Did Seanbaby really say the quote on AManIsAlwaysEager?

A Man Is Always Eager

I'm guessing TRS is more the place for quotation discussion, but I figured this question was too urgent to wait on the TRS backlog for.

Anyway, I did a google search of an excerpt of the page quotation, and all that comes up is stuff from this site, and stuff from a page that quotes this site.

Lex Logic put the quotation there. At best, he/she got the wording wrong. At worst, he/she made it up altogether. I think we should look around for Seanbaby's exact words on the matter, to see if Lex Logic had sound reason for thinking Seanbaby said what the quotation says he said.

He paraphrased it a little, but yeah, Seanbaby really did write it. The line was from a Final Last Word article of Sean's that ran in a magazine called The Wave. The online magazine went down and took all of his work with it, but —lucky for you— I saved it before the archive disappeared from the web. Here it is:

"If there’s one thing men need, it’s for women to think we hate them. And thanks to two Sex and the City writers and their book, He’s Just Not That Into You, millions of them now do. It’s a book that helps women gain the understanding necessary to give up on relationships instead of inventing excuses for the man. The clinical term for this is, “Face The Truth, Girlfriend!”

The book has been overexposed for several weeks now, and according to an unofficial poll of women in my area, it is totally true, and they can’t believe I’m making fun of it. But before you send in an argumentative letter, I’m not saying that it’s all wrong. In fact, I’ll sign a document stating how helpless women are against the signals we complicated and mysterious men give off, if it makes you feel better. Women who want to empower themselves by giving up on disinterested men are welcome to do so with my blessing.

It amazes me that so many thousands of female readers are willing to pay $20 for 165 pages of different prompts for the word “duh.” For example, if a man doesn’t want to sleep with you, he’s not interested. On the scale of condescending advice, this falls somewhere between “Don’t Get Into a Van with a Mustached Guy Covered in Blood” and “Don’t Stand In Front of a Van Driven by a Mustached Guy Covered in Blood.” If a man doesn’t want to have sex with you, of course he’s not into you. That’s not so-simple-it’s-brilliant; it’s just simple. If you make a clear offer for sex and he says no, he’s gay or married, with a decent probability of being a space-monster-in-human-suit.

At the risk of sounding like a best-selling author, I’m going to make a stupidly obvious statement: Men always want sex. The single rule we have about sex is that we only have it with people we’re attracted to, and to be honest: that’s a loose guideline, at best. However, we also know that trying for sex at the wrong time means it’s never going to happen, so for a man not to openly insist on sex is more a polite gesture or dating strategy than a statement of disinterest. Let me assure you, if you’re a woman and you’re with a man, he’s waiting for you to say go. It doesn’t matter if he’s a handsome millionaire and you’re a mail-order bride with a hump – women are completely in charge of when the sex happens and what it entails. The only control men have is how long we apologize afterward.

Any book trying to create a rule system about interpersonal relationships has to oversimplify things. The book can’t account for a man acting aloof because he’s seen too many clever dialogue sequences about the appropriate number of days to wait before calling a woman back, or the fact that he’s trying to avoid looking clingy and desperate. Everyone wants dating to be simple, and it will be once we’re trading humans for food in the war-torn future. Until then, I think we should all deal with relationships on a case-by-case basis. People are more complicated than catchphrases and stereotypes, especially when they’re in a dating situation and any tiny misstep could lead to celibacy.

The whole point of dating is to get to know someone on an individual level so you can interpret their ludicrous actions based on their personality, not your prejudices or some cute set of rules a douche-y book rammed into your brain. If some poor woman is clueless enough to need to read this book, teaching her cynicism is just going to make her stupid AND miserable. That’s time better spent performing a puppet show about how the Easter Bunny is a lie."

edited 11th Feb '13 5:51:05 PM by BigRobotBil

Since the page has been corrected and the quote properly attributed (Thanks, Bil, you're aces for taking care of that!), and is both pertinent and appropriate to the page, I'm locking this thread.

edited 11th Feb '13 6:04:55 PM by Madrugada