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Maybe this is generalizing, but I suspect that the vast majority of women in committed relationships are turned off by their men showing sexual interest in other women.
Then maybe women shouldn't let themselves go so much.
I jest, of course. Obviously it's impossible for a flesh and blood woman in the messy real world to compete with stylized 2D depictions of idealized, flawless women who exist in worlds specifically designed to appeal and entertain (yes I know this only partially applies to Evangelion).
But then again I don't really jest. Women in committed relationships often take that commitment as a signal to let themselves go. Go all the way to ugly shrew hell. Maybe the same is true the gender-flipped way around as well, but I genuinely don't see that happen. Do women just jump ship in that case?
It's called a Dad bod.
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But I doubt it explains the phenomenon I suspect is observable here, which I think is relatively recent.
The phenomenon I seek to explain is:
Why "It's fine" for a guy to like fanservice.
Why "You shouldn't expect a woman to just sit there and not complain about it."
I'm referring to the phenomenon I described i.e. unironic depictions of conventionally attractive, sexually alluring, non-girlboss female characters becoming taboo/unpalatable in the eyes of normie women. Women in committed relationships getting turned off by their men showing sexual interest in other women is a thing as old as time, so I doubt it explains the issue I mentioned which I think is relatively recent.
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Well, in that case, you are saying specifically that is not "fine" for someone with a female partner to like fan service.
Which, fair enough, if those are the boundaries you've established in your relationship. It's not unlike porn; some women are fine with their men watching porn, some are very much not.
But I'm talking about the phenomenon of women finding it objectionable for guys in general to watch it. @HereAndGone2 was not talking about her partner watching fan service, she's talking about being offended that she sees it.
Again, rather like porn: if you hate porn and wish it did not exist and wish men did not watch it, fine. But be honest about it, don't say "It's fine that it exists, I understand men like it, but also I will complain about it and try to shame men who enjoy it."
Women might be able to recognize that different people have different preferences. HereAndGone might not have a moral objection to fanservice in anime, which is indicated by "it's fine." But she and other women can dislike it. Some people might really like eating oysters and that's fine, no moral objection to eating oysters. But don't expect me to be comfortable sitting at a table with people slurping them down.
I don't know why people here see a contradiction here.
The shaming is the contradiction.
You might not like oysters, or want to watch people eating them, but presumably you won't make a point of letting oyster-enjoyers know how gross you think they are.
I mean, if it came up in a conversation and I was BFFs enough or rude enough...
It's a moot point for me because my personal beliefs is that it is indeed immoral to be immodest and to tempt others to unchastity. But I don't see a contradiction between "I think it's disgusting and don't like people who engage in the practice, but I don't find it immoral and it's fine for people in my society to engage in this practice."
But it hardly really ends there. Forget oysters, take homosexuality.
I think it's disgusting and don't like people who engage in the practice, but I don't find it immoral and it's fine for people in my society to engage in this practice.
That statement will not be taken kindly in polite society. But it's socially permissible to shame and police straight men for liking straight male gaze oriented content, and as a result, police the content itself.
You dislike immodesty and porn in general, that's fine, but practically there really is no difference when you say "it's fine" and in the breath attempt to shame someone out of watching porn. Your words and vibes don't match, is the point.
Edit: Sorry, groggy typing. Edited many times.
That is a fairly recent phenomenon. 20 years ago you'd be free to say something like that about homosexuality without any problems or logical contradictions detected. It's actually historically odd that we are able to suppress those kind of statements now for homosexuality and I don't know if it will last.
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My expectations for activities engaged in by arbitrary people are looser than my expectations for my friends', which are looser than my expectations for my wife's and kids', which are looser than my expectations for things I do together with my kids or my friends, which are looser than my expectations for things I do with my wife. None of these distinctions is a contradiction; they're the proper liberal way to thread the needle between "nobody should care about my preferences" self-abnegation versus "everybody should care about my preferences all the time" totalitarian attitudes.
It's totally reasonable to say that it's fine for a show to be made, either fine or not fine for your SO to want to watch it themselves, and yet not fine for your SO to pick it for the both of you to watch together. My wife likes phở bò with tripe and I like sushi with wasabi, and that's all great, but neither of us would ever order our favorite for the other one too, and if we did make a similar mistake out of ignorance then we'd talk about it, not to say that one of us thinks the other is gross, but to clarify what about the food we think is gross to us (e.g. I still like phở without tripe, she still likes seared tuna without wasabi) so a similar mistake doesn't happen again.
Yeah, like not to belabor this too much, because I am not personally an oyster-enjoyer, literally or figuratively. But the point I was making is not that oysters are perfectly fine and no one should complain about them or find them disgusting, but that I find it dishonest to claim you consider oysters a perfectly fine thing to enjoy, just not for you, yet make it clear in your reactions that that is not actually how you feel.
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Disagree; dread game is a PUA staple.
Dread game is the opposite of this actually - women dreading other women showing (elicited) sexual interest in their men.
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That doesn't mean a woman likes it. A thing might make a woman behave temporarily in a way you like but that does not mean that she is content and happy, nor does she like the thing that triggered the change.
Or is everyone interpreting "turned off" as literal sexual arousal and not the general "I hate this and want to turn my head from this, not look at it, feel disgusted by this" way?
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Offended and insulted, rather than necessarily turned off.
Turned off by their men showing sexual interest in other women in a low-status way, definitely. And slow-mo replay of the shower scene in an anime is as low-status as it gets.
But slow-mo replay of shower scenes in kdramas are a-okay! A man being offended by his girlfriend ogling at another dude's abs is also low-status, apparently. I'll reiterate @Botond173 that goonerbait targeting the female gaze is freely celebrated, and the expectation that men should "suffer" through it to make their girlfriends happy seems to be norm in many, many relationships. At least, in the west.
And also in South Korea presumably.
I think South Korea is still a bit equitable, they don't get as upset over male targeted goonerbait as western women do as far as I'm aware. I don't recall a domestic backlash against Stellar Blade for instance. Meanwhile in mainstream western media there's been far less female nudity in recent years, and way more male nudity, even in presumably male targeted IPs.
Edit: Relatedly. My theory is that mainstream TV, gaming, cinema, etc are a shared cultural space, a public park of sorts. If EVE is allowed in this space, where millions of normies could see her casually and frequently, it's culturally "okay" to publicly cater to the male gaze. Hence the push to stigmatise it, so you realise that designs and body standards that appeal to you are culturally taboo, you should be ashamed of liking them and only find them in porn.
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