So Ferret wrote an excellent post called You Don’t Know Me, And That’s Okay (also available on Ferret’s blog if you don’t do Fetlife) about how it’s not fair to expect women to magically you know that you are safe to meet alone in a secluded place even if you know that you would never hurt or pressure a woman. That seems pretty logical, right? I mean, it’s not like rapists and assholes walk around with convenient signs on their backs, so women kind of have to be cautious with everyone we haven’t gotten to know well.

So of course some whiny little shit shows up in the comments to cry about how terrible it is when women insist on not just meeting in public, but meeting at a munch. I guess it’s only okay for women to have boundaries when those boundaries don’t inconvenience men. God fucking forbid some guy doesn’t get his dick wet because he’s not comfortable going to a munch.

It is true that if you’re only willing to meet potential partners/play partners at a munch you will rule out some people who might otherwise be excellent partners. It’s true that not everyone can take the risk of being outed, not everyone can physically get to a munch, and not everyone even fucking likes going to munches. Not wanting to go to a munch for any reason is absolutely valid. Whining about people only being interested in meeting you at a munch, on the other hand, is just fucking pathetic.

Guys, if a lady will only meet you at a munch, she’s not fucking forcing you to do shit. She’s simply stating her boundaries. If those boundaries don’t work for you, guess what? You don’t have to go! I promise you will live if you don’t get to fuck her.

Honestly, you should be happy you found out she wasn’t compatible with you before you two even met. How much would it suck to, say, have a job with a morality clause, start falling for someone and then find out that kink is a huge part of her social life that she refuses to give up and there’s no way you can be together and keep your job? Or what if kink is something private for you and you just don’t like going to kink events? Do you really want to have a relationship where she feels like a dirty little secret and you feel pressured to do something that feels wrong to you? That sounds miserable for everyone.

Now, if the woman who was only interested in meeting men at a munch complained that she was having a terrible time finding a boyfriend, then it would be perfectly reasonable to suggest that maybe there are great guys out there who can’t go to munches for whatever reason. But unless a woman’s boundary isn’t working for her and she asks for advice, you really have no business saying a goddamn thing about how she runs her life.

Maybe she only meets people at munches for her own safety, maybe she’s had a lot of no-shows and wants to at least have fun with her friends if her date doesn’t show up, maybe she really wants to see how her friends react to someone before she gets serious about him, maybe she’s extremely busy and the night of the munch is the only night she can meet anyone, maybe kink events are really important to her and she wants to date someone who will go to munches and parties with her. It doesn’t fucking matter what her reason is, what matters is that you treat her like a human being who has the right to make her own decisions. If you can’t do that, you deserve to stay single.

And for the record, having a boundary isn’t entitlement, like Mr Hard-done-by who inspired this post was whining. Entitlement is what allows you to even think that someone should change their boundaries for your convenience.