Elle Beau ❇︎
3 min readJun 29, 2023

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I haven't read much you've written, but the little bit that I have seems to come from a place of victimhood and encouraging other men to feel that way too. How exactly is that helping them? Dating is hard - for almost everyone. Rather than uncovering some of the misconceptions and shining a brighter light on what could potentially be taking place that is making it harder for everyone, you seem to want to just create a zero-sum binary. Here's an example:

You mentioned that with some women you find that you are having to do all the talking and they just sit there responding to what you say but not really pulling their weight in the conversation. OK, maybe some of those women are entitled in some way, but have you ever considered possible other scenarios? A lot of men expect to drive the conversation on a first date (or for 30 years). In fact, too many of them spend the entire time putting on a show as if they were a used car dealer trying to sell you on their impressiveness and only wanting to talk about what they are interested in. All of this without ever asking the woman about herself or really trying to get to know her. I hear women complain about that every day as well. Sure, not all men do that, but an awful lot of them do it.

How about the fact that different people have different personalities or styles when getting to know somebody new? How about the fact that many women probably think, based on their past experiences, that this is what the man expects from them? How about the fact that patriarchy teaches women from childhood how to be accommodating and often punishes them for taking up space or showing agency? Any number of dynamics could be taking place, but you just jump to the assumption that women must be sitting back out of entitlement. I mean, maybe you're the one that doesn't know how to ask the sort of questions that really draw her out and get her engaged?

My objection is to you taking something that is complex, and oversimplifying it by leaving out large chunks of relevant information so that you can run your narrative. I have no problems at all with you noting the ways that dating is hard for men but not when you completely skip over the ways that it's hard for women and without noting that some men poison the well for the rest with their terrible, entitled, narcissistic, sex-entitled behavior.

The term Incel was coined by a woman. There are plenty of lonely, under appreciated women out there, just as there are men. Pretending like any woman who wants a man is perfectly able to find a good one with no problem is just factually not even remotely true. I know a handful of perfectly acceptable looking, smart, kind, funny, got a good job women who are single, not because they want to be. There are literally dozens of women like that on Medium who write about just that on a regular basis. Setting up these false narratives about how men have it hard and women have it easy isn't helping anyone. Dating is hard for nearly everyone - sometimes for slightly different reasons, but nonetheless.... Your binary zero-sum outlook isn't helping things. More than one thing can be true at a time; not every dynamic is exactly what it looks like through the lens of your perception and past experiences.

I honestly do hope that you are helping men who need it, but I think you could help even more if you got them to truly see women as human beings and not adversaries by acknowledging some of the things that women also face in dating. After all, safety is never a concern for a man on a date. He's never worried that she's going to drug his drink and rape him. That is a common fear for women. I could go on, and on, but I'm going to stop here, and perhaps write something about this instead.

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Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

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