A friend of mine, who still uses dating apps, wanted a way to weed out the people she wouldn’t gel with. She had something along the lines of:

You should *not* go out with me if you are… a Tory or “not political”

As a fellow woman of colour, I get why my friend wrote that. Let’s face it, politics – as in the institutions that determine our laws – affects us whether we like it or not. It is completely valid to not want to invest your precious time dating with someone who has opposing beliefs to you about the way humans should be allowed to live their lives. And it’s valid to want to go out with someone who cares enough to educate themselves and create an informed opinion, rather than stay wilfully ignorant to avoid emotional discomfort. If you don’t like her statement, then fine. Swipe left. Move on with your life.

SO TELL ME WHY THIS MAN HAD THE AUDACITY to send her this message:

I think a lot of ‘not political’ people are not party political and based on the current sorry state of the parties, we can’t blame them too much. *White man shrugging emoji*

Wow sir, how insightful. I never thought of that before

When she sent me a screenshot of this interaction, it got us ranting about how men always need to butt in with their unsolicited opinions, as if our tiny female brains weren’t able to comprehend any counter-arguments or nuance when forming our own opinions. As if we need a clever man to come along and tell us to consider this one tiny thing that we’ve been missing all along, and then we’ll magically change our minds! Thank god for the men! Otherwise, how would we know what to think?!

This mediocre white man – let’s call him Jon, because of course that was his actual name – really thought he did something there. Wow, look at him teaching a stranger on the internet about humility and not judging people for their political views. I mean, it was such a hot take; who would have thought there was a current trend of the general public being disenfranchised by party politics? We just assumed that political parties have always been appealing and have done no wrong historically until Boris and Kier came on the scene, and only now it’s all crap and putting people off. Silly us. Guess we were too busy being on our periods to notice.

It’s always the dirty centrists…

Obviously, this man from Hinge was a self-labelled “moderate” and also had his sexuality visible on there as “straight” (which isn’t an obvious red flag, I guess, but it’s so unnecessary on an app where you can choose which gender you see, and just screams late-2000s-no-homo-bro-vibes).

I can’t stand people who “sit on the fence” about important issues – it’s cowardly and I can’t respect it. I think I actually hate “moderates” and “centrists” more than I hate Tories. It’s a disingenuous method of advertising yourself as informed, while not actually bothering to learn anything. It’s usually a term weaponised by the type of people who say they’re “not racist” but think these BLM protests are “too much”.

Being a centrist is a desperate way of trying to label yourself as a Good Person™ without actually having to do any hard work of caring about others. Calling yourself a moderate gives you an excuse to delegitimise any work towards equality as “extreme”. These centrist fools legit think they’ve discovered the correct moral and intellectual answer to the worlds issues, but haven’t even heard of the Overton Window.

They’re really not as clever as they like to think

I once got into an argument with someone from my old martial arts club who called himself as a centrist, before quoting MLK’s “I have a dream” at me, after I described a racist incident I’d experienced.

Seriously?! If this man had even a fraction of the critical thinking facilities he was trying to project to me, he would have known that Dr. King was actually a huge critic of people like him:

[…] Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

This is why I cannot respect centrists.

How do we deal with these men?

My friend obviously didn’t waste her time replying to this man from Hinge. (But I decided to use my time to rant about all of this on a blog instead.) There have been many times I’ve tried to engage these mansplain-y dudes in a discussion, but it’s always a fruitless effort.

Men like this will always think they’re smarter than they are, and they’ll always think you’re less intelligent than you are, especially when you disagree with their political views. I used to try and quote statistics and facts and talk about all the books I’ve read to justify my opinions, but the beauty of getting closer to my thirties is I no longer care about proving myself to people.

Don’t get me wrong, it is always good to be challenged and re-evaluate your position on matters in light of new evidence, but some obnoxious man on a dating app is not going to provide that challenge for you so save your energy and walk away.

Or… you can do what I do when I’m feeling #pettyAF and sarcastically go, “oh my god! I’ve never thought about that before! Damn you’re so clever! I’m glad I had you to point out the flaws in my thinking! I’m just too stupid to think of that myself” and then walk away.

Don’t let the mansplainers get you down, you beautiful babes!

BGD x