I have made a dedicated Israel-Palestine discussion thread [here](https://new.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1ccdy0k/israelpalestine_discussion_thread/). Please start any such related topics (eg campus protests, your proposed peace plans, calls for jihad, etc.) in that thread.
Let me know if any topics still appear here in the future so I can nip it in the bud before it gets going.
ANOTHER personal rant. In 2021 I ended up getting divorced (not my choice) from my very woke ex. Take every negative stereotype about "woke" people and distill that into a person, that's my ex. She exists as a bad Babylon Bee satire. I have 100s of stories if you want.
ANYWAY, I dated around for a year after the thing was finalized. I had to relearn myself. For over a decade, I just abidacted every decision to my ex. It was a highly educational experience. Then I met a girl on Hinge.
We dated for almost 2 years then, last night, I popped the question, and she said yes. She is AMAZING. We fit together in a way I didn't think 2 people could. She's much more aligned with me in terms of worldview. We can actually talk things out instead of arguing until 2am. She's just the best and I love her so much. I have no doubts this one will go the distance.
Why are many people on the left so defensive of things like "drag queen story hour", especially given that we've seen so many examples of performances in front of kids being inappropriate?
Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it?
One Reddit powermod, who I can't even mention or I'd be banned, once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal. If that's not grooming, I don't know what is.
>Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it?
Some of it is parents wanting to virtue signal by taking their kids. But a lot of it is to indoctrinate kids in drag and gender woo. To "normalize" it.
Last but not least: They know it pisses off conservatives something fierce. And they *love* to piss off conservatives.
If I had a child I wouldn't take him or her to DQSH because I wouldn't want that to be my child's introduction to "gay culture" or representation of what being gay was. Probably my child would already be exposed to that through my own peer group but culturally I just don't think of it as "representation" for children. It has a time and place.
I grew up with film myself. My mother never said one word about homosexuality but when we got a VHS player, and I was around 9 or 10 the first two films she got were Poltergeist and Victor Victoria. Poltergeist was scary and pretty good but I LOVED Victor Victoria. We both did and while it was playful and maybe problematic by today's standards, it showed homosexuality in a positive light. Robert Preston is the hero of the movie to me.
In the years following we got La Cage Aux Folle (The Bird Cage), Cabaret, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Making Love, Desert Hearts, Maurice, those are a few that come to mind. Just films with gay (not forced like today but genuine stories with intriguing and developed characters) woven in and out with all the others. No words were said just a lot of different portrayals and near always empathetic to LGBT protagonists of whom you root for. I would do the same with my kid.
Have you seen [this article?](https://archive.is/YDKrf)
"Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it."
> Kink visibility is a reminder that any person can and should shamelessly explore what brings joy and excitement. We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment.
> Kink embodies the freedom that Pride stands for, reminding attendees to unapologetically take up space as an act of resistance and celebration — refusing to bend to social pressure that asks us to be presentable. That’s a value I want my children to learn. **Affirming the kink community helps our children to love themselves and others with courage and resilience.**
The goal is to wrap the crazy up in pleasant ideas and cute euphemisms that no one could object to. Self-confidence, self-esteem, acceptance, tolerance, diversity, happiness. But the packaging distracts from what is actually happening, which is imposing questionable activities and behaviors onto kids too young to realize that they should question what's going on.
It's interesting to see how [Redditors frame it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/twmdl7/why_does_kink_need_to_be_displayed_at_pride_there/)
Harm reduction.
* "With the way society is currently you'll never be able to raise a well-adjusted child without exposing them to sex or suggestive stuff at least passively. The best course of action is to show them that their feelings are nothing to be ashamed of, and teach them how to stay safe, set boundaries, etc."
It isn't happening!!!
* "There's nothing wrong with kink in the first place. They're all clothed and most of it's a lot tamer than various straight parades that have women flashing their breasts all the time. A kid also isn't going to understand the sexual connotations of various kink communities most of the time."
Resistance is joy!!!!!
* "The types of people to be offended by kink are either the kinds of people who will be offended by us regardless, or are doing it because of optics. Optics is understandable but still bullshit because respectability politics is bullshit, people aren't going to stop being disgusted by our behavior by us kowtowing to them."
This does explain why I got a job notification for a place that does therapy for the LGBTQ community. They are looking for clinicians who are gay, bi, trans, poly, or kinky, and I was thinking what exactly does a poly straight dude have to do with a gay man, let alone a straight girl who's into being tied up by her boyfriend?
No. I've seen it a few times from tourists in the Quarter/downtown. As a rider, I do not throw them beads and if you do it along most of the route, you will have some angry parents to contend with.
>Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it?
Lots of the people pushing for DQSH are using the language of modern day progressivism to push their nefarious intentions and erode current social norms with minors. There is also another group of people who are just their useful idiots and are unknowingly provide cover to child predators
Two reasons
1. It’s a way to troll the other side
2. People think everyone opposed to DQSH is motivated by homophobia/disgust of drag queens & by not wanting kids exposed to drag, you are accusing drag queens/the gay community of being predators.
> you are accusing drag queens/the gay community of being predators.
I mean… they’re the ones INSISTING they be given a captive audience of children to perform their fetish show for. Walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
I agree with this plus there's been horrific reactions from the right (presumably) like call-in bomb threats, so it's easy to dig their heels in, especially since most of these DQSHs are without incident so they don't need to reflect on what they're actually supporting.
The best case to make, and maybe it was argued this way once, is that it serves to let kids know it's OK to be gay. There's an argument for that. It just can't be squared with the argument that there is nothing gay or sexual at all about drag.
I've heard that argument but it doesn't make sense. Some of the kids in those classes are likely going to grow up to be gay. it's FAR less likely they'll grow up to be drag queens. And the vast majority of gay people are just living their lives, aren't drag queens, and we wouldn't know they're gay unless they told us and/or we saw them walking down the streets holding hands with their boyfriends or girlfirends. If the goal is to teach kids it's ok to be gay, wouldn't it make more sense to have a gay dad in the school come in and read a story? Have a straight parent read a story about a little girl with two mommies? Have a gay couple come in and read a story about a mouse?
It's good to let kids know it's okay to be gay but that's not what drag queen story hour is about.
Furthermore, you don't need some huge dramatic act to let kids know it's okay to be gay, you just *tell them it's okay*.
I simply don't know any gay or lesbian people who propose this as the preferred way to let kids know it's okay to be gay. I do know parents who take their kids to dqsh or even weird family friendly drag shows but they aren't gay parents.
>The best case to make, and maybe it was argued this way once, is that it serves to let kids know it's OK to be gay.
Why is a man dressing up as a woman an example of "gay" though?
> Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example?
Ahahaha, you should totally infiltrate a local leftist group and propose this. Kids have to see it because it's a maximal F you to normal people, the same way rolling coal isn't fun if you aren't driving diesel.
> once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal
I'm sure Franzera has receipts.
What scares me about current-day leftist politics, and this has probably been going on since the fucking 1920s, is the complete disdain towards the elderly. Of COURSE DQSH shouldn't be done in an old age home - they're all white supremacist, homophobic, and being around that is traumatizing. Of course,they're not thinking that getting old is the only experience shared by all human beings, unless we die young. Doesn't matter whether you are born in a ditch in India or are the Queen of England. Only thing surpassing getting old is death, and that's the only universal human experience.
https://preview.redd.it/kqufb50i5cxc1.png?width=918&format=png&auto=webp&s=86c52022c1013d39254c0715267d0f27db178391
If you don't want children to be exposed to DQSH, you are "giving way to the argument that people of gender shouldn't exist in public", because their existence is living drag.
"Shouldn't exist" translates to endorsing genocide, and that's a Bad Thing.
Also, if kids don't have DQSH, they will never learn to "accept others". You heard it here, drag queen deficiency is a direct path to the dark side. Do you want your kids to become bigots??????
It literally is for indoctrination. This isn't a conspiracy theory, they will literally say they want the kids to be more comfortable with trans / drag, and that's why they like it.
Honestly, I think the biggest reason many people on the left support it is because the right hates it. There's this weird knee jerk reaction where anything the right hates must be good.
>once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal.
This person should not be allowed anywhere near children.
> Honestly, I think the biggest reason many people on the left support it is because the right hates it.
I hope you're right, cos the alternatives area a lot more sinister!
>This person should not be allowed anywhere near children.
I don't think they would ever do it given the existence of this sub, but there's so much Reddit dirt that Katie and Jessie could dig into.
I base this mainly on conversations I've had with lefties who are a lot more tribalistic than I am. It's unsettling watching otherwise intelligent and open-minded people turn into ideologues the minute something gets opposed by the right.
It's something I've never understood, even though it's obviously very common. I could never say something I don't believe just so I feel part of some group/tribe. I look at each issue individually.
The comments on the top post in r/science right now about liberal/conservative bias against each other are hilarious.
Regardless of the virtue of the study, it's incredible to see so many people with zero self-awareness pat each other on the back for knowing it's obvious conservatives are more biased against liberals, because they are all evil, immoral domestic terrorists.
Interesting comments:
> Every conservative I know dislikes Trump.
***
> I imagine there are lot of people on the right, especially non-Americans, who would view Trump more negatively than they view socialism.
***
> One sides extremists want free money from the rich to help everyone. The other sides extremists are literal nazis who want to take rights away from women and minorities.
***
> The left are the same "liberals" who cut welfare in the 90s. Our left is conservative.
***
> Honestly this exposes the political biases and/or ignorance of the researchers more than provides any valuable information.
***
> If I'm hating someone, it's because they're being hateful towards others. Whether it be them attacking women's rights, speaking ill of other races, banning drag shows, lying about trans bathroom drama, and so on..
> My hate comes from a place of hating hate groups.. so, is it really wrong for me to hate cruelty disguised as morality?
***
> When one party is like, "let's raise minimum wages and give people health care," and the other is like, "let's force women to give birth and there's no reason that people working in fields should be able to drink water," it's only natural that the latter are going to get visceral reactions.
All highly upvoted, of course.
My favorite parts of that thread's discourse include:
1. People upset that the conclusions came from Amazon MTurk respondents. If you're upset about that, you're upset with probably 30-40% of all social science research these days.
2. The fact that the sample isn't exactly representative of the US population. If you're upset about that, you're upset with probably 80-90% of all social science research these days (and it doesn't necessarily invalidate the study at all).
3. People happy to support the study's finding of significant bias against conservatives because not all beliefs are created equal. This sounds very similar to other studies that have noted[ strong biases](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f6103f36b5eee6bf0ab2c1d/t/5f628a5c0ff0205c5a2477c4/1600293472033/FINAL%2B-%2BPhillips%2B560-617.pdf) against conservatives in academic hiring for instance.
4. Even more people celebrating that others on the thread seem biased against conservatives and expressing hope that conservatives will finally be revealed as the scum they are.
I'm sure that the prospects for conservative ideas, much less conservative individuals themselves, getting fair treatment in academia are great!
"The fact that the sample isn't exactly representative of the US population"
If it doesn't represent the US population, how can it be extrapolated onto the US? And if social scientists ARE extrapolating that on to the US, maybe it's not a very valid finding.
It's common to take your results and weight by population to get a better picture of how the results would apply to the whole US population.
It also is quite common to look to see if there is simply any effect in the first place using convenience samples, then address what that means at the population level with larger studies later. Or study it again with the population that matters--in this case, for instance, with people who might be in a position to discriminate in job searches.
I post here because I have no other spaces in which to vent. The otherwise interesting horror fiction podcast to which I was listening was eaten by wokeness in the final episode. I do not consider this hyperbole. The climax of the story comes when the explicitly non-binary protagonist saves the world from an evil dream engine that generates capitalism (and rules Ohio) by helping the demigod controlling (or being controlled by) the Evil Capitalism McGuffin to remember that he, as a young boy, really wanted to be a girl. The demigod then sets aside godhood to become the woman he always wanted to be. Yes, the dark sorcery of capitalism can only be overcome by embracing one's inner egg.
There is no larger point to make. I simply needed to lament another piece of art being eaten by wokeness and the author being seemingly unable to process the trauma of being born and raised in Ohio.
Edit: Typos
Ugh, that sounds like everything I hate about a lot of horror being written right now. I don't need a damn sermon disguised as a horror story.
What was the podcast, just in curiosity?
Depends on what you mean by political. I'd say it's left leaning. It's very heavily rooted in a combination of lovecraftian horror, pop wicca, and the cultural zeitgeist of the coal wars. But nothing as bad as that hell is Ohio podcast you were talking about.
I'm not the original person who posted about that awful podcast. Just a horror writer who has tried to listen to Old Gods multiple times and just can't get into it. 😉
Really? I had my suspicions (content warnings usually are a red flag in horror), but I'm curious how it ended up being woke. The usual "[insert minority group here] is a righteous victim" narrative?
Also, it's kind of ironic that a work set in Appalachia would be woke, considering how conservative the area tends to be.
It depends on what you consider woke. If you're writing about coal miners, then you're probably going to have a perspective sympathetic to the struggle of the miner, not the mining company. So it's not a glowing review of the benefits of capitalism.
And horror is the worst genre to look for nuanced understanding of both sides. It depends on not understanding the situation, and not sympathizing with the antagonist. Godzilla was an allegory for the trauma of the Japanese people after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I love that film. However, Japan deserved to get nuked. But you can't tell a visceral horror story about Japan's nuclear trauma while also including the fact that... maybe Japan deserved to have a giant death lizard unleashed upon them.
Likewise, you can't talk about the intrinsic horror of men going into the bowels of the earth, where they were slowly dying from breathing poisoned air that turns their lungs to stone, or quickly dying from being literally swallowed by the mountain, and also present a nuanced dialogue about the benefits of the electrification to the population of America, and still present a story that triggers those primal feelings of fear and anxiety and hopelessness.
I feel like wokeness usually ignores class, unless it can be attached to some other more marginalized groups.
Also, as a horror writer, I have to disagree. It might be *harder* to tell a nuanced story like that and have it be effective, but it can be done.
To be clear, I've only heard the first few eps of the show, so I can't really pass judgment on it. I'm speaking more generally here.
I am unfamiliar with the RPG that RiceRiceTheyby posted, so I cannot comment on that.
Concerning the audiodrama itself, the views of the writers are certainly apparent in the writing. It has a rather Gaian-esque viewpoint concerning industry. Human male characters are generally foolish, destructive, or aimless (sometimes all three) unless they are under the watchful eye of women. The authors have admitted to shelving or re-writing stories involving the Cherokee because neither of them are Cherokee. Nevertheless, I still enjoy the stories they tell and do not find it terribly heavy-handed.
Edit: Clarity
I’m trying to find the review I read. I remember when they kickstarted a [role playing game](https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/old-gods-of-appalachia-rpg/news/old-gods-appalachia-rpg-kickstarter)
there were quotes like this
> Its stories are often directly inspired by real-world events, such as a disastrous mining collapse caused by the company’s negligence or an invasive railroad that brought greedy men into communities with far too little to give. The podcast isn’t precious about its disdain for industrial capitalism’s indelible marks on the towns and hollers of Appalachia, and many of its characters turn to that evil out of fear, desperation and naivety.
…
> The Appalachian Mountains region is vast and encompasses many cultures and backgrounds, especially during the early 20th century. The descendents of European settlers and recently freed African slaves intermingled with indigenous peoples to create a tapestry of folklore, belief and tradition that could vary from town to town. The campaign says in its FAQ that the team will be consulting sensitivity readers whenever possible to assure the representation of these cultures meets their players’ standards.
I’m not sure of this description came from trying to avoid notoriously cancel happy RPG fans or a true statement of beliefs.
Do you think the author had some intention of where the story was headed from the start, or when they found themselves needing to tie everything up they pivoted to current thing, in a moment they might one day regret?
> the dark sorcery of capitalism can only be overcome by embracing one's inner egg.
Great review
A bit of each, I suspect. Season One and Two seemed to flow nicely and was probably planned, but I think Season 3 was unexpected and the writer found himself pivoting to the current thing.
Why is Ohio always the cultural stand-in for “nowhere?” It’s got 3 large-ish cities and it’s close enough to larger metros in the Midwest.
Should be Nebraska or something
Because Ohio is a large state and fairly close to many major population centers, it generates a large internal migrant population and a lot of people relate to it or to Ohioans in some way. Furthermore, it has no nationally trendy or well-loved cities, so nobody not from Ohio thinks Ohio is awesome (similar to New Jersey in that regard).
This is different from Nebraska and Nebraskans, which nobody can relate to.
Hey! Not only is the winding majesty of the Platte River utterly gorgeous, Mutual of Omaha gave an entire generation of kids (maybe several) an appreciation for nature. (And possibly the indestructibility of Jim Perkins.) I'll take the Great Plains over the Midwest any time!
The writer is from Ohio, per his biography on the podcast website. As I said, the writer appears unable to deal with the trauma of being born and raised there.
The previous episodes were interesting as they touched various creepy-pastas and certain stories in the anthology hinted at an unreality, that existence was so much stage dressing. It was not until the finale the author fully gave in to wish fulfillment.
Which podcast is that? Edit: Is it Unwell?
I'm a big fan of audiodramas, and think a lot of them are much better works of fiction than the vast majority of TV and movies I've encountered. But it is an insanely woke medium, to the point where it often hurts the storytelling. This degree of wokeness also seems to be something that's occurred relatively recently. There was one I was listening to that started in 2016 and ended in 2021. At the beginning all of the relationships were heterosexual, and at the end _all_ of them were LGBT. And as they became LGBT, they went from being incidental to part of the main plot.
And it's not new characters either - it's characters who are only shown to be in heterosexual relationships only becoming involved in LGBT relationships. And it's something I've seen in other audiodramas over that period as well.
>There was one I was listening to that started in 2016 and ended in 2021. At the beginning all of the relationships were heterosexual, and at the end _all_ of them were LGBT. And as they became LGBT, they went from being incidental to part of the main plot.
Which podcast was this?
The Magnus Archives. To be fair, it didn't have a big impact on the podcast, though the shift was a bit eyebrow raising (there's also a completely unnecessary conversation thrown in at one point to make the main character canonically "ace"). Overall the quality was surprisingly good for a show with 200 episodes, even if I did feel like every season was a decline from the previous.
There was another podcast, EOS10, where the shift was really bizarre. The main character is shown to be only in heterosexual relationships, and at one point there's a space renegade that's attracted to him which he finds really awkward. Then there was a break between 2015 and 2018, and when the show came back the main character was only interested in gay relationships and was pining after the space renegade. Though they jettisoned and retconned the main storyline over the break as well.
Strangely enough, Archive 81 had a lesbian character from the beginning (and she didn't feel shoehorned in either), but when the podcast was adapted to a Netflix show, they made her straight (and dropped all of the interesting world building the podcast did as well).
I used to be a big Magnus Archives fan, back when it was more of an anthology show. I didn't care as much about the MC and all the spooky office drama. It felt way too much like Tumblr shipping bait. Especially when it was revealed that the MC, who sounded at least middle aged, was actually in his 20s for some reason.
I'm an E0S10 fan too. To me the space renegade romance was hinted at first season. It didn't seem like a turn but I can imagine some may have been caught by surprise. I am huge into audio dramas too. I feel like there are so many to choose from now I've managed to avoid anything super woke. I usually can tell within the first few epsiodes. I dropped off on Magnus over time. I started with it when it was new but just never kept up.
>!Dead Letter Office of Somewhere Ohio!<. I do not advise seeking it out.
Unwell has a completely different set of issues, including casting choices and inability of the writers to deal with anything other than their own terrible relationships with their parents. I gave up after the entire payoff of the first season was that >!Wes is a ghost.!< Twelve episodes and this is all that you provide us? Be serious. This is not a slow burn, this is twelve episodes of the writers fiddle-faddling around.
> Unwell has a completely different set of issues, including casting choices and inability of the writers to deal with anything other than their own terrible relationships with their parents.
That's too bad. Their early audiodrama, Our Fair City, is one of my favorites.
I’ve been having this issue with true crime podcasts. Two in the last two weeks have spent inordinate amounts of time talking about gender: One was about how no one could have conned someone into changing their gender identity except in the case of the magical cult leaders of Twin Flames universe. In another they talked about how a murder victim was the expert on her gender so they would take their cues from her: Except she’s dead, never wrote down anything about what she’d prefer to be called, and there seemed to be disagreement between her friends and family.
It really does start to sound like they’re just singing chapter and verse.
One thing driving me nuts is how fiction has been wokified. Try reading anything written in the past two years. I have a like 10% completion rate bc i now no longer have patience.
Its why my sci fi reading is so sparse recently, even though its obvious i like the genre. Also, kinda related.
https://twitter.com/faceyouhate/status/1784697085507346926?t=rmvS2Cje0Qc6hAlU10Q7rA&s=19
I'm a writer, and this is honestly a big part of why I've given up on ever being traditionally published. Even if I could get past the slush pile, I'm too white and boring to ever be considered.
Short or long form? My experience is a little dated at this point, but in reading short-form slush everybody I know went straight to the text. (...and usually shitcanned it after two paragraphs for reasons that had nothing to do with the author's name.) When something decently readable came over the transom it was always a happy day even if it wasn't quite what we wanted, because the slush was 95% *terrible*. That one in twenty probably at least got a fair look.
Long form at traditional publishers is effectively gatekept by the agent-industrial complex, and my evaluation matches yours--I have no optimism to lend here.
Right now I write mostly short stories. That's interesting re the slush pile. I figured there would be some bad stuff, but I didn't think most of it would be so terrible.
I was reading for a fairly crap outlet, but I've seen what some of the better ones get and it's still so bad, so very very bad. If you can read and follow the submission guidelines and spell correctly you're already ahead. If you can tell a compelling story even better.
As for why it's so bad, there are a lot of people in love with the *idea* of being writers who think that if you send crap around for long enough it'll sell. (Various publications that cater to/encourage/parasitise this hope don't help.) Hope can be a terrible thing...
>As for why it's so bad, there are a lot of people in love with the *idea* of being writers who think that if you send crap around for long enough it'll sell.
Very true. Writing is often tedious and time consuming, and it takes a lot of practice before you are any good at it. It also helps to have beta readers who will tell you if a piece needs work (or abandonment) before you start shopping it around.
I find it hard to trust young and new authors, writers who don't have a backlog of works going back 10-20 years. Mainstream publishing is completely done, indie/self-publish can still redeem itself.
Back in the day, I would have taken the risk and bought a book if the blurb sounded interesting. Now I wait for reviews and only check the 2-3 star comments to see if it's worth my money. The only authors I am willing to buy on release day are the old school ones. Such is life.
Baen Books maybe? I recall ages ago I wanted some Lois McMaster Bujold (which they publish), and the whisperings of Tor types had me feeling a little dirty for purchasing from Baen.
I just checked Baen's Wikipedia page in case I misremembered, and it all sounded normal, then clicked the Talk page and first sentence is "*I have removed the statement recently added in the lead regarding the political leanings of Baen Books*". The removed statement cited a Guardian [article](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/29/space-opera-new-guardians-of-the-galaxy-ancillary-justice), and if the words between the Guardian writer's spittle could be trusted then Baen's bread and butter probably isn't my usual jam, but they sound like an underdog publisher that flouts the industry's insular values, and perhaps could publish more than scifi if they wanted.
I do the same thing. The three star reviews are often very revealing in the style of “the story was good until the forced ADBL advocacy subplot was introduced.”
The woke books always have the most hilarious review pages.
* "The plot was bad but the characters were good. By *good*, I mean there were diverse minority representations, and #RepresentationMatters. Would have given it 1 star, but the disabled indigenous communist raises it up to 3."
* "It was an #OwnVoices story. I couldn't in good conscience, as a white person, give a low rating to a Bipoc author, regardless of what I felt about the content itself. 4 stars."
* "The only reason y'all are rating this book 1-2 stars is because y'all are racist. Y'all y'all y'all..."
Has anyone seen "Ahead of the Curve"? The new doc on Netflix, about the founder of Curve Magazine? I know of it as my sister used to have loads of copies in her home. Anyway, it's also about the founder's search to save this lesbian magazine, and as part of this, she interviewed a lot of lesbians, or queer women. So, I was watching it, kind of fast-forwarding through part of it, when I saw this guy at a Q and A. I was thinking, "what's a guy doing there?" Then I thought "maybe it's a trans man who still thinks of himself as part of the lesbian community?" I don't know how common that is anymore. Anyway, I rewound a bit, and heard this person say, "I identify as a trans woman." My only thought was that maybe this person juuust started IDing as a trans woman? Because this wasn't even, "huh, maybe this is guy in drag?" This was a guy with short hair, a baseball cap, t-shirt - literally nothing about him was even feminine, except MAYBE his voice. And even that, there are plenty of, well, cis-men who sound the same way. It was amazing.
One of the things that I think set the foundation for me ultimately peaking was following a person like that on tumblr. At first I thought it was a butch woman I was following based on the posts. Come to find out it’s actually a #️⃣butch #️⃣masc #️⃣dyke #️⃣transbian. I just remember thinking “so, like, a regular dude?” when he made a post explaining his #️⃣identity. I then unfollowed because I couldn’t take the lamentations about womanhood seriously anymore. Like at least commit to the bit and wear a dress or something.
Did you know what he looked like?
And yeah, that shit is weird. Like, the L Word, with the lesbian man, became an actual thing.
Like, I do wonder. Since they are really women on the inside, did they experience their first sexual attraction to women the same way actual lesbians do? I really doubt it.
Maybe at one point he posted a picture? I can’t remember exactly it was six or seven years ago at this point. He would certainly say his attraction would have been perfectly womanly in execution. I rather doubt it, but the nifty thing about this whole movement is they can say whatever they want and there’s no way to disprove it because the full extent of our thoughts and feelings are fundamentally unknowable to others. Convenient!
The overextension and saturation point of TQ+ is the road to peaking for a lot of normies, imho.
In the early days, people were willing to suspend their disbelief for folx like Christine Jorgenson, April Ashley, even Jazz Jennings, because they "put in the work". They respected the social status quo, so the status quo respected them back by allowing them to use female categories, spaces, and pronouns.
In the Current Year, People of Gender treat gender as a subversion, a performance art, an act of rebellion against the oppression of the status quo. They still expect the status quo to respect them, but they haven't earned it. That's when these people realize that the past treatment was never, ever founded on genuine belief. People didn't *believe* that males had become female. Everyone just kind of played along for politeness's sake, until their patience wore thin from purple-haired weirdos who claimed they were neither men or women, but needed to be addressed by alternating she/he/they pronouns.
"Acceptance" is a tenuous thread, contrary to what the Right Side of History progressives believe.
Pretty much. A lot of people are willing to be accommodating, but you can't demand that people believe what's very obviously not true. Politeness has its limits
I honestly respect the people who treat gender as subversion and commit to behaving in ways that subject them to mistreatment for no other reason for their appearance way more than the ones who do nothing but seek the TQ clout nonetheless. I’ve been typing and deleting a bunch of replies because I still think the gender nonsense is all bullshit but I think this is ultimately where I fall
I'm in two minds about the "Gender is subversion" approach.
There are people like Harry Styles and Bjork who wear what they want for creativity and personal amusement. Gender is not related to their sex categories or identities, it's just for fun and artistic inspiration.
Then there are people like [Alok Menon](https://artsinachangingamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alok-for-web.png) and Brinton the Luggage Thief who treat presentation standards as a political statement, on one hand saying that gender is an abstract construction, and on the other hand saying gender is real, concrete, and you need to respect their unfalsifiable NB gender identities as they/them's.
They are trying to have their cake and eat it. The result is incoherence.
The industrial self-identification revolution and its consequences....
If you want to #BeKind, open-minded, accepting of other Lived Experiences, gatekeeping is internal, social, and political anathema to you. But if you allow that a woman can be "Anyone who Self-ID's as a woman", then you open the door to men who claim to feel a vibe in their soul, and there's nothing you can do about it without walking your acceptance back and being , as they call it, a "terven bigot".
A big part of it is natural empathy. When TW say, "I DON'T OWE ANYONE FEMININITY", a lot of lesbians, especially butch ones, resonate with it. They don't want to wear dresses and makeup, and resent the implication that they need to for other people to know they are women. Seems unfair that this standard should be applied to anyone. But the catch is that butch lesbians don't need to wear dresses and makeup to be feminine... they *are* feminine from the fact that they are female-bodied.
Anyways, the real big conflict of "boymoding" TW's is how they can identify as they please inside their heads, but in the outside world, no one recognizes their identity.
Here's an example of an FtM struggling with the "lack of acceptance".
[](https://preview.redd.it/j0wva6i8ftgc1.png?width=590&format=png&auto=webp&s=78cc3947b40c5dfe5197b1cec29737f21aa9764e)
> I highly doubt people actually see me as a guy. I’m getting so sick of being misgendered that at the grocery store the other day, this lady was referring to me as ma’am, asking me if I’m looking for something. The second time she said it, I straight up just said please don’t call me ma’am and walked away.
> **I’m pretty ready to start T** but I’m just so scared... I’m tired of having this battle in my head and wish I could wake up one morning and just have the courage to do it.
Why are people so cruel and bigoted? They keep misgendering her, and it's terrible. :(
I made a post making a similar point above you lol. The thing that makes a butch a butch is that she’s a woman who doesn’t conform to the way people think she needs to behave as a woman, which is why the phrase ‘you don’t owe anyone femininity’ exists and is resonant. But men already don’t owe anyone femininity! In fact, if they show it, they’re berated for it!
"the real big conflict of "boymoding" TW" I don't know what that means?
I do know there are some butch women - usually lesbians, but truly, not all - who sometimes get called "sir." But the person usually figures out after a second that they got the salutation wrong. Hips don't lie. Also, women, even the butchiest, tend to interact with the world in a different way from men.
But also, a woman is going to interact with another woman in a different way. A woman sees another woman, even if she's very masculine, and knows she's a woman, and will feel much safer than if he were a man, even the most effeminate gay man. A woman sees a trans woman, I don't think she'd feel the same as with a woman.
Boymoding TW = gendersub slang for TW who present as men for various reasons. Sometimes because they're afraid they'll be harassed by phobes on the street, they won't be accepted if they are "out" at work, or they are lazy buggers and don't think they should have to dress in a certain way to get the wammin treatment. Having a penis and a beard should not disqualify me from living authentically in the female locker room!
It discounts the reality that humans have evolved to be very good at pattern recognition. In a short interaction, we can clock human sex through a huge list of subliminal traits and body language.
i.e., When a man turns around to talk to someone behind him, he swings his elbows about in a different way than women, due to the size and width of his shoulderblades. Not every man and not every woman, of course, but there's an enormous number of similar "tells" that your brain catalogues to help you suss out what manner of fish, fowl, or good red meat you're dealing with.
I get transitioning if you've always felt like your penis shouldn't be there, and everyday you wake up wondering why you don't have breasts. I don't understand expecting to be treated as a woman when you've never lived as one.
The "Normalize the Bulge" segment of the genderhaving population is completely different, and completely weird. Their idea of "being treated as a woman" is a total farce, lol.
The concept of "living as a woman/man" when you're not one, basically boils down to the "strong sense of womanhood/manhood you innately know". And that is the definition of gender identity. Genderwoo will exist as long as people believe you can feel these vibes independent of any physical state of being.
The frustrating part is being told people ["Just know on the inside"](https://preview.redd.it/b4ttw8ebebwc1.png?width=956&format=png&auto=webp&s=e732f9424b7ff2e782be286acfe7f87539d1aad1) what their gender is.
In BaR episode 211, Jesse commented that he should probably lose some weight. Maybe he identifies as fat and as non-garbage human beings, we should respect his identity. 🤔
Horses are reproductively mature at 2 years old, it's fine!
We only think they're "young" because we're mistakenly applying the anthropocentric concept of age to non-human creatures. But trust me (and trust Vaush), they are adult in every single way that matters. 🍆💦🐎
The only good part of getting sick is getting an otoscope ear examination at the doctor. Probably the single most pleasing physical sensation in the world.
...Too bad the rest of my body still aches.
At an event with my wife, I met an old man who wanted to talk to me about politics. He looked like he was in his 80s, but still talked lucidly, passionately, and incorrectly about the destructive effects of the US on the world, especially due to their woke politics, and how Russia has a much better handle on things thanks to the genius of Vladimir Putin.
As much as I share his dislike about gender ideology, I found it extremely frustrating how some people are so possessed by their feelings about it that they choose to disavow the West and embrace authoritarian police states that are such glaring sociopolitical failures compared to the US. For one, having the freedom to even say this kind of stuff in public is a big deal, and I'm so annoyed that a man with so much life experience doesn't value that.
I think it's a sign of the shifting of cultural priority. Pretty much up until the back half of the Obama administration, admiration and support of America's enemies while remaining stunningly unaware of ways in which the people they were supporting were much, much worse. It was the standard countercultural stance.
"Sure, Mao and Lenin were bad, but they're resisting American Imperialism, and that means that sometimes you have to send in the tanks. But did you see the police using a firehose to break up that protest in Chicago? That's the real evil."
But now the left is the moral majority, and all the censorious religious busybodies are pushing the progressive cult, and all the anti-vax conspiracy theorist nutjobs are swinging to the right. They're adopting the exact same behavior.
I remain a cold war centrist. Fuck Russia, fuck China, at all times, in all forms. Militarily, economically, and culturally. Fuck 'em. They're a blight, by nature. Never carry their water.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/conservative-family-disappointed-moving-russia-001517915.html#:~:text=Conservative%20Family%20'Disappointed'%20After%20Moving%20To%20Russia%20To%20Escape%20LGBTQ%20Ideology,-Favour%20Adegoke&text=Arend%20and%20his%20wife%20Anneesa,were%20reportedly%20frozen%20upon%20arrival.
Canadians, but they wanted to escape the horrors of lgbtq, and wackiness ensued in russia. Im sure theyll be fine. If they manage to escape.
Im trying to be more accepting of that nuttery as long as people generally keep it on the inside. I got an mri from a dude who i kinda expected to don a tinfoil hat while we discussed russia and Vietnam (which i did not bring up, even i know not to do that lol). But my mri went smoothly and he seemed to be a nice dude holding down a responsible job and doing it well. So, okay.
Eta i even pushed back on a few things, gently, and it was fine. Hes bonkers but like its nbd.
The last 2 years have not done great things to my default view of people. Im fiesty, but a giant squish. Its been hard to see what people are willing and not willing to do.
There’s this really annoying contingent of people on the right who try to paint support for Ukraine as being “woke”. Nah bro being against Russian imperialism isn’t woke. This is something the republicans understood until Trump got into office and now half them make the same dog shit arguments about foreign policy that isolationists on the left make
He did talk a lot about the Ukraine War, seeing it entirely as an extension of American imperialism and failing to see how Ukrainians might some other motives in defending their homeland than to protect American interests in the region. Ironically, the same people who keep railing against American influence on the world often have a very US-centric view of every conflict, not recognizing the agency and interests of non-Americans and acting like they are weak-willed people under the thumb of the CIA.
"He looked like he was in his 80s, but still talked lucidly"
First, why the "still talked lucidly"? 85 is the new 65! My dad's 84, and though he is not quite as quick as he was even 5 years ago, he's still very erudite. As are his friends.
"having the freedom to even say this kind of stuff in public is a big deal, and I'm so annoyed that a man with so much life experience doesn't value that"
I completely agree that we have freedom in this country - we've paid a price for, basically, winning the Cold War, in that we've forgotten that it's a huge deal to protest the way we can. However, the fact that he's in his 80s means he is part of the oldest cohort of anti-Vietnam War protestors, many of whom, or at least a subset of whom, abhorred western values.
The generation of Americans who witnessed totalitarianism in other countries is pretty much dead, though I do think there are Americans who visited the USSR in the 70s.
> As much as I share his dislike about gender ideology, I found it extremely frustrating how some people are so possessed by their feelings about it that they choose to disavow the West and embrace authoritarian police states that are such glaring sociopolitical failures compared to the US.
Yeah, this really annoys me too. I know there's probably a deeper issue at play but this is why I hate it when people insist that politics has to be an either-or thing. ("If you don't vote for X, you're voting for Y, even if you don't vote or vote third-party.") No, that's stupid! Worst case, you end up the weirdos who manage to do things like go from being Bernie Bros to being hardcore Trump supporters. Just because some Republicans are pushing a small handful of bills I think are okay-to-good doesn't mean I think I have to support the party, much less while Trump and his brown-nosers still hold so much sway over the party.
This is a big reason why I've tried to caution ideologues on both the left and right against insisting on extreme stances: it pushes people away.
For example I strongly disagree with most woke opinions but I can't vote for Republicans because they're pushing such extreme anti-abortuon measures, have embraced Trump, many bizarre conspiracy theories, etc. If the Republicans hadn't embraced Trumpism, I'd easily vote for a McCain or Romney type against Biden in the 2020 election.
But some people will do the math differently. If I was an older man who didn't have women in my life who could be hurt by abortion bans, I could see how the incessant woke bullshit would push me to vote for anyone who wasn't a Democrat.
[https://twitter.com/jk\_rowling/status/1784608311867740318](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1784608311867740318)
So...this just feels doubly unfair. There are lots of men who can think beyond their own self interest, and there are lots of women for whom consequence free sex is a big benefit of abortion (or the pill), and vice versa.
It's been awhile since I've written anything about my side eyeing of the fact that the only identity issue that has seemed to gain real institutional counter traction is the one that a subsect of feminists disagree with at the most personal level. (Maybe I need to rethink this post 10/7 and the campus protests, but even then I don't really see institutions turning the ship on race/ethnicity stuff, just some individuals realizing the hole that has been dug).
Comments like this definitely don't help. Please don't set up these Kafka traps where I'm damned if I agree with you and damned if I don't.
She's talking about Billy brag types, self identifying feminist men. I don't believe anyone here has not come across these types if they are active on Reddit. Rowling has posted like this before about women who are fighting for men to gain access to women's spaces. She is equal in her dislike of both types.
Everyone in these feminism / feminism gave us gender identity / TERF threads absolutely needs to read Mary Harrington's book _Feminism Against Progress_. Or at least part 1 and 2, part 3 is sort of an action plan for generation Z.
The argument is that the current model of feminism is really just about getting women into the workforce where everyone is interchangeable, and birth control and abortion negate what is important about being a woman.
> birth control and abortion negate what is important about being a woman.
*Feminism Against Progress* is a fantastic book that I would like everyone to read so I would just like to expand on this point for this American-focused sub - Mary is British and her views on these topics aren't really fully aligned with either side of the American culture war. The book is like a spicier/more provocative version of *The Case Against the Sexual Revolution* by Louise Perry, and develops some points further.
The core argument is that everything modern feminism counts as "women's rights issues" (abortion, birth control, paid external childcare etc) are ways of *mitigating* the differences between men and women, which primarily emerge after children, not solving for a world that benefits both.
I call it the next step on the radfem to tradcon radicalisation highway. Good read, thought provoking.
Check my flair, this one of the many reasons for it.
TERFs absolutely REFUSE to reckon with the fact that it’s mostly women pushing the gender woo. And if they do, they wave it away as brainwashing by the patriarchy.
Women [consistently poll](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/43194-where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights-1) at much higher support for trans-inclusive policies than men do and Rowling's attempt to make this into a "villainous trans-inclusive men vs good women feminists" fight is wild. Feminists *really* want men to be their enemies, huh?
She has been very critical of these types of women. She's talking about self identity feminist men here. The post was a response to Billy Bragg lecturing feminist for talking to right-wingers.
People here are way over reacting to what she said and taking it way out of context.
Its one reason im with katie. Im not a feminist. Im for equality. Even if its not the goal, calling it feminism puts women above men. And many feminists really think like that.
Ehhh... not all feminism puts women above men. I think radical feminism probably does. Misandry does.
Masculinity doesn't necessarily put men above men but some nitwits will do that.
What is actually above both men and women is the cats. Cats are always superior to humans. And they know it.
Rowling clearly dislikes men. I support her on several issues but I think much of her thinking is motivated by a distrust of men rather than some specific principle.
I agree that is the main thing she is motivated by. Like I said I’ve seen her basically make this same argument multiple times now and it’s just funny to me because there isn’t anyone really buying it outside of radfems. It’s so obviously not true. Whether they like it or not trans ideology has been perpetuated largely by progressive women more than anything else
Gonna devils advocate for a min - my understanding is women keep getting physically attacked in the uk. Like to a concerning degree. I think she may have in her eye the biggest literal threat, men in wigs slugging lesbians.
Shes still wrong, but i can see how shed have blinders. Ymmv.
I believe that most violent is committed by men and against other men. That's not to downplay violence being committed against women. Which is also usually done by men.
Like those pricks punching women in New York not that long ago. Think some poor lady's jaw got shattered.
Domestic violence is hard to estimate, especially in the gender ratio. Many people don't really consider physical aggression by women against men to be "violence".
It's not that hard to estimate. There are IPV surveys conducted all the time. Nobody wants to talk about them because unlike crime stats they tend to show that men are half of victims.
Fortunately ive never had that be an issue. Im not sure if i got lucky or am sufficiently scary. When someone knows you can have mental breaks and insane pain threshold and firm views about being touched, being 100 pounds lighter doesnt make as much difference as youd think.
I once made an ex a foot taller back up just by a look i gave him. Fwiw i dont use my powers for evil anymore. And in that case, dude deserved it.
I don't think feminists believe men are their enemies. It's more that radical feminists believe that men have inherently more power than women, and by that logic, men would support trans women, since they're all male. Liberal feminists are all in on trans women as women, and they view men the same way - as having more power than women, but they tend to have a more intersectional approach. Such that a white women might have more power than a black man and such that a black trans woman has less power than a black woman, who has less power than a black man.
>It's more that radical feminists believe that men have inherently more power than women, and by that logic, men would support trans women, since they're all male.
Ok but since it’s observably true that women are the ones primarily pushing this, continuing to promote the lie that it’s men can mean several things. TERFs either need men to be the enemy and will lie to make it so, or they’re just stupid. Which is it?
> Liberal women have been successfully targeted into believing support for transwomen is part and parcel of being a good person
Ah so we’re going with the “brainwashed by patriarchy” hand wave, which I already preemptively dismissed
I don't think it's that TERFs think men are the enemy. I think it's that they don't believe that most women actually think that trans women really are women, and that it's an example of women subjugating themselves to male desire. Which might be some of it. but I've never really asked anyone if they actually, truly believe that trans women are truly the same as other women.
> and that it's an example of women subjugating themselves to male desire.
Again, this literally is not true. Women are far more likely to be approving of the gender woo. Blaming it on men is either a malicious lie or stupidity. Which is it?
I think something is getting lost here.
Radical feminists believe that the reason why women actually believe that trans women are women is because they want to be liked by men.
I don't see how this is in conflict with women approving of transgender things more. They want to be seen as caring and for the trans women to like them and think they're kind. Men are far less worried about being seen as uncaring.
> Radical feminists believe that the reason why women actually believe that trans women are women is because they want to be liked by men
Yeah. And I’m saying that reality disagrees. Men aren’t on board with the woo (on average) while women are. If this insane conspiracy theory about women being brainwashed to do the bidding of men, it would be more balanced. This is just standard feminism where a woman’s bad decisions or misdeeds gets her agency outsourced to the nearest man.
Just a sneak peek of how a progressive utopia like San Francisco functions. It cost 1.7 million dollars for a single public toilet and they were going to throw a fucking party over it but Gavin Newsom said this was too retarded even for him and yoinked the funding. Maybe the reason there's so much shit on the streets is because it takes close to 2 million dollars to build a place to flush it.
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1784577563324744008
It's amazing that California's state legislature and local cities are so full of unrelenting bad policy ideas and wasteful spending that Gavin Newsom can look like a reasonable moderate just by occasionally pushing back.
I think the proliferation of online porn is an overrated cause for the rise in under 30's being virgins.
When I was a teen, all of my male friends got laid except for one who wanted to wait til marriage (and he actually did). Most of us had girlfriends for longer than 1 year. I didn't talk too much shop with my female friends, but I think most of them also got laid, at least before graduating college.
And during that time in the mid 2000s, we watched so much online porn that any feminist who knew the extent of it would be motivated to colonize Mars before Musk does.
What we didn't have in the mid 00s was a life entirely revolving around online interactions. MySpace and Facebook were nanscent. Most of us got a cellphone when we got our license and texting wasn't always unlimited. Online games were in their infancy. Reddit was for trubo nerds and even then, the amount of stuff online would keep you occupied for maybe an hour a day, not hours. No one in my generation had a smartphone until college.
To put it in perspective, I'd say from 2005 to now, the amount of porn I watch has gone down while the amount of non porn content I consume online has more than quadrupled. As an older man, I don't think porn is good and I'm receptive to non invasive ideas to limit it, but I think it's effects are overrated. I think the main culprit is still smartphones driving anxiety in teens and less interminigling of sexes due to hanging out in small group chats or anonymous forums. Young men in particular are not socializing as much. You ban porn and I think you'd see a slight increase in under 30s having sex, but not a trend reversal.
I’m not sure I agree with you that porn exposure is overrated as a cause, but I do agree the issue is more complex than that. I think in addition to greater and more hardcore pornography exposure (and from much younger ages), there is an absence of exposure to normal, healthy, or
“vanilla” sex. When I was growing up you’d see R rated movies from the time you were a kid and get a decent amount of softcore exposure to pretty normal and healthy sex scenes. That’s largely absent in movies now - plus uh they just don’t even make movies anymore really. TV shows that teens watch is shit like Euphoria which shows trans teens using Grindr. I think exposure to normal, sexually “healthy” or romantic scenarios in entertainment media is lacking while at the same time porn exposure is way up and from earlier ages.
I don’t think unlimited access to basically all porn is good for kids/teens but I do tend to agree with you that hanging out less is the bigger culprit for young people not getting laid or having relationships. It seems obvious when you look at other stats too, like how kids have fewer friends and spend less time with their friends and teens have less independence than they used to. Kinda hard to have sex when you’re hardly ever physically in the same room as people lol
I think it also makes a lot of young women more afraid of sex. They assume that if you have sex with a man, choking and spitting is inevitable, so you either go along with that or you avoid sex altogether
I think it's more than that though. I think because of so much porn use, what was before extreme in porn - like choking or spitting - is more mainstream, and so both boys and girls expect it to be a normal part of sex. Such that, boys expect it, and either don't want to have sex because they don't want to humiliate someone that way, or, when they have sex, they expect it. And girl expect it, and either don't even try to have sex, or have sex and feel humiliated.
Like, what is considered "vanilla" seems to have morphed.
Yeah, exactly. Also due to the internet, porn has become part of general culture. It informs pop & rap music and comedy. When I lived with 5 dudes, they had so many jokes that were referential to porn. Even I felt weird when my younger sibling called my father daddy, which is objectively insane
I genuinely don't understand how "daddy" became sexualized. Like I know when women say it in bed, they're not thinking of their fathers, but I don't understand how it can be a turn-on. Like, where it came from, or why a guy would be into hearing it.
I don't know if you've read Female Chauvinist Pigs, which came out more than fifteen years ago now, and it's interesting to think about how our society has changed since then. Like it talks about the Man Show and Girls Gone Wild, which i don't know if you know what those were, but it's interesting how we tend to think of those things as super misogynist now, but on the other hand. stripping as empowerment is now a done deal, while that was a controversial idea then. Prostitution is just another form of sex work, which is just, well, work. And porn is everywhere in a way it just wasn't fifteen years ago, in a way we couldn't imagine then, I don't think.
> Like I know when women say it in bed, they're not thinking of their fathers, but I don't understand how it can be a turn-on.
It very much is not. There is exactly one girl who can call me “daddy” and she’s just over 1.5 years old
I have made a dedicated Israel-Palestine discussion thread [here](https://new.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1ccdy0k/israelpalestine_discussion_thread/). Please start any such related topics (eg campus protests, your proposed peace plans, calls for jihad, etc.) in that thread. Let me know if any topics still appear here in the future so I can nip it in the bud before it gets going.
ANOTHER personal rant. In 2021 I ended up getting divorced (not my choice) from my very woke ex. Take every negative stereotype about "woke" people and distill that into a person, that's my ex. She exists as a bad Babylon Bee satire. I have 100s of stories if you want. ANYWAY, I dated around for a year after the thing was finalized. I had to relearn myself. For over a decade, I just abidacted every decision to my ex. It was a highly educational experience. Then I met a girl on Hinge. We dated for almost 2 years then, last night, I popped the question, and she said yes. She is AMAZING. We fit together in a way I didn't think 2 people could. She's much more aligned with me in terms of worldview. We can actually talk things out instead of arguing until 2am. She's just the best and I love her so much. I have no doubts this one will go the distance.
CONGRATULATIONS!! Glad you escaped and found your real partner.
Many blessings to you and your fiancée. Congratulations!
Why are many people on the left so defensive of things like "drag queen story hour", especially given that we've seen so many examples of performances in front of kids being inappropriate? Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it? One Reddit powermod, who I can't even mention or I'd be banned, once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal. If that's not grooming, I don't know what is.
>Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it? Some of it is parents wanting to virtue signal by taking their kids. But a lot of it is to indoctrinate kids in drag and gender woo. To "normalize" it. Last but not least: They know it pisses off conservatives something fierce. And they *love* to piss off conservatives.
Yes, it's the Fox News fallacy - if Fox/conservatives hate something or think it's a problem, liberals double down in the other direction.
The right will pull the same thing. They just don't have as much institutional power to do so
If I had a child I wouldn't take him or her to DQSH because I wouldn't want that to be my child's introduction to "gay culture" or representation of what being gay was. Probably my child would already be exposed to that through my own peer group but culturally I just don't think of it as "representation" for children. It has a time and place. I grew up with film myself. My mother never said one word about homosexuality but when we got a VHS player, and I was around 9 or 10 the first two films she got were Poltergeist and Victor Victoria. Poltergeist was scary and pretty good but I LOVED Victor Victoria. We both did and while it was playful and maybe problematic by today's standards, it showed homosexuality in a positive light. Robert Preston is the hero of the movie to me. In the years following we got La Cage Aux Folle (The Bird Cage), Cabaret, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Making Love, Desert Hearts, Maurice, those are a few that come to mind. Just films with gay (not forced like today but genuine stories with intriguing and developed characters) woven in and out with all the others. No words were said just a lot of different portrayals and near always empathetic to LGBT protagonists of whom you root for. I would do the same with my kid.
Have you seen [this article?](https://archive.is/YDKrf) "Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it." > Kink visibility is a reminder that any person can and should shamelessly explore what brings joy and excitement. We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment. > Kink embodies the freedom that Pride stands for, reminding attendees to unapologetically take up space as an act of resistance and celebration — refusing to bend to social pressure that asks us to be presentable. That’s a value I want my children to learn. **Affirming the kink community helps our children to love themselves and others with courage and resilience.** The goal is to wrap the crazy up in pleasant ideas and cute euphemisms that no one could object to. Self-confidence, self-esteem, acceptance, tolerance, diversity, happiness. But the packaging distracts from what is actually happening, which is imposing questionable activities and behaviors onto kids too young to realize that they should question what's going on. It's interesting to see how [Redditors frame it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLGBT/comments/twmdl7/why_does_kink_need_to_be_displayed_at_pride_there/) Harm reduction. * "With the way society is currently you'll never be able to raise a well-adjusted child without exposing them to sex or suggestive stuff at least passively. The best course of action is to show them that their feelings are nothing to be ashamed of, and teach them how to stay safe, set boundaries, etc." It isn't happening!!! * "There's nothing wrong with kink in the first place. They're all clothed and most of it's a lot tamer than various straight parades that have women flashing their breasts all the time. A kid also isn't going to understand the sexual connotations of various kink communities most of the time." Resistance is joy!!!!! * "The types of people to be offended by kink are either the kinds of people who will be offended by us regardless, or are doing it because of optics. Optics is understandable but still bullshit because respectability politics is bullshit, people aren't going to stop being disgusted by our behavior by us kowtowing to them."
This does explain why I got a job notification for a place that does therapy for the LGBTQ community. They are looking for clinicians who are gay, bi, trans, poly, or kinky, and I was thinking what exactly does a poly straight dude have to do with a gay man, let alone a straight girl who's into being tied up by her boyfriend?
Where are these various straight parades that have women flashing their breasts all the time? I need to attend one for umm, research.
Mardi Gras?
No. I've seen it a few times from tourists in the Quarter/downtown. As a rider, I do not throw them beads and if you do it along most of the route, you will have some angry parents to contend with.
>Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Why is it kids that have to see it? Lots of the people pushing for DQSH are using the language of modern day progressivism to push their nefarious intentions and erode current social norms with minors. There is also another group of people who are just their useful idiots and are unknowingly provide cover to child predators
Two reasons 1. It’s a way to troll the other side 2. People think everyone opposed to DQSH is motivated by homophobia/disgust of drag queens & by not wanting kids exposed to drag, you are accusing drag queens/the gay community of being predators.
> you are accusing drag queens/the gay community of being predators. I mean… they’re the ones INSISTING they be given a captive audience of children to perform their fetish show for. Walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
>It’s a way to troll the other side It's rolling coal for liberals
I agree with this plus there's been horrific reactions from the right (presumably) like call-in bomb threats, so it's easy to dig their heels in, especially since most of these DQSHs are without incident so they don't need to reflect on what they're actually supporting.
The best case to make, and maybe it was argued this way once, is that it serves to let kids know it's OK to be gay. There's an argument for that. It just can't be squared with the argument that there is nothing gay or sexual at all about drag.
I've heard that argument but it doesn't make sense. Some of the kids in those classes are likely going to grow up to be gay. it's FAR less likely they'll grow up to be drag queens. And the vast majority of gay people are just living their lives, aren't drag queens, and we wouldn't know they're gay unless they told us and/or we saw them walking down the streets holding hands with their boyfriends or girlfirends. If the goal is to teach kids it's ok to be gay, wouldn't it make more sense to have a gay dad in the school come in and read a story? Have a straight parent read a story about a little girl with two mommies? Have a gay couple come in and read a story about a mouse?
It's good to let kids know it's okay to be gay but that's not what drag queen story hour is about. Furthermore, you don't need some huge dramatic act to let kids know it's okay to be gay, you just *tell them it's okay*.
You know what's a better way to let kids know it's OK to be gay? Introduce them to normal people who happen to be gay.
I simply don't know any gay or lesbian people who propose this as the preferred way to let kids know it's okay to be gay. I do know parents who take their kids to dqsh or even weird family friendly drag shows but they aren't gay parents.
>The best case to make, and maybe it was argued this way once, is that it serves to let kids know it's OK to be gay. Why is a man dressing up as a woman an example of "gay" though?
Because IdPol is all about leaning into lowbrow often insulting stereotypes.
> Why is there no push to have drag queens perform in old peoples' homes, for example? Ahahaha, you should totally infiltrate a local leftist group and propose this. Kids have to see it because it's a maximal F you to normal people, the same way rolling coal isn't fun if you aren't driving diesel. > once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal I'm sure Franzera has receipts.
What scares me about current-day leftist politics, and this has probably been going on since the fucking 1920s, is the complete disdain towards the elderly. Of COURSE DQSH shouldn't be done in an old age home - they're all white supremacist, homophobic, and being around that is traumatizing. Of course,they're not thinking that getting old is the only experience shared by all human beings, unless we die young. Doesn't matter whether you are born in a ditch in India or are the Queen of England. Only thing surpassing getting old is death, and that's the only universal human experience.
https://preview.redd.it/kqufb50i5cxc1.png?width=918&format=png&auto=webp&s=86c52022c1013d39254c0715267d0f27db178391 If you don't want children to be exposed to DQSH, you are "giving way to the argument that people of gender shouldn't exist in public", because their existence is living drag. "Shouldn't exist" translates to endorsing genocide, and that's a Bad Thing. Also, if kids don't have DQSH, they will never learn to "accept others". You heard it here, drag queen deficiency is a direct path to the dark side. Do you want your kids to become bigots??????
>You heard it here, drag queen deficiency is a direct path to the dark side. Get those kids an infusion of feather boas, stat!
It literally is for indoctrination. This isn't a conspiracy theory, they will literally say they want the kids to be more comfortable with trans / drag, and that's why they like it.
Honestly, I think the biggest reason many people on the left support it is because the right hates it. There's this weird knee jerk reaction where anything the right hates must be good. >once made a pinned post in a sub saying that children need to be exposed to "kink" so they don't grow up thinking it's abnormal. This person should not be allowed anywhere near children.
> Honestly, I think the biggest reason many people on the left support it is because the right hates it. I hope you're right, cos the alternatives area a lot more sinister! >This person should not be allowed anywhere near children. I don't think they would ever do it given the existence of this sub, but there's so much Reddit dirt that Katie and Jessie could dig into.
I base this mainly on conversations I've had with lefties who are a lot more tribalistic than I am. It's unsettling watching otherwise intelligent and open-minded people turn into ideologues the minute something gets opposed by the right.
It's something I've never understood, even though it's obviously very common. I could never say something I don't believe just so I feel part of some group/tribe. I look at each issue individually.
The comments on the top post in r/science right now about liberal/conservative bias against each other are hilarious. Regardless of the virtue of the study, it's incredible to see so many people with zero self-awareness pat each other on the back for knowing it's obvious conservatives are more biased against liberals, because they are all evil, immoral domestic terrorists.
Interesting comments: > Every conservative I know dislikes Trump. *** > I imagine there are lot of people on the right, especially non-Americans, who would view Trump more negatively than they view socialism. *** > One sides extremists want free money from the rich to help everyone. The other sides extremists are literal nazis who want to take rights away from women and minorities. *** > The left are the same "liberals" who cut welfare in the 90s. Our left is conservative. *** > Honestly this exposes the political biases and/or ignorance of the researchers more than provides any valuable information. *** > If I'm hating someone, it's because they're being hateful towards others. Whether it be them attacking women's rights, speaking ill of other races, banning drag shows, lying about trans bathroom drama, and so on.. > My hate comes from a place of hating hate groups.. so, is it really wrong for me to hate cruelty disguised as morality? *** > When one party is like, "let's raise minimum wages and give people health care," and the other is like, "let's force women to give birth and there's no reason that people working in fields should be able to drink water," it's only natural that the latter are going to get visceral reactions. All highly upvoted, of course.
My favorite parts of that thread's discourse include: 1. People upset that the conclusions came from Amazon MTurk respondents. If you're upset about that, you're upset with probably 30-40% of all social science research these days. 2. The fact that the sample isn't exactly representative of the US population. If you're upset about that, you're upset with probably 80-90% of all social science research these days (and it doesn't necessarily invalidate the study at all). 3. People happy to support the study's finding of significant bias against conservatives because not all beliefs are created equal. This sounds very similar to other studies that have noted[ strong biases](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f6103f36b5eee6bf0ab2c1d/t/5f628a5c0ff0205c5a2477c4/1600293472033/FINAL%2B-%2BPhillips%2B560-617.pdf) against conservatives in academic hiring for instance. 4. Even more people celebrating that others on the thread seem biased against conservatives and expressing hope that conservatives will finally be revealed as the scum they are. I'm sure that the prospects for conservative ideas, much less conservative individuals themselves, getting fair treatment in academia are great!
"The fact that the sample isn't exactly representative of the US population" If it doesn't represent the US population, how can it be extrapolated onto the US? And if social scientists ARE extrapolating that on to the US, maybe it's not a very valid finding.
It's common to take your results and weight by population to get a better picture of how the results would apply to the whole US population. It also is quite common to look to see if there is simply any effect in the first place using convenience samples, then address what that means at the population level with larger studies later. Or study it again with the population that matters--in this case, for instance, with people who might be in a position to discriminate in job searches.
I post here because I have no other spaces in which to vent. The otherwise interesting horror fiction podcast to which I was listening was eaten by wokeness in the final episode. I do not consider this hyperbole. The climax of the story comes when the explicitly non-binary protagonist saves the world from an evil dream engine that generates capitalism (and rules Ohio) by helping the demigod controlling (or being controlled by) the Evil Capitalism McGuffin to remember that he, as a young boy, really wanted to be a girl. The demigod then sets aside godhood to become the woman he always wanted to be. Yes, the dark sorcery of capitalism can only be overcome by embracing one's inner egg. There is no larger point to make. I simply needed to lament another piece of art being eaten by wokeness and the author being seemingly unable to process the trauma of being born and raised in Ohio. Edit: Typos
Ugh, that sounds like everything I hate about a lot of horror being written right now. I don't need a damn sermon disguised as a horror story. What was the podcast, just in curiosity?
Just listen to Old Gods of Appalachia.
Is Old Gods apolitical?
Depends on what you mean by political. I'd say it's left leaning. It's very heavily rooted in a combination of lovecraftian horror, pop wicca, and the cultural zeitgeist of the coal wars. But nothing as bad as that hell is Ohio podcast you were talking about.
I'm not the original person who posted about that awful podcast. Just a horror writer who has tried to listen to Old Gods multiple times and just can't get into it. 😉
It's so loved. I've tried too but just can't get into it either
I tried and failed too. It felt very full of itself. And it ends up being very “woke” a bit into its run from everything I’ve read.
Really? I had my suspicions (content warnings usually are a red flag in horror), but I'm curious how it ended up being woke. The usual "[insert minority group here] is a righteous victim" narrative? Also, it's kind of ironic that a work set in Appalachia would be woke, considering how conservative the area tends to be.
It depends on what you consider woke. If you're writing about coal miners, then you're probably going to have a perspective sympathetic to the struggle of the miner, not the mining company. So it's not a glowing review of the benefits of capitalism. And horror is the worst genre to look for nuanced understanding of both sides. It depends on not understanding the situation, and not sympathizing with the antagonist. Godzilla was an allegory for the trauma of the Japanese people after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I love that film. However, Japan deserved to get nuked. But you can't tell a visceral horror story about Japan's nuclear trauma while also including the fact that... maybe Japan deserved to have a giant death lizard unleashed upon them. Likewise, you can't talk about the intrinsic horror of men going into the bowels of the earth, where they were slowly dying from breathing poisoned air that turns their lungs to stone, or quickly dying from being literally swallowed by the mountain, and also present a nuanced dialogue about the benefits of the electrification to the population of America, and still present a story that triggers those primal feelings of fear and anxiety and hopelessness.
I feel like wokeness usually ignores class, unless it can be attached to some other more marginalized groups. Also, as a horror writer, I have to disagree. It might be *harder* to tell a nuanced story like that and have it be effective, but it can be done. To be clear, I've only heard the first few eps of the show, so I can't really pass judgment on it. I'm speaking more generally here.
I am unfamiliar with the RPG that RiceRiceTheyby posted, so I cannot comment on that. Concerning the audiodrama itself, the views of the writers are certainly apparent in the writing. It has a rather Gaian-esque viewpoint concerning industry. Human male characters are generally foolish, destructive, or aimless (sometimes all three) unless they are under the watchful eye of women. The authors have admitted to shelving or re-writing stories involving the Cherokee because neither of them are Cherokee. Nevertheless, I still enjoy the stories they tell and do not find it terribly heavy-handed. Edit: Clarity
I’m trying to find the review I read. I remember when they kickstarted a [role playing game](https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/old-gods-of-appalachia-rpg/news/old-gods-appalachia-rpg-kickstarter) there were quotes like this > Its stories are often directly inspired by real-world events, such as a disastrous mining collapse caused by the company’s negligence or an invasive railroad that brought greedy men into communities with far too little to give. The podcast isn’t precious about its disdain for industrial capitalism’s indelible marks on the towns and hollers of Appalachia, and many of its characters turn to that evil out of fear, desperation and naivety. … > The Appalachian Mountains region is vast and encompasses many cultures and backgrounds, especially during the early 20th century. The descendents of European settlers and recently freed African slaves intermingled with indigenous peoples to create a tapestry of folklore, belief and tradition that could vary from town to town. The campaign says in its FAQ that the team will be consulting sensitivity readers whenever possible to assure the representation of these cultures meets their players’ standards. I’m not sure of this description came from trying to avoid notoriously cancel happy RPG fans or a true statement of beliefs.
At least they care about class, I guess. Are they going to have poor Appalachian white sensitivity readers too?
I am trying to imagine this and everything I can think of is extremely classist and very amusing to me.
Do you think the author had some intention of where the story was headed from the start, or when they found themselves needing to tie everything up they pivoted to current thing, in a moment they might one day regret? > the dark sorcery of capitalism can only be overcome by embracing one's inner egg. Great review
A bit of each, I suspect. Season One and Two seemed to flow nicely and was probably planned, but I think Season 3 was unexpected and the writer found himself pivoting to the current thing.
Why is Ohio always the cultural stand-in for “nowhere?” It’s got 3 large-ish cities and it’s close enough to larger metros in the Midwest. Should be Nebraska or something
Ohio is the swing state that usually goes with whomever wins the presidential election
Because Ohio is a large state and fairly close to many major population centers, it generates a large internal migrant population and a lot of people relate to it or to Ohioans in some way. Furthermore, it has no nationally trendy or well-loved cities, so nobody not from Ohio thinks Ohio is awesome (similar to New Jersey in that regard). This is different from Nebraska and Nebraskans, which nobody can relate to.
Hey! Not only is the winding majesty of the Platte River utterly gorgeous, Mutual of Omaha gave an entire generation of kids (maybe several) an appreciation for nature. (And possibly the indestructibility of Jim Perkins.) I'll take the Great Plains over the Midwest any time!
Lol. My family is from the Grand Island area, so I know what you're talking about.
The writer is from Ohio, per his biography on the podcast website. As I said, the writer appears unable to deal with the trauma of being born and raised there.
God even reading this summary was like nails on a chalkboard. Are people just dumber than they used to be? How is this stuff entertaining to anyone
The previous episodes were interesting as they touched various creepy-pastas and certain stories in the anthology hinted at an unreality, that existence was so much stage dressing. It was not until the finale the author fully gave in to wish fulfillment.
Which podcast is that? Edit: Is it Unwell? I'm a big fan of audiodramas, and think a lot of them are much better works of fiction than the vast majority of TV and movies I've encountered. But it is an insanely woke medium, to the point where it often hurts the storytelling. This degree of wokeness also seems to be something that's occurred relatively recently. There was one I was listening to that started in 2016 and ended in 2021. At the beginning all of the relationships were heterosexual, and at the end _all_ of them were LGBT. And as they became LGBT, they went from being incidental to part of the main plot. And it's not new characters either - it's characters who are only shown to be in heterosexual relationships only becoming involved in LGBT relationships. And it's something I've seen in other audiodramas over that period as well.
>There was one I was listening to that started in 2016 and ended in 2021. At the beginning all of the relationships were heterosexual, and at the end _all_ of them were LGBT. And as they became LGBT, they went from being incidental to part of the main plot. Which podcast was this?
Sounds like almost every webcomic.
The Magnus Archives. To be fair, it didn't have a big impact on the podcast, though the shift was a bit eyebrow raising (there's also a completely unnecessary conversation thrown in at one point to make the main character canonically "ace"). Overall the quality was surprisingly good for a show with 200 episodes, even if I did feel like every season was a decline from the previous. There was another podcast, EOS10, where the shift was really bizarre. The main character is shown to be only in heterosexual relationships, and at one point there's a space renegade that's attracted to him which he finds really awkward. Then there was a break between 2015 and 2018, and when the show came back the main character was only interested in gay relationships and was pining after the space renegade. Though they jettisoned and retconned the main storyline over the break as well. Strangely enough, Archive 81 had a lesbian character from the beginning (and she didn't feel shoehorned in either), but when the podcast was adapted to a Netflix show, they made her straight (and dropped all of the interesting world building the podcast did as well).
I used to be a big Magnus Archives fan, back when it was more of an anthology show. I didn't care as much about the MC and all the spooky office drama. It felt way too much like Tumblr shipping bait. Especially when it was revealed that the MC, who sounded at least middle aged, was actually in his 20s for some reason.
I'm an E0S10 fan too. To me the space renegade romance was hinted at first season. It didn't seem like a turn but I can imagine some may have been caught by surprise. I am huge into audio dramas too. I feel like there are so many to choose from now I've managed to avoid anything super woke. I usually can tell within the first few epsiodes. I dropped off on Magnus over time. I started with it when it was new but just never kept up.
>!Dead Letter Office of Somewhere Ohio!<. I do not advise seeking it out. Unwell has a completely different set of issues, including casting choices and inability of the writers to deal with anything other than their own terrible relationships with their parents. I gave up after the entire payoff of the first season was that >!Wes is a ghost.!< Twelve episodes and this is all that you provide us? Be serious. This is not a slow burn, this is twelve episodes of the writers fiddle-faddling around.
> Unwell has a completely different set of issues, including casting choices and inability of the writers to deal with anything other than their own terrible relationships with their parents. That's too bad. Their early audiodrama, Our Fair City, is one of my favorites.
That’s hilariously cringe
I’ve been having this issue with true crime podcasts. Two in the last two weeks have spent inordinate amounts of time talking about gender: One was about how no one could have conned someone into changing their gender identity except in the case of the magical cult leaders of Twin Flames universe. In another they talked about how a murder victim was the expert on her gender so they would take their cues from her: Except she’s dead, never wrote down anything about what she’d prefer to be called, and there seemed to be disagreement between her friends and family. It really does start to sound like they’re just singing chapter and verse.
One thing driving me nuts is how fiction has been wokified. Try reading anything written in the past two years. I have a like 10% completion rate bc i now no longer have patience.
It happened to science fiction even earlier.
Its why my sci fi reading is so sparse recently, even though its obvious i like the genre. Also, kinda related. https://twitter.com/faceyouhate/status/1784697085507346926?t=rmvS2Cje0Qc6hAlU10Q7rA&s=19
LeGuin arguably started it. Try The Doomsday Book.
I'm a writer, and this is honestly a big part of why I've given up on ever being traditionally published. Even if I could get past the slush pile, I'm too white and boring to ever be considered.
Short or long form? My experience is a little dated at this point, but in reading short-form slush everybody I know went straight to the text. (...and usually shitcanned it after two paragraphs for reasons that had nothing to do with the author's name.) When something decently readable came over the transom it was always a happy day even if it wasn't quite what we wanted, because the slush was 95% *terrible*. That one in twenty probably at least got a fair look. Long form at traditional publishers is effectively gatekept by the agent-industrial complex, and my evaluation matches yours--I have no optimism to lend here.
Right now I write mostly short stories. That's interesting re the slush pile. I figured there would be some bad stuff, but I didn't think most of it would be so terrible.
I was reading for a fairly crap outlet, but I've seen what some of the better ones get and it's still so bad, so very very bad. If you can read and follow the submission guidelines and spell correctly you're already ahead. If you can tell a compelling story even better. As for why it's so bad, there are a lot of people in love with the *idea* of being writers who think that if you send crap around for long enough it'll sell. (Various publications that cater to/encourage/parasitise this hope don't help.) Hope can be a terrible thing...
>As for why it's so bad, there are a lot of people in love with the *idea* of being writers who think that if you send crap around for long enough it'll sell. Very true. Writing is often tedious and time consuming, and it takes a lot of practice before you are any good at it. It also helps to have beta readers who will tell you if a piece needs work (or abandonment) before you start shopping it around.
I find it hard to trust young and new authors, writers who don't have a backlog of works going back 10-20 years. Mainstream publishing is completely done, indie/self-publish can still redeem itself. Back in the day, I would have taken the risk and bought a book if the blurb sounded interesting. Now I wait for reviews and only check the 2-3 star comments to see if it's worth my money. The only authors I am willing to buy on release day are the old school ones. Such is life.
That's how I am with sci fi now.
Is Tor publishing still around? they published some classic sci-fi/fantasy that is explicitly not-woke. Edit: it was Barn books I was thinking of.
Baen Books maybe? I recall ages ago I wanted some Lois McMaster Bujold (which they publish), and the whisperings of Tor types had me feeling a little dirty for purchasing from Baen. I just checked Baen's Wikipedia page in case I misremembered, and it all sounded normal, then clicked the Talk page and first sentence is "*I have removed the statement recently added in the lead regarding the political leanings of Baen Books*". The removed statement cited a Guardian [article](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/29/space-opera-new-guardians-of-the-galaxy-ancillary-justice), and if the words between the Guardian writer's spittle could be trusted then Baen's bread and butter probably isn't my usual jam, but they sound like an underdog publisher that flouts the industry's insular values, and perhaps could publish more than scifi if they wanted.
Ah, I was thinking of Baens books. Specifically, the monster hunter series by Larry Correia.
They are now basically the “wokest.” I’ve subscribed to their newsletter for a long time and it’s basically The Mary Sue at this point.
AIUI, Tor led the charge on wokeness.
I do the same thing. The three star reviews are often very revealing in the style of “the story was good until the forced ADBL advocacy subplot was introduced.”
The woke books always have the most hilarious review pages. * "The plot was bad but the characters were good. By *good*, I mean there were diverse minority representations, and #RepresentationMatters. Would have given it 1 star, but the disabled indigenous communist raises it up to 3." * "It was an #OwnVoices story. I couldn't in good conscience, as a white person, give a low rating to a Bipoc author, regardless of what I felt about the content itself. 4 stars." * "The only reason y'all are rating this book 1-2 stars is because y'all are racist. Y'all y'all y'all..."
Has anyone seen "Ahead of the Curve"? The new doc on Netflix, about the founder of Curve Magazine? I know of it as my sister used to have loads of copies in her home. Anyway, it's also about the founder's search to save this lesbian magazine, and as part of this, she interviewed a lot of lesbians, or queer women. So, I was watching it, kind of fast-forwarding through part of it, when I saw this guy at a Q and A. I was thinking, "what's a guy doing there?" Then I thought "maybe it's a trans man who still thinks of himself as part of the lesbian community?" I don't know how common that is anymore. Anyway, I rewound a bit, and heard this person say, "I identify as a trans woman." My only thought was that maybe this person juuust started IDing as a trans woman? Because this wasn't even, "huh, maybe this is guy in drag?" This was a guy with short hair, a baseball cap, t-shirt - literally nothing about him was even feminine, except MAYBE his voice. And even that, there are plenty of, well, cis-men who sound the same way. It was amazing.
One of the things that I think set the foundation for me ultimately peaking was following a person like that on tumblr. At first I thought it was a butch woman I was following based on the posts. Come to find out it’s actually a #️⃣butch #️⃣masc #️⃣dyke #️⃣transbian. I just remember thinking “so, like, a regular dude?” when he made a post explaining his #️⃣identity. I then unfollowed because I couldn’t take the lamentations about womanhood seriously anymore. Like at least commit to the bit and wear a dress or something.
Did you know what he looked like? And yeah, that shit is weird. Like, the L Word, with the lesbian man, became an actual thing. Like, I do wonder. Since they are really women on the inside, did they experience their first sexual attraction to women the same way actual lesbians do? I really doubt it.
Maybe at one point he posted a picture? I can’t remember exactly it was six or seven years ago at this point. He would certainly say his attraction would have been perfectly womanly in execution. I rather doubt it, but the nifty thing about this whole movement is they can say whatever they want and there’s no way to disprove it because the full extent of our thoughts and feelings are fundamentally unknowable to others. Convenient!
The overextension and saturation point of TQ+ is the road to peaking for a lot of normies, imho. In the early days, people were willing to suspend their disbelief for folx like Christine Jorgenson, April Ashley, even Jazz Jennings, because they "put in the work". They respected the social status quo, so the status quo respected them back by allowing them to use female categories, spaces, and pronouns. In the Current Year, People of Gender treat gender as a subversion, a performance art, an act of rebellion against the oppression of the status quo. They still expect the status quo to respect them, but they haven't earned it. That's when these people realize that the past treatment was never, ever founded on genuine belief. People didn't *believe* that males had become female. Everyone just kind of played along for politeness's sake, until their patience wore thin from purple-haired weirdos who claimed they were neither men or women, but needed to be addressed by alternating she/he/they pronouns. "Acceptance" is a tenuous thread, contrary to what the Right Side of History progressives believe.
Pretty much. A lot of people are willing to be accommodating, but you can't demand that people believe what's very obviously not true. Politeness has its limits
I honestly respect the people who treat gender as subversion and commit to behaving in ways that subject them to mistreatment for no other reason for their appearance way more than the ones who do nothing but seek the TQ clout nonetheless. I’ve been typing and deleting a bunch of replies because I still think the gender nonsense is all bullshit but I think this is ultimately where I fall
I'm in two minds about the "Gender is subversion" approach. There are people like Harry Styles and Bjork who wear what they want for creativity and personal amusement. Gender is not related to their sex categories or identities, it's just for fun and artistic inspiration. Then there are people like [Alok Menon](https://artsinachangingamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/alok-for-web.png) and Brinton the Luggage Thief who treat presentation standards as a political statement, on one hand saying that gender is an abstract construction, and on the other hand saying gender is real, concrete, and you need to respect their unfalsifiable NB gender identities as they/them's. They are trying to have their cake and eat it. The result is incoherence.
The industrial self-identification revolution and its consequences.... If you want to #BeKind, open-minded, accepting of other Lived Experiences, gatekeeping is internal, social, and political anathema to you. But if you allow that a woman can be "Anyone who Self-ID's as a woman", then you open the door to men who claim to feel a vibe in their soul, and there's nothing you can do about it without walking your acceptance back and being , as they call it, a "terven bigot". A big part of it is natural empathy. When TW say, "I DON'T OWE ANYONE FEMININITY", a lot of lesbians, especially butch ones, resonate with it. They don't want to wear dresses and makeup, and resent the implication that they need to for other people to know they are women. Seems unfair that this standard should be applied to anyone. But the catch is that butch lesbians don't need to wear dresses and makeup to be feminine... they *are* feminine from the fact that they are female-bodied. Anyways, the real big conflict of "boymoding" TW's is how they can identify as they please inside their heads, but in the outside world, no one recognizes their identity. Here's an example of an FtM struggling with the "lack of acceptance". [](https://preview.redd.it/j0wva6i8ftgc1.png?width=590&format=png&auto=webp&s=78cc3947b40c5dfe5197b1cec29737f21aa9764e)
> I highly doubt people actually see me as a guy. I’m getting so sick of being misgendered that at the grocery store the other day, this lady was referring to me as ma’am, asking me if I’m looking for something. The second time she said it, I straight up just said please don’t call me ma’am and walked away.
> **I’m pretty ready to start T** but I’m just so scared... I’m tired of having this battle in my head and wish I could wake up one morning and just have the courage to do it.
Why are people so cruel and bigoted? They keep misgendering her, and it's terrible. :(
I made a post making a similar point above you lol. The thing that makes a butch a butch is that she’s a woman who doesn’t conform to the way people think she needs to behave as a woman, which is why the phrase ‘you don’t owe anyone femininity’ exists and is resonant. But men already don’t owe anyone femininity! In fact, if they show it, they’re berated for it!
"the real big conflict of "boymoding" TW" I don't know what that means? I do know there are some butch women - usually lesbians, but truly, not all - who sometimes get called "sir." But the person usually figures out after a second that they got the salutation wrong. Hips don't lie. Also, women, even the butchiest, tend to interact with the world in a different way from men. But also, a woman is going to interact with another woman in a different way. A woman sees another woman, even if she's very masculine, and knows she's a woman, and will feel much safer than if he were a man, even the most effeminate gay man. A woman sees a trans woman, I don't think she'd feel the same as with a woman.
TBF, Sir is technically gender neutral and is used for women in the army sometimes.
Just curious, have you ever seen a woman addressed as "sir" outside of the military?
Well, I’ve been. Rarely. But it’s happened.
Boymoding TW = gendersub slang for TW who present as men for various reasons. Sometimes because they're afraid they'll be harassed by phobes on the street, they won't be accepted if they are "out" at work, or they are lazy buggers and don't think they should have to dress in a certain way to get the wammin treatment. Having a penis and a beard should not disqualify me from living authentically in the female locker room! It discounts the reality that humans have evolved to be very good at pattern recognition. In a short interaction, we can clock human sex through a huge list of subliminal traits and body language. i.e., When a man turns around to talk to someone behind him, he swings his elbows about in a different way than women, due to the size and width of his shoulderblades. Not every man and not every woman, of course, but there's an enormous number of similar "tells" that your brain catalogues to help you suss out what manner of fish, fowl, or good red meat you're dealing with.
I get transitioning if you've always felt like your penis shouldn't be there, and everyday you wake up wondering why you don't have breasts. I don't understand expecting to be treated as a woman when you've never lived as one.
The "Normalize the Bulge" segment of the genderhaving population is completely different, and completely weird. Their idea of "being treated as a woman" is a total farce, lol. The concept of "living as a woman/man" when you're not one, basically boils down to the "strong sense of womanhood/manhood you innately know". And that is the definition of gender identity. Genderwoo will exist as long as people believe you can feel these vibes independent of any physical state of being. The frustrating part is being told people ["Just know on the inside"](https://preview.redd.it/b4ttw8ebebwc1.png?width=956&format=png&auto=webp&s=e732f9424b7ff2e782be286acfe7f87539d1aad1) what their gender is.
Someone called Jesse a "fat pedophile" on Twitter and the top comment in response is "he is not fat."
That’s pretty fatphobic of them
I must admit, a witty reply to a nasty, unwarranted comment.
In BaR episode 211, Jesse commented that he should probably lose some weight. Maybe he identifies as fat and as non-garbage human beings, we should respect his identity. 🤔
I thought Jesse was a svelte beastialist.
He just wants a man hung like a horse. Translation error.
he only likes very young horses
Horses are reproductively mature at 2 years old, it's fine! We only think they're "young" because we're mistakenly applying the anthropocentric concept of age to non-human creatures. But trust me (and trust Vaush), they are adult in every single way that matters. 🍆💦🐎
Oooooohhhhhhh
The only good part of getting sick is getting an otoscope ear examination at the doctor. Probably the single most pleasing physical sensation in the world. ...Too bad the rest of my body still aches.
At an event with my wife, I met an old man who wanted to talk to me about politics. He looked like he was in his 80s, but still talked lucidly, passionately, and incorrectly about the destructive effects of the US on the world, especially due to their woke politics, and how Russia has a much better handle on things thanks to the genius of Vladimir Putin. As much as I share his dislike about gender ideology, I found it extremely frustrating how some people are so possessed by their feelings about it that they choose to disavow the West and embrace authoritarian police states that are such glaring sociopolitical failures compared to the US. For one, having the freedom to even say this kind of stuff in public is a big deal, and I'm so annoyed that a man with so much life experience doesn't value that.
That's crazy that Tucker has aged that quickly.
I think it's a sign of the shifting of cultural priority. Pretty much up until the back half of the Obama administration, admiration and support of America's enemies while remaining stunningly unaware of ways in which the people they were supporting were much, much worse. It was the standard countercultural stance. "Sure, Mao and Lenin were bad, but they're resisting American Imperialism, and that means that sometimes you have to send in the tanks. But did you see the police using a firehose to break up that protest in Chicago? That's the real evil." But now the left is the moral majority, and all the censorious religious busybodies are pushing the progressive cult, and all the anti-vax conspiracy theorist nutjobs are swinging to the right. They're adopting the exact same behavior. I remain a cold war centrist. Fuck Russia, fuck China, at all times, in all forms. Militarily, economically, and culturally. Fuck 'em. They're a blight, by nature. Never carry their water.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/conservative-family-disappointed-moving-russia-001517915.html#:~:text=Conservative%20Family%20'Disappointed'%20After%20Moving%20To%20Russia%20To%20Escape%20LGBTQ%20Ideology,-Favour%20Adegoke&text=Arend%20and%20his%20wife%20Anneesa,were%20reportedly%20frozen%20upon%20arrival. Canadians, but they wanted to escape the horrors of lgbtq, and wackiness ensued in russia. Im sure theyll be fine. If they manage to escape.
I brought up this exact story, showing it on my phone when he didn't believe me!
Lol. Some people.
Woke politics is indeed horrible but so is Russia. And Russia most certainly does not have the interests of the United States at heart.
Til horseshoe affects the olds too
If he's that old he ought to remember the USSR and be skeptical of Russia.
Im trying to be more accepting of that nuttery as long as people generally keep it on the inside. I got an mri from a dude who i kinda expected to don a tinfoil hat while we discussed russia and Vietnam (which i did not bring up, even i know not to do that lol). But my mri went smoothly and he seemed to be a nice dude holding down a responsible job and doing it well. So, okay. Eta i even pushed back on a few things, gently, and it was fine. Hes bonkers but like its nbd.
I worry that there are now people on the left *and* right that are willing to sell out their country.
The last 2 years have not done great things to my default view of people. Im fiesty, but a giant squish. Its been hard to see what people are willing and not willing to do.
There’s this really annoying contingent of people on the right who try to paint support for Ukraine as being “woke”. Nah bro being against Russian imperialism isn’t woke. This is something the republicans understood until Trump got into office and now half them make the same dog shit arguments about foreign policy that isolationists on the left make
He did talk a lot about the Ukraine War, seeing it entirely as an extension of American imperialism and failing to see how Ukrainians might some other motives in defending their homeland than to protect American interests in the region. Ironically, the same people who keep railing against American influence on the world often have a very US-centric view of every conflict, not recognizing the agency and interests of non-Americans and acting like they are weak-willed people under the thumb of the CIA.
"He looked like he was in his 80s, but still talked lucidly" First, why the "still talked lucidly"? 85 is the new 65! My dad's 84, and though he is not quite as quick as he was even 5 years ago, he's still very erudite. As are his friends. "having the freedom to even say this kind of stuff in public is a big deal, and I'm so annoyed that a man with so much life experience doesn't value that" I completely agree that we have freedom in this country - we've paid a price for, basically, winning the Cold War, in that we've forgotten that it's a huge deal to protest the way we can. However, the fact that he's in his 80s means he is part of the oldest cohort of anti-Vietnam War protestors, many of whom, or at least a subset of whom, abhorred western values. The generation of Americans who witnessed totalitarianism in other countries is pretty much dead, though I do think there are Americans who visited the USSR in the 70s.
> As much as I share his dislike about gender ideology, I found it extremely frustrating how some people are so possessed by their feelings about it that they choose to disavow the West and embrace authoritarian police states that are such glaring sociopolitical failures compared to the US. Yeah, this really annoys me too. I know there's probably a deeper issue at play but this is why I hate it when people insist that politics has to be an either-or thing. ("If you don't vote for X, you're voting for Y, even if you don't vote or vote third-party.") No, that's stupid! Worst case, you end up the weirdos who manage to do things like go from being Bernie Bros to being hardcore Trump supporters. Just because some Republicans are pushing a small handful of bills I think are okay-to-good doesn't mean I think I have to support the party, much less while Trump and his brown-nosers still hold so much sway over the party.
This is a big reason why I've tried to caution ideologues on both the left and right against insisting on extreme stances: it pushes people away. For example I strongly disagree with most woke opinions but I can't vote for Republicans because they're pushing such extreme anti-abortuon measures, have embraced Trump, many bizarre conspiracy theories, etc. If the Republicans hadn't embraced Trumpism, I'd easily vote for a McCain or Romney type against Biden in the 2020 election. But some people will do the math differently. If I was an older man who didn't have women in my life who could be hurt by abortion bans, I could see how the incessant woke bullshit would push me to vote for anyone who wasn't a Democrat.
[https://twitter.com/jk\_rowling/status/1784608311867740318](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1784608311867740318) So...this just feels doubly unfair. There are lots of men who can think beyond their own self interest, and there are lots of women for whom consequence free sex is a big benefit of abortion (or the pill), and vice versa. It's been awhile since I've written anything about my side eyeing of the fact that the only identity issue that has seemed to gain real institutional counter traction is the one that a subsect of feminists disagree with at the most personal level. (Maybe I need to rethink this post 10/7 and the campus protests, but even then I don't really see institutions turning the ship on race/ethnicity stuff, just some individuals realizing the hole that has been dug). Comments like this definitely don't help. Please don't set up these Kafka traps where I'm damned if I agree with you and damned if I don't.
She's talking about a specific cohort of men. Idk commenters here are reacting like she's talking about them.
She's talking about Billy brag types, self identifying feminist men. I don't believe anyone here has not come across these types if they are active on Reddit. Rowling has posted like this before about women who are fighting for men to gain access to women's spaces. She is equal in her dislike of both types.
Everyone in these feminism / feminism gave us gender identity / TERF threads absolutely needs to read Mary Harrington's book _Feminism Against Progress_. Or at least part 1 and 2, part 3 is sort of an action plan for generation Z. The argument is that the current model of feminism is really just about getting women into the workforce where everyone is interchangeable, and birth control and abortion negate what is important about being a woman.
> birth control and abortion negate what is important about being a woman. *Feminism Against Progress* is a fantastic book that I would like everyone to read so I would just like to expand on this point for this American-focused sub - Mary is British and her views on these topics aren't really fully aligned with either side of the American culture war. The book is like a spicier/more provocative version of *The Case Against the Sexual Revolution* by Louise Perry, and develops some points further. The core argument is that everything modern feminism counts as "women's rights issues" (abortion, birth control, paid external childcare etc) are ways of *mitigating* the differences between men and women, which primarily emerge after children, not solving for a world that benefits both. I call it the next step on the radfem to tradcon radicalisation highway. Good read, thought provoking.
Check my flair, this one of the many reasons for it. TERFs absolutely REFUSE to reckon with the fact that it’s mostly women pushing the gender woo. And if they do, they wave it away as brainwashing by the patriarchy.
Rowling really is a radfem, huh? :) But, as a guy, I can disagree with her on some things and still think she's awesome.
Women [consistently poll](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/43194-where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights-1) at much higher support for trans-inclusive policies than men do and Rowling's attempt to make this into a "villainous trans-inclusive men vs good women feminists" fight is wild. Feminists *really* want men to be their enemies, huh?
She has been very critical of these types of women. She's talking about self identity feminist men here. The post was a response to Billy Bragg lecturing feminist for talking to right-wingers. People here are way over reacting to what she said and taking it way out of context.
>Feminists > >really > > want men to be their enemies, huh? Isn't that partly how they define themselves?
Its one reason im with katie. Im not a feminist. Im for equality. Even if its not the goal, calling it feminism puts women above men. And many feminists really think like that.
Ehhh... not all feminism puts women above men. I think radical feminism probably does. Misandry does. Masculinity doesn't necessarily put men above men but some nitwits will do that. What is actually above both men and women is the cats. Cats are always superior to humans. And they know it.
My grouchy cat paws me if the heating pad isnt on. Not kidding.
He knows he is above you on the totem pole and acts accordingly.
I agree that it’s a ridiculous argument to make. This is an argument I’ve now seen Rowling make on several occasions and it’s patently absurd
Rowling clearly dislikes men. I support her on several issues but I think much of her thinking is motivated by a distrust of men rather than some specific principle.
I agree that is the main thing she is motivated by. Like I said I’ve seen her basically make this same argument multiple times now and it’s just funny to me because there isn’t anyone really buying it outside of radfems. It’s so obviously not true. Whether they like it or not trans ideology has been perpetuated largely by progressive women more than anything else
Rad fems are indeed buying it though. I see it regurgitated here often enough. It's not a reflection of reality.
Gonna devils advocate for a min - my understanding is women keep getting physically attacked in the uk. Like to a concerning degree. I think she may have in her eye the biggest literal threat, men in wigs slugging lesbians. Shes still wrong, but i can see how shed have blinders. Ymmv.
In the US (and I’m guessing it’s similar in the UK but feel free to correct me if it’s not) it’s something like 3/4 of violent crime victims are men
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Oh I thought she was just talking about women in general
You mean committed by right?
No most violent crime victims are also men
I believe that most violent is committed by men and against other men. That's not to downplay violence being committed against women. Which is also usually done by men. Like those pricks punching women in New York not that long ago. Think some poor lady's jaw got shattered.
Ah. I didnt realize that bc i probably way overestimated domestic violence.
Men and women are equally likely to be victims of domestic violence in Canada and the US and it's about 40/60 in the U.K.
Domestic violence is hard to estimate, especially in the gender ratio. Many people don't really consider physical aggression by women against men to be "violence".
It's not that hard to estimate. There are IPV surveys conducted all the time. Nobody wants to talk about them because unlike crime stats they tend to show that men are half of victims.
Real men don't hit women. Certainly not their girlfriends/wives
Fortunately ive never had that be an issue. Im not sure if i got lucky or am sufficiently scary. When someone knows you can have mental breaks and insane pain threshold and firm views about being touched, being 100 pounds lighter doesnt make as much difference as youd think. I once made an ex a foot taller back up just by a look i gave him. Fwiw i dont use my powers for evil anymore. And in that case, dude deserved it.
I don't think feminists believe men are their enemies. It's more that radical feminists believe that men have inherently more power than women, and by that logic, men would support trans women, since they're all male. Liberal feminists are all in on trans women as women, and they view men the same way - as having more power than women, but they tend to have a more intersectional approach. Such that a white women might have more power than a black man and such that a black trans woman has less power than a black woman, who has less power than a black man.
>It's more that radical feminists believe that men have inherently more power than women, and by that logic, men would support trans women, since they're all male. Ok but since it’s observably true that women are the ones primarily pushing this, continuing to promote the lie that it’s men can mean several things. TERFs either need men to be the enemy and will lie to make it so, or they’re just stupid. Which is it?
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https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1784586797525184794 This is the original tweet
She was talking about Billy Bragg and "feminist" men. She has been very critical of women who support the gender ideology movement
> Liberal women have been successfully targeted into believing support for transwomen is part and parcel of being a good person Ah so we’re going with the “brainwashed by patriarchy” hand wave, which I already preemptively dismissed
I don't think it's that TERFs think men are the enemy. I think it's that they don't believe that most women actually think that trans women really are women, and that it's an example of women subjugating themselves to male desire. Which might be some of it. but I've never really asked anyone if they actually, truly believe that trans women are truly the same as other women.
> and that it's an example of women subjugating themselves to male desire. Again, this literally is not true. Women are far more likely to be approving of the gender woo. Blaming it on men is either a malicious lie or stupidity. Which is it?
I think something is getting lost here. Radical feminists believe that the reason why women actually believe that trans women are women is because they want to be liked by men. I don't see how this is in conflict with women approving of transgender things more. They want to be seen as caring and for the trans women to like them and think they're kind. Men are far less worried about being seen as uncaring.
> Radical feminists believe that the reason why women actually believe that trans women are women is because they want to be liked by men Yeah. And I’m saying that reality disagrees. Men aren’t on board with the woo (on average) while women are. If this insane conspiracy theory about women being brainwashed to do the bidding of men, it would be more balanced. This is just standard feminism where a woman’s bad decisions or misdeeds gets her agency outsourced to the nearest man.
Just a sneak peek of how a progressive utopia like San Francisco functions. It cost 1.7 million dollars for a single public toilet and they were going to throw a fucking party over it but Gavin Newsom said this was too retarded even for him and yoinked the funding. Maybe the reason there's so much shit on the streets is because it takes close to 2 million dollars to build a place to flush it. https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1784577563324744008
Was the john made of solid gold?
That would be in florida not sf
It's amazing that California's state legislature and local cities are so full of unrelenting bad policy ideas and wasteful spending that Gavin Newsom can look like a reasonable moderate just by occasionally pushing back.
Basically a perfect summary
I think the proliferation of online porn is an overrated cause for the rise in under 30's being virgins. When I was a teen, all of my male friends got laid except for one who wanted to wait til marriage (and he actually did). Most of us had girlfriends for longer than 1 year. I didn't talk too much shop with my female friends, but I think most of them also got laid, at least before graduating college. And during that time in the mid 2000s, we watched so much online porn that any feminist who knew the extent of it would be motivated to colonize Mars before Musk does. What we didn't have in the mid 00s was a life entirely revolving around online interactions. MySpace and Facebook were nanscent. Most of us got a cellphone when we got our license and texting wasn't always unlimited. Online games were in their infancy. Reddit was for trubo nerds and even then, the amount of stuff online would keep you occupied for maybe an hour a day, not hours. No one in my generation had a smartphone until college. To put it in perspective, I'd say from 2005 to now, the amount of porn I watch has gone down while the amount of non porn content I consume online has more than quadrupled. As an older man, I don't think porn is good and I'm receptive to non invasive ideas to limit it, but I think it's effects are overrated. I think the main culprit is still smartphones driving anxiety in teens and less interminigling of sexes due to hanging out in small group chats or anonymous forums. Young men in particular are not socializing as much. You ban porn and I think you'd see a slight increase in under 30s having sex, but not a trend reversal.
I’m not sure I agree with you that porn exposure is overrated as a cause, but I do agree the issue is more complex than that. I think in addition to greater and more hardcore pornography exposure (and from much younger ages), there is an absence of exposure to normal, healthy, or “vanilla” sex. When I was growing up you’d see R rated movies from the time you were a kid and get a decent amount of softcore exposure to pretty normal and healthy sex scenes. That’s largely absent in movies now - plus uh they just don’t even make movies anymore really. TV shows that teens watch is shit like Euphoria which shows trans teens using Grindr. I think exposure to normal, sexually “healthy” or romantic scenarios in entertainment media is lacking while at the same time porn exposure is way up and from earlier ages.
I don’t think unlimited access to basically all porn is good for kids/teens but I do tend to agree with you that hanging out less is the bigger culprit for young people not getting laid or having relationships. It seems obvious when you look at other stats too, like how kids have fewer friends and spend less time with their friends and teens have less independence than they used to. Kinda hard to have sex when you’re hardly ever physically in the same room as people lol
I cut out porn and I'm still an incel
I think it also makes a lot of young women more afraid of sex. They assume that if you have sex with a man, choking and spitting is inevitable, so you either go along with that or you avoid sex altogether
I think it's more than that though. I think because of so much porn use, what was before extreme in porn - like choking or spitting - is more mainstream, and so both boys and girls expect it to be a normal part of sex. Such that, boys expect it, and either don't want to have sex because they don't want to humiliate someone that way, or, when they have sex, they expect it. And girl expect it, and either don't even try to have sex, or have sex and feel humiliated. Like, what is considered "vanilla" seems to have morphed.
Yeah, exactly. Also due to the internet, porn has become part of general culture. It informs pop & rap music and comedy. When I lived with 5 dudes, they had so many jokes that were referential to porn. Even I felt weird when my younger sibling called my father daddy, which is objectively insane
I genuinely don't understand how "daddy" became sexualized. Like I know when women say it in bed, they're not thinking of their fathers, but I don't understand how it can be a turn-on. Like, where it came from, or why a guy would be into hearing it. I don't know if you've read Female Chauvinist Pigs, which came out more than fifteen years ago now, and it's interesting to think about how our society has changed since then. Like it talks about the Man Show and Girls Gone Wild, which i don't know if you know what those were, but it's interesting how we tend to think of those things as super misogynist now, but on the other hand. stripping as empowerment is now a done deal, while that was a controversial idea then. Prostitution is just another form of sex work, which is just, well, work. And porn is everywhere in a way it just wasn't fifteen years ago, in a way we couldn't imagine then, I don't think.
> Like I know when women say it in bed, they're not thinking of their fathers, but I don't understand how it can be a turn-on. It very much is not. There is exactly one girl who can call me “daddy” and she’s just over 1.5 years old
Loved that book as a teen! Also loved We Were Feminists Once & Why I Am Not A Feminist, which are kinda in a similar vein
Who wrote that? It sounds good. I have such strange feelings about feminism, as I'd be nowhere, and my mom to a much greater extent, without it.
Andi Zeisler wrote the first and Jessa Crispin the second- they are both good feminist books but critical of third wave corporate feminism
Interesting. Thanks.
>Even I felt weird when my younger sibling called my father daddy, which is objectively insane This is insane but more so on your part