WHEN you’re in a relationship of the long-term and committed variety, single life takes on a certain tone. Held up against weekends browsing Ikea aisles and joint responsibility for utilities, it seems all singles are hip young things playing fast and loose with hearts and pants. Each one of them on a whimsical journey of self-discovery, first dates, first kisses and adventures. When you’re deep in the trenches or domestic combat, the idea of meeting someone new almost seems appealing – though we never allow ourselves to fully acknowledge that quite human musing.

When you’re thrust into singledom, things don’t seem quite so rosy. If you find yourself violently elbowed into it, it’s rather a shock to the system. You might find yourself frozen on the couch, not sure if the most pressing need is for a tinfoil blanket, a double whisky or an Adele album (a combination of all three is recommended). For personal reasons quite beyond my circumstance or wish, this is where I’ve recently found myself once more. Flying solo — uncoupled, if you want to get Gwyneth about it. And while it’s been upsetting and at times terrifying (how will I ever convince another person I’m a normal human being again?), the prospect of dating new people offered up a little light at the end of the tunnel of awfulness. It presented an opportunity to taste some of the fun all those people were having on the lush green grass of the other side. Reluctant swings and roundabouts.

Except so far, the grass is not greener. Mate, there isn’t even any grass in sight. The other side is an 80s play park – stony tarmac, broken glass and the occasional remnants of someone else’s night before. As the embodiment of the clichéd woman-with-a-busy-life, once more I turned to online dating – a place where I’d met three previous long-term partners. Having lost lots of the stigma it once held, this form of meeting people is pretty normal now. It’s no hovercraft, but it’s the the modern convenience designed to meet a basic need for human companionship.

But the return to it has been anything but pleasant. It’s not a landscape I recognise anymore. A few weeks in, and it feels like a wasteland. The usual landmarks are there, but the language has changed and I don’t know how to speak it. Sexism and misogyny is rampant, and sadly, that’s not just my experience.

The general tone of messages I received on the site, compared to the times I’ve been on it over the last 10 years, has nosedived into unpleasantville. Sexist remarks, entitlement, propositions and unsolicited messages about my body and what’s going to happen to it have become the norm. This isn’t every message, but there was enough that I sat up and took noticed. A ratio of around 1:4 bad messages to good. So, I started off by screen-grabbing these messages and sharing them with my Facebook friends for amusement. But very quickly, the amusement started to dissipate.

These weren’t isolated incidents. Every day I would log in to more and more of the same, with varying degrees of brazenness. In a short space of time, I went from excited, to thinking “I wish men still wore hats and invited you out for an evening stroll” to feeling cheap, dirty and totally de-humanised. I decided to put them to my social media followers, and to document some of the worst examples with #NOkcupid, as some other women had been doing for a while. Perhaps the most telling thing was how shocked men were, but how many of my female friends said, “oh, yeah. That happens to me too.” Uh, Houston? We have a serious problem here.

In the last week, I’ve been asked about sexual acts I could perform, asked to join couples for sex, asked if my body was real, I even had one guy – in all seriousness – ask me how much it would cost to eat my farts. Yup.

Then, I was asked if I would take £300 to sit naked on a webcam, or more money if I were willing to go further. I replied, explaining why this sort of message was not okay. That my body, and any woman’s body, is not a sexual commodity and does not have a price tag to be assumed by a stranger. In a further act of creepiness, this guy then made a Twitter account to try and publicly justify his actions. All of these messages have entitlement at their core: entitlement to women’s bodies, entitlement to put their sexual needs above the emotional needs of a stranger, and an entitlement to treat people without even a modicum of respect.

One of the most common responses I received from people is along the lines of, “you sure do attract a lot of weirdos”. Nope. That is deflection. I, and plenty other of people out there, are done with shifting the blame onto the receiving party. The aggressor’s behaviour is the problem.

The fact that websites like Bye Felipe, books like Tinder Nightmares, and hashtags like NOkcupid exist should be a reality check. This is not light entertainment. When are we going to stop laughing at this and realise that all of these things are not okay? These are catalogues of people’s lived experiences. Experiences that if transposed to the real world would stop you in your tracks. “But, internet” is a crappy excuse for allowing this sort of laissez-faire hypersexual subtext to underpin interactions. The digital bubble should not be so impenetrable that this sort of behaviour can continue unchecked. The more this sort of casual misogyny and thoughtless objectification continues, the more normalised it becomes. Is that a world you want to live in? My heart sinks at the thought of my daughter fielding this sort of thing, or my sons thinking this is an acceptable way to treat another person.

Something dark is brewing in society. Specifically where dating and the Internet intersect. Back in February, we saw global protests after self-proclaimed pick-up artist and rape apologist Roosh V decided to hold meetings for men to share tips on gaming non-consenting women into sleeping with them. Dating culture has evolved so much that on Tuesday gone, Men’s Health magazine had to take down a collection of “dating tips” that advised men how to change the minds of women who’d said no to them. The slideshow article called “How to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’” featured different advice for at the bar, in a relationship and in bed. Working in digital publishing, it’s frightening to me just how many people that would have had to pass through to make it live. Why didn’t it ring alarm bells in a single head before it made it online for the world to consume?

Joining the dots here is disturbing. In isolation, each of these things is troubling enough, but when you piece them together, the picture is not something I want to look at. Each one of these acts is perpetuating a culture that devalues women’s bodies and reinforces the idea of our bodies existing primarily for men’s sexual gratification. Nobody is owed sex, no matter how charming, funny, witty, attractive or pushy. Online or offline, respect matters, consent matters and people’s feelings matter.