Many Such Takes: Pedro Pascal, SAHD, Sex Ed, and More
The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free
Welcome to Many Such Takes! For those unfamiliar, this is a free weekly segment (I also do lots of other stuff!) For Many Such Takes, I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter (and now BlueSky) discourse so you don’t have to. If you see yourself featured here and you don’t like it, simply send me a Substack message and I will happily remove, no matter who you are or what you said.
But first! Let me tell you about a super exciting opportunity.
Be Part of the Biggest CHH Social Experiment Ever!
I wanted to try something new (and a little weird.) I want to recreate the environment of dating apps in a survey, and have people swipe left or right on other people with certain variables changed. However, in order to do this I need real photos of real consenting people! That’s where you come in: send photos of yourself to be swiped on in a purely fake environment (nobody will actually meet or communicate with you.)
How To Submit & What You Should Know
Submit a photo (ideally with your face and at least part of your body present, only of you- the kind of thing that would be on a dating app profile) to cartoonshateher@gmail.com. Include a selfie of you holding up 3 fingers so I can verify you’re not using your friend’s photo as a prank. The 3-finger selfie will not be used for the survey. Subject line should be “Dating App Survey.” I do not use this email address for conversations, requests or questions. If you have any other question or request, submit it on the CHH Substack group chat.
Include your real age, height and job in the email.
Include the name you want me to use, which can be fake.
If you don’t include these things, I will make them up for you.
A few things you should know about this project:
Inaccurate variables will be added to your photo. For example, some users might see a version of you with your real job, but a fake age. Survey-takers will be aware that some of the information they are seeing might be fake.
This is not a matchmaking service. If you want to be featured on my personals ads, that’s a separate thing and you can submit here.
On this note, it’s okay to submit if you’re in a relationship, or to take the survey if you’re in a relationship. The point isn’t to meet people, it’s to understand people’s preferences.
Your photo might be featured in the article with the results. I will only use people’s photos if I need to use an example of someone in the average or above average category of right swipes. I will not use anyone’s photo as an example of an unattractive person.
Although I will try to keep this open to all sexualities, there is a decent chance I will only have a good sample size for hetero dynamics.
Pedro Pascal
While many people might talk about actor Pedro Pascal “giving daddy,” quite a few people think…other things about him. First of all, there’s a great deal of speculation that he might be gay (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) But separately, quite a few people just feel like he has “evil vibes.”
Some of the “evil” rumors come from the fact that he reportedly joked to Dakota Johnson that she should start an OnlyFans (a remark that Johnson apparently thought was funny.) Other people brought up some absolutely bonkers lore that sounds too crazy to be true (but is true.)
This lore drop prompted other users to discover that Woody Harrelson’s dad was *checks notes* an assassin:
Most users agreed that Pedro Pascal shouldn’t be held responsible for his father’s evildoing. Other users noted that a great deal of the “Pedro Pascal seems evil” thing comes from transphobes and is related to his outspoken support for trans rights, while others say it’s just generic insidious vibes.
I feel like this is a bizarre thing to be “100% convinced” of but alas:
Anyway, we’ll just have to wait and see.
SAHD
Just as we came off the heels of a week where multiple articles about an imbalance of domestic labor went viral (including mine) a Twitter user named…*checks notes*…uhh, mRNA Goyim Exploder…posted that he watched his kids while his wife was on a business trip and simply doesn’t see why women complain about it:
Most people disagreed with him, with several jumping in to say that he can’t judge the difficulty of a job from 48 hours of work, especially given that his wife probably did plenty of things to prepare the household ahead of time:
Other people argued that his kids being in school meant he wasn’t grasping the reality of SAHM life:
Others took the “just you wait” approach (although his wife will be home before any of this has to happen.)
Ignoring the fact that this guy was deliberately trying to provoke a response, I think it’s safe to say that for someone used to a 9-5, being a SAHM (or SAHD) for a few days can be a much-needed break, especially if they work a difficult job most of the time. But also, 48 hours isn’t long enough to make any determinations about what’s harder. Perhaps this needs to be the premise for some kind of Wife Swap type reality show, except working parents swap roles with stay-at-home parents. I actually think most people would enjoy a change in routine for a few days, and perhaps some guy named Dale from accounting would teach your kids some interesting tax tips while you sit at his desk.
Sex Ed
I think there’s a wide spectrum of the type of sexual education content with which parents are comfortable. But this week was the first time I saw a woman oppose her ten-year-old daughter learning what a vagina is:
I’m hardly a free-love hippie about this stuff. When my toddler asked me how babies were made, I froze up and told him to ask Daddy (not my finest moment—I felt like he was too young for the full story and had nothing planned!) But anyway, most Twitter users felt that not wanting a pre-teen child to learn about their own anatomy was…a bit much.
OP clarified that she’s not opposed to the subject matter, but that she wanted to receive consent forms, which she never did:
Except she did, but it was shoved inside a different permission slip (that’s what she said!)
Incredibly baffling lore drop here:
OP also clarified that apparently on the first day of school, the kids “learned how to have sex,” which feels like major burying of the lede if this was true:
Anyway, feels like this is mostly a “paper organization” issue and not an indictment of the corrupt grooming public school system. But if there truly are schools teaching people how to have sex, I think a lot of men should consider re-enrolling. Badum-chhhhh
Funny Tweets/Other Happenings
In case you missed it…
I Am The Female Bad Husband
Heads up that while this article deals with somewhat similar subject matter, it’s not a response to Emily's Version’s recent essay about “good” (or not so good!) husbands. She and I have different views and experiences on this topic, but I’ve actually been working on this article for a while, so not only is it NOT meant in opposition, but I want to take this moment to highlight that she’s a great writer and you should subscribe to her!
My 20-Year Sexy Clothes Era
Welcome to the second installment of Fashion Fridays! Last Friday, I wrote about all the reasons why sexy clothes seem to be antithetical to “high fashion.” Today, I wrote about my own (long) history with sexy clothes, my motivations and strategies behind dressing this way, and the drawbacks and benefits. If it feels repetitive, just see it as a two-part series. Enjoy!
"And also I'm a man I don't need to speak to anyone" makes me *crazy*.
It makes me crazy because a decade ago I thought exactly the same thing, and I now know that I was deluding myself.
Massively off topic rant, but (having read way more comments on these kinds of gender arguments about mental load, husband/wife dynamics, etc.) there's a kind of an argument I hear over and over that goes something like:
"Us men, we are simple creatures. We need only a few things. We just need to eat, sleep, exercise a bit and have sex, and our lives are in balance. We like the things we like, and we are annoyed at the things we don't like and that's the alpha and omega. All of this 'feelings stuff', that's for women, but not men."
And it's...total bullshit. We (men) can *tell* ourselves over and over that we're like this and if we do it enough, we'll start to see the world through this lens.
This is how you get a husband who is resentful about the way his wife talks about him about how he's "not a good husband" and needs to step up. He tells himself he's angry because she's being bitchy and won't have sex with him, when really the issue is he feels sad and overwhelmed because someone he loves is attacking him, and he feels lonely and disconnected because sex was the only way he gave himself to express that emotional connection. That incredibly narrow framing of the problem gives him no tools to understand what his wife is saying and really no tools to understand how it affects him. The anger is externalizing so he goes "maybe she should change".
If the "my kid's school taught her about how to have sex" on their first day was true, she probably would have led with that. If your friend had a bad first date and the first thing they mentioned to you later was that the date was rude to the staff at the restaurant, you would think that's probably the worst thing about the date. lf twenty minutes later they mentioned that the date killed a stray puppy, you would wonder why they didn't lead with that.