On Tik Tok, one former butt-loving man warns women to be a bit more circumspect in showing off their asses, because he’s apparently hit his ass limit for one lifetime. In his younger days, he recalls, “I used to get so excited just to see a booty, bro.”
But now the thrill is gone. Women are showing so much booty on social media that he can’t take it any more. “I’m bootied out,” he laments. “Y’all have shown me so much booty I’m numb to it.”
His video has gotten more than a million views so far. So he’s evidently not the only one who thinks that, collectively, our society has 2 much booty (in the pants).
Unwilling to let an opportunity to throw shade on female sexuality go by without saying something, the folks at The Federalist (of all places) have decided to use ex-booty man’s video as the launching pad for a strange (and rather strained) anti-booty manifesto.
Like the man in the video, Federalist staff editor Madeline Osburn believes that
The more we as a culture are inundated with women trying to out-titillate each other, whether on TikTok or in Cardi B music videos, the less titillating they become.
Even worse, she argues: the current booty surplus not only makes men sad, but “the devaluation of women’s bodies hurts women too.”
And boy howdy she’s not kidding. As she sees it,
Before we were all “bootied out,” a woman’s sexuality was not just mysterious and proactive, but the most powerful force on the planet. It drove men to face great risks, cross oceans, write ballads, and even start wars just for the chance to gaze at a woman’s booty. Women held all the cards in intimate relationships.
Well, no, they absolutely didn’t. Osburn is making a similar argument to that of Men’s Rights elder Warren Farrell, who thinks that female sexuality — at least the sexuality of young women — is so powerful that hot young secretaries have “miniskirt power” and “cleavage power” over their older male bosses. (You can read more about Farrell’s strange obsession with butt power here, here and here.)
But now, Osborn contends, women have gone ahead and destroyed their own “miniskirt power” by giving too much butt away for free.
Now, men sit back while women work their butts off, literally, trying to hold a man’s gaze before he swipes left or right onto the next one. In an attempt to liberate ourselves, we relinquished our power, and in doing so, diminished the quality of the men we hope to attract.
Is it just a coincidence that fewer men are graduating college and joining the workforce than ever before?
Yes, in fact, that is a coincidence.
Should I mention that men’s testosterone levels are also plummeting?
Well, you could, I suppose, but there’s no connection between that and women posting pictures of their asses on Instagram.
So how can women win back their butt power? Osburn, bucking The Federalist’s generally negative take on unions, suggests a Lysistrata-style butt strike.
In order to make booty great again, we must make booty limited again. In today’s butt-centric media landscape, women who understand how to conceal their curves, and who instead deploy the “magic, mood and mystique” of sex, as Paglia describes it, will unlock the secret to yielding power over men again.
I think you mean “wielding power,” not “yielding.”
And for men … who are feeling “burnt out,” stepping away from the social media booty deluge may not only have a positive impact on those testosterone levels, but will increase the value of real, tangible, unfiltered booties IRL.
So not looking at booties will increase a man’s testosterone levels? With all due respect to Dr. Osborn here, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. It’s not how any of this works.
Who knew The Federalist could be as wrong about ass as it is about everything else?
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“Ass says: ‘Bring it on!'”
“The most powerful force on the planet”? Could this be the solution to our need for carbon-neutral, renewable energy?
Moggie, you are right! This could be the greatest breakthrough in renewable energy since the buttered cat generator was first proposed in 1988!
Also exactly as feasible!
Note: For the few who don’t know, buttered-cat generators work on the principle of buttered toast always lands butter down, and cats always land feet first.
I still suspect, though Mythbusters never tested it, is that what *really* happens is the cat lands on its feet, then promptly rolls over on its back and grinds the buttered toast into the carpet attempting to dislodge it.
This is then followed by said cat pissing in every shoe you own for doing that to it.
I have become all but asexual in my old age, and I still find ass as scintillating as ever. Perhaps, just maybe, the problem is not the resplendency and easy access to the ass cornucopia, but within the man himself. Why must the blame always be cast without, instead of within, where one is far more likely to find the bug in the system? It’s never the bounty of ass, tit, or peen.
“yielding power” is what they call in the business a Freudian slip, I believe.
I’m also struck by the implicit narcissism in this kind of request. “I, personally, don’t respond to this stimulus in the way I used to. Therefore, all of society must change their behaviour for my sake until I become reconditioned to respond the way I’d prefer.”
Even if we granted all the underlying assumptions about how the world works inherent in this, how on earth would that be a reasonable thing to ask?
If showing ass can stop wars, imperialism and John Mayer from writing songs, I say let’s show some ass. More ass than anyone ever thought possible.
And these are the same folks who insist—indeed, decree—that women run around with their pretty face power hanging out, Dr. Fauci and Allah be hanged?
The thing is, I don’t see how this is a problem. If they’re becoming desensitized to ass, then ass loses its power. It’s like how in cultures where women go bare-breasted, breasts tend not to be erotic. So all that’s going to happen is that ass will no longer be able to dominate them, so they won’t have anything to complain about anymore.
Oh. Wait. I think I spot the flaw in my thought process.
Of course now I can’t get “Baby Got Back” out of my head
Oh, good gravy, Madeline Osburn. The problem isn’t titilation. You’ve fundamentally erred. Behind your cheekiness, your tale is the next thing to junk. At bottom, you’ve made yourself the butt of your own joke. Please just take a seat.
Is there somewhere where I can return my province for a refund?
COVID skyrocketing and still only 2% of the population here has been vaccinated. Their idea of how to improve things: ramp up vaccinations drastically? No, of course not. Guarantee paid sick leave for “essential workers” so they can’t be pressured to go to work with possible-COVID symptoms? Absolutely not! No, empowering the police to harass people randomly on their commute or heading to the grocery store, and closing a bunch of outdoor activities that are very low-risk for spread, of course.
The “power” that Osburn claims women can have if they would just clothe themselves correctly is passive power – it’s power that steals from others, and doesn’t generate anything on its own. It’s parasitical and manipulative. That’s why Warren Farrell and other manosphereans get worked up and angry about it whenever they detect a whiff of it in their own pants. “I worked hard for my money,” the thought process goes, “and this lady wants to steal it from me by waving her butt in my face. GRRRRR.”
It’s a regressive and wrong that women should (or do) have passive, manipulative power while the active, generative power remains with men. Men do; men create. Women steal; women manipulate. That’s the misogynist model that Osburn wants to impress on the world.
The Federalist would like very much for women to get back in the kitchen and stop competing with men in the public sphere. If they got their way, someone named Madeline would not be writing for, editing, or in any way involved with the Federalist, so way to self-own there.
Translation: “My sex drive is waning, possibly with age, drug/alcohol use, health problems, depression, etc. Now, being a manly man with a super big rock hard dick, I can’t accept or admit that… is there any way I can blame this on women?”
Edit: @mcbender
Funny, I recall some people making accusations that certain other people try to make everyone change to suit them, I wonder who, and if that would be hypocritical of certain parties.
*cough* Conservatives *cough* Woke culture *cough* Evil Libs *cough*
I eagerly await Sir Mix-a-lot’s rebuttal.
TikTok guy should fixate on some other part now.
Federalist woman ain’t getting any, I think, no matter what she wears.
I bet all her examples were BIPOC women, not just Cardi B. (who is ridiculously successful)
Perhaps if more men shook their booty, their testosterone would go up? Or maybe if their environment didn’t contain so many toxic chemicals?
@Crip Dyke: brava!
@WWTH: Twerk For Peace!
I suppose this is the least off topic time for me to mention that I have a couple librarian friends, a couple teacher friends/in-laws, and a all my friends are voracious readers, which has led to me giving out, “I like big books and I cannot lie” coffee mugs about a dozen times over the years.
That “passive power” is the meagre power wielded by the oppressed. For much of recent history women were excluded from positions of authority and even forbidden to own their own property, so the only way they could wield any power at all was by manipulating the men who did own property and hold positions of authority. Such methods are increasingly obsolescent, but arguably not obsolete yet since women have yet to reach full equality in numerous areas, even if the situation is much improved from that of the middle of the last century, and far improved from that of the nineteenth century and earlier.
Of course, with men commanding the law, the money, and violence, that limited bit of snatched-back power didn’t amount to all that much anyway, and relied on men not paying too close attention or on their arrogance. It was also vastly unequally distributed, as proximity to wealthy and powerful men was unequally distributed. Marriage robbed women of most of what little power they had when it was difficult to escape and marital rape was still legal — so no wonder there was so much pressure on women to marry.
Oppression more generally seems to make a mess of things. It twists people, from both the privileged and the oppressed side of things, and promotes patterns of behavior that are dysfunctional compared to a society of near-equals. Dysfunctional patterns that include the red queen’s race, in both status (keeping up with the Joneses) and in capabilities (thieves vs. locks and alarms, copyright enforcement vs. file sharing tools, and yes, the nuclear arms race of the Cold War), and attendant giant distortions of the economy (massive “defense” spending; the giant advertising industry, which is built on the premise of needing to keep up with the Joneses; the massive complex of guard labor, from police to private security guards to alarm companies). Most criminal and other antisocial behavior stems from these causes. Thieves are largely absent where poverty and wide status distinctions are absent. Rape is far less prevalent where sex is not, for a significant part of the population, about status rather than pleasure or procreation. Manipulative, deceptive, and larcenous behavior, as well as rioting and other large-scale public disorder, is generally a feature of the underclass and especially the intersectionally-oppressed, not because we are inherently antisocial but because these are often the only methods available for us to obtain even basic necessities at times. A person has to eat, but food costs money, so what is someone supposed to do if the socially approved methods of getting money, such as paid labor as part of the workforce, are closed to them? On the other hand, the most privileged also engage in their own brands of manipulative and deceptive behavior, aimed at preserving or enlarging their status. It’s perverse incentives all around.
And some of these dysfunctional behaviors now threaten the planet. There are still large stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and the three great powers of our time seem to be moving toward direct military confrontation with one another. Is Biden withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, at long last, out of a desire for peace or as a preparation for war? What if he just redeploys those troops to Ukraine or Taiwan, two of the likeliest flashpoints for WWIII right now? And keeping up with the Joneses is changing the planet’s climate and ocean chemistry while destroying vast swathes of habitat and generating enough waste to create landfills and floating garbage Sargassoes large enough to be seen from space.
I don’t see how we fix this. I don’t see how this gets fixed without a major disaster happening first, either of our own making (nuclear war, worldwide economic catastrophe followed by mass starvation, climate or ecological disturbance hits a nonlinear tipping point and wipes out all coastal cities or wrecks agriculture or something) or exogenous (some plague far worse than COVID, perhaps abetted by human encroachment on some reservoir animal’s habitat as seems likely with COVID and those Chinese mine-dwelling bats — in our hunger for copper, we delved too deep and awakened something best left alone).
The amazing thing is how most people are still sleepwalking toward one or another of these scenarios, or several at once. People continue to have children, though most of them seem likely to have no future. How many are honestly dupes and how many know something’s wrong but are in denial, or some such state of willful blindness?
Crip Dyke:
Seen recently on Twitter: “I like butt and I cannot lie. This is my twin brother, who likes butt and cannot tell the truth. How will you escape our dungeon?”
I love this bit, the magic of sex is you put a penis in a vagina and flop around for anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour. well PIV sex anyways, which I know they are talking about. if there is a Mystique around sex for you, your education failed you. Also I want to know what the sex magic is. Can I get my hogwarts degree in the magic giving orgasms?
and the mood of sex? I don’t know about you guys but this is how sex goes in my house.
“hey babe you wanna have sex?”
“yeah sure babygirl, give me a few minutes, I’m gonna smoke then brush my teeth real quick”
Like sex is fun, it feels good, it can be really intimate and make you feel loved but it’s not this god like experience these people put it on a pedestal of. Sometimes my husband makes me cry out for Jesus more then any church ceremony has but it’s sex. It’s not gonna cure world hunger or anything.
@Crip Dyke
I must have this mug. I didn’t know it before now, but I’m getting one this very day.
I have 5 giant bookshelves full of books and regularly overflow, at which point the library receives an influx of books on whatever subject I was on. One set of shelves is actually just for saying goodbye to books that need to be donated but have not yet become detached enough from the book-hoarding center of my brain.
Promoting indifference towards ass doesn’t seem a bad idea at all. Instead of men starting actual wars in hopes of getting a chance to gaze over a woman’s butt, and instead of men starting hateful subcultures in frustration over all the overt display of the butt, we could have a civilization where all of our asses were left in peace in the wake of pursuing other important things. I’m reluctant to believe that humanity’s greatest achievement proves to be the successful and enduring mystification on female human’s behind.
*Reads headline
Hmm. The Federalist have declared war on their opinion contributor’s favoured cranial storage space and fact source? Nah, can’t be that.
Must be some sad lad with zero self control wittering on again as if their follies and fetishes are some sort of natural law.
*Called it. Goes and makes a cup of tea to celebrate.
Edit to add:
@contrapangloss – like this?
So her point is that modesty overtly sexually objectifies women more so that’s why women should pressured/shamed into dressing a certain way.
You know often they pretend these types pretend their modesty fixation is about wanting women and girls to be seen as more than sexual objects and respect woman as people
She just gives the real reason.
well part of the real reason. That women’s bodies are just meant to be a reward, a prize for men.
she doesn’t bring up the fact for many cultures throughout history most women’s sexuality wasn’t controlled by her. It was controlled by her family’s patriarch. The person who’d pay the dowry, or accept the dowry wasn’t generally the woman herself.
it should be stated society has harbored this expectation for women to be collectivist. Wanting things for themselves especially power is much more frowned upon for women than for men.
And here I thought it was about more than the ass.