I haven't posted here in a while, and in general I haven't argued and debated gender issues online much for a while. I like to think my approach to these issues is rational and intellectual, but the reality is that I stopped becoming inspired to argue these things all the time...because things are going a bit better for me in my own life.

I've often agreed with the ideas set forth in a blog like this one: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/ , which asserts that lonely men online are being 'radicalized' by the hostile, cruel environment that meets them when they try to talk to women about their problems on the internet. I was one of those guys. In what, in retrospect, has to be one of the dumbest decisions of my life, I went to places like r/AskWomen , and bared my soul, fell upon their mercy, asked 'what's wrong with me', etc. As someone who was bullied as a teen, I think the hurtful things I heard from that experience are easily on the same level.

So, I faced what mentally seemed like a huge uphill battle, and also an environment I perceived as completely unaccepting of my thoughts and feelings, which would have to be hidden and kept secret, because no woman would understand. And yes, a certain bitterness and hostility was there as well. This creates such distance and impersonal relationships with women (which is completely counterproductive to what the SJW's seemed to desire, but more on that later). I was a horny, desperate dude, jerking off to porn and thinking how amazing it would be to not have to just imagine things.

So, what changed? Well, simply, and thankfully, some of my bad experiences were joined by good ones. I say 'good' in the sense that they led to a healthier frame of mind. First, I met someone online who was really into me, and I wasn't actually all that into her. I was surprised just how fact I went from "oh good, attention" to avoiding wanting to talk to her. And while that's not seemingly a good experience, it was in the sense that it was the first blow to some of the "grass is so much greener" pining I was doing for what other people were experiencing and not me.

Also, I went to a strip club one night on a whim. I'd been to strip clubs before, but not for a long time, and I'd imagined it would involve a cold exchange for money for a 3-minute lap dance with restricted touching and nothing more (which is why it didn't typically appeal to me). Instead I met a girl there who was more in the mentality of, "I like to party, so I might as work at a strip club and get paid for it." She went above and beyond. We spent a couple of hours talking, groping, and pretty much violating every soft rule of strip clubs except actually having penetrative sex. That first, "Can I touch your ass," being met with, "Of course!", followed by a renewed sense of how 'easy' it can be to get certain things I craved, as well as the reminder that those things were not automatically mind-blowingly awesome. I mean, asses feel nice, but it's not like some revelation to touch one or something. A porn-only life makes you forget these things.

So, confidence gained, and with a renewed sense of reality, I subsequently went online and did some Tinder and OKCupid searching. It made me additionally realize just how burned to a cinder old-school chivalry is, how much this is no longer a 'do for the woman' kind of paradigm, and really is just about blunt honesty and sex for many people. Sex isn't the end-all, it's just a fun activity that involves rubbing bodies together and other shit like that. And if someone can't handle openness, it's their problem, not yours. Not saying I'm getting laid all the time or anything, but that I'm far more comfortable with how things are, and feel I have options.

A couple of other things coincided with these experiences. I had a good conversation with a female friend which involved not getting my head bitten off when expressing my horny desperation-created feelings, which was a change from what I had come to expect. Also, recently I started making more money - it's weird, because I almost feel like women can smell on me or something that I'm now financially more solvent. Literally nothing else changed, not my weight or wardrobe...did my behavior and confidence change in some subtle way because of it that even I wasn't aware of?

Looking back on how I was, I totally now get a 'what the hell was I thinking.' "I was thinking of asking every cute 19-year-old in a supermarket for a date? Ugh, dude, that's way too young for you. Why do you really need to be asking random girls out at their job, anyway? Just go to bars and online where people are looking for that sort of thing." I think I now kind of get how in very sexually 'open' societies, like Sweden, asking a stranger out like that is considered weird, and how in sexually repressed societies, like in much of the Arab world, it's considered not okay for a man and a woman to even be alone in a house together, because all that repressed sexuality actually DOES lead to those people thinking about taking that simple opportunity to fuck each other more than it might in Sweden.

So, this is how I was 'defused'. It doesn't last forever. I find about a month or so without real-life female contact, and porn land starts tempting my mind down the old road again (which is where I am right now...maybe why I'm posting here again). But this time I think I'll remember the key lessons. The takeaway I think it's this: Desperation and loneliness happen. They happen to entirely decent people. It can create a really nasty, self-sustaining cycle too, and it's important to understand how that happens, and not judge someone too negatively for it. In fact, hearing that negative shit just pushes someone father down the anti-social path; radicalizes them, like in the blog post. This is opposite of what we want. That creepy guy, and the guy you wished he was replaced with, can be *the same fucking guy*, just with some surprisingly minor changes of circumstance.