The “Gold Star” Problem

funk_transcender · 2021-04-03T05:24:45+00:00

Thank you for the reply. I actually had to go off this site for a couple of months after this whole conversation and have a breather, since it was feeling too toxic. It means a lot my emotional vent at least offered some solace to at least one person feeling the same. I'm pretty happy to come back and see the fixation on this topic seems to have settled down a bit, thank god.

funk_transcender · 2021-04-03T04:57:46+00:00

I wasn't doing too great pre-pandemic honestly, I was still recovering from a toxic relationship. During the pandemic, it's been a bit rough. I joined a fully remote company just as the pandemic was starting to kick off (and I truly only joined the company so I could work remotely...), and the job has been pretty rough, and when you combine that with living alone in lockdown... it's really hard. Most of the human interaction i have is with coworkers I don't particularly like being fairly critical over zoom.

Vaccinations are being rolled out now fairly speedily in the UK, and the lockdown is soon to come to an end. My biggest fear honestly is what I will do after things are mostly back to normal. I've been in survival mode for a while, knowing that I wasn't very happy in life, but I had an excuse to lean on. My fear is that when this all happens, the isolation I'm going through will hit me on a whole other level when I suddenly see people walking about in parks, going out for drinks, anything...

I moved in with a friend (honestly, more of an acquaintance) after the previous relationship broke down, since I was already isolated and didn't want to be living alone during lockdown. We had a pretty awful falling out a week ago, and in general I realised over the course of living together that he is a completely different person to who I thought. It's really different knowing someone in university and them being in the same friendship circles and living with them. I knew the idea of moving in with him was probably a bit of a risk, but I really wasn't expecting he was the kind of person to shout at me in the middle of a petty disagreement and making really derogatory comments about my appearance. He also wasn't even in the house for most of lockdown anyway, so I was living alone for significant chunks of time

So yeah, honestly I'm really struggling. I'm thinking about getting some counselling, but that might have to wait a month. When the gyms reopen, I'm going to have to sign up just to be doing something different honestly. Maybe I'll change jobs and do something in an office, but I work as a software developer and as much as there are good people in the industry, there really is a 'bro' culture that puts me off spending >40hrs with these people in close physical proximity hearing locker room talk all day 🤢. I'll probably move to another city as well, I just don't know where at this point.

I had also met someone, we got along really well and clicked, and were going to be meeting up and seeing where things go, but after 3 months of intimate conversations and late night calls, she decided she didn't want this anymore. With the above mentioned, I obviously wasn't in the right place really to be in a relationship, but we connected on such a deep level and it all happened so organically I kind of thought normal rules wouldn't apply.

Jesus christ this was negative. The past 18 months have just been really rough. I know it has to get better at some point, it's just the when, how, and where, that leave me totally confused. I feel like 5 or 6 core things went wrong all at the same time, and then with the pandemic thrown in... it's just a lot, and there's days where it doesn't feel like there's enough of a foundation to rebuild up. I know I need to keep my head up, and at the very least I'm grateful to have a stable career right now.

funk_transcender · 2020-12-24T03:56:33+00:00

Also, in relation to OP, that trans person seems to just use the term 'goldstar lesbian' as a proxy to 'all lesbians', but that would just make their lesbophobia too transparent. I agree it's gross, and it's wrong that the term is used like this to basically project every negative lesbian stereotype in a way that is for whatever fucked up reason in certain social settings seen as 'more acceptable' or 'more nuanced'. My initial takeaway from the post is this is a mentally unhinged person in an environment full of mentally unhinged people who will enable whatever questionable lectures they come up with. Lesbians being pushed out of LGBT groups is unfortunately the norm now and this instance was just that.

Maybe I'm out of the loop on how the term is being used in mainstream LGBT circles, that would certainly contextualise more the sudden focus in this term. But I still think the best thing to do here is ditch the label entirely. It has misogynistic undertones to me, gay men to my knowledge do not have an equivalent term - and if they do, it holds no where near as much relevance. The existence and proliferation of this concept sincerely seems to be a lose-lose situation for lesbians.

funk_transcender · 2020-12-24T03:45:10+00:00

Honestly, there are so few of us, the last thing we need or want is breakaway groups and more division. I think I'm just a bit frustrated with the last couple of days of r/BiologicalLesbians where there seemed to be a new gold star-related post every other day.

It'd be great to live in a utopian world where homophobia didn't exist, lesbians were represented in the media in a healthy/classy/non-toxic way, where you didn't feel it necessary to deeply suppress being attracted to woman as a GNC woman who feels very 'different' to the woman around you, where 'lesbian' wasn't thrown at your face as an insult through your teen years, where woman not enjoying sex with men is normalised, where the nuclear family with a mother and father and 2.1 kids isn't glorified by society, etc.

It's not the world we live in though and frankly never will be, lesbians are always going to be a sexual minority and this species tends to have a lot of psychological complexes about sex. I'm truly happy for those who could come to terms with everything and I do admire them, but this implicit expectation that eventually every lesbian will be a goldstar is just not realistic and non-goldstar lesbians will always be a sizeable proportion of lesbians. Lesbians are still people and they have wide ranging personalities, some are introverted and neurotic, some are extroverted and extremely comfortable with themselves, some intensely care what those around them think, etc.

I know I can just avoid all those posts, and generally I do, but I think people who constantly bring up this gold star topic don't realise how uncomfortable it is to be thinking back to moments you deeply regret and that again are often mildly (or fully) traumatic to think about. It's not fun to have sex with someone you have zero capacity to be attracted too. It's awful. It comes from a place of deep denial and self-hatred. I would probably be more open to these conversations if the whole subject wasn't treated so casually honestly.

funk_transcender · 2020-12-24T02:40:01+00:00

This, in one sentence, pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole topic. I just find this subject exhausting and over-talked about honestly. It just seems to be a divisive label and I’m not sure why we wilfully perpetuate it. It plays zero role in who I want to date or what I think of a person. I don’t even know why you’d even be asking a potential partner if they’ve been with a man before... either they have and, they regret it, and probably find it quite traumatic to think about; if they haven’t, it appears they have their own issues about it too. Why constantly bring a magnifying glass to who did and didn’t fuck men? It’s bizarre. One thing I will say is I have zero tolerance for that BS in any relationship I find my self in. I’ve dealt with enough shame in my life, thanks.

funk_transcender · 2020-12-20T18:32:25+00:00

Unfortunately yesterday it was posted on several ‘against hate subreddits’ subs :/. What’s fucked up is that the sub really is very censored and mild, so it would really be infuriating if it got banned in the face of subs like TheRedPill still going... I no longer feel safe posting on it anymore, it’s just going to get brigaded and posters will be harassed...

funk_transcender · 2020-11-30T13:30:07+00:00

Yes. I'm TERRIBLE for this. I definitely want to take my next relationship a lot slower because I realise how unhealthy those whirlwind relationships are. I honestly think overall I'm pretty emotionally mature but I'm the most over the top romantic in the world and get infatuated very easily the minute I feel I have a connection with someone.

I will admit I'm actually very picky but as another commenter mentioned, there's very few people I feel I'm capable of forming a connection with and once I do I'm completely blind to any red flags.

At the same time I don't want to be a jaded person that enters every relationship on the defence... I find this 10x worse. I think the reason I let my self fall so hard is that I'm so passionately against being jaded about the one thing in life I'm not jaded about.

funk_transcender · 2020-11-30T13:11:09+00:00

Honestly I don't feel like I was the target age range for the film and I also don't do cheesy Xmas films very well... but it was pretty bad.

I do think it was more aimed at teenagers and if I saw this when I was a teenager I think I would've enjoyed it and probably related to it. Which is perfectly fine and it's great there's more LGBT representation in that respect. I do feel in many ways a lot of compromises were probably made to make this marketable towards a straight audience, hence all the male involvement. I think this is just inevitable really if you have a major studio investing heavily in a film like that. Baby steps I guess. At least it was tasteful and they were actually lesbians and there wasn't ongoing confusion about their sexuality or leaving their husband for a woman, etc.

But yeah it was full of plot holes, way too fast-paced and I definitely felt like Harper was terrible 😂.

funk_transcender · 2020-11-24T01:32:34+00:00

I'm 25 and in the UK.

Mum wasn't okay with it at first. I told her I was seeing a girl and she just said 'Oh for God's sakes', and kept referring to my girlfriend as my friend for the whole 3 years we were together. Towards the end she was open to possibly meeting her.

My dad was a lot more positive and accepting about it, and I think kind of always knew. He actually met my first girlfriend and was really nice to her.

When I got into my 2nd relationship my mum really liked my girlfriend and was completely fine with it. She would always ask to bring my gf along whenever we would be meeting up.

My extended family I'm not very close too anymore for reasons outside of that, but they're Irish Catholic and honestly very behind the times. AFAIK my Mum has told one uncle and aunt, who will have told everyone else (barring my grandparents). Not sure what they would think about it. My relationship is so damaged with my extended family it would be really hard to tell if that even would've made much of a dent despite their religious views.

funk_transcender · 2020-11-24T01:09:20+00:00

Yup, it sounds 50/50, you've either hit the jackpot or going to be able to dodge a bullet very easily.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-29T01:41:10+00:00

I read this based on this recommendation. So many mixed feelings! You were right on about the representation of a wholesome lesbian couple. For some reason this stuck to me so much - I'm 25, and I've been in several relationships, but I never realised I really needed a portrayal of this kind of selfless, non-toxic, non-warped power dynamics, love in a show. For my own sake. Again, all I can articulate it with is that it truly did stick with me.

But, alas, THAT ENDING!!!! I was a blubbering mess for hours 😂. I feel like we set the bar so low. It would be one thing if we had hundreds of rom coms and romance films, but for the ONE accurate portrayal to be in a horror movie where the wife ends up stuck for eternity in a lake frozen in time as this paranormal being??? DUDE. This kind of reminded me of a lesbian version of The Lakehouse. It's REALLY great we have something like that, but again, it feels like all we have.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-28T16:33:09+00:00

I'll have a look when my kindle charges :) honestly none of them were by major publishers - I really don't know where to start. I was kind of hoping there'd be a couple of ones where there's a broad concensus they're really great.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-28T11:19:58+00:00

Unfortunately I think there's far too much corruption and dogma in science for these kind of events to receive mainstream funding. I do know there's a lot of fringe organisations that try to empirically study all sorts of strange phenomena, the answers in some capacity might already be out there, but I'm immensely sceptical that without a huge need this kind of research will ever become part of the mainstream.

I've been pretty interested in this recently after the pentagon started releasing videos of UAPs - it kind of opened a whole new world to me that there's a whole new world of strange phenomena that we don't hear about.

I've been doing a lot of research and the most bizarre thing I find is that branches of the nazis were obsessed with the occult and other fringe cultural interfaces to 'higher knowledge'. Obviously their end game was a really cynical one though.

Additionally the CIA during the cold War did tonnes of research and studies with psychics/remote viewers/etc. Jimmy Carter is even quoted saying his strangest experience as president was when a plane had gone missing and the intelligence services got in contact with a psychic in california who could give the longitude/latitude coordinates of the plane.

As you say, a lot of group experiences for 'out of the known world' phenomena are super hard to dismiss as well.

I've come across a lot of weird stuff like that which is verifiable. I truly do think there's so much that goes on beyond our normal perceptual/sensory capabilities. What that IS I am completely clueless. But it does create a lot of wonder for me, along with a bit of fear.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-28T11:04:42+00:00

I'm the same here. I don't know why, I just feel so much more at ease.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T04:51:52+00:00

I'm just posting here for the first time since the reddit purge.

In the UK we are starting to go back into full lockdown and I relate to it starting to take a toll... I moved out from mine and my ex's place to a new area where I don't really know anyone. It's kind of doubled the isolation haha. In retrospect moving here almost seems like a masochistic decision.

This evening I've been watching Bad Boy Billionaires on Netflix :). I've also been reading a new book I bought on UFOs. How are you doing? What have you been up too?

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T04:45:51+00:00

I wrote a very long post but deleted it. I relate so much to what you've said about direct Europeans. I've essentially resigned to the fact that being raised in the UK has doomed me to life long neurosis where I will constantly look for subtext and intent in people's words.

I have tried VERY hard to not take the bluntness as abrasiveness, but I can't. It's impossible. It's too ingrained after 25 years of social conditioning. I will always be doing that mental gymnastics that doesn't even feel like gymnastics. I've tried. I've tried very hard.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T04:08:06+00:00

This literally reads like an incel post... it's so foul and misogynistic...

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T03:58:51+00:00

Yeah I joined the TL discord and it was a load of alt-right (presumbaly) teenagers using really foul language, then lecturing me on freedom of speech when I said I found it crude/it made me cringe. It was so far from the supportive, intelligent, open-minded, non-hostile subreddit I felt was home.

IDK it was nothing like TL at all, or even the reddit chat (which I only joined once but felt really cozy and not like 'WTF is this place...').

It's really put me off joining any other tl-releated discords. I just miss TL, really bad. I used to be a borderline-daily poster but saidit just doesn't feel the same :/.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T03:49:38+00:00

It's not for me. I'm not religious but I do think sex is sacred in some way. Maybe I have some sexual hangups, or whatever, I don't know, all I know is it doesn't feel right to have sex with someone I'm not in love with.

The gap between an awkward one night stand I spend a month existensialising over, and the first night with someone I've fallen in love with... to me the two are so far apart I can't even recognise the first as 'sex'.

I'm in no way self-righteous over this... I've tried thinking this is what people in their 20s do... but it just isn't me and I don't think it ever will be. All the power to those who can compartmentalise like that.

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T03:40:49+00:00

I believe you. That must've been so traumatic.

I experienced a lot of odd things when I was younger. I don't know whether it's as children we can tap into other phenomena that adults aren't usually capable of tapping into, or if during development of the brain some crazy things happened. I always assumed I had mild hallucinations up until the age of 10 maybe twice a year (honestly because a lot of the things I witnessed don't really align with most paranormal accounts, more just random objects suddenly becoming animate for a couple of seconds, or other equally mundane stuff).

What I will say is I definitely do think there is far more to this universe than we are normally capable of perceiving.

What do you think was going on?

funk_transcender · 2020-10-26T03:29:38+00:00

Honestly, I feel politically homeless or almost like some kind of political nihilist/retiree nowadays. I'm from the UK and seeing the polarisation that came from Brexit, the amount of fear mongering and total lack of integrity from both sides, and the issue being covered every single day by the media, again in a way that lacked any integrity by both sides just broke me.

I feel like now with covid the rest of the world is getting a more extreme version of that. Obviously there are seriously authoritarian regimes too and I'm hardly implying the UK is undergoing some sort of serious hardship in the grand scheme of things but the entire political conversation today just seems so optics-focussed with no interest in the crux of the issue. Like people are repeatedly chanting mantras for whatever 'tribe' they've chosen allegiance too. I watch the news and I feel a deep sense of alienation to that thinking in general.

I work in a very progressive, multibational organisation and I'm in conference calls with people from the US talking to me directly about their election going on about how they 'have to get it right this time'.

And all that is going through my head is you have a rapist pedophile who's son literally is compromised by the CCP and is smoking meth on business trips, and a sleazy businessman who has zero background in politics and is totally facetious 24/7 and regularly triggers huge international conflicts over Twitter, and there's a 'right' choice here? Someone not voting for Biden could only be a moron?

I think the whole issue here is constantly being forced to pick the lesser evil of two fundamentally broken options. I'm not interested in this game. I'm not interested in picking a side. This whole sequence of events is totally depraved and divisively contrived and you aren't having me be an ignorant pawn in something so fundamentally rigged from the get go.

That feeling of ambivalence you have is because the whole thing is batshit insane.

I am not completely 'resigned' to the world remaining like this forever, and I have some ideas on how I could personally change things, but that's a whole other post in and of it self. What I do know is trying to align my self with any 'side' or engage in this illusion in any sense is going to be a waste of energy. The whole point right now is to create as much division as possible.

I'm not edgy, I understand pragmatism, I understand working within the confines of a broken system to lead to very small incremental change, but this is beyond morally bankrupt right now. My answer would've been very different 5 years ago.

funk_transcender · 2020-07-11T02:22:48+00:00

This is such a shame. My reddit profile looks so empty now. I really hope this place can flourish and gain some traction. It's probably going to take more of an active effort for a while to keep the place active. Thank god you guys hard the foresight to take this underground before it did get banned. I can't imagine how I'd be feeling right now would this have happened in the first purge 😐.

funk_transcender · 2020-07-01T17:52:35+00:00

Which mods can I message to get added back? I was an active user and it was the only lesbian sub I posted on :(.

funk_transcender