rae
A linear combination of eigengenders
User ID: 2231
rae
6d ago
I was fairly similar to you in that I eventually mostly accepted my situation after 2 years or so of puberty. The problem was when I opened Pandora’s box again and tried things outside the default heterosexual male experience, and the same feelings came back up, because holy crap what do you mean I don’t have to take care of this annoying wild horse that’s always at risk of trashing my place?
rae
6d ago
I’d love to read more about your perspective and experience on this! Growing up I felt like I was the only one having trouble integrating male sexuality into my sense of self, and standard narrative, from my peers, media, parents was just completely alien. Obviously I gave up in the end and went with the nuclear option, but maybe there would be a world where I didn’t had if the discourse was different.
Or maybe not. I didn’t even have the external pressures you described. My upbringing was irreligious and vaguely sex-positive, and I grew up before Tumblr was even a thing back when “boys will be boys” was still used unironically as an excuse. I’m not sure the problem is lack of guidance. I was already uncomfortable being told the default heterosexual dating script, and if was told explicitly by society that as a man, I must be (all the things that were the opposite of my personality and desires), I probably would have given up much earlier.
I feel like I have to be a different man to different people, and in particular how I have to relate to women romantically and -- especially -- in the bedroom in order to please them is profoundly distinct from how I am in every other avenue of my life. I have a hard time integrating those things. I actually think this is much more common than you're suggesting.
What happens if you don’t put on the mask and just stay who you are when interacting romantically or in the bedroom?
I feel like you’d be missing out on so much if you can’t be authentically yourself with your partner. Sex when you’re just acting out a persona in order to please your partner… that just means you’re both getting cheated out of real human connection, no? What’s the point then?
rae
7d ago
I’ve hardly ever seen a gender neutral bathroom in all the European countries I’ve visited, apart from the occasional accessible bathroom available to all. I don’t think it’s realistic to retrofit all public toilets everywhere to have a separate gender neutral section, just for a tiny percentage of the population. Maybe a law could mandate it for new builds or substantial renovations, but that’s going to take multiple decades to be widespread.
Personally I’m a trans woman and I switched to using the women’s bathroom after I started getting too many stares, and the occasional comment saying I was in the wrong place when trying to use the men’s. No one has made a fuss about me since, and I’ve gone to the loo with female friends and chatted with people in there too. As far as social issues go, it’s a ridiculously minor one.
rae
8d ago
Well firstly the “top shortage” is greatly overstated anyway. Most statistics suggest that for gay men, it’s about half vers, quarter tops and quarter bottoms, within a few percentage points.
But the men who are exclusively into twinks and femboys are almost all bisexual, and bisexual men have a lot to lose by being out. A large amount of straight women would not date a bisexual man, their masculinity would be questioned by their peers, and a lot of people believe bisexual men don’t even exist and that they’re just gay and in denial.
By being on the down low, they can have their cake and eat it too: continue dating women as a straight man, have access to easy, promiscuous sex (relatively speaking), and not deal with having to explain anything to anybody.
rae
8d ago
This is where grouping all men who have sex with men as a single “gay” monolith goes wrong.
Because they don't want a faggy queen, they want the kind of highly masculine man who... has gay sex with faggy queens.
This kind of man exists in very high numbers, they just aren’t open about it. Go on Grindr and you’ll find that there’s no shortage of “discrete” tops who love twinks and femboys, and not enough supply to meet the demand.
If masculinity is what gay men are attracted to then logically they should masc-maxx, but if femininity is what masculine men want then it would make more sense to trans-max, so that they can "go straight" to fulfill their gay fantasy of straight sex.
Today a large number of gay men do actually masc-maxx, but just because you can look masculine doesn’t mean you can act masculine. Even if you convincingly manage to imitate masculinity, it’s still just a façade. Two partners pretending to be something they’re not in order to stay attracted to each other is just sad.
But again, there’s multiple kinds of gay men. The very feminine “faggy queens” are highly likely to transition today, not because they want a masculine man, but because they want a man who’s attracted to them as a woman, which they’ll never get if they masc-maxx. It’s not just about how you see your partner, but also about how your partner sees you.
But the vast majority of gay men today are absolutely fine with their partner seeing them as a man. I’ve seen quite a few gay couples where it’s just two regular looking guys, generally a bit fruity sure, but not excessively so and not enough to turn each other off.
It’s not about either preference being more optimal, or consciously valuing the 10 year old self more than the present self. It’s about sexuality being this uncontrollable compulsion that’s suddenly injected in your brain, and in people like Duncan (and I, before I transitioned), it doesn’t feel like it’s “you” that likes or wants sex.
Like I’m absolutely fine with my preferences shifting across time, discovering new hobbies, becoming a mature adult with a mortgage and a pension fund. But in my case, a preference for sex didn’t feel like I tried something new, liked it, and consciously decided to keep doing it. It felt like there was an alien invader in my brain that I had to pacify so I could get back to doing the things I actually liked. I didn’t actually want sex in the way that my biology was pushing me to want it. It felt like losing control over who I was, in the same way someone might suffer from binge eating when stressed - a completely different experience from being a foodie who occasionally overeats when they go to a very good restaurant.
Most people don’t seem to have trouble integrating their sexuality into their selves. They see their sexual preferences as “theirs”. Maybe something about being autistic can lead to your sense of self crystallise too early and prevents you from tolerating changes, or maybe it causes a mental separation between the self and “base” desires, I don’t know.
But at the end of the day, my happiness and quality of life is enhanced when I take medication that lets me feel like my sexuality is on my own terms.
rae
8d ago
Blanchard’s theory is true in the sense that AGP and HSTS populations exist, but it’s overly reductive in the sense that they’re not the only categories of trans people out there. Of course, it was more accurate than the previous view at the time which would lump them all together in a single one.
He is something different, something new, something comparatively unusual. He is a product, it seems to me at least, of modernity.
I don’t think AGP males are a product of modernity - the only thing that’s new is ability to transition using hormones and surgery, and to do it openly without it being instant social and professional suicide (not that there are no social costs now, but it’s completely different to say, the 1950s).
Men who are sexually into wearing female clothing and find the idea of being a woman erotic have probably been around since the earliest proto civilisations (see François-Timoléon de Choisy, who probably lied about seeing the royal family dressed as a woman, but not about being aroused by wearing a corset).
A trans identity that’s truly the product of modernity would be the autistic, nerdy, often terminally online kind (both trans masculine and trans feminine). A 50 year old masculine married man with children who transitions after years of hiding his crossdressing habit from his wife, is not the same as teen for whom transitioning is an escape from the social and physiological pressures of their biological sex. Body dysmorphia, sensory issues, discomfort with heterosexual norms, etc. would be the primary motivations - maybe those individuals would have been celibate monks or nuns in the past, when monastery life and asceticism was a viable alternative to the normal life script.
It’s very clear when you look at a significant proportion of trans masculine individuals, their goal seems to be more to “not be a woman” rather than to be a man. The same exists for males too - see this post by Duncan Fabien which made the concept click for me.
rae
14d ago
What do you have against waiters and waitresses? It’s not scrubbing dishes but it’s still an honest working class job, you’re on your feet all day, managing the rush of busy service, you have unpredictable shifts at inconvenient hours, you have to deal with potentially angry customers who blame you when things go wrong and dealing with the general public in a service job can be hella draining.
Imo waiters deserve more respect than bullshit corporate prestige jobs and I feel like you’re doing waiters a major disservice by using their job as a shorthand for “attractive girl whose primary goal is not making money but finding a husband.”
Ah so waitress is a stand in for a “hot girl job”? I’m a frequent restaurant goer and across Europe that’s not really been the case. First off I’ve found most waiters to be male, although at family run restaurants you might have the wife bringing you the food while the husband cooks, and in that case the vibe is definitely more “motherly” than flirty. I’m guessing it’s different in the US which might be one of the causes of the scissor statement.
“Rich men prefer to marry rich women who got wealthy through their looks and personality rather than from grinding the corporate ladder” is a very different statement from “rich men prefer to marry attractive poor women in low status jobs rather than rich women”. Picking a supermodel over a CEO is not the same as picking a bartender over a CEO.
rae
16d ago
How is Lauren Sanchez Bezos closer to a waitress than a girlboss? Prior to meeting Bezos she already was a D list celebrity as a news anchor/TV presenter, and is a helicopter pilot that founded an aerial videography company (literally… a girlboss). She was also almost 50 with 3 kids from a previous marriage when they met. The overlap between her and a waitress (especially a 50 year old waitress) is… what?
rae
16d ago
I would imagine that if I spent a lot of time in trans spaces, I would far more frequently seeing people complain about being "misgendered" or "clocked" or failing to pass than I would see the opposite (in which people celebrate how successfully they pass).
I have a decent number of trans friends and that’s not the case at all. Occasionally a funny story around passing is shared, but most of the time nobody really brings up the topic. The trans issues that come up often are problems related to healthcare (e.g. finding a good endocrinologist), or family members not accepting them. Not getting called “miss” instead of “sir” (or vice versa) when ordering takeaway.
rae
16d ago
This is probably occasionally the case, but this has happened when I’m wearing a hoodie, jeans and trainers from the men’s section, no makeup, and generally put 0 effort in presenting as anything, with people from demographics that are not known for their LGBT friendliness (e.g. middle aged Eastern European men). And it doesn’t explain why a security guard or a passerby would make a big scene trying to redirect me to the other bathroom.
But in any case, this doesn’t mesh with the GC worldview. Either the average person is very trans friendly, or trans people can pass and be perceived as the opposite sex.
rae
16d ago
As a trans person, none of the GC talking points actually matter in my daily life and it can actually be more disruptive for me to use the spaces (bathrooms, changing rooms) of my biological sex due to my appearance.
My experience is that the average person is absolutely not a sommelier when it comes to differentiating cis from even moderately passing trans people. If you look enough like a woman, you’ll get called ma’am by service workers and you’ll get weird looks if you try to use the men’s public bathroom (or even have the toilet attendant run after you to tell you you’re using the wrong bathroom). I’ve even had people be very surprised to learn that one of my friends was trans after interacting with them all day.
rae
1mo ago
The Greenland Crisis dominates the headlines in Europe and Canada and could lead to a huge political and economic shock, but I barely see any discussion about it here as opposed to what’s happening in Minnesota.
Is it just not covered in US media? With just 8% of Americans agreeing with the administration’s annexation plan (not too far from the Lizardman Constant), it doesn’t fit into the standard culture war issues perhaps - it’s not a scissor statement like the ICE shooting video, and there’s no real opportunity to have a morality debate due to expansionism being so out of the Overton window in the west.
rae
2mo ago
Many of the problems with modern dating aren’t specific to dating, they’re common to every type of social relations.
The loneliness epidemic is getting worse and worse and if a huge chunk of modern men can barely make a single real life friend, what are the odds they can find a girlfriend?
None of the gender war arguments explain why same-sex friendships are more difficult nowadays. But all the reasons that explain the loneliness crisis - social media addiction, an increasingly individualistic culture thanks to technology, the breakdown of communal third spaces, the fact that everyone is moving away instead of staying in the same town all their life, etc. all explain why people could be struggling to find a romantic partner.
Or a very simple explanation: the poorer, the less technologically advanced you are, the more socialising becomes a necessity. If you’re in a poor rural village, you need to socialise with your neighbours because they’re the ones that will help you if you get sick, fall on hard times, or just need an extra hand to help around the house/the farm. You need to get married and have children, not only because of social pressure but because family is both a safety net and a labour pool.
The loneliness crisis didn’t happen overnight. As we got more technologically advanced, we needed to rely less and less on other people for survival and even entertainment. People bring up how people in the past complained about every technological invention ruining the fabric of society as an argument on how social media/smartphones/AI isn’t that bad, but the past complaints were essentially right.
Books made it so you could stay home and be entertained without talking to anyone, although you had to be literate and still go out to the shop to buy them. Daily newspapers meant you didn’t have to get your gossip around the dinner table or at the pub. Television meant you didn’t have to leave the house to see a movie or a show. Smartphones let you have all of the above, and let you talk anywhere with anyone at anytime on your own schedule, replacing frequent in person hangouts where you could actually bond, with group chats and shallower, asynchronous text conversations.
AI is taking it a step further and making it even worse. Do you really think that the vast majority of people, who are now currently addicted to social media and scrolling TikTok all day instead of going out to make friends and romantic connections, will somehow be able to resist the slurry of AI generated content tailored precisely to engage them? LLMs designed to be the perfect conversation partner, the perfect friend, the perfect girlfriend or boyfriend, accessible 24/7 as a gorgeous realistic avatar that fulfils all your fantasies?
rae
2mo ago
The question of "how would you feel if you woke up in a female body?" doesn't make sense - I am my body as well as my brain, and the person who had a female body (complete with different musculature, menstruation, gonads that secrete oestrogen etc.) would be a different person.
You can imagine a sci-fi scenario where your brain is transplanted into a female body. You’d still be you. Exposure to oestrogen would change your personality to an extent, but it wouldn’t be instantaneous, and it would be a lot more limited than if you had been exposed to it in the womb or during childhood.
Now of course brain transplants are currently purely theoretical but cross-sex hormone therapy isn’t. Cis men who have taken oestrogen (more common in the past to treat testicular or prostate cancer) report higher incidences of depression, anxiety, body image issues from feminisation, loss of libido and sexual dysfunction, and emotional volatility.
Meanwhile trans women usually report the opposite and their mental health is improved from the exact same hormones. Weirder anecdotal reports are cis men complaining of brain fog from taking oestrogen, while trans women saying the hormones actually lifted their brain fog.
rae
2mo ago
All the occupations required to work on game dev, or media, are overwhelmingly liberal or progressive. Even software engineers are only 16-27% conservative. They might not be on board with some of the woke extremes - same way not every conservative is an ethno-nationalist - but they’ll still support LGBT rights, and diversity initiatives. I would think that conservative software engineers are less likely to work in game development as well - why not work at Anduril where you get paid more and you don’t have to hide your political views?
Richard Hanania’s article on Why is Everything Liberal still applies. There’s no talent pool to make “non-woke” games. Plus, I never got the feeling that the market actually penalised wokeness at any point - my impression was that wokeness was used to shield mediocre work of criticism, or to excuse its underperformance.
rae
2mo ago
I had the same experience as @charlesf whenever I was in Spain or talking to Latin Americans. Most people seemed happy to hear me attempt to have a basic conversation in Spanish and were very patient and helpful with vocabulary, except for Catalonians who however lit up with joy when I said a few words in Catalan and then promptly overestimated my ability to understand their language.
rae
2mo ago
Right-wing/MAGA ideology makes a mockery of objective fact. Reactionaries divide us with their culture wars. They try to force us to ignore the objective truths of systemic injustice and climate science.
Either you abhor and reject that which is objectionable, or you end up in recursively epistemic quicksand spew. It has to be possible to reject outright the false lies of the far-right.
If your entire post can be flipped to support the other side by just swapping a few key words, are you actually saying anything?
rae
2mo ago
I did pick an outdated or possibly wrong map for that statistic, but the point still stands: immigration like you described does not seem to correlate with TFR.
If you look at the countries with the lowest number of foreign born residents in the EU, i.e. Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, they have TFRs of 1.31, 1.57, 1.71, 1.6, 1.50, they are not doing any better the ones with the highest amount of immigration.
Ukraine's TFR was already very low before the war, you can't blame the recent rapid Russian "immigration" for that.
rae
2mo ago
This of course was a wrong idea and contributed to further depressions of the birth rate, which necessitated more immigrants, and so on and so forth until either some sort of great violence breaks out or the original people the planners were in theory looking out for become an unimportant minority in their own land.
Countries like South Korea and Japan have had far less immigration than the US and most of Europe, yet their TFR is even lower. Romania has ~97% native born population with the small number of immigrants mostly labourers from Moldova who speak the same language, and yet, the lowest fertility rate in Europe.
rae
2mo ago
If the government bans condoms and the pill, watch that number go down even further. People didn't have porn and video games back when TFR was high and birth control illegal.
Not sure where you're getting the "married to the state" idea from. Where I live, women aged 16-24 are out-earning men and the majority of NEETs are men, and 10x less likely to be raising children compared to their female counterparts. If you're suggesting cutting welfare to parents - the main source of welfare women are getting more than men, AFAIK - that seems to be the opposite of a pro-natal policy.
Plus, if you look at stats, fertility rate and income generally follows a U shape where the poorest people on welfare have more children than the middle-class, and are generally less likely to be married as well, so not sure what you'd be accomplishing there.
Promote the family as the pension system.
How is this supposed to work? Older middle class and upper people have private pension funds and own homes that have appreciated to multiples of their initial values. Poor people will struggle to help their parents, making raising children even more difficult and unaffordable.
The average parent spends a total of ~$200k per child here. In the absence of a state pension, it would be more rational to add that money to your retirement fund than to hope your child will be generous enough to give you a monthly stipend in your old age.
If you’re comparing being a heterosexual man to a heterosexual woman, sure. But if you’re a relatively effeminate male and primarily attracted to men, it’s very hard to feel like the grass isn’t greener on the other side. The “carrot” doesn’t look appetising and the idea of an escape from the “stick” of masculinity seems very appealing. The reality of transition is different from the ideal of course, but that only further increases the feelings of envy.
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