this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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[–] obrien_must_suffer@lemmy.world 118 points 1 day ago (11 children)

It's a sad reality, but women literally risk life and limb by meeting a strange man. Dating platforms are crawling with predators, when one is identified it can take weeks or months to remove the account. Be patient out there gentlemen.

[–] KombatWombat@lemmy.world 19 points 12 hours ago

You risk life and limb crossing the street. It is reasonable to take some precautions like looking both ways or waiting on a walk signal. It is not reasonable to assume every driver will swerve into you when they see an opportunity.

Take care to prepare for the worst for your own safety, but don't assume the worst in others.

[–] West_of_West@piefed.social 98 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I had a friend that used to bring all her first dates to the bar I tended. Just in case.

That's a good strategy. The first time I met my wife in person, she arranged to have a friend call and check in and give her excuse to bounce if things weren't' right.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 16 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (4 children)

Wait.... Because so many of them turned out to be predators?... On the first date? Like it was THAT common?

How many times did you have to step in and stop things?

[–] sundray@lemmus.org 48 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

You've only got to be wrong once.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 15 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah it's the whole poison M&Ms thing... Would you keep eating if you knew just one might kill you.

But I guess IRL dating still happens, so we clearly do have a drive to persist and try. Story of humanity I guess.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 3 points 12 hours ago

It's so irritating. What right do humans have to keep existing? After murdering most of the world and creating a hellscape.

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[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 18 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

The stats on these things exist.

But nobody likes to talk about them, because they don't line up with the 'men are all evil' narrative.

Women are way more likely to get assaulted by someone already in their life than a random stranger. That stat makes people VERY uncomfortable. Much harder to imagine your uncle or your co-worker will assault you than some random guy on the street...

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Noticed you left out "partner" there buddy.

That's usually the #1

[–] KombatWombat@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Well yeah, but presumably if you have a partner already, you aren't going on too many dates with strangers.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 11 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

People you’re on a first date with count as people in your life, not as strangers in those polls, iirc.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

No, not generally, no.

It means your immediate and extended family, people you live with, people you've known and interacted regularly with for 2+ years... people who you have had a consistent relationship with for some time.

And also these aren't like... 'polls', in the derogatory sense of a dubious or poor quality one.

They're crime stats, and academic reviews of them.

The public image of rape is of the proverbial stranger attacking a woman in an alleyway. While such rapes do occur, most rapes actually happen between people who know each other. A wide body of research finds that 60–80 percent of all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman knows, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and only 20–35 percent by strangers (Barkan, 2012). A woman is thus two to four times more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a stranger.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-socialproblems/chapter/4-4-violence-against-women-rape-and-sexual-assault/

(This is a bit old, but the citation for Barkan 2012 is a literal Criminology textbook, used to teach Criminology... it keeps getting updated and revised, but I am not able to find the entire text of the most up to date version available freely.)

A first date is a stranger, I guess possibly unless this is a first physical date after a prolonged long-distance relationship.

A boyfriend, husband, or ex... is not a stranger, in the sense of a person you have no substantial relational history with.

.........

Also, if we are talking about domestic abuse, violence committed by people in a substantial relationship, toward their partner:

IPV is common. It affects millions of people in the United States each year. Data from CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) indicate:

About 41% of women and 26% of men experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported a related impact.

Over 61 million women and 53 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html

(You may note this page was last updated before DOGE did its DEI purge of online US gov data, looks to me like this survived it unaltered, I've been using this page as a citation every so often for years when discussions like this pop up.)

So yeah, this is obviously a big problem for women... but more than half as many men have been victims of that first, very serious category of IPV as women, and something like 7/8ths as many men have been psychologically abused as women, by a partner.

When you take into account that genrerally heteronormative machismo dissuades men from reporting psych abuse, and that... many places in the US still don't consider a woman forcing a man to have sex with them against their will... to even be rape / SA ...

...yeah, I mean, the proverbial 'win' probably still goes to men for being just overall more likely to do IPV, but the margins of that 'win' are way more narrow than most people seem to think.

.........

Another factor that is very prevalent to IPV that is rarely emphasized by society:

A whole lot of relationships involving IPV have two guilty parties, both are abusive (like, legally, often criminally), the entire relationship, both parties to it, are toxic.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

That lines up well with all statistics I have read on that topic.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Wouldn't that depend on the quality and source of the poll? Like in academia when there's a publication with a poll (generally called a survey) - they usually publish a methodology section which states how things are being defined/asked.

Methodologies between surveys aren't universal, so I don't think it makes sense to speak of "all polls".

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Obviously. The majority of them that I’ve seen group people into friends, acquaintances, strangers, partners, colleagues, and family. First dates are acquaintances.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Nah, if it's a first meeting surely that's a stranger. Like those researchers are using a flawed methodology if they've assumed everyone tells the truth about themselves online. Clearly a flawed idea. Doesn't sound very academic to me.

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[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 21 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

I've heard total horror stories from exes and friends. First date weirdos and creeps are absolutely a common thing. Never hurts to be safe, especially in such a non-obtrusive way!

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

I feel like weirdo, creepy, and predator, are three different terms. I kinda like weirdos, the other two not so much. Predators are the worst.

I think the internet and the collecting of anecdotes that everyone probably has (I have some), can sometimes construct a self-selecting criteria that paints the world to sound worse than it is.

I just sometimes worry that online, or in anecdotes we're using a selection criteria that takes humanity, and make the worst of it stand out to the point nothing is worth doing, no one is worth sparing or dating.

Of course there are unambiguous cases of horrible predators. But here's to the weirdos and even some of the creeps, may your social skills dramatically improve through the stories you ended up in, and may you never lose your way and become predators.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 3 points 12 hours ago

There's some guy out there with a religion that says you are basically the devil, and there is nothing you can do about it.

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I think it was fairly clear from what I said about "horror stories" that I didn't mean harmless and fun weird people.

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[–] West_of_West@piefed.social 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I never had to actually step in for her. She'd just casually mention I was a friend, or introduce me, if things weren't good. Apparently, that settled things down.

We would occasionally get people who couldn't take a hint and we'd tossed them out when there were a complaints.

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[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

So just need to bio-enhance women to be super strong in order to get dates, got it.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 7 points 7 hours ago

All roads lead to dommy mommy

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 18 hours ago (8 children)

Of course it doesn't feel great to think that people are uncomfortable and threatened just being aware that you are a single man who exists in the same environment, but if that's how it's gotta be, how do you successfully communicate that you are not a threat?

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

how do you successfully communicate that you are not a threat?

I don't.
I'm not interested in socializing with discriminating cretins who deal in absolutes and i like my peace of mind.

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[–] MissJinx@lemmy.world 18 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

~~Dating platforms are~~ LIFE is crawling with predators

he FTFY

Edit: Just to add "predator" is not only the psycho that will kill/rape a woman. Any men that do not accept a NO, that thinks they are "playing hard to get", that catcalls a woman in the streets, ta makes an unsolicited comment about their body, that thinks woman are ment to do whatever they want... any of those men are predators.

Any men is a comment away from being a predator. Don't be this man

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[–] nectar45@lemmy.zip 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"Be patient out there gentlemen"

Naahhh...just give up on finding anyone

[–] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (8 children)

Suicide and loneliness seems like the only answer.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Isn't it hilarious that women VASTLY PREFER dating strangers than from within their own social sphere? The phenomenon of "But we're friends! is a cliche for a reason.

[–] mpramann@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Do you have any statistics backing up that claim or is that purely anecdotal/an subjective assumption?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works -3 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

Again, why is friend zoning such a cliche? Because women usually turn down men they've already met.

[–] zeropointone@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Women turn down men they're not attracted to. This has nothing to do with how long they've known each other. There is no such thing as the friend zone, just the you-are-not-attractive zone.

[–] mpramann@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 7 hours ago

Okay, so the latter.

Just because a cliché exist does not mean it's actually true. People that are complaining about a lot on the Internet are maybe more likely to spend too much time on the Internet in general and by that are more likely to have a lack of social skills in the real world.

To counter that anecdotally: in my social circle a lot couples spawned from a previous social connection and there are only a few that meet through dating apps or where a random hook up in the first place.

[–] Mika@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago

Turning down people isn't something bad. It's worse to end up with someone who don't fit.

Friendzone though is most often just not having guts to say that loud and clear.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago

Maybe they turn down men they already considered and rejected? Strangers are still being considered.

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