Firstly hate the word kink being used for everyone’s sexual tastes.
Secondly people into bdsm often don’t want to admit that the *dynamic* that they like is actually the most normie shit that was in bodice rippers from the 1940s. So instead they criticize any sort of aesthetic depiction of it as not good enough or valid enough or accurate enough cause they see it as *normalizing*.
Girl, it’s been the most normal thing since grug the cavemen dragged his cavegirl into the cave. Get real!
Anyway my theory is that they try to *differentiate* themselves from the norm by talking about the more unpleasant things they do in the service of this dynamic (spitting etc) because grossing out normies is part of their fetish. It wouldn’t be as much fun without bringing in the *lets disgust suburban mom and dad* factor. In that sense this is the horseshoe theory of where tradwives and kink meet. They both enjoy the public shock at their sexuality almost as much as the sex itself.
I have had men asking me if I’m into BDSM and been UPSET that I just blink and say I like rough housing like a normie. They want to be able to say they are edgy and special. You’re not that special — men were carrying naughty women on their shoulders to teach her a lesson behind closed doors in the Australian outback romances that my grand aunt read.
Speaking of which some of the discomfort that both normie liberal and kinky men have with this old school masculinity is that it requires effort. Just like makeup and pretty dresses and high heels are hard work but enjoyable as a heightened type of femininity which you must feel/embody if you don’t want to look like a clown, being able to be a tough masculine man takes hard work and you need to stop being a PlayStation boy for at least 30 mins and you can’t use a ball gag or whatever is the kink-toy du jour. You need to feel/embody that masculinity for the woman to take you seriously and not start laughing. So they chafe at it cause neither type of man wants to make an effort.
This also leads to incel men pathologising women for liking rough sex. They are sickened by the fantasies women have of a strong man who carries them away in an uncontrollable expression of his desire. Often the strongest women have the highest such desire - meaning you must be a very masculine man to be able to ahem “take her”. But since zero effort slobs chafe at the very idea of putting in any work and want everything neatly handed to them like mommy used to make curated meal plates - they resent it and then pathologize it and mock it. Meanwhile women get even more disappointed in real men and retreat into complete fantasies of what is it now - giant fairy men who take the heroine hostage? I get it. I totally get it
I haven’t reached the point of a fairy man fantasy yet. I’m still reading wholesome bodice rippers about Italian men and pirates taking you hostage in a bedroom sharing trope. Or Australian outback romances with an enemies to lovers trope. Some of these older authors are realllyyyyy good.
But most of these books were written in the 40s-60s. Men thought it was cute and amusing for women to read such books. Now men seem to hate these books with a passion while they have watched more naked women doing depraved things on screen by age 20 than their grandpa or dad did in his entire lifetime. Make it make sense.
The bit about masculinity brings up an interesting idea that feels true – that most women inherently know how to be feminine WITHOUT being socio-politically "trad", while men on the whole seem rather clueless about how to be masculine without dominating women (outside of the bedroom). Sometimes it feels like wanting to date a man who is both a feminist and a gentleman is like looking for a needle in a haystack, while feminine women who like traditional things like cooking and being the primary caregiver for their children while also being feminists are a dime a dozen.
And that is why I end up in tears every few weeks just thinking of how stupid men are to not read and understand Mr. Darcy or Heathcliff. Its literally a manual.
I was made to watch a porn video when I was 18 to understand what is a blow job (only one I ever watched) but men find it beneath them to read Pride and Prejudice. Agh. Goes back to my age old point that most modern women have given more blowjobs than their entire bloodline of women but men wont do what every man did -grow up. They all want to be boys forever. Peter Pan.
What about Darcy are men supposed to emulate? Being extremely wealthy/good-looking? Negging the women they're interested in? Being a good person is nice, sure, but that's not exactly dropping panties, especially not in the world of dating apps where whatever your character may be it's invisible until quite a few hurdles have been passed.
I’m not sure about women inherently knowing how to be feminine, but the feminist-gentleman shortage and the feminine girl boss glut seem completely accurate to me.
Part of this is I think the shifting definition of masculinity in American pop culture - women probably see it more often than men, but the ideal gentleman type really doesn't appear much. Masculinity is instead a spectrum from "effeminate" (cultured, polite, concerned with others, self-censorious) and "macho" (the joe-rogan-type in Glass Onion). This obviously sets us up for the current situation in which the aesthetically macho is often grouped in with actual immoral behavior for critique.
Part of this I think is solved by representation - by having examples in mind of the kind of guy you're suggesting. I guess Obama comes to mind? I presume people would say Pascal these days, but frankly there's not much masculine about the content I see from him other than just being classically hot as a man (tbf, this is why I am a big fan of that content lol - hot dude acts femme is definitely an interest of mine).
I think there's also an aspect of men being less likely to compartmentalize these aspects of our lives. In my experience, it's generally pretty easy to guess where a guy is on the spectrum of submissive-dominant in terms of sex or homemaker-boyboss in terms of preferred life role, in a way which I have not found as simple with women. though I wonder if that's changed with gen z as male fashion choices I consider feminine seem to be more mainstream
See, I think you used to have this archetype in Hollywood movies all the time . . Harrison Ford in practically anything, Daniel Day-Lewis, Richard Gere, Michael Keaton, Mel Gibson (forget his real-life persona); these guys were often in roles playing traditionally masculine men but who weren't bloviating toxic dudes-they ultimately were good guys who stood up for the little people and in several roles were true "gents" (and per an earlier article, lots of short kings in that list)
Harrison Ford, hell yes. One time he was at a restaurant I was having dinner at in Wyoming. The entire restaurant was all simultaneously trying to act like they did not notice or care that *Harrison Ford* was eating there, while also obviously totally freaking out that he was there. When he went to leave, he walked by our table and this woman at our table, my friend's mom who was in her 70s I think, couldn't help herself and she stopped him and started gushing about how much she loved him. We all held our breath bc we were sure he was going to be annoyed at the interruption and that he can't go anywhere without people bothering him. But he was in fact a *perfect gentleman*, so kind and sweet to her. She told him again she loved him and he said "ma'am I'm terribly flattered, but your husband is sitting right next to you." 😂 To which her 70-something husband responded "don't worry, I have a feeling I'll be getting lucky tonight for the first time in quite a while." 😂😂
Henry Cavill EXISTS. He is literally a HOT NERD and an IMPECCABLE GENTLEMAN OMFG. Every booktok girl that was resented by a man for reading books is drooling over him, but whatever apparently I will have to settle for pedro pascal (NO!)
I am sure Cavill is more masculine but I have to admit I am not familiar with him outside of being a mini painter and so seeing a lot of memes about hot man have geek hobby lol. I’ll have to look into him!
Maybe a reach and idk enough to really say but I feel like Tom Holland and Zendaya get love for kinda being in this space? Just appear to be a sweet, supportive and *stable* couple. There’s some of the appeal of the young sweethearts who are loyal to each other. There is something … maybe not gentlemanly but masculine about the famous umbrella video, an artistic display which highlights humor and physical prowess.
That said at a certain point I have to ask if I’m just thinking of role models for dudes who wanna be feminists and also have a jaw which can cut glass lol.
I found the Umbrella video VERY hot. I watch it mesmerised every single time it appears on my feed. I still don’t understand how I find him sooooooooooo manly in that but he’s nailed it. It’s almost like his masculinity and strength is oozing out of his very pores no matter how he’s dressed, how feminine his dance steps - that dance needs to be studied by some phd for the effect it’s had on women.
And I've just realised this is probably because women have more to lose by succumbing to the patriarchy, even if their personality and interests fit a more traditional mould.
Are we saying men have nothing to lose by succumbing to Right wing fantasy lifestyles? I hate calling it this simplistic term like patriarchy. Its more feudalism. Feudalism is not good for anyone but especially not good for the serfs/peasants - which most of us would be. Men died in that world. Often. Needlessly. In wars. On fields. Doing slave jobs from birth to death. It was and is(in the places of the world where it still exists) a horrible way to live - especially for men.
Saying "MORE to lose" automatically implies that the thing it's being weighed against is not nothing...
If you're comparing late-stage capitalism to feudalism, I'm sure there's plenty of points to be made, but the patriarchy is an entirely different thing to either of those. I suspect you're talking more about classism than sexism, which is valid, but different. Classism, the patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, Western imperialism etc. all intersect but are distinct.
Women were slaves too. Even outside of actual slavery, many were enslaved to domestic labour. Childbirth killed many women, and nearly every woman had to have multiple children; not every man lived through a war while at service age, if at all. But it's not a competition — all these things are bad. It's really tragic that we haven't actually progressed beyond wars, extreme poverty, serfism etc. and even actual slavery, despite it being illegal.
so many men were culled like animals. like dogs in a dog fight. but worse. I still hold that men dont realize what is at stake for them and how much they have to lose if they RVTURN or whatever.
and yes I know about extreme poverty, serfism and slavery currently existing considering the country I live in.
we will have to disagree on concepts like late-stage capitalism etc (obviously) but I hope you see my point that men have been sold a mirage in the name of some glorious alternative universe. Its ok if you dont agree, I also dont think its a competition but no women wants to back to the time before modern medicine so I am not trying to convince them anyway.
I feel like there’s a big difference between your examples for women and men in terms of effort required. I’m not going to say putting on makeup and sexy clothes isn’t work, but it’s a fairly mechanical process and you can basically guarantee your partner will appreciate it at the end. Whereas for men, embodying “strong masculinity” requires changing your whole personality even outside of sexual situations, and not doing things like being emotional vulnerable or being able to relax and have your partner plan a date for once.
In certain moods I can enjoy being a bit rough and manhandling during sex, but I’m not going to pretend I’m not a sensitive nerdy guy who prefers egalitarian relationships just so my partner “really believes it” when I manhandle her during sex.
Of course you should be sensitive. I think that was covered in CHH's comment about the Warren voter :) Look at Mr. Darcy - one of the most sensitive men ever - and so beloved to women all over the world. You dont have to be stoic - Hate that stereotype and hate that guys try to embody it by reading marcus aurelius of all people. Masculinity is not about the lack of softness. It is a softness +roughness together. Its the balance. Civilized masculinity is about softening the edges of grug :D How soft depends on the woman in question. I think the complaint is that some men go too soft. Just like some women go too hard on the makeup.
And embodying femininity is not just about wearing makeup or sexy clothes - its about the vibes about embodying what you are wearing - because you must admit teetering around like a baby deer in 4 inch heels like I did when I was 17 isn't sexy at all, its funny. You have to look put together, like you own it. As the fashionistas say - the clothes musn't wear you, you must wear the clothes. And you have to do all this, without looking too much like a dressed up mannequin or worse, a clown. And in the end all of it is stripped away and you still embody it as the clothes and makeup fall off. Again its individually curated - some men find barbie level dressed up sexy. To each their own. I think there was a twitter discussion about guys preferring sydney sweeney vs sabrina (specifically in her concerts which are catering to her large fanbase of women) that was kinda implying this.
Planning a date is a grandoise gesture of masculinity and most women consider it the least a man can do considering the effort and excitement we put iinto dolling up. That said I often plan dates cause I am very efficient but then a man has to bring his A1 banter flirt charm offensive to the table :) Otherwise I will feel like I did everything and lose the mood for good sex :D
Also a friend told me that when he's feeling sad or emotional or just upset at a bad day in the office his wife um, lets him take her and its a greater stress relief than anything they could do to talk it out :) Which they do. They do talk it out!! Later :D But grug angry, grug fight over spoils of war, grug want to pound - is a pretty hot vibe no? :)
I think my thoughts and feelings are heavily influenced by my last relationship. She said she wanted me to be more masculine and dominant, but when I tried to be she frequently made me feel like it wasn’t enough and couldn’t articulate what she wanted. She also did hardly anything to fulfill the feminine end of the bargain of this, so it felt like everything was being dumped in my lap. And we weren’t even having sex very often anyway.
In hindsight I think she had a lot of issues and wasn’t capable of being a good partner. But fair or not it has made me bristle a bit at calls for men to be tougher or more masculine to be sexier.
I am so sorry you experienced that. One of the things that I love about CHH's writing is how often she talks about dressing up for her man, which is something I do too. And yet is so rarely spoken about I almost wondered if I was a chimera.
It's an important aspect of femininity IMO (even those who break the rules need to note it) and an important ritual of the sexual dynamics that is simply ignored in the modern "discourse" both by 1. men who talk about craving variety like women are ice cream flavors and dont realize the specialized curated custom vibe of a woman who knows exactly what gets you off and dresses up in preparation and you know it and she knows it from the moment you walk in and take a look, and 2. by women who act like its not relevant cause you are a boss bitch or whatever, which is very sad.
I’m sorry that happened to you! I don’t always know how to tell my boyfriend exactly what I want in this domain (and being too explicit would kind of ruin it anyway) but I make a point of always making sure he knows when he does something I like… and at least from my vantage point, I think I’m doing my part on the feminine side. We’re out there!
Not exactly! I just don't want to feel like he's following instructions I've given him. It can be a little hard to describe? I'm pretty explicit about my feelings and preferences all the time, but I don't want it to be like "do this, OK, now do this."
I'm sympathetic to someone not knowing exactly what they want (or why something they asked for isn't working) - arousal is weirdly complicated - but yeah, not doing their own half of the work is no bueno. Sorry that was your experience!
I'm willing to bet there's a fairly high percentage of women who do not behave submissively in their day-to-day lives but turn that behavior on in the bedroom. Couple that with the much more involved personal grooming/styling, and I don't think it's asking men so much to turn on that facet of their sexuality/personality from time to time.
But maybe it is. Maybe that's just become anathema to men. If I had to guess, I think a lot of that hesitancy in modern men is an outgrowth of #metoo and feminist discourse equating anything aggressive with toxic masculinity.
I’m happy to be more dominant in sexual and romantic contexts, but my experience is some women treat that as a one-way thing that I do for her rather than a dynamic we both have it contribute to. I’ll do the work to bring masculine energy and dominance, but then she needs to dress in a sexy way, make me feel appreciated and masculine, be willing to let go and be a bit more deferential, and express enthusiasm. But my experience is some women aren’t willing or able to do that, and think being submissive means they don’t have to put in effort.
I like how we've identified the specific way lazy people of both sexes can hide behind this. If neither partner is lazy, though... it can be a good, healthy thing, and it's exactly what many of us (or at least I) need.
For my part, I'll dress up anytime whether anybody else wants me to or not, so there's no issue there, but I can be a bit of a control freak when it comes to certain things, like domestic stuff, so I try to watch myself to make sure I let go a bit and encourage my boyfriend when he feels like taking charge.
100%. And I understand why well-intentioned men are so careful, considering how severe the consequences can be for making a wrong move, but I really hope that as society continues to digest the lessons of that era, people can chill out a bit and it will become a little less work to get across to men that they have permission to turn that on with us.
When did men ever listen to women? I dont think this behavior can be blamed on women. Because if that was the case men would stop doing a lot of things that annoy us too. (watching excessive porn for instance). I think its an intellectual laziness and bratty behavior from having been pandered to at every stage of their life, and to be clear there are princess-vibe girls who do this too.
Wow. You actually think men don’t care what women think and are pandered to at every stage of life? You’d think just reading the comments on CHH posts would disabuse you of that notion. Personally, early 90s college feminism totally reinforced my discomfort with my sexual desires that began with my Christian upbringing. Reading feminist authors ranging from the pop to the academic was a way for me to try to understand the women I desperately wanted to be with, and it was very easy to come away with the idea that women find men’s desire disgusting and oppressive and that being as un masculine as possible is what they wanted. Of course, this was contradicted by the behavior of actual women I saw every day, but it took awhile for me to feel comfortable with being sexually assertive, and I know some adult men who still have a hard time with it because they can’t make it fit with their ethic of putting others first.
To clarify, when I said that I meant that the men who make excuses for their lack of initiative or masculinity by blaming metoo are pandered to and lazy as a result - yes. The ones who make an effort to figure things out - like you say you have done are clearly not on this list.
I dont give disclaimers when writing so my generalization was a bit confusing I guess.
I am huge fan of men. Especially modern men who make sense of what they want in a confusing world with many different, contradictory messages.
I am very sympathetic to what you’re saying. Maybe what I listed is just the excuse I’ve heard men use, and the root of the issue is what you’re saying.
I think it can go either way, and my read of the progressive-minded men in my life is that they really do care about behaving appropriately towards women and aren't just making excuses. Which one of you is right probably depends on the man?
Maybe it's about figuring out what brings out those certain moods for you - and what your partner can do to help conjure them up. IMHO good intimacy is a team project, and if I like it when my sensitive liberal nerdy guy inhabits strong & manly energy in bed, it's on both of us to figure out what makes him eager to go there. (I do have a sensitive nerdy egalitarian partner IRL, and manhandling is not his go-to move, but rough & dom-y is a fun part of both our repertoire.)
Yeah this sounds right to me. I do think it’s more common than people want to admit for women to use “I’m submissive and feminine” as an excuse to be passive.
I hope my next girlfriend has the attitude you do, it seems healthy!
Working class men can and do embody some of the most masculine energy with the literal work they do. They are closest to bring caveman energy at work and so should easily inhabit it at home too.
Yes exactly; terminally online beta-guys don't feel they can realistically embody the dominant bodice-ripping man so they project disgust and anger as a maneuver to project their own insecurities, which is essentially the problem with men in general nowadays.
Not sure why any guy would not want their gf/wife reading erotic lit; my wife started during the pandemic and honestly our sex life improved by several notches.
I’ve been curious about this too—I assumed that anything that gets women into the mood would be a benny for their male partner?
But it’s probably backlash for the anti-porn discourse, and men want to be able to say “women do this too and nobody thinks it’s a problem when they do it.”
I think it’s less a surprise and more just how you think about expectations when you’re in depression/resentment brain. Ideally the response would be “hm, I can do that!” rather than to immediately think of it as an obstacle, for sure.
I do think that like, every expectation is new to someone, just bc we’re not born knowing it, but I don’t suspect that’s the main reason for the melodrama you’re seeing
Which is why I'm an equal opportunity advocate in terms of people getting their rocks off however they see fit (assuming it's not hurting anyone of course) and a lot of the "anti-porn" hysteria is grounded in pseudo-science and poor assumptions. If a guy has unhealthy viewing habits/obsession with porn, it's not the latter causing it and otherwise he'd be Mr. Healthy Well-Adjusted Loving Husband/Boyfriend if not for Pornhub (its Reefer Madness-level panicbait I see online on this issue); the problem is with the person and other internal issues they clearly need to grapple with.
I dunno. There’s a pretty substantial chorus of men who formerly were addicted to porn who report the porn itself being the problem, and once they quit, they were normal again.
I have a feeling the average man is discounting the range of experiences out there and referencing his own.
There's a chorus of gay men who also swear that once they went into their church's Jesus-therapy, they were cured of their homosexuality. I don't place much credence with the slew of online anecdotes.
I'm still catching up on the comments, but you're speaking to me in this thread. I want my man to be sensitive and respectful, but sometimes in liberal/progressive spaces there's this thing where they're terrified of the whole package of conventional masculinity, and react to me being really into makeup and heels and dresses with worry that I'm doing it out of a sense of obligation. I think that dissipates over time as a relationship develops, but it's a dynamic that needs to be navigated.
I’m always challenging a man. The one who freaks out and tries to prove he’s more feminist than me or gods forbid teaches me feminism - is out. This is a problem cause I’m often attracted to leftists. Sadly they get too upset with my politics after a while- refusing to debate or argue - which is the very thing that gets me going and makes me hot. Men taking offence over opinions is such a boner killer.
I get that! I wouldn't say I'm attracted to leftists, but my social circle is full of them and to be honest, when I first started seeing my boyfriend, I was a little nervous that he might turn out to be the type you describe. Thankfully he's not, though I feel like I'm a notch more conservative than he is (I'm very much a "lib" in the sense that leftists use as an epithet, and I'd say he is mostly, but more jaded with conventional institutions).
There's a dominant mode of discourse in our environment that nods at leftist shibboleths, which I tend to cause trouble by refusing to play along with, but as we got to know each other I've become comfortable that his views are every bit as nuanced as mine. He delights in listening to me rant about my opinions and sometimes he'll push back or ask me to consider another perspective, but I've never seen him get offended. He does have more empathy for the raging lefties in our social world, though, and sometimes he'll kind of explain them to me and try to guide me to a better understanding of them while basically agreeing with my reaction to them. We're always picking things apart together and I love it. And absolutely, if he got offended or tried to bend me to be more deferential to leftist ideas, we wouldn't still be here.
Was it RFH who said that a woman should be more conservative than a man? So true.
And was it Aella who said that women should love more than a man? I mean it goes against current discourse that men should be obsessed with a woman, but women should be obsessed more, cause its easier for us to get icked out :)
(My quoting of these two women by no means implies I like them. Its more of a broken clock being right once in a while. I do not endorse their weird politics in any manner)
Also "He delights in listening to me rant about my opinions and sometimes he'll push back or ask me to consider another perspective, but I've never seen him get offended."
Every now and then I see discourse about how women were typically the more conservative one in the relationship until recently when (in the US at least) women's political views started tilting dramatically leftward. Considering how the right has become coded as the party of chaos, atomization, and flippant disregard for norms instead of the status quo, I think it's more complicated than that, but in a context where both partners are left of center, I suppose we can just straightforwardly apply the standard reasoning. Who is RFH, though? I may be familiar but the initials aren't clicking for me.
Rfh is a twitter personality. Radical feminist and The H stands for literally the worst name starting with H. She spends her days trolling men quite brutally in a mean girl sorta way. But has occasional interesting asides.
I really kinda wonder about the prevalence of boddice ripping, daddy-calling, impregnation kinks... like.... this is just normal sex lol. Not to shame that as "kink" - absolutely understand you're into it and engage in it outside the context of reproduction if that's where you're at! It just is a little silly.
I definitely think you're onto something WRT incels. It's a sort of mix, imho - on one hand, the fact that women have preferences or expectations means you have responsibilities or standards to measure up to; on the other hand, you likely have a not-necessarily-wholly-sexual desire to see women degraded, or just general hetero-typical sado-masochistic interests, so it's titillating to imagine every woman secretly wants to be criminally assaulted. This resentment/lust interplay I think of as defining inceldom.
No, Sado-maschism is not hetero typical. Sorry!!! Vehemently disagree!! Degradation is not masculinity. Masculinity is strength. It’s steel hand in a velvet glove. Speak softly and carry a stick.
On reflection I'd swap sado-masochism for dominance-submission dynamics, because I do think the introduction of pain specifically deviates from the hetero-typical (by which I mean the upheld standard "norm" rather than pretending to know anything statistically).
I guess my preference is to decouple this dynamic from masculinity and femininity because despite being a man into women it's not a dynamic I prefer, which I don't think makes me more feminine per se.
"So instead they criticize any sort of aesthetic depiction of it as not good enough or valid enough or accurate enough cause they see it as *normalizing*."
Commenting a year later to make an evergreen 30 Rock reference to Paul and Jenna's kink of "normaling".
To respond from another angle, I'm beginning to feel like it's part of my life's mission to crash the party for anyone who is going out of their way to be alternative or not normal or whatever one wants to call it. I see it everywhere, in all areas of life, and it drives me crazy. I always feel weird when discussions of "kink" and BDSM bubble up around me, and you've helped me connect the dots to it being yet another manifestation of this. Yes, just rough housing like a normie, please. We don't need to be special.
This, certainly being one of the main fronts in the current gender wars.
While conceding that the many men 100% have issues with weed, video games, and failure-to-launch tier jobs, there certainly is a cultural imperative with messaging to back it up, that men should be "manning up", being providers, and filling that masculine, dominant role.
Sample size of 1: but it's such a losing proposition today, to buy into this however. As a milquetoast, moderately successful, married white guy, I can attest there is no amount of assertiveness or masculinity that can overcome the (my) emotional identity of overburdened female partner who is aghast at the notion that the 26-hours-a-day worth of (bullshit) stuff she's doing in 24, isn't *enough*, and that those more traditional feminine behaviors *matter*. With profound cultural messaging to validate her: all women are beautiful, right? Help ease those mental loads, men!
And of course, as a loving partner, she'll compromise. 3x a year, I get afforded the chance to coordinate offloading the kids onto the grandparents, getting Broadway tickets or a sufficiently fancy steakhouse reservation, for the opportunity to spend more intimate time with her, and marinate in the opportunity to watch her skin crawl for 3 hours til we can get home and she can immediately retreat to the comfort of the sweatpants and complain that I'm not sexually assertive enough (the way I used to be!)
In our current, "I am only able to affect what I do - not what anyone else does", moment (I think therapy agrees?) - when lifestyle standards are getting so high, I am just resigned to the idea that satisfying, partnered sexuality is an increasingly parabolic degree of difficulty to achieve; the realized cultural drop off in sex is obvious. Ultimately arousal and sex drive is just chemicals in our brain; and maximizing them through porn or otherwise asocial avenues simply becomes destiny.
Now I'm certainly one of the more revile-able persona/archetypes out in the wild today - who upon failing to induce my wife to accommodate me through being responsive to her needs, acquiesced to the notion that I'm only able to affect what I do; and in this case, it's respond to my masculine urges, with feminine ones of my own. And let me tell ya, I'm yet another harrowing story of the "husband looks better in a dress than the wife" situations (thus why my tag is "Lilly". And granted- never in a social situation). A sad, pathetic situation, but the lesser of many potential evil outcomes here.
I'm a little confused . .you've adopted a feminine identity at home which includes dressing up as a female? Sorry some of the wording in your post wasn't clear.
The tl;dr of it is, crossdressing to project an image of the type of cues I respond to, for my own "male gaze" I guess. AGP maybe? Though I don't consider myself "transgender" by any stretch.
I understand the point, and abstractly agree; but there are two competing ideas, deeply in tension in relationships I see: that 1) we need to work on ourselves, to be the best person we can, and to be desirable and 2) that we deserve to be seen; to be loved for *who we are*. In the latter, it is completely anathema to expect our partner to change; would seeking this, not be a full-cloth rejection of them?
Further this, I think the "you can't change people" (who don't want to be changed) idea is salient for me. I really don't think a therapist can help my situation, as I don't see how they can make my wife *want* to do things she (probably) faked having interest in, in our dating years, and simply just always hated.
You may well be right - of course you know your situation way better than random CHH commenters.
I will say that my husband & I took a tantra course together, as the route we chose instead of couples/sex therapy, and it was game-changing (pun intended). It had less of a "one or both of us is broken and we are here to fix it" vibe than therapy would have (for us), more "something that might be exciting for both of us," which I think helped a lot. I'd been low libido and he'd been feeling intimacy-starved for years and we both had complicated and fraught feelings around it all. We'd been trying to meet each other in the middle as you've described, but it was mostly just getting more frustrating and overthought.
In tantra, we learned rituals to just listen to & see each other exactly as we are, asking vulnerable questions and taking in the answers - which we thought we were already doing, but in the structure of the tantra exercises it was often so powerful that one or both of us would tear up. And that connection would be the foundation from which we'd start playing with different elements of intimacy: breathing techniques, focusing on one sense at a time, inhabiting different "energies," etc. Turns out it doesn't take much for him to turn me on - the shape of it had just changed over the years, and we hadn't updated our assumptions in a while. He doesn't feel starved for anything anymore ;)
It's quite possible that your wife wasn't faking it during your dating years, just that something's shifted since, and together you can figure out what works for her (and you!) now. Rooting for you both.
Wait I am confused, she wasn't dressing up for you anymore so you started dressing up for yourself? Is that the gist of it? I am so sorry :( I really dont know what to say or have any advice in such a situation. When I was expected to become the outside facing strong "masculine" in a relationship I was in, I just quit. (He met me through my twitter where I was a badass bitch and assumed I will be the big-energy mama forever.)
Thats not advice or anything, just what I did. I would self-combust if I had actually gone through with it. Anyway now I am very clear with men that I am the lovergirl. And you will have to conquer me (yes tough job) or it wont work.
She's.... rare. *Perfect* spouse to bring to holidays, as the little mundane conversations you get there, are her wheel house. Pretty type-a, successful-at-work corporate America type, super attentive mom. But in terms of more substantive, connection-building stuff with someone like me, she really doesn't want to dive much deeper.
Deeply challenging combination of assertive, knows-what-she-wants, tells-it-how-she-sees-it, yet combative and defensive, and riddled with aversions and sensitivities. Perfect recipe for "just do what she wants, because it's not worth the fight" over time. And she can be quite pleasant when she gets her way!
Now, she'll say she does whatever I want. But I think of it like this: it's akin to wearing a red clown nose in a way. To her, any performative stuff to please me is like one of those; she'll do it momentarily (like literally - if I buy her lingerie, she'll endure a walk from the closet to the bed where it instantly comes off, and redirected to the goodwill pile). It's a red clown nose, because it detracts from *her*, and is degrading bullshit that she shouldn't have to deal with. And anything like that to please me, affects her inversely obviously.
In my own little skewed world, it maps nicely to the social/gender moment; woman, that deserves great sympathy for all her (manufactured) slights and hardships, with a man who can never satisfy the subtle but insatiable demands to be responsive to those grievances. And my desires from her, are near-universally decried - what guy that wants his wife to dress or behave a certain way, SHOULDN'T be tarred and feathered in the public square for his toxicity?
I am absolutely not an incel, but can sympathize with men who just feel like American sexual relations are contemptuous to any but the most "chad" men or whatever they say.
"can sympathize with men who just feel like American sexual relations are contemptuous to any but the most "chad" men or whatever they say"
maybe you shouldn't generalize based on trying to please one clearly unpleasable woman...but I can understand you are just trying to survive. Take care. It wasn't depressing per se. I just wish you strength.
If kinks were just cringe, that would be one thing. But they make the already difficult dating scene even worse.
I've been married for a while now, but when I was dating, this would come up randomly. And it's very different when kinks come up IRL than in some internet discussion.
It's like.... why do you want to choke me? Are you wishing I was dead or something? Do you hate me? Am I a standin for something else you hate?
I had someone ask me if he could tie me up and hit me. I told him if he ever tried any violence on me, I'd stab him dead. I know I sound like Dwight, "violence is not a joke", but why exactly do you want to hit women?
Friends tell me of unsatisfying sex where their dates couldn't orgasm with regular sex and needed to watch some gross porn to ejaculate. Like.... sure, human sexuality and all that, but if a rising, if small, number of young men can't ejaculate without watching scenes of abuse play out, or themselves getting abused, shouldn't we be concerned?
I think that you're partially right about the "um akshually" element of critiques of Fifty Shades and other popular depictions of BDSM. Part of it is displaying that you are in the cool kid's club that the normies don't appreciate, definitely.
But I can also understand the strong desire not to have actual abuse normalized as a part of BDSM. "Predator predates on people in a given social space" is a widespread phenomenon, and that sucks, but there is a difference between "this person in a local music scene/activist group/church/whatever preyed on vulnerable people" and "this person in the local BDSM scene is ignoring consent, but that's just what BDSM is." It's a lot easier to prey on people and harm them if their understanding of the dynamic is that ignoring consent and constantly pushing people even when they display discomfort is just how things are.
By the by, there was a very interesting bit in Tara Burton's book Strange Rites where she talks about the gay leather scene of the 1950's-70's. You were expected to pay your dues as a sub before you could dom, and as a sub, you were expected to keep quiet about anything your dom made you do. This was a learned behavior during a time when homosexuality was literally criminal, and vice squads sent out officers to bust up gay clubs. However, even while reading, my mind just went to "it's hard to think of a system more ripe for abuse than this"
I just think that in BDSM of all things, you'd think people would be interested in discussing the line between fictional and actual abuse... I think the author's attitude, which does not seem to understand what she wrote, is condemnable, but I don't have any issue with people finding 50 shades itself appealing
Predators aren't stopped by consent forms and Reddit FAQs. Full stop. Period. Did you think they were? They aren't. They never were. Does anyone else think they might be? Bad news for you: they won't. So it's safe to drop the after-the-fact rationalizations when it becomes clear that you aren't getting whatever reaction it is that you wanted from the "normies" of society.
That's assuming in the first place that "oh it's just to keep the predators out!" is actually the goal of all of the cringe "wholesome depravity" thing they're going for - which it very clearly isn't. The "b-b-but the predators!" thing is just impotent flailing in an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize why society isn't fawning all over you in shocked disbelief at what a wild and interesting person you must be.
Again, to CHH's point: stop trying to frame your alleged fetish in terms of "community" and um..appeals to the law I guess? It's just weird. Does anybody else constantly refer to the thing they're into as part of the "local scene?" Yeah guys, I'm super into the local blowjob scene. We have an introductory guidebook and everything!
The framing of this as being part of a community with established rules that need to be followed or else those poor saps might be harmed because they didn't sit through enough tedious Reddit lectures about consent is so cringe and infantalizing. Why are we treating adults in their late 20s and 30s as nubile little fawns unable to fend for themselves in the big scary world?
Oh right. Because that's exactly what the terminally online "BDSM community" actually is. Did you make sure to ask a parent or other trusted relative for a ride to the BDSM party, and hourly SMS check-ins? Wow so naughty. Super hot.
"It's giving 'you're not punk rock unless you wear a FUCKING mask'"
^ She nailed it with this line. This is exactly the dynamic. It's lame. Sorry.
I don’t get wanting to be kinky personally. I have a lot of really screwed up fantasies that I’d never participate in. But consent forms and safe spaces? Really? Do consent forms need to exist in a movie that’s meant to be sexual fantasy? It’s fantasy, right? Not a documentary of the kink community?
In general the idea of a kink scene has a sort of anti-appeal to me, the dysfunctional social dynamics I associate with sub and countercultures and see reflected in the (admittedly, complainer-skewed) online discourse is .... not something I need
I think it’s really interesting seeing some commenters engaging in the exact behavior being commented on in this article.
I recently had my own “this kinky thing isn’t kinky by actual kinky standards” moment recently. My boyfriend (who isn’t as chronically online as me) bought some fuzzy handcuffs (we already have leatherette handcuffs) and I couldn’t help but cringe at the sight of them. I joked that fuzzy handcuffs are actually the most vanilla thing a couple could own. He laughed and asked how that could be and I said something along the lines of, “well it’s like when vanilla couples want to try kinky stuff and immediately buy cheap fuzzy handcuffs instead of leather or steel and don’t participate in the community” and still laughing a little he was just like “Well, if someone is doing something kinky…I don’t understand how that wouldn’t count as being kinky.” The way he said it made me realize how snobby I sounded and how much online jokes and discourse was making me care way too much about appearing kinky enough and less about actually enjoying my relationship. He’s also more experienced, and while I’ve been to some classes and public meetups I haven’t been in a lot of irl kink spaces, so I think that speaks to the theory that the people who are more likely to gatekeep about that kind of thing are more likely to be insecure and inexperienced who engage in ridicule to feel better about themselves and look more experienced than they are.
Well if it makes you (or your boyfriend) feel better, I would never in a million years let someone put handcuffs on me, fluffy, pink, real, fake or not. So in my book it's still kinky.
Literally this lol. It's become an acceptable form of debate to unironically do the exact thing someone is accusing you of doing, for the exact reasons they said you'd be doing it. Then assuming that you clearly won the debate.
And who are these people trying to force everyone into a community for everything? Like, damn, some us just wanna fuck. And are not having worse sex (probably better if I had to bet) than those who view and frame everything they do and think through the lens of how the "community" would feel about it.
"Oh no, my girlfriend just spontaneously gave me road head! What would the courts think about this? Did she even consider the legal and safety ramifications? Doesn't she know the statistics on automotive deaths with and without seatbelts? I need to get on Reddit immediately."
^ This type of person is definitely having a moment right now.
Speaking of handcuffs, what kind of steel are we talking? Because as you know some steel alloys are low-strength normie cringe. I will need to see a BOM, all of your 2D drawings, a full engineering analysis, and a PE stamp for those handcuffs before they can be certified as suitably kinky.
I used to spend a decent amount of time in sex positive communities online, and there is this weird pressure in them to be kinky, and (by their standards) “actually” kinky (this always annoyed me as someone who has little interest in BDSM). Everyone in these spaces will claim that they believe people should have the kind of sex they want and there are no right or wrong answers. But then these same people will act like anyone who is not kinky must be repressed and boring. As if anyone who doesn’t want to play with knives and chains only wants to have silent missionary sex with the lights off under the covers once a month.
This leads to many people in these spaces to exaggerate how kinky they are to seem cool, exciting, and attractive. The term gets increasingly watered down until basically anyone can claim to be kinky, and you have people who, for example, like dirty talk and rough sex claiming to be edgy kinksters who can’t date normal people.
Perhaps this partly explains the gatekeeping by some kinksters. For *Syndrome voice* if everyone’s kinky, then no one is.
I dislike this dynamic myself because I think it muddies the waters and incentivizes people to claim to be, to even try to be, more kinky than they actually want to be. Most people are having pretty vanilla sex in the grand scheme of things, and that’s fine! That’s the kind of sex I mostly want too. I wish saying that didn’t carry a weird stigma in sex positive spaces.
That kink-treadmill is exactly what I think CHH was getting at in the article—that the perception of how kinky one is has become more important than the actual kink for a lot of people.
It sounds like yet another manifestation of "the more countercultural, the more virtuous, and the greatest possible sin is to be normal." Why are people like this? The other day I read an article in which the author mentioned that while she's happy about a new relationship that's going well, no longer being single has given her an identity crisis because she no longer feels like she's defying social norms, among other things. I don't get where these twisted value systems come from, or what made them so commonplace that any given reader is casually assumed to share or at least understand them.
I offer this with the disclaimer that I didn't bring it up for the purpose of shaming the author! She seems like a nice enough person, but her outlook on life and relationships is pretty foreign to me. My mind made the connection between some of the feelings she describes, and the kind of valorization of counterculture in the modern US that we're circling around here. Here you go:
Tell me about it! From my vantage point, if something you want to do is at odds with social norms, you deal with that and stand by your decisions if you're convinced they're what's right for you, but defiance of norms being a goal unto itself is something I cannot understand. I feel like this mindset, and people puffing their chests about how "kinky" they are, is coming from the same place, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I also have trouble understanding the drive to be 100% independent, to the point of feeling uneasy about letting someone into your life, but that's venturing into another topic, I think.
I guess 30 rock said it best. In it, Tina Fey is 41 when she finally gets married. She's had so many relationships not work out that she can't allow herself to feel like marriage matters. But when it's happening, it takes her a lot to allow herself to feel it's a big deal. And still, she gets married in a princess leia costume because it's the only white dress she owns, and... she's a princess.
I see this a lot with women trying to figure out if they should have kids too. They feel like they don't want to 'lose their identity' to being a mom like "all the normies and NPCs".
Some of it is media, but a lot of it is just how people try to justify their not being able to meet milestones that qualify them as grownup. But then that puts them in a vicious cycle where they push themselves further away from being able to meet that milestone.
Dolphin kink has potential — no scat needed. Dolphins are the sleazy frat boys of the sea: hyper-social, horny, and always scheming in pairs. Male dolphin pods routinely isolate females and engage in what biologists very politely call "coercive mating." Dolphins are bronze age perverts with dorsal fins, I think Aella should organize a dolphin themed event.
I’m reminded of something I read in another newsletter on a very different topic. The internet is a machine for distilling the most extreme, annoying people.
I’m not especially kinky but went through a brief poly phase where I got invited to a lot of parties with people who were and irl these are really chill people often with really bad problems but they’ll give you the shirt off their back. It’s why I’m really good friends with some of them despite their dysfunction.
The point is the people who talk about kink online, like anything else probably aren’t anything like the people who like weird things irl.
lol I had to remind myself of this recently when browsing some fitness related subreddits and feeling like I’m not exercising enough despite exercising daily.
Other thought: I’m in a progressive west coast lib city, and the amount of times I’ve heard “sex-positive” straight, cis people describe “kinks” that are essentially just “I’m into sexual dimorphism and sex acts likely to lead to conception” is low-key incredible. You’re not kinky! You’re just straight! That’s ok!!!!
“I think other kinks might start before people even have a concept of sex, or stem from some random thing they saw in a cartoon as a child (I remember seeing a Twitter thread of people with a hypnosis fetish saying that cartoons where a character was hypnotized by an attractive woman were their “aha” moments.)“
My favorite example of this is the small but nontrivial number of millennials with a fetish for getting “slimed” like a Double Dare contestant.
Oh my God I actually had this pre-sexual fetish when I was maybe 6?? I was weirdly fixated on it and I couldn't explain it. But then it disappeared and has no basis on my life now.
Lots of thoughts on this topic but I wanna say, the weird attitude that criticism can shape what art gets produced and art shapes the brains of the people who consume it led to such a counter productive stance toward 50 Shades. Absolutely, what's described therein is messed up. But as Dan Olson points out in his review - so is what a lot of people are into! It's much more sensible to say, "This is how people who actually do this stuff go about making it reality," than "how DARE they not be RESPONSIBLE," imho. I'm sure the furor got some people into understanding kink better for fear of being incorrect about stuff, but I imagine your average fan just ignored the drama and continued enjoying their smut.
I’m dying at subs being vanilla as the most vanilla person ever lol. Like I’m vanilla and happy to be vanilla. I’m just into good boring sex lol. The people who are calling anything bdsm vanilla wouldn’t know what to make of me lol
Firstly hate the word kink being used for everyone’s sexual tastes.
Secondly people into bdsm often don’t want to admit that the *dynamic* that they like is actually the most normie shit that was in bodice rippers from the 1940s. So instead they criticize any sort of aesthetic depiction of it as not good enough or valid enough or accurate enough cause they see it as *normalizing*.
Girl, it’s been the most normal thing since grug the cavemen dragged his cavegirl into the cave. Get real!
Anyway my theory is that they try to *differentiate* themselves from the norm by talking about the more unpleasant things they do in the service of this dynamic (spitting etc) because grossing out normies is part of their fetish. It wouldn’t be as much fun without bringing in the *lets disgust suburban mom and dad* factor. In that sense this is the horseshoe theory of where tradwives and kink meet. They both enjoy the public shock at their sexuality almost as much as the sex itself.
I have had men asking me if I’m into BDSM and been UPSET that I just blink and say I like rough housing like a normie. They want to be able to say they are edgy and special. You’re not that special — men were carrying naughty women on their shoulders to teach her a lesson behind closed doors in the Australian outback romances that my grand aunt read.
Speaking of which some of the discomfort that both normie liberal and kinky men have with this old school masculinity is that it requires effort. Just like makeup and pretty dresses and high heels are hard work but enjoyable as a heightened type of femininity which you must feel/embody if you don’t want to look like a clown, being able to be a tough masculine man takes hard work and you need to stop being a PlayStation boy for at least 30 mins and you can’t use a ball gag or whatever is the kink-toy du jour. You need to feel/embody that masculinity for the woman to take you seriously and not start laughing. So they chafe at it cause neither type of man wants to make an effort.
This also leads to incel men pathologising women for liking rough sex. They are sickened by the fantasies women have of a strong man who carries them away in an uncontrollable expression of his desire. Often the strongest women have the highest such desire - meaning you must be a very masculine man to be able to ahem “take her”. But since zero effort slobs chafe at the very idea of putting in any work and want everything neatly handed to them like mommy used to make curated meal plates - they resent it and then pathologize it and mock it. Meanwhile women get even more disappointed in real men and retreat into complete fantasies of what is it now - giant fairy men who take the heroine hostage? I get it. I totally get it
I haven’t reached the point of a fairy man fantasy yet. I’m still reading wholesome bodice rippers about Italian men and pirates taking you hostage in a bedroom sharing trope. Or Australian outback romances with an enemies to lovers trope. Some of these older authors are realllyyyyy good.
But most of these books were written in the 40s-60s. Men thought it was cute and amusing for women to read such books. Now men seem to hate these books with a passion while they have watched more naked women doing depraved things on screen by age 20 than their grandpa or dad did in his entire lifetime. Make it make sense.
The bit about masculinity brings up an interesting idea that feels true – that most women inherently know how to be feminine WITHOUT being socio-politically "trad", while men on the whole seem rather clueless about how to be masculine without dominating women (outside of the bedroom). Sometimes it feels like wanting to date a man who is both a feminist and a gentleman is like looking for a needle in a haystack, while feminine women who like traditional things like cooking and being the primary caregiver for their children while also being feminists are a dime a dozen.
And that is why I end up in tears every few weeks just thinking of how stupid men are to not read and understand Mr. Darcy or Heathcliff. Its literally a manual.
I was made to watch a porn video when I was 18 to understand what is a blow job (only one I ever watched) but men find it beneath them to read Pride and Prejudice. Agh. Goes back to my age old point that most modern women have given more blowjobs than their entire bloodline of women but men wont do what every man did -grow up. They all want to be boys forever. Peter Pan.
What about Darcy are men supposed to emulate? Being extremely wealthy/good-looking? Negging the women they're interested in? Being a good person is nice, sure, but that's not exactly dropping panties, especially not in the world of dating apps where whatever your character may be it's invisible until quite a few hurdles have been passed.
Stop being an asshole when someone points it out - comes to mind. But oh well. Maybe I actually meant be a zillionaire who owns a lake.
Disguise of every sort is my abhorrence!
I’m not sure about women inherently knowing how to be feminine, but the feminist-gentleman shortage and the feminine girl boss glut seem completely accurate to me.
Part of this is I think the shifting definition of masculinity in American pop culture - women probably see it more often than men, but the ideal gentleman type really doesn't appear much. Masculinity is instead a spectrum from "effeminate" (cultured, polite, concerned with others, self-censorious) and "macho" (the joe-rogan-type in Glass Onion). This obviously sets us up for the current situation in which the aesthetically macho is often grouped in with actual immoral behavior for critique.
Part of this I think is solved by representation - by having examples in mind of the kind of guy you're suggesting. I guess Obama comes to mind? I presume people would say Pascal these days, but frankly there's not much masculine about the content I see from him other than just being classically hot as a man (tbf, this is why I am a big fan of that content lol - hot dude acts femme is definitely an interest of mine).
I think there's also an aspect of men being less likely to compartmentalize these aspects of our lives. In my experience, it's generally pretty easy to guess where a guy is on the spectrum of submissive-dominant in terms of sex or homemaker-boyboss in terms of preferred life role, in a way which I have not found as simple with women. though I wonder if that's changed with gen z as male fashion choices I consider feminine seem to be more mainstream
rambling tbh
See, I think you used to have this archetype in Hollywood movies all the time . . Harrison Ford in practically anything, Daniel Day-Lewis, Richard Gere, Michael Keaton, Mel Gibson (forget his real-life persona); these guys were often in roles playing traditionally masculine men but who weren't bloviating toxic dudes-they ultimately were good guys who stood up for the little people and in several roles were true "gents" (and per an earlier article, lots of short kings in that list)
Harrison Ford, hell yes. One time he was at a restaurant I was having dinner at in Wyoming. The entire restaurant was all simultaneously trying to act like they did not notice or care that *Harrison Ford* was eating there, while also obviously totally freaking out that he was there. When he went to leave, he walked by our table and this woman at our table, my friend's mom who was in her 70s I think, couldn't help herself and she stopped him and started gushing about how much she loved him. We all held our breath bc we were sure he was going to be annoyed at the interruption and that he can't go anywhere without people bothering him. But he was in fact a *perfect gentleman*, so kind and sweet to her. She told him again she loved him and he said "ma'am I'm terribly flattered, but your husband is sitting right next to you." 😂 To which her 70-something husband responded "don't worry, I have a feeling I'll be getting lucky tonight for the first time in quite a while." 😂😂
Great list, yeah. Makes me realize we do have Daniel Craig kicking around.
Henry Cavill EXISTS. He is literally a HOT NERD and an IMPECCABLE GENTLEMAN OMFG. Every booktok girl that was resented by a man for reading books is drooling over him, but whatever apparently I will have to settle for pedro pascal (NO!)
I am sure Cavill is more masculine but I have to admit I am not familiar with him outside of being a mini painter and so seeing a lot of memes about hot man have geek hobby lol. I’ll have to look into him!
George Clooney is the best example I can think of. And I have a feeling Joshua Jackson could end up being his successor.
Clooney is a very solid pick, good call.
Maybe a reach and idk enough to really say but I feel like Tom Holland and Zendaya get love for kinda being in this space? Just appear to be a sweet, supportive and *stable* couple. There’s some of the appeal of the young sweethearts who are loyal to each other. There is something … maybe not gentlemanly but masculine about the famous umbrella video, an artistic display which highlights humor and physical prowess.
That said at a certain point I have to ask if I’m just thinking of role models for dudes who wanna be feminists and also have a jaw which can cut glass lol.
I found the Umbrella video VERY hot. I watch it mesmerised every single time it appears on my feed. I still don’t understand how I find him sooooooooooo manly in that but he’s nailed it. It’s almost like his masculinity and strength is oozing out of his very pores no matter how he’s dressed, how feminine his dance steps - that dance needs to be studied by some phd for the effect it’s had on women.
I’m keeping “both a feminist and a gentleman” in my pocket. That’s it!
I am trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that would work on my dating profile
And I've just realised this is probably because women have more to lose by succumbing to the patriarchy, even if their personality and interests fit a more traditional mould.
Are we saying men have nothing to lose by succumbing to Right wing fantasy lifestyles? I hate calling it this simplistic term like patriarchy. Its more feudalism. Feudalism is not good for anyone but especially not good for the serfs/peasants - which most of us would be. Men died in that world. Often. Needlessly. In wars. On fields. Doing slave jobs from birth to death. It was and is(in the places of the world where it still exists) a horrible way to live - especially for men.
Saying "MORE to lose" automatically implies that the thing it's being weighed against is not nothing...
If you're comparing late-stage capitalism to feudalism, I'm sure there's plenty of points to be made, but the patriarchy is an entirely different thing to either of those. I suspect you're talking more about classism than sexism, which is valid, but different. Classism, the patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, Western imperialism etc. all intersect but are distinct.
Women were slaves too. Even outside of actual slavery, many were enslaved to domestic labour. Childbirth killed many women, and nearly every woman had to have multiple children; not every man lived through a war while at service age, if at all. But it's not a competition — all these things are bad. It's really tragic that we haven't actually progressed beyond wars, extreme poverty, serfism etc. and even actual slavery, despite it being illegal.
so many men were culled like animals. like dogs in a dog fight. but worse. I still hold that men dont realize what is at stake for them and how much they have to lose if they RVTURN or whatever.
and yes I know about extreme poverty, serfism and slavery currently existing considering the country I live in.
we will have to disagree on concepts like late-stage capitalism etc (obviously) but I hope you see my point that men have been sold a mirage in the name of some glorious alternative universe. Its ok if you dont agree, I also dont think its a competition but no women wants to back to the time before modern medicine so I am not trying to convince them anyway.
I feel like there’s a big difference between your examples for women and men in terms of effort required. I’m not going to say putting on makeup and sexy clothes isn’t work, but it’s a fairly mechanical process and you can basically guarantee your partner will appreciate it at the end. Whereas for men, embodying “strong masculinity” requires changing your whole personality even outside of sexual situations, and not doing things like being emotional vulnerable or being able to relax and have your partner plan a date for once.
In certain moods I can enjoy being a bit rough and manhandling during sex, but I’m not going to pretend I’m not a sensitive nerdy guy who prefers egalitarian relationships just so my partner “really believes it” when I manhandle her during sex.
Of course you should be sensitive. I think that was covered in CHH's comment about the Warren voter :) Look at Mr. Darcy - one of the most sensitive men ever - and so beloved to women all over the world. You dont have to be stoic - Hate that stereotype and hate that guys try to embody it by reading marcus aurelius of all people. Masculinity is not about the lack of softness. It is a softness +roughness together. Its the balance. Civilized masculinity is about softening the edges of grug :D How soft depends on the woman in question. I think the complaint is that some men go too soft. Just like some women go too hard on the makeup.
And embodying femininity is not just about wearing makeup or sexy clothes - its about the vibes about embodying what you are wearing - because you must admit teetering around like a baby deer in 4 inch heels like I did when I was 17 isn't sexy at all, its funny. You have to look put together, like you own it. As the fashionistas say - the clothes musn't wear you, you must wear the clothes. And you have to do all this, without looking too much like a dressed up mannequin or worse, a clown. And in the end all of it is stripped away and you still embody it as the clothes and makeup fall off. Again its individually curated - some men find barbie level dressed up sexy. To each their own. I think there was a twitter discussion about guys preferring sydney sweeney vs sabrina (specifically in her concerts which are catering to her large fanbase of women) that was kinda implying this.
Planning a date is a grandoise gesture of masculinity and most women consider it the least a man can do considering the effort and excitement we put iinto dolling up. That said I often plan dates cause I am very efficient but then a man has to bring his A1 banter flirt charm offensive to the table :) Otherwise I will feel like I did everything and lose the mood for good sex :D
Also a friend told me that when he's feeling sad or emotional or just upset at a bad day in the office his wife um, lets him take her and its a greater stress relief than anything they could do to talk it out :) Which they do. They do talk it out!! Later :D But grug angry, grug fight over spoils of war, grug want to pound - is a pretty hot vibe no? :)
I think my thoughts and feelings are heavily influenced by my last relationship. She said she wanted me to be more masculine and dominant, but when I tried to be she frequently made me feel like it wasn’t enough and couldn’t articulate what she wanted. She also did hardly anything to fulfill the feminine end of the bargain of this, so it felt like everything was being dumped in my lap. And we weren’t even having sex very often anyway.
In hindsight I think she had a lot of issues and wasn’t capable of being a good partner. But fair or not it has made me bristle a bit at calls for men to be tougher or more masculine to be sexier.
I am so sorry you experienced that. One of the things that I love about CHH's writing is how often she talks about dressing up for her man, which is something I do too. And yet is so rarely spoken about I almost wondered if I was a chimera.
It's an important aspect of femininity IMO (even those who break the rules need to note it) and an important ritual of the sexual dynamics that is simply ignored in the modern "discourse" both by 1. men who talk about craving variety like women are ice cream flavors and dont realize the specialized curated custom vibe of a woman who knows exactly what gets you off and dresses up in preparation and you know it and she knows it from the moment you walk in and take a look, and 2. by women who act like its not relevant cause you are a boss bitch or whatever, which is very sad.
I’m sorry that happened to you! I don’t always know how to tell my boyfriend exactly what I want in this domain (and being too explicit would kind of ruin it anyway) but I make a point of always making sure he knows when he does something I like… and at least from my vantage point, I think I’m doing my part on the feminine side. We’re out there!
OMG, does being explicit about what you want ruin it?? dammit. :(
Not exactly! I just don't want to feel like he's following instructions I've given him. It can be a little hard to describe? I'm pretty explicit about my feelings and preferences all the time, but I don't want it to be like "do this, OK, now do this."
I'm sympathetic to someone not knowing exactly what they want (or why something they asked for isn't working) - arousal is weirdly complicated - but yeah, not doing their own half of the work is no bueno. Sorry that was your experience!
I'm willing to bet there's a fairly high percentage of women who do not behave submissively in their day-to-day lives but turn that behavior on in the bedroom. Couple that with the much more involved personal grooming/styling, and I don't think it's asking men so much to turn on that facet of their sexuality/personality from time to time.
But maybe it is. Maybe that's just become anathema to men. If I had to guess, I think a lot of that hesitancy in modern men is an outgrowth of #metoo and feminist discourse equating anything aggressive with toxic masculinity.
I’m happy to be more dominant in sexual and romantic contexts, but my experience is some women treat that as a one-way thing that I do for her rather than a dynamic we both have it contribute to. I’ll do the work to bring masculine energy and dominance, but then she needs to dress in a sexy way, make me feel appreciated and masculine, be willing to let go and be a bit more deferential, and express enthusiasm. But my experience is some women aren’t willing or able to do that, and think being submissive means they don’t have to put in effort.
I like how we've identified the specific way lazy people of both sexes can hide behind this. If neither partner is lazy, though... it can be a good, healthy thing, and it's exactly what many of us (or at least I) need.
For my part, I'll dress up anytime whether anybody else wants me to or not, so there's no issue there, but I can be a bit of a control freak when it comes to certain things, like domestic stuff, so I try to watch myself to make sure I let go a bit and encourage my boyfriend when he feels like taking charge.
It's definitely a two-way street, no bones about it.
100%. And I understand why well-intentioned men are so careful, considering how severe the consequences can be for making a wrong move, but I really hope that as society continues to digest the lessons of that era, people can chill out a bit and it will become a little less work to get across to men that they have permission to turn that on with us.
When did men ever listen to women? I dont think this behavior can be blamed on women. Because if that was the case men would stop doing a lot of things that annoy us too. (watching excessive porn for instance). I think its an intellectual laziness and bratty behavior from having been pandered to at every stage of their life, and to be clear there are princess-vibe girls who do this too.
Wow. You actually think men don’t care what women think and are pandered to at every stage of life? You’d think just reading the comments on CHH posts would disabuse you of that notion. Personally, early 90s college feminism totally reinforced my discomfort with my sexual desires that began with my Christian upbringing. Reading feminist authors ranging from the pop to the academic was a way for me to try to understand the women I desperately wanted to be with, and it was very easy to come away with the idea that women find men’s desire disgusting and oppressive and that being as un masculine as possible is what they wanted. Of course, this was contradicted by the behavior of actual women I saw every day, but it took awhile for me to feel comfortable with being sexually assertive, and I know some adult men who still have a hard time with it because they can’t make it fit with their ethic of putting others first.
To clarify, when I said that I meant that the men who make excuses for their lack of initiative or masculinity by blaming metoo are pandered to and lazy as a result - yes. The ones who make an effort to figure things out - like you say you have done are clearly not on this list.
I dont give disclaimers when writing so my generalization was a bit confusing I guess.
I am huge fan of men. Especially modern men who make sense of what they want in a confusing world with many different, contradictory messages.
I am very sympathetic to what you’re saying. Maybe what I listed is just the excuse I’ve heard men use, and the root of the issue is what you’re saying.
I think it can go either way, and my read of the progressive-minded men in my life is that they really do care about behaving appropriately towards women and aren't just making excuses. Which one of you is right probably depends on the man?
yes fair. maybe some men are genuinely afraid of metoo and feminists. sometimes I am afraid of those too :)
Maybe it's about figuring out what brings out those certain moods for you - and what your partner can do to help conjure them up. IMHO good intimacy is a team project, and if I like it when my sensitive liberal nerdy guy inhabits strong & manly energy in bed, it's on both of us to figure out what makes him eager to go there. (I do have a sensitive nerdy egalitarian partner IRL, and manhandling is not his go-to move, but rough & dom-y is a fun part of both our repertoire.)
Yeah this sounds right to me. I do think it’s more common than people want to admit for women to use “I’m submissive and feminine” as an excuse to be passive.
I hope my next girlfriend has the attitude you do, it seems healthy!
Working class men can and do embody some of the most masculine energy with the literal work they do. They are closest to bring caveman energy at work and so should easily inhabit it at home too.
Yes exactly; terminally online beta-guys don't feel they can realistically embody the dominant bodice-ripping man so they project disgust and anger as a maneuver to project their own insecurities, which is essentially the problem with men in general nowadays.
Not sure why any guy would not want their gf/wife reading erotic lit; my wife started during the pandemic and honestly our sex life improved by several notches.
I’ve been curious about this too—I assumed that anything that gets women into the mood would be a benny for their male partner?
But it’s probably backlash for the anti-porn discourse, and men want to be able to say “women do this too and nobody thinks it’s a problem when they do it.”
This is definitely part of it. IMHO the other part is again just the fear of not being able to embody the expectations they fear it creates
why do they act like these are new expectations though. everyone has had it.
I think it’s less a surprise and more just how you think about expectations when you’re in depression/resentment brain. Ideally the response would be “hm, I can do that!” rather than to immediately think of it as an obstacle, for sure.
I do think that like, every expectation is new to someone, just bc we’re not born knowing it, but I don’t suspect that’s the main reason for the melodrama you’re seeing
Which is why I'm an equal opportunity advocate in terms of people getting their rocks off however they see fit (assuming it's not hurting anyone of course) and a lot of the "anti-porn" hysteria is grounded in pseudo-science and poor assumptions. If a guy has unhealthy viewing habits/obsession with porn, it's not the latter causing it and otherwise he'd be Mr. Healthy Well-Adjusted Loving Husband/Boyfriend if not for Pornhub (its Reefer Madness-level panicbait I see online on this issue); the problem is with the person and other internal issues they clearly need to grapple with.
I dunno. There’s a pretty substantial chorus of men who formerly were addicted to porn who report the porn itself being the problem, and once they quit, they were normal again.
I have a feeling the average man is discounting the range of experiences out there and referencing his own.
There's a chorus of gay men who also swear that once they went into their church's Jesus-therapy, they were cured of their homosexuality. I don't place much credence with the slew of online anecdotes.
I'm still catching up on the comments, but you're speaking to me in this thread. I want my man to be sensitive and respectful, but sometimes in liberal/progressive spaces there's this thing where they're terrified of the whole package of conventional masculinity, and react to me being really into makeup and heels and dresses with worry that I'm doing it out of a sense of obligation. I think that dissipates over time as a relationship develops, but it's a dynamic that needs to be navigated.
I’m always challenging a man. The one who freaks out and tries to prove he’s more feminist than me or gods forbid teaches me feminism - is out. This is a problem cause I’m often attracted to leftists. Sadly they get too upset with my politics after a while- refusing to debate or argue - which is the very thing that gets me going and makes me hot. Men taking offence over opinions is such a boner killer.
But I’m glad you liked what I said!
I get that! I wouldn't say I'm attracted to leftists, but my social circle is full of them and to be honest, when I first started seeing my boyfriend, I was a little nervous that he might turn out to be the type you describe. Thankfully he's not, though I feel like I'm a notch more conservative than he is (I'm very much a "lib" in the sense that leftists use as an epithet, and I'd say he is mostly, but more jaded with conventional institutions).
There's a dominant mode of discourse in our environment that nods at leftist shibboleths, which I tend to cause trouble by refusing to play along with, but as we got to know each other I've become comfortable that his views are every bit as nuanced as mine. He delights in listening to me rant about my opinions and sometimes he'll push back or ask me to consider another perspective, but I've never seen him get offended. He does have more empathy for the raging lefties in our social world, though, and sometimes he'll kind of explain them to me and try to guide me to a better understanding of them while basically agreeing with my reaction to them. We're always picking things apart together and I love it. And absolutely, if he got offended or tried to bend me to be more deferential to leftist ideas, we wouldn't still be here.
Was it RFH who said that a woman should be more conservative than a man? So true.
And was it Aella who said that women should love more than a man? I mean it goes against current discourse that men should be obsessed with a woman, but women should be obsessed more, cause its easier for us to get icked out :)
(My quoting of these two women by no means implies I like them. Its more of a broken clock being right once in a while. I do not endorse their weird politics in any manner)
Also "He delights in listening to me rant about my opinions and sometimes he'll push back or ask me to consider another perspective, but I've never seen him get offended."
LUCKY YOU. I am jealous. ok bye :(
Every now and then I see discourse about how women were typically the more conservative one in the relationship until recently when (in the US at least) women's political views started tilting dramatically leftward. Considering how the right has become coded as the party of chaos, atomization, and flippant disregard for norms instead of the status quo, I think it's more complicated than that, but in a context where both partners are left of center, I suppose we can just straightforwardly apply the standard reasoning. Who is RFH, though? I may be familiar but the initials aren't clicking for me.
Rfh is a twitter personality. Radical feminist and The H stands for literally the worst name starting with H. She spends her days trolling men quite brutally in a mean girl sorta way. But has occasional interesting asides.
I really kinda wonder about the prevalence of boddice ripping, daddy-calling, impregnation kinks... like.... this is just normal sex lol. Not to shame that as "kink" - absolutely understand you're into it and engage in it outside the context of reproduction if that's where you're at! It just is a little silly.
Everything is a kink. Having babies is a kink too! How dare you call me a normie! I’m edgy!!
I definitely think you're onto something WRT incels. It's a sort of mix, imho - on one hand, the fact that women have preferences or expectations means you have responsibilities or standards to measure up to; on the other hand, you likely have a not-necessarily-wholly-sexual desire to see women degraded, or just general hetero-typical sado-masochistic interests, so it's titillating to imagine every woman secretly wants to be criminally assaulted. This resentment/lust interplay I think of as defining inceldom.
No, Sado-maschism is not hetero typical. Sorry!!! Vehemently disagree!! Degradation is not masculinity. Masculinity is strength. It’s steel hand in a velvet glove. Speak softly and carry a stick.
On reflection I'd swap sado-masochism for dominance-submission dynamics, because I do think the introduction of pain specifically deviates from the hetero-typical (by which I mean the upheld standard "norm" rather than pretending to know anything statistically).
Ok fair, but also Can’t we just call it masculinity and femininity 🥲
I guess my preference is to decouple this dynamic from masculinity and femininity because despite being a man into women it's not a dynamic I prefer, which I don't think makes me more feminine per se.
Oh well
"So instead they criticize any sort of aesthetic depiction of it as not good enough or valid enough or accurate enough cause they see it as *normalizing*."
Commenting a year later to make an evergreen 30 Rock reference to Paul and Jenna's kink of "normaling".
Damn girl, you're on 🔥 with this one.
Thank you!
To respond from another angle, I'm beginning to feel like it's part of my life's mission to crash the party for anyone who is going out of their way to be alternative or not normal or whatever one wants to call it. I see it everywhere, in all areas of life, and it drives me crazy. I always feel weird when discussions of "kink" and BDSM bubble up around me, and you've helped me connect the dots to it being yet another manifestation of this. Yes, just rough housing like a normie, please. We don't need to be special.
hahaha this is so funny. but I also think we are very special. the normie today if seen historically is the most special of cases.
I have never loved a comment the way I love this one. Never.
Yayyy! Thank you!! Merci! 🤩
This, certainly being one of the main fronts in the current gender wars.
While conceding that the many men 100% have issues with weed, video games, and failure-to-launch tier jobs, there certainly is a cultural imperative with messaging to back it up, that men should be "manning up", being providers, and filling that masculine, dominant role.
Sample size of 1: but it's such a losing proposition today, to buy into this however. As a milquetoast, moderately successful, married white guy, I can attest there is no amount of assertiveness or masculinity that can overcome the (my) emotional identity of overburdened female partner who is aghast at the notion that the 26-hours-a-day worth of (bullshit) stuff she's doing in 24, isn't *enough*, and that those more traditional feminine behaviors *matter*. With profound cultural messaging to validate her: all women are beautiful, right? Help ease those mental loads, men!
And of course, as a loving partner, she'll compromise. 3x a year, I get afforded the chance to coordinate offloading the kids onto the grandparents, getting Broadway tickets or a sufficiently fancy steakhouse reservation, for the opportunity to spend more intimate time with her, and marinate in the opportunity to watch her skin crawl for 3 hours til we can get home and she can immediately retreat to the comfort of the sweatpants and complain that I'm not sexually assertive enough (the way I used to be!)
In our current, "I am only able to affect what I do - not what anyone else does", moment (I think therapy agrees?) - when lifestyle standards are getting so high, I am just resigned to the idea that satisfying, partnered sexuality is an increasingly parabolic degree of difficulty to achieve; the realized cultural drop off in sex is obvious. Ultimately arousal and sex drive is just chemicals in our brain; and maximizing them through porn or otherwise asocial avenues simply becomes destiny.
Now I'm certainly one of the more revile-able persona/archetypes out in the wild today - who upon failing to induce my wife to accommodate me through being responsive to her needs, acquiesced to the notion that I'm only able to affect what I do; and in this case, it's respond to my masculine urges, with feminine ones of my own. And let me tell ya, I'm yet another harrowing story of the "husband looks better in a dress than the wife" situations (thus why my tag is "Lilly". And granted- never in a social situation). A sad, pathetic situation, but the lesser of many potential evil outcomes here.
I'm a little confused . .you've adopted a feminine identity at home which includes dressing up as a female? Sorry some of the wording in your post wasn't clear.
The tl;dr of it is, crossdressing to project an image of the type of cues I respond to, for my own "male gaze" I guess. AGP maybe? Though I don't consider myself "transgender" by any stretch.
I’ve said it before but I think you and your wife could really benefit from couple’s therapy.
I understand the point, and abstractly agree; but there are two competing ideas, deeply in tension in relationships I see: that 1) we need to work on ourselves, to be the best person we can, and to be desirable and 2) that we deserve to be seen; to be loved for *who we are*. In the latter, it is completely anathema to expect our partner to change; would seeking this, not be a full-cloth rejection of them?
Further this, I think the "you can't change people" (who don't want to be changed) idea is salient for me. I really don't think a therapist can help my situation, as I don't see how they can make my wife *want* to do things she (probably) faked having interest in, in our dating years, and simply just always hated.
Incompatibility, I guess.
You may well be right - of course you know your situation way better than random CHH commenters.
I will say that my husband & I took a tantra course together, as the route we chose instead of couples/sex therapy, and it was game-changing (pun intended). It had less of a "one or both of us is broken and we are here to fix it" vibe than therapy would have (for us), more "something that might be exciting for both of us," which I think helped a lot. I'd been low libido and he'd been feeling intimacy-starved for years and we both had complicated and fraught feelings around it all. We'd been trying to meet each other in the middle as you've described, but it was mostly just getting more frustrating and overthought.
In tantra, we learned rituals to just listen to & see each other exactly as we are, asking vulnerable questions and taking in the answers - which we thought we were already doing, but in the structure of the tantra exercises it was often so powerful that one or both of us would tear up. And that connection would be the foundation from which we'd start playing with different elements of intimacy: breathing techniques, focusing on one sense at a time, inhabiting different "energies," etc. Turns out it doesn't take much for him to turn me on - the shape of it had just changed over the years, and we hadn't updated our assumptions in a while. He doesn't feel starved for anything anymore ;)
It's quite possible that your wife wasn't faking it during your dating years, just that something's shifted since, and together you can figure out what works for her (and you!) now. Rooting for you both.
Wait I am confused, she wasn't dressing up for you anymore so you started dressing up for yourself? Is that the gist of it? I am so sorry :( I really dont know what to say or have any advice in such a situation. When I was expected to become the outside facing strong "masculine" in a relationship I was in, I just quit. (He met me through my twitter where I was a badass bitch and assumed I will be the big-energy mama forever.)
Thats not advice or anything, just what I did. I would self-combust if I had actually gone through with it. Anyway now I am very clear with men that I am the lovergirl. And you will have to conquer me (yes tough job) or it wont work.
Yeah, that's the gist of it.
She's.... rare. *Perfect* spouse to bring to holidays, as the little mundane conversations you get there, are her wheel house. Pretty type-a, successful-at-work corporate America type, super attentive mom. But in terms of more substantive, connection-building stuff with someone like me, she really doesn't want to dive much deeper.
Deeply challenging combination of assertive, knows-what-she-wants, tells-it-how-she-sees-it, yet combative and defensive, and riddled with aversions and sensitivities. Perfect recipe for "just do what she wants, because it's not worth the fight" over time. And she can be quite pleasant when she gets her way!
Now, she'll say she does whatever I want. But I think of it like this: it's akin to wearing a red clown nose in a way. To her, any performative stuff to please me is like one of those; she'll do it momentarily (like literally - if I buy her lingerie, she'll endure a walk from the closet to the bed where it instantly comes off, and redirected to the goodwill pile). It's a red clown nose, because it detracts from *her*, and is degrading bullshit that she shouldn't have to deal with. And anything like that to please me, affects her inversely obviously.
In my own little skewed world, it maps nicely to the social/gender moment; woman, that deserves great sympathy for all her (manufactured) slights and hardships, with a man who can never satisfy the subtle but insatiable demands to be responsive to those grievances. And my desires from her, are near-universally decried - what guy that wants his wife to dress or behave a certain way, SHOULDN'T be tarred and feathered in the public square for his toxicity?
I am absolutely not an incel, but can sympathize with men who just feel like American sexual relations are contemptuous to any but the most "chad" men or whatever they say.
Sorry, just depressing, but thanks for reading.
"can sympathize with men who just feel like American sexual relations are contemptuous to any but the most "chad" men or whatever they say"
maybe you shouldn't generalize based on trying to please one clearly unpleasable woman...but I can understand you are just trying to survive. Take care. It wasn't depressing per se. I just wish you strength.
When we ‘unlearned shame’ around our kinks, we had to offload the energy onto others 🤪
Or, the universal we, as I'm over here glorifying mundane marital sex 😌
If kinks were just cringe, that would be one thing. But they make the already difficult dating scene even worse.
I've been married for a while now, but when I was dating, this would come up randomly. And it's very different when kinks come up IRL than in some internet discussion.
It's like.... why do you want to choke me? Are you wishing I was dead or something? Do you hate me? Am I a standin for something else you hate?
I had someone ask me if he could tie me up and hit me. I told him if he ever tried any violence on me, I'd stab him dead. I know I sound like Dwight, "violence is not a joke", but why exactly do you want to hit women?
Friends tell me of unsatisfying sex where their dates couldn't orgasm with regular sex and needed to watch some gross porn to ejaculate. Like.... sure, human sexuality and all that, but if a rising, if small, number of young men can't ejaculate without watching scenes of abuse play out, or themselves getting abused, shouldn't we be concerned?
I think that you're partially right about the "um akshually" element of critiques of Fifty Shades and other popular depictions of BDSM. Part of it is displaying that you are in the cool kid's club that the normies don't appreciate, definitely.
But I can also understand the strong desire not to have actual abuse normalized as a part of BDSM. "Predator predates on people in a given social space" is a widespread phenomenon, and that sucks, but there is a difference between "this person in a local music scene/activist group/church/whatever preyed on vulnerable people" and "this person in the local BDSM scene is ignoring consent, but that's just what BDSM is." It's a lot easier to prey on people and harm them if their understanding of the dynamic is that ignoring consent and constantly pushing people even when they display discomfort is just how things are.
By the by, there was a very interesting bit in Tara Burton's book Strange Rites where she talks about the gay leather scene of the 1950's-70's. You were expected to pay your dues as a sub before you could dom, and as a sub, you were expected to keep quiet about anything your dom made you do. This was a learned behavior during a time when homosexuality was literally criminal, and vice squads sent out officers to bust up gay clubs. However, even while reading, my mind just went to "it's hard to think of a system more ripe for abuse than this"
That seems extremely abusive, not just ripe for abuse.
I just think that in BDSM of all things, you'd think people would be interested in discussing the line between fictional and actual abuse... I think the author's attitude, which does not seem to understand what she wrote, is condemnable, but I don't have any issue with people finding 50 shades itself appealing
Predators aren't stopped by consent forms and Reddit FAQs. Full stop. Period. Did you think they were? They aren't. They never were. Does anyone else think they might be? Bad news for you: they won't. So it's safe to drop the after-the-fact rationalizations when it becomes clear that you aren't getting whatever reaction it is that you wanted from the "normies" of society.
That's assuming in the first place that "oh it's just to keep the predators out!" is actually the goal of all of the cringe "wholesome depravity" thing they're going for - which it very clearly isn't. The "b-b-but the predators!" thing is just impotent flailing in an after-the-fact attempt to rationalize why society isn't fawning all over you in shocked disbelief at what a wild and interesting person you must be.
Again, to CHH's point: stop trying to frame your alleged fetish in terms of "community" and um..appeals to the law I guess? It's just weird. Does anybody else constantly refer to the thing they're into as part of the "local scene?" Yeah guys, I'm super into the local blowjob scene. We have an introductory guidebook and everything!
The framing of this as being part of a community with established rules that need to be followed or else those poor saps might be harmed because they didn't sit through enough tedious Reddit lectures about consent is so cringe and infantalizing. Why are we treating adults in their late 20s and 30s as nubile little fawns unable to fend for themselves in the big scary world?
Oh right. Because that's exactly what the terminally online "BDSM community" actually is. Did you make sure to ask a parent or other trusted relative for a ride to the BDSM party, and hourly SMS check-ins? Wow so naughty. Super hot.
"It's giving 'you're not punk rock unless you wear a FUCKING mask'"
^ She nailed it with this line. This is exactly the dynamic. It's lame. Sorry.
I don’t get wanting to be kinky personally. I have a lot of really screwed up fantasies that I’d never participate in. But consent forms and safe spaces? Really? Do consent forms need to exist in a movie that’s meant to be sexual fantasy? It’s fantasy, right? Not a documentary of the kink community?
In general the idea of a kink scene has a sort of anti-appeal to me, the dysfunctional social dynamics I associate with sub and countercultures and see reflected in the (admittedly, complainer-skewed) online discourse is .... not something I need
I think it’s really interesting seeing some commenters engaging in the exact behavior being commented on in this article.
I recently had my own “this kinky thing isn’t kinky by actual kinky standards” moment recently. My boyfriend (who isn’t as chronically online as me) bought some fuzzy handcuffs (we already have leatherette handcuffs) and I couldn’t help but cringe at the sight of them. I joked that fuzzy handcuffs are actually the most vanilla thing a couple could own. He laughed and asked how that could be and I said something along the lines of, “well it’s like when vanilla couples want to try kinky stuff and immediately buy cheap fuzzy handcuffs instead of leather or steel and don’t participate in the community” and still laughing a little he was just like “Well, if someone is doing something kinky…I don’t understand how that wouldn’t count as being kinky.” The way he said it made me realize how snobby I sounded and how much online jokes and discourse was making me care way too much about appearing kinky enough and less about actually enjoying my relationship. He’s also more experienced, and while I’ve been to some classes and public meetups I haven’t been in a lot of irl kink spaces, so I think that speaks to the theory that the people who are more likely to gatekeep about that kind of thing are more likely to be insecure and inexperienced who engage in ridicule to feel better about themselves and look more experienced than they are.
This is exactly what I’m talking about!! Although honestly it feels more taboo and unexpected to be into bdsm with a vineyard vines aesthetic
Well if it makes you (or your boyfriend) feel better, I would never in a million years let someone put handcuffs on me, fluffy, pink, real, fake or not. So in my book it's still kinky.
Kate ur being put in real steel handcuffs because YOU TOOK THE SUMMERS OUT FOR A TWENTY COURSE TASTING MEAL AT NOBU AND BAILED
Literally this lol. It's become an acceptable form of debate to unironically do the exact thing someone is accusing you of doing, for the exact reasons they said you'd be doing it. Then assuming that you clearly won the debate.
And who are these people trying to force everyone into a community for everything? Like, damn, some us just wanna fuck. And are not having worse sex (probably better if I had to bet) than those who view and frame everything they do and think through the lens of how the "community" would feel about it.
"Oh no, my girlfriend just spontaneously gave me road head! What would the courts think about this? Did she even consider the legal and safety ramifications? Doesn't she know the statistics on automotive deaths with and without seatbelts? I need to get on Reddit immediately."
^ This type of person is definitely having a moment right now.
Speaking of handcuffs, what kind of steel are we talking? Because as you know some steel alloys are low-strength normie cringe. I will need to see a BOM, all of your 2D drawings, a full engineering analysis, and a PE stamp for those handcuffs before they can be certified as suitably kinky.
Not sure where I’m going with this other than that “Resist Lib in the streets, Trad Wife in the sheets” feels like a tweet waiting to be made
I am never more relieved to be basic than when reading CHH.
I used to spend a decent amount of time in sex positive communities online, and there is this weird pressure in them to be kinky, and (by their standards) “actually” kinky (this always annoyed me as someone who has little interest in BDSM). Everyone in these spaces will claim that they believe people should have the kind of sex they want and there are no right or wrong answers. But then these same people will act like anyone who is not kinky must be repressed and boring. As if anyone who doesn’t want to play with knives and chains only wants to have silent missionary sex with the lights off under the covers once a month.
This leads to many people in these spaces to exaggerate how kinky they are to seem cool, exciting, and attractive. The term gets increasingly watered down until basically anyone can claim to be kinky, and you have people who, for example, like dirty talk and rough sex claiming to be edgy kinksters who can’t date normal people.
Perhaps this partly explains the gatekeeping by some kinksters. For *Syndrome voice* if everyone’s kinky, then no one is.
I dislike this dynamic myself because I think it muddies the waters and incentivizes people to claim to be, to even try to be, more kinky than they actually want to be. Most people are having pretty vanilla sex in the grand scheme of things, and that’s fine! That’s the kind of sex I mostly want too. I wish saying that didn’t carry a weird stigma in sex positive spaces.
That kink-treadmill is exactly what I think CHH was getting at in the article—that the perception of how kinky one is has become more important than the actual kink for a lot of people.
It sounds like yet another manifestation of "the more countercultural, the more virtuous, and the greatest possible sin is to be normal." Why are people like this? The other day I read an article in which the author mentioned that while she's happy about a new relationship that's going well, no longer being single has given her an identity crisis because she no longer feels like she's defying social norms, among other things. I don't get where these twisted value systems come from, or what made them so commonplace that any given reader is casually assumed to share or at least understand them.
Omg what's this article! I gotta read it!
I offer this with the disclaimer that I didn't bring it up for the purpose of shaming the author! She seems like a nice enough person, but her outlook on life and relationships is pretty foreign to me. My mind made the connection between some of the feelings she describes, and the kind of valorization of counterculture in the modern US that we're circling around here. Here you go:
https://areyoumyboyfriend.substack.com/p/i-got-a-boyfriend-and-an-identity
Wow. I have a lot to say.
Tell me about it! From my vantage point, if something you want to do is at odds with social norms, you deal with that and stand by your decisions if you're convinced they're what's right for you, but defiance of norms being a goal unto itself is something I cannot understand. I feel like this mindset, and people puffing their chests about how "kinky" they are, is coming from the same place, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I also have trouble understanding the drive to be 100% independent, to the point of feeling uneasy about letting someone into your life, but that's venturing into another topic, I think.
I guess 30 rock said it best. In it, Tina Fey is 41 when she finally gets married. She's had so many relationships not work out that she can't allow herself to feel like marriage matters. But when it's happening, it takes her a lot to allow herself to feel it's a big deal. And still, she gets married in a princess leia costume because it's the only white dress she owns, and... she's a princess.
I see this a lot with women trying to figure out if they should have kids too. They feel like they don't want to 'lose their identity' to being a mom like "all the normies and NPCs".
Some of it is media, but a lot of it is just how people try to justify their not being able to meet milestones that qualify them as grownup. But then that puts them in a vicious cycle where they push themselves further away from being able to meet that milestone.
Dolphin kink has potential — no scat needed. Dolphins are the sleazy frat boys of the sea: hyper-social, horny, and always scheming in pairs. Male dolphin pods routinely isolate females and engage in what biologists very politely call "coercive mating." Dolphins are bronze age perverts with dorsal fins, I think Aella should organize a dolphin themed event.
I’m reminded of something I read in another newsletter on a very different topic. The internet is a machine for distilling the most extreme, annoying people.
I’m not especially kinky but went through a brief poly phase where I got invited to a lot of parties with people who were and irl these are really chill people often with really bad problems but they’ll give you the shirt off their back. It’s why I’m really good friends with some of them despite their dysfunction.
The point is the people who talk about kink online, like anything else probably aren’t anything like the people who like weird things irl.
lol I had to remind myself of this recently when browsing some fitness related subreddits and feeling like I’m not exercising enough despite exercising daily.
I have literally said the words I only run half marathons. Fitness internet is insane.
Other thought: I’m in a progressive west coast lib city, and the amount of times I’ve heard “sex-positive” straight, cis people describe “kinks” that are essentially just “I’m into sexual dimorphism and sex acts likely to lead to conception” is low-key incredible. You’re not kinky! You’re just straight! That’s ok!!!!
Puritanical kinksters!
Don't say yuck to someone else's yum.
Bad pun opportunities abound.
“I think other kinks might start before people even have a concept of sex, or stem from some random thing they saw in a cartoon as a child (I remember seeing a Twitter thread of people with a hypnosis fetish saying that cartoons where a character was hypnotized by an attractive woman were their “aha” moments.)“
My favorite example of this is the small but nontrivial number of millennials with a fetish for getting “slimed” like a Double Dare contestant.
Oh my God I actually had this pre-sexual fetish when I was maybe 6?? I was weirdly fixated on it and I couldn't explain it. But then it disappeared and has no basis on my life now.
Kaa has entered the chat
Lots of thoughts on this topic but I wanna say, the weird attitude that criticism can shape what art gets produced and art shapes the brains of the people who consume it led to such a counter productive stance toward 50 Shades. Absolutely, what's described therein is messed up. But as Dan Olson points out in his review - so is what a lot of people are into! It's much more sensible to say, "This is how people who actually do this stuff go about making it reality," than "how DARE they not be RESPONSIBLE," imho. I'm sure the furor got some people into understanding kink better for fear of being incorrect about stuff, but I imagine your average fan just ignored the drama and continued enjoying their smut.
I’m dying at subs being vanilla as the most vanilla person ever lol. Like I’m vanilla and happy to be vanilla. I’m just into good boring sex lol. The people who are calling anything bdsm vanilla wouldn’t know what to make of me lol