Women are basically Big Macs, but for sex, MGTOW evo-psychologist explains

Lea makes a very good point, which I experienced by being SAHD. Men get credit for any involvement with their children above a certain (very low) minimum. Women have to perform at a fairly high level just to be perceived as barely adequate.

When I decided that divorce was inevitable in my first marriage, I went to a seminar for recently divorced or separated people. There were three others, the recently-divorced psychologist and two others, all women. They all were very concerned that they had somehow deprived their children of the regular presence of their fathers in their lives, even though IN EVERY CASE THE FATHER HAD LEFT THEM FOR ANOTHER WOMAN. That really boggled my mind; I have a hard time imagining that any father whose wife had left him and their children for another man would feel that way.

I started shaving when I was a teenager because it made me feel pretty and people said nice things about me when I looked pretty. I wasn’t getting a lot of other compliments so it felt good. When I started modelling I got a Brazilian but later I switched to having a landing strip and that became my “style”. I still shave but I don’t get weekly waxes any more.

It felt good to be like that and I liked doing it but I don’t think it was a feminist thing at all. It felt like them taking control of my body and making it be just an image rather than a real human being. I really agree that they want to make it the normal thing but I also don’t think it really is the normal thing, because when I did that then they always told me how much better it made me than the other girls, and I believed them. They want us to be rare and special because that makes them better than other men because they have us and other men don’t, but they also want to believe that all women should be like that.

We can’t win, and it took me a long time to realize that.

@everyone
Wow! Thanks for all the responses. I did not expect there to be this many, and I definitely didn’t expect them to be so varied. To clarify a few things, I feel what I do in my bedroom is surely my business and I do conform to gender norms but I’m aware I’m doing it and I do it for me. I’m insecure and looking pretty makes me feel good. I can’t help what society thinks being pretty entails, and not feeling pretty makes me feel worse about myself(and I’m not gorgeous or anything, but I like to believe I’m reasonably attractive)So what’s “more feminist” in this case? Me feeling good about myself or me rejecting societal norms just for the sake of it. My idea of being feminist(and I’m a little new to this, maybe my definition will grow over time)is to truly be able to be your truest self without shame( I mean I like to be pretty but I’m also bisexual and into BDSM and polyamory which don’t exactly fit the societal norm)do whatever small(or large if you have the money or time)bits of activism or what ever you can do to help women as a group(I go to some protests, occasionally donate a few $ to PP and a couple other places when I can spare it, etc.) Small things, cause I lack money and time but small things add up right??And lastly, call out misogyny and bigotry when you see it and it’s not dangerous to get involved. I just don’t see how what I wear or how I fuck makes me any less(or any more)of a feminist.
Also, I never mentioned strippers but saw them mentioned by others, and I actually know girls who stripped to put themselves through college(in NYC it’s not common but it’s not ridiculously rare either)and in one case even start a small business afterwards. How is that in any way un-feminist

There’s definitely an element of classism in how people talk about strippers.

I have a friend who does burlesque as a hobby and form of exercise. The troupe she’s in is very pro feminist. Burlesque really doesn’t get all that much slut shaming or criticism for setting back feminism. It isn’t considered trashy. It’s become in the last 10 or 15 years a really popular form of entertainment.

Burlesque does have a little bit less nudity. There’s pasties on the nipples instead of total toplessness. But they’re still doing sexy dances in sexy clothes. They’re still removing clothing as the dance goes on. They even sometimes do pole work. Do the pasties really make it that vastly different?

But burlesque is something that middle class white women enjoy. As opposed to stripping which is usually done by women from working class/poor backgrounds and who are often times not white.

So I definitely have to give the side eye to white middle class feminists who go on about how strippers are contributing to women’s oppression and shouldn’t be welcome in feminism.

@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina

Oh, we do exist. I grew up in a non-capitalist (at the time) place, and no one in my general vicinity had an opinion about leg shaving, so it would not have been an issue my mind would even address (akin to whether it’s correct that the sun rises in the east) if it wasn’t for personal dislike of skin texture with hair on it (anywhere other than one’s head). When I migrated to the US, I was quite happy to get at the razors and lasers for my own personal benefit rather than any societal pressure.

Incidentally, my personal dislike applies to dudes as well. The less hair, the better. My current boyfriend actually had hair on his legs lasered off (in an unrelated but fortunate happenstance that had more to do with scuba diving than my personal preferences) and periodically attacks the hair on his other body parts as well because it irks him by getting caught in things or whatnot (the fact that he knows how I feel about it just helps reinforce his own personal crusade).

So, yes, this can be a strictly personal choice made in a near vacuum. That being said, it does have social ramifications even when it lacks such intent for the same reason that unintentional harassment has the same effect as intentional harassment. That’s why this issue is thorny and really has to be taken on a situational case by case basis. There are few things in life that have a blanket solution or argument covering them definitively.

WWTH — the problem is how to disapprove of sex work — that is, the people who exploit the women for profit — without disapproving of sex workers. Obviously, shaming sex workers is blaming the victims (and the word “victims” in that context is possibly in itself problematic). Radical feminists say that the term “sex work” tends to legitimize the exploitation, and to a certain extent they are right that it does tend to put lipstick on that particular pig. But it’s hard to get it right without splash damage. We probably need to work on more precise words that do not come as close as “sex work” and “sex worker”.

On your pasties comment: About 30 years ago I walked into my local grocery store and on the magazine rack at about the right level for children was a True Crime magazine. The cover portrayed a beautiful young woman in a bikini lying on a bed with a pile of what appeared to be animal entrails on her stomach, with a man standing over her with a dagger that appeared to be dripping blood. Obviously we were meant to perceive that he had just disembowelled her. I left the store and thought about it, and went back the next day and asked the manager to remove the magazine, which he did. He agreed that it was inappropriate, particularly where children could see it, but he just hadn’t noticed it. But thinking about it afterwards, I felt that if the woman had had her nipple exposed, the magazine wouldn’t have lasted five minutes without complaints. I’ve always been puzzled by the magical power of nipples, since (1) males have them too and (2) they are the “working” part of the (external) breast. It seems like they have become a thing to inspire lust BECAUSE they are normally hidden.

Social norms can be so bizarre if you really think about them.

I can take or leave avocados. The texture is somewhat off-putting and the flavor is really good, so they leave me ambivalent. I don’t cry when avocados are present and I don’t eat around them, and I also don’t pay extra for them.

@ JS

Having worked in haunted houses for quite some time

Please tell me you drive a VW camper van and own a cowardly Great Dane.

Don’t worry, Katie– your experiences may be far from unique when dealing with people being bitchy, but don’t let them be the High Arbiters of Feminism for you, because no one is. Feminism is the belief that women and men should have equal opportunities wherever physically possible. People can disagree on how that is achieved while still being feminists, just like people who are different sects of the same religion can agree on the most fundamental (but rarely fundamentalist) points of the religion. In both cases, there will be people who say “You can’t be a REAL ____ unless you believe/do this and this and this,” which usually means that they believe the only real version of something is exactly their own version and no one else’s.

Those people tend to get more furious about someone who’s 1% different from them than someone who’s 90% different from them, because when it’s 1%, it’s subject to an intellectual Uncanny Valley effect, and that’s when the screams of heresy come out. Those people are either trying to be “purer than thou” until it gets boring and they move on, or they’re lifelong true believers who insist on dividing the world ever more thinly into allies and enemies, steadily converting the former into the latter. They’ll always say they’re totally going to start making Real Changes just as soon as they can get the movement truly purified, but there’s always a new degree of heresy to be found, and new heretics to wage war against, so they spend all their lives fighting the people who could have been on their side rather the actual problems they supposedly dedicated themselves to solving.

Don’t worry about trying to please those people, because they’re impossible to please. Don’t let their views on what is the One True Way drive you away from your values or, alternatively, make you ashamed for a sexual orientation that harms no one.

@Jules

I’m sorry. Would it cheer you up to hear that the Rojava YPG/YPJ have begun their assault on ISIS’s capital city?

Also, while this is still up for debate, it is said that the model of Democratic Socialism currently in place in Rojava is certainly admirable.

Internet socialists have been portraying Rojava as a sort of spiritual successor to the CNT/FAI of the Spanish Civil War, except that they are winning.

As a species, we have made more progress in means of destruction than in means of community and harmony.

I find that I can confront these horrors only so much before I begin to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if our species hadn’t existed. But you can’t give in to that, because you need to hope that you can have at least a slightly positive effect on the world. That, in essence, is what I spent 18 months in prison for. And, if it comes to that, I am willing to spend the rest of my life in prison if there’s some hope that it will help at least hold back the advance of evil.

OT:

So some guy dressed up as a Crusader Knight in a tunic and mail armor and whatnot was harassing people at a LGBT Pride parade today.