Is a tough nut to crack.
I recently had the dubious pleasure of stumbling onto the profile of a rather beautiful OKCupid girl, who, judging by what she'd written, had an exceptionally good sense of humour. Good enough, combined with her looks, to warrant half an hour spent typing out a "Hello" email - something I've had a limited amount of success with in the past. Perhaps it's the way I write, perhaps it's the almost complete lack of content or wit, but either way my missives tend to go ignored. Still, I had a good think about this one, tried to be original and sent it on its merry way.
All the bases were covered. A passing reference to WW1 poetry, if she was of a literary persuasion, another to Dickens (erm..the literary thing again), a recent photo, a small compliment, and the entire thing somewhat painstakingly constructed around her profile. People complain that reponses aren't personal enough? A bit too focused on just one aspect? Perhaps...
"Yo baby, I saw that you have tits and was wondrin if you've ever wore spunk as a shirt? Cos I got some raw building materials right here!"
(Okay, obviously I don't do crude that well. You get the gist though).
A response! Joy. A few messages bounced back and forth - she worked in a bookstore (hooray!), had an English lit degree (hooray!), and seemed to find me - if not funny, then at least tolerable in my attempts to be so. Can't complain. All went well until I eventually asked if she wanted to meet for a coffee sometime. Not with the intention of sealing ourselves together under God, but for a chat and a piece of pie. There was a longer than usual delay before the response, which came back in the negative, explaining itself by pointing the quivering finger of disgust at my sexuality (bi). Past experiences, blah de blah.
First came rage, naturally, that I had been judged in such a premptory fashion. Confusion tagged along, then pity, then a round-circle trip back to rage. Still, I decided to take the higher ground, and assumed that some bisexual people had upset her in the past. That's fine - all she'd done was mistaken "bisexual" for "lying, manipulative, cheating moral-free fucks, relying on pathetic excuses". It's an easy mistake to make, right? Well, no, but nevermind - she was otherwise lovely, and I forgive people too easily. So I persevered, messaged back, mentioned the above and said the invitation for a coffee was freestanding, up until the point she had gotten over the strange phobia she had. An acceptance - perhaps grudging, came through.
40 messages passed. *Forty*. (Bear with me now, we're getting to the end).
Until she queried, one balmy Friday afternoon, the ring on my finger, in this photo:

. Was it, perchance, a wedding ring?
Two days went by. I had friends visiting for the weekend, I was busy and didn't have time to sit down and answer what was a faintly absurd question, inspired I assumed by an underlying distrust of bisexual people as inherently unfaithful. When I sat down to respond Monday morning, I found that my apparently suspicious absence had prompted this:
"Er, I take it that really was a wedding ring. Interesting. Anyway, to
avoid confusion, you may want to switch your byline from "Single" to
"Available." This lets the savvy OKC user know you're not single, but
are still available. Clever, no? According to the directions in the
Details tab from the Settings page, you can do this by selecting
"Married" from the drop-down menu and making sure you've also checked
the boxes next to either "Long-term dating," "Short-term dating" or
"Casual encounters" (or all three - it doesn't matter, as long as at
least one of them is selected)."
(Something that was more or less then copied verbatim as a journal post on her profile).
Fury, once more. Rage beyond imagining. I couldn't even bring myself to get out of bed that morning until I had smothered the sarcastic, biting responses that came to mind and tried to correct her - which I did, as gently as possible. Whatever I said it clearly did no good however, as we are now, apparently, no longer messaging.
A friend much wiser than I, having had experiece of bi-phobic people in the past, warned me of this at the start. It doesn't matter, he said, how understanding, patient, kind or friendly you can be. Bigotry is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it will pick even the meanest excuse to flower, the tiniest crevice to insinuate itself. In her mind, despite my protestations, the messages we exchanged or the fact that I'm 22, I am clearly married and looking for something on the side. There must me *something* wrong or shifty or morally debased about me, for I am, after all, bisexual.
So - here's the culmination of this post, and something I'll probably feel guilty about at a later date and edit out. For now though:
Fuck you, iPolly.
For judging me, confusing me with whatever other cunt it was that tried to hurt you - for ascribing to me the pitiful fears and personal demons that swim around your tiny, bigoted head - for giving me the need to defend myself to someone I don't know for something I never did, and for failing to realise, not necessarily that I was a good person, but that I certainly wasn't intrinsically bad...
Fuck you.
That is all.