urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Fifth was quieter (though not as dead as the first time) and finally had someone on staff read me the riot act/facts of life.
Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
I have a rough time telling how much of that's bisexual or closeted gay rather than prescriptive when it comes to its heterosexuality or just trans chaser, but it's definitely a thing
I have no clue, either. But my read is that the "I'm a femboy and I fuck better than your girlfriend" is a strikingly common fantasy. Yeah, that line may have been used on me once. My take is that straight men are unbothered.
That said, the "I'll just go gay/date a femboy/date trans women" thing seems to have a little purchase, but only in the way that Trump wanting to buy Greenland is. It's a memetic negotiation tactic, a way of asserting "I have power over you no matter what you do!" I don't think the femboys or the trans women have actually been consulted. (But neither was Greenland.)
But also straight men need to be real careful lest they start assuming that twinky femboys are drama-free sex machines.
... I'm still a bit weirded out by that variation. I dunno if it's just my misreading it entirely, or if it's intended as a statement for people with open relationships to protect their primary partner, or what, but it seems like it's inviting people to bad understandings of what PrEP does.
I also thought it was weird, and commented on it at the time. Apparently this wasn't a CDC thing, it was Montgomery county public health. So in the NIH's backyard, though not with any affiliation.
I thought I had taken pictures of the posters, but I guess I took fewer pictures in Maryland than I thought. I did find Montgomery county's website for the overall HIV public health program, though, which has a similar banner, depicting two men and reading "Do it for HIM". Weirdly, the FAQs page for the program has a man hugging two elderly women with the phrase, "do it for THEM" which is mildly funny but also kind of seems to rebut the interpretation that this is advertising PrEP for protecting your partner. ("Do it for your mom?") Another page has a banner with a lesbian couple reading "Do it for HER" -- is HIV a big issue for lesbians? I remember seeing all of these variations at Metro stations in Maryland.
What's particularly strange is this seems to be the overall campaign for HIV prevention, treatment, and testing, but the banners I recall specifically were advertising PrEP. So maybe this was a situation of a generalized campaign being applied to a specific health intervention in a rather silly way -- "get tested for your wife, get treated for your mom, get PrEP for yourself" I guess seems reasonable, but the way in which all the posters I saw were about prophylaxis in particular just didn't make a lot of sense.
I like your perspective. Particularly this:
Viewed through the lens of purely analytic sexual gamesmanship, both men and women seem like horrible creatures whom no-one would really want to be with other than for a cheap temporary bodily satisfaction, an ego boost, perhaps money... just not for the joy of being with them.
That's what it feels like to read a lot of the more negativistic takes on dating, from both men and women. At some point I just wonder whether they even like the opposite sex in any sense whatsoever. I see so much talking about status and power and affirmation and sex, and almost nothing about a connection where you see yourself in the other and realize you're not so different as you thought, or the physical pleasure of a cuddle, or the joy of making your partner laugh after they had a bad day, or the calm peacefulness of a weekend spent living domestic life with your partner, or what it's like to look into someone's eyes and see them dilate and soften as they look at you. I would cut off my dick and throw it away before I gave up these things.
In particular, a lot of takes from men on the dating scene, even those I see on the motte, sound like they were written by people from a completely different planet from me -- men don't pair bond, men don't talk about their feelings, men are only interested in harem-building, men are only monogamous because women make them, romance is a game that men generate to get sexual access from women. I don't know to what extent this is just posturing, machismo, or a real difference in psychological experience. But those things just... don't describe me.
I guess I never went through a redpill phase. I certainly went through a phase where I realized that you do need to make your romantic intentions known early on with a woman, and trying to build a relationship on top of a friendship just doesn't work. But I only rarely encountered women who were "hooking up with alphas" as I was trying to date them; okay, maybe a couple times, but it was obvious pretty quickly that those ladies were emotionally troubled anyway, and a relationship with them would simply be unstable.
But I've also had women ask me out, women hunt me down or drop notes in my locker or use mutual friends to try and get me to ask her out, when I was back in school. In college I was asked out once, and had a few women who seemed eager for me to ask them out. Not every woman who's been interested in me has been my type -- but most of them were perfectly normal, stable people, and the relationships I've had, though fewer than perhaps I'd like, have been founded in mutual vulnerability and intimacy. I could always share my emotions with my partner, and we looked out for each other and cared for one another. When my relationships have ended, it was either because of a natural falling-apart (moving away, mutual loss of interest) or it was my fault. So the stereotypes of what male-female pairings are like, in TV sitcoms and motte posts and redpill guides isn't my experience of love.
I guess my few interactions with women who seem like the redpill stereotype involved me bouncing off them -- I don't play games, and I don't chase skirts. I don't sit for shit-tests and I don't like coquettishness. My yes is my yes and my no is my no. If women want to create drama for the sake of drama or engage in verbal sparring like a Jane Austin character, well, they're welcome to find this somewhere else. So I suppose my romantic style heavily filters against manipulation, and firmly towards well-adjusted, romantically decisive women. I intend to keep it this way.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
it'd probably involve an emphasis on frumpy and especially too-large clothing
Hey, you don't have to call me out like that!
Yeah, something like that, but eroticized as someone permanently taking you and making it impossible to go back.
Holy crap, are virginity, the "breeding" kink, and pozzed culture linked psychologically?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
The thing that seems to be missing in your description of physical and social needs is essentially non-sexual/quasi-sexual physical touch. I could probably go without sex in life, but not being able to cuddle, or romantically kiss, or hold someone as they fall asleep, or just sit on the couch, or caress someone's back or arms... well, I'd find that hard to bear.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Hm, I always thought “glazed” had to do with adding sugar to a donut or other pastry. So an AI “glazing” someone is pouring sugar on top of something that’s already sweet.
I’m familiar with the other meaning, but I thought it was a derivation.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Oh, yeah, I had the same experience a long time ago. It happens, I guess.
We really do need the bidet in the west. I have basically trained my digestive system to be almost perfectly regular, and I shower every time I have a bowel movement so I can keep things clean.
Oof. Hm. Never tried anal sex and it's not my kind of thing, but I've never gotten the impression that the women I've seen would be exceptionally angry about it.
If anything, women I've dated have been more interested in sexual cleanliness than me, particularly for themselves. I'm not sure, "you stink" would be considered a wonderful thing to say, but I don't have any doubt that I could express what was going on and it would all be okay in the end, even if feelings were hurt in the moment.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Closeted men is perfectly valid, but bisexuals? That's not risk management, that's bigotry (pun intended?).
I'm intrigued you feel that way. My understanding is that the same suspicion is even more common among trans women, and that bisexual men are seen as flaky, exploratory sorts whose bisexuality is a fig leaf, who are trans chasing, and would never be caught dead actually dating a trans woman in public. Actually, I'm intrigued in general that you've talked a lot about your concerns about dating and chasers have never come up.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
They'd asked me how old I was. The answer made them gasp, "you're a baby!" Like, come on, I'm on the wrong side of 25. The youngest was HG, who I thought was younger than me, and I think he said he was 32. I was going to add the topic of twink death to my list of nosy questions, but FG straight up told me that gay men hit a wall after 30. That answered things.
Interesting. Perhaps this relates to their non-use of Grindr: my understanding is that, like with straight people, young gay men are very app-oriented and non-commital. "Sleep around in the most friction-less (cough) way in your 20s" seems to be a pretty broad strategy for people who can pull it off.
Even the men who didn't make a move were perfectly welcoming. There's just something about me that has people opening up (it's a good trait to have in a shrink)
Ah, fair enough. Not her scene, obviously, but my mother is the same way. She used to think of herself as an introvert, but I have been telling her most of my adult life how she's extremely extroverted, and people love talking to her. She talks about how when she meets someone who seems gruff or closed-off, she makes it a mission to get them to laugh.
I think if I'd reacted negatively to FG's attempts at flirtation, instead of taking it in good cheer, he'd probably have desisted.
I guess this was my point -- you made it easy to keep going, and that made you fun to talk to!
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Despite the entertainment value of missing literal rainbow flags, I'll note outright that you did a lot better reading social signals than I did the first three or five times I went to one, and I had about the same level of interest in a casual hookup.
Okay, now you've piqued my curiosity.
even people who aren't on the meat market'll often have some less-than-audience-friendly photos on their phones.
This is kind of a straight person thing too. I recall seeing memes a few years ago joking about "not opening your gallery in front of strangers." And, really, the era we're living in often involves an exchange of nudes for people in an intimate relationship, so it wouldn't be especially surprising for a straight man to have dirty pics of his wife or his girlfriend on his phone -- though probably an order of magnitude fewer of them. Straight women are maybe? less likely, but I doubt it's unheard of. And both of them might just have dirty pics of themselves in their photos, you have to take them to send them!
From the bi guy side, that's somewhat glossing over the less charitable reasons: there's a lot of gay stereotypes about bi guys as just wanting side pieces, or wanting some fucc in the short time before they settle down with a woman/beard later. But it's not wrong, and people fitting those stereotypes do exist.
The same stereotype works in the opposite direction -- straight women have concerns about bisexual men for the exact same reason. As self_made_human has realized, getting sexual attention from gay men is trivial, and so is both easy to obtain and less valuable per-interaction. So madonna/whoring your mindset and searching for disposable sexual attention from men (whores) while seeking out reliable partnership with women (madonnas) is something you can do, if you're so inclined.
The other thing is that gay men, particularly ones who are interested in companionship more than disposability, often feel trapped by the expectations of gay dating, and are jealous of straight men for whom long-term commitment, exclusivity, and broad social acceptance feel like table stakes. So bisexual men can be "traitors": taking from gay men whatever they can get from them and then fleeing to the arms of a woman when one arises.
This has been somewhat sexualized lately, with the "femboy bf"/"femboy hooters" meme culture which prompts great recrimination in the ongoing femininine-man/trans-woman civil war, but of course that also comes with the corollary memes of "breaking up with my femboy bf because I met a real woman." (I have no idea what the actual prevalence of this stuff is, I'm just way too extremely online.)
Intriguingly, this pattern seems to mirror many complaints about women's sexual behavior from men, and women's complaints about the sexual behavior of extremely attractive straight men: if sexual attention is abundant, using it for temporary affirmation while utterly disposing of your partners' interests and needs is a real possibility. Turns out, sex is not tennis.
In the US, they're starting to push it to the point of having advertisements on bus stops and park benches in my local area... and I'm not in an especially gay or even urban space.
I saw a bunch when I visited DC with my girlfriend. Interestingly, they were generally framed as "use PrEP to protect him" not yourself, like that Simpsons meme about Maggie.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
"Hey handsome," he said, noticing my interest. "Sorry if I end up spilling any of this on you." I assured him this would be fine, since spilled alcohol represents free alcohol, which represents savings. "I wouldn't mind licking it off you, if you know what I mean."
That's... pretty damn forward.
At one point I unlocked my phone to show photos from Dover. This triggered knowing looks. “So, you are not gay, are you?” Correct. They explained that no gay man would casually open his gallery in public. Too high a risk of unexpected appearances. I learned something.
This seems like a great opportunity to use the "hide" function in the Photos app.
I said I had expected at least one notification during the evening. I declined to explain how I know the sound.
Such a tease, self_made_human, such a tease.
How often do you encounter men who are closeted or who identify as bi? FG avoids them. Too messy, too much drama, too many norm mismatches, and in his experience too much reluctance to test for STIs.
Hm. This seems to suggest to me that the big problem with this group is that they're cheating on women. In particular, STI testing is relatively uncommon among men who date women, and there's a lot of friction to start if you've never done it before. Or, if finding the answer would mean a messy obligation to disclose a compromising health detail to an intimate partner.
In the realistic version I walked home slightly drunk, slightly wiser, and extremely grateful that a bar full of men who had no reason to be kind to me were kind anyway.
I guess it seems to me that they had every reason to be kind to you -- at least some of them found you attractive. You were offered multiple sex acts. Even after they clarified that you were straight, FG still flirted with you: "Such a shame," FG added, "especially when you're dressed like that." FG in particular seems like he had "elder gay" energy, and a kind of leadership over the group, and he specifically had something for you.
And even then, you came from related fields, and could talk about work. So you built a kind of camaraderie on that detail.
It also sounds like their objection to straight men in the bar was about them talking to women there, and you said you did none of that, and even slightly judged a man who was trying to do so. You went to a gay bar and let men flirt with you, and let them down easy... of course they liked you! For the same reason that women who try to be vague and polite when they reject men tend to prolong the interaction. The door could always be more open than you're saying. And gay men are quite reluctant to take "I'm straight" as an answer. "I'm bi" is an invitation to participation in adultery, "I'm straight" is a challenge.
Apparently late July/August has been "how are the _____ doing sexually?" time on the motte. And, as usual, I have no bloody clue how lesbians are doing, except that the one lesbian I was friends with in college was interested in gender transition. I think they prefer it that way.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
I’ve just… never encountered this stuff. Maybe it’s just my religious background or my conservative community or maybe it’s happening under my nose and I don’t know it, but “married woman has an affair with a lothario” just… is not something I’ve ever encountered in my circles. Where are you observing this stuff?
I know of a great many men from older generations, and even in this generation, who are not Chads by that definition yet have had long relationships with women who care for them. I probably couldn’t string along 4 women even if I really, really tried — but I’ve had women ask me out before, I figure if for some sad reason I became single I could find a meaningful relationship within a year or so, and the women I’ve dated have shown every sign of cherishing the relationship. I relate to the feeling of hopelessness and marginalization, but not to the feeling that literally 100% of women are only and exclusively interested in a very small group of men regardless of how poorly they’re treated by them. The reason why “wait until marriage” (or some measure of commitment) works is precisely because many women actually desire that. Not because anyone forced them.
The situation for men is far from great, and the inequality between the haves and the have-nots is quite large, but I’m not convinced it’s so bad that it’s literally impossible.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Like Corvos, I like how you can use AI as a sounding board and maybe get information that’s useful back. I take it with a grain of salt — I notice details in most responses that don’t match the actual facts — but occasionally I’ve gotten some great “deep cut” information on very specific topics that either was sourced to a link I could verify or started me on a course to verify the claim myself.
I don’t really chat with AI as a person, though I do use very human-like language similar to how I write on the motte. I do know people who’ve explored chatting with AI as a person, giving it a name, telling it about daily details to see what it’ll say. But I don’t relate to AI in that way.
I’d compare using AI for brainstorming to the “active placebo” version of rubber duck debugging: it’s a good excuse to actually write out what you’re thinking, with the possibility of something valuable coming back at you, so you have incentive to be detailed. It’s happened to me more than once that I’ve typed out a technical or personal problem as an AI prompt and figured out the right solution in the process of writing it.
Yeah, I don’t doubt that’s a big part of the concern. But also, that’s the sort of thing that some say as an excuse — “chuh, no, I’m just looking for validation and attention online to make me feel good about myself without actually having to be in a position of connection or vulnerability” is not exactly a great thing to say about yourself, even if it’s true. I can certainly understand safety concerns about meeting strange men, but having those concerns while continuing to swipe and even to mock the people who are trying to connect with you is simply vicious, based on bad-faith.
The real truth about dating apps is that they’re good for window shopping — and people who like impulse purchases — and not much good for much else, though people do get lucky in the same way people used to get lucky at a bar or a club. Or I got lucky at the college atheist org meetup. (Yeah, really. The history of my romantic life has some wild twists and turns around my spiritual convictions, and not a one of my girlfriends didn’t have something to do with religion, either positively or negatively.)
But the purpose of the system is what it does, and not only the purpose but actually the intended function of the swipe-based matching apps is to facilitate hookups, not deep connections.
A big part of the problem for a lot of older guys seems to be that women with a realistic sense of romance and a strong drive to find a real partner tend to choose early, and confidently. The rest are waiting for something exciting to happen, or just trying to “enjoy life as it comes” same as young men do.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
I feel like as I get older I realize more and more why there’s so much suspicion against men among women. That said, it’s bewildering how… lacking in instinct for manipulation a lot of young women are. Or even basic “don’t do something completely insane” instinct. I went on a date with someone once who told me she’d met a man in a park in the middle of the night. You did what?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
At least in my case it's the combination of relatively few matches (about 1 new match a week), plus the lack of response to relatively thought out initially messages (+sometimes follow-ups). What's worse is one of my roommates has loads of success, but he's pretty scummy when it comes to women on dating apps. Leading 3-4 of them along at once pretending that he's going to commit.
And this is a vicious cycle — getting played leads women to leave, or the stories lead them to never download. I met my girlfriend in college, and she told me she’d be scared to use the apps and she’s glad she met me in person.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
All the "virtue-based" banners and signs in teachers' rooms when I was a schoolchild always struck me as very silly. Lots of transforming "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." into an acronym, lots of "At our school, home of the Bears, we are Based, Effective Altruist, Rationalist, Sapient" or "Everyone here C.A.R.E.S." standing of course for "Courteous, Achieving, Responsible, Excellence, at School on time"... I don't know that any of these did anything, but I'm sure there was some sort of state or federal grant money involved in "teaching ethical citizenship and public service" to children, for which these useless banners played a role.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
I mean, I strongly oppose public school teachers being required, or even permitted, really, to hang the Ten Commandments in a classroom. Public schools should not endorse an establishment of religion.
The point of the Satanic Temple stuff is as a protest against religious impositions on public spaces — you say you’re just endorsing good morals, well here’s ours, how do you like it? It’s a good troll, and I think it makes its point.
You also have to separate the Satanic Temple people — who are trolling atheists, from the LeVeyan Satanism people — who are somewhat more trolly atheists who admire Satan as a literary figure (he brought the light of true choice to man!) while not believing in the literal existence of Satan, from the actual, ritual and sacrifices to Satan people. The latter are considered dangerous even among practicing occultists.
The Satanic Temple stuff is just a more edgy version of the Pastafarians trying to wear pasta strainers in their drivers license photos. I think they need to be careful, because yelling “hail Satan” as they like to do sometimes is both upsetting to normies and spiritually stupid, but based on my experiences with the type they’re just edgy atheists and their personalities aren’t much different.
I don’t like any of them, and my view on existing religious references in public spaces is to roll my eyes at people making a big deal of them, but the teachers have a legitimate constitutional complaint that being required to hang religious texts in their classrooms is inappropriate.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
My mom found out she was allergic to penicillin as a little girl, when she had anaphylaxis. Fortunately she was ok and it hasn’t affected her life much.
But also yeah, antibiotic side effects can be real. It beats pneumonia, but uncontrollable diarrhea and stomach upset isn’t fun. Took me a while before I was back to normal.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Does that data take into account fat to muscle ratio?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Ok, now look up “BNWO.”
I recall you had a post a while ago where you said you’d dated both men and women. Did you develop a preference for men, or how did women fit into this?
something that requires a deep emotional connection to work
Well, I guess all I can say is, join the club. We don’t have fun prizes but there are occasional butterflies in the chest. And you get a stamp on your card when someone says, “you’re sweet but I don’t see this going anywhere.”
I found straight/bi men are generally more understanding when you make it clear that that's not what you're after (if they're manipulative, it's at least a sign of knowing what you want).
Interesting. I’d never considered that being played could actually be preferable to sex-forward behavior, but I can see it. I guess gay men just didn’t even make an effort? Just, “oh, no dick pic, seeya?”
It’s unfortunate that a majority are now meeting in situations of initial anonymity (online + bars), which makes it hard for anyone to judge safety and makes performance utterly necessary. I wonder what the percentages look like in 2025.
Every time I look at that chart, it scares me.
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