Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

i really don't think "straight" is the right word for that.

how about "versatile"?

thanks map... honestly it's more meaningful seeing it here. i really appreciate it. i believe in myself more than i used to but sometimes i do feel like i'm not "reading the room", writing at cross-purposes to the thread, talking over other people who have important things to say. so it's nice to occasionally hear that someone finds my posts valuable!

i haven't actually read a lot of bell hooks... i like what i've read of her work a lot, i haven't read a lot of theory overall tho. i think a lot of the stuff i've learned ultimately does come from sources like hooks... i've just kind of picked it up from other people, as lore, through experience. it's a hard way to learn but i find i learn more from lived experience than i do from reading, for better or for worse.

how about "versatile"?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

see to me talking about this is really illustrative of the limitations of language, the limitations of framing... that's something i'm acutely aware of, both as a transgender woman who didn't have access to the concepts signified by "transgender" when i was younger, and as an "asexual" person who doesn't currently have access to a word that can communicate my actual relationship to sexuality.

in terms of "versatile", that just makes me think of "vers", which is another term that didn't exist when i was young... "switch" meant both switch in the current sense and what "vers" means now. and then there's the whole idea of "side", the idea of intimacy that doesn't require top and bottom.

there's that whole thing they used to ask lesbians, "which one of you is the man" (to which the joke answer is "bernie sanders, always bernie sanders"). it's frustrating and it's also, like, the way "man" stands in for "top" stands in for "masc" stands in for "dom", the way all of these things are assumed to be the _same thing_. if i'm a woman and i like men and i want to express that attraction, the first word someone suggests (incidentally, i wasn't asking for suggestions, this is one of the hardest things about communication, understanding when someone does or doesn't want someone to give advice... not interested in judging people who _are_ giving advice, it's a good thing for me to riff on at least)...

the first word someone suggests is "straight", which, like, just gets to the heart of the problem, doesn't it? i'm a woman, and i like men, but in a gay way. before i transitioned my ex-wife used to say to each other all the time "i'm gay for you", which was a 'joke' except it wasn't because it turns out we actually were gay for each other.

the other thing about all these clustered correlations is that they do _correlate_, in kind of the same way "trans" and "neurodiverse" _correlate_, and in a lot of cases i think there are good reasons for those correlations. part of the struggle for me, and for other people i think, with queerness is that there is, in a lot of intimacy, this idea of "subject" and "object", and it is highly gendered.

i mean, this is my background, so i kind of do want to talk about it here... "subject" and "object" expressed as "dominant" and "submissive". dominant men and submissive men. what the norms are. how they behave. i'm a switch now, just like i was a switch before transition, but before transition i was afraid to express myself either as a dominant or as a submissive. in large part that's because i'm not a man, so presenting myself as a "dominant man" or a "submissive man" just doesn't feel _right_. now that i don't understand myself as a man, though, now that i recognize myself as a woman who likes men... i have the same discomfort with the male norms of "dominant" and "submissive".

the stereotypical dominant.. the name he goes by these days is "big dick daddy dom". i'm not even going to get _into_ the daddy bit. i don't have daddy issues, i have mommy issues.

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side trip actually, one of the thing that frustrates me is the essentialization of abuse, the duluth model, the model that sees men as abusers and women as victims. i've been involved in three significant abusive relationships in my life, and in all three of those cases the abuser is/was a woman. this is another instance where patriarchy hurts men... everything AMABs get taught about abuse is how to not be an abuser. to the extent we're taught that, we're typically taught it quite badly. the idea of men as victims, that doesn't get taught. the only time anybody seems to bring it up is when someone tries to talk about the systemic way women are abused, at which point somebody brings it up as a "gotcha". which is frustrating to me. it does a real disservice to men who are victims of abuse. it _is_ important to talk about the ways in which men are abused _in a gendered sense_, just like it's important to talk about the ways in which women are abused _in a gendered sense_. men who are victims of abuse deserve their own conversation.

to be clear i'm not saying that in an exclusionary sense, because god knows i've spent my whole life being told "this is a Women's Space and you don't belong here". it's more like... there's a difference between "men" and "normal people". it's so hard to talk about men _as men_. if i try to say "i like men", the word that comes up is "straight", "normal". my liking men isn't _normal_. it's intrinsically queer. everything i do is intrinsically queer, because _i'm_ intrinsically queer. i queer everything i touch. that's a good thing in my book.

i talk about this sometimes... in the late '90s i was involved, i did go to a weekend retreat for the mythopoetic men's movement, the movement that evolved into jordan peterson, my gender-confused ass showing up at a retreat filled with middle-aged men with daddy issues doing cultural appropriation.

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and we're back to the daddy stuff. i really can't talk daddy stuff. i don't think my dad was a woman - it's not something i can ever know for sure - but he was distinctly _unmasculine_. he was small, soft, weak. he spoke with a high-pitched voice. his mannerisms were effete. he didn't get along with men, wasn't able to do the things men were supposed to do. my mom browbeat him into becoming the troop master of my boy scout troop and it was a disaster. he was horrible at it. he couldn't _do_ that kind of manhood. he was born a man and died a man, but he wasn't ever very good at whatever "man" was supposed to be. he was an abuse victim too. i don't know if he was a dominant. you can never tell, really. there's no correlation. in a factual sense i guess he wouldn't have been a "big dick daddy dom". apparently he had a small penis, which i know because my mom made fun of his penis size to her kids after they got divorced.

and it's so fucking silly. the penis thing. like, daddy issues are _very much_ a woman thing, a lot of women i know have daddy issues. the big dick thing? the whole prevalence of dick size in popular culture? what i go back to is how Swolesome talks about... the patriarchal stereotype of a masculine gay man _isn't_ someone created to appeal to the female gaze. it's created to appeal to the _male_ gaze. the whole idea of the "chad", i mean, i know at this point it's a meme but the idea that _women_ would find this guy attractive... i mean, i guess there are _some_ women who are into roided out dudes, but it sure as hell isn't the norm. i mean even when you look at... i'm old, so my point of reference would be someone like chris hemsworth. he _is_ a big, rugged, handsome, stubbly man. that's attractive. but when i see the stuff about him that goes viral, it's about him being _sweet_. someone like pedro pascal, he's hot, but he also loves his sister (and me personally i think his sister is hotter, but i definitely do think he's hot). like that's an essential component there. are there guys who can't tell the difference between pedro pascal and andrew tate?

and of course the chad has a big dick, which is ridiculous. if you're on roids you're not gonna be packing a monster schlong. even if you were, though... the term "size queen" wasn't termed to refer to _women_. like i'm sorry taking nine inches down my throat doesn't seem like a good time to me. is that something women are supposed to, like, normally want? that seems weird. that seems actively unpleasant to me. i mean if you're into that, totally cool, i'm not saying i'm not into, like, breathplay or whatever. choking (why do people keep spelling it "chocking"? is that, like, how you spell it in british english or something?) on a monster cock just isn't my idea of a good time, is all.

the big dick daddy dom, though... to them the dick is super important. they're the ones going out on the dating sites sending unsolicited pics of their schlongs to women. am i supposed to believe that they think we want that? because i don't. i don't believe that. they're not looking to be dominants. they're digital flashers. they don't want to dominate women - they want to abuse us. that's the _norm_. that's the _norm_ among "dominant" men.

like there's this whole new subtype of dom that's around, the "soft dom". which is, like. a dominant who is sweet and kind and affirming. who uses the velvet glove rather than the iron fist. you ask me, i'm more into being caressed with a velvet glove than i am into being iron fisted. (although even fisting, from what i've seen and heard that's, like, actually a soft, gentle, intimate act. you can't just ram your fist into somebody's bottom and expect that to work.) and to me, i'm just... thank god that's even being _recognized_.

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because submissive men, that's way more problematic. first off a lot of these guys... they just want to be pegged. i mean if you want to be pegged that's fine, but it's not the same as being submissive. a lot of these guys are rude and bossy and demanding... i mean, there's "topping from the bottom" and there's just being an _asshole_.

aaaaaaaaaaand then you have the sissies. at this point... i asked this a lot earlier, but at this point it does make sense to me, it makes sense that submission should be associated with effeminacy. one becomes an object, one becomes objectified, one becomes the _beheld_ rather than the _beholder_, and it makes sense for someone in that position to be _pretty_. it just gets all mixed up with the trans thing. wearing a dress doesn't make you a woman, i insisted, over and over and over again, and to prove it i wore a dress and...

and it _didn't_ make me a woman, i just wasn't able to _access my own gender_ until and unless i could _perform femininity_. which is, to me, "femininity" and "effeminacy" are distinct concepts, like, being a woman versus being "girly". in my case, recognizing my own womanhood required me to do "girly" things. these days i'm really only situationally "girly", but i'm always a woman.

it just complicates things. it complicates things so much. i want so much for there to be girly men and for that to be accepted and welcomed. the prejudices, the biases at stake though...

it's fraught. men submitting is fraught. it's a conundrum.

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i think about... william moulton marston, the creator of wonder woman, he had some interesting ideas about gender. he said that women were superior to men because they submitted to men. that's complicated and paradoxical and i kind of understand where he's coming from. i think it's important for men to have the freedom to submit. to have the freedom to be soft. sexually, in terms of power exchange, and in every other conceivable sense. being able to do that - _contextually_, _sometimes_ - i think that is important. hard men are also brittle men. hard men are prone to cracking. i think a lot about how it's the most patriarchal institutions that seem to give rise to proportionately more transfems. catholicism. mormonism. live under those pressures for long enough, and someone might crack. crack like an egg.

I don't know if this is the place for this, but I find it truly weird the way a certain population of online right-wing masculinity people has adopted the idea that people enjoying looking at Sydney Sweeney is some kind of rebuke of "wokeness" or a revival of "allowed to be male" -- are there really highly online 18-year-olds who are going to be convinced that just prior to 2024 there was a whole era where men didn't find pretty young women with large breasts attractive & were formally or informally forbidden from watching movies starring pretty young women with large breasts or from trying to date pretty young women with large breasts in their social circles? Who's going to believe that Sydney Sweeney represents a breakthrough of a "type" that was barred from the airwaves by the woke prudes until the day before yesterday?

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

update: i just caught up on the memes channel on my lesbian server

we are all _highly entertained_ at the idea that sydney sweeney showing off her boobs at the GLAAD awards constitutes a critique of the "gay agenda"

i like boobs so much i grew my own. checkmate, fascists.

I'm sorry but Hanania is back to elaborate on his point

"Sydney Sweeney's boobs are anti-woke because they cause physiological reactions in men that make leftist delusions impossible. The repression of normal heterosexuality is very important to left-coded spaces."

Where does this idea come from that it's impossible to be liberal with a hard-on

"The repression of normal heterosexuality patriarchy is very important to left-coded spaces."

How tiresome. It's just so uninteresting to me, and as someone who despite deep soul-searching continues to be attracted to men, I kind of despair.

This quote is obviously a joke.

I think that just reveals more about how right-wingers think - there's no such thing as accomodation or empathy, everything is a zero sum game. if you acknowledge that some people don't like big jugs it's a blow to straight men everywhere. it's all a bit weird I think given how prudish these people are, I think they just want to go back to the time when you could openly ogle celebrities. I mean when I was growing up you had women like Pam Anderson and Cindy Crawford who were kind of shorthand for "really attractive women". like when you namechecked them everyone knew what you were talking about. who was the last celebrity who was primarily known for being really attractive?

most celebrities

I mean

like as their primary thing. all the really hot ones have like big movie roles and stuff. look I probably don't know what i'm talking about here just kinda thinking back to like the heyday of Britney Spears and how you couldn't even mention her name in mixed company because people would get real horny. I don't see that sort of thing too much anymore. I blame wokeness

sweeney is in loads of really big and good stuff!

frogs its not that deep yr poat and premise are just prob wrong man its ok

the discourse around her ending wokeness just by being hot is still deeply weird and confusing

And stupid.

i can only think that she is hot in a very """"obvious"""" way but like

christina hendricks wasnt that long along, alexandra dadarrio had a real moment with tru detective, kim broke the internet

obviously hot ppl never went away at all imo?

long /ago/

Hot people still walk among us but this premise is more like "women who could be objectified/sexualized to the exclusion of anything else about them" and also it requires you to accept as true that there was a past where everyone was totally fine with that and it didn't have any social or cultural consequences for the speaker. It was never okay, it was always wrong, and plenty of people already knew that and conducted their lives and friendships accordingly. Let's please not give into to the totally garbage premise at all or be confused by it.

Hi I just got back and I'm already regretting it.

nah I get there are loads of hot people still out there, maybe more than there has ever been in human history. do I do think the concept of celebrity as someone who's entire image revolves around wearing skimpy outfits and making sexy faces and groaning noises has gone out the window. I remember Britney's big hits obv but like every video and high profile appearance revolved around her doing something sexy. I mean I don't see Taylor Swift appearing with a giant snake looking like she wants to fuck it. Sidney Sweeney def ain't one of them. in retrospect this is still wrong because we have Nicki Minaj. Megan thee Stallion too. I wonder why right wingers find them so obscene.

look if you wanna understand where I'm coming from you need to watch all 22 minutes of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQlfGt6J14s

I mean, I didn't, but clicking around half of it is not understanding women and thinking they are dumb and brain damaged and then a bunch of stuff about fishing. in between segments there are boobs everywhere. this show was incredibly famous when I was growing up. my Dad let me watch it for some reason. now check out the comments, half of them are whining about Jimmy Kimmel going "woke" (which is hilarious, he's still pretty crass for a late night comedian, he just makes fun of Trump a lot), the other half are whining about how you can't make this kind of show anymore. well yeah you probably couldn't because it fucking sucks. this is the time they want to go back to.

also a sign of the changing times: Adam Corolla asks women in a mall if they would take a pill that made them smarter but also made their ass bigger. the women say no. oh how things have changed. in 2024 we call that a win/win.

"girls gone wild" and maxim magazine also existed

i am not sure what the point is.

Just as one can justify any moral position by selectively quoting the Bible, it seems to me a person could prove anything they want to about social attitudes of the recent past by selectively citing youtubes of past cable television programs.

wait. -- is this it? the other half are whining about how you can't make this kind of show anymore. well yeah you probably couldn't because it fucking sucks. this is the time they want to go back to.

keep whining whiners

in retrospect this is still wrong because we have Nicki Minaj. Megan thee Stallion too. I wonder why right wingers find them so obscene.

Partly because they are "ethnic"; partly because they are so conscious and in command of their sexuality. The right-wingers prefer "Aryan" women who appear to be unconscious of their beauty and sex appeal (think classic Britney or Hannah Montana-era Miley Cyrus).

in retrospect this is still wrong because we have Nicki Minaj. Megan thee Stallion too. I wonder why right wingers find them so obscene.

But back to big trucks… I have one of those mini-SUVs with raised wheels and unlike the stereotypical suburban/rural person in this thread … the value of the “lift” is better navigating the immense potholes of my neglected urban city. Seriously the potholes here are no joke

The right-wingers prefer "Aryan" women who appear to be unconscious of their beauty and sex appeal (think classic Britney or Hannah Montana-era Miley Cyrus).

actually I hadn't considered that, like you're right there isn't anything too overtly sexual in Britney's lyrics

I was thinking of the more obvious reason though

At this point you might be saying “Come on, CHH, it’s not like being a real human actress is illegal now. What about Jennifer Lawrence? Taylor Swift? Margot Robbie?” Of course, all of those women are beautiful and talented, but—and I can’t really explain this—it feels like they are here for the girls. Maybe that’s why I like them. Sydney feels like she’s here for the guys, and in a way that feels completely unironic. I don’t mean to say that “hot blondes have gone woke” or anything, but lately I have noticed that popular actresses are expected to couch their hotness and femininity in a blanket of irony

https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/are-we-sunsetting-ass-and-entering

I think the above put into words something I felt but couldn't really articulate about why the 'Sydney Sweeny's boobs mean wokeness is over' takes have a grain of truth (though I don't really agree with all the examples of that 'irony' she gives - "posing in a magazine eating pizza out of a greasy box" seems like it would fit in fine with a The Man Show era sex-symbol). I agree with frogbs, SS's celebrity persona and vibes feel reminiscent of an earlier era where the media was less self-conscious or coy about ogling famous actresses, or when it was more taken for granted that the media was 'looking' from the pov of a hetero man, I think? Like those magazine profiles of actress from the pre-2010s where the author is just openly horny in a way that you don't see so much nowadays. (idk to what extent this is something intrinsic to how Sweeny presents herself or to what extent it's something that is just being projected onto her)

Where does this idea come from that it's impossible to be liberal with a hard-on

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

from that morrissey song, "liberal with a hard-on", fascists love morrissey because he's racist even though he doesn't like boobs as much as they do

I think that just reveals more about how right-wingers think - there's no such thing as accomodation or empathy

― frogbs

or lesbians

"empathy" used to be a member of my polycule, i say "used to", it's still in my polycule but it changed its name, it now goes by "great big honking bazongas", because it has great big honking bazongas and is very proud of them

this week it's working on redirecting all donations to donald trump's election campaign to a slush fund to unionize sex workers.

anyway, yeah, us liberals are so owned

the discourse around her ending wokeness just by being hot is still deeply weird and confusing

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac)

like when i see a hot woman and start keysmashing and go all "no thoughts head empty" that's a situational thing, it's not permanent... i think the right doesn't get the concept of a "sometimes thing". or they're deeply opposed to it. god, remember how mad they got when cookie monster started eating vegetables? to me, i mean, the way the right talks about food says a lot about them. mostly because i like food.

this lady i know was talking about how her dad's gun club was mad about anime taking over good old fashioned cartoons, like 40s and 50s looney tunes, which i understand, because a lot of that stuff was completely racist. that said it does tend to overlook how hot bugs bunny was wearing a dress. again, that says a lot about patriarchy too. they know bugs bunny is hot wearing a dress. they've seen the cartoons. they stan the cartoons. they just think nobody is going to pay attention to the fact that they totally find bugs bunny wearing a dress extremely hot. like my man that's cool and all but then you turn around and complain about trans people and nobody takes you seriously. you know who we take seriously? bugs bunny. more seriously than you. you shoulda taken that left turn at albuquerque. if you'd watched that doctor who episode you'd know that by now.

where was i

oh! fuckin'... food wars. i mean they complain about the anime influence on cartoons but have they seen food wars? they have not. you know what's in food wars? great big honking bazongas. no lie. but they won't watch food wars. you know why? they think cooking is gay. which it is. GAY FOR BIG HONKING BAZONGAS.

dear defenders of traditional manhood, if you're so heterosexual, WHAT WERE YOU DOING LOOKING AT A PICTURE OF SOMEONE AT THE GLAAD AWARDS? that means you're gay now. so much for "traditional masculinity". i've just made a five hour long video about it. it's called "the DOWNFALL of traditional masculinity". it has one million views on youtube right now. i have a tv show. it's run two seasons on amazon prime already. it is very gay and it is chock full of bazongas. what have you done with your life? nothing, that's what. you're still watching "young sheldon" looking for boobies because you don't know the difference between "bazinga" and "bazongas". THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR DEFUNDING EDUCATION, YOU FEEBS.

I mean, I didn't, but clicking around half of it is not understanding women and thinking they are dumb and brain damaged and then a bunch of stuff about fishing.

― frogbs

what is with the fishing thing

i just

it's that hat, we all know that hat. "women want me, fish fear me". they treat women like fish and then they get salty when they can't catch us. well you're not gonna hook me like that, i'm fresh.

like i'll get with a man i'm afraid of, if it's the right kind of fear. not gonna lie. at the same time... like, you know wearing a hat saying that i want you doesn't make me actually want you, right? like, what, you think it's a magic cap? magic cap was discontinued. like. 20 years ago. (even if it wasn't, i would rather be a danger hiptop sidekick than a magic cap envoy.)

bet these motherfuckers can't actually fish for shit, neither. YOU HEAR THAT, MEN? All those pictures of fish you're holding in your dating profile pictures - those aren't real fish, are they? They're robots. Robot fish.

Fuck you motherfuckers. Fuck you and your fake-ass robot fish and your lesbian erasure and your insipid major-network sitcoms. I want a REAL MAN. Preferably one with a small penis.

sorry i'm apparently very silly today, there's something about the stupider manifestations of "traditional masculinity" that brings out my inner goofball troll

i used to write like this all the time 25 years ago. sad!

I like fishing.. not very good at it tho

It's a stupid talking point being talked about by idiots and it doesn't bare analysis is how I break this down tbh

Altho I misspelled "bear" so maybe they've got me, game over woke lads

I like sitting outside doing close to nothing.

Going back to Kate’s “all women and 3 men” thing … as an AFAB who is primarily attracted to men … my instinct is to say that’s par for the course… just because I am attracted to men, it doesn’t mean I am attracted to the vast majority of men.

And I forgot if I have already mentioned the title for the next bestselling book “Men are Stupid and Women are Crazy” … reflecting how hets talk about the other gender among members of their own gender

When we go down these right-wing rabbit holes, I imagine having a co-worker in the 90s who would stop by my cubicle daily and talk nonstop with outrage about what Rush Limbaugh said today on his three-hour show, and then the same thing the next day, and the next.

When we go down these right-wing rabbit holes, I imagine having a co-worker in the 90s who would stop by my cubicle daily and talk nonstop with outrage about what Rush Limbaugh said today on his three-hour show, and then the same thing the next day, and the next.

― paisley got boring (Eazy)

i mean i couldn't do it every day, but sometimes they do something so ridiculous that even _i_ have to take notice. "the woke left hates boobs" definitely falls into that category.

And I forgot if I have already mentioned the title for the next bestselling book “Men are Stupid and Women are Crazy” … reflecting how hets talk about the other gender among members of their own gender

― sarahell

god, spending the first 43 years of my life hearing what men say about women when they think none of us are around was...

well, it was _something_ alright

Mrs HD’s friend’s husband has gone down some kind of Tate/Peterson rabbit hole and has started treating her like total shit, saying she’s not feminine enough, she’s not a real wife, like dude, the woman you married is a horse-wrangling iron-fisted bitch (in the best way), what are you even thinking? I was never a huge fan of the guy but this seems so out of left field. I’m like “shoot him in the dick and get the hell out of dodge” but of course it’s also logistically complicated & she also thinks the man she married is still in there somewhere… what the fuck is wrong with men? Rhetorical question; we know the answer.

Mrs HD’s friend’s husband has gone down some kind of Tate/Peterson rabbit hole and has started treating her like total shit, saying she’s not feminine enough, she’s not a real wife, like dude, the woman you married is a horse-wrangling iron-fisted bitch (in the best way), what are you even thinking? I was never a huge fan of the guy but this seems so out of left field. I’m like “shoot him in the dick and get the hell out of dodge” but of course it’s also logistically complicated & she also thinks the man she married is still in there somewhere… what the fuck is wrong with men? Rhetorical question; we know the answer.

― It was on a accident (hardcore dilettante)

i mean honestly when talk about men it's less "men are stupid" and more "what the fuck is wrong with men?". i hear lots of women talking about things the same way. and i mean it's a rhetorical question, i know more than most, there's nothing _wrong_ with men it's just that being "socialized male" means being taught a bunch of stupid wrong bullshit and also _not_ being taught a bunch of pretty important things.

sometimes i hear other women say like "when a guy says something shitty and hateful, can't you just say, like, hey, that's not cool, don't say that?" that's something i can do as a woman, but i never felt like i could do it when i passed as a man. i don't think it was just that i wasn't actually a man. people "socialized male" are just taught to _not listen_. like it's not just that we're not taught to listen... i mean, i _was_ taught how to listen. but i was also taught that when someone said something i disagreed with, i should argue with them. that i should debate them, bro. i've worked hard to try and learn that, but it's still a struggle. particularly since women and AFABs are taught to, like, not talk? that's something i fight against a lot. it's important for me as a woman to speak.

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idk. something that's been a real challenge for me... i have friends who wish they'd been born cis women, wish they'd been born "real" women, and i don't feel that way about myself. with me... part of me wishes i'd been born a cis man. it feels kind of weird to say that, knowing that there are a lot of folks out there who are _absolutely insistent_ that i'm totally a man and always will be. it's stupid for them to say that. they have no idea what they're talking about.

to be clear, i _love_ being a woman. i am happy and proud to be a woman. i enjoy being a girl, in both an ironic and unironic sense. when i thought i was a man, i fucking hated it. it was terrible. it just didn't _work_ for me. i tried really hard to make it work, for a long time, and i just couldn't. ever.

i just kind of wish i could have, sometimes. i mean partly because it's so much easier to be cis than trans. partly because whatever gender i am, i'm gonna be gay as fuck, which is the _really_ important thing to me. a lot of it is, though... now that i know i'm a man, it's so much easier for me to see all of the ways in which men are great. all of the things they can do, they can be, that i can't. that i never could, because i wasn't ever really a man.

and a lot of it is stuff that just gets called "normal", because men are unmarked and women are marked, and women get judged as inferior for not being able to do it. which is dumb. like.

by the way i don't mean this in an absolute sense, gender isn't, like. there's a range of things in gender and they overlap. there are a lot of cis women who are way better at a lot of dude stuff than i am, and it doesn't make them not women, or less women, or anything like that. that's what i appreciate about women, it seems like there are _so many_ different ways to be a woman, but people act like there's only one way to be a man. i tried so hard to find a way of being a man that worked for me, and there just wasn't one. that's nothing to do with manhood. it's because i'm not a man and never was. still, i mourn that.

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as far as "women are crazy"... idk, mostly i hear women saying that about ourselves. i've had to work really hard to stop describing myself as "crazy". i got _problems_. i'm not _crazy_. we're really pressured to put ourselves and each other down a lot... and like men put down women, but they put us down in different ways than women put each other down. like the first question a man is supposed to ask when he sees a woman is "do i want to fuck her?", and how he treats her depends on the answer to that question. and guys don't treat other guys like that. i really do think that's what makes a lot of men uncomfortable with trans women, they're kind of taught to instinctively ask that question whenever they see someone. and to then find out that a woman has or had a penis... like the only reason they feel "tricked" is because they're thinking of women in sexual terms when it's irrelevant.

it's interesting because that's one of the things i feel fortunate to have been able to unlearn. like that was behavior i learned, and in my case it got mixed up with "do i want to be her", the whole subject/object dichotomy - embodiment versus possession. particularly since there's a dialectical option, a "both/and" option. anyway i'm a lesbian, i'm still really into women, but not in the _same way_ i used to be. it's more _contextual_. that's something that's really hit me as a woman, that anything and everything is sometimes. if i'm attracted to a woman, if i'm into a woman, it's... i mean it's kind of like the man crushes i had before, but with added bonus "sexual" (or whatever it is that stands in for "sexual" for me) attraction. it doesn't override any other considerations, it's not a first-and-foremost thing.

the men i like as well... it's very similar to the man crushes i had before with added "sexual" attraction as well. just looking at a guy and thinking "mmmmm he's delectable". sometimes i do feel creepy and male-gazey for that, even though experientially i know it's not the same thing. it gets back to, like... looking at a woman's boobs and finding them attractive is _fine_. i mean women _want_ to be looked at sometimes, _want_ to be appreciated. it just sucks when that's done to the exclusion of all of our other qualities as a human being.

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just some kind of half-baked thoughts.

Mrs HD’s friend’s husband has gone down some kind of Tate/Peterson rabbit hole and has started treating her like total shit

This is really sad and I didn't actually realize married guys were susceptible to this, I thought it was just never-girlfriend guys and divorced guys

i mean women _want_ to be looked at sometimes, _want_ to be appreciated. it just sucks when that's done to the exclusion of all of our other qualities as a human being.

it feels like this has been kicking around in the revive, and lately i feel like my understanding of it has shifted. the whole "men are stupid" thing... i mean, they are, but i think the actual problem is when "men lack awareness" and are "unable to balance". they turn their essential stupidity into rules and roles and a public persona, they go all the way with it, lack any perspective or self-awareness or lightness about it, and then it makes them miserable and they never break out of it. it's ok to want to fuck someone but if you aren't connected to the other things you want, the other human things in addition to wanting to fuck, you're just an impoverished void who everyone with any sense clocks as a potential threat. one of the great things i'm finding out about kink is that it allows me to get into a lot of really primal and "wrong" stuff within a safe and trusting frame. i think men mostly don't know what to do with their primal and wrong stuff so they put it up front and create an environment of real danger and diminishment. there's that simone weil quote "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

xp my sense with guys who suddenly go down the right wing rabbit hole is that there is a certain need related to the "imaginary evil" of their manhood that they aren't getting and so they end up desperately going the way of "real evil" which is ironically a fake substitute for it.

xp My boyfriend (of 10 years) went through a spell of insisting that if I really listened to Jordan Peterson I would agree with his "points." I'm pretty sure he still thinks that but at least he stopped bringing it up.

Very unfortunately for me he also knows a rich eccentric VERY divorced man who is personal friends with Graham "Aliens built the pyramids" Hancock. Very, very divorced. So divorced. Living in an expensive house full of kooky unfinished projects and approx 0 feeling of home, complaining about his ex-wife and insisting that Graham Hancock has discovered really explosive proof that the scientific establishment doesn't want us to know about.

I think that was one of the longest days of my life.

barf

Sidney Sweeney is in a new--film? Series?--and the posters in LA seem intentionally not to emphasize her boobs.

xp i'm big into self-love and like ultimately i think correcting this falls into that category but coddled dudes who avoid struggling with anything internally are such a disease.

intellectualizing human relationships is an interesting exercise if you want to improve your generalizations about people, but if you want to connect with another human intellectualizing is a poor substitute for just paying attention to the person in front of you and responding to them. if that direct approach is not working out for you, then it's usually best to take a good look at yourself and what you're doing first, because no matter who you're with you're always half of what's happening.

^ nb: the "you" in that post is not directly about anyone else posting itt

the posters in LA seem intentionally not to emphasize her boobs.

CENSORED BY WOKENESS

Well, it is LA, after all.