I'm posting this in the suicide discussion portion of this board rather than the off topic section because I see it the most here and I feel it's important to call attention to as I'm sure this also makes a lot of other members uncomfortable as well.
This is a suicide discussion board that has a large base of both women and queer people, and for years, it's given marginalized groups the platform to vent about suicidality and given compassion to those who would otherwise have received none, and lended ears to voices who would have remained unheard.
Which is why I think it's an important issue to address! I'm likely not well equipped to discuss this as I'm still learning about such topics, but man, someone's gotta say something, you know?
You just have to nip it in the bud sometimes..
This is an open discussion so if you have any counter points or anything you wish to add that I missed or skimmed over, please do so.
And if I got anything wrong, then please correct me and I will apologize.
I'm again, still very new to this all and my hands are shaking as I type this. I hate confrontation but this has really been bugging me lately and I can't not say something otherwise it'll just continue to happen.
Some parts of this post may be worded a bit harshly to prove a point, though these moments are few and far between, I tried my best not to be overly mean but please let me know if I've crossed a line.
If a moderator takes issue with this post, also please let me know so I can refrain from posting things like this in the future!
So, without further a do..
I started lurking this forum about 2 years ago and I officially joined in early July. Soon after that I took a bit of a break from this forum and I only recently became active again.
And over the course of the time I've been here, I've noticed an uptick in misogyny which has only been steadily increasing since late 2022.
I now see unsubstantiated and quite frankly, ludacris talking points pulled straight from right-wing podcasts such as Fresh and Fit and famous sex trafficker Andrew Tate-
By men telling women what they do and do not find attractive instead of simply listening because they think all women that live outside the box of stereotypical cisnormative femininity are either lying or just an exception to their arbitrary rules that they treat as gospel.
Whereas before, I'd only encountered misogyny once or thrice here.
I don't believe this to be an incel issue as they've always been a part of this forum to some capacity. The incels who used to be here weren't misogynists and were actually pretty reasonable and understanding.
They were simply lonely men who didn't know where to start or even how to talk to people generally. And that loneliness has become all too common unfortunately amongst all people regardless of gender due to cities not being walkable and public places to hang out becoming all the more scarce.
Which has resulted in the sudden rise of lonely men, women, and enbies. There are many articles about this topic that I'd love to discuss in detail but this is already going to be a long post as is,,
Anway, sorry about that tangent, as I was saying-
Now, I constantly see new threads popping up with men discussing how women are biologically wired for xyz and other odd talking points with absolutely no proof for their claims beyond Tinder studies that fail to take into account that:
1 . There are more men than women that use Tinder.
2 . This worldview that hinges on a select few traits being desirable falls apart the second you factor in LGBTQ+ folk. Bisexuals, lesbians, gays, asexuals, etc etc!
Hell, that's all without taking into account the many kink/fetish circles where people can be attracted to robots, objects, watching others or themselves gain weight, being tied up, feet, hands, etc!!
(BTW, I'm not equating LGBTQ+ people to people with kinks or fetishes!! They're obviously very VERY different and not at all the same! I just think both are good examples of the diversity and complexity of sexuality and attraction!! I'm a trans guy who's also bisexual myself so I felt it important to say this to avoid anyone misunderstanding me!)
You could call people with fetishes/kinks weird or a rare bunch of deviants, and you could claim that their inherent rarity excludes them from your argument that really just boils down to rigid gender existentialism.
And I would be inclined to disagree with your exclusion, I think they're fascinating case studies of the vastness and oddities found within human sexuality!!
I also disagree that just because a group is small, that somehow makes them inconsequential and unworthy of consideration when making such blanket statements about human behaviors and inclinations.
Exceptions to perceived rules are important in collecting data, and like I've stated previously, ESPECIALLY in the case of claiming that half the populace only behaves in one way due to the very nature of their "biological wiring!!"
You'd be laughed out of a room of researchers if you were to present your already flimsy, and highly anecdotal evidence as fact while actively dismissing/outright refusing to acknowledge large groups of people because they don't fit your worldview that only serves to erase nuance.
Now, in the specific case of LGBTQ+ people, you can see these people as exceptions to your rules all you want, but it's important to note that these communities are made up of millions upon millions all around the globe despite making up 9% of the population.
9% seems like a small number, but it's actually quite large! My math may be incorrect so please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's more than 600 million people who are LGBTQ+ worldwide out of 7 billion!!
I unfortunately don't have a % for the amount of people out there with odd fetishes or kinks, but I'd assume there's also a large, albeit considerably smaller portion of people who are as much of a freak as I am in terms of being kinky. Take this bit with a grain of salt though as I don't have any data suggesting such, this is just an assumption on my part.
Anyway, once you open yourself up to these communities, you'll see that sexuality isn't as cut as dry as you once believed it to be and how standards of beauty are more influenced by the society we live in rather than being in our nature.
Human sexuality is actually highly complex!! It's something that I'm very passionate about as someone whose special interest is anthropology and human behavior!
I think it's something everyone should study personally, it's just fun but I think that's also because I'm a bit of a nerd!
3 . It's not just survival of the fittest, it's survival of whoever can work together as seen throughout history and in other social animals who take care of their sick and elderly such as wolves, apes, elephants, and other social animals!
One famous case of social animals caring for one another and accepting the "burden" of caring for a disabled person while struggling to survive themselves-
is a group of cave people continuing to care for their family member even after they became disabled, the skeleton of their disabled family member had multiple cavities because of how often they were fed sweets by said family members.
There's a good video that explains this and other such cases in detail by Trey the Explainer on YouTube by the title of "Disabilities in Prehistory."
There are many, many cases like this throughout history if you were to just have a base level understanding of anthropology! You cannot claim to know how women or men intrinsically behave unless you study and learn from history and the current experiences of women and other minorities you stubbornly and uncritically see as lesser and refuse to hear out because of your baseless preconceived notions.
I bring this point up because the "biologically wired to find xyz attractive" talking point hinges on the idea that evolution only favors one type of survival, when in reality, it's so much more complex than that!!
Everything about humans is so much more complex and to boil it down and simplify it as much as these misogynists do is a disservice to all who study the intricacies of the human mind and how much there is we still don't know about it!
You can look up many such cases! The group that survives are not motivated by selfishness and were definitely not picky with who they fucked, (not to mention that back then when people were dying left and right due to a lack of safety, it's not like they had the choice of being picky with who they mated with to begin with! :V)
No silly! They were often the ones who can help each other out, those are the humans who survived long enough to reproduce.
Humans evolved and as a result, became physically weaker than the strong primates they once were, because evolution favored our minds and usage of tools over the strength and fitness humans had initially started out with.
4 . Women and AFABs (assigned female at birth) are more picky with who they choose to have sex with, not out of superiority or because they're genetically wired to find a select few traits attractive, but out of safety/survival.
Cis men often feel they are owed our bodies by virtue of us being the "lesser" of the two sexes and are more likely to act out violently if they are denied sex/intimacy due to their intense sense of entitlement.
That sense of entitlement usually manifests itself in feeling as though they are owed sex because during their upbringing, boys are often shamed for being virgins or told that they're somehow lesser men if they don't have sex by an arbitrary date. Which is obviously fucked up and false.
They see it in much of the same vein as being intentionally and maliciously deprived of an essential need such as food or water, rather than being turned down for a fun, and casual activity that's supposed to satisfy both participants equally-
And that putrid combination of anger, hatred, painful self-loathing, and entitlement is what often results in women and AFAB people getting murdered, sexually assaulted, or more often than not, both at the same time.
Which is why women and AFABs are more hesitant with who they sleep with, they get murdered more often. There are multiple, publicly available statistics and charts that prove this claim.
However, I feel the need to clarify that cis men are not biologically wired to be more violent, and neither are they more horny than women.
This is my own anecdotal experience, but I offer my experience as well as the explanation as to why women and AFABs don't talk about sex as much as cis men do.
The simple answer to that is women and AFABs are shamed for "high body counts" due to the intense purity culture of America perpetuated by the religious right, insecure teenage boys, and pathetic men who never grew up that don't want to have sex with someone with previous sexual encounters because they fear it would expose their own inadequacy in bed.
There's a lot more to this topic, but I don't want to spend all day writing this so you can look into the topic of how society demonizes women and AFABs with high sex drives which causes them to stay silent about how horny and lonely they really are :V
Women draw and watch porn too and can become addicted in much the same way cis men can, mind blowing, shocking really, who could have seen this coming? Women are people too?? wow!?!?!
Anyway, here's my experiences, skip over if you want I guess, or don't, I don't give a shit.
Being inexperienced sexually is really no big deal, sex is a skill and you'll learn as you go. Just apologize for being bad at it and move on, as someone who's been through that awkwardness, the other person you're engaging with likely went through the same thing too at some point so I'm sure they'll understand.
It's really as simple as communicating :/
I'm not on hormones and yet, despite being AFAB I have a very high libido and I've had sex with other AFAB people who are equally, if not more horny than I am.
And I'm 5'1, not at all conventionally attractive, depressed, weird, autistic, and fucked up. Yet I've still had sex with people who were so gorgeous they could be a model if they wanted to.
Granted, I haven't had sex with anyone other than my boyfriend since we got back together, but still! If a fucked up gremlin freak like me could get some, then the issue probably has to do with how you treat women and not your appearance.
It's also probably not because you're shy, shy men are cute asf ngl.
(Though I am not saying that there aren't shallow people out there, there are.
But if you wouldn't date a fat woman or a tall woman, wouldn't that make you just as shitty and shallow as the women you hate? That same insufferable shallowness that has only ever made you miserable? Wouldn't that make you part of the problem too? Have you ever considered that those same women who you dehumanize and consider low value MIGHT feel the same anger and vitriol towards you for being so disgustingly judgemental?-
-I'm 87 pounds and I think fat (esp fat, I like soft surfaces to lay my head on after a stressful day), muscular, and thin men, women, and non-binary people are all sexy as fuck imo so you really have no excuse and you can't hide behind the "biologically wired" bullshit like a coward, just admit you're just as shitty as the tinder women you criticize ffs!)
Women and AFABs aren't a separate species. You can talk with us as you would your guy friends. There's no secret to women and AFABs and anyone who tells you there is, is a scammer and a grifter who makes bank off of taking advantage of profoundly lonely men.
There is no secret to women because they're all very different from one another, because
*drumroll*
THEY'RE PEOPLE TOO!!!
So in other words,
The notion that cis men are uncontrollable, rabid animals with no sense of self control around attractive women is downright insulting, don't you think? To be told all your life that you have the mental capacity and self control of an ape who fell off a tree and bumped their head one too many times?
It's even more insulting when we take into account how cis men often use their supposed "biological wiring" as an excuse to downplay and avoid accountability for r*pe or just being a general sex pest.
But what's even more laughable is how often this talking point of cis men supposedly being on the same wavelength as savage apes co-exists with the idea that men are biologically more logical and therefore, more reasonable than women and therefore, are more worthy of respect.
How is a man shackled to his vices, a man who claims to be logical while also refusing to listen to any viewpoint other than his own, a man who will only hear what he likes and dismisses what he doesn't as exceptions to the rule or as lies, how is this man in any way logical or reasonable?
Simple.
He is human, and as humans we have emotions, flaws, and that's not a bad thing. We are not inherently evil for our flaws, but it's bad when our flaws and emotions hurt others or uphold harmful systems that hurt both AMAB and AFAB folk in different ways.
We all just need to make a collective effort to keep ourselves in check, and addressing misogyny is one step towards that.
There is no paradox of tolerance, you cannot have true tolerance without being intolerant of viewpoints that justify viewing those which you do not understand as biologically inferior, or as detrimental to the perceived default.
In hindsight, I shouldn't have wasted my breath. I should have just reported her. But yeah, sexism sometimes goes unchecked here. In the end I think it falls on us as a community to report people being sexist, though.
