Idk being more social after covid has made me more conservative. A lot of behavior that I assumed was exclusively online turned out to be surprisingly common in real life.
A lot of the sexism parts in particular were jarring. A significant minority of grown ass women basically used #metoo as leverage to behave in a sexist and immature manner. There’s also a culture where other women are extremely reluctant to call out that behavior, or else they might be accused of “internalizing their sexism” and not sufficiently supporting women. I dismissed the postings about that as incel-bait during the pandemic, but it turns out it’s extremely common.
So my post was explicitly about how I dismissed a lot of things I read on the internet as BS until I encountered them in real life. The part about “ethnical non monogamy” was something I didn’t truly believe until I saw it more than once, including some explicit details at a 4th of July party provided by a wife with a visibly uncomfortable husband.
What is your definition of “outside”?
What behaviors do you mean and how does that correlate to being conservative?
So the behaviors are the same kind of things that you’ve seen forever among people who can get away with it. Immaturity, bigotry, cruelty, etc. However I myself am a liberal, and live in a liberal area of the country. A lot of people use liberal rhetoric to behave in an objectively toxic way, often by coding criticism of their actions as conservative or the toxic actions themselves as liberal.
I mentioned sexism from women, so I’ll focus on that:
- As I mentioned earlier, a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them. This is often talked about as a sort of a sexual identity, with the implication that hating on this is the same as hating on a gay relationship or a woman who chooses to be single.
- As I mentioned earlier, women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.
- In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”. This assumption is not only a massively sexist generalization, but is never logical. If a man is tall and built he gets the benefit of the doubt, despite being objectively more of a threat than a short chubby guy. The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift. This is despite the fact that my SO is often not with me, and that there are a million different true crime stories involving a heterosexual couple both being evil. All of this is justified with progressive #metoo rhetoric
- There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding. When things inevitably go wrong they make sweeping statements about men. Despite this being more or less nonsense, it’s considered sexist to call them out.
- There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.
- Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.
- This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.
Of course, sexism is just one example. I use it because I find this stuff is the most egregious. I also have a lot of frustration about other things, most notably shitty people making a huge deal about how much they love drag queens in what I view as an effort to obfuscate from how shitty and judgmental they are.
My response to all of this has been to become more conservative. Note the delta. I’m not conservative. However I am also in no way shape or form a progressive anymore. I don’t think liberals have nearly the moral superiority they think they do when it comes to how you treat people on a day to day basis. I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment. I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.
Gonna be honest with you, these all mostly sounds like toxic masculinity, which isn’t really dealt with well by conservatives, mostly because they don’t like critical thinking and all that.
a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them
Um, I actually think it’s the opposite? It’s not cheating if all partners consent. If you don’t want to date someone who is ENM, then… don’t? Most ENM people don’t want to date monogamous people! That’s why you tell everyone before you do it (that’s the ethical part.)
women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.
I don’t see the problem here? Is it bad to support women, or is it that they somehow support bad women? Do men not do similar?
In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”.
This has some truth to it, and while I understand that this is, indeed, a sexist take, it’s one that is perpetuated by a patriarchal culture. Men have unreasonable standards thrust upon them the same way women do, but the standards are not necessarily equal in how they affect us, even on an individial level. Men are indeed seen as more violent as a whole, just as women are seen as sex objects as a whole, and working to change those societal pressures to conform to them is the point of pointing to “toxic masculinity.” There are good aspects to masculinity to admire, that we can try to positively adopt those, the same way that women try to adopt positive aspects of feminimity!
I actually see this the worst among conservative men and women. Conservative men and women tell you to “man up”, that “men don’t cry”, that you need to “take it with your own hands”, the idea of “alpha and beta males”. Very aggressive, and that’s a toxic mindset. The hard part about those cultural aspects is that they DO affect us all! Part of feminism is undersranding these biases within yourself and actively working to change them.
The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift
This actually goes both ways, too. Women very often have to tell men they aren’t interested, trying to tell them gently that they are taken. (There is the joke of “I have a boyfriend.” out of the blue to the most innocuous things.) This is a consequence of a society that pushes men to be the active pursuer of relationships. It is, frankly, stressful to have every interaction possibly be taken as a signal that you want a relationship. It is easy for me to understand their perspective because it feels like how my PTSD manifested. Trauma is hard to deal with, and being understanding and accomodating can also be hard, too.
There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding.
Very much applies to anyone of any gender, so I’m not sure of the issue. I have seen this in cis-men, cis-women, trans-men, trans-women, enbies, gay men, lesbian women, and so on. This is not exclusive to women, and never will be.
- There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.
Okay? Don’t date them? I don’t see the issue, but discussing your partners isn’t particularly weird, and men do this too, and if it bothers you, well, don’t date anyone who does it.
- Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.
There’s some truth to that. Women are, ostensibly, an oppressed group, having less rights than men do, as well as being the one responsible when they get pregnant. They maintain a level of risk that most men do not have to face (though you could consider it a different type of risk, since men also face their own adversities that women typically do not.)
However, that’s irrelevant because none of the things you listed were women-exclusive behaviors, but I figured I would explain why it might be important just in case.
- This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.
Don’t date them, then? I mean, I get it. I like when my dates offer to split, and I do judge them if they don’t. But it’s definitely silly to bring up as though they aren’t a feminist for engaging in that behavior. Progress is made incrementally, and sometimes we aren’t aware lf our own biases.
I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment.
Hey man, monogamy is a dating choice, just like ENM. No one makes you have to be one or the other. It is okay to be monogamous, but no one has ever oppressed monogamous people.
I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.
It is really weird to me that you thought calling people weird for legitimately fascist behavior as a way of denormalizing that behavior was somehow a step too far, but the behavior that provoked it wasn’t, as if they hadn’t attempted to call the behavior out beforehand and were ignored.
If that was gonna dissuade you, then I think you might have bigger problems.
No one maybe talking about lookism but they’re practicing it.
Between strangers, yes. For social groups, people tend to stop seeing each others looks as they get to know each other. This is where people’s advice to work on your personality is necessary. If you’re out just expecting random people to approach you because of your looks, you’re going to be waiting around for a long time unless you’re blessed with the lucky quality of being born gorgeous.
If you go outside more you also notice that there aren’t a lot of gorgeous people in the real world. (No, Tinder, clubs and other places where people LARP don’t count as the real world.)
Wait, really? Whenever I spend more time at work or at home I tend to forget how many really attractive people are really out there. Whenever I go out after a long period of time I end up being positively surprised. I would also not look at Tinder as an example, but because of the opposite: people on tinder look much uglier than in real life. But then again, usually outside you don’t look at people for more than one or two seconds, while on tinder there’s loads of photos for you to examine every single flaw
I suppose everyone is different, but most people tend to agree that photos are often misleading in one way or another. Typically though, photos tend to flatten features and as you said, accent and display flaws for people to stare at, whereas in real life, people are “alive” and dynamic and you see that “flaw” was actually just an angle or photo-artifact, and people’s expressions can provide a sense of dynamic life and motion that most people find more agreeable on an aesthetic level.
But more than anything, face-to-face socializing is incredibly important because when you get to know someone, their appearance changes.
Not a deluding-yourself kind of way like some people think, but literally your sense of what you find appealing will change. This is why again, social friend groups are the best places to meet people, you don’t have to feel as insecure about your appearance if you can socialize and make friends, people will associate you with positive feelings, and you them, and you will all become familiar and attractive to each other in one way or another.
Exactly.
Honestly, if I was dating today, I probably wouldn’t select my SO based on looks, because let’s face it, we’re both getting older and a bit less attractive. But that literally doesn’t matter to me and I find them beautiful, because of the life we’ve spent together. I was initially attracted to them based on looks, but after some weeks, that really didn’t matter any more.
Likewise with friends, I probably initially made my friends based on looks, but I honestly don’t care what they look like anymore, they’re just my friends.
Lemmy in a nutshell too tbh.
Yes leftism is just as bad as incel misogyny, I also live in a world without nuance.
go outside
interact with people
nobody is talking about linux
nobody is talking about the bad thing that amazon did today
nobody is talking about self hosting or privacy
everyone just having normal and relatively pleasant conversation and going on with their day
I’m not having that experience at all as a member of lemm.ee and I am very thankful.
Because online, people only talk about those things.
In the real world, they are doing them. And so much more. But usually when you’re not looking.
Basically a better version of the post since I was writing that in the morning while I was half asleep
My classmates are full on degenerates and call the milk that’s in the refill machine in our school’s cafeteria “boy milk”
Yes I know it’s awful, I don’t know if i got down voted because they do that or because half asleep me couldn’t write a legible post