Women, I know that most of you have been taught to imply a desire for sex while not outright requesting it. I know that being the one to initiate it gives power to the one who is not asking. That said, we no longer live in a world where ambiguity can be easily tolerated. If your man is dense, and can’t pick up on your signals, you need to just tell him that you wish to initiate intimate adventures like a lawyer would. It reduces the stress on the men who consent actually matters to. This goes both way to one degree or another, but men do tend to be more clear in communicating a desire to engage in intercourse. If you want to take it a step further draw up a little contract for him to peruse. Obtain a signature. Be sure to have a 3rd party notary on standby at all times. The expense incurred could save you a lot of court costs in the long run.

I’m full of wisdom. Anyway, we have survived the day of fools, at least I have. I assume that you all did, but I can’t actually verify that… It is my sincere hope that you all did. I also sincerely hope you survive the weekend and return on Monday for more comic. While I’m at it I hope you all consider becoming a patron, and then become a patron, and everyone is happy. Especially me. I will take your 58 cents and put it toward whatever nonsense I choose. The government will take a quarter of that, which isn’t fun, but we all need safe roads and bridges… And also things we don’t need quite as much… Which I will refrain from naming… In any case I will pile up all the coins that actually do make it to me and lay on them, like a dragon. It keeps me cool in the summer.

Until next time we meet, from my penny pile, I wish you good luck in all your adventures!

24 Comments

Heyo! ?

Oh my

The fools have killed any desire to go on.

No! Bad Mind! *Washes with soap! No BJ for you!

But that’s exactly where her mind was going.

WOW, someone is VERY proactive lmao
I think they’re about to “make some memories” :p

Starter Dragon Kit

I *love* Alex’s face/expression in the last panel. So expressive!
Hm. Do you suppose one of those companies that make acrylic keychain fobs could make one for me if I were to take a screenshot and abstract her from it? Hmm.

Well someone knows what they want haha

April 1st has got to be one of the worst days to die. Honorary mention to “good” holidays, close people’s birthdays etc., but…

…there IS a certain extra something disturbing about dying on April Fool’s Day, yes.

Oh, my!

I have a t-shirt that says “If you’re flirting with me, please let me know” or something like that. Some of us (me) are pretty dense, or just totally unfamiliar with flirting being directed our way.
Anyway, this was fun, and your commentary quite entertaining.

Fun(?) fact! Studies have been done and absolutely no demographic of people has a better than chance success rate when it comes to determining whether women are flirting or not. Not men, not women, not gay people of either gender, not bi people, not even people who have been specifically trained in reading body language. It turns out that the body language women use when they are talking to someone they like is identical if they like them romantically/sexually and if they like them platonically. There is no real distinction between being flirty and being friendly, perhaps on an individual level, but if you are not already familiar with the given individual woman that means nothing, but all of the same gestures people talk about as being “signals”, like smiling, eye contact, touching the arm/leg, playing with their hair, etc. can all be found in friendly behavior as well. Because they aren’t signaling romantic or sexual interest, they signal that the woman enjoys the company or attention of the person she is talking to, but not *why* she enjoys the company or attention, only *that* she does.

The fact that women are vague and ambiguous does not mean we men are oblivious, it means we aren’t mind readers. If she can’t use her big girl words and say what she wants, she has nobody but herself to blame if she doesn’t get it. Women are the better communicators, my ass.

As further evidence, look at the fact that it is a common thing in the lesbian community for women to have no idea whether they are dating or just really good friends, often times until well into the relationship. And that’s when they both know that both of them are lesbians, so they don’t have the added complication of trying to figure out whether they have compatible orientations. It’s because even women have no way to tell when a woman is flirting, not just us men.

You aren’t oblivious, you are human. If someone is interested in you and is too chicken shit to actually do or say anything about it, that is most definitely not your fault. Men have been told to stop hitting on women in public, men have been shamed for misinterpreting friendly behavior as flirting, so now the men who are respectful of established boundaries are careful not to misinterpret things and are respectfully leaving women alone in public and not approaching them to express interest. And yet women are still (by and large, obviously not everyone plays these stupid games, I am speaking in generalities here) putting the onus on men to approach, and are wondering why men don’t approach any more, or why men are missing “obvious” signals, or whatever, or worse, are wondering where all the “good” men have gone because a societal boundary has been put in place that women don’t want to be approached by strange men anymore, and so most of the men who still do approach women are the ones who don’t respect boundaries and thus aren’t going to treat their partners right. But there has not been a cultural shift to encourage women to approach men, to be direct with men, to express their interest in men verbally without ambiguity. Women still play these stupid games, and then blame us when they win their stupid prizes. Or at least that is the impression I get from the discourse on dating I’ve encountered both online and in person, both the stuff made by women targeting other women, and the stuff made targeting men.

This is true. And with the stakes being what they are these days, it’s especially vital to be clear about such things.

We can no longer afford to risk misinterpreting a “signal” when the consequences begin at getting dragged on social media and escalate to job loss or even imprisonment.

Sad but absolutely true.

I got temporarily banned from a game store and permanently banned from a weekly boardgame night hosted at that store because I politely asked out a girl I had been gaming with and talking to for over an hour. We had a lot in common, we had a really solid rapport established, we had good banter going, we had chemistry. I would have been happy just being friends if she wasn’t interested, but I figured I’d shoot my shot anyway because I hadn’t seen her before and didn’t know whether she’d be back. I wouldn’t say I “misinterpreted” anything, because I fully gave up on trying to figure out when women are flirting or being friendly years prior to this incident, rather I figured I like her company, she seems to enjoy mine, and I find her physically attractive, so either she says yes and I get a date and hopefully a girlfriend, or she says no and I let go of the attraction and pivot to forming a new friendship instead (I’ve done that several times before and since, it is not hard, you both just have to be mature about it).

But instead of a simple “no” or other polite rejection, she started screaming at me about how “creeps like you are why women don’t feel welcome in nerd spaces” and “I’m just here to game, not get hit on” and blah, blah, blah. After screaming in my face for a solid five minutes, I was not given an opportunity to defend myself, everybody reacted as though I had assaulted her (probably because she was acting like I had) and I was kicked out, told I couldn’t come back to the store for a week, and that I wouldn’t be welcome at the board game nights ever again.

All I said was “hey, I’ve been really enjoying gaming with you, and you seem like you’ve been enjoying gaming with me, would you like to go out on a date sometime?” Totally normal and innocent question, wasn’t creepy in the slightest. Didn’t make any sexual or suggestive comments, didn’t make physical contact, didn’t move in any closer or change my body language in any way from the how I had been toward her the entire conversation, etc.

The worst part is, a few weeks later I was informed by a friend of mine who had been there that she had been asked out later by another guy who hadn’t been present for that incident, but instead of going off on him like she did when I asked her out, she said yes and they became an item. So it wasn’t even that she had a blanket rule about vehemently rejecting anyone who would ask her out in those circumstances and it wasn’t the venue or situation that made me a creep, but rather the fact that I failed to read her mind to know that she wasn’t attracted to me before I asked, because if a guy she *does* happen to be attracted to asks her out, that’s not creepy at all and totally fine, apparently.

This wasn’t the first time something like that had happened to me, it was just the first time there were real consequences for it. I once was similarly screamed at and called a creep for simply saying “hello” to a woman, I wasn’t even planning to hit on her, was going to ask her about her t-shirt (I don’t even remember what it said anymore, I just remembered being interested in it and wanting to ask something about it).

So I just try not to ask out women I meet organically anymore and limit myself to only women I meet through the apps or at singles’ events, because that’s the only time I know for certain they are “there to be hit on”. Too bad the apps suck and the nearest singles’ events are over an hour away and expensive to attend (plus tend to sell out far enough in advance that it’s really hard to get tickets) so it is really hard to justify going to them.