farhakhalidi.substack.com
It's an essay about the various flaws modern feminist sex positivity culture has for women, and that it's often a good idea to refrain from sex even if one isn't religious. The author is an Only Fans model for context. I thought it did a great job laying out the downsides of ubiquitous sex.(Reposted because I accidentally linked to reddit instead of the original essay earlier).
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Notes -
What struck me about this article was how completely different her university experience was to mine. I never had sex in university. I never even went on a date, though did occasionally get drunk at parties and make out with girls.
I never talked about sex with my parents and only very rarely with my friends, and certainly not in any detail. I didn't even watch porn. The university didn't lecture us about consent. I didn't read about it on the internet. I didn't have a well developed theory (sex positive or otherwise) about how consent, dating or sex were supposed to work. Most of what I knew came from TV and movies. I only had vague ideas about how things were supposed to work, and I struggled to form a coherent understanding of courtship by piecing together conflicting clues. The whole subject was a mystery to me, and seemed almost fantastical, something which on some level I didn't really believe would ever be relevant to my life.
I did start dating and having sex in my late twenties and tried to educate myself by reading the internet, but nothing like the craziness this girl describes took place. She is really describing an alien world to me. It might be because I am ten years older than her, but I wonder if something equally crazy was taking place at my alma mater while I focused on studying. I certainly would never have guessed that anything like this was happening.
Also, my friends who did date mostly had a series of monogamous relationships. There wasn't that much hooking up, at least that I knew of.
I remember being frustrated early on in college that every woman who was friendly to me turned out to still have their high school boyfriend back in their hometown, which made me roll my eyes at either the lame lie or at the impracticality. I never got any consent training from the school itself, and it turned out not to be needed, because I gained a bunch of weight and my hair started thinning unfairly early, and I got lonely and depressed. Didn't help that my main social outlet was the gamer's club.
Then near the end of college it got strange; every woman's favorite topic of conversation became rape at frat parties, despite our college not having frats or sororities or any sort of Greek life. They started talking about Consent like it was the first time they'd ever heard of the concept and it needed to be constantly explained to everyone else like they were five. I once walked in the same direction as a group of women after class, because that's where my car was parked, and got accused of stalking them to their dorm.
After college I lost weight, grew better facial hair, and shaved my head. But I wound up interacting with a slightly rougher crowd. And I saw women repeatedly choose to stay with men who physically assaulted them, repeatedly, while being surrounded by supportive friends and potential suitors. And the rape rape rape, abuse abuse abuse, rhetoric had gotten worse; all women live in fear of all men, who might abuse her, but her abusive boyfriend isn't like that, she can change him, he's been so much better lately. Also, the seeds of the gamergate schism were sprouting; the new buzzwords that geek girls threw around at all the men they shared their hobbies with were Toxic Mansplaining Gatekeeper. It was also the height of the "men I don't already know aren't allowed to speak to me" rhetoric, which started with On the Bus or At The Supermarket, but eventually became In Class, At Concerts, and At Bars and Clubs.
Through all this, all my male friends (and I) ever wanted was casual dating; doing cute couples stuff together, fucking, and being at social events together, but not planning a wedding. Hookups were something the particularly-hot guys got to do between relationships (or to end relationships).
I had this brought up to me in tones and contexts that (should have) made it clear that this was just another angle of flirting, "look at this social proof of my attractiveness which is nevertheless only nominally an obstacle for you", from women who hadn't yet learned that that doesn't typically work the same way on men as it would have on them.
My own thoughts went from "whew, my new friend is establishing clear boundaries quickly so now I don't have to worry about accidentally overstepping them!" at the time to "damn, how did I miss that opportunity!" with a little hindsight to "wow, glad I dodged that bullet!" with a lot of hindsight.
"I have a boyfriend" is a shit test.
"Boyfriend back in their hometown" is a nonsensical category anyway. He's not your boyfriend, because in a practical sense you aren't together. If you actually had a boyfriend, you wouldn't be attending parties without him.
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No kidding. I'm guessing girls who say that with the intent of flirtation may not realize that they are filtering out guys with ethics in favor of guys who have no issue with enabling a cheater. Bonus points if they later complain about all the guys who hit on them being jerks who aren't into commitment.
Maybe it's to filter out guys with low social skills who don't know how to read non-verbal social cues?
Also: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6NWDBFo0gQ filters out guys like that
Sure, but that's not the point. I was talking about effects, not intent.
If a college girl says, "I have a boyfriend," she may intend that to mean, "I am not interested," or "I am interested."
In the first case, the statement may be true (she's being honest and straightforward) or false (she's saying buzz off, per @Skulldrinker's dude-repellant comment below).
In the second case, she's flirting, which is the context that @roystgnr was addressing above. This is an example of saying "no" when you mean "yes, please," and I agree, this may well be a filter intended to exclude guys who can't parse the conflicting social cues.
All of that said, what she is actually accomplishing is filtering in favor of guys who are willing to read "I have a boyfriend" as "please continue to flirt, this could go somewhere." This strategy is remarkably unlikely to attract a guy with integrity who wants to develop a relationship, especially when the one thing that traditional and progressive advice to guys agrees on is "no means no."
Hmm indeed, it’s either x or not-x. How could she make it 🎶 any more obvious 🎶
It’s almost as if chicks subconsciously or consciously select for men sufficient in toxic masculinity as to not take them seriously and as to be willing to trample over their boundaries, and that the winning move for men is to act accordingly.
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It shouldn't be that hard for them to figure out, since they use "Ihaveaboyfriend" as their default dude-repellant.
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