Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A thought and question I've had bouncing around in my head that I don't expect a real answer to, or even a coherent framing, since its possible there are a few false premises at work here.
Is it possible that one side effect of the rise of Onlyfans/digital prostitution is that (many) men are noticing that (many) women know precisely what men want in a sexual partner and are willing to provide it... but only outside the context of a committed relationship.
Simply put, Onlyfans creates an extremely liquid marketplace for attractive women to produce smut content for a large audience. Content producers want to optimize to capture as many customers as possible. Something like 87% of the customers/users on OF are men. So competitive forces drive the (mostly females) creators to figure out exactly what men's sexual preferences are and provide content tailored to those preferences and produce it en masse.
So by sheer economic necessity, these women are demonstrating that they are willing to engage with men's deepest sexual desires in order to make a buck.
Imagine being a 20-something male in the current environment, being aware of the fact that you can go on OF and for the price of a cheeseburger find women who will perform almost any male sexual fantasy you could imagine. Then going on the dating market to find a woman who might be willing to indulge in fantasies with him (assume he's seeking an otherwise healthy, committed relationship).
If he goes into the dating marketplace and is open about his own personal sexual desires, he can be branded as a pervert or a sex pest because "women don't exist solely to please men" and/or "you can't reduce women to sex objects, even if they sexualize themselves." In some cases, they might just simply express ignorance of men's sexual preferences and act as though expecting sexual gratification from a partner is suspect!
But this would read as extremely bad faith given that, as above, women clearly can figure out what men want if they put in a modicum of effort, and WILL provide it when provided sufficient incentive.
Seems, to me, that seeing the difference between what women are willing to do for money and attention from thousands of onlookers online vs. how they can be unwilling to indulge their own partner's personal desires could lead to a feeling of resentment.
Do you expect you're talking about the same women? The women I know best wouldn't dream of setting up an OF account. I am sure they have their secret garden like all women, the face they don't show me and would never show me, but I am not sure the OF types are the same girls one might be approaching at, say, Starbucks. Of course you could argue you're talking about some sort of female psychology here, but that seems like women assuming all men are subscribers to OF or are dangerous potential rapists. This is only true in the least charitable view.
Also I am not sure it's either realistic or ideal (despite the modern idea of writing up a dating profile) to be "open about preferences" from the get-go (primarily because I think these preferences should be a natural growth based on shared experience of one another, and not, say, what one learns one gets off to via watching porn).
Many women are students of male weakness, yes. For various reasons. But I'd argue against anyone who suggests all men want one type of inamorata, actually. There are commonalities, probably, among men, but I mean camgirl and porn sites all have the Category button for a reason. If what you mean is "All men want to see your tits" then you're probably right. Past that it's vague. But presumably for most the draw of such sites is the same as the draw of the waterlogged magazine cache in the woods for boys of my era--the erotic forbidden. There have been Playboy centerfolds for a long time. That doesn't mean that's everyone's ideal (thus you get sexless wonders asking on reddit and elsewhere "Would U date an Onlyfans girl?") Regardless of the answers, the fact that this is a question that gets asked suggests these girls and women who put themselves in that marketplace are not the norm, despite how it seems.
I will offer that I think the normalization to some degree of this sort of virtual prostitution is very troubling and I can't imagine it sending us anywhere good. An equivalent would be normalization of, say, fighting and violence for men. We all have that side in us, buried to some degree. Make it acceptable and people suppress it less. There probably is a zone where girls who never would have imagined themselves dancing naked to shitty music in video are doing so because as you say, easy money and some degree of anonymity.
How do you know this?
Would you expect them to admit it if they did?
I'm really no longer sure what "the norm" is, other than all indications are that its trending towards running an Onlyfans being a relatively acceptable practice.
And more to the point, it means any female who wants to figure out how to satisfy male sexual preferences need only check into what some of the top content producers are putting out.
Women now have no real excuse for being unaware of men's sexual preferences.
And guys now get the impression that females are willing to satisfy those preferences even if they claim to find them disgusting and crude.
AH, but I don't think that is equivalent.
Sexuality is often idealized as something to be shared with solely your committed partner, and seeking sexual gratification outside the relationship is considered adulterous.
Hence why having a sexually explicit OF might be a violation of that relationship.
I don't think a man's capacity for violence is something that has the same level of "sacredness" where he is expected to express it solely to his partner.
Although I see your point that we have a social interest in restraining the male tendency to violence.
I have no idea what the argument you’re making is, that women should act like whores for their partners because they can Google the porn that OnlyFans creators make?
I'm exploring a question "whether the fact that women act like whores on OF for random strangers could lead to men resenting the fact that they won't do so in the context of a relationship."
I don't think there's any "should" about it.
Males have a lot of sexual preferences that they are, generally, told are disgusting, base, or socially unacceptable.
The signal that OF seems to be sending is that, for a relative pittance, women will absolutely engage in the most disgusting, base, or socially unacceptable behaviors that men want.
And OF is blurring the line between what is 'real life' and what is 'fantasy' with regards to sexual behavior. Indeed, a huge part of the "appeal" of OF is that women market themselves as just ordinary girls who just happen to like all the sexual behaviors men prefer and have as high a desire for sex as men do.
So men might be reading the signal, then contrasting it to their own experience in the dating market, and feeling as though women are intentionally withholding sexual behaviors from men that they would willingly engage in for paying online voyeurs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link