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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26177 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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I find this pretty interesting. I have kind of a retrograde idea of sexuality. When I was young, I was very pretty. Something of a Twink I guess you could say. Looking like this colors your psychology. I used to be called Angelina behind my back as a kid because I had big lips. And as I got older, I realize that there was some small part of me that was interested in men. But it wasn’t the same way that I would obsess over a girl. It was the idea, always in general terms. It was never romantic either. But I never ever took the effort to come out in any way - because functionally I never did anything that was gay. Of course people around you have a ‘gaydar’ but to this day, I’ve never explicitly and publicly mentioned it. I would even say out of principle I’ve decided not to publicly describe my sexuality at all. As a side note, It’s pretty infuriating that historians get to decide some dead person’s sexuality. It’s very, very complicated. I still don’t like calling myself bisexual (even if objectively true) because I feel i am more nuanced. it feels like when people anthromorphize animals to make some point about human behavior. Yes there is real world evidence I did these things, but can’t I choose how I define it?

To a significant other I might mention my experimentation in my teen years - and while that goes over pretty well with liberal women, it’s an eye opener. I never thought about it as the primary motivating factor behind hiding it, but it is real that women think of bisexual men as less than (especially if you are passive). I think women are off-put by the idea of man acting in the feminine role - and have a hard time really processing that, especially when it involves the person you find attractive.

But all that said, I always acted ‘closeted’ - and that’s the way I liked it. I’d get horny in bed, get my fantasy over with, and go back to normal. It was just this little part of myself that I indulged every once in a great while. I did wind up having gay sex a few times and I enjoyed it. I had a tryst in Milan with a guy with a boat.

But that was when I was 19 and now I’m 28. I’m a man with a job and a 401k. I’m not smooth and beautiful anymore - and the whole thing felt like a facsimile for the feminine.

It’s awful but some part of me wishes for community around this. I am at a point where I can build a life and get married, but this old part of me still exists - disconnected from what I am now. Protestant conversation therapy shouldn’t exist probably, but why not have programs to assist me in choosing to live my life as if this didn’t happen? Why tell people this essentialist idea that they are something forever and always - when, at least when you have two genders you are interested in, you can always neglect one? There’s always a chance that I wake up like Phillip morris, but I don’t think I will. I want to actively choose to never indulge in it as I grow old. Can my gay experiences not be a fun teenage experience à la the summer of love? Doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for that in the culture that’s been cultivated over last 15 years ish.

This is a podcast about being gay with your dad

I think the only challenge with building a community around this is that you have too much nuance to fit into simple boxes, and people basically always put others into simple boxes. You're just assigned to whatever cluster you seem to be the closest to, even if your internal processes are entirely different.

A better solution would be for people to treat other people as more complex beings in general, rather than just slapping labels on them based on limited information.

That said, I do believe that all the important bits aren't in the facts but in how they're interpreted. In this case:

that they are something forever and always

This is just the tendency for people to model others, and a sort of laziness which makes them not want to update their beliefs about others. Perhaps they even get uncomfortable when people are more fluid than fixed, simply because we don't like changing out minds. You might be gay, you might not be gay, only you really know. Your experiences could be sexuality, they could also be fetishism, and they could be something else entirely. Theory has to fit reality, but reality has no need to conform to theory. There's zero needs to label yourself in any way, or even to be consistent. What I think you dislike is the fact that other people will judge you and put you in boxes which you do not fit into.

Edit: I relied as if your comment was a top-level post. I don't know if this makes any meaningful difference or not

This is not a podcast. Did you copy that post from somewhere?

It’s a cumtown reference, whose gay jokes made me more comfortable with my identity

That's a joke, like saying "thank you for coming to my TED talk".

Yeah, but people that have listened to cum town will know exactly where it comes from. I genuinely think listening to that podcast helps me contextualize how non-serious this stuff is

I for one didn't. Write like everyone.. something. There's a rule. Sorry, phoneposting.

But not every cultural reference needs to be explained. You understood his post, except for one reference tacked onto the end. And that's fine.

That's quite true. And I think my pointing out that here's one for whom it's a complete dud isn't exactly a problem either.

Fair enough. I guess I wrongly assumed that there was a pretty big intersection between people who’ve listened and forum readers here, especially since it was so transgressive during its early run.

From morbid curiosity, I browse /r/redscarepodcast on a regular basis. Very interesting specimens on that sub.

That means I know as much about Cumtown as a well-adjusted person can through sheer cultural osmosis. I don't really do podcasts in general.

I'm a cum boy. I think there's at least 5 other regular posters that are too.

Maybe there is and you're right. I'm just one data point, as it were.

I keep hearing about it, but I refuse to try it out because the name is so gross.

Protestant conversation therapy shouldn’t exist probably, but why not have programs to assist me in choosing to live my life as if this didn’t happen

Conversion therapy worked for me… granted there were no Protestants involved.

Seconding, please elaborate!

You'd be amazed what you can accomplish with a few electrodes...

Have you written more about this?

No, I have not.

I am unwilling to go into particularly great detail, even with strangers on the internet, as it is a rather... personal subject. I suppose I brought it up though.

I had the guidance of a priest overseeing it, who doubled as a spiritual director. I remember a lot of talk therapy focused on inculcating a more normative masculinity(which included attraction to women, but also the general idea of it- I learned to like sports as well). I had a therapy workbook by someone Dutch... Van Ardweg I think? There wasn't a lot of specific focus on sex and sexuality- I was discouraged from thinking about it too much- but the idea of sexual activity with another male went from appealing to buzzkill. I did have to catalogue my attraction to women and was supposed to do it by recording- something to do with a normal, male voice. There were other exercises aimed at perceiving myself as male, too. The key theory was something about disruptive relationships to masculinity and the need to establish heteronormativity; I don't think it would even have been without the intertwined ideas about gender roles and all that.

If you have more specific questions you're welcome to ask but I might not answer.

Were you attracted to women before on any level?

I don’t see how conversion therapy can work unless you start off at least a little bit bi. There’s something just neurological different about gay vs straight brains and you can’t change that through therapy anymore than you can fix epilepsy. I also find the flip side - e.g. straight men watching gay porn and “turning gay” because straight porn became too boring - to be similarly questionable.

How did you get started? I mean, the grandparent comment sounded like he wouldn't mind availing himself of this, if it is the One Weird Trick. How would he be able to access the therapy that you were able to receive?

Convert to Catholicism and take an uber-conservative priest as a spiritual director?

I’ve heard that courage international is similar to what I had but in a group setting.

Huh, I always heard that Courage was just nofap for Catholics who were Gay.

That’s certainly possible; I went through individually with an FSSP priest who recommended it but I didn’t try it.

I still don’t like calling myself bisexual (even if objectively true) because I feel i am more nuanced. it feels like when people anthromorphize animals to make some point about human behavior. Yes there is real world evidence I did these things, but can’t I choose how I define it?

I am a simple man, if another man has sex with men at a rate >0 without duress or deprivation, I'd call them bi.

The reason I specify a lack of duress or deprivation, other than the obvious of rape, is that men often have sex with other men when deprived of opportunities to get the fairer sex. Think prison, or boys only boarding school.

I was in a boys only school, albeit not a boarding one, and I never got it on with my bros.

(I say this without any moral condemnation, at all, it's just a question of labels)

Of course, there are all kinds of edge cases, what if they didn't know someone was a man? Wiser men than me have ended up in Thailand drunk off their tits, and didn't realize their partner was a lady boy. Or what if they're post-op trans?

I agree with you that retroactively labeling people in the historical sense is a questionable task. Many cultures, particularly the Romans or Greeks, had models of sexuality that don't cleanly match onto our own. Even when it was two men, the question of who was on top versus the bottom was very important. The latter was condemned, the former condemned weaker, tolerated or extolled as virtuous depending on the exact moment in time.

Even today, the Turkish army excludes people bottoming from the mandatory draft, but doesn't allow tops to use the same excuse. There are doctors working for the government whose job it is to look at pictures of people getting their backs blown out, while having to decide if that counts.

Of course, there are all kinds of edge cases, what if they didn't know someone was a man? Wiser men than me have ended up in Thailand drunk off their tits, and didn't realize their partner was a lady boy. Or what if they're post-op trans?

If they look like women, and if they don't have a dick (or you're unaware of it due to drunkenness), how is that an edge case? And what about the reverse - a man having a passable trans male partner? Are both scenarios gay/bi?

I think it's easier to just think of it as, if you're a man and only attracted to male characteristics, e.g. penis, body hair, muscles, general masculinity, etc. you're gay, if you're only attracted to female characteristics, e.g. vagina, breasts, small waist/large hips, you're straight. If you're attracted to both, you're bi, past a certain fuzzy point (being attracted to tall women is fine, but being attracted to tall, muscular, hairy women with small hips and deep voices starts getting a bit sus). You're not suddenly gay for being attracted to a drawing of a woman if the artist later goes "ha, I actually intended it to be a male, it just looks like a drawing of a woman!".

I agree with you that retroactively labeling people in the historical sense is a questionable task. Many cultures, particularly the Romans or Greeks, had models of sexuality that don't cleanly match onto our own. Even when it was two men, the question of who was on top versus the bottom was very important. The latter was condemned, the former condemned weaker, tolerated or extolled as virtuous depending on the exact moment in time.

There does seem to be this universal male anxiety over "does liking/doing X make me less of a man?" though. In modern times this seems to have become "am I gay for liking/doing X" which adds an layer of worry over things Romans or Greeks wouldn't have cared about, like being the dominant partner of a younger male of lesser social status. Although the Romans thought having a goatee or touching your head with your finger was effeminate, so maybe it evens out.

Even today, the Turkish army excludes people bottoming from the mandatory draft, but doesn't allow tops to use the same excuse. There are doctors working for the government whose job it is to look at pictures of people getting their backs blown out, while having to decide if that counts.

I wonder if AI makes this easier, although I presume there are simpler ways for the committed pacifist and/or coward to get out of it.

I remember my grandfather saying that in the US military during the war there were countless easy ways for someone smart to avoid actual front line combat, but they had to join first so as to allow the military the plausible deniability central to conscription; it is important for the fighting plebs to believe that nobody is “getting away with it” lest overall morale suffer. He hated those people, even though after a relatively minor injury he sat out much of the war.

I’ve heard that dodging the draft in Vietnam by pretending to be gay was doable as long as you pretended to be playing along.

If they're using AI for this purpose, well, that would be unusually forward thinking for the Turkish military. It probably doesn't take long for a military psychiatrist to take a look at an image, and trust me, we've seen much worse so it's not an onerous task.

I have never needed to dodge a draft, but I could see worse options on the table. Paying a gay man a few bucks to put on a condom and stick it in? Do you even have to pay? On the topic of AI, I'm sure it would be possible to deepfake it.

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