domain:dynomight.net
Great reply. This is why the “groomer” discourse* is so wild to me. Modern parents precisely are NOT grooming their children. I imagine that much of tribal and traditional child rearing involves educating children and adolescents into how courting/mating/reproduction operate, and it is at the exact moment that straight parents fail to teach this to their children that they choose to project their failures onto nearby drag queens or trans people. If you don’t do it yourself they’re going to pick it up off the street. Are the parents not possibly creating sexual minorities (which are to some degree sexual dysfunction in my opinion) in their children through the lack of education surrounding courtship ritual?
If you are disturbed to imagine parents providing sexual or courting education (which is a response I might expect from this post) I don’t really disagree with you but it also reinforces my point. I don’t really know how to create an environment more conducive to courtship today but the clinical answer of high school sex ed isn’t very sexy and doesn’t seem to be working.
*Groomer discourse referring to straight people calling trans and/or homosexuals “groomers”
aiislove
39m ago
nerds
jocks
Everyone needs to go watch a Studio Ghibli movie right now. We should aspire to be well rounded people who aren’t specialized weirdos. People in other countries understand this. Why do Americans want to flatten their identities into one weird thing? Someone thinks they’re a nerd so now they’re absolved of the responsibility of being attractive or the expectation that they can hold a conversation. Someone else believes they’re a jock so now they don’t have to suffer the irritation of being corrected by pedantic relatives or be expected to work at a computer all day. It’s so exhausting and reductive. Why aren’t we supporting everyone to be a well rounded person who is as capable as anyone else at all the various parts of life we’re going to have to deal with? It’s really sad to see people waste away their potential in identities pushed onto them by family and schoolmates at an early age.
LiberalRetvrn
1hr ago
That sounds like an average 6th grade dance, from what I remember. Up until a certain age, kids think romance is gross and embarrassing. Then in about high school it flips, and having a gf becomes cool. As an incel, I distinctly remember completely missing this change, not realizing that people were going on unironic dates. Even then, it's nowhere near as direct as boys asking girls to dance. That would be trying too hard, which isn't cool. The actual courtship happens behind the scenes, without adults watching.
If these are high school kids, then it's a little weirder, but since they're being homeschooled maybe the process is delayed.
JulianRota
1hr ago
As a adult man with no kids, I don't think there really are any hard and fast rules, only preferences.
My preference is already to pee in bathrooms. If that's impractical for some reason and I really need to, then I'll do it somewhere else. I would also prefer to do things like only on nature, at least a few yards into some woods, reasonably hard for others to see, etc, but then necessity and lack of availability of good options can override that.
Best recent example was during Covid times in NYC. For a while, it was legal for bars to serve drinks to pedestrians, but not to let anyone inside, so my friends and I would all walk around drinking. No bathrooms open anywhere means when you need to pee, you try to find somewhere reasonably low-traffic and discrete and do it. If you think this doesn't make a lot of sense, I agree, but I didn't make the rules. I guess that's the price for temporarily sort of containing a disease with a 99.9% survival rate (/s).
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
My experience with them broadly predates the 2014 woke apocalypse; being more than a decade out of date, I'm still highly skeptical that your description is accurate at the population level, though I've certainly heard of people and even communities that description would fit; in any case, I'm sticking to what I have direct evidence of.
Shrike
1hr ago
Yeah, heaven only knows what things are going to look like in 10 - 20 years. No point in getting locked into a flowchart.
I was homeschooled and dated and married basically entirely "within" the broader conservative religious universe – which wasn't necessarily 100% homeschoolers but had a lot of overlap, and I personally was homeschooled. I met my wife, who had a similar background, at a college with a statement of faith and we married shortly after we graduated. I have zero regrets about any of the above and plan to raise my children relatively similarly.
To the extent that I've had a better outcome than the stereotypical homeschooler (which might not be the case – in my experience homeschoolers often turn out fairly well) it might be in part because my parents were always very confident in their children and our ability to succeed outside of the house and "in the real world," whether that was in romance or on the job or in areas of basic life competency. My parents never really expressed anxiety about our ability to work, or find a wife, and never seemed fearful about our future, or overprotective. They were never hectoring about the "basic life script" but there was an implicit assumption that we would follow it, not because they insisted on it but because we were capable of it.
One concrete thing I would say is that my wife and I both took a few community college classes in high school and found that very good for starting the transition out of the home. I think it's worth considering even if your kids are in public or private schools – it's a good introduction to the college format.
JulianRota
1hr ago
Are you talking about the "Home" screen recommendations? I agree that it's an annoying layout, but don't you have the "Library" page too? On mine, that shows only your books, with a bunch of layout options. Mine also never actually goes to the "Home" screen unless I actually tap on Home to go there, so I only really ever see the "Library" page. So it doesn't really seem like that big of a deal to me.
Agreeing to pay less than the normal price in exchange for seeing ads is one thing, but it does bug me when the big providers pull a "we are changing the deal", like Amazon Prime video's apparent stance that they will actually start showing ads unless you agree to pay them even more. Fortunately, for now at least, uBlock Origin Lite, which is Manifest V3 compatible, works fine at blocking them, and YouTube ads too.
Forty-Bot
1hr ago
The tax man always gets his due:
In 1987, the Kansas Legislature passed laws imposing an excise tax on the illegal possession and/or distribution of marijuana and controlled substances. The laws state that any person who illegally possesses and/or distributes these substances in quantities exceeding a threshold amount is a “drug dealer.” The threshold amount is designed to avoid taxing the casual user of these substances. The tax must be paid by the “dealer” by purchasing the proper amount of drug tax stamps from the Kansas Department of Revenue and then affixing them to the packaging of the illegal drugs as proof of payment of the tax as soon as the “dealer” comes into possession of the illegal substance(s). The stamps may be purchased anonymously at the Department’s Taxpayer Assistance Center in Topeka. The stamps are valid for three months after purchase. A “dealer” is not required to give his/her name or address when purchasing stamps and the Department is prohibited from sharing any information about the stamp purchased with law enforcement or anyone else. Purchasing the drug tax stamps does not make possession of marijuana or controlled substances legal.
DiscourseMagnus
1hr ago
I note that you took no issue with my similarly unfavorable description of the left.
MedicalStory2
1hr ago
Would Trump 47 be able to show his his true colors in a shutdown or is much of the unpopular stuff in a shutdown is actually required by law?
Trump will do his best to do the most enjoyable shutdown possible. For example, in previous shutdowns, the national parks closed, including spending money to ensure the closure of isolated trails. Maybe in a Trump 47 shutdown, they stay open to the public, but are free since no one is paid to collect money at the entrance.
If Trump 47 gets to show his true colors, then it would look completely different than the shutdowns of yore. If not, he can blame all the bad results on the Dems (and still enjoy the dismantle-whatever-he-wants superpowers the shutdown provides).
urquan
I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness.
1hr ago
· Edited 1hr ago
In that case, I’m not even sure why your comment is even a response to @RandomRanger. I have a nasty habit of trying to give my impression of others, but in my interpretation, obviously he’s presupposing the existence of crushes, affection, genuine liking — and just evaluating whether or not acting on these feelings is reasonable under the circumstances. If he’s not saying that — I am.
(I would also argue that making friends with someone with the hope of dating them is both a bad strategy, as romantic attraction is based on first impressions even if they’re not acted on early, and likely to actually get someone called a creep, because women like intentions to be upfront, and loathe losing a friendship to a crush they didn’t requite. All of my relationships began with flirting and romantic interest, and any platonic relationships that came before the dating existed because of imperfect knowledge — we were friends because we didn’t realize we were into each other.)
I also think you seriously underestimate the extent of the cultural shift that’s happened, and how hard it is for many young people to have their crushes requited. The initial Twitter post was about homeschoolers, but the same principle applies just as well to the schooled. There are lots of well-meaning, love-oriented young people who find their crushes have no interest in them and develop a thickened skin to love as a result. I was one of them — by the grace of God I grew out of it. And I know many, many men between the ages of 18-30 who very much fit this pattern: desperate for love, with deep and immense feelings of true infatuation to romance, indeed for particular persons and not the generalized concept, yet without these being requited, as revealed in the meme of lamentation: “tfw no gf.”
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1hr ago
Sometimes you are being selfish, and you have to realize that it's okay to have (or not have) wants and desires of your own. In pettier situations it does ring a bit hollow, but in my experience if you can't learn to say "No" to something that isn't really a big deal (and to be clear, you don't have to say "No" every time; doing favors can make for rewarding experiences), you'll get get stomped on when the big things do come up. You don't have to be specific, just "sorry man, I'm tired, have other stuff going on, or whatever it is". People aren't going to hate you for that just like I don't hate my friends/relatives for not answering the phone when I call them in the middle of a long drive because I'm bored and trying to kill time. Ask yourself, "Would I be really bent out of shape if someone said "No" to me concerning this?"
I had to kick out two roommates in the last year. One was a big contributor to that 30 grand I mentioned and the other one was an awful, sad story, the prompt of "I have the right to defend myself" as an argument (I'll admit that phrasing comes across as overly dramatic, but you'll see why.). Some spineless regular at the bar I worked at met her on a dating site, hooked up with her, and couldn't handle the crazy (I'm not one who goes around diagnosing every woman I don't like as suffering from BPD, but she's one of two or three I've met in my adult life who was a dead ringer for that malady.). She was homeless/living in extended stays, I had a spare room and could use some extra cash (she was employed), and she seemed nice enough, so I said "Why not?" and took her in. Note to self, Friday night at the bar is not the place to go shopping for roommates.
It was toxic. She's not a bad person and I wish her something better, but she was troubled in a way that I'm not qualified to fix. She was 36 and drank like I did at 22, blacked out every night and trauma dumping on anyone in earshot. Honestly, observing her behavior made me feel deeply embarrassed for myself and how I was at that time and understanding of why the 8th Step exists. During blackouts it wasn't just the mundane stuff about being sexually abused by her father and not believed by her family or being fucked over by every friend in her life, but hearing the most disturbing admission of animal cruelty/neglect that I've heard, being called while working at the bar and told that she'd been on the phone with the suicide hotline, her goading her boyfriend into dumping her because she liked me more (her words), having to reject multiple sexual advances, and her blowing up on me for neglecting her in favor of speaking with an old friend that I hadn't seen in years. All this happened within two weeks. It was a disaster waiting to happen and she had to go. I felt like a massive asshole as I endured tantrums, "Why do you hate me?/What did I do to you/I'm sorry!!!?", and so on with stone silence (precisely how I dealt with/deal with my mother's tantrums), knowing full well what I was exiling her to (where she was before). I did it though, because my only choice was to do the hard thing or get dragged down further into her Hell than I already was. I still think about her sometimes.
anti_dan
2hr ago
I like this reply since it has a little edge to it, but I am left wondering, to what extent does empathizing with young men just translate to validating their crippling anxiety and fear over interacting with the opposite sex? Does that do them any good? To me a lot of the replies about fear of getting 'cancelled' just seem like an overblown and hyperbolic expression of that anxiety and fear. The real question should be why that anxiety and fear exist in the first place. And to what extent the responsibility to overcome it rests on young men rather than someone else.
While its been a while since I was in high school, I do recall quite vividly that the anxiety to asking out a girl was very strong even back then. Overcoming this and asking girls to prom/homecoming/etc has always been a thing many boys struggle with. What has changed isn't that situation, it is the girls. Frankly, the options out there seem middling. The stats are in. The girls are fat now. The ones that aren't are getting 10000 swipes on Tinder, yes even the high school girls. They lie to the app and purloin booze from some 21 year old "loser" instead of going to prom at all. Its not just the stats, I believe my lying eyes. I used to live next to a high school. The hotness recession is real. I had little to no lecherousness that needed suppressing.
By the way, the guys are fat and ugly too. They know this, thats additional points for their anxiety about being rejected being justified.
How to fix? Take PE seriously. Make BMI and 5k times into strict graduation requirements for women, and pullups and 400M times for men. And then stick to them. The law is a teacher after all. Currently it teaches bad things. We should have it teach good things.
DiscourseMagnus
2hr ago
Go flop around on Twitter or /pol/ for a short time.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
2hr ago
Apropos of a very small, tangential discussion on the main culture war thread, what are the borders of polyamory?
For me personally, I don’t think of any variation of one man/x number of women as actually being polyamorous in the current year sense. It’s all just gradations between patriarch with +1 wife, or a mistresses situation, or a full on Ottoman seraglio.
I can’t say I base this on much more than vibes, but modern polyamory seems to connote at least one additional male in the mix, and probably something that tends towards more even mixes of men and women.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
Your description does not match any portion of the right I've ever interacted with. Would you care to provide some evidence along with your inflammatory statements?
DiscourseMagnus
2hr ago
Yeah, but those boys have both shit ends of the stick; the left thinks that they're rapists-in-waiting who need to be castrated or gaslighted into turning gay, while the right thinks that if they have any positive feelings for women aside from maybe lust then they're as good as gay already and need to be beaten. (Ignoring the normie/boomer faction of the right that's just a reskin of the left.)
TheBailey
soapy mop
2hr ago
Is it just, like, straight-up illegal to get anonymous STD testing in Alabama?
https://law.justia.com/codes/alabama/title-22/title-1/chapter-11a/article-1/section-22-11a-14/
Any physician who diagnoses … a case of sexually transmitted disease as designated by the State Board of Health, … shall report … to the state or county health officer … the patient’s full name, date of birth, … address, telephone number, … stage of disease, … and the date of onset.
Or is there some workaround where a physician or clinic can “give you the tools for diagnosis” without being the one to diagnose you?
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Don’t liquidate everything. Cigarette stocks, at the minimum, do well in a recession.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
The plan is to a) pay attention to families whose children marry in a timely manner and copy them and b) emphasize hitting maturity/developmental milestones(jobs, driving, making their own schedule, etc) while the boys are still at home.
If that sounds vague- sure, maybe it is. But I don’t have a son out of diapers. A detailed and specific plan will probably do more harm than good.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2hr ago
Not really, he just mentions his wives regularly. Afaik he's the only penis in the mix.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
It is socially acceptable to ask girls to dance at a school dance, but boys don’t want to dance. They want to fuck (or get married if you’re feeling charitable).
That's an oversimplification. Teenage boys also have feelings for girls, and want to express them and have those feelings reciprocated. They aren't just walking erections. That means that yes, boys do enjoy dancing with girls on occasion even if it doesn't lead to sex.
I never said anything about it being requited or demanding passion from both sides! What I'm talking about is one person (typically, the boy) developing an infatuation, and being motivated thereby to ask out the other one (typically, the girl). Hopefully, in the course of dating, the askee comes to reciprocate. Hopefully, if she doesn't, it's because the two of them don't really click in a romantic context, and this causes the initial crush to fade. Perhaps using the L-word confused things; I'm not speaking about the full bells and whistles, necessarily. Just about its precursor. A crush. An infatuation. Whatever you want to call it.
Of course, falling-in-love with/developing-a-crush-on someone necessitates already knowing them and hanging out with them frequently for non-dating-related reasons. Luckily, we have a social institution for locking largeish numbers of boys and girls together in a room for months on end until they are forced to get to know each other; it is called "school". By the end of any given year of middle school or high school I'd spoken to most of my opposite-sex classmates a few times, worked on class projects with several, and befriended a few platonically. Even without direct interactions, I'd seen enough of literally all of them to have a working sense of their vibe and personality. That's quite enough to develop a romantic infatuation that goes beyond the carnal (as it did yearly for me) and might motivate you to eventually ask one of these girls out on a date (as it did a few times).
What's your take on people using the term "groomer" to refer to a person in a position of authority who uses that position to secretly involve themselves in a child's sexuality?
A huge portion of the debate very clearly centers on authority figures lying to parents to hide information from them about what's going on with their kids. Surely you are aware of the many, many documented cases where this has been the center of the controversy? How can you frame teachers and administrators "teaching" kids about aberant sexuality, explicitly urging the kids to hide this information from their parents, and then lying to the parents when they ask what's going on, as a matter of policy, as parents "failing to teach" their kids?
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