this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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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.
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?
You've only got to be wrong once.
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.
It's so irritating. What right do humans have to keep existing? After murdering most of the world and creating a hellscape.
If one is sufficiently motivated, one takes one's chances.
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...
People you’re on a first date with count as people in your life, not as strangers in those polls, iirc.
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.
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:
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.
That lines up well with all statistics I have read on that topic.
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".
Obviously. The majority of them that I’ve seen group people into friends, acquaintances, strangers, partners, colleagues, and family. First dates are acquaintances.
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.
Cool
Noticed you left out "partner" there buddy.
That's usually the #1
Well yeah, but presumably if you have a partner already, you aren't going on too many dates with strangers.
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!
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.
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.
I think it was fairly clear from what I said about "horror stories" that I didn't mean harmless and fun weird people.
I think weirdo, basically means we have different standards of behaviour, and/or humour.
Creep, means they wanted to have sex with me and I didn't want to have sex with them.
Predator, means they're stalking or pestering me.
So like I guess I just don't have weirdo "horror" stories (they'd be escalated to creep, horror is creepy or involves predators). But you seem more like you're willing to mix all the terms into a stew of bad. Understandable.
Anyways, thanks for the discussion. 🙏
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.
Oh that's good. Good job!