OPINION

HERE’S something I’ve noticed about dating. Women who are rejected after an initial interaction feel hurt and disappointed, but slink quietly away. While many men who are rejected before or after a first date get angry and/or argumentative and try to change the woman’s mind.

This is not a blanket rule. I’m sure there are women who argue, and I know there are men who accept rejection with dignity. But a difference does seem to appear along gender lines.

Take ‘Bye Felipe’, an Instagram account established to highlight incidences of abuse by rejected men on dating sites. It can be shocking, horrifying, and even comic in its extremity, as compliments turn to threats and insults when a man’s interest is not reciprocated.

I have never sent a screenshot to Bye Felipe, but I have been tempted. I was recently harassed by a man I have never met, who emailed me six requests for a date, and then abused me viciously when I turned him down. I have been berated a man for not accepting a second date. And I have been criticised by a man on my own Facebook page for turning him down on a dating site.

And so it was with great interest that I noticed this picture on the internet, posted by Tumblr user Fenrufenrifenny and then tweeted by @mitchberghini:

A 100% non serial killer thing to do is just print this up and put it up all over town with black duct tape pic.twitter.com/jlFV7Yaeoc — Matt Pops Collins (@mitchberghini) March 11, 2016

Here, yet again, is another example of a man arguing with a woman who has rejected him, only this time his argument is couched in faux concern instead of abuse.

“You don’t want a gentleman to walk you to your car,” he writes. “You don’t want a friendly dude to help you carry your groceries … or hold open the door … or crush the life out of other men that would do you harm.”

And then, “…Fine, fear the good guys, I guess we’ll just have to suffer watching you get broken over and over by the scum you think you love.”

His note is disingenuous at best, and completely insulting at worst. For a start, the writer implies that being a ‘gentleman’ — ie, walking a woman to her car, carrying the groceries, holding open the door — should be sufficient to make a woman interested in him. And this is absurd.

Of course, being polite and having good manners are lovely qualities. (Though ‘crushing the life out of other men’? Not so much.) But there are many factors that influence attraction, and they differ from person to person.

Appearance, personality, humour, intelligence, all contribute to whether we like another person. It makes as much sense to berate someone for not liking you because you’re a ‘gentleman’ as it does to berate someone for not being attracted to you because you’re ‘clever’. Attraction is far more complicated than binaries.

What’s more, this man’s note is unbelievably sexist. The writer seems to believe that he is entitled to be found sexually attractive just because he considers himself to be a ‘good guy’. But does he believe that women are entitled to be found sexually attractive just because they are ‘good girls’? Of course not. No man would date a woman he didn’t find physically appealing simply because she helped with the groceries and had good manners.

The bottom line, however, is that plenty of women do like good guys. But here’s the clincher: the man who wrote the note is not a good guy at all. Because good guys don’t berate women for not dating them. Good guys don’t insult other women’s choice of partners. And good guys certainly don’t feel entitled to attraction, no matter how much they walk you to your car and open doors.

This guy is just another dude who berates women for rejecting him. Maybe if he started being a good guy after all, he’d have a better chance of finding the love he wants.

Kerri Sackville writes the blog Love and Other Crises. Follow her on Twitter @KerriSackville