job. I’m a threat to the endless supply of women men are free to consequencelessly abuse day in and day out because I’m shining light on how single women don’t have to try and claw their way out of singlehood by making themselves available to it. That’s not actually required to find partnership and dare I say it’s keeping us further from it. We are completely allowed to live a full, valid, valuable single life that is not consumed by dating and searching, and connect with people worthy of our affection naturally, instead. Marcus, if you hadn’t guessed, ain’t worthy.
Oh for heaven’s sake think I’m ugly! By all means! I look in the mirror every day and see me and I’m never disappointed unless I’m in a dry climate. I also never rely on outside influences to establish my own opinions of my physical self. As if I was put here for your gaze? I wasn’t put here for the pleasure of others, I was born to prevent terrible men and the dating industry from taking advantage of single women. Do you have as firm a grasp on your purpose? Or is that grasp reserved only for your dick as you watch the toxic, violent porn that pulls you further and further away from reality and anything you might grow and heal enough from to make someone your own in real life? Pity.
To insult me with something as subjective as physical appearance is a waste of your energy and a jolt to my creative inspiration and I suppose for that I thank you. I always wonder what people who leave these comments think will happen after. Do they imagine me crying on my couch, researching plastic surgeons? Do they think insults promote silence? From writers? I might be single because I’m ugly but you’re definitely single because you’re dumb as shit.
The only reason someone is EVER single when they don’t want to be is that they haven’t met their partners yet. That’s it. And while I’m quite confident that there’s nothing about me so abhorrent as to keep me from the future meant for me, if commenters like this don’t make some hard evaluations and changes, I’m not sure I can say the same for them. The ugly that’s on the inside is worse.