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At the risk of sounding like a giga-autist, why does this standard seem to only apply to sex? If OP asked the girl to be a regular tennis partner, no one would accuse him of treating her like a "wall to bounce a ball off of." If he asked her to play video games with him, no one would accuse him of treating her like an "ally NPC."
I don't get why if a guy wants to have sex with a girl but doesn't want a relationship, it's taken to be demeaning and cold, while engaging in any other activity without some sort of grander emotional engagement is fine. Yes, I understand that sex and relationships are traditionally paired, but I also assumed that all but the most trad among us have moved on from that strict coupling in every possible circumstance, especially for college students who are still trying to figure out their dating and sex lives.
Well, from the person's report about what happened:
It could actually be inferred that she MIGHT possibly have been interested in this guy if he'd just...asked her to go on a date instead of proposing this no-strings sex arrangement.
As a woman, it would imply, to me, that 1.) the guy only wanted me for sex and didn't want to do romantic stuff because...? 2.) he's embarrassed to be seen with me or something?
It comes off like he regarded her as good enough for sex but not good enough to actually be his girlfriend. I'm not sure why the guy thought she'd be more amenable to banging him than to dating him.
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...and then maybe she talked to her friends about it, and her friends were all like "good god what a creep/asshole/jerk/whatever" at which point the school's gossip-network took care of the rest. Girls asking each other "Did you hear about so-and-so?"
Maybe this is another one of those inferential distance moments but to me your and @EdgeCityRed's take-aways seem like the most obvious interpretations.
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Exactly.
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It makes sense if promiscuous women are judged as lower value. Asking someone to be FWB means you thought there was a possibility she would say yes, which is essentially an accusation of being "easy". Having a reputation of being easy means lowering your chances of a long term relationship with desirable men and increasing your chances of getting propositioned by undesirable men. You would suffer all the downsides of having low social value. A harsh rejection would be necessary to clearly deny such an accusation.
I can see how someone learning about sex and relationships from reading feminist leaning sources would mistakenly think its okay to ask to be FWB. Feminists push for a world where women are not judged for their sexual choices. If there's nothing wrong with being easy then there's nothing wrong with just asking politely as long as you calmly accept a "no". In fact it would be asking for consent, which is the only acceptable thing to do before any kind of sexual escalation.
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It doesn't only apply to sex, sex just happens to be the biggest and most obvious example, and the answer is that "because relationships are, by nature, anti-inductive" No relationship is ever going to be about just what you want because the other party always gets a vote, and that vote might very well be "to hell with this".
You ask why it's considered cold and demeaning to want something from someone without making an offer in exchange and I reply that the answer is in the question.
I agree that relationships have an anti-inductive component (even a significant one), but:
The answer is... sex. The girl gets sex in exchange for sex. I think most people, or at least most men, see that as a fair trade as long as both parties are attracted to one another.
The obvious, but often unstated retort is that men and women value sex differently. Both enjoy it on a physical level, but women tend to attach more emotional significance to the act, while men generally take a more casual approach and seem to desire the purely physical aspect more.
Ok, that's fine. It is what it is. But to wrap back around to one of the overriding aspects of my original post and many of the comments... why is the female perspective on sex not only seen as the default, but the male perspective on sex is seen as immoral, at least to the Reddit crowd? Isn't that what happened to the OP? He made a (very clumsy) sexual offer based on the male perspective of sex, but the girl had the female perspective, and shamed him for his error.
Traditional Judeo-Christian morality had an answer to this discrepancy. But I don't think modern sexual mores do. The sensible approach to me is for people to be aware of both the male and female perspectives on sex, and to exercise empathy in negotiations over sex. The Redditor perspective (which I think you are sympathetic to based on what you're saying, feel free to correct me) is that the female perspective should be privileged, and the male perspective should be punished, even if it's touted innocently and ignorantly.
As much as I find much of the rhetoric surrounding the whole "red-pill" and "pick-up artist" community distasteful this is where knowing your market value comes in. What are you brining to the table that makes you think that sex with you is worth the trade?
Honestly as long as people openly vocalise this it is still fine. Sex with you may well not be worth the trade but implicit in even making the statement is an acknowledgement that some people are superior to others while some people are inferior to others. I think over 60% of the West's issues stem from them not openly and publicly accepting this fact (and yes, it is an undeniable fact).
Had the girl said "No, how dare you say such a thing, you are beneath me" that would be a 1000% preferable situation to what happened.
Define "Superior"
This is a "define a woman" coming from a left winger tier response where even if you say something like "adult human female" the next reply is "define female" and then you get into a whole host of exceptions and complexities. And yet, the category "woman" has predictive power and is useful. Same for superior. I intend to make a top level over a reasonable definition of "superior" for humans soon that works around as well as "woman" works as a descriptor.
Matt Walsh's joke/point is that left wing academics and supreme court justices find themselves struggling to answer a question your median African Villager would consider trivial. To that end I think your comment works, but perhaps not in the manner you intended.
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