You may as well end every post with “They will not do this, however, as this will disrupt the imagined solidarity that women are supposed to have with one another.”
The sexual empowerment wing of the feminists have a particularly hypocritical stance on all of this. Because they are also the same ones who will blame men who are consumers of pornography for being the problem. Which is like blaming the drug users but not the dealers. If they are dealers, they will certainly find customers.
I have mentioned to them that women are the gatekeepers of sex. If a man says I will pay you for sex or to do it on video… It has always been the woman’s responsibility to say “no”, not “how much?”
Additionally, feminism has always said that pornography was demeaning to women and been against it… Until fairly recently. Now it turns out they don’t mind being demeaned so long as they get paid enough money.
Also it’s been a long argument that women consumed pornography in written form through erotic romance novels. However, the young generation of women also consume video pornography and it is affects them in surprising ways. For example, some mock men for “small penis size“… Which to them was anything under 6 inches. Those are consumers of porn.
"Making videos with someone who has very likely been coerced through financial hardship (men do own 80% of the world's resources after all) is the same as someone writing a story in which no actual people are coerced or cornered into participating"
Pretending these women have been coerced is very naïve these days. If you are familiar with only fans, or as I call it only fools, these young women are opening their own accounts (as porn stars). Some of them are making millions and millions of dollars doing it. It’s greed to live the Kardashian lifestyle, they aren’t being coerced by Rich men to work for pennies. That is a very old canard. Many of them are earning far less, about $45,000 a year. Interviews with them, they’ve been told they could work one or two jobs and earn just as much, keeping their dignity and honor. They didn’t care; shooting a few videos a week was much easier work, easy money. The female version of becoming a drug dealer.
The men selling themselves on OF are fine though, no problem there? Ok.
You are the fool, bot. We will answer for the fortification of the readers:
If there were no demand, there would be no supply. We know who does 99% of the demand. The supply forfeits dignity and honor, but the demand creeps do not? Sounds legit.
If these men would instead HIRE and PROMOTE and MAKE ROOM for and BE WELCOMING to women in the workforce, guess what would happen? Almost all of those women would be in a "regular jobs" making good money, financially secure. Do you see well paid women leaving their employment to do OF? Almost never. Think about why that might be.
Do you think that as little girls, these women said, "You know what I want to do with my life? Get men to jack off and pay me for helping out!"
No. Do you think you could never have a daughter that both a) falls on hard times and doesn't want to burden you by asking for money yet again in a failing economy, or b) knows where her value to men lies and knows that not even her father respects women, as therefore knows what she has to do to make a buck?
Do you think she would tell you about it ..or just say she works from home for an answering service instead?
Anyway, men are unneccesary and they know it. So that must hurt the fragile ego.
Long game, I didn’t mention the two men that have OF accounts because they are a statistical insignificance.🙄
As far as the consumer side, there have always been armies of guys who sought out pornography. I will call them out on it, but that hasn’t changed. What HAS changed is armies of women, millions of them, turning themselves into porn stars because it’s easy work. Like young urban men becoming drug dealers for quick money, these gals are doing the same. In interviews on YouTube they admit they could find equal pay by working two jobs. They just don’t want to work that hard. Much easier to shoot a couple videos a week and get paid. In other words what little purity and honor they had they were perfectly willing to sell for a quick buck. Don’t try to turn them into victims, they weren’t all broken, just degenerates influenced by degenerate society. Because they’d rather “get that bag” then live poor with hard, honorable work.
STopped reading after the first sentence. No one said you didn't mention them. The point is that you said WOMEN, not PEOPLE ..men create content there too.
You are a troll and no one agrees with you. This is why no woman wants you and you are *biologically irrelevant*. Know what else is statistically negligent? The percentage of women vs men who commit violent crime.
When demand goes away, so will supply. There is only so much money in circulation and those who HOLD IT determine where they allow it to go. Let it go to hiring, promoting, supporting the business efforts of women and the money the demand once used will no longer be routed to OF. The supply goes where the money is, bc one needs money to eat. Yw.
Correction, I am a *married* troll and most people agree with me. You’re an illogical woman who just justified woman OF creators because “they have to eat.” 🙄 As per usual, accountability is Kryptonite to women.
'Man-hating feminism' is a tautology. More generally, the market for porn exists because there is a mismatch between the supply and demand for sex. Feminism exacerbates the mismatch by making women who embrace feminism less appealing to men, and promotes porn and prostitution by disinhibiting those women who can from exploiting this mismatch for financial gain.
I think another point is that men seek validation from women, which could even be a substitute for missing sex. That’s where sophisticated sex robots come in, which will give a man female validation plus the sex.
In Japan, female holograms were developed that spoke kindly to men. From what I hear, 1/3 of young Japanese men have gone MGTOW.
Now there are “AI girlfriends”, that can engage men in pleasant conversation. With feminism came insufferable women, and the AI girlfriends offer a workaround for that
Good points. Although I think it is more than supply and demand for sex. When someone watches porn, they see a woman that is happy to be with the man, and go to bed with him. Exactly the opposite of feminism.
Besides porn and prostitution, there are sex robots. The most sophisticated sex robots will engage a man in pleasant conversation, which also went out of style with the rise of feminism.
Don't worry about it. In a few years men will be able to create the perfect woman, with the perfect personality for him, the sex drive and skills of a porn star, and a body that never ages or gets fat. Women will be useless to men and their weaponized vaginas will be just be another hole between their legs. Did you think feminism would have no consequences?
I've been noticing this for a long time, and I think it's why men, generally, are so frustrated with modern society re: sex and relationships. We're constantly shown images of really attractive women in revealing outfits on social media. Even women we know personally on IG will post photos of them "hiking"--which to be fair, they are, but the mountains and lakes aren't really the feature--it's her ass or breasts. I have the same experience as you when I watch Reels: mostly I watch clips from Comedians, fly-fishing or skiing stuff, and workout videos, but invariably, 1/7 of the time or so, a super hot chick pops up looking super hot.
"What's more insulting, however, is the fact that if men point out this sort of content is sexual, then women will act ignorant, and play a game of plausible deniability." This is because it gains them attention, which is the point. Attention for a woman is a currency of sorts, that has many benefits, whether monetized directly or indirectly, or even if it translates into better dating opportunities.
However, as you point out, as a man, like, we're going to respond. We're biologically attracted to women, and we're going to pay attention if we see an attractive woman, especially if she's not wearing much and/or is behaving in a sexually provocative manner. It's the same reason fast food commercials show juicy burgers with ketchup and mayo and cheese oozing--it elicits a base level biological response.
And yet a huge portion of men can't actualize the desire that's been activate by thirst-trap content into actual sex--hell most of them have no real shot of even having sex with a truly average or below average woman. So what do they do? They go online and masturbate to porn. There's no way to stop the thirst trapping, and I'm not sure that we should even if we could (free speech seems pretty good to me), but it would be nice if women could understand that men are BOMBARDED by sexual imagery all day every day, much of it not by choice. Would almost be nice if social media platforms would give the option to opt out of that type stuff, but I can't imagine that will happen anytime soon...
I will posit that throughout history women have been in the low power category and there is a strong need built in to attract a male as soon as possible as men represent status, but more so simple safety and protection. One of the few ways women have of gaining a man is to be sexually alluring.
One issue feeding what you're naming is that women are always competing each other for the male gaze, but feminism has taught us that the gaze is oppressive. Here we again see the gap between stated and revealed preferences; women want dominant men with status but they're not allowed to admit that they're courting the gaze. Serparately, sexual liberation and wearing what you want are part of the feminist theology. You dress for attention and then complain you're getting it because you're not supposed to want it.
Agree there, but have to imagine men who thirst-trap are a tiny minority compared to women. Maybe the algorithm evens them out? But ordinary women thirst trap. Ordinary men do not.
Ordinary women don’t either? I think we’re all weidly trapped in algorithms that show us what they imagine we will most easily respond to… I follow tons of women who talk about random stuff and never seem to be focused on the fact that they have bodies. And I do get a lot of guys flexing or tossing their hair or whatever. Which I do not seek out in any way. I would agree it’s more women than men but only to the degree to which men respond to that stuff more than women do?
One thing you can do on IG is go to settings & activity -> content preferences -> sensitive content -> see less sensitive content.
It’s quite a broad category and I wish they broke it down into categories. But since I’ve set it to less, I feel like I get much less women in bikinis recommended in my explore page.
No idea. It’s probably impractical anyway because you’d have to label content by some arbitrary standard and I mean do we really want to be qualifying a girl wearing a bikini as lewd? That seems silly.
In retrospect the best way is to just not spend time on TikTok, Reels, or YouTube. I mean Substack if you stay on notes doesn’t have that’s stuff.
Your take is very logical rather than emotional...which means feminists will absolutely hate it. 😉
Also, I'm continually amazed when feminists deny that women have free will by assuming that a woman who goes into porn is always being "forced" into it against her will...and simultaneously assuming that the same cannot possibly true for men who go into porn.
In other words, it's considered "unreasonable" to expect adult women to say no to anything. Here's a wild idea...if women can't be trusted to say no or to make adult decisions on their own, because they're just too fragile and they're just not capable of it, then that means they also can't be trusted to vote or drive a car or own property or be a manager in the workplace or have any adult freedoms or responsibilities at all! You can't demand that women be treated like children, but ONLY when it benefits the feminist cause and not when it doesn't. If we're going to assume that women have the mental capacity of children, then that means we have to treat them as children ALL the time, both for their own protection and for everyone else's. (Would you want to fly in a plane piloted by someone with the mind of a five-year-old? I wouldn't.)
If men are so logical as they've been crying for centuries, why can't they control themselves and stop watching porn, paying for OnlyFans, and all of it in the first place?
Nothing is a male's fault, is it? Literally nothing.
Your only come back is--BUT WOMEN ARE BAD TOO.
We're not the ones funding this, and we still go to college. Reading books isn't the same as watching 10 hours of Pornhub every day.
Nobody cares you can't get laid when Tinder is 80% male.
Uh-oh, sounds like SOMEBODY got triggered! 🤣 If you're trying to combat the idea that women are excessively emotional and irrational, your response here is not helping.
Your reading comprehension skills are abysmal. When did I say men were a hundred percent logical? I didn't. When did I say women were a hundred percent emotional or a hundred percent irrational? I didn't. When did I say men were more logical than women? I didn't. I said feminists hate logical rebuttals to their emotional arguments (as demonstrated by your triggered reply...thank you for proving my point). When did I say nothing is men's fault? I didn't. When did I excuse men's behavior by saying "BUT WOMEN ARE BAD TOO"? I didn't.
To say that you completely missed the point and didn't address any of my actual arguments is an understatement. Your entire reply is nothing but one big ad hominem argument (which is a logical fallacy...you should stop using those if you don't want to perceived as irrational and excessively emotional).
"If all women stopped working voluntarily in porn, there would be gangs"
Wow. You are so, SO fucking stupid. 🤣 Where do I begin?
A. Sex slavery is EXTREMELY illegal and is one of the most harshly punished crimes there is. People who engage in it are absolutely reviled by 99.9% of all men. We have laws against things like rape and sex slavery. Guess who created those laws? That's right...MEN did! And who enforces those laws? MEN do! Are you starting to see the bigger picture here?
B. Your point about "gangs" actually has nothing to do with whether or not women are voluntary signing up to work in porn, and it has nothing to do with whether it's women's FAULT that they're signing up to do porn. It sidesteps the issue entirely...it's a red herring. It uses an extremely implausible hypothetical ("if all women stopped voluntarily working in porn") as a distraction to take attention away from the fact that women ARE voluntarily appearing in porn, have done so for as long as porn has existed, and will continue to do so until porn ceases to exist. The fact that there's a hypothetical chance that women could THEORETICALLY be forced into it, in an extremely unlikely alternate reality which the world has never seen before, has nothing to do with the real world that we actually live in. It does not affect actual women's choices in the here and now. It does not take away from the fact that women are voluntarily choosing to appear in porn in the here and now.
Let's be honest, this comment is seemingly made in bad faith because you felt the need to insult Kyle, but didn't really respond to any claims he made.
‘Nothing is a males fault’, I assume you are trying to say that the porn industry and all its consequences are the fault of men, which is true, assuming that men are the major consumers of it. In what way does it logically follow on that a woman working in the porn industry is by default working against her will? I'm not sure if you hold this opinion, but there is an argument to be made that ALL work is exploitative to a degree, this is not confined to sex work in particular, which appears to be more exploitative simply because it is humiliating on a social level. If sex was a less “shameful” topic, then sex-work may not appear to be as degrading/humiliating. This is a different issue, however, my point is people should not blame others for the decisions they make by their own free will. Considering whether free will even exists in any decisive situation would become too philosophical for this discussion but it is interesting nonetheless, or depressing, I should say.
You also implied that men are ‘illogical’ because they can't control their desires in some cases. Inability to control desires where doing so would be the ‘logical’ choice is a weakness of all humans. This, however, doesnt mean that the person is illogical, it simply means that they act illogically. We can can say that logic is confined to thought, whereas wisdom would be acting logically, or something to that effect. However this is wholly useless to discuss. Kyle said men are logical, you said men can't be logical because- and so on, as you can see this is pointless.
‘Nobody cares you can't get laid when Tinder is 80% male.’ I'm guessing that this is an assumption you have made, but whatever the case may be, this is unfair to say. We can talk about how dating apps work, but I dont think that would be very useful. Dating apps are pretty dehumanising, and so is your statement. I'm not going to lecture you, but we would all be better off if we treated others with understanding and empathy.
If all women stopped voluntarily working in porn, there would be gangs that kidnapped and practiced trafficking to force them. That happens all the time in prostitution--it's human trafficking. They use drugs, violence, etc. for human slavery.
If all men stopped watching porn (not to mention paying for prostitution), it would all disappear overnight because there would be no profit. It would stop immediately.
That's the difference. This is demand-driven, not supply-driven.
Men are to blame. If they were logical, they would see that. Until they do, continue the blame game as men destroy themselves.
You raise a good point, and I think based on my previous reply to you it's pretty clear that I agree, it is men's fault that any sex industry exists where women are the product. I would hope that most men don't contribute to this issue, and it is a few bad apples who evade the law who cause, or would cause, most of the issues if the illegal market for sexual content grows under the conditions you stated and the possibilities that follow from it.
However, no woman who decides (by her own free will) to be a pornstar is actively being threatened by these possibilities, their individual choice in that instance does not somehow bring an end to all porn, I think the issue here is that some ex-pornstars often place blame on people other than themselves, which may be true, but they aren't faultless by default if they regret what they have done for whatever reason. I'm not familiar with any other related arguments people have made in this regard, I don't think anyone is blaming women for the porn industry, not to my knowledge.
To address a wider point, it is men's desires that cause these issues, and it is the duty of society and civilisation to control any antisocial behaviours that occur as a result. We must punish perpetrators, but extreme individuals will always exist in a “free” society, who act in spite of law and order. Sex industries have existed forever, and its undeniable that while still dangerous, it is safer for women now than ever before. I guess that is progress. I don't think men will ever stop paying for sex. Various social structures have been in place for centuries to prevent it or cater to it.
To end I'll ask you, what are men to blame for? The exploitation of women in most circumstances? Yes. A woman's individual choice? No. We can go into how men created the option for sex work in the first place, as you have said, and thus it is their fault that women even have that choice. But consider this, in a world without porn or prostitution at all, by any means, what sexual activity would remain? Not much apart from hookups/casual sex/non-committed relationships, because even conventional relationships are simply value transactions. I fear I have digressed but I suppose my point is that while we can theoretically eradicate exploitation and harm to women in sex industries (for which men are at fault), we can't eradicate the sex industry itself because it will always exist in some form, and that comes down to sex being a necessity for human life, not nessesarily the fault of men or women.
Hopefully I haven't made a fool of myself, I spent way too much time writing this lol.
I agree with the general crux of your post. That said, you could do with more specificity and more steelmanning, they would make your arguments stronger. For instance, there is a whole branch of feminism called radical feminism that has been fighting the sex positivity strand for decades. Likewise with socialist/Marxist feminism. They make very clearly the case for porn as exploitative by nature and not a true form of labor to be defended, for men or for women. I've never called myself a feminist, but those two strands are the only feminisms worth their salt.
More of this logic can be extended towards the agency and out-earning questions as well. The vast majority of women who enter porn, especially at 18, were abused as children. The famous porn actresses will defend porn as an industry, until they either finally realize they were groomed as children (e.g. Sasha Grey) or they become too old for the industry and cannot find any other work. No other industry locks a person in the way porn does, and the demand for porn and sexual access by men will always outstrip the number of women willing to supply sex, so these factor in the higher pay for women vs men. Not to mention the physical burden that women bear.
I could easily flip the script even on the proliferated softcore porn i.e. if men didn't like this content, women wouldn't make so much of it, so men should be the ones exercising more discipline. But I don't like that flip either, I look for the materialist explanations versus which gender is more to blame. Algorithms hijack our normal needs and incentivize these negative behaviors for the benefit of a few tech monopolies.
Fair enough, but I think this article is targeting the soft core side of things before the actual pornography. While it is definitely ignoring the sex negative feminism, mainline feminism has tossed sex-negative feminism aside as well. I suppose the author could engage with that, but at that rate that is suddenly opening the discourse to the countless feminist denominations and heresies to consider.
As far as materialism goes; sex sells. Putting a bimbo in a skimpy outfit on a thumbnail gets more clicks from both men and women. We had social structures that limited this; both men and women were gatekeepers with the backing of both religious and secular law to boot. But with less religiosity followed by secular laws ceasing to care as both men and women cheapen their access to sex, it is pissing in the wind to try to reassert it from a broad cultural standpoint.
I have never claimed that and I don't know a single man that dodges accountability like women do. Not one. You're projecting this projection. Peak woman moment.
The feminine version of the thirst trap is the quench trap. Society bombards women with petty reassurances that they are not at fault and that they are special and worth protecting/making sacrifices for, as we do for children, and they often come to believe implicitly that others should maintain their comfort. Women do not sexualize men by pursuing them (gaze, unsolicited flirtation, aggression), but by treating them as objects of selection, e.g., expecting strangers to win their favor and abide by their moral codes, like no swearing or everyone needs to wear a suit.
Frankly, feminists ought to see women dressed slutty and a bunch of men gooning to their stepdaughter's OnlyFans accounts as a sign of social progress--the world has literally never been safer for women.
"Women do not sexualize men by pursuing them (gaze, unsolicited flirtation, aggression), but by treating them as objects of selection" this really struck a nerve for me, as it's definitely something I did in my early twenties and am still working to rewire in myself. I adopted this stance as a way to try to reclaim power when I often felt powerless/objectified by men, and it took several years (and a fully developed prefrontal cortex) to recognize that fighting fire with fire will not solve the problem. I think this may feed into the proliferation of thirst traps as well. If you as the woman are in charge of your own image and YOU decide to make that image sexual (with that veneer of plausible deniability) you might maintain a sense of control and power in which you otherwise might not. Because I'm sure every woman has experienced a situation in which she was sexualized or objectified by men online or in real life against her wishes, and that will always cut into your sense of safety and security. In some ways by posting a thirst trap she can beat them to the punch and pretend it's empowerment for herself. Although I suppose it is, if a false sense of security is "empowering"
I think the point being missed is that modern feminism in all it's forms veiws men as villians in the narrative. Being villians means no matter what a male does, that his motives, are always suspect and in some way are always negative to women. Males are boxed in, any attempt to find common ground has been shutdown before it even begins.
It's a no win situation, if you're nice you just want sex, if you are cold and indifferent then your a misogynist, if you decide to use AI over having a relationship with a women it's the patriarchies fault even though they say outright men should never ever emotionaly attach to them otherwise you want them to mother you,, when women are mean to eachother it's their "internal misogyny" that's to blame.
I see a hole cohort of women who bought their "radical feminist barbie playset", and are ignorant of the feminism before them who expanded women's rights in the civil and legislative arena.
Feminists are pollyanna innocent observers always the victim and it's pathetic. I'm left of left politically, used to identify as a male-feminist, but not with this group of whiny immature predators that lack ethics and character.
There is an all-pervasive performative shallowness in online leftist/feminist spaces that is an absolute caricature of what ‘having opinions’ even means. It’s just perpetually hysterical fierce posturing on literally any subject, where apparently nobody but her is doing anything right and everyone except her personally is a villain… It’s weird and off-putting. Thankfully real-life women are nothing like that where I am.
"There's no real equivalent of a thirst trap for literature; it's hardly as though people go around plastering single paragraphs of erotica all throughout the city."
Romance books only work in their entirety. You need a whole book's worth of buildup to get a satisfying payoff. The guy pursues, she resists. He turns out to have a heart of gold underneath all that muscle. It may only be one sex scene, but you couldn't do it with one paragraph because you need the whole book.
I take your point but my understanding is that is a somewhat dated view of what appears in female oriented erotica. I'm pretty sure now it's a spanking every chapter or a (relatively) explicit hook up with a wolfman or something like that, not a slightly more risqué daytime soap opera converted to text.
Wouldn't it be fair to argue that it is the book cover of some Fabio iteration male carrying the female protagonist that is the thirst trap and the rest of the book is the literary porn?
I have also wondered what it is exactly that motivates so many women to pretend that thirst traps are not thirst traps, or that it's offensive to notice when someone obviously made a ton of efforts to look as sexy as they can while still being socially approved. I do think this is going away somewhat and now they mostly all just admit it, but this was a big weird theme of sort of the 2010s.
I recall there was a big uproar and a bunch of articles bc someone made a comment about the inappropriate high school cheerleader outfits at a local high school here. All the moms were going nuts saying how dare you sexualize our girls, they are just athletes, if you can't look at a teenage girl in athletic gear without thinking it's sexual that's YOUR problem pervert, etc. I then went and looked up to see what the outfits were, and like....they were literally basically bathing suits. Lol, I mean, NOT what I remember cheerleaders ever wearing, it was just a tiny spandex onesi that did not cover their whole butt cheeks. So why were all these moms pretending that these obviously sexy outfits for teenager girls to dance and prance around in were NOT in fact sexual??
The only hypotheses I can come up with are:
1. When it comes to moms in particular wrt their teenage daughters, they are just blatantly in denial and can't handle acknowledging the truth that the daughters know EXACTLY what they're doing and it's on purpose, bc they can't deal with it and haven't accepted that they're growing up and not naive children anymore. That's specific to parents though.
2. For other women, they defend it so that they aren't called out on it themselves when THEY do it? They want to be able to, so they stand up for other women and deny it's on purpose maybe?
3. Women want to seem cool and like they're not envious or threatened. Because if you do say anything judgmental other women (and men) will jump down your throat and say you're just jealous and being a hater.
4. One actual legitimate reason is that it isn't fair to women with naturally big boobs that they will often be deemed to be too sexy or even being obscene just wearing the same thing that a girl with small boobs can wear with no problem. This is actually true and I can see that seeming unfair. Otoh, plenty of these women doing this with big boobs bought them, and it's obviously on purpose, not something they just can't help bc of natural endowment. But it's true that the same shirt that looks overtly sexy and inappropriate on a woman with an ample chest will look perfectly normal on a small/average sized woman.
I can’t help but feel that a lot of this has to do with the fact that, historically, society has trained girls and women to understand that their looks are their greatest asset, while simultaneously shaming them if they use that asset in obvious ways. Hence the thirst trap and the denial.
Honestly if thirst traps didn’t work ten times better for social engagement than anything else, less women would use them. I find it silly to moralize over something that gives such a ridiculous advantage. Like if people threw money at me every time I whistled, I would be very tempted to keep whistling.
Society hasn’t “trained” women into knowing that looks is their best asset, biological female sexual nature ingrained that into the deepest parts of the psyche millions of years ago. Male gaze is biologically ingrained, and women’s desire to attract the attention of the guys they like is primal as it gets. Blank slate theory is undeniably false, don’t view everything through that prism.
Morality and modesty was a check on immature, uncivilized, self-centred human nature in both sexes, and we’ve progressively done away with that over the past 50 years, especially on the female side.
I’m not arguing women are not attractive to men. But we can definitely do many other interesting things which have historically all been discouraged, as we were guided to just look pretty and not worry our little heads about all that other stuff like science and whatnot.
What I was getting across is that biological realism is not an excuse for immoral behaviour, just because it produces attention and money.
By that logic, men should be using their physical strength advantage for their own benefits… but of course, we’ve deemed that immoral as a society, and we should go back to days where modesty was a virtue, and thirst traps and virtual prostitution are shamed upon.
Sure, I agree with that. The question is how we define ‘immoral’. We often use these words like they have some clear definition when they absolutely don’t. There are probably plenty of things you and I would readily agree were ‘immoral’, but there would be plenty of others where we would not agree at all.
That makes sense. Though also I think there's the parental denial thing. I remember my parents acting as if I didn't realize what men would think or what effect it would have when I used to wear super short skirts that barely covered my backside when I was like 15. Of course I let them think that, that it was just naive and accidental. It definitely was not though lol.
I think parents act like they don’t realize because they’re petrified of actually engaging with us on these topics. I remember trying to ask some general birds/bees stuff and my mother, with whom I could normally talk about anything, looking so profoundly uncomfortable I never asked again. They just didn’t want to go there. So they kinda let me go wherever and wear whatever because I think they were thinking like ‘well some sort of transition and sexual awakening needs to happen, and we would prefer it to happen as far away from us as possible’. That was my read on it anyway 😅
Oh I totally remember that look from my mother, it was the worst. Same thing happened to me and I learned to never want to see that look again (sort of a mixture of horror, disgust, embarrassment, and trying to hide it all at the same time). Still creeps me out just thinking about it actually 😂
Same same :) I’m raising a teenager right now (and a boy to boot!!) and I am not replicating that generational trauma lol. I’m sure he will find my approach cringe too, but at least I’m trying to innovate 😂
To your 4th point, I can see this in a vacuum, but every interaction I've had with a woman talking about how tough it was that they were just so naturally endowed with a big ass/boobs is them using it as a subtle flex on other women. Like a guy saying "it is tough being a guy that can't find a condom big enough for me" kind of energy.
If your definition of "unfair" includes someone's physical body being a few inches shorter or someone's bra size being a DD not a C, it's useless. People dress their own bodies, & therefore style (and modesty) are personal considerations.
The athleisure thing is wild, too. If I leave my house to run a basic errand, I'm pretty much guaranteed to see the exact shape and outline of someone's vulva.
I'd much rather control my actions (eyes) than police someone else's behavior (clothes). But at a certain point, can we acknowledge that flaunting your lady bits in public is every bit as rude as sending an unsolicited dick pic?
The issue however, is that men dont* have control of their eyes, millions of years of non-rational biological programming does. We only can choose how we react to it, not whether we see it or not, and it’s a legitimate problem that we solved many hundreds of years ago… and yet we think we somehow evolved out of that in the last 50.
A couple of things come to mind. First off, asking women to not use an asset that instantly and massively outperforms any other in terms of garnering attention and subsequent profit is, like, a REALLY big ask. And for every woman I see showing off her rack I see a dude flexing his biceps. Every great looking dude is also doing thirst trap stuff. The main difference is that we don’t care that much about men flexing, in fact the main audience for men looking hot is also other men. Maybe men just really care about what things look like?
So yeah, I am not about to start blaming women for having boobs and wearing clothes. Everyone does need to be handling themselves. We can say it’s unfair that men are wired to react to boobs in a way in which we are not wired to react to pecs, but that’s a complaint to address at Mother Nature.
On the hypocrisy around porn I am 100% with you. The written stuff is in some ways worse than the filmed stuff (in the sense of selling a toxic ‘fantasy’ which is totally harmful if applied to real life), and it is profoundly hypocritical to be glorifying ‘girl power, emancipation and liberation’ on one side while criticizing the consumption of that very same thing on the other. I am also often made uncomfortable by the sorts of comments women allow themselves on the subject of hot men in the public space where they would be livid to hear someone talking about hot women in that same way. Surely the rules should be the same for everyone, and we should give as good as we would like to get.
The male human is sexually pursuant, meaning they will tend to value displays of sexual availability in their mates. The female human is sexually selective, meaning they will tend to value displays of character value in their mates.
So, pornography makers targeting men will sell them fantasies leading to easy sexual gratification, while those who target women will sell them fantasies about the quality of men they can attract. In both cases, the porn addict develops an unreasonable relationship expectation.
I wonder though. Like if we compare it to drugs, we had that working model, right? Lighter drugs like weed are ‘gateway drugs’ that lead to the heavier stuff, and it should all be strictly prohibited? And the stats eventually didn’t seem to bear out the gateway drug thing…. Like, sure, some people might go from weed to heroin, but lots of people will be happy to just stay on weed and never do anything more.
Some people might eat a cookie and then be drawn to eat an entire cake, and others will raid the fridge at night and eat an entire cake if you don’t let them have the cookie…
I would much sooner have limitations in place for the hardcore stuff, because some of the things being made today should just be considered criminal activity I swear. But I don’t know how we have restrictions against women showing cleavage in their insta videos. Like how would that possibly be enforced.
It would be nice to see a social turn away from hedonism in general and towards some moderateness, in all things. But I’m not sure how that would be brought about.
Clearly we aren’t dealing with “gateway drugs” that don’t go anywhere. Just look at any stats with average porn consumption.
You also can easily enforce this; media platforms don’t boost soft-core pornography. Demonetize accounts that do. These people chase the algorithm as dollars and virality by putting their tits out. If they can’t get anything for it, then they won’t do it. Ban corporations from doing this in ads, we already ban plenty of things for ads.
We already use these digital tools for enforcement on plenty of other things. What is one more?
Well sure, but the tits are there to begin with in order to push the algo. So they will never agree to that. Remember before social media, when all wd had was commercials on tv? Those were full of tits too… and it wasn’t women writing or casting those ads, it was men. Men who understood how to sell product. You would have a better chance convincing birds to stop singing than to get people to stop using proximity to physical attraction to sell shit.
Why do those companies not just allow straight up hard pornography to sell product? Because it is explicitly illegal. So you totally can convince them not to do it.
Companies also don’t promote hard porn on their algorithms either. Google, Microsoft, facebook, etc will not throw pornography onto their recommended listings. FB and YouTube will straight up not allow you to post it at all. Twitch is constantly policing its users of soft porn since it is ostensibly a kids platform.
You seem earnest to act like we have no possible way to stop this despite how we stop this kind of stuff all the time. It is true that we have given a pass to this thanks to a lot of liberal social attitudes, but those are malleable if you want to actually combat this.
I would not be against it, though realistically I don’t see it happening. But I think, if it could happen, it would be an improvement, as long as it wasn’t implemented weirdly.
But looking at the rest of society now and in the past…. Yeah, my hopes are not high.
Why don’t you trust the article, and men, when they describe what their sex drive being stimulated constantly ends up leading to when it comes to selecting the next website they open? Zero empathy, zero accountability.
I totally believe that for some men that’s how it feels. And I do empathize with that. But where should ‘accountability’ come into it? I am not part of these things in any way except as someone who is, together with you at this moment, thinking about them. I am not asking you for ‘empathy and accountability’ on anything. I haven’t mentioned anything that would blame you in any way. Why are you so reactive?
It is absolutely rough to walk through a world that constantly tries to tempt you in directions you don’t want to go. I have the same issue with food - I want to make good and healthy food choices, but every single storefront seems to be trying to show me the most luscious pastry or ice cream or burger or pizza. Because they are trying to sell their products.
I can say they are being ‘immoral’, and in a sense they are. But in the end what do I have except my own force of will to resist?
I am in favor of people trying to make things easier for each other, when they can. But I am also very much in favor of everyone owning their own crap.
If we are going to excuse the daily softcore pornography men are subjected to, then don’t be surprised that they fuel the porn industry with their dollars and attention.
Are you genuinely suggesting the porn industry - one of the oldest in the entire world - would die off if women didn’t show cleavage in their insta videos? I have serious doubts on that.
"So yeah, I am not about to start blaming women for having boobs and wearing clothes."
So yeah, I am not about to start blaming cheats for to screwing people over.
Getting male attention for "having boobs and wearing clothes (which display those boobs quite handily)" is the female mirror to the thirst trap. Male sexual attraction is something women have unique power over by visual display. Women know this, & have every choice on how to dress in light of it.
Women are moral agents. We judge them as we judge the cheat & scammer for what they do with their advantages.
I mean you can judge who you want I guess but unless you’re arguing that we should introduce burqas and niqabs, I am not sure what you think women can do about having bodies.
Calling that equivalent to ‘scamming’ or ‘cheating’ is honestly pretty weak.
I totally agree that normal dress codes should not be egregious. I do think the tights that go all up inside the ass crack and wildly low cut cleavage are excessive and rude to other people.
But multiple analyses of what SA victims were wearing when assaulted show sweatshirts, baggy tees, normal jeans, just as often as skirts or dresses or anything at all revealing. That’s not on us, man. It’s nice to pretend that if women only always wore trashbags instead of clothes, all would be well. But data doesn’t back up that fantasy.
There are centuries of more conservative fashion in the Western World. You don't even have to leave the last century. A thoroughly modern example might be a raglan over a tucked t-shirt & straight-cut jeans. General 'dress code' used to be to the clavicle, below the knees & above the elbows within living memory.
"HAvINg bODiES" has nothing to do with dressing well, actually. No honest person could claim we judge a cheat or a fraud for "having information", or the perpetrators of SA for "having testosterone". We would not say a young man, who killed an elderly man by slugging him in the chest, was being judged for "having a body". (This is such a stupid frame I failed at using it in my previous reply.)
Women have more selection & control over what is in their closet & on their bodies now than at any other time in history. Do you think women make their own decisions or not? Because both your framing, & your reflex defense of the normative mass cultural, suggest someone else plots the course.
Slipping in mentions of "burqas and niqabs", & throwing in SA victims are textbook examples of dishonest arguments; straw-manning & 'moving the goalposts'.
I genuinely don’t understand what we are actually talking about. Yes people can dress modestly or less modestly. Yes of course they make their own decisions about that. This goes equally for both genders. What am I missing?
I do not intend to strawman nor move goalposts. I am trying to lead thoughts to their conclusions. Do we have to have raglans over t shirts and jeans even when it’s 40 degrees outside? Do we hold both genders to this rule? This is not me being flippant, I am genuinely trying to understand what the argument actually is. Can the outfit be fitted? Do you think girls wouldn’t be able to ‘thirst trap’ in, say, fifties-style dresses?
I agree upfront that nobody should be showing tit nor ass in the streets. Neither gender. Agreed.
But beyond that, the idea that women are only behaving morally or with empathy if they’re dressed in layers strikes me as… extreme? Questionable?
"I am trying to lead thoughts to their conclusions." Well, if we take "to the clavicle, below the knees & above the elbows" to its' logical conclusion, then perhaps "when it’s 40 degrees [centigrade?] outside" you might wear a light-yet-opaque sundress, with a light outerlayer as needed? It's outfit advice (from a dude) not a logic puzzle.
To summarize the position: men & women are not interchangeable. They are separate, distinct, & non-fungible pieces with fit together in pairs. This is partly driven by sexual attraction, which works differently for each sex. Men are particularly visual. Women enjoy male attention; they like to be looked at, while men are compelled to look. Most women understand this naturally, the rest have heard about it since Laura Mulvey coined the term "the male gaze". What most feminists don't grasp is male sexuality is a straight line, starting from looking & ending with the act itself. Trawling for this lowest form of the male gaze is throwing sexual fishhooks into every man you meet. There are many good reasons social mores were enforced to stop men from being pulled around by the lizard brain. The only way for healthy relations between the sexes is when sex it is treated with modesty. (Pedantic: this is both a necessary & insufficient condition for healthy relations.)
Since we're writing in English, we can assume this discussion pertains to the West. Although since you like being pedantic, there are cultural changes across large amounts of time, space & setting. The relevant change to this discussion is: how much skin women have been allowed to show across decades? (The careful observer may note the lack of burqas & niqabs in the Western historical record.)
What does this mean? Right now, Western society is at DEFCON 2 (arguably DEFCON 1) for dragging men around by the gooner cords in their brain. It & 100 other things need to STOP, now, so things can start running OK again. The diesel engine of male sexuality is running so rich, the smoke cloud is visible from the ISS observation module.
I don't think further conversation will worth my time, so I'll leave you with this primer on "sane sex relations".
TL;DR: Men are biologically programmed to be distracted by tits & ass. Leave it for the bedroom or sex, sexuality & society falls apart.
Very well said and highly agree with your diagnosis and prescription. I’ve been expressing the same thinking, but seemingly she (and the average Western young woman) can’t even agree with the diagnosis, nevermind the prescription. Our interlocutor is a great example of that - appeals to nature fallacies, strawmanning, and moving the goal posts.
You’re going down a very dangerous road by laying responsibility on the “blame Mother Nature” statement.
If we start using Mother Nature’s instituted order as primary, rather than reason and empathy for others, then you’ll have to simultaneously be justifying men abusing their nature-given-advantages to achieve their own desires unencumbered too.
No one wants that however, so let’s be considerate for the other sex’s weaknesses instead.
Well there’s having a body and then there is using it to nefarious ends. Is a form-fitting sweater somehow equal to hitting someone? Is wearing pants that aren’t baggy the same as grabbing a stranger by the ass? These things are not the same. Mother Nature decided that guys are interested in boobs in a way in which women will never be entranced by dick. That’s just how it is. I don’t think women should be sticking their breasts in people’s faces in order to manipulate them. But they have the right to exist and have bodies in public.
I have personally seen women called out for wearing perfectly acceptable clothes just because someone judged those clothes were ‘too flattering’. No low cut cleavage, no skin shown, no weird tightness - just normal clothes that looked nice. That’s just ridiculous. You can’t expect women to wear burqas. False equivalences do not help the argument.
Why are you strawmanning my argument? Why are you suggesting I said women should wear burkas? Why are you suggesting in other replies that SA is the only metric for whether women have made unwise dress decisions? Also, why are you of the belief that thirst traps online for attention and $$ are not* manipulative… explain to me, precisely… because any claim relating to “a woman can do what she wants with her body” or “women have bodies”, can absolutely be replaced with wolf whistles from men and males have hands and hormones. Appeals to nature HAVE to be allowed across the board as primary or not at all… why? Because nature does NOT care about imbalances in these departments, rational conscious human minds do, so let’s use them.
And no, abusing Mother Nature instead of having reason and empathy IS the problem, it’s the abuse part. You are again, showing an extreme lack of care and empathy, and as such, you shouldn’t expect ANY by way of your own sex-specific issues.
Women have taken their freedom and absolutely leveraged the shit out of it, well beyond what is reasonable, appropriate, considerate, mature, or fair.
You are making absolutely zero concessions to anyone however, despite a flurry of great rebuttals from different people, so I can’t expect to have a reasonable conversation with you.
I don’t have any ‘sex-specific issues’ hahah. We are talking in theoreticals. There seems to be a vibe here how ‘all women do this and that’ but all women absolutely do not. In fact I do not know a single woman personally who does even the tamest thirst trap material on social media. And I know a fair number of women. So it can’t be that widespread. Most of us don’t post anything at all of ourselves.
There is an obvious difference between existing in a certain way and doing something physically to another person. If you are unwilling to accept that distinction then indeed the conversation cannot go far. Men have as much right - in fact, more right - to dress and present themselves how they want as women do. I see guys shirtless jogging through my park every day, never ever seen a woman do it. That’s equality, no? Are guys jogging shirtless morally while women run in sports bras immorally? How? Why?
I didn’t say you personally want burqas. I am saying if you never want to see the shape of a breast in public, that’s kind of what it takes. Do you have a practical idea of how you would decree all women to dress in order to fit the morality clause? And should men also have such limitations? Whatever I try to imagine in that direction brings me to bad sounding ideas.
‘Women have bodies’ is not equal to ‘men have hands’. If a woman ever touches you inappropriately with her body, that is assault. Men can absolutely be assaulted too and you would have every right to ask to be protected from that, and I would absolutely stand up for you or anyone else of any gender who gets touched or in any way approached against their will.
Also, women who dress provocatively in public absolutely get reactions to that and they know that. I am not in any universe saying ‘women should be able to walk half-naked down the street and men should run and hide’. We know how human dynamics work. But the article really stretches the idea of what ‘provocatively’ means. Like, will there be someone handing out baggy t shirts to all influencers? What is really the plan here, besides insisting how women are immoral?
Because some women of course are immoral, as are some men. The majority - of both genders - I would argue is not. And wearing a fitted t shirt should not be labeled ‘immoral’ - for either gender.
"I see guys shirtless jogging through my park every day, never ever seen a woman do it. That’s equality, no? Are guys jogging shirtless morally while women run in sports bras immorally? How? Why?" This is your brain on blank-slate-ism.
Because men have very different triggers for attraction than women. People are not some disembodied souls stuffed into temporary meat suits. And jogging with the tatas flopping around is impractical.
And pulling "my friends don't do it" doesn't work when you're going to bat for the rest of "the sisterhood".
Me ‘batting for the sisterhood’ is your projection, to use a popular term. I think the vast majority of representatives of both genders are behaving in pretty dumb ways, as they probably always have throughout history, except now we all have to see it because everyone blogs their thoughts 24/7.
I am just examining the notions presented here. And interestingly whenever I go check out the reading habits of people arguing here, I find some questionable stuff. No surprise I guess.
Speaking about ‘me and my friends’ is pretty relevant because the claim here is Women with capital W do this or that. I am saying they do not. ‘Women’ is, like, 5 billion people. They do all kinds of stuff. In fact any time someone starts to explain to me how ‘women’ do this while ‘men’ do that, and ‘women are biologically….’ while ‘men are biologically….’ I just know it’s not gonna be a good time.
The inability to discuss any social trend with more nuance than dividing the entire world into two opposing chunks is guarantee of a poor conversation.
It is in terms of who makes it. But not necessarily in terms of the audience. Did you hear about the Australian author who recently got arrested for her ‘fantasy novel’ where a barely 18 protagonist is lusting after her dad’s friend, who, in turn, has been lusting after her since she was THREE YEARS OLD. And this is presented like super hot sexy steamy raunchy wowow.
Now for sure a three year old was not injured in the making of the book, but these books are written in a middle school/ young adult style and have covers that mimic middle school and young adult books, and it’s widely noted that younger and younger girls are reading them. Girls who don’t yet have a grasp on their own sexuality. How will that grasp develop if that’s their first contact with the subject, and it’s normalized and promoted on every bookstore shelf?
Both can be equally bad for the soul, but I think the use of real people (whether or not they should be considered exploited, they are real people committing terrible sins) is worse than imaginary scenarios. Although for an extremely deviant imaginary scenario like this one, I would suggest that the author maybe should be investigated for what she might be up to in her own private life. But for books of the “Regency woman falls for rakish nobleman” type - they are bad, but seeing real people perform the action is worse.
one thing i've always found odd is the perception that men are NEVER exploited in the industry, and it's the same as in Hollywood. i remember when Terry Crews came out about being sexually assaulted by someone powerful in the industry and said that MANY men experience something similar whetherthey be assaulted by a man or a woman, people's response was "yeah okay cool men bad tho"
IMO….women are way more offbeat sexually than we think/admit. Porn is so men can masturbate. Men like and are visually stimulated. But, there is a Kazillion $ a year vibrator industry. What is that for if not to masturbate? And studies show women are big visual porn users too. Not as big as men, but a substantial part of the market.
You may as well end every post with “They will not do this, however, as this will disrupt the imagined solidarity that women are supposed to have with one another.”
The sexual empowerment wing of the feminists have a particularly hypocritical stance on all of this. Because they are also the same ones who will blame men who are consumers of pornography for being the problem. Which is like blaming the drug users but not the dealers. If they are dealers, they will certainly find customers.
I have mentioned to them that women are the gatekeepers of sex. If a man says I will pay you for sex or to do it on video… It has always been the woman’s responsibility to say “no”, not “how much?”
Additionally, feminism has always said that pornography was demeaning to women and been against it… Until fairly recently. Now it turns out they don’t mind being demeaned so long as they get paid enough money.
Also it’s been a long argument that women consumed pornography in written form through erotic romance novels. However, the young generation of women also consume video pornography and it is affects them in surprising ways. For example, some mock men for “small penis size“… Which to them was anything under 6 inches. Those are consumers of porn.
"Making videos with someone who has very likely been coerced through financial hardship (men do own 80% of the world's resources after all) is the same as someone writing a story in which no actual people are coerced or cornered into participating"
Got it.
Pretending these women have been coerced is very naïve these days. If you are familiar with only fans, or as I call it only fools, these young women are opening their own accounts (as porn stars). Some of them are making millions and millions of dollars doing it. It’s greed to live the Kardashian lifestyle, they aren’t being coerced by Rich men to work for pennies. That is a very old canard. Many of them are earning far less, about $45,000 a year. Interviews with them, they’ve been told they could work one or two jobs and earn just as much, keeping their dignity and honor. They didn’t care; shooting a few videos a week was much easier work, easy money. The female version of becoming a drug dealer.
The men selling themselves on OF are fine though, no problem there? Ok.
You are the fool, bot. We will answer for the fortification of the readers:
If there were no demand, there would be no supply. We know who does 99% of the demand. The supply forfeits dignity and honor, but the demand creeps do not? Sounds legit.
If these men would instead HIRE and PROMOTE and MAKE ROOM for and BE WELCOMING to women in the workforce, guess what would happen? Almost all of those women would be in a "regular jobs" making good money, financially secure. Do you see well paid women leaving their employment to do OF? Almost never. Think about why that might be.
Do you think that as little girls, these women said, "You know what I want to do with my life? Get men to jack off and pay me for helping out!"
No. Do you think you could never have a daughter that both a) falls on hard times and doesn't want to burden you by asking for money yet again in a failing economy, or b) knows where her value to men lies and knows that not even her father respects women, as therefore knows what she has to do to make a buck?
Do you think she would tell you about it ..or just say she works from home for an answering service instead?
Anyway, men are unneccesary and they know it. So that must hurt the fragile ego.
Long game, I didn’t mention the two men that have OF accounts because they are a statistical insignificance.🙄
As far as the consumer side, there have always been armies of guys who sought out pornography. I will call them out on it, but that hasn’t changed. What HAS changed is armies of women, millions of them, turning themselves into porn stars because it’s easy work. Like young urban men becoming drug dealers for quick money, these gals are doing the same. In interviews on YouTube they admit they could find equal pay by working two jobs. They just don’t want to work that hard. Much easier to shoot a couple videos a week and get paid. In other words what little purity and honor they had they were perfectly willing to sell for a quick buck. Don’t try to turn them into victims, they weren’t all broken, just degenerates influenced by degenerate society. Because they’d rather “get that bag” then live poor with hard, honorable work.
STopped reading after the first sentence. No one said you didn't mention them. The point is that you said WOMEN, not PEOPLE ..men create content there too.
You are a troll and no one agrees with you. This is why no woman wants you and you are *biologically irrelevant*. Know what else is statistically negligent? The percentage of women vs men who commit violent crime.
When demand goes away, so will supply. There is only so much money in circulation and those who HOLD IT determine where they allow it to go. Let it go to hiring, promoting, supporting the business efforts of women and the money the demand once used will no longer be routed to OF. The supply goes where the money is, bc one needs money to eat. Yw.
Correction, I am a *married* troll and most people agree with me. You’re an illogical woman who just justified woman OF creators because “they have to eat.” 🙄 As per usual, accountability is Kryptonite to women.
Agreed. I think it's fair to say that as long as there is man-hating feminism, there will be a market for porn.
'Man-hating feminism' is a tautology. More generally, the market for porn exists because there is a mismatch between the supply and demand for sex. Feminism exacerbates the mismatch by making women who embrace feminism less appealing to men, and promotes porn and prostitution by disinhibiting those women who can from exploiting this mismatch for financial gain.
I think another point is that men seek validation from women, which could even be a substitute for missing sex. That’s where sophisticated sex robots come in, which will give a man female validation plus the sex.
In Japan, female holograms were developed that spoke kindly to men. From what I hear, 1/3 of young Japanese men have gone MGTOW.
Now there are “AI girlfriends”, that can engage men in pleasant conversation. With feminism came insufferable women, and the AI girlfriends offer a workaround for that
Good points. Although I think it is more than supply and demand for sex. When someone watches porn, they see a woman that is happy to be with the man, and go to bed with him. Exactly the opposite of feminism.
Besides porn and prostitution, there are sex robots. The most sophisticated sex robots will engage a man in pleasant conversation, which also went out of style with the rise of feminism.
Ok bot
Anyone who mocks another person for a body part or thing that person has no control over, is a very lame person
Don't worry about it. In a few years men will be able to create the perfect woman, with the perfect personality for him, the sex drive and skills of a porn star, and a body that never ages or gets fat. Women will be useless to men and their weaponized vaginas will be just be another hole between their legs. Did you think feminism would have no consequences?
Men shouldn't be allowed to vote.
This is just more proof of it. Why do you have the time to do this? You should be in a coal mine.
Your comment demonstrates he should be here far more than you.
I've been noticing this for a long time, and I think it's why men, generally, are so frustrated with modern society re: sex and relationships. We're constantly shown images of really attractive women in revealing outfits on social media. Even women we know personally on IG will post photos of them "hiking"--which to be fair, they are, but the mountains and lakes aren't really the feature--it's her ass or breasts. I have the same experience as you when I watch Reels: mostly I watch clips from Comedians, fly-fishing or skiing stuff, and workout videos, but invariably, 1/7 of the time or so, a super hot chick pops up looking super hot.
"What's more insulting, however, is the fact that if men point out this sort of content is sexual, then women will act ignorant, and play a game of plausible deniability." This is because it gains them attention, which is the point. Attention for a woman is a currency of sorts, that has many benefits, whether monetized directly or indirectly, or even if it translates into better dating opportunities.
However, as you point out, as a man, like, we're going to respond. We're biologically attracted to women, and we're going to pay attention if we see an attractive woman, especially if she's not wearing much and/or is behaving in a sexually provocative manner. It's the same reason fast food commercials show juicy burgers with ketchup and mayo and cheese oozing--it elicits a base level biological response.
And yet a huge portion of men can't actualize the desire that's been activate by thirst-trap content into actual sex--hell most of them have no real shot of even having sex with a truly average or below average woman. So what do they do? They go online and masturbate to porn. There's no way to stop the thirst trapping, and I'm not sure that we should even if we could (free speech seems pretty good to me), but it would be nice if women could understand that men are BOMBARDED by sexual imagery all day every day, much of it not by choice. Would almost be nice if social media platforms would give the option to opt out of that type stuff, but I can't imagine that will happen anytime soon...
When I heard some point out that women crave attention the way men crave sex it alllllllll started to make sense.
Even more so with social media where attention can be commodified and measured.
I will posit that throughout history women have been in the low power category and there is a strong need built in to attract a male as soon as possible as men represent status, but more so simple safety and protection. One of the few ways women have of gaining a man is to be sexually alluring.
One issue feeding what you're naming is that women are always competing each other for the male gaze, but feminism has taught us that the gaze is oppressive. Here we again see the gap between stated and revealed preferences; women want dominant men with status but they're not allowed to admit that they're courting the gaze. Serparately, sexual liberation and wearing what you want are part of the feminist theology. You dress for attention and then complain you're getting it because you're not supposed to want it.
The opt-out would definitely be cool but will never happen because the algorithm has the same motivations as the thirst trappers.
Also I have to say my algo is pretty even-keel between women looking hot and men looking hot. Like, men are not averse to thirst trapping either.
Agree there, but have to imagine men who thirst-trap are a tiny minority compared to women. Maybe the algorithm evens them out? But ordinary women thirst trap. Ordinary men do not.
Ordinary women don’t either? I think we’re all weidly trapped in algorithms that show us what they imagine we will most easily respond to… I follow tons of women who talk about random stuff and never seem to be focused on the fact that they have bodies. And I do get a lot of guys flexing or tossing their hair or whatever. Which I do not seek out in any way. I would agree it’s more women than men but only to the degree to which men respond to that stuff more than women do?
Hey! It's not my fault that sawdust is man-glitter!
😂
One thing you can do on IG is go to settings & activity -> content preferences -> sensitive content -> see less sensitive content.
It’s quite a broad category and I wish they broke it down into categories. But since I’ve set it to less, I feel like I get much less women in bikinis recommended in my explore page.
And what percentage of men do you think would opt out if such option was available?
No idea. It’s probably impractical anyway because you’d have to label content by some arbitrary standard and I mean do we really want to be qualifying a girl wearing a bikini as lewd? That seems silly.
In retrospect the best way is to just not spend time on TikTok, Reels, or YouTube. I mean Substack if you stay on notes doesn’t have that’s stuff.
Your take is very logical rather than emotional...which means feminists will absolutely hate it. 😉
Also, I'm continually amazed when feminists deny that women have free will by assuming that a woman who goes into porn is always being "forced" into it against her will...and simultaneously assuming that the same cannot possibly true for men who go into porn.
In other words, it's considered "unreasonable" to expect adult women to say no to anything. Here's a wild idea...if women can't be trusted to say no or to make adult decisions on their own, because they're just too fragile and they're just not capable of it, then that means they also can't be trusted to vote or drive a car or own property or be a manager in the workplace or have any adult freedoms or responsibilities at all! You can't demand that women be treated like children, but ONLY when it benefits the feminist cause and not when it doesn't. If we're going to assume that women have the mental capacity of children, then that means we have to treat them as children ALL the time, both for their own protection and for everyone else's. (Would you want to fly in a plane piloted by someone with the mind of a five-year-old? I wouldn't.)
LOL
If men are so logical as they've been crying for centuries, why can't they control themselves and stop watching porn, paying for OnlyFans, and all of it in the first place?
Nothing is a male's fault, is it? Literally nothing.
Your only come back is--BUT WOMEN ARE BAD TOO.
We're not the ones funding this, and we still go to college. Reading books isn't the same as watching 10 hours of Pornhub every day.
Nobody cares you can't get laid when Tinder is 80% male.
Logic, indeed.
Uh-oh, sounds like SOMEBODY got triggered! 🤣 If you're trying to combat the idea that women are excessively emotional and irrational, your response here is not helping.
Your reading comprehension skills are abysmal. When did I say men were a hundred percent logical? I didn't. When did I say women were a hundred percent emotional or a hundred percent irrational? I didn't. When did I say men were more logical than women? I didn't. I said feminists hate logical rebuttals to their emotional arguments (as demonstrated by your triggered reply...thank you for proving my point). When did I say nothing is men's fault? I didn't. When did I excuse men's behavior by saying "BUT WOMEN ARE BAD TOO"? I didn't.
To say that you completely missed the point and didn't address any of my actual arguments is an understatement. Your entire reply is nothing but one big ad hominem argument (which is a logical fallacy...you should stop using those if you don't want to perceived as irrational and excessively emotional).
"If all women stopped working voluntarily in porn, there would be gangs"
Wow. You are so, SO fucking stupid. 🤣 Where do I begin?
A. Sex slavery is EXTREMELY illegal and is one of the most harshly punished crimes there is. People who engage in it are absolutely reviled by 99.9% of all men. We have laws against things like rape and sex slavery. Guess who created those laws? That's right...MEN did! And who enforces those laws? MEN do! Are you starting to see the bigger picture here?
B. Your point about "gangs" actually has nothing to do with whether or not women are voluntary signing up to work in porn, and it has nothing to do with whether it's women's FAULT that they're signing up to do porn. It sidesteps the issue entirely...it's a red herring. It uses an extremely implausible hypothetical ("if all women stopped voluntarily working in porn") as a distraction to take attention away from the fact that women ARE voluntarily appearing in porn, have done so for as long as porn has existed, and will continue to do so until porn ceases to exist. The fact that there's a hypothetical chance that women could THEORETICALLY be forced into it, in an extremely unlikely alternate reality which the world has never seen before, has nothing to do with the real world that we actually live in. It does not affect actual women's choices in the here and now. It does not take away from the fact that women are voluntarily choosing to appear in porn in the here and now.
Do better.
Lol glad to see someone agrees with me, seems like we both saw the same issues with what she said
Let's be honest, this comment is seemingly made in bad faith because you felt the need to insult Kyle, but didn't really respond to any claims he made.
‘Nothing is a males fault’, I assume you are trying to say that the porn industry and all its consequences are the fault of men, which is true, assuming that men are the major consumers of it. In what way does it logically follow on that a woman working in the porn industry is by default working against her will? I'm not sure if you hold this opinion, but there is an argument to be made that ALL work is exploitative to a degree, this is not confined to sex work in particular, which appears to be more exploitative simply because it is humiliating on a social level. If sex was a less “shameful” topic, then sex-work may not appear to be as degrading/humiliating. This is a different issue, however, my point is people should not blame others for the decisions they make by their own free will. Considering whether free will even exists in any decisive situation would become too philosophical for this discussion but it is interesting nonetheless, or depressing, I should say.
You also implied that men are ‘illogical’ because they can't control their desires in some cases. Inability to control desires where doing so would be the ‘logical’ choice is a weakness of all humans. This, however, doesnt mean that the person is illogical, it simply means that they act illogically. We can can say that logic is confined to thought, whereas wisdom would be acting logically, or something to that effect. However this is wholly useless to discuss. Kyle said men are logical, you said men can't be logical because- and so on, as you can see this is pointless.
‘Nobody cares you can't get laid when Tinder is 80% male.’ I'm guessing that this is an assumption you have made, but whatever the case may be, this is unfair to say. We can talk about how dating apps work, but I dont think that would be very useful. Dating apps are pretty dehumanising, and so is your statement. I'm not going to lecture you, but we would all be better off if we treated others with understanding and empathy.
If all women stopped voluntarily working in porn, there would be gangs that kidnapped and practiced trafficking to force them. That happens all the time in prostitution--it's human trafficking. They use drugs, violence, etc. for human slavery.
If all men stopped watching porn (not to mention paying for prostitution), it would all disappear overnight because there would be no profit. It would stop immediately.
That's the difference. This is demand-driven, not supply-driven.
Men are to blame. If they were logical, they would see that. Until they do, continue the blame game as men destroy themselves.
You raise a good point, and I think based on my previous reply to you it's pretty clear that I agree, it is men's fault that any sex industry exists where women are the product. I would hope that most men don't contribute to this issue, and it is a few bad apples who evade the law who cause, or would cause, most of the issues if the illegal market for sexual content grows under the conditions you stated and the possibilities that follow from it.
However, no woman who decides (by her own free will) to be a pornstar is actively being threatened by these possibilities, their individual choice in that instance does not somehow bring an end to all porn, I think the issue here is that some ex-pornstars often place blame on people other than themselves, which may be true, but they aren't faultless by default if they regret what they have done for whatever reason. I'm not familiar with any other related arguments people have made in this regard, I don't think anyone is blaming women for the porn industry, not to my knowledge.
To address a wider point, it is men's desires that cause these issues, and it is the duty of society and civilisation to control any antisocial behaviours that occur as a result. We must punish perpetrators, but extreme individuals will always exist in a “free” society, who act in spite of law and order. Sex industries have existed forever, and its undeniable that while still dangerous, it is safer for women now than ever before. I guess that is progress. I don't think men will ever stop paying for sex. Various social structures have been in place for centuries to prevent it or cater to it.
To end I'll ask you, what are men to blame for? The exploitation of women in most circumstances? Yes. A woman's individual choice? No. We can go into how men created the option for sex work in the first place, as you have said, and thus it is their fault that women even have that choice. But consider this, in a world without porn or prostitution at all, by any means, what sexual activity would remain? Not much apart from hookups/casual sex/non-committed relationships, because even conventional relationships are simply value transactions. I fear I have digressed but I suppose my point is that while we can theoretically eradicate exploitation and harm to women in sex industries (for which men are at fault), we can't eradicate the sex industry itself because it will always exist in some form, and that comes down to sex being a necessity for human life, not nessesarily the fault of men or women.
Hopefully I haven't made a fool of myself, I spent way too much time writing this lol.
I agree with the general crux of your post. That said, you could do with more specificity and more steelmanning, they would make your arguments stronger. For instance, there is a whole branch of feminism called radical feminism that has been fighting the sex positivity strand for decades. Likewise with socialist/Marxist feminism. They make very clearly the case for porn as exploitative by nature and not a true form of labor to be defended, for men or for women. I've never called myself a feminist, but those two strands are the only feminisms worth their salt.
More of this logic can be extended towards the agency and out-earning questions as well. The vast majority of women who enter porn, especially at 18, were abused as children. The famous porn actresses will defend porn as an industry, until they either finally realize they were groomed as children (e.g. Sasha Grey) or they become too old for the industry and cannot find any other work. No other industry locks a person in the way porn does, and the demand for porn and sexual access by men will always outstrip the number of women willing to supply sex, so these factor in the higher pay for women vs men. Not to mention the physical burden that women bear.
I could easily flip the script even on the proliferated softcore porn i.e. if men didn't like this content, women wouldn't make so much of it, so men should be the ones exercising more discipline. But I don't like that flip either, I look for the materialist explanations versus which gender is more to blame. Algorithms hijack our normal needs and incentivize these negative behaviors for the benefit of a few tech monopolies.
Fair enough, but I think this article is targeting the soft core side of things before the actual pornography. While it is definitely ignoring the sex negative feminism, mainline feminism has tossed sex-negative feminism aside as well. I suppose the author could engage with that, but at that rate that is suddenly opening the discourse to the countless feminist denominations and heresies to consider.
As far as materialism goes; sex sells. Putting a bimbo in a skimpy outfit on a thumbnail gets more clicks from both men and women. We had social structures that limited this; both men and women were gatekeepers with the backing of both religious and secular law to boot. But with less religiosity followed by secular laws ceasing to care as both men and women cheapen their access to sex, it is pissing in the wind to try to reassert it from a broad cultural standpoint.
All of this
They essentially argue they in fact have no agency. Maybe we should start treating them as if that's actually the case.
You should! This is part of the problem - men need to become more conflict prone with women. Otherwise it’s just women like me shouting into the wind.
Just say “No”. Instant flame on.
That's what men are arguing when they claim nothing is their fault. If that's the case, men are the ones who should have no power in society.
You literally do nothing but project.
I have never claimed that and I don't know a single man that dodges accountability like women do. Not one. You're projecting this projection. Peak woman moment.
Literally the only thing that exists in the world is your personal experiences--male solipsism distilled into its purest form.
You can't get matches on Tinder, but it's the women's fault because it can't be you.
Men have been doing this literally since the beginning, literally since Adam and Eve. Tell the Taliban about your amazing ideas.
Male projection is killing the world.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
TERF, man-hating feminist & boomer internet-induced-brainrot syndrome. Interesting combo.
Bring back insane asylums.
The feminine version of the thirst trap is the quench trap. Society bombards women with petty reassurances that they are not at fault and that they are special and worth protecting/making sacrifices for, as we do for children, and they often come to believe implicitly that others should maintain their comfort. Women do not sexualize men by pursuing them (gaze, unsolicited flirtation, aggression), but by treating them as objects of selection, e.g., expecting strangers to win their favor and abide by their moral codes, like no swearing or everyone needs to wear a suit.
Frankly, feminists ought to see women dressed slutty and a bunch of men gooning to their stepdaughter's OnlyFans accounts as a sign of social progress--the world has literally never been safer for women.
"Women do not sexualize men by pursuing them (gaze, unsolicited flirtation, aggression), but by treating them as objects of selection" this really struck a nerve for me, as it's definitely something I did in my early twenties and am still working to rewire in myself. I adopted this stance as a way to try to reclaim power when I often felt powerless/objectified by men, and it took several years (and a fully developed prefrontal cortex) to recognize that fighting fire with fire will not solve the problem. I think this may feed into the proliferation of thirst traps as well. If you as the woman are in charge of your own image and YOU decide to make that image sexual (with that veneer of plausible deniability) you might maintain a sense of control and power in which you otherwise might not. Because I'm sure every woman has experienced a situation in which she was sexualized or objectified by men online or in real life against her wishes, and that will always cut into your sense of safety and security. In some ways by posting a thirst trap she can beat them to the punch and pretend it's empowerment for herself. Although I suppose it is, if a false sense of security is "empowering"
We all do it, and we do it to each other. Not everyone grows out of it. Good job figuring it out.
Yup, attention. I expect 12 Step programs to see women coming in trying to break their addiction to social media
Perhaps not by their own 'decision making'.
I think the point being missed is that modern feminism in all it's forms veiws men as villians in the narrative. Being villians means no matter what a male does, that his motives, are always suspect and in some way are always negative to women. Males are boxed in, any attempt to find common ground has been shutdown before it even begins.
It's a no win situation, if you're nice you just want sex, if you are cold and indifferent then your a misogynist, if you decide to use AI over having a relationship with a women it's the patriarchies fault even though they say outright men should never ever emotionaly attach to them otherwise you want them to mother you,, when women are mean to eachother it's their "internal misogyny" that's to blame.
I see a hole cohort of women who bought their "radical feminist barbie playset", and are ignorant of the feminism before them who expanded women's rights in the civil and legislative arena.
Feminists are pollyanna innocent observers always the victim and it's pathetic. I'm left of left politically, used to identify as a male-feminist, but not with this group of whiny immature predators that lack ethics and character.
There is an all-pervasive performative shallowness in online leftist/feminist spaces that is an absolute caricature of what ‘having opinions’ even means. It’s just perpetually hysterical fierce posturing on literally any subject, where apparently nobody but her is doing anything right and everyone except her personally is a villain… It’s weird and off-putting. Thankfully real-life women are nothing like that where I am.
"There's no real equivalent of a thirst trap for literature; it's hardly as though people go around plastering single paragraphs of erotica all throughout the city."
Romance books only work in their entirety. You need a whole book's worth of buildup to get a satisfying payoff. The guy pursues, she resists. He turns out to have a heart of gold underneath all that muscle. It may only be one sex scene, but you couldn't do it with one paragraph because you need the whole book.
I take your point but my understanding is that is a somewhat dated view of what appears in female oriented erotica. I'm pretty sure now it's a spanking every chapter or a (relatively) explicit hook up with a wolfman or something like that, not a slightly more risqué daytime soap opera converted to text.
Lol. I guess I'm showing my age. Imstead of Fabio iteration, I almost said said billionaire doctor werewolf with a dungeon in the backdrop.
Wouldn't it be fair to argue that it is the book cover of some Fabio iteration male carrying the female protagonist that is the thirst trap and the rest of the book is the literary porn?
I have also wondered what it is exactly that motivates so many women to pretend that thirst traps are not thirst traps, or that it's offensive to notice when someone obviously made a ton of efforts to look as sexy as they can while still being socially approved. I do think this is going away somewhat and now they mostly all just admit it, but this was a big weird theme of sort of the 2010s.
I recall there was a big uproar and a bunch of articles bc someone made a comment about the inappropriate high school cheerleader outfits at a local high school here. All the moms were going nuts saying how dare you sexualize our girls, they are just athletes, if you can't look at a teenage girl in athletic gear without thinking it's sexual that's YOUR problem pervert, etc. I then went and looked up to see what the outfits were, and like....they were literally basically bathing suits. Lol, I mean, NOT what I remember cheerleaders ever wearing, it was just a tiny spandex onesi that did not cover their whole butt cheeks. So why were all these moms pretending that these obviously sexy outfits for teenager girls to dance and prance around in were NOT in fact sexual??
The only hypotheses I can come up with are:
1. When it comes to moms in particular wrt their teenage daughters, they are just blatantly in denial and can't handle acknowledging the truth that the daughters know EXACTLY what they're doing and it's on purpose, bc they can't deal with it and haven't accepted that they're growing up and not naive children anymore. That's specific to parents though.
2. For other women, they defend it so that they aren't called out on it themselves when THEY do it? They want to be able to, so they stand up for other women and deny it's on purpose maybe?
3. Women want to seem cool and like they're not envious or threatened. Because if you do say anything judgmental other women (and men) will jump down your throat and say you're just jealous and being a hater.
4. One actual legitimate reason is that it isn't fair to women with naturally big boobs that they will often be deemed to be too sexy or even being obscene just wearing the same thing that a girl with small boobs can wear with no problem. This is actually true and I can see that seeming unfair. Otoh, plenty of these women doing this with big boobs bought them, and it's obviously on purpose, not something they just can't help bc of natural endowment. But it's true that the same shirt that looks overtly sexy and inappropriate on a woman with an ample chest will look perfectly normal on a small/average sized woman.
I can’t help but feel that a lot of this has to do with the fact that, historically, society has trained girls and women to understand that their looks are their greatest asset, while simultaneously shaming them if they use that asset in obvious ways. Hence the thirst trap and the denial.
Honestly if thirst traps didn’t work ten times better for social engagement than anything else, less women would use them. I find it silly to moralize over something that gives such a ridiculous advantage. Like if people threw money at me every time I whistled, I would be very tempted to keep whistling.
Society hasn’t “trained” women into knowing that looks is their best asset, biological female sexual nature ingrained that into the deepest parts of the psyche millions of years ago. Male gaze is biologically ingrained, and women’s desire to attract the attention of the guys they like is primal as it gets. Blank slate theory is undeniably false, don’t view everything through that prism.
Morality and modesty was a check on immature, uncivilized, self-centred human nature in both sexes, and we’ve progressively done away with that over the past 50 years, especially on the female side.
I’m not arguing women are not attractive to men. But we can definitely do many other interesting things which have historically all been discouraged, as we were guided to just look pretty and not worry our little heads about all that other stuff like science and whatnot.
I wasn’t arguing that either.
What I was getting across is that biological realism is not an excuse for immoral behaviour, just because it produces attention and money.
By that logic, men should be using their physical strength advantage for their own benefits… but of course, we’ve deemed that immoral as a society, and we should go back to days where modesty was a virtue, and thirst traps and virtual prostitution are shamed upon.
Sure, I agree with that. The question is how we define ‘immoral’. We often use these words like they have some clear definition when they absolutely don’t. There are probably plenty of things you and I would readily agree were ‘immoral’, but there would be plenty of others where we would not agree at all.
That makes sense. Though also I think there's the parental denial thing. I remember my parents acting as if I didn't realize what men would think or what effect it would have when I used to wear super short skirts that barely covered my backside when I was like 15. Of course I let them think that, that it was just naive and accidental. It definitely was not though lol.
I think parents act like they don’t realize because they’re petrified of actually engaging with us on these topics. I remember trying to ask some general birds/bees stuff and my mother, with whom I could normally talk about anything, looking so profoundly uncomfortable I never asked again. They just didn’t want to go there. So they kinda let me go wherever and wear whatever because I think they were thinking like ‘well some sort of transition and sexual awakening needs to happen, and we would prefer it to happen as far away from us as possible’. That was my read on it anyway 😅
Oh I totally remember that look from my mother, it was the worst. Same thing happened to me and I learned to never want to see that look again (sort of a mixture of horror, disgust, embarrassment, and trying to hide it all at the same time). Still creeps me out just thinking about it actually 😂
Same same :) I’m raising a teenager right now (and a boy to boot!!) and I am not replicating that generational trauma lol. I’m sure he will find my approach cringe too, but at least I’m trying to innovate 😂
To your 4th point, I can see this in a vacuum, but every interaction I've had with a woman talking about how tough it was that they were just so naturally endowed with a big ass/boobs is them using it as a subtle flex on other women. Like a guy saying "it is tough being a guy that can't find a condom big enough for me" kind of energy.
If your definition of "unfair" includes someone's physical body being a few inches shorter or someone's bra size being a DD not a C, it's useless. People dress their own bodies, & therefore style (and modesty) are personal considerations.
The athleisure thing is wild, too. If I leave my house to run a basic errand, I'm pretty much guaranteed to see the exact shape and outline of someone's vulva.
I'd much rather control my actions (eyes) than police someone else's behavior (clothes). But at a certain point, can we acknowledge that flaunting your lady bits in public is every bit as rude as sending an unsolicited dick pic?
The issue however, is that men dont* have control of their eyes, millions of years of non-rational biological programming does. We only can choose how we react to it, not whether we see it or not, and it’s a legitimate problem that we solved many hundreds of years ago… and yet we think we somehow evolved out of that in the last 50.
Totally agreed on that. The tights that ruche up into the asscrack are like….. a whole lotta something.
I can imagine an Islamist who thinks that all women should wear hijabs reading this and thinking "finally, the infidels are starting to understand".
Basically 😂
A couple of things come to mind. First off, asking women to not use an asset that instantly and massively outperforms any other in terms of garnering attention and subsequent profit is, like, a REALLY big ask. And for every woman I see showing off her rack I see a dude flexing his biceps. Every great looking dude is also doing thirst trap stuff. The main difference is that we don’t care that much about men flexing, in fact the main audience for men looking hot is also other men. Maybe men just really care about what things look like?
So yeah, I am not about to start blaming women for having boobs and wearing clothes. Everyone does need to be handling themselves. We can say it’s unfair that men are wired to react to boobs in a way in which we are not wired to react to pecs, but that’s a complaint to address at Mother Nature.
On the hypocrisy around porn I am 100% with you. The written stuff is in some ways worse than the filmed stuff (in the sense of selling a toxic ‘fantasy’ which is totally harmful if applied to real life), and it is profoundly hypocritical to be glorifying ‘girl power, emancipation and liberation’ on one side while criticizing the consumption of that very same thing on the other. I am also often made uncomfortable by the sorts of comments women allow themselves on the subject of hot men in the public space where they would be livid to hear someone talking about hot women in that same way. Surely the rules should be the same for everyone, and we should give as good as we would like to get.
The male human is sexually pursuant, meaning they will tend to value displays of sexual availability in their mates. The female human is sexually selective, meaning they will tend to value displays of character value in their mates.
So, pornography makers targeting men will sell them fantasies leading to easy sexual gratification, while those who target women will sell them fantasies about the quality of men they can attract. In both cases, the porn addict develops an unreasonable relationship expectation.
I am suggesting that addictions to it would not be as prevalent if there wasn’t softcore pornography everywhere.
Never mind you could have actual legal prohibitions to work with as well as opposed to this absurd situation we have today.
I wonder though. Like if we compare it to drugs, we had that working model, right? Lighter drugs like weed are ‘gateway drugs’ that lead to the heavier stuff, and it should all be strictly prohibited? And the stats eventually didn’t seem to bear out the gateway drug thing…. Like, sure, some people might go from weed to heroin, but lots of people will be happy to just stay on weed and never do anything more.
Some people might eat a cookie and then be drawn to eat an entire cake, and others will raid the fridge at night and eat an entire cake if you don’t let them have the cookie…
I would much sooner have limitations in place for the hardcore stuff, because some of the things being made today should just be considered criminal activity I swear. But I don’t know how we have restrictions against women showing cleavage in their insta videos. Like how would that possibly be enforced.
It would be nice to see a social turn away from hedonism in general and towards some moderateness, in all things. But I’m not sure how that would be brought about.
Clearly we aren’t dealing with “gateway drugs” that don’t go anywhere. Just look at any stats with average porn consumption.
You also can easily enforce this; media platforms don’t boost soft-core pornography. Demonetize accounts that do. These people chase the algorithm as dollars and virality by putting their tits out. If they can’t get anything for it, then they won’t do it. Ban corporations from doing this in ads, we already ban plenty of things for ads.
We already use these digital tools for enforcement on plenty of other things. What is one more?
Well sure, but the tits are there to begin with in order to push the algo. So they will never agree to that. Remember before social media, when all wd had was commercials on tv? Those were full of tits too… and it wasn’t women writing or casting those ads, it was men. Men who understood how to sell product. You would have a better chance convincing birds to stop singing than to get people to stop using proximity to physical attraction to sell shit.
Why do those companies not just allow straight up hard pornography to sell product? Because it is explicitly illegal. So you totally can convince them not to do it.
Companies also don’t promote hard porn on their algorithms either. Google, Microsoft, facebook, etc will not throw pornography onto their recommended listings. FB and YouTube will straight up not allow you to post it at all. Twitch is constantly policing its users of soft porn since it is ostensibly a kids platform.
You seem earnest to act like we have no possible way to stop this despite how we stop this kind of stuff all the time. It is true that we have given a pass to this thanks to a lot of liberal social attitudes, but those are malleable if you want to actually combat this.
Change the norms, change the normies.
I would not be against it, though realistically I don’t see it happening. But I think, if it could happen, it would be an improvement, as long as it wasn’t implemented weirdly.
But looking at the rest of society now and in the past…. Yeah, my hopes are not high.
Why don’t you trust the article, and men, when they describe what their sex drive being stimulated constantly ends up leading to when it comes to selecting the next website they open? Zero empathy, zero accountability.
I totally believe that for some men that’s how it feels. And I do empathize with that. But where should ‘accountability’ come into it? I am not part of these things in any way except as someone who is, together with you at this moment, thinking about them. I am not asking you for ‘empathy and accountability’ on anything. I haven’t mentioned anything that would blame you in any way. Why are you so reactive?
It is absolutely rough to walk through a world that constantly tries to tempt you in directions you don’t want to go. I have the same issue with food - I want to make good and healthy food choices, but every single storefront seems to be trying to show me the most luscious pastry or ice cream or burger or pizza. Because they are trying to sell their products.
I can say they are being ‘immoral’, and in a sense they are. But in the end what do I have except my own force of will to resist?
I am in favor of people trying to make things easier for each other, when they can. But I am also very much in favor of everyone owning their own crap.
If we are going to excuse the daily softcore pornography men are subjected to, then don’t be surprised that they fuel the porn industry with their dollars and attention.
Are you genuinely suggesting the porn industry - one of the oldest in the entire world - would die off if women didn’t show cleavage in their insta videos? I have serious doubts on that.
It could (must) go back to being the Vice Squads' problem, as it was in the past.
"So yeah, I am not about to start blaming women for having boobs and wearing clothes."
So yeah, I am not about to start blaming cheats for to screwing people over.
Getting male attention for "having boobs and wearing clothes (which display those boobs quite handily)" is the female mirror to the thirst trap. Male sexual attraction is something women have unique power over by visual display. Women know this, & have every choice on how to dress in light of it.
Women are moral agents. We judge them as we judge the cheat & scammer for what they do with their advantages.
I mean you can judge who you want I guess but unless you’re arguing that we should introduce burqas and niqabs, I am not sure what you think women can do about having bodies.
Calling that equivalent to ‘scamming’ or ‘cheating’ is honestly pretty weak.
I totally agree that normal dress codes should not be egregious. I do think the tights that go all up inside the ass crack and wildly low cut cleavage are excessive and rude to other people.
But multiple analyses of what SA victims were wearing when assaulted show sweatshirts, baggy tees, normal jeans, just as often as skirts or dresses or anything at all revealing. That’s not on us, man. It’s nice to pretend that if women only always wore trashbags instead of clothes, all would be well. But data doesn’t back up that fantasy.
There are centuries of more conservative fashion in the Western World. You don't even have to leave the last century. A thoroughly modern example might be a raglan over a tucked t-shirt & straight-cut jeans. General 'dress code' used to be to the clavicle, below the knees & above the elbows within living memory.
"HAvINg bODiES" has nothing to do with dressing well, actually. No honest person could claim we judge a cheat or a fraud for "having information", or the perpetrators of SA for "having testosterone". We would not say a young man, who killed an elderly man by slugging him in the chest, was being judged for "having a body". (This is such a stupid frame I failed at using it in my previous reply.)
Women have more selection & control over what is in their closet & on their bodies now than at any other time in history. Do you think women make their own decisions or not? Because both your framing, & your reflex defense of the normative mass cultural, suggest someone else plots the course.
Slipping in mentions of "burqas and niqabs", & throwing in SA victims are textbook examples of dishonest arguments; straw-manning & 'moving the goalposts'.
I genuinely don’t understand what we are actually talking about. Yes people can dress modestly or less modestly. Yes of course they make their own decisions about that. This goes equally for both genders. What am I missing?
I do not intend to strawman nor move goalposts. I am trying to lead thoughts to their conclusions. Do we have to have raglans over t shirts and jeans even when it’s 40 degrees outside? Do we hold both genders to this rule? This is not me being flippant, I am genuinely trying to understand what the argument actually is. Can the outfit be fitted? Do you think girls wouldn’t be able to ‘thirst trap’ in, say, fifties-style dresses?
I agree upfront that nobody should be showing tit nor ass in the streets. Neither gender. Agreed.
But beyond that, the idea that women are only behaving morally or with empathy if they’re dressed in layers strikes me as… extreme? Questionable?
"I am trying to lead thoughts to their conclusions." Well, if we take "to the clavicle, below the knees & above the elbows" to its' logical conclusion, then perhaps "when it’s 40 degrees [centigrade?] outside" you might wear a light-yet-opaque sundress, with a light outerlayer as needed? It's outfit advice (from a dude) not a logic puzzle.
To summarize the position: men & women are not interchangeable. They are separate, distinct, & non-fungible pieces with fit together in pairs. This is partly driven by sexual attraction, which works differently for each sex. Men are particularly visual. Women enjoy male attention; they like to be looked at, while men are compelled to look. Most women understand this naturally, the rest have heard about it since Laura Mulvey coined the term "the male gaze". What most feminists don't grasp is male sexuality is a straight line, starting from looking & ending with the act itself. Trawling for this lowest form of the male gaze is throwing sexual fishhooks into every man you meet. There are many good reasons social mores were enforced to stop men from being pulled around by the lizard brain. The only way for healthy relations between the sexes is when sex it is treated with modesty. (Pedantic: this is both a necessary & insufficient condition for healthy relations.)
Since we're writing in English, we can assume this discussion pertains to the West. Although since you like being pedantic, there are cultural changes across large amounts of time, space & setting. The relevant change to this discussion is: how much skin women have been allowed to show across decades? (The careful observer may note the lack of burqas & niqabs in the Western historical record.)
What does this mean? Right now, Western society is at DEFCON 2 (arguably DEFCON 1) for dragging men around by the gooner cords in their brain. It & 100 other things need to STOP, now, so things can start running OK again. The diesel engine of male sexuality is running so rich, the smoke cloud is visible from the ISS observation module.
I don't think further conversation will worth my time, so I'll leave you with this primer on "sane sex relations".
TL;DR: Men are biologically programmed to be distracted by tits & ass. Leave it for the bedroom or sex, sexuality & society falls apart.
Very well said and highly agree with your diagnosis and prescription. I’ve been expressing the same thinking, but seemingly she (and the average Western young woman) can’t even agree with the diagnosis, nevermind the prescription. Our interlocutor is a great example of that - appeals to nature fallacies, strawmanning, and moving the goal posts.
You’re going down a very dangerous road by laying responsibility on the “blame Mother Nature” statement.
If we start using Mother Nature’s instituted order as primary, rather than reason and empathy for others, then you’ll have to simultaneously be justifying men abusing their nature-given-advantages to achieve their own desires unencumbered too.
No one wants that however, so let’s be considerate for the other sex’s weaknesses instead.
Well there’s having a body and then there is using it to nefarious ends. Is a form-fitting sweater somehow equal to hitting someone? Is wearing pants that aren’t baggy the same as grabbing a stranger by the ass? These things are not the same. Mother Nature decided that guys are interested in boobs in a way in which women will never be entranced by dick. That’s just how it is. I don’t think women should be sticking their breasts in people’s faces in order to manipulate them. But they have the right to exist and have bodies in public.
I have personally seen women called out for wearing perfectly acceptable clothes just because someone judged those clothes were ‘too flattering’. No low cut cleavage, no skin shown, no weird tightness - just normal clothes that looked nice. That’s just ridiculous. You can’t expect women to wear burqas. False equivalences do not help the argument.
Why are you strawmanning my argument? Why are you suggesting I said women should wear burkas? Why are you suggesting in other replies that SA is the only metric for whether women have made unwise dress decisions? Also, why are you of the belief that thirst traps online for attention and $$ are not* manipulative… explain to me, precisely… because any claim relating to “a woman can do what she wants with her body” or “women have bodies”, can absolutely be replaced with wolf whistles from men and males have hands and hormones. Appeals to nature HAVE to be allowed across the board as primary or not at all… why? Because nature does NOT care about imbalances in these departments, rational conscious human minds do, so let’s use them.
And no, abusing Mother Nature instead of having reason and empathy IS the problem, it’s the abuse part. You are again, showing an extreme lack of care and empathy, and as such, you shouldn’t expect ANY by way of your own sex-specific issues.
Women have taken their freedom and absolutely leveraged the shit out of it, well beyond what is reasonable, appropriate, considerate, mature, or fair.
You are making absolutely zero concessions to anyone however, despite a flurry of great rebuttals from different people, so I can’t expect to have a reasonable conversation with you.
I thought the conversation was going pretty well?
I don’t have any ‘sex-specific issues’ hahah. We are talking in theoreticals. There seems to be a vibe here how ‘all women do this and that’ but all women absolutely do not. In fact I do not know a single woman personally who does even the tamest thirst trap material on social media. And I know a fair number of women. So it can’t be that widespread. Most of us don’t post anything at all of ourselves.
There is an obvious difference between existing in a certain way and doing something physically to another person. If you are unwilling to accept that distinction then indeed the conversation cannot go far. Men have as much right - in fact, more right - to dress and present themselves how they want as women do. I see guys shirtless jogging through my park every day, never ever seen a woman do it. That’s equality, no? Are guys jogging shirtless morally while women run in sports bras immorally? How? Why?
I didn’t say you personally want burqas. I am saying if you never want to see the shape of a breast in public, that’s kind of what it takes. Do you have a practical idea of how you would decree all women to dress in order to fit the morality clause? And should men also have such limitations? Whatever I try to imagine in that direction brings me to bad sounding ideas.
‘Women have bodies’ is not equal to ‘men have hands’. If a woman ever touches you inappropriately with her body, that is assault. Men can absolutely be assaulted too and you would have every right to ask to be protected from that, and I would absolutely stand up for you or anyone else of any gender who gets touched or in any way approached against their will.
Also, women who dress provocatively in public absolutely get reactions to that and they know that. I am not in any universe saying ‘women should be able to walk half-naked down the street and men should run and hide’. We know how human dynamics work. But the article really stretches the idea of what ‘provocatively’ means. Like, will there be someone handing out baggy t shirts to all influencers? What is really the plan here, besides insisting how women are immoral?
Because some women of course are immoral, as are some men. The majority - of both genders - I would argue is not. And wearing a fitted t shirt should not be labeled ‘immoral’ - for either gender.
"I see guys shirtless jogging through my park every day, never ever seen a woman do it. That’s equality, no? Are guys jogging shirtless morally while women run in sports bras immorally? How? Why?" This is your brain on blank-slate-ism.
Because men have very different triggers for attraction than women. People are not some disembodied souls stuffed into temporary meat suits. And jogging with the tatas flopping around is impractical.
And pulling "my friends don't do it" doesn't work when you're going to bat for the rest of "the sisterhood".
Me ‘batting for the sisterhood’ is your projection, to use a popular term. I think the vast majority of representatives of both genders are behaving in pretty dumb ways, as they probably always have throughout history, except now we all have to see it because everyone blogs their thoughts 24/7.
I am just examining the notions presented here. And interestingly whenever I go check out the reading habits of people arguing here, I find some questionable stuff. No surprise I guess.
Speaking about ‘me and my friends’ is pretty relevant because the claim here is Women with capital W do this or that. I am saying they do not. ‘Women’ is, like, 5 billion people. They do all kinds of stuff. In fact any time someone starts to explain to me how ‘women’ do this while ‘men’ do that, and ‘women are biologically….’ while ‘men are biologically….’ I just know it’s not gonna be a good time.
The inability to discuss any social trend with more nuance than dividing the entire world into two opposing chunks is guarantee of a poor conversation.
Peace.
Pornography is obviously more exploitative and harmful than erotic books…
It is in terms of who makes it. But not necessarily in terms of the audience. Did you hear about the Australian author who recently got arrested for her ‘fantasy novel’ where a barely 18 protagonist is lusting after her dad’s friend, who, in turn, has been lusting after her since she was THREE YEARS OLD. And this is presented like super hot sexy steamy raunchy wowow.
Now for sure a three year old was not injured in the making of the book, but these books are written in a middle school/ young adult style and have covers that mimic middle school and young adult books, and it’s widely noted that younger and younger girls are reading them. Girls who don’t yet have a grasp on their own sexuality. How will that grasp develop if that’s their first contact with the subject, and it’s normalized and promoted on every bookstore shelf?
Both can be equally bad for the soul, but I think the use of real people (whether or not they should be considered exploited, they are real people committing terrible sins) is worse than imaginary scenarios. Although for an extremely deviant imaginary scenario like this one, I would suggest that the author maybe should be investigated for what she might be up to in her own private life. But for books of the “Regency woman falls for rakish nobleman” type - they are bad, but seeing real people perform the action is worse.
Yes, for standard romance novels I agree they’re not particularly harmful. This new dark fantasy thing is…. a whole lot, though.
Males live in a world where nothing is their fault. That doesn't compute in their heads.
one thing i've always found odd is the perception that men are NEVER exploited in the industry, and it's the same as in Hollywood. i remember when Terry Crews came out about being sexually assaulted by someone powerful in the industry and said that MANY men experience something similar whetherthey be assaulted by a man or a woman, people's response was "yeah okay cool men bad tho"
IMO….women are way more offbeat sexually than we think/admit. Porn is so men can masturbate. Men like and are visually stimulated. But, there is a Kazillion $ a year vibrator industry. What is that for if not to masturbate? And studies show women are big visual porn users too. Not as big as men, but a substantial part of the market.