The Art of Exposing Douches

As many of you probably already know, I have a second blog that I co-run with Ash from More Than Cheese and Beer called DoucheArt. If you’ve never visited that particular site, in a nutshell, we take messages we receive on dating sites (and reader submissions) that are oversexualized and awful and turn them into kitschy art with a little commentary following the images we post.

This has not always gone over well with male readers. Some comments that we’ve gotten include:

· If you really wanted to help, you could use your time to do so much more.

· Why don’t you just block those guys and not worry about it?

· Isn’t getting revenge on stupid people a little petty?

· Making fun of people who don’t really know any better isn’t productive.

Let me address all those in one big lump. Because they’re all relatively linked and all bullshit.

I’m not sure why the assumption is the only people who send awful messages are stupid, socially inept, and don’t know any better. The facts are that after years of being on dating sites, these messages come from people of all races, ages, socioeconomic classes, intelligence levels, and genders (though from my personal experience, they come from men far more often than women). They aren’t coming from stupid people who don’t understand how to talk to others; they come from people who purposefully send such messages because they have issues. Having issues and not knowing any better are two very different fucking things, and the former doesn’t need to be excused. It needs to be highlighted more often and understood in the dating site context.

See, the thing is…we are trying to help on an issue that far too often goes ignored because so many people feel ashamed and guilty for receiving these kinds of messages over and over again. It can be frustrating, sure, but at the core of it is a very big issue that is ever-present in our society. It’s not about revenge, not in the least. It’s about shining a light on these sorts of messages instead of sweeping it under the rug. It’s about making a statement that this shit is not fucking acceptable, not in the least, and that when a message like this happens, it's evidence of the fucked up views of society manifesting in some asshole with too much time on his hands.

What happens when a man (or woman) sends a message detailing the sorts of things he (or she) would like to do to you without ever having talked to you first is tantamount to sexual assault. It’s not any different at all than a man in a trench coat flashing his flaccid little weewee at old ladies in a grocery store parking lot. That message is sent without respect for the person who reads it and is sent for the thrill of sending it just like the flasher shows off his sad little pecker for the thrill of doing so and not with the idea that it is going to win him a date with double-couponing octogenarians. Blocking the person after the fact is like telling your horrified grandmother to just erase the memory of the tragedy that lived beneath the trench coat AFTER she was flashed. It doesn’t fucking work that way. The damage has already been done.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-v, the criteria for exhibitionistic disorder, one of the paraphilic disorders detailed in the manual, includes the following:

· Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the exposure of one’s genitals to an unsuspecting person, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors.

· The individual has acted on these sexual urges with a NONCONSENTING person, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Exhibitionistic disorder is highly associated with antisocial personality disorder which is characterized by complete lack of regard for others, manipulation, criminal behavior, lying, conning, and impulsivity. Psychopathy is a subtype of antisocial personality disorder.

I provide that information to illustrate that getting aroused by showing off your genitals to random people really isn’t all that different from sending unsolicited dick pics (which happens. often. Some people even try to beat the bots and use dick pics AS THEIR PROFILE PICTURE) and it’s not all that different from sending a woman a message detailing all the perverted things you want to do to her. She didn’t ask for that information. She is NONCONSENTING. The person who sends those messages, as with the person who flashes his weewee, has no respect or concern for the person who sees. He (as almost all clinical exhibitionists are male according to prevailing studies) has no regard for what the other person wants or for the other person altogether. It’s a sick motherfucker who gets online and jerks off while sending a quantity of random women perverse messages. And make no mistake—that is exactly what is happening. It’s not about her or about how attractive she is. It’s about getting off because it’s a thrill to send something like that and imagine the woman’s face when she opens the message. It’s a new era of exhibitionistic disorder that needs to be studied for future inclusion in the paraphilic disorders of the DSM.

And when you get right down to it, this is all an extension of rape culture, of the sense of entitlement some men have to do whatever it takes to get off even when the other person has absolutely zero desire to be involved. It’s about the attitude that, for men, women are here for their enjoyment especially their most base pleasures and that we, women, really don’t have much say in the matter. The Internet has made this mode of thinking (and yes, I know, #notallmen) even easier to capitalize on because there are relatively NO consequences for this kind of behavior and plenty of websites that promote and celebrate it.

This isn’t about revenge as has been said to us. It’s not petty. It’s not about making people look like idiots. This is about highlighting a serious issue that is basically treated, as always, as the woman’s responsibility and her fault. I can’t tell you how many times that Ash and I have heard “if you don’t want to deal with that then why are you on those sites?” like we’re ASKING FOR IT just because we want to network outside of our very limited local social circles. We’re asking to be abused because we have a profile on a website that is not designed specifically for fetish behaviors, hookups, or casual sex but for dating and getting to know people? Right… I’m tired of being told to just ignore the messages and block the person because in the end, that dude is sending out dozens more to dozens more women who all have to deal with it themselves. I’m tired of being told to report it (like I don’t) when I know each and every person who gets reported just makes a new profile. I’ve gotten messages from the same guy who always talks about how much he wants to dominate me with his 10 inches from at least half a dozen different profiles over the last few years.

This needs to be treated like the serious issue that it is and while we sometimes write from a humorous point of view on DoucheArt we do maintain that the Internet community needs to be more aggressive about this issue. The scariest part of this is that sexual offenders often escalate in their crimes. A person who starts out as a flasher or as an Internet scumbag who sexually assaults women with his explicit messages may very well end up a repeat sex offender as the thrills of *just* flashing recedes and the person in question needs more and more to achieve the same state of arousal.

And, even when the person is not messaging a detailed list of all the things he wants to do and he sincerely propositions a woman in the first message, it's still that same sense of entitlement that makes him think it's okay to do so. We really don't fucking care if you have a huge dick. We really don't care that you want to suck on our tits. We don't have any desire to meet you for drinks and a little fun because you want to show our clitorises a good time. When you have no respect for us on a dating site, why the fuck would you respect us when we said "no" in person? And by then it's too late, isn't it?

So, are there really bigger issues I could tackle or more important ones or more than I can do on my “silly” little blog? I suppose we could always do more and strive to be better, but I’m quite proud of what we’re trying to do here and will continue despite the naysayers.

This is another Sunday of Confessions with More than Cheese and Beer (link above). Please feel free to check out all the other submissions and see all the tales of revenge that should follow. Oh and Please feel free to check out this funny older post of mine involving the time my son got revenge on our cat here.