Here’s an interesting, er, historical discussion I found in the Red Pill Women subreddit, in a larger discussion of vagina size:
The more you know!
The entire discussion is, of course, a gold mine of misogynistic nonsense. You can dive right in here, or see some of the more memorable quotes highlighted in this Blue Pill discussion.
RE: guffaw-ferrets
and many lesbian personal ads now ask for specific labia configurations
My god, people CARE about that? Ed Wood have mercy.
Oh yeah, most (I would say ‘sensible’, because I’m an elitist) lesbians don’t seem to care, but some are following in gross-het-dude footsteps and want small, “neat”, “symmetrical” labia.
Suffice to say, I don’t get it, for either group. Other than “it’s a ‘social/cultural influence of porn & airbrushing’ thing”. There is zero biological reason to desire a superficial appearance that only a very small percentage of women even *have.*
Oh hey.
75 % of the arguments archived on Manboobz put down in a sentence.
Thanks, Fibi! There’s a reason I feel fairly at home here.
RE: guffaw-ferrets
*eyeroll* I wish I could say I was surprised, except me and hubby used to mock gay hookups on Craigslist. The fixation on penis has never been something I understood–which immediately seems to nix me from 95% of all gay porn ever.
I just can’t imagine saying “your genitals must look like this or they’re not pretty enough so don’t even talk to me” in a dating ad. Manners, people.
Get thee to Teddy Babes, is what I have to say.
I don’t even understand what the big hoopla about them is. I must’ve missed part of my socialization or something. I… guess it’s okay to have incredibly arbitrary and narrow standards, as long as you don’t bitch or give people crap for not personifying them?
@guffaw-ferrets:
WTF? Configuration? Call me iggerant but I’d say “labia shaped” to that one. As for asking about pubic hair maintenance – well, that’d be a dealbreaker even if the configuration one wasn’t.
LOL if drinking tea in the garden counts as an escapade!
Out of body experiences or (shudder) astral travel* probably describe it as well as anything. It’s not dreaming, not remotely connected to images created by the mind; it’s living at home on the spirit plane (heaven, whatever) with my family there – husband, in-laws and furrinati. Mostly furrinati. 🙂 History doesn’t come into it much; yes, my family are mostly much, much older than me (which gives much hilarity to my stepsons) but they’re not stuck in their lives of four centuries ago; they’ve been alive and growing all that time, and it’s the now they’re living.
*Shudder ‘cos I can’t abide all the New Agey stuff that goes with that term, and my domestic life over There has stuff all to do with it. We live a very quiet life, and the main difference is that we can do stuff with the mind, if we want, instead of having to do it physically. Mostly we do things physically (cooking, making stuff) because we enjoy it; we’re both into craft things and always have been.
(Hope that didn’t read like a lecture! It wasn’t meant that way at all.)
I’d want to ask ’em “How much time do you expect to spend looking at genitals vs looking at faces? I’m thinking really boring company here.”
But surely a bunch of ferrets in a suit so overcome with mirth and joy that they guffaw would feel right at home anywhere? Only a fair nest of foul cravens could not let an amalgamation of creatures so stylishly dressed into their virtual homes!
—
Seriously though, it’s an interesting and somewhat disconcerting change. I can’t say I’m surprised – because when I say it out loud to myself it fits very well with all the other random little physical tidbits I’ve heard people say over the years. Must be tall, must be short, must have freckles, must wear glasses, must possess a B cup, must have a six pack, must have a perfectly symmetrical labia, must have a neat moustache, must only possess 192938 hairs on the entirety of body (Amount will be tracked).
I wonder. If the proliferation of online dating convinces you that there’s literally millions and billions of potential partners to choose from, and romantic tales and porn convince you of the idea that they must look in a certain, very specific way – not just a type like “redhead” or “athlete” or “librarian”, is that the main reason I see occasionally strange requests for those of a carnal bent?
I’m not saying you can’t have standards. I know I like what I happen to like (Which has so far, admittedly, been whatever I happened to like at the time with no common denominators I can perceive, I I I I I, self reference), but sometimes it really just seems strange.
… So it just the easy availability of the thought that Other People Sometimes Look Like That that leads someone down this oddly specific path of preferences? Or am I missing something? Because trying to imagine breaking up with someone because their labia isn’t neat enough or their nails are slightly too long just makes my head hurt
I mean, I am really picky about looks. I won’t date anyone who I don’t find attractive, and my standards are arbitrary and very specific. But…genitals, people. How much time do you really spend looking at them? Surely function is more important than form here? Not to mention the rudeness of implying that genitals that don’t look the way you prefer are icky in a public forum.
I normally don’t have sex dreams, mine are just plain weird. Many times I experience–or think I experience–“identity shifts” where I am not the same character for the length of the dream–like, I shift between myself and a non-me character, or two non-me characters, and sometimes I can only tell because I’m male in my dreams. (I’m a cis woman, so this is not based on desires or previous experience.)
I think I was male for part of last night’s dream, which involved running from a volcano (I often end up running from something), nuns, kittens, and my grandmother, who died several years ago.
I’ve also had dreams where part of the time I’m Miles Vorkosigan, fighting vampires with my sister (my sister, not Miles’ sister. He doesn’t have a sister).
I have dreams where random people who don’t belong there show up too. I was once dreaming about a trip I went on with Mr C and my cousin, who he’s never met, showed up.
Sometimes I have rage dreams, where I just let it rip on someone who has pissed me off in the dream, I think because I never get a chance to do that in real life. I prefer to avoid conflict. It feels really good in the dreams. I did it to George W. Bush once, though often it isn’t a real person or based on anything that has actually happened to me.
I’ve had dreams years ago where I met famous people – Peter Sellers, Michael Schumacher for instance – and the occasional fictional character, like Lord Foppington. I’ve dreamt of being other people plenty of times, but they’re all male characters of my own. A lot of my dreams take place in some variation on the house I lived in longest as a child (we moved house a lot when I was little), the one place I had some feeling of being home, on this side of the veil. The two places since have just been houses we’ve lived in. “Not belonging here” is a frequent theme or feeling in my dreams, all the stronger now I spend my nights somewhere I am totally at home even though I’m currently just visiting.
(The famous people dreams are almost uniformly frivolous, I might add.)
In “Blink” Malcolm Gladwell talks about a study done on people using a speed dating thing. According to that study (and possibly others, can’t be arsed to look), people aren’t necessarily attracted to the types of things they think they are.
That is, in the study, people filled out questionnaires about what they find attractive in the target gender. Then they had a speed dating event. After the event, they filled out the same questionnaire, and then again a few weeks (I think) later.
What they found was that, if a person was attracted to somebody at the event, they would change their answers on the questionnaire to match the person they were attracted to. And then, if nothing came of the relationship, a few weeks (or months, can’t remember) later, their answers would go back to their default.
Heh – that just reminded me of the episode of New Tricks where Sandra Pullman’s speed dating. Mostly she doesn’t say she’s police officer; she says she works in government. Then she hits one guy who’s a total bore/skeeve (I forget which) and says flatly “I’m a cop.” He disappears pronto. 😀
Thinking about speed dating almost had me freezing up, then. Having to come up with something to say to a man who’s a total stranger, and do it repeatedly – gawd, I couldn’t do it even if I was dead eager to find someone.
RE: Unimaginative
people aren’t necessarily attracted to the types of things they think they are.
Ha! I learned that the hard way. Had you squeezed an answer out of me, I would’ve probably figured on some smart little geek boy that I could emotionally dominate so I wouldn’t have to get fucked too often. It didn’t occur to me I’d get much more of a choice then that. (Back then, it was my sister picking the partners, and I just accepted rape as part of life.) I figured best case scenario, it’d be someone I could tolerate.
Instead I got a big strapping jock guy from Mississippi who didn’t know Street Fighter from Mortal Kombat, never went to college, and could sweet-talk his way into any customer service job on earth. Oh, and he was actually NICE to me.
Yup, never would’ve planned that one out. But I’ll happily take him over my earlier, fatalistic “plans” any day.
I’m lucky – the physical type was sort of pre-set for obvious reasons, so I never had to look around or get nasty surprises. On the contrary, the surprise with Mr Type was all “I had no idea it could a) happen and b) be so happy!”
LBT – ’tis a terrible thing when one’s gay is on the fritz. It always seems to happen out of warranty, too. 😛
Seconding every “Wtf?” and “How is that even polite?” sentiment from everyone above.
Along those lines, I do think it’s actually okay if, say, penises trigger your sexual-trauma responses and you’re afraid of them, to prefer that your sex partners don’t have/use such body parts. Basically, if someone really strongly resembles someone who has hurt you in a very bad way and you can’t get over the instinctive shudder you have whenever you look at them, you would prefer not to get into an intimate situation with such a person no matter how nice they are. All part of attraction vs non-attraction and whatnot. But you should probably bring that up in private, and as politely as possible, not … like, on your dating profile?
Plus, I personally do not see how “I find your uneven labia majora to be triggering” could even be a thing, unless it was in conjunction with the rest of the person? Since labia are not really instruments used in assaults, they’re just kinda there? I don’t know though, again, I feel safe chalking it all up to cultural forces and enforced beauty standards.
kittehserf — no, that didn’t seem lecturey at all! It’s fascinating. No two people’s spirit-space is the same, so it’s always interesting for me to read about someone else’s experiences.
The bit about history, and about changing over time, makes a lot of sense. And it clears it up for me a little: I was imagining an element of time travel, but now I think I understand better.
“one’s gay is on the fritz” LOL omg! That’s hilarious! I may start using some iteration of that …
Oh, and PS: Fibi: you would think that, but we are actually very particular. If there are no packing peanuts in a particular place, we are turning right around and going home.
Also we smell kind of … well … strongly musky. It’s not everyone’s thing, and we understand.