I wouldve been the best miss andrist (painted nail emoji)

  • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    People really shouldn’t be at all surprised that cis men have an absurd amount of hang-ups about how they want to be desired and how being desired or not-desired affects their self-worth. It’s really not that crazy to want to be desired both in a seemingly shallow immediate sexual manner and in a deep emotional one.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      It also strikes me as very rude to chime in with “smh don’t you know women are attracted to more than just looks?” Because that’s just super condescending. Yeah of course we know that, that’s how attraction works for everyone.

      Everyone is attracted to more than just looks, that’s why it hurts to hear your partner say they wouldn’t be sexually attracted to you, were it not for your pre-existing relationship (which I know isn’t what she meant to say, but that is how it can be interpreted). You’d like to think they’re into you for more than just… Being a stable person or whatever. Most people probably want there to be something intangible about themselves that makes their partner attracted to them, some parts of the sum of the whole that are ever-present even outside years of knowing each other.

      Saying it’s about men wanting to own women or needing to be the most beautiful person in the room is making a lot of very negative assumptions about someone else based purely on the fact that you’d interpret a vague sentence differently.

      • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        You’d like to think they’re into you for more than just… Being a stable person or whatever.

        It’s why I find it strange when people repeat the sentiment of “the bar is very low. just be normal and a woman will give you a chance.” This is like the other end of the spectrum for being “a nice guy,” where somehow it’s a good thing that someone actually takes interest in you for just being “nice” without really being attracted to you otherwise

    • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Is it really just cis men? No queer people would feel insulted if their partner implied they had no other desirable qualities besides being “a good person”?

      • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Is it really just cis men?

        Come on now. Neither did I even write anything about queer people (which I wouldn’t do since I’m not queer) nor did what I write in any way imply that this might be exclusive to cis men or cis people in general.

        No queer people would feel insulted if their partner implied they had no other desirable qualities besides being “a good person”?

        Now really come on, you couldn’t even really call that a bad-faith interpretation of the original post, that’s just making up words that literally weren’t even said and putting them in quotes.

        • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I didn’t make up any words lol. I was asking a question because I don’t know if OP’s experiences were any different. Chill out. And the quotes were my own because “a good person” means a million things to a million people, but it was referencing the reddit post which implies their boyfriend was simply “a good person” and nothing else.

    • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Was out with my partner of over a decade and a load of her friends, she and some others started talking about exes (gymbros specifically) and my partner brought up one of hers that was a runway model that she didn’t like because he was dull and only wanted to be at the gym. I was off having a different conversation as I got called over by one of her friends to get ‘congratulated’ on being chosen over that thanks to having a better personality. Didn’t really feel like a compliment to me, but I think it was supposed to be.

  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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    5 months ago

    I swear to god, every time I’m exposed to heterosexual culture I walk away from it far more confused and concerned than I was expecting to. I keep preparing myself for greater and greater dissonance, but every time I still walk away from it having underprepared and feeling like a vulcan. Highly illogical.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Me too. The problem is that I’m a cisshit. We seem incapable of forming healthy relationships. I’m especially baffled by heterosexual couples who get married and stay that way for decades while hating each other the entire time? Like what’s with these grown-ass men not able to do basic chores? And why do women want to be their mothers? Is it a kink? An elaborate prank? I don’t get it.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        My mom and step-dad have been married for close to 15 years now and they’re very happy together. I don’t think it’s at all impossible to have a healthy cis-het relationship, I really hope you’re just being hyperbolic and that you don’t think cis people are incapable of healthy relationships

        • MaoTheLawn [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I think cishet people are prone to very gendered problems in relationships, and in general a lot of relationships from the outside do look terrible. But a lot of it is so normalised that it doesn’t seem particularly shocking.

          But then I talk to people in queer relationships and realise once you pull back the veil of normative gendered relationships there’s a whole new layer of insanity and neuroticism in most people to deal with under that layer anyway.

          • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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            5 months ago

            “Healthy relationships” aren’t free of problems, they’re healthy because people put in work to maintain them, which includes staying on top of any long-term concerns and addressing new ones as they come up.

      • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        You really cannot underestimate how deeply ingrained marriage, having children and buying a house are into the average people’s sense of how life is supposed to be lived. Add onto that the fact that our society is structured (or at least used to be structured) in a way that turned that way of life into the only “sensible” one. If community building outside of traditional family structures is an impossible thought, what else is there to life outside of those structures? Even if your marriage is disfunctional or even hateful, it still gives your life structure in a way that in our current society basically nothing else can.

        Being able to take a step back and look at those structures and institutions not as god-given or obvious is an ability that the vast majority of people simply do not have.

      • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        And why do women want to be their mothers? Is it a kink? An elaborate prank?

        I’ve been told it’s a very rewarding experience and you feel a lot of love and affection for your children.

        I have no interest personally but I see what others get out of it.

        • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I can see why a woman may enjoy being motherly to her husband in some ways, but being motherly in the way where you clean up all his messes and remind him to wipe his ass and cook every day? Nah that’s just doing work for free for a man child lol.

          • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Oh I thought you were referring to being an actual mother, not mothering your romantic partner.

            Idk I’ve honestly never cohabited with a romantic partner and at this point am not sure if I ever will. Feels like a bad idea if you have different standards of cleanliness.

    • Yor [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      same. there are misunderstandings, unusual expectations, and many other things that become less and less familiar to me over time. I never really got it, but at this point it’s starting to be like picking up a book in a language I don’t speak

    • SpiderFarmer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I’m bisexual, but insecure about my weight and looks. Some people have made some offhand remarks that have had me wondering if I deserved dinner… Thankfully my partner is actually considerate of my self esteem, so that’s less of an issue these days.

  • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    I saw one of our frequent flyer libs butt their head into a thread and make an ass of themselves, so I was hoping to wake up to a bunch of mockery and watching them dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. Instead, that thread was dead and I wake up to this.

    The whole deal seemed to be a case of poor communication, how…ironic(?) that there is a massive struggle session due entirely to people not communicating their ideas clearly and refusing to see a different interpretation or different lived experiences than their own.

  • queermunist she/her
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    5 months ago

    I wish I hadn’t read through the thread. It just made me feel bad and now I can’t yell at anyone.

      • queermunist she/her
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        5 months ago

        I just felt so bad for both of them! She clearly didn’t mean to imply that he was unattractive, but due to his own insecurities he interpreted her that way. Yet, instead of talking it out, he just bottled it up and left! But instead of trying to understand him she couldn’t because he was gone and so she went online to air their problems for all of us to argue about. Then people pick sides and shit on one of the two partners for being callous or overreacting, but it’s simultaneously true she didn’t mean to hurt his feelings and that his feelings and insecurities are valid. But he felt hurt so he retreated into himself and then left to avoid a conflict, and I get it! And she didn’t understand because he never explained why he was hurt, and I get that too!

        They hurt each other for no reason and it’s just sad, and I’m so mad at people for picking sides and attacking either of them for it.

        fk i made myself cry lol

        • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I’m glad to see this kind of empathy and grace being extended to the situation. I tried to do so in one of my comments in the original thread but the other one was probably overly combative because I was annoyed at perceived hypocrisy

        • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I’m just confused as to why it got people so entrenched in either side. Clearly it wasn’t very well worded if it has caused as much of a stir as it has (and her friends also agreed that it was) and she didn’t mean to make the compliment backhanded.

          Seems like a pretty open and shut case really, don’t get what it is that causes people to refuse either interpretation as valid.

          • CriticalOtaku [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            My off-the-cuff armchair psycho-analyzing (which very well could be wrong, I’m just some random on the internet) is that particular situation tapped into people’s own personal relationship traumas- men feeling like their partner refuses to acknowledge their emotions as valid, women’s intentions being misunderstood due to toxic masculinity… and so on. And then once you’re in that head-space it really is hard to pull yourself out of it, especially when other people visibly roll up with their support for the other side, which makes you go into a defensive crouch to validate your own position on the matter.

            Will we (collectively, as a community) learn anything from this? Oh hell nah.

          • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Personally I got entrenched because I experienced a lot of people saying the negative interpretation wasn’t valid because “she said…” And then they’d go on to quote something that wasn’t directly in the text. There were people talking about misogyny and how the guy felt like he owned her or wasn’t comfortable with the fact with her having had other partners, which was also just invented whole cloth. It’s something that can exist in the meta-text and be part of a larger discussion, but it is not present in the text itself and arguing from the position that it is and those who don’t see it are guilty of doing it, was something that ticked me off.

            That’s something that generally frustrates me. It is not nice when you are having a disagreement and the person you are disagreeing with is not willing to engage with your arguments. It really sucks when someone is telling you you are objectively wrong, but whatever they’re quoting isn’t actually present anywhere, but is instead, at best, their interpretation, which they pretend is the text itself.

            That combined with dismissals like saying the people disagreeing just don’t understand how attraction works for women (which is also some weird gender essentialist “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” bullshit) as if it’s unique to women to have attraction be more than looks, and dismissals like saying you have sex with your spouse as if that’s what people giving the negative interpretation we’re saying, really pissed me off. Just immense condescension assuming people who disagree with you don’t understand really basic shit, instead of engaging in good faith and actually trying to understand why the people disagreeing with you are disagreeing.

            It seemed to me like a thread were a bunch of people came in pre-conceived about the whole thing, and then refused to interrogate their own views because they’re leftists and therefore their opinions are correct, and therefore they never need to stop and reconsider, and therefore everyone who disagrees with them is wrong on a personal or ideological level. That’s not extraordinary, it is what usually creates struggle sessions here.
            This time was just extra frustrating because the people doing that kept claiming the other side was being unreasonable, but as far as I can tell most people that say they can see how the dude understood it how he did, also say they can see what she tried to say.
            That was dismissed by a lot of people and I really hate it when things like that are just dismissed and then followed up with variations of “whats your argument tho?” Or accusations of bigotry. It’s poor form, it’s rude it’s not good for site culture.

              • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                5 months ago

                Thanks for reading thru my rant and responding. I really need to get better at letting things go.

                Yeah and I think that’s where the struggle part of the session came in, but I feel like that’s on them. I’m not denying the presence of any of those things on a broader societal level and I feel like that would be part of a productive discussion, but it’s not productive to present ones interpretation and what one infers from the text as if it were the text itself.

                If people would interpret my argument as denying those broader realities despite me making it very clear what I am arguing about and from, then I feel like that’s an issue of those people, not me. At the very least I would hope they would operate with doubt about my position instead of certainty, when I don’t directly dismiss those larger structures as existing. That’s not the impression I got from the thread, I got the impression a sunset of the user base had half-read the post, made up their mind that they were right, and then went in with the notion that since they were leftists and have read some theory or other, then everyone disagreeing with them is, at best, uneducated/unknowing.
                That’s the broader impression I got from the session at large, which is me making a lot of assumptions about a large group of people. It’s also something I’ve seen happen a bunch of times on here.

                • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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                  5 months ago

                  then went in with the notion that since they were leftists and have read some theory or other, then everyone disagreeing with them is, at best, uneducated/unknowing

                  One of the biggest downsides to the “don’t talk to them, dunk on them” approach to dealing with chuds is that it’s easy to fall into the same pattern when disagreeing with other leftists. It’s also easy to dig in on that approach if someone points out you’re being an ass to people who are on your side, which often leads to the extremely productive “oh well if they disagree on [increasingly irrelevant dispute] they’re no comrade of mine.”

              • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                4 months ago

                Thank you <3
                I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems like so many people online struggle with the basic concept of “reading”. I constantly see people misinterpret basic shit, accuse the other of something heinous, then get a response that clearly explains how their accusation is unfounded or a misinterpretation that requires misreading or skipping large parts of text, and then they just dig in further, still apparently failing to read large parts of the responses they get.
                More and more often I end up just answering “I didn’t write that. Reread what I wrote.” because people just make shit up.

                One place in the thread I express frustration because I feel as though I experience that, because someone is trying to argue a lot of things I haven’t mentioned at all and have no reason to disagree with.

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Clearly it wasn’t very well worded if it has caused as much of a stir as it has (and her friends also agreed that it was) and she didn’t mean to make the compliment backhanded.

            It was from R*ddit, meaning it was 100% fiction. Why people were wasting their Sunday arguing over fake Internet shit from R*ddit is beyond me.

            • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              5 months ago

              Yup. Even literal pictures and video evidence aren’t enough anymore. Nothing you see online is real, especially anonymous posts of text. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was bait.

  • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I think some people need to be careful to to not accidentally echo the “women ride the cock carousel of alphas and then eventually settle down for beta bux” line of incel/red pill thought. That discourse seemed to bring out some stuff that was like, uncomfortably close to that just said in less harsh language.

    Even though straight people (especially, queer people do this too just less frequently) do sometimes fall into patterns of settling for partners they dont actually love. Like thats not inaccurate. Its just, sometimes when you talk about that it can come off like I said above.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I think I only saw one person directly alluding to that kinda discourse.
      But that is because, to me, saying you would be hurt if your partner said they settled for you isn’t the same as saying that your partner just had a bunch of sex and now uses you for money or whatever or that you think a person “settling” for someone is doing it for those reasons. Settling can just be that a person doesn’t find you attractive in some aspect that is important to them, but your other qualities make up for it.

    • gueybana [any]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I think people need to hold the fuck back on toxic feminism that only perpetuates the patriarchy and harms people of color.

      Going to war on men because a 3 line post stated this dude had hurt feelings by an alleged comment his wife made is just not conducive to anything positive

  • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I was busy hanging out with friends and family so i missed it too. Seems pretty silly though, I usually understand the broader argument being had but i have no clue what’s going on in there

    • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I was busy hanging out with friends and family so i missed it too.

      Lol, I find it really cringe when users on this site are like “I was too busy HAVING SEX WITH GIRLS to get involved in this online BS”.

      Uh, you still have an account on this super niche forum, that alone makes you super online already. If you were really having that much sex with girls you just wouldn’t be here at all. Also there’s enough hours in the day for people to have a life and get involved in stupid internet drama, some of us are good multitaskers.

  • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I just read through it and it affirms this is the only place on the Internet worth fucking anything. I didn’t even see it as a struggle, that looks like a discussion. I gained valuable perspective from it instead of just going “nevermind” and clicking off the tab because I know everyone is about to complain the same way people on WoW forums complain about their class being underpowered instead of playing the game.

  • goose [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I was expecting a mess when I clicked the original thread (thanks to years of reddit conditioning), but the top comments were all very empathetic toward both the girl’s confusion and the guy’s reaction. That’s great and all, but now I have to find some other stupid, inconsequential thing to be pissed off about

  • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    Think I saw that post when it was at like. Five posts tops and I could automatically tell it was going to be some heteronormative bullshit that’d even see well-meaning posters completely talking past each other.

    • Nocturne Dragonite@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 months ago

      It was a huge waste of time imo I got so heated my hands were shaking smh. I was like man I gotta go smoke and get off this shit, this is why I don’t argue with niggas online