An Interesting tumblr conversation about ale undersexualization and how it affects the discussion around female oversexualization

StatisticianBig6210 · 2022-09-15T05:12:29+00:00

That's an interesting series of comments. A naked Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters isn't the type of attention most men realistically encounter, so I envision that example feeling alienating. Moreover, as understood from the warranted pushback against oversexualization of women, any increased sexualization of men might inflame body image issues. In fact, when gender-swapped sexualization happens, like pointing out male Olympians' bulges (combined with popular lingo like "Big Dick Energy"), it does just that.

A symmetrical bargain isn't likely if the argument is about being sexualized and desired solely for appearance. Where this attraction exists, it's usually narrower/more selective than men's, and it might even emphasize more, overall, immutable characteristics like height.

I do think there are things that would make men more aesthetically appealing to women in general. However, women would have to be more forward, men would have to be more receptive to being sexualized without linking it to promiscuity, and society altogether would have to tolerate a much less rigid distinction between "relationship material" and "f*ck buddy."

maxcorrice · 2022-09-15T05:54:45+00:00

Jumpingjacktrash really fucking missed the point

Chris Hemsworth is the unnaturally muscular man referred to earlier, and saying women are scared to compliment men because they’d think it’s a come on is like wondering why a man dying of dehydration fawns over you when you give him a drop of water, are you really so fucking heartless that you’d want to deprive him of that because you might have to tell him you aren’t interested? Maybe, idk, help him find someone who will keep him hydrated if you really are worried about hurting his feelings? On top of that of course men would feel it as someone coming on to them because most men give compliments as a means to gauge interest as well because every fucking part of dating is put on his shoulders

Forgetaboutthelonely · 2022-09-15T04:03:28+00:00

Aside from the transcripts I posted I do have one thing I'd like to share.

This image was also posted to the feminism subreddit. Here's a preview of the comments there.

Talking about the undersexualization of men also ignores that the objectification of women is part of patriarchy and a large system of oppression that women live under.

it's such a stupid assertion that sexy clothes for men don't exist and that there aren't male media role models for sexiness. men are just misunderstanding what women find sexy and assuming that our sexuality must operate the same way as theirs.

But that ignores the fact that the "lack of compliments" from women is their own damn fault. Like women who like guys would compliment them, its just men tend to take that as solicitation so we often feel like just never doing that unless we are comfortable that they arent gonna wanna hop inside at the slightest show of validation.

I find it rather interesting how they would take such an insightful and exploratory conversation and condense it back down to "Women victims, Men at fault"

lastfreethinker · 2022-09-15T05:04:41+00:00

How many compliments on your appearance do you get? When you do get them how do you feel?

Let me start with a little story. My wife is blind, when I started dating her NO one made the joke that a blind woman is perfect for me. Until one of my coworkers did and I thanked him for it! You make that joke when it isn't true, that is a joke you make to speak the truth.

I was and still.am.pretty validating to my wife. I tell her how much I love her, how pretty she is, what I love about her, I bought her lingerie when she was pregnant in case she wasn't feeling sure of herself. I found her just as stunningly beautiful then as when she wasn't.

She would praise me too and call me her hunky husband she says I am handsome, I feel good , she grabs my butt, she validates me. Do you know she is the only girlfriend who ever did that regularly?

While I have NEVER sent a dick pic (wouldn't work on my wife anyway) some friends of mine did, but as far as I know it was girls they were dating. Guys don't get validation like we do for women, hell my why will say things like how handsome I am, that she loves me, or something to that effect RANDOMLY. She just walks up to me and says it, I will still to this day ask her why she said that out of the blue.

TL/DR We are so CONDITIONED to getting praise for accomplishments or actions, but not because we exist and someone loves us.

P.S. I am sorry that was a long, and I must say the dick/vag pic is also a misunderstanding of how the two sexes work. Men tend to be visual when it comes to arousal, women are more about anticipation. So of course men are going to respond to a vag pic while women don't as readily respond to a dick pic.

Pasolini123 · 2022-09-15T09:22:45+00:00

I love the "vagina pics" story. It shows in a very good way, that modern gender debates, especially when it comes to things related to sexuality, are a real "emperor's new clothes" - situation.

Everybody knows, why some men are sending dick pics. Because they are proud of their penises and would like to receive the same kind of pictures from women.

Ofc they shouldn't do it, if women don't like it.

I think it has something to do with a certain, deep ingrained fear of male, phallic sexuality, which all people have and which stems from the fact,that men are the ones physically able to penetrate. I think it is also the reason behind some forms of homophobia. Just look at homophobic jokes about "the risks" of bending over for the soap or many others like that.

I can understand, that women may feel uncomfortbale, when suddenly seeing unsolicited pics of erected penises on their screen. That it feels like a threat and infringement of their autonomy to them.

But instead of saying "listen guys, you may find it cool, women usually don't", the media engage in the only allowed perspectives, which are those of equality and power.

So there is a whole debate about dick pics, which assumes there is no difference between female and male sexuality, therefore the only reason why men send this kind of things is, that they want to exercise power over women.

How stupid is that? There is one golden rule. If you want to understand male sexuality, just look at gay guys :)

Dick pics are very popular among homosexual men. Not all of us like them, especially when they're unsolicited. I don't because I think there is something vulgar in starting a conversation with a picture of ones Willy. But how on earth can it have anything to do with "partiarchy and power" when men are sending it to other men?

Jonathanese · 2022-09-15T07:07:39+00:00

YES. OMG the top post explained EXACTLY some of the stuff I've posted about here. Especially with regards to clothing options.

And "not having ways of practicing passive sexuality" YES I love this term! Like I love being appreciated for personality traits, but there's always a fear that all my desirability will disappear the moment I drop the act. That I don't have passive redeeming features, but only a personality that has to be maintained at all times.

Forgetaboutthelonely · 2022-09-15T03:53:53+00:00

Image Transcription: Tumblr [1/2]

marcusseldon

(note: I have no romantic or sexualized experience myself, so I admit *some* of these points rely entirely on secondhand stuff and media)

One thing I think is not talked about very much is that straight men live pretty much desexualized lives if we’re not actually having sex at that moment, and then there’s not much room to be the object rather than subject.

As I’ve said before, we men don’t have clothing options for “dressing sexy” in masculine clothing (there is cross dressing but that is different). There’s no male equivalent to the short skirt or low cut top. There’s no male lingerie that isn’t seen as a joke.

Further, we just don’t get validation for our sexuality outside of a sexual partner. We are almost never complimented for our looks or sexiness from platonic friends like women are, especially same sex friends.

There really aren’t many straight male role models for raw aesthetic sexiness in mainstream culture (besides unnaturally muscled men). In fiction, male characters are almost never attractive for embodying sexiness but rather for doing things (saving the world, being extremely witty, being a genius, winning the tournament, etc.). Their sexiness is non-aesthetic and sometimes is in spite of their aesthetics.

Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of men aren’t even called physically hot and sexy by their own sexual partners, who themselves focus on personality. There’s not much room to fulfill the role of passive sexism object for you partner for many/most men.

I think it is telling that a lot of porn for men ignores the man’s personality and has a woman just throwing themselves at the man, overcome with lust.

Also there the fact that women seem to rarely approach men and some seem to often expect the man to do most of the sexual escalation, especially in the early stages.

We talk about women of color or women who are disabled being sexualized, but we don’t talk about how all straight men are desexualized and denied the ability to be sexualized object.

argumate

oh my god... that's why they send dick pics

"witness me!"

thefutureoneandall

There are occasional reddit threads about things like this: “guys who send unsolicited dick pics, why do you do it?”

The answer always seems to be some combination of slot machine mentality (“maybe this one will like it, and make the other 50 worthwhile”) and a desire for witness. Surprising numbers of people admit that it’s validation even if the reaction is negative, simply because they’re still being viewed in a totally sexual context.

At the very least that has obvious consequences for people trying to reduce dick pic sending. There’s some core of people who can’t possibly be reached with “it’s not attractive to women” because that was never their expectation.

More broadly, I think efforts to get (Western?) men to emphasize with objectification wildly underestimate the challenge they’re facing. It’s not just a sympathy shortage, it’s a totally unfamiliar feeling. Making things even harder, it’s a feeling a lot of men say they wish they could have.

The usual narrative on not (politely) complimenting the appearance of unknown women is “sure, it’s nice if it happens once, but think about how annoyed you’d be if it happened all the time”. Fine in general terms, but I think a lot of men don’t have any way to intuit the emotional difference between too-frequent compliments and being pestered with too much of something totally innocuous like requests for the date.

The comments on those articles are frequently from men saying they’ve literally never received a single compliment from a stranger on their appearance, and can’t imagine what it would be like. The ones who have are often talking about a single, years-old compliment they still cherish. That’s not a framework that supports more than a purely theoretical understanding of what’s it’s like to be valued for your appearance too heavily - or at all.

Obviously that’s not universal, any more than all women are catcalled, but it seems like a really serious communication failure to appeal to a sense of objectification that much of your audience has literally never felt, and desperately wants.

vessel-haver

Reblogged because thefutureoneandall describes exactly why I have trouble empathizing with feminism columnists.

corpus-vak

Can confirm, I'd take literally any compliment on anything at this point, and would cherish it.

argumate

one day we gotta get all the men and all the women to sit down together and hash this stuff out between them, how hard can it be.

arjan-de-lumens

This discussion kind of reminds me of a story that made the rounds about a year ago, where a woman, after having gotten a bit tired with dick pics, decided to try to get her “revenge” of sorts, by sending unsolicited vagina pics to 40 random men:

[Link to an article on Thrillist, with the title "We sent a preemptive v pic before dudes could send dick pics heres what happened"]

Let’s be honest: while I enjoy penises, I don’t necessarily want unexpected visual boners intruding on my day. I wondered, “What would guys do if I turned the tables and sent them an unexpected vagina pic?” And so, in my own twist on revenge porn, I sent 40 unexpected vagina pics to men on Bumble.

This … didn’t work out the way she apparently expected it to:

Overall, I was surprised that I didn’t get my, “Gotcha!” moment. I’d initially hoped the guys would see how invasive it is to receive such intimate photos from a stranger. When I’m excited to get to know a guy, his penis isn’t the first part of him that I want to know. But given that men like to send dick pics, I suppose their enthusiasm for v-pics makes sense.

So, basically, women experience dick picks as a net negative, as an intimacy violation, while men experience v-pics as a huge positive, as validation and an indicator of interest.

This seems consistent with the above discussion, where it’s a pretty common male experience to basically never receive any sexual attention ever and thus respond really strongly positively to whatever scraps come their way (or to start trolling for attention - with the point of some of these dick pics apparently being to get any attention at all, no matter how hostile), while a common female experience seems to be more like being flooded with unwanted sexual attention and wanting a way to make it stop -

resulting in an absolutely massive inferential gap - with the result that if you’re on one side of the gap and try to describe your feelings and experiences to the people on the other side, whatever words you have will just fall on deaf ears because the feeling and experiences you describe are … not just unfamiliar, but outright alien, to the ones on the other side.

This alienness is … mutual.

thej-key

For men, it feels like no men are sexy to women.

For women, it feels like all women are sexy to men.

It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.

thesocialjusticecourier

It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.

amakthel

the conversation has gotten longer, so i’m reblogging

the-real-seebs

... This is so cool. It actually makes sense.

jumpingjacktrash

but of course women are wary of just giving men compliments, because attention-starved men are likely to take it as a come-on. what a dilemma.

mikalhvi

So what I’m getting from this…

Is that my idea of taking popular types of fiction and essentially ‘flipping the script’ so that there are sexy male characters as ‘damsel in distress’ types would actually be very good and help a lot of people become comfortable with their sexuality?

jumpingjacktrash

it could well! i’m not the guy to answer this really, i’m queer and also i’ve always been pretty comfortable with being the one giving the compliments (and just asking for validation when i need it). but i do think there’s a place in the world for fiction where The Sexy One is male.

consider chris hemsworth in ghostbusters. that one’s a bit mean-spirited, with him being hilariously clueless, but you’ve got that dynamic where what he contributes is, he’s hot. that’s it. and i found it kind of a breath of fresh air, not because it was a fuck-you to sexist tropes, but because it’s never, ever enough for a guy to be attractive, but here it was, and that was fun to see.

BloomingBrains · 2022-09-15T05:08:33+00:00

I feel like this was posted on here before?

But yeah, its spot on. I pretty much feel that way every day and it makes me wanna cry.

Reckless-Pessimist · 2022-09-15T21:00:19+00:00

One aspect thats missed in this discussion is how male nudity is treated in media, its almost exlusively treated as humorous, whereas female nudity is almost always taken very seriously and treated as risque.

For a recent example lets look at Thor: Love and Thunder. The scene where the incredibly sexy Chris Hemsworth is forcibly derobed(by accident) in front of a massive crowd is played for laughs. If Chris Hemsworth nude is something thats only worthy of humor what chance does an average guy have of ever being viewed as sexy? This same situation would never happen to a female character in a modern mainstream piece of media, and if it did no one would be laughing.

AskingToFeminists · 2022-09-15T07:50:37+00:00

I guess it's time to repost the archive of the first meditation on privilege by Scott Alexander

carverchile75 · 2022-09-15T04:28:00+00:00

That is well thought out communication. I've had similar thoughts but never so articulate and clear. Kudos to all involved.

CzechoslovakianJesus · 2022-09-15T06:40:24+00:00

I'm reminded of the author of the Eighty-Six novels mentioning that what's sexy on men and what's sexy on women are totally different. That tight, revealing clothes look hot on women but dashing, authoritative uniforms make men sexy as fuck.

bashomatsuo · 2022-09-15T05:58:00+00:00

Women’s sexuality seems a contradiction. It isn’t.

My wife fancies Thor, and likes his body a lot.

Then she actually watches the latest Thor movie and complains his arms and muscles are not sexy.

What changed? Simple: she liked Thor in the first phase. The hero. The stoic true man. The cool, honourable, noble guy. His body was an obvious bonus. Being sexed by that guy would be awesome.

However, in the latest phase, he’s a goof. A prat. A fool. He makes stupid decisions, he’s childish and self centred. He messes up and is looked down on by his fellows. Suddenly, his body is no longer attractive. Screwing a foolish man is no women’s sexual fantasy.

I suspect the feeling is something akin to that of looking at porn just after orgasm.

If I want compliments from my wife, I 100% need to be like phase 1 Thor. After demonstrating those factors, my wife suddenly starts “checking me out” and all the hard work in the gym pays off. Big time.

The same with other women. I get sexually flirted with by some women. However, they are careful to not actually send a sexual signal that I might actually operate on. This is mainly because they wouldn’t want to fuck a guy cheating on his wife. That’s a Phase 4 Thor. I have to be ultimately unobtainable to be sexy to those women. The compliments I get from them, small as they are and often non-vocal, are treasured.

For me however, I find my wife sexy when I see her get up in the morning, body highlighted by the morning light through the window. It’s a purely aesthetic judgement. Her abilities as a mother and housewife factor little in my desire.

Men and women simply work differently. I suspect this is a deeper thing than simple “social construction”. Most things are. Much deeper.

Dick pics, especially unsolicited dicks pics, don’t trigger the right feelings. You want to send a dick pic? Send one of you while doing the washing up, or vacuuming. Still, the dick is a little too direct. Better to send a butt pic or shoulders while cuddling a cat. Just get the lighting right and do not look into the camera.

FightHateWithLove · 2022-09-15T19:02:00+00:00

I really wish more conversations about gender could have this much all around empathy.

34T_y3r_v3ggi3s · 2022-09-16T16:14:32+00:00

I still remember a girl complementing me on my Nirvana shirt six years ago. That's how little I get compliments from women, despite being pretty good looking.

Richardsnotmyname · 2022-09-18T13:03:47+00:00

“It’s like someone dying from dehydration while watching another person drown”

Probably while hearing that they have it a lot better because they’re not drowning too.

DaoScience · 2022-09-15T09:07:32+00:00

This is insightful and true

RockmanXX · 2022-09-15T15:25:27+00:00

I don't like where this conversion is going, the focus needs to be on creating a culture where we compliment Men on a day to day basis and not just getting Women to compliment Men.

Let's say, i buy the excuse that Women are just "afraid" of a man simply misconstruing casual compliments for romantic interest. What is the excuse men have for not complimenting each others and treating each others with hostility or cold indifference? Ultimately, this is just about being accepted&valued and if we men refuse to accept&value each other as humans, then we can't point fingers at Women!

Title	An Interesting tumblr conversation about ale undersexualization and how it affects the discussion around female oversexualization
Author	Forgetaboutthelonely
Upvotes	160
Comments	70
Date	September 15, 2022 3:53 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/xeme1k/an_interesting_tumblr_conversation_about_ale/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/an-interesting-tumblr-conversation-about-ale.1132951 https://theredarchive.com/post/1132951

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