One guy reveals what happened when he posed as a woman on online dating sites
After hearing female friends moan about creepy men, writer Nick Harding logged on as a girl to find out more
SITTING on the sofa one Saturday night, my girlfriend Stephanie indulges in a spot of online shopping.
Meanwhile, I’m being cyber sexually harassed by a 38-year-old IT worker from Chelmsford, who’s asking me if I like to be dominated.
He wants to get me drunk and look at me while I stand naked in front of him.
I’ve known him for less than half an hour and he thinks I’m a girl called Sarah – not a 46-year-old man.
‘I’d run a finger down your spine from the neck to the bum, then down the inner thighs,’ he writes. ‘Let’s meet.’
Meanwhile, a 19-year-old student – who I’ve known for 15 minutes – is promising ‘something sexciting’.
Then, when I don’t answer either of them for a few minutes, they bombard me with insistent messages.
In the background, scores of other men ping into my inbox.
Some are perfectly polite, but most have a very loose grasp of the rules of social decorum.
After an hour of this skin-crawling onslaught, I have to log off.
Why do these misguided cretins believe this is an acceptable way to behave?
Pale-faced, I turn to Stephanie and show her some of the messages. She sighs and tells me it’s normal. I feel genuinely ashamed to be a man.
It started innocently enough over a conversation at the pub with friends.
One of my female mates told us about an experience with a man she’d met on a free dating site.
He’d said he was a widowed father and worked as chef.
After several months, she discovered nothing he’d told her was true.
Instantly, all the women in the group agreed that online dating for girls is at best a random lottery of weirdos – at worst, it’s dangerous.
I thought they were exaggerating.
Surely cyberspace is the same as real life, where you’ll find just as many decent people as you will oddballs?
But they were adamant these sites are catnip for liars and sexual predators.
Intrigued by this claim – and in part wanting to prove them wrong – the next day I created a fake profile on a dating site, using a photo of a willing colleague.
My user name was ‘Smiley Sarah’ and I made her a female version of myself, listing all my likes and dislikes.
Within three minutes, I received several messages.
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There was a student in Ireland, a forklift driver and a man from Leeds whose profile picture showed him nervously clutching a pint of lager.
‘Tell me about your flirty experiences,’ one wrote.
Another – a sad, grey, old man with a hangdog expression, typed: ‘Beautiful… Sigh!’
The messages that continued ranged from: ‘Are you looking for fun?’ to a more direct: ‘Can we meet?’
I was pressured for photographs, too.
I replied to each with general chit-chat, but within minutes I discovered that a simple ‘hello’ could be misconstrued as a full-blooded yanking down of the knickers.
No social niceties, just straight down to business.
I soon realised the sordid cyber world my friends had warned me of was a reality.
Then I read an unsettling report published earlier this year, that identified a significant rise in serious sexual assaults initiated through online dating. In fact, there’s been a six-fold increase between 2009 and 2014 according to the National Crime Agency.
But what’s most shocking is that online dating sex offenders are less likely to have any previous convictions, suggesting the anonymity of the internet in some way encourages criminality.
I can see how, as I’ve discovered first-hand how having that barrier affects many men on dating sites.
They become pushy and misogynistic – and it doesn’t matter, as the worst that can happen is they get blocked, before looking for another victim to harass until some poor soul succumbs.
It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs and, ladies, on behalf of men everywhere, I can only apologise.”