here is her story….

What I’ve learned pretending to be a man

http://sofiastry.wordpress.com/2012/…g-to-be-a-man/

So, I’ve been posing as a guy online for nearly twenty-four hours with positive results. I am competing against a pool of polyamorous-vegan-feminist-omegas, but it’s still a minor feat nonetheless. A few things I’ve learned:

- Men constantly have to be on. Not only were my initial messages to girls necessarily concise and witty with a healthy dose of de…..tion, but every succeeding message has to be interesting even if – as in most cases – the girl gives you a minimal level of conversational material to work with. It also has to be sensitive to her mood and the changing tone and course of the interaction. As my friend put it, the messaging process goes something like:

Probe –> Response –> Calibrate –> Flirt –> Calibrate –> Exchange numbers

The hardest part is constantly having to be interesting lest you **** it up.

- Women are fickle. Even if a sequence of messages seems to be going really well, a woman will arbitrarily change her mind at any given point if you did not re-calibrate effectively, or her competing options are disqualifying you as a sexual candidate. This trait in particular made me really sympathetic to the hoops men have to jump through when acquiring a girl’s attention, even though most women have nothing to offer.

- Women are boring and have very high estimations of themselves. I mean, I really should say “people” in this case, because having maintained a female profile on such a website, I can tell you that most men (at least online) don’t really know what they’re doing either. The difference is the self-evaluation. Most men undervalue themselves online and most women overvalue themselves. I understand this is a natural consequence of the sexual marketplace, but after you read the literally hundredth, carefully worded profile of a girl touting her intellectual strengths and esoteric pop culture references, it gets EXCRUCIATINGLY boring. The annoying part is that she thinks she’s being really unique with her taste in independent music + film, off-kilter or “quirky” sense of humour (god, that word gets abused) and how intelligent she is (knowledge accumulation is very different from stringing two abstract thoughts together to make an original one). Please don’t get me started on the contrived neuroticism.

Made-up example of something an urban, hipster girl will say in her profile with her thick-framed glasses:

I tend to get lost in my own headspace a lot [focus on her self-absorbed, female emotional content]. Sometimes I ride the bus without a destination in mind. It makes me feel like a single cell in the mass organism of humanity.

I’m studying sociology/gender studies/exchangeable liberal arts program and it’s intensely interesting. I’m contemplating going to grad school and getting increasingly useless degrees [remark that is simultaneously self-depreciating and attempting to be self-aware].

etc. etc.

I can see how having to be in this frame of mind makes men cynical. I’ve heard men previously remark that they use male friends for intellectual stimulation and women for emotional companionship + sex, and now I understand the compartmentalization a little bit better. A high investment/low return interaction does make you perceive women as a monolithic category that don’t deserve much sincerity. I understand that is self-defeating to admit as a woman, but my male persona can’t help but experience it.

While I think it’s important for men to develop charisma and personality, the fact that my profile (which indicates I’m a professional masturbator, who does drugs, seeks casual sex and lives with his parents) gets more attention than a relationship-seeking, professional who is being nice to girls, makes you wonder what ****ed up mechanism is responsible for this.

Real message I just received: Your profile makes you seem charming. And halarious. [sp.]

Case in point.