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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25035 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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I’ll keep this short because I’ve rambled about this enough on themotte in the past. As a younger gay man, I didn’t understand why the soft status game was so ungratifying. I could be Liberace with little to no effort on my part. But Liberace- and gay men like him- have little to no actual status among gay men. Even entirely destitute gay men aren’t charmed by the money of a rich man. Likewise, when you are the rich man, it is not gratifying to charm a man with your money. The average gay man may pay for sex once or twice in his twenties, or when he comes into money, but he’ll find that it doesn’t gratify the ego in any way that matters. It feels cheap, fake, and dishonest to wield power in this way. Only through hard power- and earning respect, love and status through hard power- can you feel good about yourself and your place among men.

I’m not a gay man but this seems utterly backwards to me. Liberace was the highest paid musician in the entire world, an immensely talented entertainer and genuinely skilled pianist. To achieve that level of status requires a massive amount of talent and effort and you’re saying it’s more gratifying and somehow harder to just be a generic handsome guy because… other gay men find you more fuckable?

For me, what you describe as “hard power” is the definition of cheap and ungratifying. You’re talking about the kind of “status” that a chimpanzee would understand. There is nothing deep about it, it doesn’t add any value to the world, and it’s not something you can build a foundation for a relationship on - whether that is a friendship, a professional connection, or a romantic relationship. I’d rather have a partner who’s a bit plain looking but smart, loving, ambitious and successful - once you’re 6 months into a relationship a chiseled jawline won’t compensate for the lack of deep meaningful conversations. When you’re old and grey, will your proudest achievement really be that you were hot in your twenties and thirties?

I am sure that, as a man, winning at hard status is gratifying, while winning at soft status feels dorky.

I am not sure of that at all.

But I want to know if women feel the same way or if the opposite is true. Do women feel more gratified being Ellen Degeneres or more gratified being Marilyn Monroe?

Marilyn Monroe had a tragic life, suffered from depression, alcoholism and probably committed suicide via drug overdose, while Ellen Degeneres is still alive at 67 with hundreds of millions of dollars and seemingly no real regret over having being a toxic bully of a boss.

I don’t know if the medication of MTF women can tone down this desire inside- perhaps it can, and perhaps that’s fine if you’re living it, but as an outsider to me it is sad.

I’m MTF and if anything I find it a relief to not have that testosterone driven competitive mentality. Explicit hierarchies always made me uncomfortable and the very concept of “ranking” people in status/attractiveness is something I find kinda icky.

I’m not a gay man but this seems utterly backwards to me. Liberace was the highest paid musician in the entire world, an immensely talented entertainer and genuinely skilled pianist. To achieve that level of status requires a massive amount of talent and effort and you’re saying it’s more gratifying and somehow harder to just be a generic handsome guy because… other gay men find you more fuckable?

This is definitely a real dynamic in straight couples to the point of being a cliche (The Eagles’ Take it Easy if you want an example). The attractive young woman is married to/dating a wealthy older man, but stepping out on him with a young poor man who she is actually attracted to. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a thing with gays too.

Revealed preferences even if inadvertent and unconsciously expressed are the most telling of all.

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