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I have an idea for an invention that will revolutionize the fashion industry in the Northeast. It's a garment that women can wear underneath their shirts that will support their fleshy bosoms. This invention would have the benefit of further concealing the breasts, but making them appear firmer and fuller, and preventing sagging when women approach old age.
Seriously, I feel like the modern urban world has forgotten about the bra. When I'm in big Northeast cities riding public transit, I rarely see a single woman wearing one. What's with this development? Is it some feminism thing? Is it fashion? Is it just that it's hot these days? Was the bra always worthless but women wore it out of modesty, but now there's no more modesty? I would guess that is some feminist notion that bras are a relic of patriarchy, and that has influenced fashion over the last decade to make it less fashionable. And that this has enabled the more lazy women out there to just not bother wearing it, and in turn, the link between bras and female modesty is disappearing (along with maybe the modesty itself, or the idea that women should be modest).
Out of all the issues in our world, "women around me are showing me more of their breasts" is not one that I personally consider a problem. I have some disagreements with women on average - for example, while I am pro-choice and so to some extent understand why women are reluctant to vote right, I also do not understand women's tendency to vote left despite it leading to some policies that are to both their own detriment and mine, such as when it comes to law and order. But overall, I do think that in some ways women are wonderful. They really do tend to be nice and gentle, at least to men. I have heard some horror stories from women about how other women treat them, but as a man I can say that the vast majority of women I have encountered have been very nice to me. And no woman has ever punched me in the face, whereas some men have. Some my closest actual friends are women. So my attitude towards women is more or less that for the most part they are like men in terms of the kinds of qualities that I value, but with the added benefit that I am also sexually attracted to some of them. Experiences of being intimate in bed with women, both sexually and emotionally, have been some of the highlights of my life. Obviously the vast majority of "extreme right end of the bell curve" intelligent people in history have been men but oh well, while I wish that I was, I really doubt that I am in that extreme right end myself as a man. It's not something to hold against women. And I have known a handful of women who are as intelligent or even more than I am.
This is all a long-winded way to say that overall, I tend to love women, and part of that is that I love enjoying women's erotic company. Female modesty seems rather pointless to me. One could make an argument that immodesty from both genders contributes to a chaotizing of society, a focus on hedonism instead of on the often-boring tasks of upholding a decent society, such as raising families. And that could be an interesting argument to make, but I am not sure how much truth there is to it. Overall, I would say that immodesty is extremely low on the list of our society's problems, if it even is a problem to begin with, which I doubt. It is not half-naked women in the streets that are causing Walgreens to get robbed left and right or politics to be ruled by corrupt incentives. And an extreme focus on female modesty has not stopped Islamic societies from being shitholes. Victorian England, from what I understand, despite all of its prudity was not some pinnacle of social order, it had a higher violent crime rate than modern England.
This is a bit of a tangent, but why do women tend to lean left? I say this as a moderate who dislikes both the left and the right. So I am not coming at this from a right-wing perspective, I just am sometimes baffled why so many women are actually left-leaning rather than being a centrist like me. What is the appeal? Is it mainly the fact that the right is associated with socially conservative prudes who favor patriarchy-coded social structures and are not pro-choice? Is it some higher degree of empathy from women that makes them feel more bad for the so-called oppressed of the world than men do? That is a common argument, but in my personal interactions with women, while I have found that the vast majority of women are nice to me, I have not found women to be more sympathetic to others abstractly than men are, on average, so I am not sure. Women do tend to be much more pro-social than men are on average, mainly because there is a small fraction of men who do the vast majority of both genders' anti-social activities. But do they really tend on average to be more "naive bleeding-heart liberal" than men are, and if so, why?
If you can get women's erotic company, of course you'll feel that way. But presumably you can understand why men who can't feel that immodest women are flaunting something in front of them that men are biologically hardwired to respond to, having no intention of rewarding that response with anything except disgust or punishment. From that perspective, it's oblivious at best and cruel at worst.
I grew up in a mostly-male environment, and my introduction to female company coincided with my introduction to online 'gamer girl' feminism which was anti-sex in a way that would leave Christian fundamentalists gaping. By the time I got enough worldliness to appreciate how far those feminists were detached from reality, it was too late. I had missed all the opportunities for learning how men and women were supposed to flirt in a low-stakes environment, and been warped into a sort of cringing resentfulness that is obviously toxic to women. Had things been otherwise, I would feel otherwise. Path dependency at its finest.
So while I too feel that there are greater problems in the world, I get why a lot of men would like sexiness to just go away and stop taunting them. As with our commentator however many months ago who wished that it was okay to enter a monastery in the modern world, or Scott Aaronson who wished to be allowed to chemically castrate himself.
Tangents:
To be fair, modern England has CCTV and DNA forensics. I think it's quite possible that Victorian England mores transferred to the present day would be far better than what we have now.
I think it's most a desire not to be nasty. Most right-wing philosophy ultimately gets to the point of saying, 'we are going to have to do nasty thing X to avert bad scenario Y'. I've generally found the women in my life much less likely to bite bullets than men.
That's pretty much how I feel. At least, in environments where it's frowned upon to flirt with women, like in the office, I really wish they would stop wearing sexy clothes. It's like a constant mental tax I have to pay, "don't look at her don't look at her don't look at her," and there's no way to complain about it without sounding like either a huge pervert or an overbearing puritan.
I feel like food is maybe the gender-switch version? As a guy, I like chocolate, but I can take it or leave it. I have no trouble just eating one chocolate and ignoring the rest. But there was a holiday party at my office, and some woman sent in a complaint to HR, crying that she just couldn't stop eating the chocolate, it was making it impossible for her to work and maintain her diet with all these scrumptious chocolate lying around in front of her all day. And I was thinking... woman, you have no idea...
Serious question: I know nothing about you and the guy posting above you, but if y'all are (like seemingly every other male around here) going home and jacking off to images of breasts for hours every night, aren't you somewhat responsible for greatly strengthening the existing circuitry that links that visual cue to a state of arousal and sexual reward?
Sure, it's natural for men to find bodies sexy, just as it's natural for that lady to find chocolate delicious. But if I knew that your coworker went home every night and deliberately spent hours burning chocolate-scented candles while watching candy-tasting shows, baking brownies and licking them then throwing them away while fantasizing resentfully about what it'd be like to eat them... I'd have a lot less sympathy with her complaints that thoughts of forbidden chocolate were ruining her focus at work the next day.
It may be true but most men won't perceive it that way because our perception is that abstaining will just make you more distracted. This is actually the most common advice: fast long enough that you redirect the inevitable energy towards something useful. The idea of retaining your sexual energy has taken on a life of its own amongst the porn-saturated via NoFap but seems to predate it so the idea was out there.
It's unlike chocolate, so I think the condemnation might actually be stronger from the other direction: you're going to feel arousal anyway. The problem is you're associating sexual arousal with an ultimately fraudulent reward and powerlessness, which heightens the anxiety that comes with feeling sexual desire.
I hadn't considered the role of anxiety before, but there is a match with the kind of edgy, restless, compulsive feeling that comes after eating a bunch of shitty nutrition-free junk-food.
Also the same feeling you get when you’re stuck in a doom-scrolling loop. All three are of a kind.
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