A Million Little Pizzas.

Tuesdays with Pizza.

Divine Secrets of the Pizza Sisterhood.

Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say Pizza.

I See Rude Pizza.

Good Pizza for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck would have been better. Sorry. It was late.



Alright, let's talk about the Sex Weasels.

Lady Chatterly’s Pizza

The Pizza of the American Mind

All the President's Pizza

The Coddling of the American Pizza.

A Pizza in Full.

The Right Pizza.

The President's Pizza is Missing.

The Pizza of Madison County.

The Satanic Pizza.

Clear and Present Pizza.

Hmm..

Little Pizzas.

No pizza for old men.

The pizza of Anne Frank.

The new pizza therapy.

This is a great place for a selfie:

https://twitter.com/MarkTomasovic/status/1418306558979620869

There have been many discussions here about the arrogance of those people who insist that it's somehow bigoted not to want to date trans people. (Many contrarians would say it's not a big deal even when you don't want to date outside your own race. It's lazy, yes, since many with that attitude don't want to have to learn about racial politics/history or learn ANYTHING about someone who's distinctly different - but laziness, in dating, is only rude when it directly hurts a particular person. Otherwise, it's your loss.)

So anyway, I found something similar.

https://old.reddit.com/r/childfree/comments/opoyyy/has_anyone_ever_had_this_happened_to_them/?sort=old

RANT Has anyone ever had this happened to them….

submitted 1 day ago * by Brave-Examination-37

Me: “I’m sorry. I don’t date men with kids.”

Him: “well then I guess your going to be forever alone, because most men have kids already, and you should really open yourself up to more to give men like me a chance. Not all guys with kids are bad. Some of us are actually really great and we deserve a shot just as much as a man without children."

There are over 450 comments. Some top-rated ones:

"Well he clearly didn’t get the point it wasn’t about him making a kid but you not wanting to parent."

"People take it as a personal attack, when in fact you are only saying that your circumstances are incompatible.
I'm not into long distance relationships. You can be the best, sweetest and most wonderful person in the world, but if I need to travel half way around the world to see you, then I'm not into it. Kids are no different. Incompatible circumstances."

"YES!! I feel like it's such an immature thing to not be able to go 'yeah, this person is awesome but our lifestyles are just too different for us to be compatible.' It doesn't have to be taken as personally as they take it."

"I met a guy that I liked a lot and he liked me back, but he had 3 cats and was a veterinarian, and I'm severely allergic to cats. It was sad all around, but we both knew we couldn't compromise, it was just life incompatibility."

And others suggested that if the man wasn't looking to take a lot more than he was prepared to give, HE'D be more open to dating WOMEN with children. (But, given that stepfamilies are already highly vulnerable to divorce, even without stepsiblings, it's not too surprising that single parents in general PROBABLY try to date people without children.)

1970's rock & fun people: It's kind of cool that maintenance on a Clavinet is such a spectacular pain in the ass.

And worth it, even if it's done better through synths nowadays.

> people who insist that it's
> somehow bigoted not to want
> to date trans

Does that happen?

After 8th grade, romantic selection seems like the fundement of affection, rather than the last redoubt of bigotry.

You like 'em curvy and blond or flat and brunette, whatever. It's your beeswax. There aren't really committees which are going to review your judgment.

IIRC, Amy said something like "well, duh," when trans people find that getting the operation makes them less popular in the dating pool and they get upset over that.

On the other hand, it's easy enough to sympathize with teens who work hard to lose weight, clear up their skin, floss, etc., only to feel bitter and cheated because, after all that work, they STILL can't get a date. (Not that those lonely teens are to blame, necessarily.)

And, in a similar vein, depending on how religious a community is, either a 25-year-old female virgin is too old to get a husband or too old to BE a virgin - and, either way, is considered unpopular. So for her, it's a very harsh Catch-22, especially if she worked hard to abstain in her teen years.

From Ann Landers' column, in 1994:

"I am a female professional and an attractive, loyal and caring 27-year-old 'technical virgin.'

"Most of the men I've dated want sex within the first three dates. When I say I'm still a virgin and plan to stay that way until marriage, my date tells me he 'respects' me. That means I will never hear from him again.

"I learned from bitter experience that a woman can't win. If she sleeps with a guy on the first, second or third date, he figures she's a tramp. If she doesn't, he writes her off as a cold fish and maybe a lesbian."

> trans people find that getting
> the operation makes them less
> popular in the dating pool and
> they get upset over that.

That kind of 'finding' would be self-reported, and therefore suspect. Anybody who'd go through the enormous social conversion of changing their gender was probably not seeing their relationships to others, and the feelings of others, in perfect clarity anyway.

And seeing that someone has put themself through that is probably off-putting or intimidating, whatever attractions might be present.

Of course, one could argue that dating, itself, is inherently flawed when it comes to getting to know people, since the two people are going to be feeling uncomfortably self-conscious from the start. (As I've mentioned, my late baby-boomer mother despised the very term, since it implied that men and women can't be just friends who happen to meet for lunch, whether they're friends in the short- or long-term sense.)

Trouble is, of course, once you finish school, there aren't many ways to meet large numbers of people and get to know them better gradually in a mostly relaxed manner, with no expectation of sex even after several months. (I'm guessing that most men, gay or straight, wouldn't have the patience for that arrangement anyway.) Except maybe in a volunteer work situation, or something else that isn't too pretentious in the way that, say, fencing classes are.

"Several months" is an interesting metric: I'd imagine whatever future you're looking for, you'll know whether it's in the offing before two changes of season. And if not, you should let go.

But yes, we agree, dating sucks. I think that in most cases it's supposed to suck, because it hones one's tastes.

It's one of those really important contexts of life where we shouldn't be too patient with people in good haircuts who show up and say 'I know how to make this easier!! Education, many forms of investment, and lawmaking are other such realms.

We don't want it to be easy. Those things are too important to be made comfortable and unseen.

> one could argue that dating,
> itself, is inherently flawed
> when it comes to getting to
> know people, since the two
> people are going to be feeling
> uncomfortably self-conscious
> from the start.

Maybe they ought to be. Maybe not, but maybe that's one of the ways you know you're doing it right. When life starts to sting you know you're getting close to the honey, and all that.

But in non-dating situations, one is less likely to try to hide the things that everyone would want to know by the third date at the latest - such as the fact that one has a child. Or that one is not good with money. (This is no laughing matter when you remember that money problems are one of the top reasons for divorce.)