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May 29, 2006
Ruth ... terrified of online sex
What can you expect in the days of social software? People are going to want to, umm, socialise. It's simply another medium, surely, for the sorts of things that people get up to in clubs and pubs and parties. But Ruth Ostrow, whose column in The Australian magazine we've often found extremely irritating, finds it shocking. Even terrifying.
Ruth told lies about her age and breast size on one of those "raunchier dating sites", so, not surprisingly, within a day, she received more than 50 responses from men interested in meeting her. She calls them "hits", but in the circumstances, that's surely not the correct term.
According to Ruth: "The modus operandi is that once you've etablished 'chat-room' contact, you then send photos via the site, then contact details, then arrange to meet. When I asked why, I started getting an insight into the world of cyber-deception. The sender was usually a married man wanting to tantalise and score a date without leaving evidence." Ruth, a former sex and relationships writer, says she was shocked. We're not shocked. In fact we're surprised at the degree of honesty displayed by these married men. Poor Ruth was even more shocked, however, when her partner also posted a profile on the site.
"Though his hit rate was far less than mine," she wrote, "some married women did contact him. But we estimated a quarter of his pursuers were married men!" Ruth says she was flabbergasted by "the level of deception out there in the 'burbs, and in our opinion she gets somewhat hysterical:
What your kids are up to online is nothing compared to what your partner might be doing behind closed doors. Where cyberspace is concerned, "be afraid, be very afraid"!Seems disingenuous to us. Of course people of every sexual persuasion are online, playing the same games they play in the "real" world. And the numbers aren't all that surprising, are they? She says she was getting about 100 hits a week. Roughly half were husbands on the prowl. She says her husband's hit rate was far less than hers. Just how far less we can't say, of course, but let's assume a quarter of hers. If that's so, then her husband might have had approaches from as many as, let's see now, half a dozen bisexually inclined married males.
On the strength of that, people should be "afraid, very afraid"? We've never written about sex and relationships, and our advice - to enjoy whatever you do as consenting adults, mind your own business and let other people mind their's - is possibly simplistic. But we'd suggest you'd be crazy to follow Ruth's. There's some psychological counsellors online, too. Maybe Ruth should get a little help from them. She's clearly suffering from acute anxiety.
Posted by cw at May 29, 2006 11:13 AM
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Comments
Partner might want to cheat on you: blame the internet.
Person of responds to an ad on a dating agency: blame the internet.
Really. While I haven't read the article, she has got to be kidding herself. If the partner wants to cheat, I think the relationship needs to be looked at. Do we want restrictions on newspapers just because people look at the personals:
Man, 6ft, late 30s, GSOH seeks married woman for discreet daytime fun.
More than that, it provides a cheap, non-threatening way for people to make their advances and for her to turn them down. I'd imagine you can specify what you are looking for - something they probably didn't do - so when the married man replied to her husband, he might have (perhaps not unreasonably, I don't know) assumed that her husband was after the same thing.
Posted by: Alex at May 29, 2006 07:38 PM
What fascinates me is that Ruth doesn't seem to understand that by promoting her (fictitious, but apparently impressive) breast size, she was establishing the terms of engagement.
Perhaps she unwittingly, but quite specifically excluded contact from hundreds of single males who were looking for conversation, friendship, perhaps a dancing partner or someone with whom to play bridge.
Based on her column, and her online ad, I'd say that anyone looking for a relationship with an intelligent woman would almost certainly have avoided Ruth.
Posted by: cw at May 29, 2006 08:59 PM
You can meet great, genuine people - including a potential partner online. You can meet liars and creeps, even abusers at work or in the pub. Given these two facts, just what point is Ruth trying to make?
It seems the only thing one could take away from her article is that the Internet is a far more efficient way to go about the hunt, as you can sort through 50 candidates a week without having to go out every night!
Posted by: Colin J at May 30, 2006 09:44 AM