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Fair distillation in my book.
Its crazy how we've come around to the "porn is bad (from the feminist perspective) but women should be rewarded for producing it" (see: Bonnie Blue) point of view as a seeming cultural default.
Then add the additional wrinkle where men who are excessive porn consumers (where 'excessive' is a moving target, mind), or otherwise admit to partaking are still ostracized... even though the action of consuming porn is, I'd say, objectively less degrading and disgusting than the acts involved in producing the hardcore stuff.
There's sort of an implicit "if you're a male porn addict you're pathetic and its good that your money is going to women, even though we wish women would instead choose to not produce porn at all" subtext or something.
And on top of that women can read the most egregiously pornographic books and make them best-sellers... and we're all pretty aware that they're getting off to these things in private, but once again they can claim this makes them 'bookworms' and get a certain amount of adulation from admitting it.
There's an absolutely fair argument "real porn is produced by real people and depicts genuine suffering" vs. words on a page.
But as far as the psychological impact on the consumer I'd wager they're quite similar.
The fully cynical view is that the women are wonderful effect just dominates all cultural narratives. Human psychology is bent against criticizing attractive women, and so if women are engaging in [taboo/disgusting acvitity] maybe many humans will just contort their thought processes to find that thing really good actually, as long as its women doing it.
That's not the explanation I'd run with, I think it just frames the issue properly.
There is a far more basic dynamic at play there, which is also the reason why sex toys for women are a much bigger and less stigmatised market: because men's value is measured by their ability to convince women to have sex with them, men who obtain sexual gratification without the need to do so broadcast to the world that they are losers.
There is no obvious counterpart of this for women - given that the counterpart animal-brain valuation is often stated as "measured by their ability to exercise choice and reject even high-value men", and the animal need is taken to be for resources and validation rather than sex, perhaps the distaff version of the coomer is something like a streamer maintaining a simp army by way of heavy plastic surgery/makeup/AI retouching/voice changers. I do get the sense that the embarrassment around women's no-makeup high school photos is a bit similar to the embarrassment around men's browser history.
Its an odd clash between our primal lizard/ape brain and our more economizing higher mammal brain that we seem to be well aware that "sex" is cheap in the abstract, you can find it with just a little effort and risk, and if you have some cash can acquire it, in varying degrees of quality.
Got specific names for it and everything. High end "sugar babies," low end "lot lizards."
So its not like some hard-to-acquire thing that has intrinsic value due to its rarity.
But... acquiring it from decent-looking women without having to pay out for it (up front, especially) usually means you're an absolute high-value stud who will literally be the envy of other men.
Status-seeking interacts with sexual politics in some odd ways here. If I have, I dunno, about 4-5k, I could spend the night with some of the most gorgeous women on the planet (so my research suggests). But I don't think that would, by itself, afford me any extra status points, and would in many contexts lower my status.
So its a commodity, but also something way, way more important.
In OLD and social media, "sugar babies" will refrain from disclosing as such until you get their number and take the conversation to other channels, lest they get banned from the platform. While rarer, they often appear indistinguishable from normal girls too, just the usual attractive young woman's assortment of bikini pics, thirst traps, nights out with their girlfriends, pics of them in a cocktail dress at a two-person table in an expensive restaurant (who's taking the photo?).
If you have no interest in "sugar babies" like me, this represents time having been wasted talking to such a girl. Sometimes in the past when I've been traveling abroad or preparing to travel abroad (and thus chatting with girls in their local language) is to make lemonade out of lemons and amuse myself.
I say abroad because this doesn't work in English-speaking countries since I can't play dumb in terms of language familiarity the same way. Basically they'd say they're a [positive euphemism for a sex worker] and I'd "innocently" inquire if that means [less positive euphemism for a sex worker]. The equivalent in English would be something like, once we've been text messaging or WhatsApping or whatever for awhile:
Her: btw... im a sb and looking for something mutual
Me: what's an sb
Her: sugar baby
Me: what does that mean
*beat*
Me: ohhh is that like a prostitute?
Her: no not like that!!
And hoe maddening ensues. Even female sex workers are quite defensive and sensitive about their Wonderfulness.
Nowadays, I'm all-too-tiresome'd out to entertain myself like the above and will just leave it at that after the initial reveal.
Not really endorsing your post, but there is a REAL problem with women refusing to advertise their 'true' status in any way that might give up the game before a guy invests attention in her. Even being on a dating app isn't proof positive that she's available and serious.
Girls will have dozens of photos on Insta of just herself in various states of dress and undress, and you'll only find out she has a boyfriend after you've been texting sporadically back and forth for a month (happened to me recently).
Of course the wannabe SBs and the OF purveyors want to hide that until they think they've got you invested enough to slide down the sales funnel.
Yet even 'honest' girls will elide their current relationship status insofar as they'll neglect to mention their ongoing FWB situations or that they're still pining over a guy back home and they'd drop everything to move back there with him (also happened to me). Why not, you know, include him in some photos or at least acknowledge that he's there?
A guy might not know exactly what sort of woman he pulled until 3-6 months into the interaction. Its maddening.
When I learned that the Germans used to have a traditional method for women to advertise their availability I got kinda mad that we don't use similar systems any more.
As a result, it is utterly rational for a guy to assume there's a hidden caveat when a girl 'presents' as single but isn't really open about what that means to her. And that means withholding investment until he is reassured she's actually available and isn't about to spring the "please pay my rent this month" trap.
Certainly is. Women who's entire profile is '@instabae' or 'I'm hardly ever on here, come find me on monetised-thirsttrap.com/teehee'.
Back in the day, the pump and dump was weaponised against women like this (gold-diggers etc) with a very very large amount of collateral damage.
It sure feels like whenever you enter a digital conversation with (what appears to be) an attractive woman, there's like 50-50 odds that there'll be a reveal that this is just the top of her sales funnel once you've actually engaged.
No, I will not follow your insta, snap, telegram, join your discord, or subscribe to your Patreon or Substack.
And even the ones that don't... tend to not care that the general goal of such convos used to be meeting up in person. I've heard the term "rain check" too many times in the past few months.
I strongly encourage people to take breaks from OLD (or even dating in general) when they feel burnout. You won't be at your best when burnt out and frankly it feels horrible to keep engaging when you've had a bad run.
Yeah, but its even happening with women I have I know from other places too. Drawn out text convos then withdrawal/avoidance when I try to get to the brass tacks.
And I'll go ahead and up the stakes to say "do not use Online Dating, its simply not worth the psychic damage."
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