Not to bring comedians and their bits back into this. But Ron White ha a hysterical bit about men watching porn and how they actually enjoy seeing a big hard…
It’s pretty funny. And some truth to it.
I am not one to hide or shy away from who I am.
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Here’s an experiment for the guys: make a female profile on any kind of dating/meetup site. When a guy messages you to say “you’re beautiful”, agree with him. Just say “Yes.” or “I know.”
You will be astonished at how furious they get. Most of them will immediately take it back. They will call you “rude” for not thanking them. It’s almost never a freely-given compliment. It’s a transaction. And WE are not allowed to recognize OUR OWN beauty. It’s only valid if we pretend, every goddamn time, to be oblivious and allow men to tell us about it.[quote=“Missy_Pants, post:175, topic:101530”]
Women read.
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50 Shades sold like … a billion copies and it’s not even particularly risque (and I’m not even going to touch on the other gross stuff about it). My copy of Valley of Horses (the sequel to Clan of the Cave Bear) was falling apart it had been read so much. If you dropped the book it would fall open to the part where the two main characters finally get it on. About 5 pages of explicitly descriptive sex.[quote=“Mindysan33, post:180, topic:101530”]
I have been. You don’t know me or my experiences, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make any assumptions.
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Ditto. And this goes back to what was touched on earlier; we’re not supposed to see our own attractiveness. We’re SUPPOSED to get that validation from men and men only. We’re trained early on to desire it.
My sister’s a lesbian. She’s been with her girlfriend since they were both 15. You think she wants male validation for her appearance? She literally doesn’t care, but men will get super upset if she fails to acknowledge something she has no desire or use for.
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It’s because men have low amounts of the sex motivating hormone estrogen.
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When I was young and angry I may have yelled “I HAVE EYES” when a stranger complimented me. LOL
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To me, it can range from Rich Kids Of Instagram to Basic White Girl. A boring range, but still a range, technically. People of color not included. Not mainstream, not included. Too fat, too thin, too athletic, too this, too that, not included.
Nerd/geek? Included a little, provided it’s for show. See: Adorkable, Hollywood Geek, Hollywood Ugly. Real women who are smart, tough as nails, and passionate about their interests need not apply.
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That is a brilliant idea; but I have to wonder how many guys with contrary positions on this topic have the conviction to actually accept your challenge.
Put your money where your mouth is, fellas; come take a walk in our shoes.
Since people seem to want keep bringing up comedians as if they are some sort of infallible ‘experts’ on human sexuality, Chris Rock once made a good point about how sex itself is readily available to women (whether we actually want it or not) because by the mere happenstance of being female, we are always being offered unsolicited peen.
#“Women are offered dick everyday.”
And while there’s obviously some wild hyperbole therein for comedic effect, his main point is valid:
Our societal structure reduces sexuality into a series of perpetual tit-for-tat propositions usually advanced by males; and females are left in the position of constantly having to deflect and deny the majority of those advances, if we don’t want to risk the possibility of being shamed and/or vilified.
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Oh I think most of the women here could tell THAT story. The guys complaining that no women liked “nerdy guys” while simultaneously refusing to let me play D&D with them and calling me ugly.[quote=“Melz2, post:201, topic:101530”]
Put your money where your mouth is, fellas; come take a walk in our shoes
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Honestly, “make a female profile” would probably be sufficient. You’ll get enough crap without poking the bear LOL
Edit: You don’t even need a photo, probably!
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Way back in my living in the residence hall days one of the girls there started reading to us from one of her romance books. Seriously the only difference between that passage and a Penthouse forum letter was the vocabulary. Women like porn, just not what immediately comes to mind as ‘porn’.
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[quote=“manybellsdown, post:197, topic:101530”]
My copy of Valley of Horses (the sequel to Clan of the Cave Bear) was falling apart it had been read so much. If you dropped the book it would fall open to the part where the two main characters finally get it on. About 5 pages of explicitly descriptive sex.[/quote]
The funny thing was that Clan was completely different and totally non sexy. I was amused when Lifetime decided to pick it up… I’d always wondered how they’d make a TV series out of the books since I’m pretty sure most people remember the books after Clan primarily for the sex. As I recall, the “discovery” of fellatio by the protagonist was an important plot point.
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The big problem is that men are just too emotional.
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Hey. HEY. Don’t judge me for crying at the end of Big Fish. I was chopping onions at the time. In my seat. At the theater. To snack on.
LOOK AWAY. IM HIDEOUS.
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Jesus I haven’t seen that movie in years. Before my father died, which means I’m now tearing up just thinking about the end of that movie.
Jerk.
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Dead poets society does it too for me.
Honestly. I became far more emotionally charged for such things after my first son was born.
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That’s considered romantic? Serious question.
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She considers it romantic porn. That is its sexually charged but more about the relationship and emotions they share. Not just sex.
I don’t completely agree with the perspective; however, I understand the view.
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Ah, see for me that book/movie had no real relationship or emotions involved. It’s an outsider pretending to represent BDSM in order to titillate the reader with – ooohh – edgy stuff.
I’m utterly baffled why people think it’s a love story.
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There was a lot of that in the Earth’s Children series. I read Clan Of The Cave Bear, then Valley Of Horses, and stopped there. There were quite a few five page sex scenes in just those two books. For me, it’s like reading a five page mayonnaise scene. I don’t understand it, it’s obviously not written for me, but whatever.
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In which I am quite positive I’ve existed in some bizarro universe.
In my youth, I’ve been on the receiving end of some puzzling (as in, why choose me?) or even straightforward propositions from both women and men - the most straightforward ones (literally, “I want to fuck you”) coming from women. Of course, nowhere near the same proportions as women receive. But I have had stalkers. Boy, have I had stalkers.
I’ve discussed it with female friends, and generally I get that I’ve been “cute”, but I think it goes deeper than that - that I seem to project some sort of naivety, which seems to be an invitation for advances, though it should not be.
Honestly, I think men see something beautiful and pure (primarily young girls or boys), and they have to exert dominance over it, even if it means shitting all over it.
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You and me both.
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Indeed! I have no reason to assume that most who remark upon my appearance have been of any specific sex or gender, but the effect it had upon me growing up was wondering what exactly a person’s visual appearance has to do with attraction, or sexuality. How I rationalized it was as a conflation of sex with reproduction, and that that was kind of immature and often self-deceptive. Being attracted to a person because of their (for example) body type seems to have any long-term relevance if one plans upon making babies with them. Whereas if it was simply for release of sexual tension (as often seems to be the case with horndogs) it would not especially matter what the other participant looked like, any more than when finding a competent masseuse. So whenever I encounter somebody who is desperate for immediate sex - but yet it has to be hetero, with a person who looks a certain way - I tend to assume that they are confusing reproductive imperatives for sexual behaviors.
It also taught me about how deeply people fetishize the visual, generally. But I still have not found a way to work around that.
The notion that people have different levels of intimacy is not one that all people subscribe to. People seem to be fundamentally unknowable to each other. But they posit a kind of intersubjectivity because it seems more comforting than the reality. This in no way precludes caring for or knowing about people, except that it is only your conceptual model based upon the person, rather than the person themselves. Relationships are phenomenological - for example, I can be said to have “a relationship” to every person who has ever existed, and me choosing to favor some over others would be my own personal problem, a fixation. What I can do as an agent and actor in life is try to negotiate with others what kind of relationships we have with each other.
I classify the three main models of relationships as:
- self-centered (infantile)
- inter-personal (romantic)
- social (trans-personal)
