stop, in the name of professionalism.
In 2013 there are a million ways to search for a date or love. Aside from the growing number of websites and apps specifically dedicated to helping you find your soul mate, we also have social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. I even know someone who met her current boyfriend on Instagram (and it worked out). So it’s uber creepy when men decide to veer away from the appropriate avenues that are already in place to troll for girls, specifically on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking site for business. It is not your personal Patty Stanger or Heidi Fleiss. I will restate and repeat this for all of the men out there (and women who obsessively watch You’ve Got Mail). In the words of the immortal Michael Corleone: It’s not personal, it’s business.
I think that I’ve been pretty clear in establishing that LinkedIn is for professional use only. So why am I getting messages from men who are strangers asking me if I travel to New York a lot, complete with their phone numbers? It’s not cute. It’s offensive. You aren’t interested in my resume. We couldn’t be in more opposite industries, so why do you want or need to know my travel schedule? I can’t help but feel a little like a hooker on one of those flyers you see all over Vegas.
The more it happened, the more i thought, “Is this my fault?” “No,” I decided. I’m not dressed provocatively in my profile photo. I don’t have any profanity or sexual innuendo on my bio or resume. But I still felt dirty, and I hated that I felt dirty. I asked myself why and what I’ve come up with is that these social solicitations taking place in a business forum made me feel like I was being degraded in the workplace, and I don’t work in an office. (To date, sexual harassment in American work life is pervasive. Despite explicit, no-tolerance policies at most companies, one in four women report workplace harassment.) I wasn’t being looked at for my credentials or taken seriously. I was a photograph and an object.
So listen up. If you to find dates or knock-boots, go to match.com or to Tinder, or seriously, even Ashley Madison, but I beg you to please leave LinkedIn for business networking purposes only. You will not be getting any dates by private messaging women- at least not one from me.
