On the Importance of Knowing One's Audience

Over the past couple of weeks I'd been chatting with a guy I met on the lovely internets. It all seemed pretty cool at first- we had some nice conversations and we had a lot in common. I was happy to accept when he asked me out.

We were discussing where and when to meet up, and he asked if I'd prefer to go home after work before meeting him or not. I said I would so I could drop my stuff off and what have you, and he says, "Yeah, plus you have to look pretty for me."

*blink, blink* Excuse me?

I laughed, because I couldn't think what else to say. And I thought, hey, I'll let that slide, because he was just trying to be funny. And I tried not to think about the guy from last year who told me that 15 minutes late was 5 minutes early for me since I was a girl, and how I laughed that off and he turned out to be a jerk. Because sometimes it's just a joke, right?

Well, right. But after that came another sexist joke, followed by a racist joke, followed by me saying hey, it's been real, but you have made me feel rather uncomfortable a few times now, so I think maybe we shouldn't hang out again. And that was that.

I've run into this sort of thing a few times- where I'll meet a guy and in the first few conversations/dates he'll let fly a comment (or several comments) that are anywhere from "Gee, I could take that a number of different ways and some of those ways are offensive" to "Holy crap, WHO SAYS THAT?" While sometimes it's that the guy truly is just kind of a jerk, sometimes I think it's a case of them not realizing that when you don't know your audience, there are just some things you don't say.

It goes without saying that anything racist, bigoted, sexist, or generally just fricking mean is pretty much never OK (for example, the infamous Crazy Starbucks Guy, who told me about how all women of a certain age are "Hos" on our first date). But some things can be funny once you're more familiar with a person and you know their sense of humor. I think in dating, and in any new relationship, it's important not to assume familiarity and comfort. Not that you need to be some fake version of yourself or flat-out lie to be agreeable- but it's a good idea to think before you speak.