Date Doctor dispenses dangerous advice

David Coleman, “the real Hitch,” administered a syringe of dating advice to a full Council Chamber on Sunday. The Dating Doctor, as he calls himself, promised to teach inept Lewis & Clark students how to catch and keep the interests of potential romantic partners. However, the performance failed to provide the solutions it advertized, violating its own promises and leaving students with a detrimental message about how to create and maintain healthy relationships.

The Doc began with the admirable sentiment that to be datable, you have to like yourself. Contrary to this positive sentiment, throughout the performance the Doc’s humor frequently descended into name-calling and derision. Full disclosure: he repeatedly singled out one of the authors of this article. Rather than asking me my name, he referred to me exclusively as “Freaky.” He expertly steered the audience into laughing at me, disparaging me for my sexual preferences and practices. While I am self-confident enough to handle ridicule, that does not give anyone the right to deploy that style of humor against another person. It certainly does not teach self-appreciation.

The Doc promised that his performance would be inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender identities. In reality, his treatment of the LGBTQ community was demeaning. He opened his talk with a disclaimer that his advice was applicable to all students, whether gay, bisexual, transgendered, or aroused by the microphone stand. Not only was this a false promise of inclusivity, it belittled the LGBTQ community by equating same-gender attraction with attraction to an inanimate object, thus reducing it to ridiculous. He tacked the phrase “we’re all adults here” onto his disclaimer, implying that potential criticism of his performance’s privileging of heterosexual experiences would be immature and not worth his consideration. However, the Doc’s language was so explicitly gendered that it was almost impossible for queer listeners to tease out any advice we could apply to ourselves. The Doc made it clear that much of what he said was not meant to apply to LGBTQ people. More than once he had an aside in which he was “politically correct for a second” and explained that though his advice may or may not apply to queer people, what was important was that it did apply to straight people. Queer students left the performance with the understanding that we were a politically correct aside to dating. A truly inclusive performance does not preface itself with a disclaimer about its inclusivity; instead, inclusivity is inherent throughout the performance, eliminating the need for a disclaimer.

In addition to assuming queer audience members would be able to reframe his advice to fit their deviant ways, the Doc stereotyped men and women. His performance did not acknowledge or value differences between genders. The Doc relied upon convenient gender tropes, equating women with feelings and sensitivity and men with facts and boorishness. He admonished men for asking women the wrong questions, advising that a man should ask, “How did that make you feel?” instead of who what when where why. The implication is that men should feign interest in a woman’s feelings in order to con her into dating him. It would have been far more valuable for the Doc to advise honest communication and consent.

The concept of consent was absent from the Doc’s performance. Although never stated explicitly, the tone of the performance sounded a lot like if she says no, she’s playing hard to get. He told the women in the room that one way to know a man is interested is when he is not deterred by the barriers a woman puts up. He explained further that women have a flashing neon sign that reads “you have a penis, I don’t trust you” on their foreheads. A man that is interested in a particular woman will ignore her neon sign and persist in his quest to get to know her, and ostensibly to bed her. The message is clear: though the woman is apparently portraying that she is uninterested in the man, the man must persevere because she doesn’t know, or doesn’t show, what she really wants. Her no actually means yes.

The Doc sought audience response – unequally – to prove his claims about gender. In his advice to women regarding how to keep a boyfriend, the Doc prescribed “FEED HIM.” Then he asked the men to stand if they were even remotely hungry. Men shot to their feet – it was, after all, more than four hours since most of us had eaten brunch. Point made, he moved on, never asking women to stand if they were hungry, therefore neatly perpetuating the ideology that men eat and women feed them. Some of the gender stereotyping the Doc evinced from the audience could lead to dangerous misinterpretations. When an image of puppies flashed onto the screen, it was met with a rousing, “awww!” to which the Doc said “Men, when you hear ladies make that sound, it means you’re in for some serious lovin’.” Take note: it is quite possible to perceive something as cute without going to bed with it.

The performance did have a few enjoyable moments that could have been expanded to project a more positive, useful message. When the Doc inventoried types of bad kissing, he avoided gendered language and used humor without targeting specific individuals. Advice on how to be a good kisser would have been a helpful next segment. The section listing where women like to be touched could have been useful had it been expanded to include men too; the erogenous zones the Doc identified are body locations abundant with nerve endings in people of all genders. Instead, women were transformed into a Twister board for men to touch in the right spots without bothering to ask the girl if it is okay to touch her in those places first. The Doc’s advice for approaching a love interest, “be a fat penguin – break the ice!” would have been more helpful had he provided effective ways for people to overcome their reservations.

It is not impossible to host a show that combines dating advice and humor to create an empowering and sex-positive message – New Student Orientation hosts Sex Signals every September! Some people left the Dating Doctor feeling offended, alienated, or apprehensive about the Doc’s advice. More concerning to us is that the vast majority of people we spoke to left believing they received an afternoon of great dating advice and some quality entertainment. For a community that prides itself on its ability to think critically, Lewis and Clark students disappointed us by their obedient swallowing of the Dating Doctor’s faulty prescription for how to woo and screw.

-Maisha Foster-O’Neal & Allison Weith