"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

I took leave of my senses and briefly unpaused my account on a dating/social app yesterday. In the few hours I was active again, my profile was liked a dozen times or so, and I received a couple of messages. As soon as I saw the messages, I thought about the reality of the usual awful small talk that leads nowhere, and my flight instinct kicked in.

Being the person I am, the idea of just pausing my account again and having the guys who messaged me see that made me feel bad, which is just foolishness, but I err on the side of being a decent person.

The first message was simply a greeting and an inquiry about what I was up to. "WYD," to be exact. The low effort wasn't in the least bit surprising, but left me feeling zero guilt about leaving him on read.

The second message was from an older guy. It read and was formatted more like a cover letter for a job application, with him signing off with warm regards... The hookup app pendulum swinging from one extreme to another. 😬

I thought I should at least say hello since he had introduced himself and put in some effort, as strangely formal as it was. I said hello and introduced myself with my first name.

To avoid revealing my first name here, I'll just say it's a feminine form of a male first name, but I go by a nickname used by both men and women. By rights, I should be able to introduce myself using that nickname and have it be understood that I'm a woman with a nickname that both men and women use, end of story.

Unfortunately, no, because, well, some people are just dumb as fuck. It isn't unusual to introduce myself to a guy online as, say, Jo, and have a guy immediately question if they're talking to a guy. While this is, admittedly, a good litmus test for seeing how dumb they are, I'll introduce myself as Josephine with a quick little mention that I go by Jo.

Just to make this all as clear as mud, I introduced myself to the aforementioned older dude as Josephine, but that I go by Jo. As in, please do not call me Josephine. Please call me Jo.

He replied: "Hi, Josephine. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

If he were the first guy to do this, I wouldn't feel moved to rant about this. If he were the second guy to do this, I would notice, but I'd still call it a fluke. Since he was the third guy to do it, my autistic brain clocked a pattern.

After a woman introduces herself and makes it clear what her name is and what she wishes to be called, why would three separate guys ignore that?

I've pondered if it's some form of bias. That, because I'm someone they've already sexualized, at least so far as seeing my SFW images and deciding if they'd fuck me or not, their male brains are defaulting to the most feminine name option available.

Whatever the reason is, ultimately, my takeaway is this: It did not matter to them to get my name right. Moments into first encountering me, even with the potential for future encounters and making a good impression on the line, it does not matter what I wish to be called, which is something so...basic. I can't help but ask myself what other basic things will be missed or ignored.

Someone I used to chat to once told me that he could feel me making a case against him from the beginning. I found myself at a loss for words. How could this man, with multiple younger sisters and female friends, not understand that that is so much of what it is to be a girl or woman: Scanning and rescanning all the time to look for danger or all manner of foreshadowing.

As I've been rolling this around in my brain since yesterday - this feeling of hopelessness about men - I couldn't find the words to express how this made me feel. As I was writing this, a chorus of a song popped into my head:

"But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"

I paused my account on that dating/social app again because, the long and short of it is, I don't know how to be an optimist about men. I want to be, and maybe there's my trouble.

The last guy ticked all the boxes the other guys didn't, the boxes other women said should've been ticked in the past before I let someone into my head, and he still abandoned the connection we'd spent several weeks building together. 🤷🏻‍♀️ The only way I could've been more careful was to simply not put myself out there at all.

I just don't have the energy to explain to fellow human beings that the little things matter, like caring enough to get someone's name right the first time you use it. Oddly enough, the failure to do that doesn't inspire me to continue giving someone a chance.