Random Thought of the Day

[Otherside]

Seeing the comments on sick-note culture and how sick-notes are benefits claims, is very odd.

I've been signed off sick by my GP for two periods in total, both for mental health reasons. On neither occasion, did my GP write the diagnosis on the reason part of it, and it was instead filled as "low mood." This was at my request, I do not want my employer to be aware of my mental health diagnosis. If that was disclosed, it could very well lead to discriminatory behaviour on my employers part. Despite that being illegal, it still happens.

On neither of these occasions was I a benefit claimant, nor was I entitled to claim any. It led to the company paying CSP, after which I would have been on SSP (though thankfully, never gotten to SSP level). Both of which are, nothing to do with the benefits system, and are paid by my employer.

I sure as hell do not trust a "specialist assessor", who is almost certainly not going to be a doctor, and if this parties history is anything to go back - will very likely be outsourced to Capita, who will give assessors a three day training course and targets - to assess when and how my mental health issues affect my ability to work, and when time off is needed.

(Also, you're gone next election. You know, we know it, you're polling very low, there's not going to be a magic turnaround where the numbers suddenly shoot up for you. Stop putting it off.)

[Nyctophilia]

Yup, the rumors are true. I am knocked up big time. To protect the privacy of my family and loved ones, a lot of information has purposefully been omitted from this announcement. Please understand :3 Anyways, very excited to exploit this child for views, and I'm so excited you're gonna help me do it. Love you all!

The fact theres still like a 50% chance this is a psyop is making me go insane

i've been gaslight so much by this channel i don't believe a single thing i see on it

theres videos of her on BFT and hypothetical nonsense from literal days ago where she does not have a belly. she is not pregnant it is okay u can rest

I don't know what BFT even is.

Because of her cynical dark sense of humour it makes it seem fake. [..]

KAROLINE WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

I think this is one of the videos people are talking about that was filmed/posted recently but she's wearing a kind of baggy hoody and the table is blocking her so not very conclusive. Though skimming through it she makes a joke about being a big swollen blue ball and wanting to make that joke but not having people she can use middle school humour on like 27 minutes in. That sounds like it could be a pregnancy joke because why would she be swollen? Not that that would stop it potentially being a bit as she'd obviously planned this whole thing either way.



Ah nevermind this was uploaded 3 weeks ago so at the very least she's not as far along as in that video thumbnail (assuming this one wasn't filmed ages ago for some reason) At least one of these was filmed recently because someone said that someone brought up seeing the film Civil War in the cinema which came out recently but I don't want to watch all of that I don't think:



"I've thought about burning alive a lot though cause I had this thought like what if I was around like during the pilgrim times if I came here. I would totally be burnt alive. There's not a reality where I wouldn't be burnt for being a witch."

Oh so we all just thinking about this now I see.

"Yeah that's true"

"And so I've thought about it quite a bit."

LOL I love how he just automatically agrees.

I can see why she potentially might want to do this as the topic of deepfakes comes up in that video where she's wearing the blue hoody but at the same time the video is very sincere in a way that is borderline offensive to women who are actually struggling with fertility issues so I have no idea.



This video was uploaded a month ago and they're looking up weird prank stuff and briefly look past a pregnancy test that's obviously fake and she kind of reads it out quickly before they skip on.



There's the fact that this is very topical right now in online discourse. With people freaking out that gen z aren't pregnant yet and half of women aged 30 in the UK don't have kids and things like that. Comedians like to focus on these areas of tension.

And I know how these festivals work first you have bonfire night but then people are busy so there's a 3 week window of fireworks instead. April Fool's day becomes too obvious so people decide to do it later.

I'm not fully convinced.

Anyway it won't top my favourite April fools joke that wasn't an April fools joke:

[Nyctophilia]

That last guy Vlad talks to who says he's into trans people you have to be careful about that especially in Russia because they might end up killing you. Some men will specifically hunt people as well. Like consider the reaction those guys had to the woman who was wearing rainbow frog earings and consider that an indicator. I mean obviously he wasn't going to go further but yeah. I also assume he just doesn't care much but yeah.

"Yo women is this a thing? Why is every guy asking are you alone? Are you alone?"

I'm assuming a lot of these guys either thought Vlad was a prostitute or in some cases he approached them first. One guy just outright asks him where his house is then when he says why he just says 'sex' which is a really weird thing to do. It would be really weird here. He also doesn't just ignore these guys who approach or avoid them like most people would do so this experience isn't entirely accurate he's trying to [BEEP] with them. But he lives in Russia afaik so cultual norms are also probably different there anyway but strangers don't usually approach you like this in the UK ime especially if you're dressed casually.

The only times at night I've been approached have been homeless people asking for money or twice in one night I got asked for a cigarette but otherwise I've never been asked for a cigarette and since I look young for my age it's likely during a significant chunk of my life people assumed I was under age anyway. I would always get id'd and one time I was buying something when I was 25 and I got asked if I was in high school by someone because they had a student discount. I mean first they asked if I was a student I said no then they asked about me being in high school like they thought that was a possibility...

I think as a teenager someone tried to sell me weed but I'm pretty sure I was with someone else at the time so was more like approaching the group I was in.

Also when I used to dye my hair sometimes strangers would compliment that. Not during the night time just in general. I also had a girl compliment my top once during the day. Oh and one guy complimented an IAMX cap I was wearing after a concert. Other people have started conversations or asked questions about band t-shirts I'm wearing. I'm pretty sure that's happened multiple times. I can't really remember now. At least once regarding Steven Wilson band t-shirts etc.

One time some guy started talking to me asking if I was coming from some place then trailed off and was like 'oh no you didn't' I think he was asking about the concert I'd just left (Steven Wilson,) but I dunno. Maybe he thought I was attractive and changed his mind lol.

Also if we're talking in general I once had some drunk guy during the day saying some stuff to me but I can't remember what now. He was mildly annoyed and I just walked past him and continued on. Also the time on a train a drunk woman started talking to me and she was very weird but I spoke about her before lol. She started talking about some killer or something and then said men are assholes and then said she was going to get her daughter to attack me.

Someone several months ago also was trying to get my attention I think from inside their car. I mean they were vaguely yelling, but I just ignored them. They might have been asking for directions or something but it was like the early hours of the morning down a side street, and there was no one else around and you can just use your phone now in most cases.

But I never had someone catcall me or try to hit on me in some obvious way and the encounters I've had were also not exclusively female. I mean the weirdest stranger incident was definitely the woman on the train.

In a bunch of F1nns videos he talks about getting hit on a lot in public and other weird experiences but his girlfriend doesn't. She seems just as if not more cute so I think it's because she dresses a bit differently and has less extroverted energy. He either talks about that in that video or this one:





OK well guess I can't embed that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGR6wwJN78s

I'm honestly not that surprised that F1nn gets hit on by a lot of straight women. There's a significant proportion of straight women, who only tend to be vocal during their yaoi/fujoshi/BL reading teen phase but then to go silent during adulthood for fear of judgment, who've both A: Often wished they themselves had a penis, and B: Are very into the thought of male/male pairings, both romantically and sexually. It's the equivalent of the old trope of guys who are really into watching lesbians, only with more social shame attached (making it harder to openly admit/discuss). From my observations at least, this population actually seems to be really into prettier guys (making F1nn an ideal candidate). I suspect because on the surface a relationship with a prettier, less classically (and perhaps toxically) masculine guy would seem to provide more flexibility for exploration and power sharing. In our society, there's still a social expectation that women will be sexually submissive and men will be sexually dominant, to the point where you risk being shamed for violating these norms (with both dominant women and submissive men facing that risk), and risk being seen as less womanly or manly (as the case may be) as a result, to the point where even many bi women will identify as being dominant only with other women but still submissive with men. It's why, even though a roughly 50/50 split for dominance/submission should be expected for both genders (as there is no biological motivator towards either), we still see the numbers in our society skewed towards far more sexually submissive women and far more sexually dominant men. For a lot of people, fear of the stigma drives them to the more socially acceptable place, and keeps them there. With a guy like F1nn, there's little expectation of having to conform to such social stereotypes. It gives a bottled-up straight woman the chance to more greatly explore shifting power dynamics without fear of judgment, the opportunity to try out something much closer to the male role from one of their fantasies. It's part of why material written by gay men for gay men tends to have far more classically masculine characters, whereas a lot of BL and shounen ai (which is primarily written by women) feature male characters who are both more likely to be bishonen (pretty boys) and more likely to be more open to their feminine sides.

I see you also notice things lol.

Although it's worth pointing out there's also overlap with trans and non-binary people there.

To me the idea that there are more dominant men than submissive women isn't weird you would probably expect that. The weird part is that there are more submissive guys than dominant women (allegedly.)

And sexologists seem to go out of their way to avoid researching this.

the scare quotes around both "straight" men and "straight" women lmao

Well I still find it very funny. A trans woman had this situation on twitter too. That trans woman was quite insane and psyhcopathic though and I can't be spending the time to go down that rabbit hole. But anyway at one point while reading her myriad of insane tweets I noticed she pointed out that she got hit on mostly by men and women who both identify as straight then was like 'the sexes aren't equivalent' or something as explanation lol.

As a general rule and someone would shoot me for using assigned sex in this situation if this was twitter or whatever but it matches what I see - as a general rule. Amab people tend to label their sexuality based on secondary sex characteristics and afab people based on primary. But there's also the fact that women are more likely to be bi and have more varied preferences anyway I think + fluid sexualties. But you also see the thing where there are lesbian women who basically just date very masculine women and trans guys.

Also of course you have the straight women who are having sex with women in that reddit thread I found days ago (not that it's the first time I've run into that.) And the straight women who watch lesbian porn. And the lesbian women who watch gay male porn. It's funny but also what the [BEEP] are people doing?

I also have a lot of trauma with "straight" women where like a solid 50% of my woman friends who have identified that way have tried to [BEEP] me at some point but then threw me away and I just feel so like tired. It got to a point where I stopped being friends with hetero identifying women lmao because it was THAT bad.

No really what kind of social bubble is this? This even seems weird to me knowing that nobody is using language correctly (especially afab people,) and nothing makes sense.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25808718/

It has been speculated that men's sexual arousal patterns may be related to sexual inhibition (Bailey, Rieger, & Rosen- thal, 2011; Rosenthal, Sylva, Safron, & Bailey, 2012). In short, in contrast to gay men, bisexual men may not be averse to sexual stimuli featuring women. Findings from the current study do not support the sexual inhibitionhypothesis for women. In order for this theory to be confirmed, one would expect (1) lesbians to rate men higher on the negative dimension of the SADI, and (2) heterosexuals to rate women higher on the negative dimension of the SADI.

In the current study, the only observed difference on the negative dimension of the SADI was between bisexuals and heterosexuals for sexual contact with men, suggesting that bisexual women may feel more aversion during sex with men than heterosexual women do. Rather that arguing that bisexuals may be bisexual due to a lack of sexual inhibition, this finding instead raises the possibility that bisexual women define themselves as such because they are more averse to sex with men than heterosexuals are. In sum, male and female bisexuality may be driven by different mechanisms. It is noteworthy that in the current study, bisexual women reported higher sexual arousal and desire but also more aversion. Future studies should further explore which mechanisms may be related to both high positive and high negative sexual arousal.

I want someone to explore this because it does seem interesting and personally relevant to me but I don't know if they have because I've never really stumbled on anyone talking about this specifically.

The findings of this study indicate that a substantial percentage of women defines themselves as mostly heterosexual, bisexual, or as mostly lesbian, and that these women's subjective sexual arousal and desire in partnered sexual activities differ from those of heterosexual and lesbian women, further validating mostly heterosexual and mostly lesbian as distinct sexual orientations (Savin-Williams & Vrangalova, 2012, 2013).

I feel like different studies find subtly different results too regarding personality traits and sexuality etc between orientation categories. Also depending on how you seperate people. This one was interesting because it added mostly heterosexual and mostly lesbian.

This is just... What?

For instance, Chivers et al. (2004) found that heterosexual women's subjective sexual arousal was higher to erotic films featuring female male intercourse than to female female intercourse. However, in another study, they reported higher arousal to female than to male stimuli, indicating lack of category-specificity (Chivers et al., 2007). It is still unclear why heterosexual women would report greater subjective arousal to female than to male stimuli

Do they change their mind after they come out of these studies? Because that study they mention isn't the only one I've stumbled on where they had the same self report results. Are they just lacking in self awareness because they have lower sex drives? Are women who participate in these research studies unusual in some way? What the [BEEP] is happening?

It's like everyone is walking around ignoring this and pretending that this isn't reality. It's hilarious but.

Tbh I feel gaslit by the world.

Don't even get me started on this lol:



Which I've now linked a billion times.

Why are people choosing to argue about the things they are politically instead of acknowleging this? I mean I get that it's Aella and she's a hobbyist but like this seems like a big deal and is anyone going to follow this up? I think more people should research fetishes and sexuality and political alignment among other things.

Jordan Peterson brought it up one time and that was it lol (everyone else is in complete denial or ignoring the topic):

"One thing that may have happened and I don't know this for sure but it's interesting to consider is that since women have been taking the birth control pill their preference for less masculine men has become more pronounced and that could easily be one of the things that's fueling at least some of the tension that's existed and exists now between men and women."

I'm skeptical about it being attributable predominantly to the pill or hormonal birth control as I've said before. I might be weird (and also I don't self id as straight and I'm non-binary so I know people like me don't get included in research like this anyway,) but I've never been on birth control and I'm also not attracted to super masculine guys. My preferences are completly different from my mum who eg: finds Bruce Willis attractive I think she mentioned once.

And it's not even just that. It's also how my sexuality functions that's atypical and breaks various norms. A lot of the time it feels like I'm kind of mentally blocked so it's like there's a kind of distance between me and sexual objects which fits this concept (there's one paper written about this under another name but nothing very explorative atm):

Aegosexual classifies people who experience a disconnect between themselves and the subject of arousal. This enables them to experience sexual attraction, arousal, and desire in response to sexual stimuli, yet they have little or no desire to engage in sexual activity with anyone.

This is slighty incorrect Anthony Bogaert coined another term (autochorisexual,) which basically nobody adopted because they were insulted by that paper and it was too clinical lol...:

As most of you probably know, the psychologist Anthony Bogaert was involved in the coining of aegosexuality. But in his book Understanding Asexuality he also discussed how aegosexuality could be related to other concepts, including issues of identity in trans people:

They [aegosexuals]--as individuals--are disconnected from their sexual responses to others or to sexual stimulation. In other words, they don't "own" those sexual attractions. Their bodies (or aspects of their brain regulating arousal) are responding to sexual stimulation on some level. The missing piece for them is the I or me, or an identity as an individual, in subjective sexual attraction. In other words, the I is missing in the statement "I am attracted to..."

A similar phenomenon may occur in some forms of transgenderism. A transgendered person who was born as a biological male, for example, may not "own" his masculine responses. This individual may behave in a traditional masculine way, he may appear masculine, and his body may respond to stimulation in a traditionally masculine way, even sexually. But if this person does not "own" her responses, and in fact is completely disconnected from them because of an internal sense of self as female, these masculine responses are not part of her identity, or her I or me.

If you take this analogy seriously, one could extend it to say that aegosexuals are kind of like a trans person in the realm of sexuality. It's our mental states that don't match up with our bodies.

If you look at non-libidoist asexual people, they don't have this kind of disconnection because without a libido or sex drive their bodies are in alignment with their minds.

Anyway I just thought would share this analogy because I find it interesting and perhaps illuminating. I also wonder how trans people who are also aegosexual would compare the two?

Also my sense of sexual competition and envy and everything like that is blunted but sometimes there's some kind of connection and seems to be bi-gender essentially... It's so weird inside my brain lol. I once described it I think as someone taking male and female sexual drives and mashing bits together in a way that doesn't work well.

It's also just like not having a map though? Which I guess could be undiagnosed autism or something I don't know. Certainly not everyone is wandering around feeling frustrated in this way clearly. Not even the straight women who are more aroused by women than men.....

Oh I see someone pointed that out in the comment yeah lol:

I think there’s a big overlap of people who are aegosexual, trans and daydreamers, because of their feelings towards sex and gender and wish to divorce themselves (ourselves- I’m definitely one of them) from the way we were born and the lives we have to live.

So yeah I definitely believe there is a correlation between them. One critique of your post, however. Boghart didn’t coin the term aegosexual, he coined autochorissexual which is slightly different and more pathologized. Aegosexual was coined by the a community member and focuses on the absence of the self in sexuality more than the disconnect.

This kind of response below is also irritating because it's like "yeah OK sure, but he's trying to understand and it's not going to always be politically correct..." It's also probably a fair point and people discuss stuff like this all the time anecdotally. I don't think it's insulting to point out a general trend and the implications of that...

I'm trans and I didn't like that passage from his book at all. I found his treatment of gender in general to be very based in stereotypes, especially where he claims elsewhere that asexual women are less likely to enjoy wearing feminine fashion (and claims that wearing feminine fashions is partly about wanting to be seen by men as sexually attractive).

This is litreally a post I just found on another asexual subreddit lol:

Basically, in my personal experience, I feel distanced from "traditional femininity" I guess because I'm ace aro. And idk if it's a [BEEP] thing, an ace aro thing, or just a me thing.

Do you guys think aces are more likely to be gnc or nah? Are you gnc, and is being ace part of why?

Most studies have found that somewhere in 20-25% of aces identify as neither male or female, which is way above what is found in the general population, and higher than the general LGBT+ community. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a large enough sample size and could look at aro/ace people specifically, that percentage would get even higher. I don't think anyone has established an actual causal link, but there is definitely some sort of correlation. If one were to throw in questions to screen for gender detachment, I'm curious what the percentage would get to.

It's all very convinient to be dismissive of the idea of anything that points to anything... Not innate necessarily but like what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know but material maybe works. If you're content and/or you don't give a shit. But then I also understand the lack of trust some people have for researchers based on history and how Humans are.

And it's frustrating without having access to complete knowledge about everything. I can see why that guy Bronze Age Pervert quoted who is gay essentially went insane. I mean that guy believed like every conspiracy theory it seemed and definitely had some other mental health and trust issues - possibly some form of psychosis going on. Also I just disagreed with most of his conclusions and opinions lol...

But I get the emotional reaction:

And so we don’t know ANYTHING about the causes of homosexuality: there is a massive IDENTITY PROBLEM, because 'queers' don't even know why they're '[BEEP]'. The only thing they know it's that it's so wonderful and festive, and such a reason for glowing pride!

Amazingly, [BEEP] academics themselves actually tell us in passing that 'queers' have no real identity. And they hardly seem worried about the implications… '[BEEP]' is, as David Halperin put it, whatever is at odds with the normative; it is an oppositionality vis-a-vis a norm, and fascinatingly, he adds: 'it is an IDENTITY WITHOUT AN ESSENCE'!

[Nyctophilia]

Also what are some more values of a "traditional husband" I'm curious because social media shows us traditional wives all the time but I don't ever see the equivalent Tik Tok made for "traditional husbands" and quite frankly it might be because none of us doofs really know.

So far I've got chaste until marriage... Oops
Pays for dates ✓
Asks the dad for permission (ngl I've never really ran that by anyone's dad whom I've dated but I guess I could start if I felt so inclined)
Then somebody else said like don't go out late at night a whole bunch I think was the jist.

Is there anything else you can add to this list? Again I'm genuinely curious. Like what about like fixing stuff, lawn care, that kinda thing counts too?
What about driving? Is that supposed to always be on the man?
And obviously the chivalry holding doors open and walking on the inside of the street part for sidewalks. Which are all normally things that come natural to me. These count? Any more?

There's content designed by and for conservative men but I don't know if there's much on tiktok because I'm not on that website. Notably none of it is designed to actually appeal to women and in general it doesn't seem to and instead annoys women. I think most conservative women who might appreciate that aren't online. The right wing women who create content are usually doing it for male attention (I don't mean that in an insulting sense that just seems to be their primary audience and I think most are self aware of that,) and half or more of them aren't traditional. The accounts that post tons of political stuff but never really talk about themselves might not be women in some cases when they're anonymous. Even when they are they're I guess 'disagreeable' people, very combative this is on twitter though which is an insane website but tiktok sounds insane too. Also the lifestyle of making content is in itself not traditional but that's an irony many have pointed out before.

That anyone may still be confused about this is sad/funny. There's nothing traditional about social media.

Here's Ben Shapiro (or his producers,) realising that his audience could be me (I don't watch him at all outside of a couple of things ever one of which was this video where he was clearly trying to get attention from liberals. I think he's often trying to get attention from liberals just not as good at it as Jordan Peterson or his sister - who actually paid to advertise to liberal and LGBT+ people lol when she started her channel. So I can see why his company hired Jordan.)



All of the comments are like this:

A theater filled with mothers, daughters, and a furiously angry Ben Shapiro

"Let's say hypothetically I was a Barbie girl, and for the sake of the argument it was in the Barbie world"

He's just a walking meme to people.

This is my favourite one (because it's surreal obviously,):

Hey i'm the real Ben Shapiro. I'm locked in your basement. I didn't hate barbie, that [BEEP] was fire. Let me out. Let me out.

He - or his company - also hired a female version of him (Brett Cooper.) When I say a female version of him I mean she looks more like him than his own sister. Basically rule 63 Ben Shapiro. At this point it feels like some kind of Freudian thing honestly. In the universe where Freud wrote more about my fetish interests instead of incest.

I swear half these people are failed academics and/or have a film/acting background. It's a whole thing. The one who did the gay student film I can't even remember his name now lol. The other one who is often conviniently in drag. I'm talking about 'conservatives' yes. His wife divorced him Steven Crowder yeah.

Wow you really showed the people who wanted to see you dressed as a woman anyway.

The redpill Andrew Tate guys aren't conservative either. Even when they decide to larp that way.

"The materialistic guy who brags about cars, said he'd aggressively have sex with a trans woman who looks like Megan Fox, worked as a pimp for years, allgedly has kids with multiple women, converted to Islam only to deflect criticism isn't conservative. Shocking."

Unpopular opinion: if you want a traditional wife, you'd better be ready to be a traditional man. If you want a traditional husband, you'd better be ready to be a traditional wife. No excuses. If you cannot meet your own standards, do not expect someone who meets standards YOU can't even meet.

I don't know if you are a man or a woman; but this is typically the talking point of a woman who wants to shame men for their natural desire of a family life with order and productivity. When women say this, what they mean is; is he making enough so she can have the luxuries that she can still show off to her friends and family, not can he pay the bills and put food on the table and in the fridge? Questioning a man's ability to provide is a tactic to derail the conversation and spread the word to men who are not understanding why they are rejecting modern society yet because they have been fed f3m1nist propaganda for so long that they don't understand that there is a viable alternative. An alternative that has worked for thousands of years. Subsistence and luxury are 2 different things, and not mentioning it is disingenuous. This context is omitted because women don't want to show their lack of humility and how their vanity and pride are why relationships don't work in the West but elsewhere in more impoverished places, last 50 years.

I'm pretty sure when women say it online it's mostly because they're looking for excuses for why they don't live up to traditional lifestyle rules - which most Western women don't and nor do they want to honestly.

There is a viable alternative to complaining about Western women online it's called moving to 90% of the rest of the planet.

Of course moving countries isn't always easy, but passport bros manage. So if you're serious enough you can probably pull it off.

The Passport Bros Lifestyle Twitter page's caption is "Escape the hatred of feminist women and go to where you can thrive."

I mentioned most of the reasons it is supported above. The arguments I've heard against it are that the people encouraging it seem to be encouraging sexual tourism. Many of the men that you see have traveled to a few countries but haven't married any of the so-called traditional women that they have spent their evenings with. It also buys into a narrative that all black (and western) women are combative, masculine, and don't take care of their men.

The post in particular that you are referencing is about one passport bro who was called out for encouraging sexual tourism while staying in Brazil. Due to the response, he decided to leave Brazil for his safety.

Obviously don't be a hypocrite.

I just think about this:

"But lesbians don't like me," she notes, in part because she insists that most women are bisexual, that the role of hormones accounts for an inevitable attraction between the sexes. Lately Paglia has been going out with men. But, she asks, "what man is going to take me seriously? I'm not a nurturer. Men have flashes of ego and confidence followed by relapses. They have to be stroked, and I don't have that patience." There is also the age problem. Recently she dated men around her age, 44, but found them over the hill sexually. She would prefer younger men, but her pride restrains her.

I had crushes on women -- actually I loved charismatic, extreme people, women or men. By high school I was saying I must be a lesbian, because if you are attracted to women, you're a lesbian. I was also attracted to men, but I didn't get along with men.

Tbh I'm furious that she invented Tumblr (lol nah she was born too late still):

You famously collected 599 photos of Elizabeth Taylor when you were a teenager. Which one should we use to illustrate this interview?

I collected 599 pictures of Elizabeth Taylor -- some people find that obsessive. I collected 599. Not 600, but 599.

When she devoured books on ancient Egypt, her father was gratified. But movies also held her in thrall. Paglia's love affair with popular culture, which forms the forthcoming second volume of Personae, was already blossoming when she was a child. "Egypt and Hollywood were equivalent phenomena to me, equally rich and fabulous," she says. Her father demurred. "He lectured me on Voltaire's disapproval of actors," Camille recalls, "and this was the time when I was making my collection of 599 Elizabeth Taylor pictures."

Oh right she played Cleopatra. That makes so much sense.

Whatever Taylor once was, it is now completely lost on a new generation (one that, ironically, Taylor helped to create).

When I was a kid there was a hairstyle I'm pretty sure was based on her Cleopatra character in either The Sims or The Sims Bustin' Out. I forget which game but I used to give it to lots of my female Sims. It was also a super popular costume aesthetic until it became too politically incorrect.

I also wanted to be an archeologist at one point as a kid but that was purely because of Tomb Raider.

I also downloaded her outfits from Tomb Raider Legend in The Sims 2 the red and black dress.

It's possible to view her in a sexual and aesthetic way, and also as a badass. And she's British which is even cooler (for me.)

So I'm very defensive of her.

Why we've been arguing about Lara Croft for two decades

lol

Though Paglia writes, from time to time, about politics and culture, for the most part she has receded from the center of feminist debate. "It must be stressed that my flamboyant media presence lasted scarcely four years and was boosted by the official book tours for three bestsellers in a row (1991?94)," she writes in the new book. "After that, like the Roman general Cincinnatus returning to his plow, I simply resumed my cherished seclusion as a teacher and writer. As I often say, I?m just a schoolmarm!" She has been ensconced at the University of the Arts, a school of visual and performing arts, in Philadelphia, for 33 years. In the past decade, she's undertaken solitary research into the Native American tribes of southeastern Pennsylvania, collecting artifacts and noting rock formations that she believes appear manmade. She hopes this research might develop into a book, but said that her agent foresaw little commercial appeal.

"I'm lucky," she told me. "I have absolutely no importance of any kind. Now and then, someone will come up to me and say, after class, 'You know, my father is a fan of yours, and he says that you've written some books.' I say, 'Well, thank you, send my best wishes to your father.' So they have absolutely no sense whatever that I write books or anything else. Maybe now they're starting to, because of the web -- they're starting to see me interviewed on YouTube or things like that."

Her ex, Alison Maddex (a co-founder of New York's Museum of Sex), lives nearby, and the two of them are parents to a 14-year-old son. ("I wouldn?t have known how to raise a girl," Paglia said. "I mean, the idea that I would have to -- pink nail polish, all that, oh my god. I don't know what I would have done.")

It took most of my life to realize that men are not tyrants or egomaniacs. I had an epiphany in a shopping mall recently that put it all in perspective. I was having a piece of pizza and I saw all these teenage boys running around in the mall. They were wild. I looked at them and saw this desperation. When I was their age I hated those kinds of boys because they were so obnoxious. They are so involved in their status, gaining it, afraid of losing it. I'm glad I don't have to be that age again. So they sat down near me and they didn't notice me. I didn't exist on their radar map. I was thinking, This is great. I was watching. They were full of energy and life. And I suddenly realized, My God, the reason they are so loud, the reason they are so uncontrolled, the reason I hated them at that age is that they bond with each other against women. It was the first time they were able to be away from the control of a woman -- their mothers. They were on their own and for this period they're very dangerous. Women have to watch out when they go to fraternity parties, because the men are all trying to up their status among one another and there is all this testosterone. And then some girl will snag them. And that's it. It's over for them. They get married and they're under the control of their wives forever. You hear these women all the time, on, like, Ricki Lake, saying, "You know, I have two children, but actually I have three children" about the husband, and it's true: The husband becomes a child again. Even when men are doing their share, taking out the garbage, doing the mopping, whatever, women are still running the household. They are in control and the men become subordinate again. So that's what the feminists are so worried about? Men who are subordinated by their mothers and then by their wives? Men are looking for maternal solace in women, and that's the nature of heterosexuality. Now you tell me, who really has all the power?

I think this is an interesting way of looking at the world:

?What I see is not a world of male oppression and female victimization, but an international conspiracy by women to keep from men the knowledge of men's own frailty. A strange maternal protectiveness is at work.?

Most men (right wing men anyway,) would probably argue that highlighting male vulnerability is maternal in a devouring way. I guess it depends on the context though since plenty of those guys lean into victim narratives themselves.

...

Pearl Davis proves right wing men don't want what they say they want

Nobody seems to want to date Pearl Davis even though she tries so hard to be the biggest "pickme". It just proves that these right wingers don't actually like a submissive woman.

They want to convince and break an unbroken woman's spirit to feel like a powerful alpha. The "alpha" wants the woman to let him have sex with her even though she isn't in the mood, that's sexy to him. It's no fun if she's already broken. That's when they dump her for someone new to destroy.

Pearl Davis is only used to coerce other women who aren't like her. She's too willing, too eager, it creeps them out. In a way she's the best troll that we could ever hope for. She makes it so blatantly obvious by being such a ridiculous caricature of a submissive trad that it's all bs.

No that's not quite it. (I also wonder if they're projecting because that was posted in TwoXChromosomes. Or I'm projecting but it's more interesting that way.)

She's not submissive the way those men want sub women. She has a job, she's online on social media, she "debates" men, she's actually not agreeable at all. Also, she dated a black man. And a lot of white males in those type kf spaces do not want to date a white woman who dated black men. Thats not a new ideology btw.

Yes that's it.

The majority of their fanbase are always male.

They generally avoid relationships though and/or get few offers that appeal to them.

Comparing her to Paglia is kind of insulting Paglia though lol at least so far.

[Nyctophilia]

I swear half these people are failed academics and/or have a film/acting background. It's a whole thing. The one who did the gay student film I can't even remember his name now lol. The other one who is often conviniently in drag. I'm talking about 'conservatives' yes. His wife divorced him Steven Crowder yeah.

Wow you really showed the people who wanted to see you dressed as a woman anyway.

I have to say this is the weirdest personal life section I've ever read on wikipedia (well probably not actually but it's up there):

In 2012, Steven Crowder married Hilary Korzon. Both before and after the wedding, Crowder argued in favor of sexual abstinence before marriage. In 2023, they divorced. Crowder?s ex-wife accused him of emotional abuse.[source?] Crowder said he did not abuse her.

Crowder is a zoophile. In a now-deleted YouTube video from 2018 on PragerU's channel, Crowder demonstrated how he would [redacted graphic description]

Also I love that it's in the 'personal life' section and not under controversies or something.

Oh it's only the simple English version of wikipedia that's edited that way. I ended up there by Googling I don't usually check that. I'm surprised that was included lol and no one had removed it. I mean he did say it but it's not the kind of thing that normally ends up on wikipedia. It was probably a joke too but still.

And this is what I was talking about before:





Liberal left people are supposedly into a lot of kinks that are tangentially related to feminisation so I assume if Aella'd included that in her questions it would have popped up yeah. I'm not sure we want to talk about some of the things the supposed 'authoritarian right' are into though - oh wait you did!

He's not wrong though. I am obsessed with that (not as much as I just like skinny guys with long hair and glasses though tbh,) but in hindsight I think he should have hired Vlad's wife to do his makeup for him (I think he said she does a lot of his makeup.) He has a lot of money so there's no excuse.



Why is she taking it so seriously lol? Octopus drop was hilarious and he's obviously fucking around.

Even when Vlad's doing it himself it looks better:



Obviously this is because he's not a big Russian man.

[Nyctophilia]

I'm honestly not that surprised that F1nn gets hit on by a lot of straight women. There's a significant proportion of straight women, who only tend to be vocal during their yaoi/fujoshi/BL reading teen phase but then to go silent during adulthood for fear of judgment, who've both A: Often wished they themselves had a penis, and B: Are very into the thought of male/male pairings, both romantically and sexually. It's the equivalent of the old trope of guys who are really into watching lesbians, only with more social shame attached (making it harder to openly admit/discuss). From my observations at least, this population actually seems to be really into prettier guys (making F1nn an ideal candidate). I suspect because on the surface a relationship with a prettier, less classically (and perhaps toxically) masculine guy would seem to provide more flexibility for exploration and power sharing. In our society, there's still a social expectation that women will be sexually submissive and men will be sexually dominant, to the point where you risk being shamed for violating these norms (with both dominant women and submissive men facing that risk), and risk being seen as less womanly or manly (as the case may be) as a result, to the point where even many bi women will identify as being dominant only with other women but still submissive with men. It's why, even though a roughly 50/50 split for dominance/submission should be expected for both genders (as there is no biological motivator towards either), we still see the numbers in our society skewed towards far more sexually submissive women and far more sexually dominant men. For a lot of people, fear of the stigma drives them to the more socially acceptable place, and keeps them there. With a guy like F1nn, there's little expectation of having to conform to such social stereotypes. It gives a bottled-up straight woman the chance to more greatly explore shifting power dynamics without fear of judgment, the opportunity to try out something much closer to the male role from one of their fantasies. It's part of why material written by gay men for gay men tends to have far more classically masculine characters, whereas a lot of BL and shounen ai (which is primarily written by women) feature male characters who are both more likely to be bishonen (pretty boys) and more likely to be more open to their feminine sides.

Thinking about this comment again.

I don't know if the attraction to 'prettier' guys is really connected to role flexibility. I feel like I've always just been physically attracted to guys who look like that as a seperate thing. Some of the fictional characters I was into were behaviourally pretty masculine as well but very androgynous (like one vampire character in a Korean manwha (comic) that honestly pretty much just looked female but it was a heterosexual romance story so was a fairly typical guy I think just more vain.) Although I was never specifically into BL manga/anime that much either moreso Western equivalent stuff or fanfiction.

I also feel like the sexuality is tangentially related to 'gamp' and that probably explains both the wanting a dick + attraction to 'pretty guys' better. Especially if you're using F1nn as an example he's probably more feminine than most of the guys that demographic are into. So if someone was mostly attracted to people who look like him I'd just consider that the same sexuality at that point. But generally afab people are into more masculine people than GAMP guys are but.. I'm not 100% sure about that in every case. It's kind of a grey area anyway.

Plus GAMP guys are more AGP but if you already have a dick that aspect isn't going to be obvious unless you're afab and if you already look feminine or are ambivalent about having breasts that aspect won't show up if you're afab (well it would, but not as visibly probably. AGP in general isn't going to show up as visibly since it's basically normal to want to look like other women if you're a woman):

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26498424/

Background: Gynandromorphophilia (GAMP) is sexual interest in gynandromorphs (GAMs; colloquially, shemales). GAMs possess a combination of male and female physical characteristics. Thus, GAMP presents a challenge to conventional understandings of sexual orientation as sexual attraction to the male v. female form. Speculation about GAMP men has included the ideas that they are homosexual, heterosexual, or especially, bisexual.

Results: GAMP men had arousal patterns similar to those of heterosexual men and different from those of homosexual men. However, compared to heterosexual men, GAMP men were relatively more aroused by GAM erotic stimuli than by female erotic stimuli. GAMP men also scored higher than both heterosexual and homosexual men on a measure of autogynephilia.

No idea why the two are connected. I think it was about 50% in that study which is much higher than in the general population.

Like so sometimes I specifically like stuff with female language terms if I'm looking up erotic audio stuff (uh I don't like it if more masculine guys who are dominant use feminine language I think - not if I'm self inserting, but if it's a feminine sounding guy who is dominant, or femdom I probably don't care as much, and I also specifically like it sometimes if it's with a submissive guy using those terms for the person listening. So basically I just don't like the dynamic with a dominant masculine guy I guess, then again it might also be the whole thing that doesn't work in that scenario,) and since I'm afab that wouldn't really be questionable except that I also get social dysphoria sometimes when people use those terms in everyday contexts and I'm put off if they describe stuff happening to the listener's breasts which is more atypical.

I have a lot of aversion to breasts but also arousal with other people's sometimes. It's very weird. This is an everday thing with my own body I've always had too I just kind of try to ignore that I have that body part. I also feel like there are times when I become more aware and it's more unpleasant, but mostly I'm good at ignoring them especially with clothes. That's why I wanted someone to study the bisexual arousal/aversion thing.

I think it's possible my brain doesn't distinguish between my body and other's so it thinks my body isn't my body. Not completley though otherwise I think my life would be more surreal.

Oh and I don't think there's more social shame attatched. It's bad but there's less exposure so it's mostly just other women and insecure trans guys who are like 'you're preying on/fetishising gay men' or comments by people on 4chan. But 4chan is like the home of degenerecy so you can't really be that offended. Also some lesbian trans women on twitter sometimes rant about 'fujoshi' there's a specific social circle (I can't go down that rabbit hole. I think it overlaps with the issues many people who use the term 'theyfab' have with afab non-binary people as well.) But it's hardly equivalent to the 'you're a disgusting degenerate pedo rapist' kind of [BEEP] amab people in general get from other people. People tend to infantalise afab people so there's a ceiling to how many predatory accusations you can get. For now I think this is going to disappear in 10-20 years because of the internet's impact on cultural awareness lol. I just think that feminine people are more susceptible to social shame and most of that demographic are more feminine. Probably has something to do with agreeableness (the personality trait.)

Anyway. I get to fetishise both.



I'm actually rarely attracted to gay men though so it's funny.

Reminds me of the comment they got too about her not being a real trans woman and about how her girlfriend wants to date a 'real gay man' lol:



So first afab people were fetishising you and now you're harassing this couple because you think she's supposed to be fetishising you? (She wrote a m/m romance book and honestly it's not a reach to say she's in this demographic broadly.)

I struggle to keep up. It's almost like some of you want an ego boost.

"I won't have sex with you. And nobody else should be allowed to either. Or transistion unless they're only attracted to men. Looking pretty/feminine is only for male attention/attraction."

That's basically what he's saying.

Still not over that. The audacity.

I don't think they really got what he was saying either which is probably for the best but since it relates to everything I'm talking about in this post I did.

[Nyctophilia]

Periodically checking if being non-binary is OK yet culturally lol (it's not. But I kind of knew that lol. Especially in the UK legally/culturally it's bad.) Of course reddit is less conservative than most websites too.

Actually plot twist the non-binary partner came out as a trans woman a few weeks later (this thread is 8 months old) so uses female pronouns now, and OP came out as non-binary trans masc. Which is kind of ironic because now all those terrible comments are basically talking about the OP. I've seen this happen a bunch of times so not really weird to me. It's partly because of what I mentioned in the previous post I think.

My spouse is non-binary

My spouse recently came out to me as non binary, they were AMAB. They told me that long term they hope to present as more feminine. They are not ready to come out to others so I?m left to process this on my own. I don?t want them to misunderstand any of my own feelings as me not supporting them. When ever it comes up I just remind them that I love them and support them. They seem so much happier since they?ve started to come to terms with their own identity and it?s wonderful to see the light back in their eyes but I can?t help feeling alone.

Update: I was never expecting people to respond to this. I just wanted to say it to someone since my normal support system will not be an option until my spouse is ready to come out to our families.

This was never a question of leaving my spouse, I love them dearly, their gender identity is of little consequence, it does not impact our shared passions or our love for one another. I will be going back to therapy just to have someone to talk to and I am looking into other resources that we can explore together during this time.

For all of you who said kind and supportive things, I appreciate you.

I have friends who have gone through this exact process. They (formally he) are bi, NB, and wanted to present as more androgynous or feminine, and they both had to work through the new developments together. It's certainly not an easy process, but they are still together now after about two years after coming out.

Part of what they decided was to open their marriage to other partners, but that is not a viable solution for everyone, so I'm not going to say that will fix things for you, but it did make things easier since she is very straight and they were interested in exploring their bisexuality.

Obviously, it took a lot of very frank, open conversations, a lot of adjustment, a lot of open-mindedness, but today they are in a much better place, both as individuals and as a couple.

I don't know if any of that is useful to you, but maybe it at least shows that it's possible to get through this and be an even stronger, better couple on the other side. Maybe ask in NB spaces how their SO's reacted if you haven't already? They can probably offer more practical advice. Either way, good luck!

OK why would they immediately assume because the OP's spouse came out as non-binary she's 1. bisexual 2. wants an open relationship?

Again this comment what?

This post is really sad. Because you think that you love this person when really they aren?t the person you fell in love with. That?s the thing you aren?t getting. You fell in love with what they were born as, you are attracted and fell in love not with just a person but that gender. Are you not your gender as well now or are you going to identify as a lesbian or bi, because they decided to be who they feel they are?

You understand that your spouse is very very selfish for doing this to you and in all honesty should have told you the same time as everyone else so that YOU could have the support you needed as well. I'm going to be honest with you, you can think this will work out but what happens when they find someone they find attractive and it happens to be of the opposite gender of you?

You are thinking of right here and now when really you have to start seeing the whole picture. They aren't the same person you met, fell in love with and married, if they were then they would of been happy and fine being who they were with you

So you mean sexuality not gender? Lesbian and bi are sexuality labels. Also the second bolded part what?

Because of the subreddit where they posted this a lot of the responses were transphobic and/or ignorant (like 50-70%) Also most comments from non-binary people or otherwise supportive etc were massively downvoted. Not actually quoting the worst stuff. There's also a lot of 'your partner is terribly selfish' type comments which are a bit ironic now I guess.

Comment removed by Reddit

As someone whose spouse actually has a mental illness, kindly F-off. Your hate is not helpful.

Who knows what that said since it was removed by the actual site admins.

Non binary fancy term for I'm not into you anymore.

Pretty sure it's not.

Take him to therapy before he's too far gone

There were a lot of people who were like 'take her to therapy' conversion therapy basically. I don't think they realise that's illegal in some countries and therapists won't necessarily agree with transphobia.

This is more bothersome in a way than straight up transphobia because it's complete misinformation and no professional is going to be able to do this. There are people who medically transistion and don't and people who's dysphoria is reduced or fluctuates and it also varies in severity in the first place but basically no one's dysphoria goes away entirely and no professional has managed to cure dysphoria:

It can be a gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is like an eating disorder. You can't tell a person with an eating disorder to "just go and buy food", but there is help to get. In a similar wqy you can't tell a person with gender dysphoria to just look in their pants and get over with it, dysphoria is a feeling. But people can get help and through therapy for anxiety disorders relieve their gender dysphoria. Not everyone will be "cured", but many will.

I've had basically the same feelings about my secondary sex traits for my entire life post puberty. It's not even severe dysphoria and it still hasn't gone away. Anxiety disorder therapy also won't help hell it might not even help with anxiety disorders (cbt didn't help me with social anxiety.)

I also think (partly because of what I mentioned in my previous post,) that it would be difficult or impossible to change with just talk therapy. There seem to be neurological differences too that show up in brain scans involving body processing stuff. But that's just physical dysphoria social dysphoria is a bit different probably.

It makes intuitive sense to me but it's also what this study found:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8

This paper uses very technical language though and I don't think any journalists bothered to really cover that. It would have been cool if at least one media outlet tried to break this info down but couldn't find anything by googling and that study was released in 2017.

Totally cool to break up and divorce over this, even if you're religious it's allowed. It's cool you're supportive but you can be supportive apart too. You deserve to have a partner that is a true partner.

How is being non-binary being a fake partner exactly?
When I came out to my boyfriend as non-binary, it changed nothing important between us. He just went with: Ok so what do I call you now? Ok. And now instead of just bringing feminine stuff from festivals he occasionally go to, he also bring me back cap and masculine stuff. It's literally the only thing that changed.
Sure if the non-binary thing eventually evolve to a trans thing, with complete transition to the opposite gender, I understand that this is more likely to become a problem in a relationship.
But when we are just talking about being non-binary, I don't really understand what is the big deal? I don't ask that in a ill intent way, but I'm just trying to understand why is it posing a problem?

I think it depends on whether it changes internally how they view you (which tbh it should,) and also if they're still physically attracted if you change your appearance a lot.

I also think 'true partner' was a weird way of putting it.

[Nyctophilia]

This person seems misinformed about what bigender means and also what drag means:

My friend (30F) is getting married and asked one of her best friends (33M) to help with the wedding by planning a bachelorette. The guy is gay and was enthusiastic about planning the party, and the bride knew he was the right choice because he's organized and knows a ton of connections to have an awesome bachelorette.

We were sitting for lunch together and talking about the wedding, when the guy said he would like to come to the wedding in drag, as he feels "more beautiful" dressed as a woman. The bride said she would support him going in drag, but not for her bachelorette or the wedding, because she wants all eyes on her and everyone to talk about her. Being in drag would take all the attention away from her she said.

The guy huffed a bit and said "I thought you're my friend" where she said "you're my friend so I would like it if you just did this for me for my wedding". He asked who is in the right and I said I agreed with the bride. He seemed down and left early.

Was I the AH or am I wrong?

Edit: This gay friend identifies as 'bigender' ever since he started to do drag on a regular basis. He goes by he/him when in his male form and she/her in drag. He does drag at work sometimes and when he goes on dates. So far no hormones or sex surgeries or anything like that. He gets far more attention in drag, and he even went to his sister's wedding in drag so I guess he thought it would be fine to go to the bride's wedding in drag too.

Edit 2: The gay friend isn't planning to do drag in a spectacular fashionista way like on RuPaul, it's more like he is going to dress as a woman. The bride doesn't want that because he would clearly look like a man in drag, and she doesn't want any attention away from her during the wedding or bachelorette because they are her days. Otherwise she doesn't care if the gay friend does drag on her birthday parties or whatever else.

Drag is a very specific over the top performance/aesthetic and doesn't apply to just any feminine amab expression.

I also find wedding culture kind of toxic like how the focus is mostly entirely on the bride and even the groom is kind of secondary at their own wedding half the time but then most guys don't really care and weddings are mostly for women.

It's difficult for me to relate to because I find the idea of a wedding with it being performative mostly awkward and terrible. I'd prefer to just do something with my partner. Thinking about who to invite and that whole thing just gets stressful for reasons. So it's hard to imagine. Also you have to have witnesses right? So someone else would have to be there... I don't like the idea of legal marriage either really. And it's annoying that someone can be in a long term relationship for longer than some legally married couples but be considered lesser by the state too etc.

So getting past my issues with wedding culture and the marriage in general (there's also the amount of money it costs which you could spend on a vacation/house etc though of course that's down to individual people to decide.)

So getting past that lol. I can see why she would not want him to present in drag because that would be very attention stealing but I think there's a difference between that and just presenting femininely. The latter might be attention grabbing too depending on if she passes and if people recognise her etc. But I consider that to be a cultural problem that needs to change. Is she going to force all her female guests to show up wearing dresses if they want to wear some kind of suit? Probably lol. Maybe she would. But also probably not because of cultural double standards.

I don't like it, and I don't like enforced gender norms in general. But it is her wedding. Another reason to not like them I guess lol. There are so many gendered rules with weddings as well. People have been recently abandoning them especially at eg: gay weddings but a lot of the traditional stuff is offputtingly gendered.

I mean it's a 'straight (tm)' wedding though so I guess you have to respect their culture. Couldn't be me etc.

Respectfully, I find your distinction to be unhelpful to the friend's case.

A wedding is accepted as an event prioritizing the bride and the groom. Anyone who wants to undermine that expectation should skip the wedding. It?s that simple. Friend is an entitled narcissist.

See you can make that case but you can also make the case that weddings are inherently narcissistic. And they are.

OP is trying to downplay the fact that the friend is trans and using their sexuality to conflate the issue. The first clue was the term "bigender," then in subsequent edits revealing that the friend presented as female for work and other activities. At that point, the transphobia is pretty blatant.

Yeah probably. I also like how they brought up hormones like he'll just magically start treating them better if they decide to medically transistion. Incredibly fucked implications.

Well, I think the bride is an AH because she had her bigender friend to plan pre wedding parties bc you know " they do things like that so well." Then they can't go to the wedding and reception if they dress feminine (as previously stated, drag is way different than dressing feminine). I'm assuming, because it wasn't mentioned, that she didn't pay her friend for their work, as she would have had to if a party planner did the work.

It seems like people are demonstrating their prejudices when they are saying it will take attention away from the bride. I'm 65 yrs old and couldn't care less what people wear. Ohhh, what if they had to wear a burka?!

Obviously, just my opinion. Also my opinion, the bride is no friend to "party planner" friend.

Yeah I glossed over that aspect but I feel like she should have known/said something earlier or something. Also there seems to be some weird stereotype of bachelorette parties ending up in gay bars and I wonder if that happened and if she'd freak out by people there in drag since she said she didn't want him wearing feminine clothing on that night either.

This is also a common thing in other cultures. Like the calabai and bissu in Bugis culture. I get it though the West has 'egalitarian homosexuality' for a reason and all that. Because we hate amab people presenting femininely and overreact about it all the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Bugis_society

In pre-Islamic Bugis culture, bissu were seen as intermediaries between the people and the gods, according to Indonesian anthropologist professor Halilintar Lathief. The bissu are closely associated with the female yet androgynous moon goddess, as her spiritual offspring.[12] Up until the 1940s, the bissu were still central to keeping ancient palace rites alive, including coronations of kings and queens.[7] Historically, bissu have played an important role in other ceremonies as well, particularly in weddings and childbirth events.

[...] Bugis society has a cultural belief that all five genders must coexist harmoniously;[5] but by 2019 the numbers of bissu had declined dramatically, after years of increasing persecution and the tradition of revering bissu as traditional community priests. Bissu have mostly survived by participating in weddings as maids of honour and working as farmers as well as performing their cultural roles as priests. Hardline Islamic groups, police and politicians have all played their part in Indonesia's increased harassment and discrimination of nonheterosexuals.

According to the Bugis gender system, calabai are generally assigned male at birth but take on the role of heterosexual women. Their fashions and gender expression are distinctly feminine but do not directly match those of "typical" heterosexual women. Especially in the modern era, calabai fashion has also been influenced by styles outside of traditional Bugis culture, such as from Islamic and Christian sources.[18] Customary calabai roles include wedding planning and hairdressing.

If there is to be a wedding in Bugis society, more often than not calabai will be involved in the organization. When a wedding date has been agreed upon, the family will approach a calabai and negotiate a wedding plan. The calabai will be responsible for many things: setting up and decorating the tent, arranging the bridal chairs, bridal gown, costumes for the groom and the entire wedding party (numbering up to twenty-five), makeup for all those involved, and all the food. Rarely did I attend a village wedding with less than a thousand guests. On the day, some calabai remain in the kitchen preparing food while others form part of the reception, showing guests to their seats.
-- Sharyn Graham

What if it's taking attention away from the groom? (I assume there's a groom cause I just feel like as a general rule if they were sapphic this wouldn't be happening.) Why isn't the groom wearing a dress?

Am I obnoxious? Yes.

The edits? you know YTA 😐

Yeah I mean I'm less interested in the bride I kind of don't even want to touch that (although I already did in this post,) but he asked about himself and he's clearly just misinformed and he's the asshole for misrepresenting the entire situation lol.

Also she wears skirts in everyday situations (How has no one clipped this?):



"You know I was looking up Forbes magazine and it said that people who were bisexual are more likely to succeed in business and I think I want to be in that seventy-three percent."

"I want to ease myself into it so I thought I could start with genderfluid guys."

"Drag queens?"

"No like genderfluid. You know genderfluid."

"Yeah I know about genderfluidity"

"Tell me about genderfluidity"

"I mean I've worn like skirts to like regular events"

"Yeah that's it. That's it."

That's not it btw.

Oh I forgot there's a wedding on that show lol. Spoilers I guess.

At my wedding (in an alternate universe.) I'm going to hire a genderfluid person to do this 6:05 minutes in:



"Both these men are not stereotypical they do not fall into your fucking categories. Who knows maybe they aren't even gay. Maybe just maybe Caleb's had sex with women. Multiple, multiple women. Or maybe he hasn't. And I'll take questions on that later."

Make stuff really funny and awkward. It's only funny if you've seen this though.

[Nyctophilia]

The short guy is still taller than me because I'm 5'1" lol. Fml.

No wait what am I talking about. I forgot how tall I am lol. I'm 5'2" I grew a whole inch during this post. And sometimes I was almost 5'3" He's still taller though because he's 5'4"

Hmm found his twitter. (Haven't finished watching the video. Seems like they broke something already. I dunno what but something glass.)

"men>women"

Men=women but less women let me suck them off on short notice

Lol OK.

I'm trying to figure out if he's exclusively gay his energy says no but that's not 100%. I think it's going to be impossible because he does onlyfans so he has to be 'gay' even if he isn't gay.

do you prefer girl freddie or manly shotgun countryside freddie ?

nope.

I think he's gay I don't find him that attractive anyway. Like he's kind of cute cause of the glasses and everything.

Really just trying to find alternatives to 1970s rockstars.

On the 25th isn't just going to be my first shoot with a dude it'll be my first real dick and the second time ive ever left the house dressed up. Wish me luck xx

hmmm i though the femboi thing for u was a thing for fun aswell just like finn but i guess its not for u? well all power to u freddie <3

Wow what happened to alll the years of you being straight and having a girlfriend

I was just about to stop scrolling (also I couldn't find any tweets about girlfriends so not sure what they're talking about.) But it's OK because I'm turned off anyway lol. I can't handle any competition (even in imagination,) that's why I only like 1970s rockstars who are now in their 70s and weren't sex symbols in their time and only sexually appreciated now vocally by 12 non-binary and women people on tumblr. And then I sometimes imagine they're my lesbian girlfriend or something weird.

I mean that's not why, but it tends to be convenient.

Now I feel bad about not having a dick again. Cause of some photos with a dildo.

This has been an interesting accidental social experiment.

And I have cramps because I think I'm getting my period. And I kind of have to go see my dad soon. Was thinking tomorrow. Was thinking today but put it off.

I blame F1nn.

You know all of this could have been avoided I'm realising now if I just kept watching the video because he said he 'employs the missus' who I guess his girlfriend to do his makeup.

I blame F1nn again.

I wonder if she's OK with him having sex with guys for porn or if those timelines didn't overlap. I wish I could be that cool but it would bug me if they're a bottom because I'm very sexually threatened by masculine dominant guys with dicks because I don't have a dick. Yeah that is a pretty weird combination like if I had a dick even not being masculine wouldn't bother me as much and on the other hand I don't really get sexually envious/jealous in the same way about feminine guys or trans women even if they're tops. I think it's like the idea of a certain kind of personality type/attitude along with a combination of traits and the way culture caters to them that pisses me off. Also because nothing bothers me consistently (well some things do but this kind of thing,) everything I've wrote is also false. Who knows? I mean it's also just that this is very abstract I guess. You can't really know unless you're in the situation.

All of this and I don't really find this guy that attractive. What are you doing brain?

They have a YouTube channel but they haven't uploaded there for a year. I think I'm only (somewhat) attracted to them with glasses. I have a problem. Several actually. 99 problems if you will.



It seems to run in families as I've come across a bunch of people who have homosexual and trans people in their family like multiple members. Arielle Scarcella is a lesbian with a gay twin brother, Blaire White (trans woman,) said she had a gay uncle once. Some guy I used to talk to on discord who was on hrt but didn't socially transistion had a gay brother (he wasn't gay was in a relationship with a trans woman but I think he was probably bisexual though he didn't label himself that someone once jokingly pointed out he was more into guys than I was because he'd sometimes get off to masculine men in porn which I don't,) someone else who was a trans woman I talked to on discord had a brother who was a crossdresser. Probably other examples I've forgotten. I saw some trans guy arguing with people on twitter recently and he said his sister is a trans woman.

Also children born to lesbian parents are more likely to report samesex attraction (male and female children.)

The 25-year-olds are participants in the ongoing U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), which has followed the same cohort of offspring from conception to adulthood. It has a 92% retention rate since it began in 1986. The current analysis compared 76 offspring of lesbian parents and 76 demographically matched participants from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). [...]

31% of female and 73% of male NLLFS offspring reported being only attracted to the opposite sex, compared to 54% and 91% of NSFG females and males.

54% of female and 33% of male NLLFS offspring reported having a same-sex sexual experience, compared to 38% and 9% of NSFG females and males.

70% of female and nearly 90% of male NLLFS offspring identified as heterosexual or straight, compared to 88% and 98% of NSFG females and males.

Among the NLLFS female offspring, the percentage identifying as sexual minorities decreased from 49% to 30% between the ages of 17 and 25. In contrast, the percentage of NLLFS females who had engaged in same-sex sexual behavior increased from 15% to 54% in the same period.

The percentage of NLLFS male offspring identifying as sexual minorities decreased from 22% to 10% between the ages of 17 and 25, and the percentage reporting same-sex sexual experiences increased from 6% to 33%.

It's significant but not insane.

Another study examined gay dads as well:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20642872/

Percentages of children of gay and lesbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual identities ranged between 16% and 57%, with odds ratios of 1.7 to 12.1, depending on the mix of child and parent genders. Daughters of lesbian mothers were most likely (33% to 57%; odds ratios from 4.5 to 12.1) to report non-heterosexual identities.

They don't really break it down in the abstract. Predictably seems most common with daughters with lesbian parents. You know they say lesbian parents but I bet they're lumping bisexual women in too. They should start using sapphic or something unless they mean lesbians. Bisexual men are less common in general but should differentiate with that too. Some people coined the term Achillean because everything has to be Greek I guess.

Personally though I'm the only LGBT+ person in my extended family as far as I know. When me and my brother were young kids according to my nan people would mistake us for twin girls and then he'd get mistaken for a girl often until puberty just because he didn't like getting his hair cut (and this wasn't a gender thing he just disliked the hair dressers and prob disliked change. He also was very picky in general and disliked people buying him clothes etc.) I dunno why though because he was other wise very boyish and his hair was generally kinda messy too like he never seemed female to me. He had mildly non-conforming behaviour rarely like when he looked after a baby doll at one point for a while but otherwise very stereotypically boyish and is pretty masculine now. He's very cisgender too. He said once he specifically enjoys being a guy. I think there's some related stuff in my family though because a lot of weird stuff tends to cluster. Like the correlation with autism and neurodivergence in general. Also left handedness my mum is left handed for example.

Anyway conservatives pick up on this kind of thing and freak out.

[Nyctophilia]

Some guy tried to argue with me about the 'gay' bigender amab person getting upset about being asked not to wear a dress to a wedding by bringing up butch lesbians being encouraged by their wives to wear a dress to their own wedding which has to be the worst example ever lol. I'd love to watch that conversation happen. On what planet is that a common scenario? The women who date butch women are specifically into their presentation for starters. And they're definitely not wearing a dress to their own wedding if they're butch. It's their own wedding lol why would they do that?

I mean if you Google search butch lesbian wedding it's all suits. Either two people in suits or if a butch/femme couple than the butch woman is in a suit. Some of the women aren't even butch and in a suit.

If you think this is likely you've been watching too much L Word like when Shane wears a dress once and is still unhappy (I haven't watched it so I'm just familiar with this clip I've stumbled on before lol,) and she's not butch her character is androgynous. But fat chance you're getting an actual butch woman to wear a dress and she definitely won't be happy about it if she does.



I think there are a lot of guys who would find it to be less of a big deal actually. Mostly because they haven't had the same pressure or trauma surrounding this.

Kate Moennig has also worn dresses on (counting on google images lol,) at least 5 occasions outside of playing characters. But also obviously:

Shane was originally billed to Moennig as "sexy" and "androgynous".[1] Moennig told Michelle Kort from The Advocate that she had learned "a lot" from playing Shane. She has elements of realism because "life imitates art and art imitates life". The actress further explained that she related to certain aspects of Shane's storylines because she had previously experienced them.[1] Moennig did not agree with labeling the character butch. Fellow cast member Leisha Hailey (who plays Alice Pieszecki) also disagreed and believed that Shane was more androgynous.[2]

https://www.advocate.com/commentary/...et-butch-women

Op-ed: Why Hollywood Can't Get With Butch Women

As long as the entertainment industry cravenly appeals to straight men, less-than-feminine women will rarely see their stories on screen.

When I was in high school -- way back in the late '90s, before I was out -- a straight friend warned me not to watch the movie Wild Things because it featured two women kissing (that's the tip of the iceberg). The first thing I did was watch it. I don't remember much, but the scene(s) where beautiful Denise Richards and sultry goth Neve Campbell tongue-wrestle stuck with me. In those days, seeing actresses make out was like watching the moon landing.

That reminds me I really loved The Canterville ghost as a kid (yeah the 'gothic' thing really did start young.) I mean the version with Neve Campbell and Patrick Stewart. I haven't seen it since I was a kid now (I kind of don't want to rewatch it at this point because it might ruin my memories lol,) but when I was a kid that was basically my favourite movie at one point. The Craft was great too but I watched that much much later as a young adult.



I definitely talked about this and this song and everything before but I love this song and this cover version a lot.

When Showtime released The L Word in 2004, it was a major hit, despite no shortage of bad writing. A large part of the show's success had to do with the fact that it appealed largely to straight viewers. Men for the first time could watch women have sex in a perfectly acceptable way, with their wives or girlfriends beside them. What television viewers have been witnessing the last two decades is a sexual revolution, not a [BEEP] one. It's no secret the entertainment

industry borrows from minority experiences and repackages them at its leisure. It embraces lesbian sexuality and discards the rest. With the exception of Shane (Kate Moennig), who was really an androgynous character, and Max (Daniela Sea), there weren't many butch characters on The L Word (and this only lasted until Max transitioned to a man). The show's producers were obviously struggling to make a show about [BEEP] women that was still appealing to straight viewers. [..]

Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, a show about women in prison, features one butch character -- Big Boo, played by Lea DeLaria. Crass, obnoxious, and sex-obsessed, DeLaria's character is the personification of the butch lesbian stereotype. But she is also authentically human in many ways. I go back and forth between liking her and hating her, which is understandable. When I finally meet a character who is sort of like me, she's in a jail cell. That's not surprising. Prison is exactly the place many would expect to find someone like Boo. After all, women perceived as too masculine are often seen as bad and deserving of punishment.

The show features a few other masculine-leaning characters, like Stella Carlin (Ruby Rose), who, like Shane, is more androgynous than butch. As a [BEEP] character there's nothing wrong with her. Many lesbians are androgynous, and many see it as beautiful. In some ways, Orange Is the New Black can be applauded for embracing characters who exist outside gender norms. But still, when it comes to the absence of butch characters, there are unfilled gaps.

This has become a big point of argument actually lol but I feel like it's important. Because if you don't diffentiate people are like 'oh so I saw this butch woman doing x so why can't you?' To butch women.

Despite Shane initially being labelled as androgynous rather than butch, a sex scene between Shane and Paige in season four showed a fantasy in which they were depicted as a 1950s butch and femme couple, respectively, and in The L Word: Generation Q, she is referred to as "Uncle Shane" by Angelica Porter-Kennard.

I'm quite surprised there's not one post on here about Kate Moennig/Shane ^^
To me she's the definition of a hot butch. Some ppl might call her androgynous bc she's skinny and occasionally dressed in a more feminine way during public events in the past, but to me she's 100% butch. I judge mostly by the energy someone gives off, also the sound of their voice, the way they move, their mannerisms and then the look.

Some women have a butch energy but are presenting more on feminine side. Good example is Gia Carangi.

Gia's energy was kind of borderline and sometimes she's more feminine but she was also often on drugs. She caught my attention too though in a YT thumbnail before the one they posted as well haha (or at least the same interview.) Apparently she admired David Bowie a bunch.

Also in some photos she kind of reminds me of Zendaya.

Rue and Gia Carangi

I was thinking that Rue reminds me a bit about Gia Carangi. Maybe it's something about Zendaya's interpretation of her character. Just this badass hot look. Not only for the drug addiction, but more fore this angst for life and at the same time this big big sensibility, big empathy. I don't know, I see the same pattern in some way. Just like Rue character is inspired a bit by Gia. What do you think?

yoooo. No I get it.

Oh man I cannot stay on one topic.

Agree💯 I'm the one who posted about Shane. Gia is indeed one of the very few feminine presenting women, I'd feel sexually attracted to as well I think. Also Freja Beha Erichsen.

I don't consider Freja to be butch. Not femme either but def not butch imo.

This entire conversation is happening in a thread about butch women lol. She has pretty good taste though lol. Although she didn't link this photo:

Explain the Shane obsession

Ok seriously. I have even straight friends who I?ve watched the L word with and even they are like "oh I'd totally get with her." Kate is very interesting and unique looking, but what do y'all think is the sex appeal of Shane? She's an emotionally unavailable asshole most of the time 😂

Well I can tell you why straight women like her it's because she has rock star energy/aesthetic.

I don't get the obsession? Fake butch with shaggy dog haircut and a skinny beanpole with no boobs?

So you get it. I'm actually not into the character Shane though really well I never bothered to watch the show. I just find Kate attractive sometimes because she's androgynous with long hair, has a nice voice, introverted (it didn't work before and I don't learn.)

Also he said he doesn't get why it's controversial but of course it is. You can find posts about this online too by butch women talking about other people's weddings and other situations where they've been told they should wear a dress:

My brother is getting married and his fiance just texted me to inform me that I'm supposed to wear a dress to the wedding, no exceptions. It's just a dress for one day, and I'm not really interested in fighting her on it. But I don't really know how to style a dress without going full femme. I have not bought the dress yet, but I'm plus-sized and it needs to be forest green, so my options as far as the dress itself goes are somewhat limited. Suggestions?

I would seriously consider talking to your brother about this; forget about family, I've been in the wedding party for friends and they welcomed me and all the other wedding party members to wear either a dress or a suit & tie that matched their wedding colors (specific options were provided). I think her informing you that you're supposed to wear a dress to the wedding is beyond the pale and no way to treat someone whose family you're becoming part of.

As much as I agree, she also said no to her own sister's similar request to wear something other than a dress. I don't think there will be any changing her mind on this.

This woman didn't attend in the same situation:

I was in this same exact situation (except also pressured by my own family) and i just didn't attend.

This one said she also wouldn't go:

I honestly wouldn?t go if I was told to wear a dress. However if you do go you could assert dominance and wear cargo pants underneath or just generally go the r/maliciouscompliance route but I'm a petty [BEEP] so take my suggestion with a grain of salt 🧂.

There are a couple of posts referencing that subreddit lol.

This person also said they ultimately wouldn't go but would try to discuss it and find out why they wanted them to wear a dress:

Being GNC/butch/masc is an identity for many people. Personally, I would ask to wear something else (I'd prefer to wear a suit) and if I was told no, I probably would ask to discuss their reasoning and try to have a grown up conversation about it. If they still insisted I wear a dress, I wouldn't go.

Wearing a dress is drag for me. I do not compromise when it comes to my dignity and identity.

All the comments are like this. The bolded made me lol:

I know little of het marriage asks like this, I'm curious why she has this rule ?

Wearing a blazer atop it, combat boots, unique but tame socks, a thick leather bracelet

Because some het women subconsciously realize that this one day of being a princess is the only social glorification they'll get as women for the rest of their lives, so everything has to be perfect and we butches don't fit into that picture, literally or figuratively. In conservative spaces, more attention might be paid to "that d*ke in the suit" than to the bride, and some fragile women can't handle that. Also they want the pictures to be symmetrical.

Source: am Southern

I was thinking blazers or combat boots as well. Nothing screams gay more than broken into, well loved pairs of work boots to go with an otherwise femme dress. Throw a leather jacket on it if you're feeling yourself

OP, the thing is that any ways we can think of to make a dress look dykey are probably going to upset this bride just as much as wearing a suit. I can't see her being okay with you wearing Doc Martens, for example, or a green suit jacket type dress.

Terrible. Boots with dresses make it a lot better. I did that once lol.

"Thanks for the invitation! No" is how I would respond if my hypothetical SIL asked me to do that, but for me it's a matter of dignity and I've had to do it before. Maybe it's different for you but just know you have every right to not wear feminine clothing, and letting yourself get pushed around now could lead to other people trying you later down the line. You've got to decide for you what you?re willing to take.

And this comment is funny because the OP before kept misuing the word drag lol but they weren't even talking about actual drag unlike this person:

Have you considered going full on drag queen? If you are going to put on a costume, you might as well go all out. Wig, makeup, all the sequins...

I think it's easier for some people because it's performative and not just 'every day femininity.' I think some people use goth aesthetics in a similar way.

Would they maybe be okay with a kilt?

This person clarifies that they're not fully butch and that their opinion is unpopular:

Time for my unpopular opinion: the last time I did this, I just went full femme and treated it like drag (but I'm a lot more genderqueer than consistently butch, so take that for what it's worth). I did wear a Hawaiian shirt and khakis to the rehearsal dinner the night before, though.

My press-on nails made it through the photos and the ceremony, and then popped off one by one during the reception, which was kind of hilarious.

(The friends whose wedding I was in absolutely would have been thrilled if I had suited instead of dressed but it was easier to dress for a lot of reasons).

Whatever you decide I hope things go as well as they can!

Yeah, don't go. Your brother's fiance is a lesbophobe.

Also southern here... I have adorned many a dress for the sake of my friends while in my 20s. Because Pictures!?! That they won't look at in their wedding album. I am 44 now, and if a family member or friend asked me to do so, I would tell them to FO. The beauty of aging = the fewer Fs you give.

Like 2-3 months ago I had to get super serious and assertive with a friend while we were taking about her wedding because she couldn't seem to wrap her head around the fact that there isn't a single person in my life that I would wear a dress for, including her. She was fine with me wearing a suit up until the point that I said that, and then was (I think jokingly) upset that I was dead serious, and then a bit actually upset that I stuck to my guns and refused adamantly that I wouldn't wear a dress in any situation and that I was kind of offended we were still talking about this after my first refusal.

I've had others be similarly perplexed/upset by my feelings on skirts and dresses. Like no, I wouldn't wear a dress if my future wife wanted me to wear one. I wouldn't wear one if my grandma asked me to. I wouldn't wear one if it was part of a dress code that I had to (I did that [BEEP] in high school and it made me feel like shit). Dresses and skirts look great on women and power to anyone who feels good wearing them, but they make me want to curl up in a ball and die.

End Rant

That guy could just read some of their discussions it's easy to do now on the internet. If he thinks it's weird that that person reacted that way he's obviously not aware. I probably should have just asked him how he'd feel about being expected to wear a dress but he'd probably see it as some kind of challenge and claim to be fine with it to be contrarian.

Tbh this is probably a big part of why it's less of a big deal most of the time for women to wear masculine clothing. Because they're just like [BEEP] off.

Some people hate it so much they describe it as dysphoria (post from another thread):

I was one of the bridesmaids for my brother's weddings so unfortunately I had to wear a dress for the majority of it which did nothing but demolish my confidence and ensured me that I might have some form of dysphoria by how uncomfortable I was. However, since you're not a bridesmaid, you're lucky enough to get to wear whatever. I'd say put on your best suit and tie. So what if you get a couple of weird looks? [BEEP] them! You're there for your friend. Beside, the real focus is her and her spouse and that's all they should care about. If she's just happy to see you there, then what's the big deal if you look a little gay?

Sorry for the rambling. My point is to just go for it.

I don't think people get how terrible it makes some people feel. Personally I've worn dresses before with only minor discomfort sometimes, when I'd present more femme than normal it would feel like I was in drag, though I basically never wear dresses (at this point I can't even remember the last time but it's been a decade at least,) I'd also do stuff like wear trainers and boots with them. But I'm pretty androgynous presentation wise and have a fairly feminine personality. If I was a very masculine person it would probably be intolerable.

This did make me wonder about genuinely androgynous (not masc or femme,) wedding outfits though. I found this which is kind of cool:



Not fully into the end result but I like the idea of capes lol.

[Nyctophilia]

And I have cramps because I think I'm getting my period. And I kind of have to go see my dad soon. Was thinking tomorrow. Was thinking today but put it off.

The situation has not improved.

[Nyctophilia]

Lol I've worried about this. That that's how things work for me because I think I'm quite avoidant. But I didn't get a lot of experience in the past + my crushes were basically never reciprocated anyway. It's also not exactly an issue now though because I have no social life so don't date.

This is a perfect example of what's called an 'Avoidant' Attachment Style

I don't think the problem for me is specifically someone I'm attracted to expressing positive emotional feelings about me or at least that hasn't bothered me though in most cases it's more ambiguous so probably doesn't count for these purposes as they weren't expressions of strong clearly romantic interest. But I think the issue is like when I'm not feeling the same way and they express stronger feelings and also if they get sexual too fast.

But if I don't really know someone enough, or talk to them much than I definitely end up idealising them and inventing them in my mind.

Something I've learned is this: unavailable people actually hate themselves a lot, so that's why they find it off putting if you like them.

That's really only fearful avoidant people. Dismissive avoidant people judge other people and have a better view of themselves typically (there are a bunch of other differences in thinking too. Like dismissive avoidant people usually think depending on other people is weak and value independence a lot etc. So they devalue relationships on a surface level.) I'm assuming there are people with a negative view of themselves + others too. Hyper critical and untrusting etc. Sounds like me probably.

Maybe these are some of the bigger differences. I dunno sounds about right (I think fearful avoidant people are probably more agreeable on average so have a harder time saying no to people. They also care what others think about them more and probably feel rejection more strongly):

17. Fears

Fearful avoidants are afraid their romantic relationship will end. It's hard for them to work through their defenses and get closely attached to someone. They don't fall in love too easily.

Dismissive avoidants can fall in love easily, but they're afraid of commitment. Commitment seems to go against their core value of freedom. They feel trapped when they have to commit.

They also fear losing themselves and their cherished 'space' in the relationship.

2. Boundaries

Fearful avoidants have weak boundaries. They tend to have people-pleasing tendencies and care too much about what others think of them.

Dismissive avoidants tend to have firm boundaries. They hardly care what others think of them.

3. Openness

Fearful avoidants are open with people immediately, but they push back when they get too close.

Dismissive avoidants experience a tremendous amount of difficulty in opening up with people. They seem distant, and it takes a lot to open them up.

4. View of self and others

Fearful avoidants have a negative view of self but a positive view of others. They're quick to blame themselves when things go wrong.

Dismissive avoidants have a positive view of self, resulting in high self-esteem. They generally have a negative view of others.

8. Source of pride

Because fearful avoidants have a positive view of others, good relationships are a source of pride.

For dismissive avoidants, self-reliance is a source of pride.

I think both groups tend to adopt the same coping mechanisms (or very similar ones anyway,) but have different underlying reasons for doing so. It's not exactly easy to find concrete clarification of the differences though tbh.

Reddit is often entertaining:

What is the difference between FAs and DAs?

I think the deactivation phase has some overlaps between FAs and DAs and I have a hard time identifying FAs and DAs. Please explain through examples and specific traits for more clarity.

FAs are a lot more fast-paced and hot + cold, their emotions can be more turbulent as they're getting both anxious and avoidance triggers. I'm not DA so this is just a summary I've seen from other DAs about key traits: DAs trend slower and steadier, they can sometimes come across as colder than their actual sentiments due to deactivation and bc their behaviour is more restrained in general as their emotions are more locked away or they are trying to not make their emotions someone else's problem.

Is it important to identify FAs vs DAs? A lot of people say attachment theory is more useful as a personal insight tool and not something to use to analyse other people (especially as people feeling anxious can use it in some negative ways rather than to constructively think about their own attachment triggers and what boundaries they want to set in a relationship).

I loved this:

...nah. 50-60% of the population are secure. 15-20% are on the AP scale. At the upper end, you have 80% of people out there wanting a relationship that draws them closer, not pushes them farther apart.

Personally, I want to be in a thing that would mean that if I was sick or needed help, my person would be there for me, and vicaversa. Sounds trite but it's actually pretty important, from an evolutionary standpoint.

AP is anxious-preoccupied I guess.

Nah what? They said nothing to evoke this weird pseudoscientific piss fight.

There's no piss fight. I was making a comment, that's all. That's what reddit's for. :)

Also, it's not pseudoscientific. I'm going by the numbers from multiple sources here but being exact about said numbers in a casual conversation seemed to detract away from what I was trying to say. You don't always have to bring scientific papers to a comments section when you're expressing an opinion.

It's very much a piss fight when your comment boils down to "we're better", very irrelevant whatever you think Reddit is for.

It is pseudoscientific. And I'm not the one who brought in science, you did, to sound like you know what you're talking about. You just brought in bad science because you don't. Even if your numbers were correct, your claim was still bogus because secures are pro-social (which is what you were trying to call an evolutionary advantage) but AP behaviors are not pro-social, wanting them to be so doesn't change that fact. Not to mention DA doesn't mean that you don't want the things you listed.

APs are not better. This person said nothing to provoke you into inserting a cocky claim about them being better. Your argument was weak on top of all of that. Your problem is that you allow a lot of nuances and excuses and humanity for APs while you see avoidants as an inexcusable unreasonable monolith, and therein lies your problem. Your reasoning will remain weak if you continue doing that, the gap and bias in your understanding of AT is very obvious to any objective outsider who's been learning about this for a while.

'Nah'

(that wasn't the end of the argument obviously.)

15. Triggers

Things that trigger a fearful avoidant:

Becoming attached
Inferiority
Blame
Criticism

Things that trigger a dismissive avoidant:

Demands
Tantrums
Drama
Criticism

Have you ever experienced enmeshment before? I frequently see this type of rhetoric here, where DAs are scapegoated as the "bad" attachment style because people try to make arguments that their behavior is more than APs. I?d argue that comparing suffering is generally unhelpful, and if you look on Reddit you?ll find stories about people hurt by their AP ex as well as their DA ex (though it seems DAs seem to talk about it less unless prompted). Experiencing an enmeshed partner, or being on the receiving end of anxious preoccupation can also be traumatic. Just as being on the end of DA avoidant behavior can be. They are both qualified as insecure styles for a reason. I'd argue that when I see someone dismissing one style as being "less damaging," most often it?s a way to try and avoid self reflection and preserve one's ego.

Hum, not sure about that. Avoidance is scapegoated because hot and cold behaviours are a typical feature AND a typical feature of manipulative strategies.

If you listen to pick-up artist coaches and dating expert who are all about extracting something from partners, it comes from the avoidant playbook, there is nothing there coming from the anxious playbook.

DA and FA don't dl it on purpose, but hot and cold behaviour is easily abusive and toxic in a way than whiny smothering from AP is not.

Disclaimer: I'm ap

I had multiple people react in very emotionally unstable ways to rejection from me and get very obsessed with me when I didn't really feel equivalent emotions at all and it's weird when you're not purposefully trying to get that response but you're socially naive at the time and you even explained some stuff and they ignore that too and don't care. And part of the reason a lot of these guys have all these women aggressively trying to destroy them is that no emotionally stable people will put up with what they're doing. So they attract people with anxious-preoccupied attachment styles etc which reaffirms their 'bitches be crazy' mentality they usually have. And they're advising other people to do this too. Assuming it was a process they came to in a machiavellian planned way in the first place it's monumentally stupid. Eg: look at Andrew Tate lol.

I think the idea is they're all unhealthy in different ways and there are personality disorders that mimic some traits but that aren't the same thing (or it's not supposed to be the same thing.) Anxious-preoccupied is a bit like BPD, dismissive-avoidant is probably associated with antisocial, schizoid and maybe narcissistic PD's. Fearful avoidant seems like avoidant PD and vulnerable narcissism to me. But this study said it wasn't associated with cluster B:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16289754/

The relationship between attachment styles and Cluster B personality disorders were examined among prisoners, forensic inpatients and controls from the general population. Forensic inpatients and prisoners reported significantly less frequently the secure attachment style (Relationship Questionnaire) and significantly more the fearful attachment style compared to the normal controls. Both forensic groups could not be distinguished from each other. Further, prisoners, forensic inpatients and controls could not be differentiated on the basis of the dismissing nor the preoccupied attachment style. With respect to personality pathology, almost all relationships between Cluster C pathology, on the one hand, and attachment styles, on the other, were significant. Cluster A pathology was clearly related to the secure and fearful attachment style. With respect to cluster B pathology, the results were more specific but also less clear. The results were strongly dependent on the way the personality pathology variables were treated, as either categorical or dimensional. None of the cluster B personality pathology variables were associated with the fearful attachment style and histrionic personality pathology was negatively associated with the dismissing attachment style. Antisocial personality features were associated with a dismissing attachment style. Borderline personality pathology, when treated as a categorical variable, was significantly related to the preoccupied attachment style. These results show that (1) cluster A and cluster C pathology are more strongly associated with attachment than cluster B, (2) treating personality data as either dimensional or categorical is of major importance to the conclusions that can be drawn, (3) it is important to control for the influence of co-morbid personality pathology when examining the relationship between (Cluster B) personality pathology and attachment.

Sort of what I said but not quite. I feel like people often don't bother to articulate the differences between fearful and dismissive in general. Fearful avoidance does seem like AvPD but I feel like there's a point where those traits blend with vulnerable narcissism like I say.

Obviously secure attatchment is best.

[Nyctophilia]

From a thread about Paglia's comments about androgyny and societal collapse. Most people were in agreement like her comments about Greek statues getting noodlier over the years (that was how she described them lol. Like noodly limbs. Basically different aesthetic preferences I guess over time,) was just obviously responsible for everything going wrong in that culture and applicable to everything ever.

There's always someone claiming culture is on the verge of collapse. This sub has been doing so for five years now.

Conservatives have been doing so since the 1980s. It's called eschatology.

Also culture has already been through multiple periods of fashionable androgeny. Last was in the 1970s, before that it was the 1920s.

What she's saying has no basis in fact and reality. There's not even a proposed mechanism of action. It's not directly correlated, she could pick any random thing and make this argument. It's irrational.

...also, she herself is androgenous.

No they've been doing this for thousands of years. It's actually insane. No one is learning anything.

"The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women, and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles to be their concubines." - John of Wallingford

edit: How can I make this post even worse/extra oh yes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtOvBOTyX00

There's actually a version of this with Loki:



I can't ship it because I ship Loki/Darcy. So now I'm linking this video instead which is butchering your mythology (well MCU is I mean and Loki is suddenly English and Sigyn is Irish.) In fairness the video was created by a Swedish person:

Here's a little video about Loki and Sigyn. Love Loki in the marvel movies and since I'm from Sweden, from which a part of the mythology comes from, I wanted to read more about it. Found out Loki actually had a wife name Sigyn and that she was truly loyal to Loki so I wanted to do a video about them.

I guess when you think about it this is like really slow pay back or something.

I mean I don't discriminate I've also read Jesus/Satan fanfiction. And Jesus/Satan/Loki fanfiction. Well there was one fanfic where Loki (mythology Loki not MCU Loki,) helped Satan crossdress. As Richard Dawkins would say the UK is a culturally Christian nation so. I'm doing my part by reading fanfiction years ago. Netflix are mad they didn't think of this first.

I mean I ship Loki in mythology with Angrboda more I think. Just because of this:

Loki ate some of the heart, the thought-stone of a woman,roasted on a linden-woodfire, he found it half-cooked;Lopt was impregnated by a wicked woman,from whom every ogress on earth is descended.

Some people interpret the heart as being Angbroda. And also a witch. So there's witchy vibes.

Did Loki give birth to a monster?

A heart ate Loki,-- | in the embers it lay, And half-cooked found he | the woman's heart;-- With child from the woman | Lopt soon was, And thence among men | came the monsters all.

My questions are:

-Why did Loki eat that heart?

-Who or what was that woman? Was she a notable character in Norse mythology? If not,what race did she belong to?

-Why was her heart burnt?

-What/who exactly did Loki give birth to?

-How did he carry and give birth to it/him/her? Did he turn into a female to carrry and give birth to it?

Are you asking if there's a legend about how this specific female character turned into a male to impregnate a gender-swapped Loki, or if there's a Kama Sutra Edda?

Tumblr had some thoughts:

The birth-mother of Fenrir, Hel, and Jormungandr is, for the most part, said to be Angrboda, with Loki as the father. I disagree with this claim, and believe Loki to be the birth-mother. There is support for both the former and latter, but that point is not made clear enough in our surviving sources to make a proper conclusion.

[long theory here]

I may be nothing now but I will rise
I'll have more followers than Jesus Christ

According to Wilson, "Slave Called Shiver" is about feelings of "unreturned love". He said, "['Slave Called Shiver']'s a very perverse love song, yeah. I mean, it's an unrequited love song. It's a love song with somebody who's obsessed with someone else, but none of that affection is returned? It's about someone who's very much in love and obsessed with somebody else. That love is not returned and so there's a slightly violent perverse undercurrent."

Time travelling Vikings reading my posts: We have to go back. Coming to this island was a huge mistake.

I don't think it ever really stops in entertainment + creative fields the expression just changes. I don't know why people focus on specific decades because it's literally constant. That's why the idea it's associated with 'end times' is particuarly stupid.

This isn't everything of course there's so much more:

Like you say there was androgyny in the 70s (putting in effort not to post a Rush music video =P Bowie is too obvious too):



No OK I have to include this because against all odds these kind of 70s glasses came back in 2022~:



and in the 80s:





It's the 80s though so I have to mention some goth rock band that hates the goth label. You know like The Sisters of Mercy.

I totally believe that God called me, a non-binary, hard-of-hearing person, to follow the path of being a religious Sister of Mercy. How can one not listen to that call, to put one's full trust and faith in going on that journey? And how can one not be authentic to oneself when doing so?

Um what no? Google? That's not what. Lol.

Oh I know.



"Androgynous Noise Hand Permeates"

lol it's in the title.













I'm not including mullets in this post if I can help it.

and in the 90s:

Boys in the girl's room
Girls in the men's room
You free your mind in your androgyny - Androgyny, Garbage













Girls who want boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
Always should be someone you really love - Girls & Boys, Blur



and in the 2000s:

I was mostly trying to limit this to music but yeah





The tie thing was iconic I suppose I have to include that too:





I mean I don't need to- we all lived through this era not long ago lol.





















and in the 2010s:

What if I just posted photos of myself no lol. There are 2000s photos too.







At a certain point knives/swords became a theme of this post lol. But I have left out Kate Bush she has a bunch of photoshoots/videos with swords.

















I almost forgot Bones pink coat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqSpI1Jm0YE

No this was a moment. I think I had that as an avatar at one point actually lmfao. Or if not I thought about it.

and in the 2020s:





It's giving this lol:



It's kind of impressive that he's been doing this since the 90s and he's aged about 10 years in that time lol.











Cause of the camo jacket person in the video. I don't want to screenshot it but. Actually. Speaking of camo jackets:



She combined a lollipop with a camo jacket? That's amazing. 10/10 no notes.





I like how this photo is the inverse of a menacing guy with a puppy:













1920s?

Yeah and:

1950s:

This is actually from a 1949 film called I Was a Male War Bride but I want to end on a particular video for the 1940s because it's very dramatic.



I'm going to leave 'conservatives' this decade as a treat. They're not conserving androgyny.

1930s:



1940s:



Of course you can go back before this century and can go back centuries. And Paglia knows this she's just bored and everyone buying into it is bored.

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here - Macbeth, Shakespeare



Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron

I just don't get it anymore. I thought the invention of film etc would put a stop to this but it hasn't and surely nothing will.

[Nyctophilia]

I found this article and I have some thoughts about it. Mostly because it seems unecessarily gendered in the first place with what it's talking about. Like the elephant in the room is that there are tons of single guys. It's The Guardian though so I guess this is their thing.

Western society has always struggled with the issue of what to do with unmarried women. Take the religious mania for persecuting so-called witches in the middle ages. Communities fixated on single women - their era's "other" - not only because they were suspicious of their alternative lifestyles, but because of the collective guilt over their inability to cater or care for them.

When single women weren't assumed to be witches, they were often taken to be prostitutes ? to such an extent that the two terms were interchangeable, including in court documents.

No wonder modern spinsters feel conflicted about where we stand, and whether we're all we should be. When Professor Paul Dolan, a behavioural scientist at LSE, published research claiming that single women without children were happier than married ones, he was taken aback by the response. "I had lots of emails from single women saying thank you," says Dolan, "because now people might start believing them when they say they're actually doing all right. But more interesting was the reactions from people who didn't want to believe it.

"I'd underestimated how strongly people felt: there was something really insulting about choosing not to get married and have kids. It's all right to try and fail - but you'd better try. So with these competing narratives, you would be challenged internally as a single woman, where your experiences are different to what they're expected to be."

I think relationships are one of those things where if you're in a good relationship you're probably going to be a lot happier, but if it's not a good relationship you'd probably be happier single.

But there I go, living down to the spinster stereotype of envy and bitterness. How is it possible that, despite being raised by a feminist mother and enjoying a life rich with friendships and meaningful employment, I still feel the stigma of that word? Or fear that, even in middle age, I haven?t achieved the status of a true adult woman?

I think this is probably not ideological per se. If Humans weren't sensitive to social pressure and in many cases didn't have some genetic push to find partners and reproduce (I think intelligent women experience this less based on research since they want kids later - and often not at all - and are more the group social pressure has been directed at as a result.) Then we probably would have died out as a species and since Humans are a social species and really borderline eusocial other people are expected to reproduce so groups don't die out because Humans aren't good at living in too small groups. Even though the groups are ginormous now and Humans are everywhere it seems those tendencies are still there. You can manipulate people easily by telling them that birth rates are collapsing etc.

It is time, surely, to change the rules, and the conversation. As the population of never-married women expands, we should be honest about what it meant, and means, to be one. We should celebrate our identity and the life experience that has given it to us. We should reclaim our history and stop being defined by others. Why not start by taking back that dread word, spinster?

this gendered framing is so bizarre and historically inaccurate. First of all throughout history most people who didn't reproduce were men. It's just that before the modern era most of these men would die through war etc.

Cut to now having such a large percentage of single, childless women outside of war time is really an anomaly of the modern time period with the technological changes that have occured.

Also there are still more single men than women based on most statistics I see shared around. In a lot of countries anyway. Women are dating the same guys or having relationships with other women.

More to the point in my own personal life all of my older female cousins are married with kids so that's 3 women. I have three older male cousins too one has schizophrenia, has not been married and has no kids, I think according to stuff my dad said on some recent visit to him he might actually also be in some kind of psychatric facility. He was diagnosed after trying to stab his sister during a delusional episode. Another older male cousin (his older brother,) is married with kids and another older male cousin on my mum's side is afaik unmarried and has no kids. His sister had a young kid at my grandad's funeral in 2016 and she was supposed to be getting married during covid but that didn't happen and then also her dad died that year (I'm still not sure how.) I have two younger cousins but they're too young to know right now how their life's going to go. The youngest - a girl is still in highschool and her older brother recently graduated uni.

Me and my brother are still single, never married. Neither of us have dated anyone in about a decade. For him I think it's been even longer than me. Think he might have been in some kind of relationship or something while I was living away at uni and before he dropped out probably but can't remember. He had relationships when he was in high school too. Neither of us have kids.

My friend who I was in a relationship with for several months a decade ago before we broke up has been on a few dates since then but has had no relationships, never married, no kids. His sister is married and they have a kid.

I'm non-binary and weird sexually and have a variety of other issues (mostly undiagnosed I think,) so not really a decent example of anything myself. I think under different circumstances/personality traits I probably would have just ended up like other female relatives. But yeah this depends on so many different factors that it's impossible to say.

Eg: Maybe if I was more 'normal' I would have staid (is that a word? Or how you spell that? It's looking weird to me now lol. Oh my god I just realised I mean stayed how did I forget how to spell that word? That's terrible,) with one of the guys I was with before. Although, since I'm pretty sure I would have eventually wanted kids if I had my [BEEP] together and was in a relationship (I never wanted to give birth, but maybe surrogacy.) I'm not sure my relationship with my friend would have lasted regardless because he never wanted kids. He expressed that I think when we were in a relationship and still has that opinion now although he likes playing with his nephew and stuff. I sort of feel like that's an ideal situation in some ways because you get some of the benefits like young kids say cute/funny stuff, but less responsibility lol. I mean kids scare me lol. I don't know how to communicate with them so unless that mysteriously changed with my own kids there's also that.

I just haven't been around enough young kids in my life since I was a kid to really get practice and there's the anxiety. When it's someone else's kid there's also the sense you might say something wrong and the parents will blame you. I saw one of my younger cousins when I was 11 and he was a baby for a bit then mostly lost contact with family and I was still a kid then myself. His sister I've seen on a few occasions including when she was probably about 2-4 I forget exactly, and then probably 7 but these were brief interactions with other family there. Very rarely (I can only think of one time off the top of my head,) strangers kids have approached me in public and I didn't know what to say/do. I also feel like this is connected to my inability to intuitively know what to do with dogs (although I am a bit anxious around them too, I used to be scared of them as a kid and I'm not really now but like mildly anxious because they're so energetic unlike cats which seem more chill to me. I know some dogs are more chill than others though.) Like other people just enter baby/dog talk mode. I'm very analytical and I'd have to exercise that area of my brain basically.

I like the idea of teaching kids things though and taking them to museums and stuff (for some reason whenever I imagine it I always picture taking them to some museum lol.) Just trying to inspire them to get excited about learning stuff in general actually. I've never wanted to be a teacher though I don't like the idea of being around such a large amount of kids. That's another thing if you have kids there will be more kids and other parents and entire cultures. Also don't like the idea of being 'a mother.' Like it's all very gendered. I just want to be a weird alien that came to Earth and has kids now.

In my parent's generation in their families everyone was married except my mum's youngest brother who had a lot of issues too and they also all had/have kids except my dad's older sister who is married and I think wanted kids but couldn't have them. But I'm going off comments my dad said so who knows.

My dad's female friend was married at one point I think or maybe they were just in a long term relationship when I was a kid, she didn't have kids. I don't know if she's ever discussed if she wanted them or not. Because she was always in our life and my parents relationship was broken she had 'kids in her life' so to speak and I don't want to talk about it at length. My family don't communicate about anything serious most of the time and I don't think it's OK at all and the older I've gotten the more it's bothered me especially after hearing my mum talk about stuff as an adult once. Nothing about my parents relationship dynamic seemed good.

My brother's friend was engaged for a bit but has been single for years now and also childless. They're both in their early 30s as am I. He has another male friend who is struggling to date again now since moving back in with parents. He's gay though so the cultural norms/expectations/everything are different anyway. Most gay men end up 'spinsters' (I think Quentin Crisp used that word,) even now gay marriage has been legalised sapphic women are more likely to get married although also more likely to get divorced.

"By heterosexuals the life after death is imagined as a world of light, where there is no parting. If there is a heaven for homosexuals, which doesn't seem very likely, it will be very poorly lit and full of people they can feel pretty confident they will never have to meet again. It is only partly because they are ashamed of themselves and wish to remain unrecognized that this environment seems so desirable. The chief reason is that it makes possible contacts of astounding physical intimacy without the intervention of personality. To either partner, the other is a phallus garlanded with fantasies, chiefly of masculinity. The homosexual world is a world of spinsters. Most homosexuals over the age of twenty-five will play, on the physical level, an active, passive or unspecified role with the same or a different partner from night to night or even from hour to hour, but emotionally they search perpetually for a real man who desires passionately (as opposed to making do with) another man. This being, if he exists, is so rare that one might as well enter a monastery on reaching puberty. The less drastic alternative is to live a real sex life in a dream world. This can best be done in the dark with strangers."

The thing about lighting is weird to me because I've always felt more comfortable in low lit environments. It seems to reduce anxiety. I also like certain tones. I don't like bright white lights.

As modern, single women, we are not supposed to feel that we?re missing out. And so we feel obliged to hide any feelings of shame or inadequacy or longing.

I know I don't want to take my many privileges for granted and I suspect that many single women in a similar position to me dread being thought of as whiny or desperate. And so we don't talk about the subject, and we try not to acknowledge that spinsters still exist. Perhaps that's the reason that, instead of finding my #inspo from modern have-it-all heroines, I prefer to look back and learn from the spinsters who came before.

I relate to this because it's clear to me that no one now knows what they're doing. I don't think they necessarily did in the past either but I don't even think they really want to have real conversations about things anymore. But I mostly have to look back at 'sexual outliers' for lack of a better way of saying it historically speaking, and tbh some of them ended up getting married anyway like Rachilde. She had a kid and she didn't seem to like that experience. I would consider it to have been a mistake for her.

She met Alfred Vallette in 1885 and they married in 1889, despite his disapproval of her writing and her sometimes shocking public behavior. With their marriage, she regrew her hair and adopted a more subdued presentation of herself. A few months after their civil ceremony wedding, their only child was born. Rachilde named their daughter Gabrielle after her own estranged mother. By most accounts, she disliked motherhood and prioritized writing and supporting other writers over her daughter.[9][3][8][10]

Rachilde remained socially active for much of her life, appearing around town with young men even into her sixties and seventies. There were naturally rumors of licentious adultery, but she had always preferred the company of gay men and men like Maurice Barres, for whom there was pleasure in the torture of restraint. In 1935, however, when Rachilde was seventy-five years-old, her husband Alfred Vallette died at his desk. Her truly Bohemian phase had ended with her marriage to Vallette. Her active social presence ended with his death. After more than fifty years, her Tuesday salons came to an end.[16][2]

I think it was Hirschfeld's opinion that people like Rachilde probably shouldn't have kids.

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/v...=dissertations

An example can be seen in how Hirschfeld discusses whether people designated male at birth who dressed or desired to dress and/or live as a woman should marry or not. Hirschfeld argued that they should not marry because, "They are mostly very restless spirits, inclined towards adventure, and would find it difficult to chain themselves to domestic duties..." (1910, p. 39 in Stryker and Whittle, 200 Hirschfeld's claims about transsexual women using words that connote traditionally masculine behaviors like "restless" and "adventure", as well as his belief that they would not be suited for "domestic duties" indicate that he did not see transsexual women as fitting into the category of "women".

No... What? I'm trying to find the quote. I remember that part and I'm sure he was talking about those designated female at birth. Why on Earth would he describe feminine males as being restless and needing adventure etc? Why would they even be doing domestic duties as males? Why would that be relevant to bring up?

Look see. This is very important too. He is not talking about transsexuals in the first place. Please stop misreading stuff based on current labels. This seems to be a university based url!

At this time I would like to touch upon one other point, namely, whether these persons appear fitting to enter into marriage. As we discovered, many are married, most even happily. Only in one case (11) was the marriage a truly unhappy one because of the transvestite drive. Of course, in this case the wife was psychopathic, suffered persecution mania, delusions, and for a long time was institutionalized. It is unconditionally advised that a transvestite disclose everything to the spouse. One cannot assume that the unprepared spouse will be so accepting. I was surprised that many wives found no difficulty even traveling with their husbands dressed in women's clothing, or even sitting evenings at the family table, both spouses in women's clothing.

So you can see what gendered language he uses here. When he says transvestite women he does not mean trans women he means genetic females who are masculine.

But even if the wife is accepting of her husband's preference, I still have my doubts as to the suitability of these marriages; it cannot be argued that transvestism belongs to the sexual intermediaries in whose case the outer appearance of the opposite sex is exceptionally considerable. In cases of lesser features, for example, no more than 33 1/3 percent then there can easily be a balance between the married couple, so that the descendants would not be endangered by a hereditary burden. Or the other hand, where the sexual gap of the personality is such a great one, as in our cases, there is such a deviation from the pure sex type that the deviation, even if it should not itself be considered a degeneration can lead to offspring who are psychologically disunified and frivolous who are unstable, degenerated individuals. Of course, I cannot produce any proof of this very theoretical supposition; on the contrary, the children of the transvestites whom I saw gave me the impression of being good and healthy. But the material available at this time is insufficient to dispel expressed fears.

He repeatedly uses male language for amab transvestites. Then since he's not just talking about amab transvestites mentions transvestite women aka afab people:

Raising children today demands one to have nerves of steel. Transvestites who want to raise children must be physically healthy and strong as well as mentally well-developed persons. They must be careful with their choice of marriage partners because of the children. Moreover, I would be against transvestite women marrying. They are mostly very restless spirits, inclined toward adventure, and find it difficult to chain themselves to domestic duties. In fact, most suitable would be--which is in accordance with the wishes of these persons--a transvestite man and a somewhat manly kind of woman, who naturally need not be a transvestite, or a transvestite woman to a womanly man, so that, to quote Schopenhauer [in The World as Will and Idea in the chapter "Metaphysics of Sexual Love" (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: "Metaphysik der Geschlechtsliebe")]: "The degree of his manliness corresponds to the degree of her womanliness"; to be sure, it would be more correct to say in our case the degree of her manliness to the degree of his womanliness.

OK I could see how potentially you could assume he was talking about two groups transvestite men who dress as women but don't identify as women, and then maybe those who do. Since he wrote about a lot of different types of people. However within the book you cite which is not his it quotes from him (I've read this quote in his book before but I forget which book and don't really want to dig further atm):

As the old land-based feudal order was replaced by capitalism, the very existence of transvestite and other transgendered women and men had been largely driven underground. Many were forced to pass as the opposite sex in order to survive. Transvestite women passed as men and became soldiers, pirates and highway robbers. Yet transvestism continued to emerge culturally throughout Europe in holiday celebrations, rituals, carnival days, masquerade parties, theater and opera.

If you know anything about masculine women and trans men throughout history you would know they tend to go off to war and become pirates and [BEEP] like that. You can figure this out easily by not just - what I think they did - reading some random quote somewhere out of context.

Oh god fine let's see if I have the book downloaded.... Even though they don't even cite his book so obviously read this extract from the other book with all the other context too.

Yeah.

So this is how he uses the terms:

No matter how much transvestite men feel like women when dressed in women's clothing and women feel like men when dressed in men's clothing, they still remain aware that in reality it is not so. To be sure, some do imagine and if so, then the wish is the originator of the thought--that their skin is softer, their forms rounder, and their movements more gracious than are usual for men, but they know full well, and often are depressed by the fact that they do not physically belong to the desired sex they love. If they did consider themselves actually to be women, whether cross-dressed or not, as persons with megalomania think they are the Messiah or millionaires or even the emperor and pope in one person, then it would be an illusory idea, and the condition would have to be addressed as mental illness, as being insane, as paranoia.

He uses transvestite women once in the entire text just in that part but he also talks about afab people far less in general in that book - there's some discussion about pirates again lol...

As far as she can remember, she never felt she was a girl. Whenever she played house she always wanted to be the father. She preferred to play pirate, at the helm with saber and whip.

I think her name was Mary? But yeah 'her adventerous life' etc. I didn't read this third section of the book as throughly when reading it years ago but even without this it still seemed obvious to me:

The British pirate Maria Read, too, who in the early eighteenth century made the seas uncertain, had been systematically raised as a boy by her mother, herself of the manly kind. Her mother hired her out as a servant to a French lady. However, Maria applied for a job as a sailor on a British warship and thereby began her adventurous life, which ended only when she fell in love with a soldier, whom she married [E. Whitehead. Life, Deeds and Fate of the Most Remarkable British Robbers and Pirates, Etc. (Leben, Taten und Schicksale der merkwuerdigsten englischen Raeuber und Piraten usw.) German by J. Sporschill. Leipzig 1834, Part 2, pp. 75-81.] Bloch [Sex Life in England (Geschlechtsleben in England). Part 3. Berlin 1903, p. 56] considers this female pirate, according to her love story, very justifiably as "doubtlessly heterosexual."

I really don't know why they would assume he was talking about someone amab when saying transvestite women. Also I think it can be safely assumed by his repeated use of tranvestite men when talking about amab people that transvestite woman means an afab person like the above.

How annoying!

You're the one who projected your own sex stereotypes onto your assumption of what he was saying lol.

I get it - I don't read entire books typically but you have to read enough that you're sure you undertand the quote when writing academic papers at least. This isn't your personal blog.

So yeah one incredibly weird relationship situation where everyone pretends it's fine, and everyone else who is long term single and childless I've known has been male.

Most of the female YouTubers who talk about their relationship status are in relationships or married. Some older in their 30s having kids but the younger ones don't have kids. There's one I can think of who is probably about 27 who was in a relationship but has been single for a couple of years I think? But I'm not keeping constant tabs on that just aware. The YouTubers who are or might be single are usually [BEEP] like this one genderfluid trans guy in the UK who seems to have been single for many years and is also autistic and has ADHD. No kids as is the trend. There are some married couples I follow who don't want kids and have cats instead. Then there are other people who are [BEEP] and haven't disclosed their relationship status.

Even in the article her sister is having a kid:

But now my little sister was having a baby, and I was single and approaching a big birthday. The odds were increasingly against me ? even if the notorious statistic that you?re more likely to be killed by a terrorist than you are to find a husband after the age of 40 has, in recent years, been debunked.

Anecdotally I'm aware of older women on mental health sites who are long term single, and the journalists are clearly not doing OK. I'd be surprised if statistically women are in general more likely to be single. It even seems that outside of weird journalist think pieces like this most of the people complaining online are male. Even the women who do complain or form movements seem to be more a response to the years of men complaining and PUA and general sexism so they want revenge for that so they've started their own weird movements to get revenge. It's not really about being single even most of the time. And a lot of those women are younger as well.

Like this woman just has evil vibes lol:



It's not often someone will speak as though they're a super villain with malice dripping off every word but yeah lol. And it does remind me of YouTubers like Sandman but the female equivalent. Not even masking the psychopathy lol. What a time to be alive.

The fact that the average age at marriage (in heterosexual couples) has never been later ? 31.5 for women in the UK, 33.4 for men ? offers little comfort, because the singles market is at its most crowded between the ages of 35 and 47, and in that market women outnumber men.

This is another thing about our culture I don't get because in theory you can date younger or older men. If younger men and older women don't want to date each other than maybe they should acknowlege that's their own issue? I realise there's a huge stigma attatched to that which is something worth complaining about (but instead neurotic puritans are going to do the opposite and complain about age and height gap relationships on social media being pedophilia OK,) but otherwise. Probably not helped by the 353535 news stories about attractive blond women (I swear they're always blond lol,) having sex with teenage boys. At any rate most of those women are in their 20s. There's an epidemic of hot exclusively female teachers and other attractive women in their early-mid 20s having sex with teenage boys I'm told. It feels very legit and not at all just what gets attention.