I just want to talk at the fellas here. Man to man.

If you do this shit, the women will leave and not come back. I know the incels are going to think that’s typical female behavior, and I’m here to say, no, it’s not. It’s typical for someone, of any gender, to want to exit a situation where they feel vulnerable, and that’s what is happening.

Think of it like this: you end up in prison, and your naked, alone, you have no allies or friends, while taking a shower with about 100 other dudes, and Bubba comes over with a grin saying “you’re awful pretty”. How would you feel? I’m guessing you would want to nope the hell out of there and never take a shower with Bubba in the room, ever again. And that’s natural. You were in danger, you want to avoid that danger. While the circumstances might be different for the women you’re interacting with, that raw emotion, the exact same one you would have felt with Bubba talking about how pretty you are, the feeling that gave you, it’s exactly the same.

Now think, after Bubba made such a statement, what could Bubba do to win your trust to shower next to them again at all? Probably not much. Same deal fellas. There’s little to nothing you can do or say to make them feel comfortable being around you when you’ve done something that inspires that unsafe feeling of danger.

Now, how could Bubba avoid the situation of you feeling like you’re in danger and wanting to get out of there. A reassurance? Like Bubba instead saying “don’t worry, I’ll protect you”… You’re going to wonder “from what?” Because until Bubba spoke up, you had no feeling of danger. How does that make you feel? Well, I would feel like there’s danger that Bubba knows about that I don’t, so now I’m on edge, looking for what Bubba is talking about, and all of a sudden, I’m having the same feeling of danger, just this time from an unknown assailant. That’s not good either. I’d still want to gtfo and not go back. Worse now since I don’t know what the danger actually is. Not only would I not want to shower with Bubba nearby like in the previous scenario, but now I don’t want to be left alone with anyone.

Same deal fellas. By trying to reassure the lady, you imply that there’s danger indirectly; she gets creeped out and leaves to not come back.

So, what’s the right thing to do here?

It’s easier than you think. Treat them like you would any of your male friends. Treat them like a person. You don’t need to reassure your male friends that you’ll protect them, nor do you feel the need to defend them when their “honor” is challenged. Let them handle it, but have their back if they need you… and only if they need you.

Be a friend first, and if something happens that makes your relationship with that person, more than just friends, so much the better. Don’t expect it, women aren’t slot machines, where you put in enough tokens of niceness and eventually you win the sex jackpot. It doesn’t work that way. It never has, and it never will. You can’t force someone to like you, and if you try, you’ll either take any attraction that they might have had for you, and destroy it, and/or simply cause them to feel unsafe and creeped out, and they’ll find a way to exit and never return.

People, regardless of gender, just want to do things they enjoy. If you also enjoy those things, then engage in the enjoyment of those things with the other people who enjoy them. Don’t make it about gender. If, beyond that, you both like eachother, you’ll find a way to spend more time together and that’s when things can grow to more than just being friendly, as long as you’re both agreeable to it.

If you continually obsess over the fact that their anatomy is different, you’ll end up filling whatever negative ideas you have about the other gender, and push yourself so deep into a hole of confirmation bias that you may never recover. Just be people. Treat others the same, as people.

I believe in you. You can do better. Always improving.

You will fall, you will be rejected, you will have set backs. And that’s all normal. It’s a part of learning. You got this.

millions of years of evolution wiring our brains to make sex feel good so we don’t accidentally kill off the human race by forgetting to do it

dumbasses want to play badminton or some shit instead

Well ok.

I have never seen this actually happen and I have a lot of experience with gaming with randos (I’m old and I also started a gaming club in college that had over 75 members with at least 15 of them being female). I’ve been playing MTG and D&D at local shops for decades now and I’ve never once seen other dudes simping or fighting over a girl at the table.

Not saying it can’t happen, nerds are nerds and do often lack social skills. But from my experience (and from what I’ve heard from my female gamer friends), this has got to be a rare situation.

Your best bet is to try and find groups with better ratios of guys to gals. These groups tend to self regulate and give the creeps the boot.

People play fantasy games to live out their fantasies. And for some sad people, their fantasy is to touch women because they act so repulsively no one wants to risk getting close to them.

I’m done with the bars and their drunks, and the apps with the spying, out of school, and don’t date coworkers, the advice given to me every time I complain about the fact that there are no other “third places” to meet women romantically 100% of the time is “get a hobby.” Well, see above. There is no place, women do not want to be talked to anywhere but the bar or apps which ime have been bad places to find long-term companionship.

Can we do something about this? Can we maybe start “bars” where the focus isn’t alcohol but it is socially acceptable to say “hey I think you’re cute wanna go get some damn coffee?”

I always have to remind myself that I was introduced to and raised in nerddom from my godmother. Everything was through the lens of her curated tastes.

So when I hit puberty later in life all the deranged horniness suddenly clicked in me as MY problem since for me it wasn’t normalized. Playing D&D and MMOs just didn’t have that foundation, so I could compare.

Thanks godmother for keeping me somewhat normal. I’ve been often alienated from gamers due to my application of basic respect and sometimes just plain apathy towards women.

Hang out with more LGBT people. If I wanna get laid, I can turn on Growlr and have a dude deliver himself to my basement.

Guy chiming in. I use to go to small, monthly lan parties a lot. Every now and then a woman would show up and 4 or 5 of the average 10 total guys would make weird jokes about there being a female present. I don’t think I ever saw the same woman twice.

Would have been nice if more of the women in mmorpgs I played growing up were like that. Too many guilds were torn apart intentionally by women who damn well knew what they were doing and knew that at least one of your staff members was easy to twist around their fingers.

Edit: For anyone seething, women are people and they deserve respect like anyone else, but they are also people, and some of them are assholes.

This is why a lot of women keep our nerdy hobbies to ourselves and don’t really talk about them much in public.

People get weird.

I’ll save her.

I could never feel sexually attracted to a nerdy girl. They’re somehow even grosser than boys