It’s sad to think people would want to snuggle (and maybe even pay to snuggle?) with a stranger. I can’t imagine being so starved for that kind of physical connection that’s not even sexual, just another human person up against you, that that seems like fun. That sounds to me like a really major kind of loneliness and a sad thing to say about a city that it’s got enough people in it that sounds appealing to keep a place like that open.
I like to snuggle with my husband (and he seems to enjoy it,too), but it’s because we’re in love with each other. There’s an emotional connection there,too, not just the biological human desire to be touched by other humans every now and then. I think it would feel super icky to share that experience with someone else I wasn’t in love with. Even more than it would to go have sex with someone I wasn’t in love with. I’m pretty sure I’d be less disturbed to find out he’d visited a brothel and had intercourse with a stranger than that he went to a snuggle house just to curl up with someone else.
I have a feeling the woman in the article is not a pet owner and maybe doesn’t know any pet owners. I bet she’d be SHOCKED how many men and women she knows that love to snuggle with their pets. That calm physical connection with another sentient being’s warm body is comforting and they dig it, even if it’s not a person they’re in love with, or even actually another human. It’s a pretty decent substitute and produces a lot of the same warm happy chemical reactions. And I bet none of those pet owners are just using saying they enjoy just cuddling with their dogs and cats as a front for bestiality.
‘‘What I meant to say was that I don’t know any real men who just want to snuggle. That’s the messaging I was supposed to put out there. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go deposit a rather large paycheck from the patriarchy.’’
This isn’t a blog post, this is a business plan. A business plan for a snuggle house annex that’s full of snuggly dogs. If I didn’t have my 50 pound snugglebug at home, I’d get a yearly pass TODAY.
I have to admit that when I read the article I thought “It is a sad and lonely person who needs this service”, but then I thought that it might be the highlight of their week, having real human contact after days of tedious office work and alienating city life.
Yes! I completely agree with this. That’s why I don’t like the notion of separate education for girls/boys. Even though there are some problems with co-ed education (IMO most of them caused by traditional methods of teaching that could be corrected in ways other than apartheid) I think it is crucial for genders to mix and mingle throughout their lives; have opportunities to make friends, work alongside one another, fraternize, empathize, etc.
The best way to understand and respect another is to experience life alongside them, to see first hand that they share remarkably similar drives, challenges, desires, etc, despite differences in gender, age, race, etc…
I’ve always had many platonic male friends. Many of those friendships have been lasting for decades and every one of these people are like family. So it makes me bristle every time I hear people saying that ‘true’ friendship between men/women is supposedly impossible; because that broad statement is demeaning to not only my own experiences but also the character of the wonderful friends in my life. I do think that this unfortunate observation is true to too many people, but that’s because they have internalize that gender is some rigid binary instead of merely another highly nuanced set of characteristics that billions of humans express in as many personal ways. If you bust out the doors expecting a pile of stereotypes, chances are you will fulfill your own prophecy by precisely seeking those stereotypes.
Anyways. I guess all I’m saying is that most men in my life definitely can dig a good snuggle. At face value.
Plenty of them do, but they’re just dirty MRAs who need to be shouted down. Men are in a privileged position in society and should stop complaining every time somebody hurts their feelings. After what they’ve done to women and minorities for centuries…
According to the video and the website, the snugglers are employees (1 man, 3 women). The sting would presumably be to have some officers go in for a cuddle session and ask for extras (and then go after the owner for running a brothel). Unless they’re going to have female officers train at “Snuggle U”, get jobs at the place, and then go after the clients (the sting might not last very long once they escorted a few clients out the front door in cuffs, and they’d have trouble pinning anything on the owner).
(a) our species, like the bonobos, has integrated sexuality into our grooming behavior repertoire and without social pressure there isn’t a really sharp line between them until one gets to specifically genital stimulation toward orgasm;
(b) our society doesn’t deal at all well with sexuality and historically has entrenched assumptions that touch (heck, that most interaction between folks who are potentially compatible) must be aimed toward eventual seduction.
I’ve always approved of the fact that SF fandom is, overall, a bit less hung up on touch. Friends of either/any gender may be greeted with hugs and backrubs, and sometimes strangers if they indicate willingness. There are some other subcommunities who have carved out similar space for nonthreatening grooming behavior.
Having said that: I’ve never quite understood paying for sex anyway, so I’m not sure I understand paying for cuddling either. Being held while I sob, if nobody else is available, maybe… but pets can partly fill that particular need.
Yeah, it bugs me a bit to see that stuff, but then I remember that as a white male with an education I have been given a lot of basically undeserved advantages.
Had I made the same (common) mistakes that I did as a young person, but been a woman, had brown skin or been from a relatively poor family then my life would have gone very differently. As it stands I have never struggled to find a job, even when I was a lazy slackass pothead. Almost never faced an empty cupboard, and the few occasions when I did it was clearly and obviously a result of a series of minor but poor choices on my part (i.e. buy beer instead of oatmeal).
TV tends to portray us men as either ultracompetent ubermen (i.e. most cop shows or action films) in perfect shape with encylopedic knowledge, or brainless knuckleheads. On the other hand, TV tends to portray women as mere plot points for those ubermen or doofuses to enact their personal journeys upon or around. So we men need to quit whining and start helping fix it all.
True that. I’ll start complaining about men getting a bum rap in media when ten percent of the movies that come out can even hit two of the points in the Bechdel test. Not even pass it, just hit two of the points.
FYI, since you quoted someone, it is not clear that you are replying to ild unless you go to their post. This is why I think we should see “in reply to ____” every time we reply to someone.
I am not sure if ild thinks that men pointing out how sexism negatively affects them are (A) MRAs who need to be shouted down or (B) men who are unfairly shouted down.
