My wife and I have an open relationship. It works, we're happy — but that's not what my question is about. We're both cool with other people, but we're discreet about it, and we've agreed to a rule of "nobody from our small city, and no dating sites/apps." And I completely agree with those terms—our little city is one of those rather religious, southern places where if someone doesn't know you, they know someone who knows you. We want people out of our business.

We both travel for work, so that's where our opportunities are. I often rely on Craigslist, which has become much less reliable than it was five years ago. And it seems that whenever I post a m4w ad, 80% of responses are spam, 5% are from actual women, and the remaining 15% are from men. These men always go with the same general line of "if...

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...you don't find what you're looking for, would you let a guy blow you?"

I find this behavior obnoxious. I've mostly ignored it until recently. Out of frustration, I've started replying, asking why they think it's okay to respond to my ad, when my ad was very clearly looking for a woman. The responses I get from that line of inquiry are either hostile or mocking:

Grow a thicker skin
You should be flattered
Why are you so insecure?
Just let me suck your cock
Come on, you know you want to try it

I don't get it. Not one of these men has once acknowledged that their behavior is incorrect or bordering on sexual harassment. Look at it another way: if I responded to a w4w ad, I'd have my ass handed to me, so I don't do it. I love pussy, but I'm well aware that if a woman places an ad looking for another woman, she's not interested in my cock.

If this were a scenario at a bar, and a guy hit on me, I'd laugh it off, say thank you, and explain that I'm straight—this hypothetical man at the bar didn't know if I was straight or wasn't sure, and gave it a shot. No harm, no foul.

But when a man answers a m4w ad, he's ignoring my established sexual preferences and hitting on me anyway, and that just seems wrong. Am I making too much of this practice, or am I right in being wholly frustrated by it?

Man 4 Woman

You can rest assured that men reply to w4w ads all the time. Know any lesbians who've dated online, M4W? Ask one of them. Don't know any lesbians who've dated online? Send a few messages to women who've posted w4w ads on Craigslist (or anywhere else) and ask them if they ever get responses from men. They'll tell you—if they bother to respond—that they get responses from men constantly. Even worse, M4W, they get responses from guys who pretend to be women, send them pics of women they've grabbed off Facebook or Instagram, and lead them on (while having a wank or two) without any intention of actually meeting up—and no meet ups are possible for obvious reasons, right?

Men have a bad habit of feeling entitled to whatever they want—straight men, bi men, and gay men. Sex with lesbians? Sure, straight dude, you should be able to have that. A straight dude's dick down your throat? Sure, gay dude, you should be able to have that.

I can see why these messages would annoy you, M4W, and it may be rude and/or presumptuous for gay and/or bi guys to respond to m4w ads. But I wouldn't describe it as sexual harassment. I don't think it rises to the level of sexual harassment—it certainly doesn't meet the dictionary definition of sexual harassment: "Inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature, such as repeated sexual advances or offensive remarks, that occurs usually in a workplace, school, or other institutional setting, especially by a person in authority with respect to a subordinate or a student."

Why do gay and bi men respond to your ads? For the same reason some men send unsolicited dick pics to women: because every once in a while—every once in a great while—it works. The chance, albeit small, that an unsolicited dick pic is going to get a guy some pussy leads jerky straight and bi men to behave like entitled dick monsters. Similarly, M4W, the chance—and it's a somewhat greater chance—that a guy looking for women on CL might be up for a blowjob from a dude leads some gay and bi men to send unsolicited offers of no recip oral. Some guys posting in the M4W section are bi, some ascribe to the "a mouth is a mouth" theory or oral sex, and some guys are so desperate or horny that they figure a blowjob from a dude is better than no blowjob at all.

You're not one of those guys, M4W—you're not bi, you're not a mouther (like a truther but for blowjobs), and you're not so desperate or horny that you'd let a guy blow you. But don't waste your time getting mad, M4W, and don't think you're the only one who has to slog through unwelcome responses. Posters get responses from people outside their stated age ranges, vanilla people get responses from kinksters, gay men get responses from women (oh yes we do), lesbians looking for relationships get responses from opposite-sex couples seeking one-off threesomes, etc., etc., etc.

Ignore and delete.

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