On the Nature of Things | Forum

Simple Minded wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:27 pm

Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:51 pm
I wonder what game he was playing.

Dunno, but obviously, it was joystick controlled.

Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:51 pm

Simple Minded wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:27 pm

Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:51 pm
I wonder what game he was playing.

Dunno, but obviously, it was joystick controlled.

Colonel Sun wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 4:56 am Quillette | Discovering the link between gender identity and peer contagion

A progressive rebrand at Victoria's Secret forgets one thing: sex

But the contemptuous dismissal of men, and their tastes and opinions and desires, is as trendy in our present moment as the lace bralettes that have replaced the underwire bra as the lingerie du jour (and like those bralettes, it doesn’t suit everyone.) The broader tendency is to treat any desire for men like a character flaw, a burden, an embarrassment. The writer Indiana Seresin invented the term “heteropessimism” to describe this phenomenon — an excellent coinage that’s nevertheless overbroad in its implied gender neutrality, when the sense of heterosexuality as something in between a cursed affliction and a personal failing is almost exclusively held by women. To be horrified by one’s own sexual orientation, and every possible expression thereof, is the side effect of a culture that flattens everything from personal relationships to aesthetic taste into a political framing: if you like men (as most women do), but men are trash (as every good progressive feminist must surely agree is true), then what’s a girl to do?

Whatever she wants, modern feminism tells us, as long as it’s not conventional.

. . .

But men don’t matter; they are the subject but not the object of Savage x Fenty’s siren song. This message is for women, malleable and impressionable creatures that they are, who are expected to follow the latest identity directives just like they’re expected to follow fashion trends: heterosexuality is boring, heterosexual desire is embarrassing, and dressing with any thought of appealing to men is a gross offence against feminism.

. . .

All of this is by design. Nobody makes an easier mark for the woke industrial complex than a young woman convinced that she’s bad and broken and can only get better — morally, spiritually — if she buys the right products. Our misery is their profit margin. The unhappier you are, and the bigger the void inside you, the more you’ll spend to feel validated — which the brands are only too happy to do for you, at an affordable price. Forget the male gaze; forget men, period. Forget the things you want, those frustrating intangibles, like intimacy and love. Just think, ladies, of how sexy and empowered you’ll feel when you’re sitting at home alone in your lingerie, buying still more lingerie to feel sexy and empowered in.

Colonel Sun wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 4:53 pm Unherd | What’s wrong with lingerie?

For some reason, one of the most emailed articles from the NYT was an article about whether women should or should not wear make up. "New York Times? Sounds progressive." Yes.

Seven people were asked their opinion in a column called "Room For Debate," liars, there was no debate, all of them said "I guess so", their main contribution was the hedge: "it's a woman's choice." So while pretending this was some kind of debate with contrasting opinions, all of them had the same opinion, which should automatically signal to you it is the wrong one.

When they say, "it's a woman's choice" what they mean is "it's not a man's choice, it is thoroughly stupid to wear make up just for men, the only acceptable reason is if you do it for yourself, if it makes you feel better about yourself."

Let me offer a contrary position, unpalatable but worth considering: the only appropriate time to wear make up is to look attractive to men. Or women, depending on which genitals you want to lick, hopefully it's both. "Ugh, women are not objects." Then why are you painting them? I'm not saying you have to look good for men, I'm saying that if wearing makeup not for men makes you feel better about yourself, you don't have a strong self, and no, yelling won't change this. Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, now you're saying the cover of the book influences how the book feels about itself?

I am not doubting that in fact you do feel better about yourself, I am saying that that fact is both pathological and totally on purpose. Since this cognitive trick does help you feel better about yourself, by all means go ahead, but at what point will you stop pressuring other women to go along with it? When will you stop "requiring" it, like when you say, "oh, she's so pretty even without makeup" as if the default was makeup?

The fraud women now believe is that it is wrong to look good for men only, as an end in itself; the progressive delusion is that looking good for men is synonymous with submissiveness, so while you're allowed to look good to men, it should always be secondary to looking good for yourself. This is madness. You are enhancing your outward appearance, which is great, but then you pretend it's for internal reasons?

How would you like to live in a world where men had to wear make up? "Oh, I love make up on a guy, especially eyeliner." Of course you do, you're having a stroke. Ask it this way: how would you like to be in a world where men said," oh, I feel so much better about myself when I'm wearing makeup." You'd run for the nearest totalitarian regime.

The trick to the makeup debate is that it pretends to want to be free of male pressure, yet the pressure to look a certain way is actually much worse from women. So this result is that a "patriarchical", controlling force, unacceptable if coming directly from men, is maintained by giving the whip to other women. No boss man would survive if he said, "ugh, you should put on some makeup, doll yourself up a little bit" but women say this to other women all the time-- especially at work. "You look really tired," says a woman in MAC Greensmoke to another who isn't. Just once I wish the reply would be, "I am, your husband kept me up all night." Not very progressive, but hilarious.

The evolution from "enhances sexual attractiveness" to "doing it for yourself" is definitely a regressive step, and by regressive I here mean "regressing to age two", but it's the next step which reveals the presence of a neurosis: recruiting science as a justification for behavior: "Study finds makeup makes you appear more competent." Can't wait to read about that study in a Jonah Lehrer book. Ugh. So here's the evolution of feminist theory, take notes: "I want to look better" to "I want to feel better about myself" to "I want people to think I am better." Madness.

The further clue that the problem is not gender but... you... is that you find this pseudoscience while you are browsing the internet, i.e. it is your entertainment, your free time; your leisure time is spent justifying a behavior you can't not do. "But I wasn't looking for those articles, I just stumbled on them." Exactly.

The reason the makeup debate is insoluble is that it's not yours to solute. The choice to wear makeup is no choice at all, I know you think you came to it on your own but you live in America, you don't make free choices here, freedom is a brand. Makeup is an $8B/yr industry, that's face makeup alone, no way is it going to allow you to make a choice that doesn't involve a credit card, fine, if you don't like makeup here's a remover for $30, just remember that you're not doing it for men, you're doing it for yourself.

Dating and the process of mate selection have changed. The rise of hook-up culture, proliferation of dating apps, and ever-increasing age of first marriage are evidence of this. This current situation can be summarized along four parameters:

Increasing female achievement.
Growing variability in male status and competence.
An evolutionary desire among females to marry up.
The globalization of the sexual marketplace and resultant collapse of local status hierarchies.

Together, these conditions have created pronounced imbalances in the modern sexual marketplace. Put plainly, an increasing cohort of successful women are chasing a shrinking number of high-value, commitment-averse men.

At a cursory level, much of this can be explained by sex ratios and partner availability. However, the underlying structure of modern mate selection is fundamentally mathematical. For us to truly understand the causes and consequences of the modern sexual marketplace, a bit of math is required.

Typhoon wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 8:18 pm PornHub | Year in review - 2021


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“It had a long pointed snout and it blew [spouted] like a whale [it] had broad big flippers and the body seemed to be grown [covered] with carapace and [it] was very wrinkled and uneven [rough] on its skin; it was otherwise created below like a serpent and where it went under the water again threw itself backward and raised thereafter the tail up from the water a whole ship’s length from the body.”