it's offensive but why do people of a higher socioeconomic class seem to be less "gendered" than poorer people?

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-07T16:51:14+00:00

I remember an article about those trickle down behaviors I read recently.

Sounds like Rob Henderson's writings on luxury beliefs.

Where the upper classes play with things like gender, fluidity, polyamory etc. and it becomes their signifiers (which lower classes copy and that has disastrous consequences for society at large) but the kids who played with those things return back to Olympus get married have kids and all that shine dissipates.

You can see this by tracking marriage rates over the last half-century, which trend in the opposite direction of what you'd expect.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-07T16:48:22+00:00

lot of gender is innate and you keep rambling on about social influences by giving us this grand story with a historical perspective that isn't really true

A lot of gender is innately based on sex but it exists on a spectrum within populations. The enforcement of gender norms, which involves dismissing outliers as aberrant and wrong, isn't natural.

Then refute it. Since you elected to use a general insult, I'll assume you're incapable of doing so.

gays and lesbians are gendered differently and their environments dont really affect them the way you say they do.

In terms of natural inclinations, gays and lesbians have very similar distributions to the heterosexual population with slightly more expression at the opposite ends (male-feminine and female-masculine). That's why you can have butch lesbians, lipstick lesbians, and everything in-between without any contradiction. If anything, you're echoing the TRA mindset that claims gender/sex is constitutive of the other.

Furthermore, we're not talking directly about gays and lesbians. We're talking about gender roles within certain classes.

we're discussing deep psychological levels of what people call "gender", not something that comes from cultural instruction.

Status is one of the most primal drives motivating the individual psyche and it greatly influences how we act in the presence of peers. The existence of this subreddit is the inadvertent byproduct of that.

Ask yourself this: why did the Ts rise to the top of the pile of oppression? Why did they fight to be recognized as such in the first place? Why do they cry foul about prejudice while threatening, demeaning and demanding sex from those who are supposedly their compatriots? Why did this demographic shift engender abandoning and labeling dissidents within the LGB community as TERFs, haters, troublemakers and ignoramuses? And why did previous allies in the public arena - primarily liberal and leftist advocates in the upper-middle and upper classes - fall completely silent, pretending this conflict either didn't exist or was a one-sided account of bigotry?

All these behaviors make sense if you see the major players as attempting to accrue in-group status within social circles where the parameters for what makes one 'good' are nebulous and everchanging.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-06T05:23:19+00:00

You literally just pulled the “how can they be homophobic If they’re not afraid of gay men” 12 year old response.

Go take it up with the APA and the Oxford Dictionary.

it seems that your understanding of homophobia is incredibly superficial since you think it directly deals with gay men. Homophobia isn’t directed at gay people because some gay man stole a heterosexual’s sandwich 900 years ago and we’re learning to reconcile because of that conflict. You’re intentionally being dishonest and childish here.

Funny how you're consistently inventing ad hominem accusations with no proof but I'm the bad guy.

I’ve read some of jane Austen’s works. Whats the point of bringing them up as if you’re some sort of scholar in women’s literature?

I know despite your sophistry, you're a bit too thickheaded to grasp any point that's not framed as a incendiary polemic. So let me explain it in language a child can understand:

Popular fantasies among women are based on what they lack access to. These can be divided into two categories: things that are taboo and things beyond their present capacity to obtain. These are contingent on what women expect from life. I illustrated this by comparing popular women's literature from 200 years ago to the present day and explaining how the social + material circumstances influenced stated desires.
Fujoshi (women who read yaoi) read violent yaoi in order to project their desire for powerful, masculine men onto gay couples. They do this specifically for gay men because it's considered socially inappropriate within their circles to read similar erotica with women as the main character - it offers plausible deniability. Is it offensive towards gay men? Yes. Is it stark evidence of homophobia? No more than a Samantha Price novel "proves" regular heterosexuals has a phobia of Amish people.
The mania over dominance, sexual and otherwise, comes from the absence and unfamiliarity with masculinity in their own lives. Women in the 18th century didn't fantasize about being sexually dominated by men since men had most of the rights and privileges in that arena. These fujoshis are mostly naive young girls and women who haven't experience assault and rape firsthand; victims dream of escaping domestic assault. Getting punched in the face, and experiencing the terror and pain firsthand, would solve this problem (in a brutally efficient, fucked up way).
Since the audience, by and large, have access to sex/material comfort/career and social opportunities, their fantasies blow up the object of desire to extreme levels. In the past, women ate up stories about being courted by petty nobles and landowners. Prosperity and free time inflates the demand to unrealistic standards like immortal werewolves and supergeniuses with six-packs. Do women believe these are pragmatic options in their future? For most of them, no. Do they want what they symbolically mean? Absolutely.
Women like bad boys for numerous reasons. But what constitutes a bad boy depends on the culture and social norms. 70 years ago, it was riding a motorcycle with a black jacket and smoking with an ineffable cool drawl. Previously women dreamed about freedom and choice in love because they didn't have those experiences; now they crave being controlled and dominated with lust for the same reason. A craving to witness, or instigate, violence is not innate in women - it is a byproduct of modern gender norms. In one sense, it's the dilemma of current feminism: telling them what they desire is wrong only sanctifies the taboo and makes them yearn for it more. No different than their father's warning to avoid that troublesome, handsome boy hanging around at the corner.

Your basic complaint is rabid fujoshis are representative of all heterosexual women (fallacy of composition right there) and what women fantasize about in their minds represents what they want in the real world. The latter is only partially true in the sense that dreams reflect our anxieties and obsessions in reality. Here's a secret: when most heterosexual guys want porn, they don't actually want a big penis like the male talent. They want the self-assurance and confidence to be sexually entitled that they erroneously attribute to the penis itself. That's why they call it a fetish.

You’re not doing a very good job obfuscating and deflecting the flaws within heterosexual/bisexual female sexuality

You're doing a bad job pretending this is nothing more than a bad faith argument where you can flash your nonexistent credentials in order to police a discussion. If you want to grow up and stop waving around your internet wiener in a bout of ego insecurity, I'll be waiting.

especially when homosexuals (both gays and lesbians) constantly complain bisexuals share the exact same flaws as highly gendered heterosexuals.

Again, your "NO, YOU" gambit fails. Frankly, your obsession with bisexuals and inserting them into arguments where they are at best tangential to the topic is bizarre and more indicative of your priorities than anything else. Let's also not pretend biphobia isn't a problem within the gay community itself. Oh yes, I'm quite aware.

You can’t exactly hide the overwhelming majority of women’s underlying expectations of men since they’re regularly stated by women themselves and heterosexual men won’t stop complaining about them.

You're cherry-picking when you take women at their word. Should I assume looks don't matter and they truly want equal partnerships by the same logic because the majority state so? Most don't want to get beaten up, kidnapped, threatened, gaslit or tortured in real life period. It's ridiculous I have to point out this obvious fact.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-06T04:16:10+00:00

My highly cynical answer:

First, we have to note this is a recent development in human culture. In the past, stratification and differentiation in gender roles were most prominent among the elite and least noticeable among the poor e.g. look at Heian Japan, ancient Rome, Byzantine Empire, New Kingdom of Egypt, and so on. Money and leisure time constituted strong incentives to push the upper class towards such a dichotomy: it takes considerable energy and time to learn the nuances of a gender role, especially when said role is constantly in flux depending on the political and cultural milieu of the day. For the impoverished lower class, they are too busy with prosaic duties to maintain attention on the vagaries of a culture far removed from them. That's why in small rural villages, you can find general trends of gender distinction that last thousands of years unchanged.

The main reasons are the elite's primal need to discriminate and the more uniform distribution + access to capital in post-WWII society. Every minor, unpleasant aspect you mention about the poor - ostentatious plastic surgery, insistence on enforcing gender rules, the careful analysis of behavior to distinguish ordinary people from homosexuals - constituted the previous verbal and visual language the rich used to signal their status to each other. Once upon a time only the rich could afford specialized surgery as a matter of leisure; the prejudices and perceptions of country bumpkins were derived from intellectual theories on homosexuality decades in the past (eugenics and sterilization of gays was a popular topic among them too); there are reams of evidence from the Victorian era, 10th century Japan, the courts of Versailles, blah blah blah denoting the exact specifics and ritualistic behaviors that 'proper' men and women were required to observe in the courts. This also applies to the history of makeup (a fascinating subject in itself), skin tone, clothing, the advent of PC language in the professional sphere, and a hundred different things. All these areas, developed and refined by the privileged, gradually trickled down and were absorbed via osmosis.

But now that ordinary people have the money and time to imitate their betters, it no longer makes the upper class special from an ontological perspective. Wealth and status were always justified by the belief rich people had special access to the true nature of the world, an understanding that preclude any disturbance in the social order (1). Instead, they have to adapt new beliefs and behaviors to distinguish themselves from the crass lowlifes and dollar-store replicas. Most of these new philosophies and rules of conduct were nurtured in urban, academic grounds or among revolutionary groups that were foreign to the average American. Tom Wolfe wrote extensively about this in Radical Chic.

Clear displays of gender, still prominent within the lower and middle classes, rank among the first things that must go if one wants to be perceived as enlightened.

(1) If you want proof, I can partially cite the ancient texts from memory where this motif is repeated. It is also a repeating cycle whenever the merchant class accrues enough power to copy the material success of the upper class, embodied by "old money" versus "new money" tensions.

i know our social climate now is to "hate the rich", but why do their personalities and genders seem more decent, human and why do the wealthy heterosexual males just seem more..."gay" or decent or kind?

They are inundated with soft social training from a young age on how to navigate public life. Parents, private school, university, social circles...it takes decades to cultivate this type of demeanor as an automatic reflex. The ones eager for acceptance and ambitious for status adapt the new standards (in this case, based on liberal-centric and progressive philosophy) to progress in the relevant domains. Of course, this largely teaches them how to avoid coming off as bad people instead of installing a sense of morality.

Do wealthy people hide it better? Is it hiding inside of them or are they completely transformed? Why are they exempt from this?

Judging from their terrible behavior behind closed doors - I can only speak from a perspective within Hollywood - they are better at hiding it and far worse when exploiting it.

The elite have an unshakeable tendency to arrogate moral supremacy as their birthright. They co-opt movements to render them impotent, adopt the language of minority groups for probity's sake, and an opportunistic nose for detecting which way the wind is shifting. For me, it's hard to view most of their external performances as little more than facade. I'm too familiar with how they wield their power to give wealthy people the benefit of the doubt.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-06T03:21:39+00:00

I think the case here is that committing crimes is considered "masculine".

Not all crimes rank equally on the scale. Hybristophilia is largely reserved for murder, physical assault, robbery and other deeds that involve force; it is notably absent for embezzlement, wire fraud, hacking databases and misdemeanors of an abstract nature.

Men also sexually select for traits that seem illogical for a healthy relationship, such as youth (often too young to carry out a pregnancy without serious risk, despite being fertile).

Men are usually not attracted to adolescents. The age deemed most sexually attractive, regardless of age, hovers around 21-22. That's fine for a pregnancy.

The common denominator here is that it's the woman whose being harmed. Thousands of years of a culture of female subjugation will do that to a woman.

That's a blanket statement that lacks casual or explanatory power. We can't blame every inconvenience on the bad ol' patriarchy as if that illuminates the topic, especially when women writers routinely tackle verboten subjects such as incest and bestiality.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-06T03:06:36+00:00

thats just a form of gaslighting to dismiss the underlying homophobia straight women are responsible for perpetuating and inflicting.

By definition this is not a phobia, which involves overwhelming irrational fear/disgust towards the object in attention. Using gay men as props for a fantasy is not synonymous with being scared of them. You can be equally offended at being objectified for another's benefit, and I doubt any sober observers would claim debacles like the Harry Styles saga aren't extremely harmful.

Heterosexual men are highly regulated by...heterosexual/bisexual women. And they do it through homophobia. They call their boyfriends/husbands FGGTS if they don't take out the trash, or do their "manly duties" or perform their gender roles and whatever their expectations are within the relationship.

Yes, women use the threat of diminished respect to keep men in check. Men are particularly weak to being judged as sexually undesirable - just look at how 'incel' is the default slur hurled towards them - and women understand this.

Their underlying expectations within the relationship include violence and they heavily eroticize it. Yes, they dont like the consequences of the oppression but they dont have the ability to not respect a non violent or non threatening man, hence "the bad boy". The bad boy isnt some ridiculous "twisted caricature" of masculinity. He IS masculinity. They cant conceive of any other kind. The violence, the rape, the killing. They yearn for that BUT they expect to be the exception. That he's a menace to society and can be used, manipulated and wielded against other people.

Well, it's a twisted caricature because nobody can realistically match these standards and it runs counter to a man's conception of masculinity.

Like I mentioned before, the erotization of male-on-female violence is a recent development. A cursory familiarity with the genre suggests a strong correlation with women's relative freedom and autonomy within society.

When the threat of violence loomed like a ubiquitous presence and women had restricted responsibilities, popular fantasies dwelled on social mobility, freedom of choice (in breaking social norms) and acquiring improved status through marriage/education. The heroine's triumph was an escape from the drudgery of day-to-day life as well as reifying the ambition of obtaining a portion of power enjoyed by the opposite sex. Just look at Jane Austen's contemporaries or "Amish girl" literature. By the same token, the man showed his love through restraint and a measure of compassion. Hitting a woman was easy regardless of affection.
By contrast, the notion of powerful men restricting, controlling, and threatening women by force becomes a common trope and gains traction within the genre as women gain power, influence, and sovereignty in both private and public life. Once social mobility, education, and freedom in love turned into everyday realities, they stop being eligible as turn-ons or aspirations. Women can accomplish all of these without associating with men. What's left? Sexual prowess and status. It's no wonder these two aspects become inflated to preposterous degrees in modern erotica. Edward Rochester can't contend with an immortal vampire, a 25-year-old billionaire magnate, or an Italian mob heir who can kidnap his object of affection at a whim.

Additionally, male violence becomes synonymous with power as it's one of the last taboos in modern Western culture; men can't hit women publicly without being denounced into a hundred different ways. The prospect of a (handsome, rich) man ignoring social convention and "putting her in her place" transforms into a strange, fascinating possibility instead of a depressing fact. But in order to enable physical domination, the men in these fantasies must possess a sociopathic, cruel streak that makes them completely indifferent to shame or morality.

The overwhelming majority of straight/bi women have these expectations of men.

Eh, I doubt that. I don't know why you insist bisexuals share the same proclivities as heterosexuals either.

Let's not be inconsistent here and respect feminist screeds against porn and its underlying dynamics that are presented as erotic and "dangerous" and then consider those desires a perverted, unhealthy and toxic form of sexual dynamics revealing a fundamental core of someone's character that needs to be changed when it comes to heterosexual male porn and the abuse they enjoy but then close our eyes and ears when straight/bisexual women have an ocean's worth of yaoi/literature doing the exact same thing.

Who's "we"? I never claimed to endorse or rely on feminist critiques of porn.

Yes, we know they dont want to physically be stabbed but they sure do heavily desire someone capable of doing the stabbing over someone who doesnt. Thats a deep part of their sexuality that they need to focus on.

Yes, many women associate violence with power in their fantasies. It's perhaps the sole tangible aspect that distinguishes men from women in the realm of relationships. There are many different streams feeding into that murky lake.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-05T23:36:25+00:00

I understand why people might like to read about taboos, or kink or the unobtainable. But it is this specific type which I struggle with, because the reverse is so obviously wrong. If I found gay male rape a traumatic topic yet found stories about straight women being raped erotic it would seem deeply hypocritical and twisted.

It's helpful to think about yaoi as a framework of substitution. The super duper hyper-alpha billionaire with a 12 inch wiener is the object of desire, while the innocent underaged boy is the vessel through which the girl lives the ups and downs of the fantasy (note how the victim tends to be stereotypically feminine to an absurd degree, like a cartoon of a sensitive teenager in a English romance). Whether gay relationships operate in this manner, whether it's immoral to create, indulge and propagate this type of fiction, is immaterial to its consumers.

I understand your suggestion it omits the terrible consequences, but only because they are othering the objects of degradation ie: it’s hot if it happens to people like me, and upsetting if it happens to people like them.

To be fair, self-objectification is the purpose. The aforementioned modern movies are all fantasies about vulnerability, domination, and humiliation within a heterosexual context. Through certain types of degradation, the readers find freedom and emotional fulfillment.

Using yaoi as the vehicle is probably a way to avoid competing impulses. Twilight and its ilk been routinely criticized as anti-feminist and demeaning towards women, so anyone who enjoys it is forced into a defensive posture from the onset ("why do you like this book that badly represents girls and socializes them into unhealthy relationships?"). By using male gay relationships, they can experience the fantasy vicariously while denying that the situation applies to them.

I suppose I also find it disturbing because gay men being raped as punishment by straight people is not uncommon on a world wide scale - obviously this done by men with power in repressive counties or the prison system, but the idea that some straight women might find that hot ... and like to tell each other stories about it is pretty grim.

As another poster noted women often sexually select for traits that seem illogical for a healthy relationship. In particular, hybristophilia is almost entirely woman-exclusive and most prominent towards serial killers of women.

PosthumousScholar · 2021-05-05T21:24:24+00:00

Gay male relationships are hardly perfect, but I also have wondered if some of these stories by straight women reveal thier underlying expectations that sexual violence is a normal part of relationships. Straight relationships have a range of unhealthy assumptions within them, which is not really present in same sex relationships.

I think it's the inverse in two aspects. When it comes to sexual fantasies, the focus is typically on an expression of desire that's either taboo or unattainable. If the audience for these stories believe sexual violence was a regular facet of relationships, there would be no point in incorporating it into the story - it would be too passe and (daresay) unerotic.

For example, comparing modern erotica to 18th/19th century analogies illustrate wildly different attitudes towards male-instigated violence. It would seem utterly bizarre to fluff writers of the latter to depict male-on-female violence as hot. The prospect of a man becoming physical was omnipresent via fatherly discipline, a husband losing his temper, or a wicked stranger stalking you in the street. It was something to be respected and feared, not dreamed about. In those older books, for both popular and more serious works, the man sacrifices the appearance of dominance to form a true, vulnerable emotional connection (e.g. Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, etc.). Giving up the opportunity to use his superior status and physical strength to address a situation is proof he loves her. It was even a common trope to use the act of a man hitting a woman as a sign their relationship was irreparably broken.

Additionally, the breaking of the taboo is not to be taken literally but symbolically. When straight women obsess over tawdry literature with prominent depictions of rape or threats of rape, they don't want to be violated in real life: the goal is emotional release within a carefully constructed fiction that omits truly terrible consequences. The woman is taken because the preparator is overcome with genuine lust for her, but she's never beaten/imprisoned/abandoned/cannibalized/gaslit and the guy eventually falls in love with her since he's secretly a sweetheart on the inside that needs the right woman to rescue him. So on and so forth.

In my reading, the type of yaoi stories OP is flabbergasted about are twisted caricatures of the type of masculinity their audiences sexually yearns for. Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey and 365 Days, among others, showcase the same type of dynamic.

PosthumousScholar