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Women know the difference between dressing sexy and dressing beautiful and they very deftly choose which kind of signal they want to send all the time. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to accuse other women of dressing like whores or realize when their daughters need to change their clothes before going out.
Only very stupid or very young women wouldn't be able to figure it out. The reactions of other women help them learn even more so then the male reactions.
I did say it was a controversial comment. I am a woman and I can tell you that dressing "sexy" versus dressing "beautiful" is like trying to look pretty like a sunset or look pretty like a flower.
I can tell my six year old not to wear tights and a t-shirt because I understand that this is inappropriate with the rules of fashion, not because I understand what it is to look at a six year old with sexual lust. But as the rules of fashion change so goes clothes, and my kids have "jeggings" they can wear under both dresses and shirts, which makes it easier to let them pick their own clothes for now.
Yes, women understand that they are sending different signals when they dress. They understand that this cardigan makes them look smart and serious, this skirt makes them look fun, etc.
But they don't understand sexual hunger and how they dress impacts it. We witness patterns and try to act accordingly, but we don't grok the underlying mechanism, so sometimes we think we understand a pattern but a man behaves differently than we expected. This explains a lot of the disconnect between women thinking men act creepy, and men thinking a woman wearing only half an outfit must be down for a good time, and if she rejects the man it's because he's not hot enough.
I don't agree women are so blind, even if you are a woman yourself.
The girls showing off their assets to simps online know perfectly well what sexual hunger is and how to stoke it. They didn't learn it from some secret e-thot grimoire. There's tons of male gaze materials online to learn from.
Maybe they don't understand that intuitively, but it is certainly an attainable skill.
https://www.themotte.org/post/1121/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/241478?context=8#context is a recent example of what I mean. A woman assumed bras make breasts more sexy, and the only benefit to modesty was they reduced the visibility of hard nipples. She made these deductions through observation, and thought she understood the rule. But now a bunch of men are telling her that bras actually make breasts less sexy.
Sure, a woman can learn to be a stripper. But my point is that most women you meet are not intentionally sending Fuck Me signals through their dress, and would be alarmed to realize the intensity that Fuck Me signals can cause in a man.
Okay, this is probably a weird question. But your view is that a lot of women don’t understand the signals their dress is sending or the intensity of Fuck Me signals. I think you’re probably right.
What shaped your views in a different direction? Did you have personal experiences, did you read a bunch of stuff, did you just intuit it? I just get curious about the etiology of different worldviews. (And to be transparent, because we agree but a lot of people disagree with us, I’m hoping maybe we can learn how more people could come to agree.)
I think the Internet is a huge leveler. Men talk about their experiences openly. It didn't take long before I noticed that what men feel when they look at an attractive woman is different from what I felt when looking at an attractive man. For a few years I decided I was asexual, but I am happily married with four kids, so that label probably doesn't actually apply to me.
Even with the Internet, I still don't think I understood. People like to say that the Internet is not real life, and to some extent that's true (but if lots of people on the internet talk about red and green like they're different colors that you don't perceive, eventually you might start to understand that you're colorblind.) I understood that the porn-sick, perverted men of Reddit were very visually attracted to women, but that wasn't evidence that the Respected and Trusted men of my life, who share my workplace and classrooms, also reacted that way.
I waited for marriage. While my husband hadn't made the same choice, he was very respectful of my choice and saw himself as a guardian of my conscience. One day I wore a dress that was sexier than usual. I thought that was just what women did when they had boyfriends. To me, it was just a style that signified that I loved him. He responded differently from what I expected. He told me that, if I cared for him, I shouldn't wear that dress until we were married and wanted sex right then and there. I was embarrassed, but also it was a huge click for me.
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I was reading your comment while taking the subway today. And there was this woman, wearing super professional attire (white blouse with no cleavage, light makeup, sensable hairdo). Except that she was also wearing a super short skirt with a slit up the middle, almost as if she was trying to show off her crotch.
It was... confusing. This was a weekday morning, so I assume she was going to work? I doubt she was going clubbing or anything at that time. But it really just made it awkward for me as a man to even look in her general direction. So I appreciate your comment, because I was genuinely wondering "is she doing that on purpose, or is she just clueless about how she looks?"
It also made me think of this star trek TNG episode where Picard is carrying a sexuality symbol without understanding what it means, and the local women keep approaching him, and he's like "dammit just leave me alone I just want to read my book in peace!!!" Quite the communication error.
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