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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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I totally get that. When I was a teenager I was a sexually very frustrated person, the idea of actually flirting successfully with a woman seemed alien to me. One time when I was about 17, I literally cried after seeing a picture of a beautiful woman in a bikini online, I cried because I felt like there was no way I could possibly ever have sex with a woman, I felt miserable. It took me years to get over my shyness. It took a lot of effort, I forced myself to go out and interact with people in general and women specifically, and a lot of it was scary, but I was deeply motivated... back then, to tell the truth, it wasn't even that I was necessarily so motivated by my sexual urge. I could have alleviated most of my sexual urge with porn. It was more that I was motivated by hurt pride. I was like, "no, fuck this, there is no fucking way that other guys are having sex and I'm not". Which was part of my own problem... having my ego bound up with it. Once I started getting laid, that ego-driven thing started to cause me problems, and it took more years for me to address it and actually get to a place where I'm fully driven by erotic desire rather than by any semblance of wanting to ego-fix the insecurity I remember from when I was a young man. And it is so so much better that way, to not have the ego thing. But the ego thing did help drive me to force myself to go from a frustrated virgin to a guy who was competent at getting laid, so I guess I have to thank it for that even though overall it's not something you want to have in your life. Like a rocket stage, useful to propel you into orbit, but should be discarded afterward.

I have been on both sides. I remember being a frustrated guy who wasn't getting laid, and I understand what it's like to be a guy who gets laid. I totally understand that there is some fraction of the male population who have extremely hard issues getting laid for no faults of their own. If you are really short or fat or disfigured, obviously it's fucking tough. If you are average-looking, on the other hand, it's only your mind holding you back. I'm just a bit above average looking at best, I am average height and have a decent face, but not Brad Pitt or anything like that. There is an element of modern online culture that tells men that if they're not 6'5" with a six-pack and $1 million in the bank, they have no sexual future, and that is complete nonsense. How am I getting laid if that was true? Cause I'm no Brad Pitt and I don't have $1 million in the bank. What I do have is a willingness to try to shoot my shot, to try to flirt with women, won through long successful struggle against my shyness, and also a level of experience with women that I have developed because I succeeded in that struggle, so I have a certain sense for what turns women on, a sense that I have largely developed because of the experiences that I have had with women once I overcame my original brutal shyness.

Kudos, and thank you for the story.