GreenEggsAndJam
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User ID: 2256
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
The feminist solution is obvious.
Women having one night stands and/or affairs are self-harming. The article you quoted acknowledges as much. Statistics on female orgasm in one night stands are consistent on this point, one night stands suck for women.
They are also harming women as a class. Even if you are a rare extreme outlier who regularly has satisfying ONS sex, you are normalizing the cultural pressure on other women to do the same.
As feminism is about improving the condition of women as a class, promiscuity is anti-feminist. Having an affair with a married man is anti-feminist (this should be obvious with even two seconds of thought - it is by definition betraying class solidarity)
Promiscuity is bad for the woman engaging in it, and bad for women as a whole.
But third wave feminism is all about empowering women to make whatever stupid self harming choices they want! Well, that's a very specific sub brand of "feminism" that frankly is not convincingly feminism at all, given it's other attempts to make obvious disempowerment of women "empowering". No, you can't have eyeliner sharp enough to kill the patriarchy, permanently deforming your feet with high heels isn't liberation, and having meaningless, orgasmless sex with men who have no respect for you will never be feminist.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Given the big reveal is that she's married to a man, it seems like the character is never actually a lesbian.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
If anyone has suggestions for other things worth doing or being, or that satisfy that "check my phone while waiting in the line to pickup the kids" nudge that avoids my new no-nos, I'm all ears.
Duolingo is addictive, and while not especially useful (it won't get you to fluency) it seems harmless enough. Memrise is actually better, but less addictive.
For intelligent low-glitter puzzle games, I like (free, no ads, no garbage):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles
Poetry a day style blogs could be nice, I just tend to binge and forget them, but could follow an actively updating one to check it once a day.
Ebooks can also help. Check if your library lets you borrow them via Libby/similar.
Good luck! I've never succeeded at maintaining my own breaks very long. Sticking time limits on the browser never helps. Deleting the browser helps for a week or two, then inevitably I simply need to Google some medical question or whatever and then I'm back at my bullshit.
I am perfectly well aware this is probably my biggest self-development problem and I'd be a much better person if I did break free, but I've gotten so bad at managing boredom without internet it's kind of pathetic, and every so often I encounter something cool and interesting and worthwhile and it's like the damn rat with the intermittent pellets all over again.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
The accountant is assumed to be man because he has a pregnant wife. Unless it's a lesbian whose wife conceived via sperm donor, which is not "assumption of details", it's actively violating Occam's razor.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
their urge to put makeup and nail polish on me (!) and do my hair,
I've seen girls do this to brothers, especially younger brothers, but I've never seen or heard of this being done to dads. Also don't get why you'd care, just say no. Get them one of those giant groomable barbie heads if they really want.
Do you have unusually long hair? If not, doing your hair wouldn't be appealing anyway.
Girls get plenty of opportunities to practice grooming activities with friends, and don't seem to see fathers as a particularly relevant vector for it anyway.
Can't argue with the teen drama concerns. The stereotype is that girls are much much easier before puberty, less likely to be hyperactive or violent (...I'm talking normal schoolyard violence), and then after puberty the boys hopefully already have some self control and/or people have given up on hoping for it from them, while the girls go mad on hormones for a few years and have tons of power struggles with their parents.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
This website (that I found via Google and don't know anything else about, so no clue re reliability) claims childless rate in Israeli Jewish women is only 6.4% (in a sample of women aged 45-60)
https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/
That only gets us from 3 to 2.8 or so
But for example if 44% of women have 3 kids, 30% have 2, and the remaining non-childless have 1, we'd get reasonably close to 2.1, while still having 3 kids be the plurality most common number. (in practice I'm cheating since I'm excluding 3+, which obviously also exists although IME is pretty rare in secular circles. Whatever, it's just a general example.)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
But we see that, eg, religious women who are highly educated still have more kids. So there are clearly some things that can at least ameliorate the trend.
(I'm also not entirely convinced the problem is education qua education and not the incredibly delayed entry into adulthood. What I see a lot of is women feeling like they are finally "ready"/at a socially acceptable stage to have kids, and then starting to have kids - ie, wanting to reproduce - and continuing to want to have kids, but running out of time to have more of them. This is entirely anecdotal, of course, but I see this pattern incredibly frequently, where women describe badly wanting N+1 kids where N is the current number they have, and they'll iterate on this until eventually they have to give up on it because they're too old, their husband is opposed, etc. That's not "women don't want kids", its "women make decisions, especially when young, that aren't conducive to having more kids, and end up bearing the consequence via having fewer kids than they would have otherwise chosen to have")
Anyway. It's not as if we need to get back to fifties level reproduction, nudging things upwards a bit would already help.
(Actually, in that vein, what are the differences between low fertility and extremely low fertility countries? Are there any trends there?)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I agree with all of this comment and hence don't have anything useful to add, except idly wondering if pushing strongly for people to think of dating as barter, not sales, would have any positive effect on the discourse.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Even though you claim you didn't mean to reply to this comment, you quoted the question I asked in this comment, not in my original comment.
And it felt like a very obvious attempt at a derail, hence my lack of patience with it. I have, nonetheless, deleted my comment, and we can continue the discussion where you say you intended it to be.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Right, and viewing crying as a lack of self control and a lack of emotional maturity would be something I'd want to run away from. Someone who lets himself cry is strongly signalling that he does not believe crying is a lack of control and a lack of emotional maturity.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
There is definitely policy-level pressure to reduce c-section rates/hospitals proudly citing their low C-section rates/other things going in with the C-section rate aside from younger mothers. And lots of support for VBAC and even for VBA2C
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
It both reduces birth trauma and reduces health risks of further births — once you have a cesarean section it becomes progressively more and more dangerous to get pregnant with each subsequent c-section. (This is why some people try to have vaginal birth after c-sections)
.... In writing this comment, it occurs to me to wonder if this is an underappreciated factor in lower fertility rates in modern times. One reason Israel tries hard to avoid c-sections is because they assume it will be upsetting to mothers to have their fertility curtailed by having them. My understanding from people I know in the states is the attitude towards c-sections is much more cavalier, since it's no big deal it ends up meaning you can't have more than one kid after this. This must obviously have at least some depressing effect on birth rates...
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
To me the use of the word love here is a bit abstract.
What would be causes of the love? What would be observable effects of the love? How would the two parties coordinate on knowing whether they love each other or if the word even means the same thing to both of them (or if different meanings, then a difference they can live with)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Eh, why not try to answer anyway?
What makes you a good partner? What makes someone a good partner to you?
Who needs universal buy in, just describe what you personally think the opposite sex potentially has to offer, and what you personally have available to offer them.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I actually agree with this, from a somewhat different perspective, which is that I find it so deeply weird how blue Americans react to larger families as an exotic and bizarre species. Meanwhile, at least on Facebook, I see loads of blue tribe women wishing they could have another baby but feeling like it's too socially unacceptable or having no mental model for how it would work logistically. This seems very fixable: Start a concerted propaganda campaign making 3-4 kids the "normal" family size and < 3 kind of sad and pathetic and weird, and given how much human nature seems to anyway want >2 kids I bet you could get somewhere with it.
(No bets for Europe, where having kids at all has tanked. But once you've had one baby they tend to be contagious, and Blue America still really wants babies...)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Specifics. What are you offering? What are you trying to receive?
If not interested in an LTR I guess the question isn't relevant, unless you want to imagine a hypothetical member of each sex and what you'd suggest them to offer and to look for.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Part two: what I actually meant to ask, even though that's not where the discussion went
What I can offer:
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I will cheerlead your goals, brainstorm with you how to pursue them, make time and space in the relationship for them to be a priority.
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I will communicate my desires directly, including occasionally saying "I don't know, I just want something I can't articulate" or "I just want you to magically read my mind" if that's what I want. I am pretty in touch with my desires, of which I have many, and I don't like beating around the bush. (if you prefer more indirect, coy communication I am not for you. I don't do indirect flirting, I do "let's have sex")
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I value regular and high quality sex, and will actively pursue it as a goal.
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assuming you are admirable (otherwise why I am in a relationship with you), I will express my admiration frequently, including to our kids. Similarly I will both provide and demand physical affection frequently. (once again, if this isn't for you, it's no longer something being offered but a warning.)
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I am shit at housework and will be hiring cleaning help.
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I will do extensive research on big life decisions and provide summaries as needed for why I think the correct choice is X and what case could be made for alternative Y. I'll handle the load of researching correct child rearing, correct mortgage borrowing, etc.
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I will handle necessary social coordination of who is doing what with whom and why this matters and where we need to respond how.
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I will be a highly involved parent
Etc.
In exchange, what I expect from a partner:
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someone who will make space for me to nurture my social network, i.e. willing to enable me to host social events, carve out time and money to support my friends, etc
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regular orgasms
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large quantities of physical affection
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an intelligent and thoughtful sounding board for thinking out major life decisions
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highly involved parent
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whatever our disagreements, always backs me up in public and does not undermine me in front of other people.
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equal partner around the house (but this can simply be paying for more cleaning help)
There's some asymmetries here, I don't care if my partner is good at communicating their needs, even though that's something I offer on my end.
Also this isn't even close to a complete list, it's just a sample, which makes me realize that the scope of the question was too ambitious. Oh well. I'm too tired to continue writing, but felt like I had promised this second part of the response, so here it is, even if incomplete.
As promised, my own answers:
I actually didn't mean the focus to be on traits, so much as on what you're offering in the relationship. So less "smart", more "interesting conversation partner", less "hot", more " regular access to sex with someone hot", if that makes sense as a distinction. Nonetheless I'll answer in both ways.
So, part one:
Traits I found sexually attractive:
Attractive face, healthy lifestyle, not fat. I didn't care about height unless the guy was not just shorter than me but extremely shorter than me. I didn't care about six-packs beyond "not fat" (tangent: I genuinely do not understand why this is the shorthand for attractive muscle. I am pretty sure I am a typical woman in my attraction to nice biceps and pectorals, based on both accurate internet stereotypes about women's obsession with nice arms and basic sexual dimorphism logic where clearly sexed traits like upper body strength are more attractive. Very defined six packs just look vaguely insectoid, whereas very defined arm muscle ... Drool...). Ugly faces were a total deal breaker, though. For my standards of "not fat", I'd roughly say fat visibly spilling over waistline of pants would be my cutoff for "ew, no".
Ambition and clear life goals. I actually didn't care about money, I had vaguely assumed I was going to be the primary breadwinner because of my chosen career‡, but I could feel my sexual interest shrivel up and die when guys didn't at all know what they wanted from life, or when all they wanted was to "kind of exist, I guess". I had empathy for them, sure, but it was also a super obvious kill switch for my libido.
Emotional stability. I am the stereotypical neurotic, anxious, over-reacting woman attracted to calm, grounded, under-reacting men. Neurotic men just fed into my own anxiety, thereby killing my libido, therefore, not hot.
Very affectionate, especially physically.
Signaling caretaking and responsibility — this was actually very distinctly separate from caretaking and responsibility towards myself. It was things like someone being an older sibling and talking about ways they cared for their younger siblings, or someone being involved in community service, or someone helping old ladies carry their groceries. All of these things were very hot, and then guys without it just... Were less hot.
There were other traits that weren't really about hotness but about basic compatibility, like I needed a guy smart enough I could respect him, and obviously for marriage I wanted us to be on the same page re values and life goals. The above is just the list of things that made guys more/less hot to me, and then things like "don't hate his family" was just necessary qualification checking before the big leap.
Traits I offer, the package, as limited by my own self awareness:
Physically hot - obviously there's a limit to how accurately I can gauge my own attractiveness, but still... *
Playful, sense of humor
Smart, curious
Money and good social connections
The rest is harder to identify — from an outside perspective I can say a guy is involved in community giving, from an inside perspective I don't consider myself that way or think of it as a trait I offer even though I do, stepping back to look at myself objectively, get involved in community initiatives, regularly get turned to for help by my friends, etc. I also think some of the things I "offer" are technically more "negative" traits, ie I am relatively happy to be "needy" followed by being abundantly grateful and admiring to the person meeting my needs, which sounds vaguely bad while still being pretty clearly something men I was with enjoyed. I guess the more positive psychology term for this would be "vulnerability" perhaps?
‡ I was right
*(subtract points for being the kind of person who occasionally browses the motte, an unbelievably unhot trait. In total seriousness I think my level of being online is easily the least sexy thing about me and not something I'd ever tolerate in a partner, yet still I return, like a dog to its own vomit ... Sigh)
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