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In 2023, at a Wuhan University library study space, Yang Jingyuan (JY), a female master’s student in Economics/Law, was seated close to Xiao Mingtao (MX), a male first‑year undergraduate student. JY secretly recorded MX for approximately 70 minutes whilst seated near him for around 100 minutes. During this time, MX can be seen touching his clothed crotch area, reportedly due to eczema‑related irritation.
Once she believed she had obtained sufficient footage and had formulated a plan, JY confronted MX and demanded an official written apology on the spot, promising that this sexual‑harassment episode would be handled privately.
JY subsequently pressed the university for disciplinary action against MX and for preferential treatment as a victim of sexual assault. She circulated the video and the written apology online amid a wave of feminist activism in China in 2023, garnering wide support. Personal details of MX and his family members—including their occupations and backgrounds—surfaced online, with many voices supporting JY and amplifying female victimhood. Wuhan University awarded JY a distinction for her thesis, among other recognitions, and she was admitted as a doctoral candidate at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). MX was later disciplined by Wuhan University and, according to some reports, expelled.
JY sued MX using the evidence she had gathered (the video and MX’s written apology). The court dismissed the case on the basis that MX’s written apology had been produced under duress. This was evidenced by an additional clip showing JY threatening MX on the spot as the apology was written; JY’s lawyer voluntarily supplied this clip to the court.
Court decision happened on 25 July of 2025. Around August 2025, JY posted online again from multiple accounts, stating that she had been accepted by HKBU for a doctorate in law, and that she did not think Mr Xiao (MX) would be accepted into any programme of similar prestige. In the same posts, JY said she was aware of efforts for MX to apply to a university outside China and that she would submit evidence of MX’s alleged sexual‑harassment acts to any institution to which he applied.
By August 2025, the ebb and flow of feminist movements in China had produced different sentiments. Voices emerged emphasising the damage that JY’s posts—and the 2023 wave of online support—had caused to MX and his family, leading to stress and harm. MX developed mental‑health issues during this time.
JY’s master’s thesis became the most downloaded thesis from Wuhan University. Multiple errors in key components of the award‑winning thesis were identified, some pertaining to econometrics and others to different areas. JY has since been permitted to make corrections to the submitted and published thesis, and has claimed that she was harassed by journalists while working on it, which caused her mental‑health harm.
As of 9 August 2025, Wuhan University officials had yet to provide an official response to netizens’ scrutiny of how the 2023 case was handled, as well as to questions about the recognition of the quality of JY’s master’s thesis.
Hong Kong Baptist University, a lower‑mid‑ranking tertiary institution, was also under netizen scrutiny for the decision to accept JY onto a doctoral law programme. It has since hidden acceptance‑decision information and made no statements regarding online pressure.
A sizeable number of netizens remain supportive of JY, linking her success to the life and death of feminist movements in China.
Conversely, some companies have reportedly either explicitly or quietly rejected internship or job applicants who are Wuhan University graduates, citing concerns either about the actual quality of candidates or about the ethos and culture of the university’s management.
It is reported that, in Chinese universities, more severe cases of sexual assault—for example, rape—may result in the victim being awarded degrees without completing required components of study or examinations, and being guaranteed a place in postgraduate studies with a scholarship that would normally require a qualifying examination.
In China, sexual harassment and rape are, in key legal formulations, recognised as offences against females.
Jingyuan Yang (JY): 杨景媛 Mingtao Xiao (MX): 肖明韬 https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/武汉大学图书馆争议事件
Hi, first time poster here. Had discussion with a friend who recommended me to the motte.
I grew up in China, went to Wuhan University.
My experience with what I understood to be feminism has been leaning more towards the negative: I found vehement advocates tend to be fueled with anger, and riddled with what I perceive as various forms of double standards.
I think advocates of the Chinese feminist movement should be allowed a 2-year live and work experience exchange to India.
Also, Chinese internet sphere is kind of scary.
Welcome!
It's always interesting to get a perspective from another part of the world, though that always comes with a built-in inability to comment on it much, due to the same lack of familiarity that makes it interesting to begin with. It's a bit sad to hear the same sort of controversies are taking place in a completely different culture. What's worse, even the pushback that followed doesn't feel like cause for much optimism, as it reminds me of various backlashes in the Western internet ~10 years ago. Here's hoping China is on a different trajectory, and not just a bit behind on the same path.
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Kind of sounds like a smaller-scale version of Mattress Girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattress_Performance_(Carry_That_Weight)), without any sexual contact between complainant and defendant alleged to have taken place.
Note that Columbia ended up settling a lawsuit with the guy in question on account of (presumed) Title IX violations in the course of its disciplinary actions and allowing the performance art piece, including issuing a formal apology.
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How are gender relations in China, in your experience? We have a lot of issues and stories like this in the West, though South Korea always seemed the most insane to me in terms of complete gender relation breakdown.
Also, welcome to the Motte. I would love to read about more Chinese culture war skirmishes like this, and I'm sure I am not alone in that. These stories tend to not make their way to the English side of the web often.
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Welcome! China is often discussed here, but only "from afar," as there seem to be very few people who have visited, and even fewer who can speak the language or have a more than superficial understanding of the current culture. I hope to see you post here frequently to weigh in on these discussions!
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I second @Lewyn's welcome. I would like to learn to read Chinese someday but I'm very interested about what goes on. The Chinese internet is basically dark matter for most of us - you know it's there and you know it's huge, but you have no idea what's in it. The Great Firewall notwithstanding, I believe that the reverse is not quite true, though that may be parochialism on my part.
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I have never been on Chinese wikipedia and I must admit suddenly opening a Chinese webpage which is entirely text almost felt like something physically hit me in the face. So many boxes and sticks.
It is difficult to comment on this episode, especially since you drop the information that the guy supposedly wasn't actually touching himself but rubbing some eczema spots. In my personal experience mainland Chinese men (or at least international engineering student types I interacted with) have by far the worst personal hygiene or etiquette awareness I have ever seen in any group of people. But I also never heard or seen them act openly sexually creepy so I am struggling to even visualize this episode.
I must ask: I read about Korea (and heard about Taiwan from personal acquaintances) that in these countries there seems to exist some serious animosity between young men and women. Would you say the same applies to PRC as well?
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Welcome from China! Feel free to answer my questions or not:
is pinyin/use of Chinese characters a culture war flashpoint? If so, how so?
what’s the state of Chinese gender relations?
is china’s education obsession driven by straightforward economic factors, or is it entirely cultural? What’s the delta between high skill blue collar and average white collar salaries?
what’s the great firewall like in practice? Is it mostly focused on keeping news sources state approved? Or is it very block heavy? Obviously there’s some keywords(tianmen, June 4), are there some odd or unexpected ones? What’s the whispernet/samizdat situation like?
does China see itself leading the world as hegemon, or is it more of a place of honor thing?
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The Unwitting Ethnographer: On Pride Flags and Plausible Deniability
I did not set out to do anthropology. I set out to have a beer. The other regular haunts near my flat skewed geriatric, and while I can happily talk to a septuagenarian about buses, I was in the mood for music that did not predate the Falklands. The bar I wandered into had a younger crowd, a decent playlist, and discrete details I somehow failed to parse until much later. Pride flags on the walls. A very large pride flag by the door. A clientele that could only be described as statistically enriched for men in nice shoes.
I was nursing a Tennent's when one of the patrons approached the bar and ordered what appeared to be a small chemistry set worth of brightly colored shots. The logistics fascinated me: he deployed some kind of carrying apparatus that locked under the shot glasses at the rim, allowing safe transport of the entire collection. The British have always been quiet pioneers of Applied Alcoholism, and the field has clearly advanced beyond what I learned in medical school.
"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."
I experienced a sudden cutaneous vasodilation, a blush, which I hoped was obscured by my facial hair and the ambient lighting. The complexion probably helps.
His companion laughed, but the interaction quickly resolved into a gesture of goodwill. They offered me one of the shots. Morbid curiosity being a powerful motivator, I accepted. The taste was not unpleasant. Upon turning to share this assessment with the group, I was met with expectant looks. "It wasn't bad," I offered. "I could see myself drinking this." "If you think this wasn't bad," a different member of the group replied, "then you'll probably like antifreeze."
I answered, mostly sober at that point, that I had not yet tried antifreeze but remained open-minded.
Etiquette required reciprocation. Also, heterosexual uncertainty suggested that free liquor in a gay bar might have exchange rates I was not qualified to negotiate, so I bought two shots and took them over. The bartender had hinted that the recipients did not like Gordon’s, which I could respect as a principled position. The group received the offering warmly, then kept me at the table as if a recruitable stray cat had decided to sit in their sunbeam.
Cast and setting
There were six of them, give or take my blood alcohol level. Most looked like ordinary men dressed for a Saturday night, with more piercings and better grooming. The one who had flirted at the bar was the outlier. Wife-beater, small tattoos scattered like confetti, a bull ring large enough to restrain mythological fauna. Call him FG, for Flamboyant Gent. His friend with the quick laugh was slight and balding. SG. The third I spoke with most was conventionally handsome and soft-edged in a way that suggests many women have fallen for him and then discovered the plot twist. HG, for Hetero-passing Gent.
I clarified my presence, attributing it to a combination of cultural unfamiliarity and severe myopia. FG gestured towards the numerous pride flags. I claimed to have interpreted them as generic contemporary decor. He then indicated the very large flag by the entrance, to which I could only plead a fundamental lack of situational awareness.
They inquired about my purpose in a city not famed for its nightlife. I gave my standard exposition: I am a doctor, recently relocated from a Small Scottish Town (SST). This news was met with uniform approval. My subsequent anecdote about drunken misadventures in SST was also successful, though their perspective on such small communities was predictably negative. A lot of them disclosed that they had grown up in nearly indistinguishable SSTs, and hadn't enjoyed it. The low-anonymity, high-surveillance environment of a small town is likely a suboptimal habitat for a gay man.
They were all locals. They were also colleagues, sort of. Not mine, yet. Two worked in the biochemistry lab at the same trust where I work in psychiatry. The third did something nearby in clinical science that I forgot as the evening progressed.
We found common ground commiserating over the state of the NHS circa 2025. FG complained about ill-conceived sample requests from junior doctors at inconvenient hours. I reassured him that psychiatry was a low-impact requester; my biochemistry screens were routine and rarely urgent. This professional courtesy earned me an offer of expedited service for future lithium level checks, which I noted for potential future use.
I was also offered, variously, two blowjobs, a rimjob, and a golden shower. I declined with gratitude. It is good to be desired. It is also good to have boundaries.
(As wise men have said: if you're struggling on the local dating apps, it might not be your fault and there's hope for you yet. But if you go to a gay bar and don't get hit on, it might be time to see if monasteries are recruiting)
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.
"Such a shame," FG added, "especially when you're dressed like that." My attire, a polo shirt under a pullover, was chosen for its extreme neutrality. I suppose this can create its own kind of allure through sheer demureness.
I was informed of some romantic tension. SG and HG both had crushes on each other, but neither would make a move. Were they both bottoms? I tentatively asked. Nah, one's a bottom, but the other is a verse.
When they heard FG explaining this to me, HG claimed that he had, in fact, tried to kiss SG, but had been rebuffed. SG was affronted and explained that it hadn't been a good time, he'd been chewing on a chicken tender when the former had attempted to tongue-punch him in the tonsils. They both laughed, and began making up for wasted time. Ah, young love, don't you love to see it?
By now the ethnographer in me, who had apparently decided to write this post retroactively, began asking questions. I apologized for being nosy, but they laughed it off. The answers, heavily paraphrased and possibly misremembered after several Tennent’s, were as follows:
Q1. Poppers
How common are poppers in actual practice? FG looked at me like I had asked how common forks are at dinner. The table consensus: some had used them, none were evangelists. They shared two cautionary fables about people who treated poppers as shooters or aerosolized them and died. The bartender volunteered that poppers slowed time and elongated orgasms.
An unexpected corollary was also disclosed: a high incidence of incontinence issues among the group, to the point where coffee consumption was a calculated risk. They then fielded a surprising counter-query: Does applying sugar to a prolapsed anus aid in its reduction? I admitted that while the technique was vaguely familiar from medical lore, if I tried to put it into practice on the wards, the nurses would have me up in front of the GMC or the police in short order.
Q2. Cleanliness protocols
Do people douche before anal sex? After some deliberation, the consensus was no, not routinely. Diet was preferred. Eat fiber, manage timing, accept that risk can be reduced but not eliminated. You get used to it. I shared that several heterosexual experiments of mine had ended with olfactory regret. They said that in a male-male context the polite response would be to send the man to the shower or call for a reschedule. I said that if I tried that with a woman I would be killed, slowly, and possibly correctly.
Q3. Closeted and bi men
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. Others nodded. This was not about identity policing. It was about risk management.
Q4. Grindr
Grindr, yes or no? A unanimous no. The people on it were described as crazy in the technical sense. Word of mouth, mutual friends, and the bar network work better. I said I had expected at least one notification during the evening. I declined to explain how I know the sound.
Q5. PrEP and HIV risk
Are you on PrEP? Only FG. He is meticulous about screening and uses PrEP as insurance. He also thinks gay men are unfairly blamed for both HIV and monkeypox, and claimed that heterosexuals now acquire both at higher rates while gay men are just more honest and tested more. I had strong reservations about that claim, and made a note to check later. It was not the time for a literature review in a bar where I had been offered a golden shower five minutes earlier.
Q6. Bug chasers
Do bug chasers still exist? Only FG had even heard of them, and he is slightly older. He said the phenomenon is almost extinct, and was already rare when he came out. He explained the idea for the younger men, who reacted with the combination of curiosity and horror that usually attends bad Victorian surgery.
Q7. Baths
Do people have sex in the baths? Yes, says FG, wistfully reminiscing about a visit to San Francisco.
Is it hygienic? Probably not, he confides. But much like swimming in a kiddie pool, you have to have your faith in the antiseptic properties of chlorine.
Q8. Straight people in gay spaces
Is my presence in a gay bar objectionable?
Not you, you seem like a nice and open-minded lad. But in general?
They gave a quick lesson in ecological progression. A gay bar/night club opens and serves a mostly LGBT clientele. Straight women discover it is a space where they can be drunk and loud without constant male attention (they're very popular for hen-dos). Straight men discover that straight women are there. The venue drifts toward generic nightlife. Even worse, some of these men are alleged to be rather bigoted, and FG said he wasn't willing to take the risk of being socked in the face for merely kissing a partner on the dance floor.
According to him, the only reliable counterpressure is to make the environment clearly and unambiguously queer. Sex in dark corners and in toilets tends to discourage straight tourists and is conveniently hard to legislate away without awkward free speech arguments. They mentioned the only other gay bar nearby, owned by a man who is both gay and loudly hostile to trans people. They had taken their business elsewhere.
My new friends left early. Sunday shifts wait for no man. I stayed until closing and fell in love at a distance with a woman who was almost certainly a lesbian and possibly autistic. Short hair, noise-cancelling earphones in, a single beer, a one-handed game controller, a dog’s full attention, an older man attempting conversation and doing no visible damage. I did not ask for her number. In a Hollywood version of this evening I would mature, learn a lesson about acceptance, and end with a chaste coffee. 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.
Methods, such as they were:
This was opportunistic qualitative sampling. The ethnographer was three drinks in and had accepted a blue shot of unknown pedigree. The participants were friendly and practiced at explaining themselves to outsiders. There was music. There were interruptions. Recall bias is certain. Social desirability bias is probable. My notes consist of the phrases I kept repeating to myself while walking home and the sentences that reappeared in my head the next morning like uninvited guests. If you want preregistration and a codebook, you will be disappointed.
Given the proliferation in enemy areas of huge pride flags at the door of every imaginable type of establishment, the misunderstanding should be perfectly normal. In fact I now have to wonder how actual explicitly LGB establishments can now directly advertise themselves as such.
This is, on one level, my actual impression of many places. I live in a blue state, so casual pride flags happen. But once you get above a certain threshold of rainbow density in a nominally public place, it’s clear that there’s a dynamic of deliberate hostility to those of us with other convictions.
Still, I’d not open with that phrase on the Motte. Mistake theory is not altogether dead here, the way it usually is there.
I'm not much into mistake theory, but what does annoy me about the "enemy areas" phrase is the consensus-building. @phailyoor's enemies are not the same as my enemies. I'd be fine with it if he wrote "Given the proliferation in areas controlled by my enemies,...".
I completely agree. I am conservative while strongly disliking MAGA and as a result pretty much everywhere else I go online it is very clear that I am the outsider and there is nothing I hate more than "as we all agree" style posts. Part of why I like the Motte so much is that it is one of the few places I feel closer to the median, like I actually belong, and one of the things I would like for my space is to not replicate the indignities of enemy territory but with the sign reversed.
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I remember when my hotel had a gay pride flag flying alongside the American flag and the state flag. Definitely made me feel worse about working there; it was like I was under enemy occupation.
Thankfully, it has since been replaced with a Canadian flag. Woke may not be dead, but it is surely in retreat.
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I’ll admit, I’ve seen political signage and iconography on both sides that’s starting to get disturbingly close to the murals in Belfast that demarcate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.
Ah, thé pride flag and the Republican pride flag(although granted the thin blue line/thin red line/etc are usually separate flags). The Protestants who have discovered sacred heart month. The ‘y’all means all’ murals. The ‘in this house we believe’ signs. The maga flags. The bumper stickers saying ‘stand for the flag, kneel for the cross’.
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Please explain (and ideally provide pictures).
In Northern Ireland during the Troubles (a period of civil war waged by clandestine paramilitaries roughly along religious sectarian lines), neighborhoods in the major cities would have large political murals on buildings and walls that marked the area as either Protestant or Catholic. This is a region where walking into the wrong neighborhood could get you shot.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I mean - please explain what political signage and iconography you see today, and please provide pictures thereof if possible.
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Well we still have the murals and your chances of being shot have gone way down. Though FYI seeing which colours the kerbs are painted or which flags are on the lampposts is probably easier as there aren't that many murals, you may have to walk a while to work out where you are if relying on murals alone.
You chances of being shot in the wrong region weren't zero, but they weren't massive even at the height of the Troubles. I was on the Falls road (Catholic area) a fair bit even though I was Protestant. Without checking where someone keeps their toaster, or talking to them about schooling you can't tell a Catholic from a Protestant in general just by looking. Hence the old joke about a Jew being stopped by Paramilitaries.
Where do protestants keep their toasters?
In the cupboard as opposed to out on the counter. Popularized by Derry Girls where a Catholic girls school and a Protestant Boys school are attempting to find commonalities.
@Lewis2
https://ce-wp-site-content.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2022/08/13232530/MHROL34Q4K5PCNG5AE53V5QUTI.jpg
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Care to tell the old joke? I’m not sure how I’d google it…
A Jewish man is walking through Belfast one night when he gets stopped by two men in balaclavas with Armalites.
One of the men asks in a thick Belfast accent "Prod or Taig?" The Jewish man looks confused. "What?" "Are you a Protestant or are you a Catholic?" the other man asks in an even thicker accent. The Jewish man says "Well, I'm a Jew". The first paramilitary gives a long suffering sigh. "Yes, but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?"
That's the joke.
I have heard a different version which plays off it:
A man is walking home late at night in Belfast. Suddenly he's pulled into a dark alley and feels a knife at his throat! A hoarse voice whispers into his ear, "Are ye Protestant or Catholic?" Thinking quickly, wondering how to answer to save his life, the man has an inspiration. "Neither! I'm Jewish!" he says. "Well now, I'm the luckiest Arab in Belfast, so I am!" says the attacker.
Edit: I see my near namesake beat me to it!
Edit Edit: There is also a version where it's an atheist and the final question is: "Yes but is it the Protestant God or the Catholic God that you don't believe in?"
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"Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?"
"Neither. I'm Jewish."
"Sure, sure, but are you Catholic Jewish or Protestant Jewish?"
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Where do they keep their toaster?
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Indeed. If I saw a parade's worth of Progress Pride flags, I would think "must be a mainline protestant church."
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Even the shitty dive bar near me has a pride flag in the window. And practically every establishment claims to be "black/woman/lgbt owned" for social credit points. If you live in a Blue area, the gay bars really have to try to stand out.
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I work in an office building. There are a few open office sections with many employees in each one. At least two have pride flags. We design electronics and software for said electronics.
A local restraunt has outdoor seating with a pride banner wrapped around the barrier separating it from the public sidewalk. It must be hundreds of feet of the stuff. I met the owner and as best I can tell he isn't gay. The clientele are the regular mix of people in the area. Not a gay venue by any means. But inexplicably covered in pride.
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A Pride flag plus a "Black Lives Matter" sign is pretty much obligatory for every business in a "hipster" neighborhood. Just means "We support $CURRENT_THING". Reminds me of Havel's greengrocer.
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Internet.
There's some flaming bars that will literally have rainbows draped from every awning and at every curtain, every wall bright pink, but especially these days there's a lot of very boring-looking bars that will have a surprisingly deep event lists. (And, albeit more rarely, some flame-on looking bars that'll have an event list that looks like an Applebee's.)
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In the gay bar near my apartment, the bathrooms are downstairs. At the top of the stairs is a little dispenser from which you can get free condoms and little sachets of lubricant.
I'd say the majority of straight bars I've been in have vending machines in the bathrooms for this. Maybe not lube, but that's just knowing your audience.
Yes, but in this particular gay bar the condoms and lube are given away for free in common areas, as opposed to being available for sale in the toilets.
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Location, word of mouth, I assume.
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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 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.
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.
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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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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!".
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.
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Conversion therapy worked for me… granted there were no Protestants involved.
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.
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.
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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.
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Seconding, please elaborate!
You'd be amazed what you can accomplish with a few electrodes...
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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:
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
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This is not a podcast. Did you copy that post from somewhere?
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.
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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.
I keep hearing about it, but I refuse to try it out because the name is so gross.
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Maybe there is and you're right. I'm just one data point, as it were.
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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.
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I'm a cum boy. I think there's at least 5 other regular posters that are too.
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It’s a cumtown reference, whose gay jokes made me more comfortable with my identity
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I appreciate the 'why worry about it' perspective, but being an adult means you have to be honest with yourself, especially when you're at a point where you're making choices that will define your future and affect other people.
The indulgent, careless thing to do would be to just 'roll with it,' get married, and pretend this part of my history doesn't exist. That's the path that ends with me hurting a family someday because I decided to indulge in something hidden, something I refused to honestly confront beforehand.
It's about doing the difficult, private work of self-assessment now so that I don't live with regret, and more importantly, so that I don't betray the trust of a person I promise my life to.
Frankly, I see this process as the absolute opposite of indulgence. I see it as a prerequisite to being a decent husband and man.
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My understanding is that it's a 13 52 kind of situation. On a per capita basis gay men are way more likely to catch and spread it, but in absolute numbers there are more heterosexual cases because they are the vast majority of the population. If you're outnumbered 20 to 1 then you can have up to 19x the incidence rate and still have fewer total cases.
According to the CDC website, 67% of new HIV cases are to gay men and 55% of total existing cases. So it's more of a 1.5/55 scenario than a 13/52.
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Also, you are misunderstanding 13 52. 13 52 means 13% of the population does 52% of the murders. That is higher both on a per capita basis and on an absolute basis than any other group, by the necessity of percentage math.
I was pointing towards the general concept (disproportionately high rate of incidence) not the specific numbers involved. I suppose 13 52 is a minority -> majority not a minority -> higher minority, so maybe a bad example.
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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.
Fair. Not 100% accurately, mostly because some are paranoid enough to have separate phones or be really aggressive about separating files, but yeah, even people who aren't on the meat market'll often have some less-than-audience-friendly photos on their phones.
You might be surprised. I'm not the best person to ask about appearances, but there's a good part of gay society where that'd come across as pretty strong masc top signal.
Sounds about right. My impression's that they were a lot more popular in the 80s, and still had a decent number of strong advocates in the 90s, but even when I was a young bi they'd started to get the same sort reputation whippits did (if far less dangerous). Technically a high, but dumb and risky even by the standards of drugs.
I think there's also some mechanical explanations, in addition to the safety and reputational concerns, though. A lot of by-gay-for-gay literature even into the 90s emphasize them (or similar materials like 'vcr tape cleaner') not for improving climax, but as a muscle relaxant. Improved availability of tools and toys to get certain muscles more trained for certain things, and more expectations for tops to properly manage speed, may have made that aspect a lot less universally valuable.
But they've still got a following for that purpose, and that following has long a litany of first-hand bad experiences (bad headaches) and second-hand horror stories (oh boy, chemical burns).
Huh. Wonder how much of that's a genuine geographic or cultural difference, or something tied to the specifics of how UK bars work rather than US sphere stuff, rather than 'oh, that's just a bidet/enema/lotta shower time, not a douche'. It's always been something some people can't stand at all, and definitely not my idea of fun, but it's something I've been hard-pressed to be comfortable without even when pretty confident about diet control.
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.
You're starting to see that a bit more, but not surprised it's both uncommon and mostly not young gays in your sample. I'm not convinced it's a good decision at larger scales -- a lot of the fresh-out-of-high-school gay guys think it's like complete immunity, rather than 'just' an order of magnitude reduction -- but then again I probably put nowhere near FG's value on sex, so hard to make a serious analysis.
((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.))
Yeah, they were incredibly rare ten or even twenty years ago, and probably reflected a bunch of conditions that aren't likely to show up again: the whole thing screams of sublimated fears over having to choose between certain infection and complete abstinence not just from sex but even casual exposure in gay spaces. You do still get some people taking incredibly stupid risks, but they're usually more just going 'max bodycount'.
Speaking of which: ugh, that's a sphere I'm glad I have no information about.
In the US, you'll sometimes see jokes about it as equivalent to keeping rent down by firing gunshots off at the street corner. Probably not a turn of phrase that'd be appreciated or understood in the UK, though. I think there's more motivation toward low-grade exhibitionism, since a lot of these habits were common back when (or where) straight guys wouldn't enter a gay bar for a sorority worth of women, but fear of gay spaces getting rolled over by a tidal wave of straights is definitely a thing and not an unreasonable fear.
Oh, boy, that's it's own separate ball of wax. Tbf, there's a lot of complex tradeoffs where the new demographic has some compatibility issues with the standard demos at the same time that it is partly your old clients. But there's also lot of older gay guys that are somewhere between weirded out by and grossed out by trans women as pretty much everything that gay men weren't supposed to do, or just don't like it, and that's a lot more controversial an issue in the field.
Okay, now you've piqued my curiosity.
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!
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.
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.
I'm afraid it's not very interesting: I was just at the 'willing-to-buy-gay-porn' level of confidence, had completely missed the (then-much-rarer) high school and college actually-social gay environments like whatever-they-called-GSAs back then or marching band, didn't drink alcohol or go to straight bars, and was pretty terminally clueless, so fish out of water is understating things. Absolutely unprepared and uninterested in a hookup, no actual gay friends, and no clue what the expected behavior was beyond hanky code horror stories, and I've got a face for radio and so little self-confidence I wasn't even bring that well. The whole train of logic was just 'gay and bi guys meet in bars, I'm a bi guy, so if I want to talk with other gay and bi guys I should learn how to go to bars'.
First time I showed up alone ten minutes after opening, bought a whole pizza and a diet coke, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. Nobody else there but the staff, and in retrospect they thought either I was stood up by a cheap date or about to run away from home, but about the only context I had was a couple years in high school having worked a family diner so took a hovering and constantly-asking-if-I-was-ok waiter as trying to get an extra dollar tip on a bad night.
The second was later enough in the day there were actually other clients there, but I'm still absolutely clueless and after how badly the first time went I brought a book, so when a guy sat next to me and ordered me a drink I said nope, and while I'd like to pretend that's to avoid leading someone on, I also still genuinely had trouble with the taste of beer and wine, and also had all the various then-prominent stories about never accepting drinks from strangers. And then went back to my book when he didn't start talking anything else. And then went on like that for a good thirty-plus minutes. Third was pretty much the same thing. In retrospect, some of the people on try three were probably trying to flirt, but in terms of social skill I’m not just answering how my day was with actual details of my actual day, but I’m not following up with questions back. I remember one guy complimenting my shirt, and telling him where I bought it.
Fourth was karaoke night. So you've got all that, and now people are much more drunk, and it's loud enough I couldn't hear most of what was going on anyway. 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.
In some ways, I was pretty lucky that it went that particular failure mode -- despite a pretty subtle appearance and name, the place both oriented toward older crowds and was... much more high-energy than I would have been ready for, so to speak: karaoke night was the shallow end. But I'm glad that there's other options on both 'dating' and homosocial environments options now.
Yeah, that's fair. There's a lot of gay guys -- even gay guys that self-identify as sluts -- that want their (primary) relationships to be a lot more serious than a lot of natural equilibrium ends up, and that's a hard problem to solve and an easy problem to get jealous over.
Heh. 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 with variations on both sides of the orientation aisles (for an undeniably gay version: himbo hooters). And there's definitely a whole variety of stuff that's spread around the fantasy of either being so attractive or fucking so well that you redefine what's desirable for someone. ((for furries, jarlium has some great stuff on those themes.))
And, of course, top shortages definitely don't help.
... 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. But probably something the CDC expects to be more effective.
Good god, the level of obliviousness was off the charts haha. If it's not too late, I can send you an autism diagnosis in the mail.
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Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
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 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 mean it pretty literally: an employee sat down, explained what I was doing wrong, what the expectations for that specific space was, what likely failure modes I'd encounter if I continued as I was doing, and some alternative approaches.
I dunno what the guy's specific job was, but one of the older employees sat down and gave a ten or fifteen minute spiel, starting with the simple stuff like explaining what someone buying you a drink meant (only strictly speaking requires a conversation, but impolite to accept if you aren't looking for something more, with expectations of reciprocity, and how the tab worked under those circumstances) and how to handle it if the drink was unacceptable but the company wasn't (tell the bartender or waiter when you order your first drink that you're a teetotaler, even if you're not), that customers purchasing less than two beers worth were going to unspecified issues (hint hint), normal don't leave drinks unattended and know your limits for alcohol when you do drink. Eventually, what I'd missed about the name (a marijuana reference), what event nights were active for 'mostly' social stuff (poker or
betting onwatch football) and which were much more heavy on either hookups or otherwise might be a little too ribald for me (here's a flier; yes several include drag and/or guys in glorified speedos), and other spaces that might be easier to get friends to go to the bar with (admittedly, not very helpful given three of the recs were explicitly political orgs).I have no idea how many of those conventions were even common back then and I'm sure many aren't common now.
Uh... yeah. One of my first crushes was on a straight guy, and it wasn't the only such crush, add in a general shortage of tops, and there's a lot of reasons it works as a fantasy. And while I've never pursued it, you only really need one or two closeted guys for it to feel like it could work.
Maybe? I dunno how much of it's kidding on the square. A lot of soccons have looked at the number of younger generations self-identifying as bi and then not doing anything about it, but there's other explanations for that behavior that could end up changing pretty fast.
But that may just be me assuming many other people share my interests, and there definitely are starting to be people who try to take that approach and get surprised to find out exactly how poorly it works in practice.
Hah! Fair point. Even 'always up for sex' isn't anywhere near realistic, and that's assuming a lot of frot that straight or 'straight' guys aren't probably gonna be feeling. And it's very much just a different sort of drama, and not even that different, rather than as overt a difference in quantity as a lot of straight guys expect.
Hell, some of the times you don't even avoid the shoe-explosion.
Interesting. I'll have to put some feelers out; this seems like the sorta thing where everyone involved was sure they were just presenting the most palatable experience, but by the end of the game of telephone it's somewhere between useless (like dental dams, PrEP for lesbians is probably not a high impact field: I think there's been literally one case of cisF/cisF HIV transmission through oral sex documented) and actively counterproductive (expecting partners to use a drug they can't get and wouldn't be helped by).
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My God man, showing up right after open and buying a whole pizza. I literally laughed out loud.
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Uff da, been there with the book.
I'm glad that on a couple other "just how oblivious can I be" occasions I had thoughtful friends nearby that recognized how dire the situation and coached me before it was too late and the opportunity lost.
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What is an honest straight man who is a zero on the Kinsey scale supposed to do? Go topless? I suspect that would make things worse, heh.
What else do I have in my wardrobe? Hawaiian shirt? I can see where that leads.. Barely worn suits? Probably means I'm closeted and looking for fun on a business trip I'm sure.
I mean, I can't blame them, I was an interloper in a gay bar. That is a strong signal of... something. Poor situational awareness, a liberal worldview, a love of cheap drinks? Pick your poison.
FG framed it in a manner I've heard before: Back in the day, you're all but guaranteed to get it, unless you give up on the gay lifestyle altogether. Why not just get it out of the way?
Hang on, another memory unlocked. He told me that he had met three potential partners who were HIV positive. I think he said two of them were on PrEP, and he might have slept with them. The other wasn't, and thus was rebuffed. I think this is what prompted the tirade about HIV and monkeypox. He said that man was being an idiot, and worsening general societal perception of the gays, as well as being a risk to their lifestyle.
Interesting. I'm not too surprised by the existence of conservative or reactionary gay men. These guys seemed to be very liberal in outlook, they were friends with the trans bartender, so I guess they took the concept of LGBT solidarity more seriously!
Fair. If I had to come up with the no-gay-guy-would-wear-this setup, it'd probably involve an emphasis on frumpy and especially too-large clothing, but that's neither actionable nor useful advice for anyone in the real world.
Yeah, something like that, but eroticized as someone permanently taking you and making it impossible to go back. Not just for lifestyle-as-in-baths-and-chemsex, but even lifestyle-as-in-meeting-up-with-gays-for-parchessi: remember that it took until the late 1980s for official medical advice to say you couldn't transmit HIV by casual contact, and longer for a lot of people including gay guys to actually believe it.
There's been a long-standing presence of these sorta pragmatists, and while HIV gave them a lot more political capital (even when they were guessing), they've probably had more impact than my respectability politics side. I'm not sure how well the math works out in the long run, though.
I'm also confused about either the specific policies or a communication issue. My impression was that US medical advice is to actively test people for HIV first and never give PrEP to HIV positive people, and that the UK was similar. Are these people using PrEP as a byword for any oral anti-HIV medication, and they're really on ART (but then they're unusually medtechnical group, so that'd be a weird conflation)? Is FG assuming anyone without known HIV status is positive, and these guys are 'just' unknown status, so PrEP is more reasonable? Am I behind the curve on the literature, here? Am I ahead of the curve, and people giving out PrEP doing so in conditions that probably aren't helping?
Some of them are generally-conservative or reactionary, at least by local standards, but I've also seen it from older lefties who just have that topic as their exception, too, in the same way that a lot of TERFs are bog-standard feminists otherwise. But the solidarity arguments are still pretty strong for anyone that's seen a cis crossdresser called a fag, too, even if the actual policy proposals don't necessarily follow.
One of those "Federal Breast Inspector" T-shirts.
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Don't tell the President!
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Hey, you don't have to call me out like that!
Holy crap, are virginity, the "breeding" kink, and pozzed culture linked psychologically?
If it helps, drawing from personal experience myself.
To some extent and some forms, yeah. Strictly speaking the infection version only ties you to the culture of the infecting actor (whether infection is literal HIV or vampirism or latex monster), where pregnancy or virginity loss draws a permanent connection to a specific person, but I'm not sure they're even distinct on that point from inside the fantasy. You see it a decent amount in kink, even in pretty free-use-styled kink across a variety of genders and orientations: A/B/O with mating bites are female-reader coded and a lot of slavery-themed stuff with these conventions are gay-for-gay-themed, but assigned mate is overwhelmingly het guy-oriented.
In the extreme case, womb markers for pregnancy and biohazard markers for poz-themed stuff has a lot of parallels.
It's not the only driver even for those kinks, and there's a lot that doesn't get remotely near it (eg, glory hole isn't about the tops being interchangeable, but it's definitely about impermanence), but it's a really non-obvious bit that explains a lot where present.
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PrEP is definitely not given to people who are known to be positive, I presume FG was using it as a shorthand for any antiretroviral. I was too drunk to notice the issue back then.
Hm. That's the third time in a week I've seen the topics overlap, but at least in my neck of the woods it's not something people treat as interchangeable. Might put some feelers out to figure out of that's just a linguistic change or if people are getting genuinely confused on the matter.
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[D] All of the above.
No actual D involved, but you're right, all of those seem to be a running theme in my stories.
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You don't look like a big fat party animal to me
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I pass a prep billboard on my daily commute and I spend at least a few minutes a week thinking about the demographic/regional dynamics involved and how deliberate it may or may not have been.
Edit: that was unnecessarily vague, I was hurrying.
The billboard is in the ambiguously industrial/lower-working-class/gentrifying border between a mid-size Southern city and one of its slowly-absorbed suburbs/satellites. A "neighborhood in transition," one might say. The area is poorer and blacker than the main city, and socially if not politically conservative on average. The sign features a black guy at the prettier end of handsome without crossing into effeminate, and some phrase about staying safe. Demographically correct but a bit socially off, perhaps in that way of ignoring any stigma by the sign being 'generic'?
Nobody I work with actually lives around here and I'm not going to ask one of the attendants at the nearby gas station or Asian market "hey, what do you think of that sign up there?" so on the ground reporting remains as yet untold.
I assume prep billboards are funded by grants to ‘raise awareness’ and ‘destigmatize’ and have little or nothing to do with the people who view them.
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Great write-up as usual. I'm surprised at how stereotypically gay these lads were, you really got lucky from an ethnographic POV.
Wouldn't this also be affected by Pride celebration? Where I live even the burrito place will be covered in pride flags for a good two months in summer, and a big greasy burrito full of beans is probably not the kind of food you'd want as a gay man looking for a hook-up.
I'm grateful that no gay man has ever been this crude with me in person. At worst they've just asked me to go home with them and the rest was implied, or made suggestive innuendos.
You could just have said you had a gay roommate or something like that. Declining just invites more questions and idle speculation.
Closeted men is perfectly valid, but bisexuals? That's not risk management, that's bigotry (pun intended?). And they contradicted themselves anyway, they were offering to hook-up with you despite you having clearly stated you were heterosexual from the get-go, so they were hoping you were at least a little bi-curious.
But from your description of these gents I do get it in one sense. They basically want someone of that's "culturally gay" like them, for whom offering a golden shower to a stranger over a couple of drinks is normal behavior.
As far as I know sex in a public lavatory is illegal in the UK regardless of the sex of the participants. I would assume a pub (i.e. a public house) counts? I know straight people who've had sex in a bar toilet, so there's no argument to be made that it's an exclusively homosexual act.
In any case, your talk with these gents made me understand the perspective of some more intolerant people. That "gay culture" seems to be purposefully designed to be repulsive. I understand that being a pick-me isn't helpful, and that loud gays were the ones that paved away for LGBT rights while the polite, respectful homophile movement accomplished little... but still I feel like I've had the most headway with conservatives when I explained that deep down we just want to be free to live the same lives straight people do. Popper-inhaling, incontinent, promiscuous people who go to bath houses and have sex in the corner of a bar where anybody can come in and have a drink, well, I have little defense of that beyond my general liberal principles.
I don't believe that it was "designed" to be anything. It's simply male sexuality in its most natural and unrestrained form.
Do you know how straight men would act if women were as DTF as men are? Hooooo boy.
Yup. Gay male sexuality is just pure-strain male sexuality, free from the fetters of women's preferences and demands.
So too is lesbian sexuality unmodified female sexuality, and lesbian bed death is a common thing.
Lesbians are interesting. They certainly have a much lower libido than men on average, which is what results in LBD, but at the same time I think they are noticeably more "aggressive" in their tastes than straight women. I recall there being a debate at Michfest in years past over whether public displays of BDSM should be allowed, or whether that would be politically compromising because it would be reinforcing patriarchal power dynamics. In the occasional conversations I've had with lesbians, they often seem to be quite self-conscious about restraining their natural desires around other women, because they don't want to violate the "rules of the sisterhood".
So I get the impression that straight female sexuality might truly be a unique phenomenon unto itself, and it has similarities with lesbian sexuality but also some notable differences.
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I once saw a complaint that all the women in pornos acted like men, which seemed to me to be onto something but not quite right. Years later I finally managed to articulate it - the women in pornos act like men think they would act if they were hot women. So...
Basically like they do in porn.
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I think the "we" is doing a lot of work here. I don't dispute that that's how you want to live your life, but I expect your desire might be quite far removed from what the median gay man wants.
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It’s very gay-coded in the UK because it’s associated with cottaging. If you complained about going to a gay bar and finding two men having sex in the loo, people would laugh at you. If you persisted they would call you a bigot.
This and the IRA (who put bombs in them) are the two reasons Britain doesn’t have nearly enough public loos.
I just had a great idea for a comedy sketch.
I will try and scoop you:
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Among the gay men I've met personally, "turning" a straight man was by far the most common sexual fantasy. Many straight men have similar fantasies about "turning" lesbians.
I feel this is heavily confounded by the fact that most "fantasies" are trivially achievable by gay men!
Catching the eye of a hot stranger in a park and going at it behind at a bush? That's Tuesday?
Threesomes? Only barrier is scheduling conflict.
In a toilet? Did you bring a wet wipe?
So just about the only desire that remains even somewhat fantastical is the forbidden fruit.
That's part of it, but it's also just really common for a gay guy's first crush (and fairly common for first half-dozen crushes) to be straight guys, or closeted het-passing guys. Unless you join a LGBT org early, it's hard to avoid. That doesn't necessarily impact your tastes once you grow up a bit, but it's definitely something can throw a curveball in.
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It's true. Most straight men's fantasies reside only in their heads, and there they shall remain.
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The idea of it is hotter than the reality. I've been a couple people's "exception", as a pretty and feminine looking guy.
It's not really worth it. They don't know what they're doing.
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I think that can be the case if they're applying to everyone, but a lot of people who call themselves bi are like barely bi. Heck, a lot of people who call themselves bi are basically not bisexual at all outside of "shrugs, I'd do a guy/girl if I found them attractive I guess" types who also can't name a single same sex person they've ever found attractive. I imagine a lot of them are way less comfortable with sexuality and a lot more "boring" to sleep with.
But definitely going after a straight guy to see if he's down for a lay as well comes off as an odd contradiction here.
Eh, I think a lot of that is just because it's two men involved and they tend to be a lot more openly sexual in general. Women complain all the time in a similar manner about straight guys, so it tracks that two guys together are gonna be pretty nuts.
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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.
There's many different kinds of bisexual men and you can't paint them all with the same brush. Some are mostly into women and occasionally will top men, some will only bottom for men but top women, some are 99% attracted to women but there's this one guy that takes their fancy, some are just hypersexual and will do anything with anyone. I've known chasers to be bisexual, straight or gay (the latter being into trans men), and I've known bisexual men who didn't want anything to do with trans women. I think trans women would avoid a lot of heartache if they stop being obsessed with dating 110% straight masculine guys and went for the guys that are fine meeting them for a coffee date in broad daylight instead.
My experience with chasers has been that they make themselves known in the first 5 minutes of conversation so it's never been an issue I guess?
Well, the complaint I've heard is that even this doesn't protect you. You might go on a nice set of public dates, but still get played by someone who's using you as an exploratory vessel for bicuriosity and isn't actually interested in a full-on relationship -- or even sex, when things get down to it. "This has been fun, but I've decided this isn't for me/I'm still exploring my sexuality" is a common type of breakup or rejection I've heard complaints about; one acquantance insisted on showing me a screenshot of the breakup text and then, sighing, said "I hate bi men."
That said, most trans women I've known or seen with a partner in public were, or wanted to be, in a relationship with another transgender person. I have no data, so maybe the reality is more complicated.
I guess there’s a big difference between a bi guy who’s secure in his bisexuality and has had relationships with both men and women, and one that’s still figuring things out. The former seems to use “pansexual” or “queer” as a label more often I’ve found? I can totally see why bicurious guys would be a problem though, and I don’t think I’d want to date one.
I’d date a trans man for sure if we’re compatible. It’s not that I’d be more attracted to one, but it makes things easier when you have a shared experience over things like dysphoria and the other person just gets it. Plus you don’t have to worry about them transitioning to a woman (which is weirdly common among men willing to openly date trans women).
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Gay Scots don't beat around the bush.
If I see them again, I must ask about their opinion on kilts.
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To answer both your and @urquan 's question:
I know the Grindr sound because of a prank video I saw somewhere online. The prankster would clock someone as likely gay, and then play the matching notification sound standing close to them. I think they used women in some scenes, to minimize the assumption it was them. You'd see a lot of men jump and pat their pockets. Including quite a few who definitely didn't look it to my untrained eye.
Possibly. I wasn't keeping track, but since this happened literally this weekend, I guess some of the decor might have stayed up.
The majority of the offers came before the phone gallery bit. I'm sure that FG still made more moves, but they were clearly in the "haha, just kidding. Unless...?" tier.
His explanation covered both clubs and bars. I think the sex in dimly lit corners applied more to the former.
While sex in a loo might be illegal, I sincerely doubt anyone ever gets charged!
FG was by far the most forward. The rest of them, beyond the usual compliments and offers, seemed normal, for lack of a better word. In other contexts, I might have suspected they were gay, but I wouldn't have strong confidence in that notion. They seemed to act like anyone else out for a drink with friends.
I am generally liberal, and I think that's enough here. If they want to do all of that, with other consenting adults, then it's none of my business! As a straight man, if I could get away with the sex bit, I'd definitely go for it. Sadly women don't seem quite so keen. Gay sexuality is male sexuality, without the constraints of needing women to indulge in it or to provide the civilizing influence.
The poppers and incontinence? Not as pleasing to my sensibilities, but I will defend their right to do as they wish.
That's hilarious, do you have the link? Reminds me of this Jeopardy contestant who mispelled "Tinder".
I did try and look for a link before I wrote that! Unfortunately, couldn't find the exact video.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QzL-4tkCX9A
This gets the gist across, even if it's a disgusting YouTube short.
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George Michael excepted, although it was rather a different time.
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The day of my city's Pride parade, I was standing on a street which hosts the city's second-biggest gay bar (and which hasn't undergone mission drift, devolving into yet another drag queen theme park ride for straight women) surrounded by hundreds of LGBT people. Me and my friends were standing in a circle drinking cans, when I glanced at the next group over. One of the men was holding his unlocked phone at about shoulder height, and I could see that he had WhatsApp open and had just sent someone else a photo of his rectum.
I couldn't help but laugh. He was making zero effort to be discreet. His friend noticed me laughing and I just shrugged and was like, come on dude, that's funny.
Maybe he just found goatse and was sharing it with his friends.
It was definitely not goatse.
I would be shocked if the guy sending the rectum photo had anywhere near the stretch of goatse.
He did not.
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That's... pretty damn forward.
This seems like a great opportunity to use the "hide" function in the Photos app.
Such a tease, self_made_human, such a tease.
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.
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.
There's some advantages to knowing op-sec, but there's also some strong advantages to recognizing when future you might be (probably) drunk or half-asleep, thinking with the wrong head, and making bad decisions otherwise, and recognizing that future you will not maintain the right level of op-sec and changing habits around that.
((That's not even just a photo concern. iOS will quite happily take screenshots if you hit the power and voldown button, and boy can you believe how easy it is to get accidental screenshots of stuff you don't want to be sharing with the hets.))
In practice, yeah, the problems that come with guys cheating on a woman with a guy is still some of the motivation. And there's a lot of other gay stereotypes about bi or closeted men, some of them moderately well-founded. The steelman is that even bi or closested gay guys who don't have and aren't looking for a woman still have some pretty significantly different behaviors than out gays do, and put different expectations on their romantic (or not-romantic) partners.
Trivially, if you're with someone that's not out, in their social environment, it puts a significant onus on you to dial down the flame lest you out them in turn. In gay social spaces, they're likely to be a lot less happy with a lot of more flamboyant behavior. Even without all of the frictions and concerns that a positive STI test result would bring to a het relationship, just getting a test done at all even knowing you're clean still involves a) talking to a professional about your sexual history, and b) doing something that's overwhelmingly advertised as important for the gay guys while you're talking to a professional about your sexual history, and having done it knowing that the professionals don't care about anything but the next break, that's really awkward from the closet.
Some of that's just blaming specific person or relationship issues on the identifiable trait -- especially in these fields, there's a lot of dramatically different expectations for how serious a hook-up's going to be open to becoming, even if I've seen almost every possible combination and direction for bi-on-gay pairs. ((Though there's some fuzziness on the edges of that. I'm not gonna say that bi guys are universally happier with the idea of a threesome, because that's probably not even remotely true. But even and maybe especially closeted gay guys will put a remarkable amount of effort into having a woman tangentially involved in ways that most out gay men will run away from.))
At a deeper level, I think there's some level of 'seen the elephant' involved in really coming to terms with being gay, specifically. But I can't say for sure, because I haven't been there.
In Ireland, you can send off for free STI tests in the post. They arrive in discreet packaging, you pop your blood, urine and stool samples in a postage-paid envelope, and less than a week later you log into a portal and it tells you the results. I think it's a brilliant idea and wish it was the norm everywhere. I'd love to know how much of the transmission of STIs is ultimately downstream of people being too embarrassed to discuss their sex lives with doctors.
That's true. Looking it up, there's a few services offering something similar in the US, albeit generally for much more limited sets of diseases or limited to specific states or demographics (or both). I was under the impression that most of them wanted to include 'professional counseling' as part of the service, but it does look like some of them are just taking the 'ship a spit-test to everybody' approach. I dunno that I'd put anywhere near as much trust in it as in the standard full-spectrum-professional result, but a) I don't have a typical risk analysis here and b) I've been out of the dating game long enough to not be familiar with current norms.
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Oh no, he made it clear he'd be perfectly happy bending me backwards. Sadly, my yoga days are behind me.
My thoughts exactly. I wanted to give these guys a lesson in opsec.
Really? You're telling me this now for the first time. And here I was thinking he was being polite.
FG actually looked a lot older than he really was. I think he claimed he was 35? I was thrown off by the gray hair. I'm presuming he wasn't lying about his age.
A lot of memories are finally coming back to me:
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.
(Am I a twink? Goodness, I hope not. Perhaps @Corvos can answer that, he's seen me in person, even if he's straight)
A lack of opportunity rather than interest! The first two people I thought were women were actually trans. I think a total of two natal women walked in, one left while I was still in conversation. The last one? You know how that ended.
I didn't mean to judge the old dude. He owned the dog, it had a rather painful looking wound on its back, and he wasn't trying to hit on the lesbian woman - he was telling her the story of how it happened. He was telling quite a few other people the same story too.
I'm sure that me being attractive had some bearing on their friendliness, but I don't think it really explains the whole story. 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), and their behavior wasn't out of the ordinary (well...) when it comes to having good conversations with other pub goers.
It also seemed to me that their objection to straight men in gay spaces wasn't just the fact that were straight, or after women but other things:
They dilute the pool of available gay men.
They react negatively to being taken for gay men even if it's literally a gay club. I imagine the average chav wouldn't be as polite as me.
They have the potential to get violent even if the gay men are being gay without involving them. I can believe it.
I was indirectly exploring that with my questions about closeted men and bi men. I think that the gay men who actually get a kick out of "converting" straight men are a minority in practice. Sure, they definitely exist, but I doubt they're representative. In a similar manner, most straight men would bang a lesbian chick and brag, but you don't see the majority of us trying.
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.
Neither do I. I assume they're working on project cars, or playing roller derby. I don't think I know a single lesbian, personally or online.
I refuse to answer, on the grounds that you're taller than me and I don't like the implications :P
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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.
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 guess this was my point -- you made it easy to keep going, and that made you fun to talk to!
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This is a lie. Twink death is a spook. It only happens to those who stop taking care of themselves.
What happens is there's a point where you can no longer effortlessly be a twink. And a lot of twinks, unused to making actual effort, let it fall by the wayside.
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I've tried poppers exactly once. The high from poppers is 1:1, 100% indistinguishable with the high of standing up too quickly. The one minor difference is that standing up too quickly isn't followed with ten minutes of your heart going BOOM... BOOM... BOOM and then two hours of an absolutely pounding headache.
Did you follow up?
I'm putting away all of my inclination to ever give that a try.
I know for a fact it's not true! I very much don't need a literature review to be sure.
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Depends on how well you know each other. I've had a "wait that's not lube any more" moment with my wife that could only be fixed with a shower and a reschedule.
Let's just say that when I did disclose it, a long time later, it went about as well as I expected. Your wife sounds far more amenable to critique than the average.
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.
This wasn't even anal sex. The aroma hit me during doggy :(
What's worse is that, like you said, the lady in question was far more of a freak about fastidious cleaning than I ever was.
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.
Boy do I have some news for you! Hooks up to your existing water line so all it needs is a nearby outlet and you're good to go. Utterly life changing and I have no idea how folks endure the barbarity of making do with the standard bogroll.
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This made me remember that the topic of bidets did come up during our conversation. Both FG and I agreed that they were the mark of civilization, and that TP was a barbaric practice.
He added comments about having a hairy ass that I will not reproduce, at the moment.
But you end up with your posterior dripping wet. Wat do? It just didn't seem practical to me when I tried it.
You can wait a few seconds to let the worst of it drip off. Or you can take some TP and dab off the moisture!
I have a butt that can be called a hairy one. TP leaves me with swamp ass far more often than a bidet does.
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Seconding @Muninn. Once you get a bidet installed, you will hate having to do without when away from home.
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Oh, that's a different story! Anal accidents happen, but not washing your anogenital area before sex and then acting offended when called out on it is just shitty behavior, no pun intended.
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Have you investigated this claim?
I knew for a fact that it wasn't true, at least on a per capita basis. I didn't see the point in challenging him, since he seemed highly conscientious and was taking reasonable precautions.
Gay men have more average partners, and per act of anal intercourse, have OOMs higher risk of spreading or catching an infection. Without any moral judgment intended, doing stuff up the butt is dangerous in a way PIV sex isn't, it's not built for such activities. I genuinely don't judge, if I were gay, I'd be having gay sex too, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the practice.
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics
https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/poxvirus/mpox/cases-data/technical-report/report-2.html
@5433a since you'd previously asked me the same question.
What's your instance on refusing to allow MSM to donate blood?
https://www.themotte.org/post/787/smallscale-question-sunday-for-december-10/169499?context=8#context
(It turns out I've been here so long I really do already have a comment about everything)
In short, it depends on the base rates, the degree of shortage, and the accuracy of screening tools. I don't think excluding MSM for their HIV risk makes sense these days (since you can test them and screen the blood) and my understanding is that it's not policy in many places.
Screening tests can have false negatives. Perhaps there has been some large, recent improvement, but not that long ago the situation was so dire that blood from MSM that had been tested and found negative was still more likely to be contaminated with blood-born pathogens than non-MSM blood because the base rate was just that much higher.
My issue is claiming, without precise data, whether or not MSMs should be blanket banned from blood donation. I believe I am qualified to make a decision here, if I were to dive deeper into said numbers and do a principled cost-benefit analysis. However, what would the point be? I'm sure more qualified people have already done so. Blood is always in acute shortage, and everyone is desperate to get as much of it in stock as they can without compromising safety more than it helps.
Sure. I'm just noting that the more qualified people did run the numbers, and even with screening tests denying donations from MSM was a good call - at least 10 years ago. It's possible there are better tests, or better HIV suppression medicine these days that might change the math.
Or cultural changes more willing to suffer the consequences, and/or less willing to produce that particular kind of stigmatization.
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Almost all Western nations have lifted blanket restrictions for MSM donating blood. Iceland just removed theirs at the beginning of July. I believe it's just Greece and Croatia left, which probably tells you something about the Greeks.
Based on some quick Googling, there didn't appear to be any significant changes in technology between 2011, when the rules started being relaxed, to what we see today. The retrovirals were available well before then. I take it back, I could probably have done a better job than these regulators, they seem too risk averse. At least they've moved on by now!
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I know that several Mottizens are American attorneys--have we got any solicitors or barristers about?
This week I've seen a couple of articles about Surrey policewomen posing as joggers to catch men harassing women out exercising. This is ostensibly to combat "violence against women," and this particular article's subheading reads:
As an American, my instinct was that this had to be sloppy (or deliberately misleading) reporting. For an expressive act like catcalling to rise to the level of unlawful harassment in the United States would require either a severe single incident, or (more often) a pattern of unwanted behavior and either actual or constructive ("a reasonable person would know") knowledge on the part of the harasser that the behavior was in fact unwanted. I know the UK lacks anything like the protection afforded to Americans by the First Amendment, but they aren't entirely without speech protections. Sure enough, the article seems to suggest that most men do just get "educated" (I assume a stern talking-to, maybe a pamphlet?) while the 18 arrests are for something more like actual assault. But attempting to ascertain the state of "catcalling" law in the UK sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.
According to one article, the "first London fine for catcalling [was] dished out after undercover operation" in 2022. This was an application of a "Public Space Protection Order" (PSPO), which makes "certain anti social activities within a mapped area prosecutable"--including such diverse things as noisy supercars, protesting near abortion clinics, and "kerb crawling." Anyway this fine (£100) was issued to a man for making a "sexually suggestive remark to a woman in a late-night takeaway."
So, neither apparently severe nor an established pattern of unwanted behavior! With specific regard to harassment, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (PDF) suggests that any "unwanted behaviour directed at an individual with the purpose or intent of humiliating, disrespecting, intimidation [sic], hurting or offending them" qualifies, even if it is a single incident. The laws I was able to find use slightly different language, suggesting that harassment is anything a reasonable person thinks harassment is, plus "alarming the person or causing the person distress"--but also suggests that a "course of conduct" must include "at least two occasions in relation to that person" or "on at least one occasion in relation to each of" two or more persons in a group. But all of that may be moot, if these PSPOs are not specifically dealing in harassment law, but instead are more general mandates against whatever "antisocial" behavior local politicians can be convinced to be concerned about.
This is of course related to a common hack in "Common Law" jurisdictions with "reasonable person" standards: if you conduct a successful campaign to shift people's attitudes, you can actually change the law without ever changing the law. And people's attitudes are apparently changing! After the 2022 London fine, other parts of the UK took up the cause and expanded the penalties; the £100 fine was presumably deemed insufficiently punitive, and in 2024 the city of Bradford boasted of seizing four cars in a "catcalling crackdown."
Not everyone is impressed with this use of police resources. But what brought me up short, personally, was the asymmetry of it all.
I don't really understand catcalling, in approximately the same way I don't understand smoking, or aggressive driving--that is, I know that some people's preferences run that way, but I'm pretty sure it's because those people are to that degree some combination of stupid and inconsiderate. Particularly when a woman is on foot and her, uh, admirers are in a car, it is unequivocally terrifying to be abruptly shouted (or worse, honked) at from a moving vehicle. Wolf whistles from men on foot are less immediately terrifying but can portend a different sort of danger, and England has certainly had its share of sex assault scandals. So I rather see the objection to such behavior!
But in drawing the line between "inconsiderate" and "criminal offense," it feels like the UK has opted for an approach that caters primarily to outrage merchants and the terminally online, rather than to their own community norms. If you were a culture warrior back in 2014, you might remember "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," which generated pushback from diverse angles (most of the men in the video were not white, a repeat of the experiment in hijab showed reduced harassment, a similar video taken in Mumbai recorded no instances of overt harassment, etc.). There seem to be cultural, demographic, and/or geographical contexts in which catcalling happens or does not happen, and "when women are exercising in public" seems to be the currently contested context, at least in the UK.
So where I find myself uncomfortable is in the way that the press and, presumably, the police PR are clearly tying catcalling, wolf whistles, and even sexual comments together with simple and sexual assault. The articles often admit, somewhere on page 3, that a lot of the objectionable behavior isn't (maybe can't be) prosecuted, but instead met with "education" efforts. "Did you know this frightens women?" Well, hashtag-not-all-women, surely? Rather like the epidemic of "dick pics" on dating apps, actually--"if today I catcall a hundred women and one of them flashes me her boobs, tomorrow I'll catcall a thousand women?"
In other words, "male sexual strategy," such as it is, is understandably disconcerting to women (especially when the men don't know the rules), but the reverse is also true. Women dressing in form-fitting or revealing clothing and parading themselves in full view of the public is something that some men find "alarming" or "distressing." You can see the result of laws that seek to minimize that distress. Is this just down to "women in the West were oppressed in the past, therefore it's fine to flip the script?"
My own personal position is that these are things that should not be decided by law, but by norms. If the 18 men arrested in Surrey were all arrested for touching a woman without clear invitation to do so, then I have no particular objection to their arrest (beyond the slight stench of entrapment that all "sting" operations inevitably report to my senses). But (if indeed this is happening) law enforcement officers dressing people down for a wolf whistle, much less fining them, much less throwing them in prison, seems excessively aggressive given the interest on the other side. To be overtly sexually attractive, in public, and never have anyone comment on this in any way might be nice, but it hardly seems like the sort of thing one can reasonably demand be enforced by law. And using the media to disingenuously suggest to men that they are under real risk of serious punishment, not for sexual assault alone but even for comparatively innocuous, annoyingly antisocial behaviors like catcalling, has us wandering out into "actual psyop" territory.
Much of what they do is retarded. British 'green energy' includes chopping down forests in Canada, processing them into wood pellets, shipping them over and burning them. Burning wood releases all kinds of impurities and air pollution and doesn't even produce very much power. Naturally it gets subsidies because it's not economical. 6% of the UK's electricity comes from this.
They've got Motability, a scheme where the disabled get vehicles paid for by the state. At least 1 in 5 new vehicles is purchased via this scheme, 'anxious' people getting cars, secretaries... It's a joke. Local authorities are being bankrupted by judges ruling that different jobs need to be paid equally, or a law making them pay ridiculous amounts for taxiing disabled children to school. The perverse incentives should be obvious.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-british-economy-cannot-sustain-its-contradictions/
Or they pay billions to Mauritius so they can give away land to Mauritius. Or they pay billions to bring Afghan 'refugees' into the country. Just the other day they sent out a memo telling people to delete old images and emails to save water: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/uk-government-inexplicably-tells-citizens-to-delete-old-emails-and-pictures-to-save-water-during-national-drought-data-centres-require-vast-amounts-of-water-to-cool-their-systems
Somehow the infamously rainy UK is short of water.
It's not like they're making honest individual mistakes that can be learned from. The mistake is 'having the govt permanently run by retarded/malicious wreckers', which only happens if the basic institutions are also broken. It's no good looking at individual Soviet failures like 'why are their televisions so bad and prone to exploding' and 'why did they kill all these whales' or 'what happened to the Aral Sea'.
Each time it's the same answer. The nature of the Soviet system was retarded. They did some things well but as a whole it was retarded.
The UK's infrastructure seems to be extraordinarily brittle. Three days without rain and they institute a "hosepipe ban."
The UK has failed to build any new reservoirs for, IIRC, several decades. This despite the fact that the population has expanded considerably in that time.
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This is only true in the sense that anything bought out of state benefits is paid for by the state, including the food retirees eat etc. Motability is a scheme where people getting disability benefits can have their benefit paid directly to the leasing company, which mean they are more creditworthy and get lower lease rates than they would be if they had to remember to make their own car payments on time. There is no cost to the taxpayer beyond the benefits we would be paying these people anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motability
Massive growth in the number of pip claimants:
https://x.com/thurhyde/status/1949753087419207786
IFS: 'The rapid growth in [working-age] health-related benefits [post-COVID] seems to be largely a UK phenomenon.
https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1945752894868701444
Less than 10% of motability cars have any modification for the disabled.
I'm sure we all benefit when the state pays for everyone’s BMW. He is providing much more than mobility to the slightly anxious, he’s doling out unheard of creditworthiness to the not-so working class.
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Everything about the UK is a cautionary tale at this point. It's a conquered country.
They had two policewomen jog around with their camel toe's out (not joking, look at the photos). They do this for the same reason police in the US write tickets for people going 45 in a 30 instead of 90 in a 55. It's safer, easier, the person going a measly 45 is more likely to comply, and they just don't give a fuck.
I've also heard theories this is a desperate hail mary to game the stats and have more white people committing "sex offenses" since the current stats are so stubbornly brown. Honestly I doubt that, unless you start seeing it at scale.
Personally, I think these two badged Karens had an idea, and nobody up the chain of command had the right IDPOL cards to shut it down. Or maybe it was a way to keep them busy and out of the way of people doing actual work.
Very unlikely if you speak to anyone who has been catcalled in England.
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Given that most 30mph limits exist for a reason (like "this is an urban street") whereas most 55mph limits in the US are a holdover from the oil crisis, I would (without further details) be much more worried about someone doing 45 in a 30 than 90 in a 55. And therefore I would support cops focussing on the former.
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I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Jess Philips have no problem talking about misogyny or condemning the more gender egalitarian Western societies but generally but shy away from specifically targeting minority communities (I don't see how this can fit @TwiceHuman's model: if the point is for high status men and women to tamp down on low status behavior why give low status minorities a pass?). The (apparently correct) assumption is that they're the ones that will take it.
It really does seem like a weird displacement thing where you go after the easy cases. The charitable stance is that they go after both in the background but it's rhetorically easier to not get into migrant/brown crime. I don't know how many people in the UK believe that though.
I think men and women are quite different.
I'd like to conclude something like "Women are more interested in rock stars and movie stars than in politicians", but I can't find any studies on the attractiveness of politicians. You know how some murderers in prison get fanmail from women? I don't think that happens as much to politicans. I have no evidence of this, but the game of politics is rather gross to me, and I can't imagine why a women would be attracted to a man who is playing a game which won't even allow him to be genuine for a moment.
As for that woman - it looks like a shit test to me. Women want to be targeted by high-value bold men while avoiding low-value bold men. Somebody who can break the rules because they're powerful awnd because they understand the rules well. So they speak nonsense, being brats, hoping that some high-value man comes around and puts them in their place. I think the whole "You can't handle a woman like me" thing is a taunt, they want to be handled. That said, this could also just be agreeableness/conformity, or the kind of mental illness which makes them side with everything weak on principle (except their own in-group, which is superior because it sides with the weak. Broken maternal instinct perhaps?). Politics has too many layers of deception, I'm afraid that a model which makes too much sense might actually be wrong. I stick to the evopsych view of "high value" since it doesn't have all these distorted layers
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Why not both? And I don't mean game the stats to get more white offenders or whatever, I mean it in the usual sense that police departments game the stats by going out trying to write lots of citations to hit their quotas for the week. These lady cops (or their supervisor) had the bright idea to go out doing this to generate some citations and pump the numbers, and the supervisor might have signed off on it to help his employees hit their numbers, as well getting them out of the way for some actual work being done. Unremarkable business as usual for police departments.
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I wish I had a fraction of the energy and creativity for upskilling and entrepreneurship as so many women have for finding excuses to farm sexual attention with plausible deniability.
This would be another example for how, in Western societies, the compromise with respect to the trade-off between female freedom and protection is expressed by limiting male freedom and protection. We can’t suggest to women that they could dress less thottily, so let’s arrest men instead. This would fit well in a country where people can be arrested for hate-speech.
Catcalling is an avenue for women to humblebrag; she's so attractive as to be catcalled all the time. A Wojak with a seething mask in front, but smirking behind it, comes to mind.
It reminds me of US police bodycams. Progressives went from being pro- to anti-bodycam as the bodycams just reflected that indeed, non-Asian minority suspects are as wrong-thinkers might think they are—perhaps worse. Thus, bodycams became a Problematic vehicle for which stereotypes might be reinforced, like security cameras in Californian public transport later on became.
For better or worse, cat-callers are by default, an unsympathetic group, like drunk drivers or age-of-consent-trespassers. There’s compass unity between progressive and social conservatives, with only a staunch subset of libertarians willing to go to bat for them. However, I could see progressives getting around to support cat-callers for disparate impact reasons.
Such verbiage allows for “know the workplace rules”, to be attractive and not be unattractive. Just read her mind, bro, otherwise know your place. In addition, it allows for anarcho-tyranny, where men of different cultures could have different views on what constitutes “reasonable person.”
That being said, I rather dislike catcallers. To me, it’s aesthetically bad in not being a good look.
It’s also annoying in boosting women’s egos and baseline paranoia levels. Men catcalling is rendering it more difficult, on the margins, for higher status and/or better-looking men with some semblance of tact who would otherwise have a shot at the catcalled women. Yes, yes, I know—other men have always been the primary victims of men cat-calling women. *crosses arms, turns away*
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I am so through with the performative institutional feminism. Watch as these police decoys don't jog in the no go zones, instead doing circles along rich neighborhoods for the photo op, convenient material to gaslight "all men" about something only the underclass does. Hell, you got these old women jogging, where are the very young police girls jogging near the Pakistani and Nafri neighborhoods?
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I feel like I need to see the actual encounters being solicited and/or prosecuted to have an opinion on this. Making it illegal to hit on women in public is left-coded (feminism run amok), but arresting flashers on public transportation is right-coded (tough on street crime). Which one of these is, “sting operation on catcalling hotspots,” closer to? I have no idea.
My immediate thought was those videos of women recording themselves getting harassed by immigrant men (Brussels) or black/hispanic men (NYC) - both women studiously denied the obvious racial angle that everyone else could see, naturally - .
I'm not sure whether most catcallers in the UK would be the native underclass or immigrants, but I'm fine with the police going after either group. Catcalling is an antisocial act, it's not asking a woman out, it's shouting at her in public, very different. If Surrey Police are doing it for feminist reasons that doesn't bother me, it might be good for these policewomen to learn who the antisocial men on their beats actually are.
I wish the police used the same logic in setting up bait bikes to catch bike thieves.
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No, they don't want no one commenting on it. They only want desirable men commenting on it, by whatever their standards are for "desirable". It's pure Hello Human Resources/SNL rules.
The idea is for women to be able to filter the guys (or girls) they want from the guys they don't. The strategy is to put up a brickwall filter (a set of rules which allows no one to approach), which then filters out anyone too timid to ignore their rules. The stronger the punishment for breaking the rules (for someone who isn't too timid but is unattractive in some other way), the better the selectivity.
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I think that the intent of the actor is a much better standard than the interpretation of the receiver.
For example, if I was in a jury, you would have a hard time convincing me that someone who wolf-whistles intends to humiliate the recipient. It seems reasonable that in the mind of the accused, he would merely be acknowledging that the recipient is judged sexually desirable, which is not an insult.
Even a sexual invitation might not meet this standard, in my mind. "Hey babe, wanna have some fun with me" is likely to make a jogger uncomfortable, but might be a serious suggestion on the men's part. In Victorian England, that would be the kind of insult which leads to duels, because it implies "you look like the kind of woman who would fuck men she just met on the streets". Today, there is nothing wrong with women fucking men who just cat-called her.
Of course, if the woman was wearing a hiab instead, I would assume that the man had concluded that the woman was very unlikely to be promiscuous and was just trying to insult her by implying otherwise.
Likewise, "why don't you gag on my cock, whore!" seems pretty clearly intended to humiliate. The defendant might claim that the humiliation was just instrumental for getting sex because he thought that the woman was into that, but that does not change the mens rea. Of course, if he can prove that his victim had explicitly opted into being sexually humiliated by random guys in the street, it would be fine.
Honking a car's horn except to warn of danger is already a traffic offense. If the driver wants to argue that she was causing a danger by being distractingly sexy, then that raises doubts about his general ability to drive a vehicle in the Western world, unless she flashed him or something.
By contrast, single remarks which merely felt insulting to the recipient -- e.g. by someone who does not know the rules or is just gambling on low odds -- should not be a criminal matter. People feel insulted by all kinds of statements directed at them specifically or not. Personally, I think it depends on the odds. If a verbal behavior will feel offensive to 60% of women in the same situation, but also leads to 10% of them being flattered, that seems very acceptable from a criminal law point of view. If 95% would feel deeply offended and less than 0.1% would be flattered, things look different.
As an unfortunate consequence, this probabilistic standard would mean that the line of what is acceptable would depend not only on the woman and her situation but also on the guy. So a 25yo Chad driving a Tesla might be allowed to ask a given woman if she would be interested in "having some fun", while a 60yo homeless alcoholic with a beer belly might be on the other side of the dividing line.
While it would be possible to replace the person of the speaker with a generic standard person for the purpose of determining if the success chance meets the threshold, I think that this would decrease overall utility.
This gets into questions of constructive intent. If you know or should know that your actions result in X, did you intend X?
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Is this true in NYC? Because if so, seemingly every second Manhattan driver needs a talking-to.
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The interesting thing about social norms and equilibria though is that they interact strongly with intentions. In other words, whereas in the past catcallers may well have reasonably intended flattery, nowadays (arguably), they can't possibly think that because it's been made so clear to them that their attention is unwelcome.
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While not an insult, this is a different kind of social faux-pas. Walking down most streets in the daytime (obviously the street in front of a club at 1AM is different, and I'm sure some influencer is wearing a skimpy outfit on TikTok) is not a place most people intend to be judged sexually desirable. It's a (very minor) social injury in the sense of bringing something more private into a more public area.
Compare it with having a woman in a class/meeting and someone saying out loud "let's all give an applause for how great so-and-so's tits look today". The injury from this isn't the insult, it's the public airing.
The etiquette about displaying and acknowledging sexual desirability is certainly complicated. Outside of bedrooms and strip clubs, either is normally clad in plausible deniability.
I think that plenty of women (and some men) spend quite a lot of effort on looking hot in public spaces. Of course, one could also argue that the causation is the other way round -- they know that they will be judged either way, and find it preferable to be judged hot than to be judged not hot.
Normally, the judging -- which I think is done both by men but also by other women -- is of course more subtle than a wolf whistle or an outright remark on one's tits. More stuff like "nice top", or even non-verbal, I think.
Right, it's not really the judging -- it's the public airing of it.
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It's worth prefacing this post by saying that obviously any government restriction on speech (minus libel, slander, perjury, andtrademark violation) is abhorrent.
But anyways, this is basically how every well-ordered society throughout history has behaved. Powerful, high-status men restrict the use of the mating strategies that lower-status men have a comparative advantage for. Women tacitly or explicitly support them because they don't want weak, low-status men making sexual advances that don't directly renumerate them. Painting anti-catcalling measures with the "feminist" brush is accurate to the point of describing that women benefit from them, but misses the fundamental truth that this behavior reinforces the position of already-powerful men, rather than dismantling it. That being said, it's still perfectly rational for feminists to support this. A matriarchal government would also seek to impede the reproductive success of low-quality vs high-quality men, and an anti-catcalling measure would still be in the cards; it's a rich-get-richer tactic rather than an explicitly patriarchal one.
Yeah but basically all of feminism/lgbt/idpol works this way. Powerful people benefit from the benefits and are insulated from the social ramifications of the breakdown of gender roles in society.
'The sexual revolution primarily benefitted high status men who wanted consequence free sex, while destroying middle/low class families and communities' is not a hot take.
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I sort of disagree, but only because I do not agree with the definition of "powerful" or "high-status". From an aesthetical, logical, and spiritual perspective, these people possess traits which only mimic good development. From an evopsych perspective, I'm more neutral: Social status is high value in a sense, but excess sociability is also a sign of weakness and therefore low value.
Powerful men might think that this benefits them, but that's only because they're elite normies. Above average in many areas, but not truly intelligent, and therefore unable to consider second and third-order effects. In short, it's locally beneficial and globally harmful.
I agree that this is causing the power-law distribution to get steeper
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On the one hand, police clamping down on catcalling with anything other than a talking-to seems to me like a government clampdown on an unsavory lower-class norm. On the other hand, I sure am glad that bottom-pinching is no longer considered merely an unsavory lower-class norm.
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When I was an undergrad I was a runner and would sometimes run through campus. I would occasionally get hot enough that I'd remove my shirt and tie it around my waist. More than once, cars of females would hoot at me with varying degrees of fervor. I never quite believed that they were seriously going for any sort of praise --more like taking the piss. I wasn't sure. I have never related this to anyone. But this was a long time ago. Today if we were in the UK I wonder if those sorority girls would be arrested.
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The New York Post ran an article about this a couple days ago, and the comments were variations on the following themes:
I'll admit to admit that it's a bit unfair to judge conservatives as a whole based on the New York Post comment section, or any online comment section for that matter, but I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that conservatives in general think that busting people for catcalling, or even viewing it as a police issue, is stupid. The culture war angle here is that if you replace "catcalling" with "panhandling" the polarity reverses instantly. I have no doubt, based on prior stories the Post has run on panhandling, that if they ran a story about how some American city did a similar crackdown on begging we'd be hearing about how it was about time that a mayor grew some balls and cracked down, and that all those people should be locked up in mental institutions or forced to get real jobs.
In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.
Catcalling in theory has targets who would like the compliment, even though this may not always be true. No panhandler thinks his targets like being panhandled. Furthermore, the panhandler has a profit motive and incetives for annoying people are very different where a profit motive is involved.
"In theory" is doing a lot of work here, as is "may not always be true". In theory, the men commenting on that article would be flattered if a flamboyantly gay man publicly whistled and pointed out what a great ass they have. In practice, I'm routinely bombarded with images created by people trying to get me to give them my money, and I don't think the purveyors of these believe that I actually enjoy looking at them. Especially when they're advertising a good or service I couldn't make use of even if I wanted to. This is some all-star hairsplitting.
I specifically mentioned that if there's a profit motive, it's different.
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I agree. I think in some of the conversation downthread this is getting teased out further. Actual physical contact is (generally) an easier line to draw; when it comes to things like offensive clothing, nauseating smells, vulgar music, horrifying imagery, etc. people often have very strong but not very consistent opinions about what should or shouldn't be allowed, and what constitutes an appropriate response or deterrent.
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Can you elaborate on this bit? I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
Setting the legal debate aside (I find myself not too sure of my views on what the laws should be in this area), I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass, and a fairly significant difference between actively getting into someone's space by catcalling them and just being seen by them as you go about your own business.
I'm far from a Puritan, but there's a certain tenant who recently moved into a rental house we own. They have a teenage daughter, she's thing and reasonably good looking, and she dresses in ways that make me want to avoid standing too close to her. Gossamer thin tank tops worn without a bra, which barely cover her stomach, and shorts so short I'd be arrested for wearing them.
I'm not aroused by her in any way that's above normal or disturbs me, nor am I particularly ashamed by any feeling of arousal I might have. But in any conversation beyond a few minutes, I'm filled with a sense that I don't want to be seen talking to her. Perhaps this is an overactive superego, a feminist or Catholic panopticon living in my brain, but I don't want to be seen chatting with a girl who looks like that. I have an inner sense that the image of me talking to a teenage girl dressed like that is inappropriate, and I'd prefer not be near her.
She's perfectly pleasant, if essentially uninteresting, to talk to; but immediately after I tell her whatever it is I need to tell her I cut the conversation short if no one else is present and go about some other business until her parents arrive, even if I have to invent some pretext to be inspecting or doing something else. I simply don't want to be seen by anyone to be chatting with a teenage girl dressed in that way, call it an extension to the Pence Rule.
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The example I provided was a picture of women in full niqab. My experience with men from countries where niqab is common is that they are often extremely distressed by the comparatively immodest dress of Western women. Traces of that remain in most Western regimes, too, though usually limited to the exposure of genitals (and sometimes breasts) being treated as legitimately "distressing" to display.
(Fun fact: Australia used to require protruding labia to be removed from pornographic displays, so even in contexts where it was legal to display female genitalia, it was not legal to do so with complete anatomical accuracy! I have seen it argued that this may have contributed to the rise of cosmetic labiaplasties.)
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
I'm not sure I see how catcalling "actively get[s] into someone's space," which is why I noted that provided the 18 arrests were made for actual assault rather than mere catcalling, there's less to complain about here. The realm of "offensive speech" and unwilling audiences is a fascinating one for legal theorists precisely because what counts as "invading" someone's "space" in public is really tricky. Our bodies are an easy place to draw a line: unwanted physical contact is bad! Our senses are much more complicated. How is dressing provocatively any different from speaking provocatively, from the perspective of the unwilling audience? Are our ears more important than our eyes, somehow? "You can just look away!"--or--"you can just plug your ears!" There seem to be a lot of unstated assumptions in the assertion that there is a "significant" difference between catcalling and parading around in provocative clothing.
("But you shouldn't think of something like exercise clothing as sexually provocative!" "No, you shouldn't think of something like catcalling as provocative!" Etc.)
I'm pretty sure there was a post here by a frustrated man who didn't appreciate seeing tight gymwear constantly in public. I can't find it now unfortunately but I believe it was well-received or even AAQC.
So apparently not just a Muslim thing.
This forum also has seen some Aella-inspired discussion of this phenomenon.
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Women shouldn’t be allowed to wear bikinis in public, but neither that nor speedos nor the Borat swimsuit justify potential violence the way a particularly forwards/lewd catcall would.
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I think it's more an active vs passive thing.
A cat-caller actively intrudes into the life of the random passerby. They do this intentionally by inserting (hah) themselves into the life of another.
The bikini clad ass may upset the Amish or Muslim man, but it doesn't force them to look. It's a passive object in their life they can choose to interact (hah) with or not.
I guess the counter is you have to first notice the bikini to then ignore it, but I again just have a very hard time not finding a someone deliberately taking action (making noise that is in 99% of cases unwanted and coded as threatening) to be anywhere near equivalent as someone getting annoyed as to what someone else is wearing.
I think you're definitely supposed to think about it this way, in connection with women's dress at minimum, but I also think this simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Catcalling is no more active a choice than wearing a bikini, especially with the intent to wear it somewhere conspicuous (i.e. not at the beach, although even at the beach a bikini can be pretty damn conspicuous). You are no more forced to listen to catcalls than you are forced to look at someone in a bikini--though you may not be able to initially prevent yourself from hearing the first or seeing the second, you can always respond to either by plugging your ears or closing your eyes. The idea that catcalling is somehow more "intrusive" doesn't make any sense; we're talking about people sharing public spaces, and finding the proper balance allowing that space to be used by everyone for the activities they prefer. Why does a man's preference for catcalling rank below a woman's preference against it? The answer can't be "intrusiveness" because we actually often want intrusiveness to be a feature of shared public spaces--for example, political protests are deliberately intrusive, and lose their effect when they are not at least somewhat intrusive.
(I think the most likely answer, as others have noted, is probably just "public hetero male horniness is a low class signal," and nobody wants to speak for the interests of horny low class males, who are also often criminal elements, undesired immigrants, the uneducated, the antisocial, etc. Plus I suspect that many men who can keep their mouths shut would like the catcallers to stop, simply because living in a culture where women regularly go out in public half naked is something many heterosexual men prefer, and quietly enjoy.)
Part of this may be a "noncentral fallacy" problem, too--honking your car's horn at a pedestrian when there's no actual danger is a very obnoxious thing to do quite regardless of whether it is part of "catcalling" someone. Whereas wolf whistling is not coded as threatening (though some women take it that way, and seem to think every woman should, even though this is actually fairly paranoid on their part). To use some other examples of obnoxious public behavior, carrying around a protest sign with graphic imagery of aborted babies is gross. It's surely as "intrusive" as someone yelling sloppy compliments in your direction. "Well you don't have to look at it" doesn't really acknowledge the depth of discomfort many people experience when seeing such imagery.
While I agree with a lot of what you say, I do wonder if maybe my active/passive definition didn't work.
Catcalling is a specific act, targeted/focused at a specific person. One that is in the overwhelming super-majority of cases is not desired. I would also posit that many a cat-caller does it not just because they think someone is hot, but because they enjoy the fact they get to flex "power" over someone by making them uncomfortable with no recourse against them (dovetails nicely with everyone's discussion about lower class men, they don't get to flex power often).
Having ones ass out is an unfocused act, it is not targeted at anyone. While it may make some uncomfortable, it does so at a much lower rate (and makes people happy at a much higher rate). There is no intent to cause distress.
Finally, while I agree that society is teaching and reinforcing women to be far more paranoid than is warranted, the Venn diagram between "is willing to break social norms by cat calling" and "is willing to go for a cheeky bottom pinch or other form of personal assault" has overlap, there is a small but credible possibility of violence from that person. The Venn diagram of "has ass out in Lululemon" and "will grab your dick through your shorts" is 0, unfortunately.
I'm unconvinced cat calling should be an indictable offense, but comparing it to skimpy clothing is ridiculous.
I'm not especially sympathetic to the "sex as a power trip" narrative, but assuming it is basically correct--isn't women dressing in revealing clothing also often an opportunity for them to enjoy flexing their power over men? I think maybe part of what leads you here--
--is a background Western assumption that men have power, and that power is what men have. I occasionally see feminists (especially, "sex positive" feminists) move past this decidedly mid-20th century "Second Sex" narrative into a more postmodern, Foucaultian "women's power is different" narrative. Men may dominate physically, but women dominate socially; men may gatekeep the levers of action, but women gatekeep the levers of status. Occasionally in these "catcalling debates" women will decide to flip the script and start catcalling men; this never works out because men love this shit. Not the truly aggressive and negative stuff--honking at pedestrians, shouting insults--that might well get you punched in the face! But "CHECK THE GUNS ON THIS GUY" is going to put a smile on his face for days.
Putting on a skimpy swimsuit is the psychologically female equivalent of a man looming over someone and saying, "hey, you wanna feel my muscles?"
And sure, you might not find this totally persuasive, but I think it's a long way from ridiculous. Except in the sense that ridicule itself is a way of socially signaling; countenancing the idea that women may have just as much power over men, as men have over women--just in different ways and contexts--is very low status, at present! It's the kind of thing you might expect to hear some "beta cucks huffing as copium," in the parlance of the iPad youths.
The Venn diagram between "is willing to ask you out" and "is willing to rape you at the first opportunity" has overlap, too. Women are wise to be cautious of men! That's clearly true, and surely of importance in this discussion. One of the reasons I started it is because, like other posters have more explicitly suggested, I think there is a kind of person who will feel unsure about the Surrey stings until they see the color of the perpetrator's skin! Or two kinds, if we want to separate them out--people who will only be mad if this is enforced against non-whites and immigrants, and people who will only be mad if it is enforced against native whites outside otherwise-criminally-problematic neighborhoods. As an anti-identitarian I think both of these perspectives are avoiding a real substantive issue, namely, the regulation of interpersonal behaviors in public spaces shared between individuals with diverse and not entirely compatible interests. Likewise, treating women's interests in public space interaction as weightier than men's interests in the same, is identitarian rather than appropriately considerate of all the issues involved.
(One solution some cultures implement is to simply segregate the disparate interests; men from women, white from black, whatever. That is a workable solution in many cases but the West has rejected it, and as a liberal myself I think it is both possible and desirable for people with disparate interests to share public spaces without significant conflict. So I set this solution aside, but I know not everyone does.)
Somewhere downstream from catcalling is a slightly different thing: the cold open. Most people here are not old enough to remember the Clinton years, but a phrase that got kicked around a lot (with direct reference to Clinton's own behavior) was, "it doesn't hurt to ask!" Meaning: the First Amendment protects men asking women if they'd like to go out on a date--or even have sex! Even if those women are strangers! Even if 99.995% of women are going to say no!
We don't seem to actually live in that world anymore; we punish men for even asking, in almost any setting, and so they have in many cases just stopped asking. Norms are forcing these conversations out of almost every environment, onto dating apps that optimize for something other than flourishing. All in the interest of preventing women from ever being put in an uncomfortable position in public--while allowing them to put men into uncomfortable positions through comparable, albeit not identical, practices, like dressing provocatively* while immune from any kind of interpersonal or societal response.
*I here leave aside the tiresome conversations about what counts as provocative, as of course different cultures will have inculcated different views on the matter; as a rule, people know what "sexy" clothing is for people in their sociocultural environment, even if they try to ignore the actual biological implications of the word "sexy."
That was an interesting link. I often wonder about all the variables that are leading young people to date less — of course, “no woman wants to date me” seems to be a plurality answer from men, and I’m well aware of male friends of mine for whom that’s the entire reason they’re single. I have a friend who’s gone from social and engaged to depressed, suicidal, and medicated as his 20s have flown by without a wink of intimacy. Nicest and most prosocial guy you’d ever meet — maybe that’s the problem.
I do wonder sometimes how I’d feel romantically if I hadn’t had some formative positive experiences with dating as a teenager. It certainly wasn’t all roses, but I can trace my own strong drive for intimacy to a before/after with my high school sweetheart. If I hadn’t fallen into a relationship with her… would I be dating now? Would I feel as strongly about dating as I do now?
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This is a really well thought out comment, thank you for writing it.
I think I agree with most of it. I still think the "mechanism of action" for a cat-call vs skimpy shorts (or whatever) is far enough apart that they don't compare well, but I'll concede they're on the same spectrum of human behaviour/motivations.
I'm gonna read this again later when I'm not in motion, thanks again.
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Perhaps but we are talking about UK culture, which I am part of, and so I do feel fairly comfortable telling a British religious person this. Moreover there's a gradient of feelings where some religious people will be upset about even having to see parts of a woman's face or hair, and in this extreme case I don't feel too many qualms about telling them they need to get over their feelings. Perhaps that's the same in reverse as a catcaller telling a woman she needs to get over her objections to catcalling, but so be it.
For sure there's a theoretical debate to be had which I think is perhaps too laborious to really get into here, but part of that debate would need to get into questions of intent. The catcaller is manifestly trying to get a specific woman's attention and prevent her from going about her business undisturbed. The skimpily dressed woman may also be trying to distract a given man. But we actually don't know, and most of the time cannot know, if she is or not merely from the fact of her dress. It's just harder to establish an intent to impinge on a specific individual to the woman in this case than the man. If she actively flashes a body part at a specific man, we would have established an intent towards that particular person, and in that case, the woman's act is similarly invasive as catcalling – maybe even if another woman is showing a similar amount of skin as a matter of course, but not pushing it specifically towards a given unconsenting man. Innocence is not merely in what is shown but how it's shown.
Right, so, one of the things I allude to in my original post is that this bit is really vague in UK law, as best I can tell. Sometimes it seems like "harassment" under UK law requires specific and directed intent, but sometimes not. And even when intent is required, the kind of intent is usually something like "intent to cause distress or shame." But of course screaming "NICE GAMS," while it might very well cause embarrassment to the admiree, is perfectly consistent with intending to make a woman feel good about herself, rather than to cause distress or shame. So when you say--
--this seems at least half mistaken. The catcaller wants to get someone's attention to pay her a compliment, albeit perhaps a compliment she'd rather not receive. (Is it also "catcalling" to yell putative insults at a woman, e.g. "whore" or "slut?" I think maybe this also would qualify as catcalling, but then the vulgarity and more aggressively threatening content of the speech seems to more clearly establish hostile intent.) Disturbing her "business" does not seem to be a necessary (or indeed generally intended) aspect of catcalling.
Likewise, UK law seems to think that you can direct harmful intent without a specific target in mind--for example, using PSPOs to forbid people from protesting near abortion clinics. Merely holding a sign that says "abortion is murder" near an abortion clinic need not be done with any intent to impinge on any specific individual. Likewise, wearing a diaphanous string bikini to walk around a busy pedestrian area need not be done with any intent to impinge on any specific individual, and yet a reasonable person might well find it an alarming sight--and doubt that it was done with anything less than mischievous intent.
As you allude to, there's a 'reasonable person' standard. Someone could flash a woman hoping the woman would be excited by the sight of some random unexpected genitals in their eyeline. But that's unreasonable. A reasonable person would understand that they are more likely to cause upset, so the only reasonable intention we can impute is a malign one.
With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery, British society has (arguably) reached a point where the only response to this is 'Give me a break, pal'. Among my own male friends, certainly, I would flatly disbelieve one of them who said they thought catcalled women liked it and they were doing it to flatter them. I'd tell them, 'Really? Or do you get off on upsetting them, because that's what you're mostly doing.'
With the walking in a string bikini example, depending on the location I think this would very possibly be done with mischievous intent. Except at a beach though I think that's a pretty strong example. Tight leggings or bare midriff is more likely the disputed case and I think a woman dressed thus would be within her rights to say to someone offended, 'I wasn't thinking of you at all'.
Society is not uniform. For instance the incident that naraburns alluded to when most of the catcallers weren't white. I wouldn't be surprised if there are sections of society where catcalling is acceptable. They just don't overlap with friends of Internet geeks very much.
Yeah, this might be true and if they could keep their cat calling within their section of society maybe that would be okay? But not very practicable if we're talking about whistling at strangers.
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I think this is probably close to correct (obviously from these articles, there is a meaningful percentage of British society that presumably hasn't reached this point, as they still engage in catcalling), but is rather my point about being in psyop territory. Convincing everyone to believe that catcalling should be perceived as negative seems to be the actual goal of these "stings," not because it was democratically decided that catcalling is in fact negative, but because certain people genuinely don't like it and they don't want anyone else to like it, either, or be subjected to it as a result of others liking it.
As I suggest in my original post, I don't really understand catcalling and regard it as at best inconsiderate. But I also don't like it when the government and news media collude to nudge people's values around instead of having an honest conversation about controversial-but-not-to-everyone behaviors.
I guess I just never understood the appeal of catcalling — what do you think is gonna happen, she’s gonna decide that random horny construction worker #25 is so hot he deserves a handjob? It just seems like pointless horniness.
But then again, I also don’t see the appeal of a strip club so maybe there’s a whole psychology of looking but not touching I don’t share.
Yeah, I don't know. But to try to steelman it, maybe--imagine you're an audience member at a beauty pageant or a fashion show. (Yeah, I don't get beauty pageants or fashion shows, either, but they're definitely a thing!) You see all the work these models have put into their poise, their dress, their movements, their facial expressions... so you cheer! Cheering is surely a thing at beauty pageants (I admit I'm assuming here). You're expressing your appreciation and admiration. Indeed, isn't it perfectly natural, even polite, to express your appreciation and admiration for someone like that?
Well, some people just... aren't that smooth with their cheering!
Or to take it up another level, have you ever deliberately tried to provoke a smile from someone? Maybe an angry child, or a grumpy friend? Maybe you took it as a kind of personal test, a self-imposed challenge of sorts... so maybe catcallers are thinking, maybe unrealistically, "I bet I can get a smile out of that girl." And in some cases, should they fail, they might feel ashamed by that, and lash out instead--"oh, too stuck up for a smile, girl?"
These are surely not the most artful approaches, I'm trying to steelman and I'm still not coming up with highly sympathetic actors, here, but I think there are many analogous behaviors out there. I don't really understand catcalling but there's a lot of irrational human behavior I don't understand (professional sports!) and most of it doesn't get you a dressing down from your local Bobby.
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Classically, catcalling is a builder who is with his mates, not by himself. It's done for the mates to strengthen the group and give them the small stroke of pointing out a hot woman to look at or whose reaction to be amused by.
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I mean, you’ve never tried to flirt with a woman you just ran into? Imagine that but….
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Well, maybe you're not but here is an appeal to authority that the devout Amish, at least, should acknowledge.
I'm not sure whether this is your point, but if I were the kind of person to take that particular Biblical edict seriously, I would likely be in favor of laws that discouraged other people from behaving in ways that might tend to inspire rebelliousness in my extremities.
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I was raised christian (though I'm not anymore) and traditional teaching is very clear that avoiding sin is a communal project, i.e. you're supposed neither to directly sin, nor to make someone else sin. See the literal Enemy, Satan, whos' most dangerous attribute is making humans sin, not the fact that he himself sins.
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Yes, looking at women(other than your wife) in bikinis is sinful… but Jesus also says that those who lead others to sin are more sinful- he specifically says it would be better for them if they were killed.
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Well, some guy who is jogging stark naked through the city is also just going about their own business, and yet we treat it as actively getting into someone's space in most of the Western world.
I think that I can understand where the puritans would come from at least in theory. If I were in a business meeting and the woman across from me was sitting there bare-chested, I would be annoyed because her tits would be hijacking my attention. By contrast, if I go swimming in the lake and see some women tanning topless, I think 'yay boobs'.
I realize that this is totally dependent on culture. Some guy from Saudi Arabia who has never seen the hair of a woman who was not his wife or relative might get similarly distracted by seeing a woman without a headscarf. And some guy from a society where clothing was not a thing and people masturbated during social gatherings all the time might consider me a terminal prude, but would perhaps freak out when people were eating meat during a business dinner.
Well the jogging stark naked guy is probably crazy. Even if not though, streaking is way more wholesome than flashing!
As you say though all this is quite culture relative and I often think about how a woman willing to ditch the head scarf in a very repressive country is doing something that must feel brazen to her and read as overtly sexual to men around her.
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An asymmetry, sure, but I'm not so sure we can definitively come down on either side. I find catcalling at best trashy and at worst threatening, and I like seeing semi-naked women on the street, but then I'm a guy who got laid when he was younger so I expect that affects it.
But for a lot of men I imagine seeing a semi-naked woman is like a homeless guy seeing me light a cigarette with a 20 dollar bill. Sure, I'm not hurting him, and he's not entitled to my money, but I can see how it would be painful for the homeless guy. In the same vein, rare is the woman who is relieved when she reaches middle age and men stop paying attention to her. Instead she desperately clings on to her youth and tries to stave off invisibility.
I think it's a mistake to see dressing in provactive clothing as a passive act, which is how a lot of women frame it. It's an act with plausible deniability, perhaps, but when a woman dresses like this she does so in the full knowledge of the effect it is going to have on men. All men, not just the ones she's interested in.
My suspicion is that a large part of the dislike of cat-calling (at least among adult women) is the offence that a trashy low-class man thinks he has a shot, as opposed to fear of violence, although certainly that's going to be common, particularly for teenage girls. What I really want is a truthful survey (probably impossible) on how many women feel like this.
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There 100% is. Women walking around in their underwear is an unfortunate commentary on the state of society; it’s not directly threatening.
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