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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35038 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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I don't understand the reasoning in these 2 sentences. The latter - "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" - is clearly just an instantiation of the former - "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!"

"We like to fuck" does not mean "We like fucking without even an implied relationship or commitment."

There may be some women who like the latter, but the former does not imply the latter.

It'd be like telling someone that they can order anything from the menu and when they say they want the pizza that's on page 2, responding with "I don't recall ever telling you that you could order pizza."

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

It's a strained analogy:

  • everyone's taught the polite lie that it's "baking a pizza together", not "you bake, and I eat"

  • there's a whole spectrum of propositions asking for casual sex maps onto, from "hey, would you be my on-call pizzaiolo?" to "hey, could I have a slice of your pizza the next time you feel like baking one?"

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

I feel like that argument undermines your point. It's totally normal if someone says "I like making pizza" to hit them up and be like "hey would you make me a pizza?".

It varies. I have friends who are chefs who kind of hate it when people expect them to cook at parties, at times they question whether they were invited just to cook. On the other hand if someone became friends with me just to listen to me rant about shit I don't know enough about, I'd be flattered.

Personally I'd consider it kind of rude to ask someone to make me a pizza just because they said they like making pizzas, so interpreting someone saying they like sex as meaning they are DTF with anyone who asks is just deeply weird to me.

I think that @ThenElection picked up on an important nuance I missed. Asking someone to have sex with you isn't like asking "make me a pizza", it's like asking "let's make pizza together sometime". Which is 100% acceptable to ask someone.

deleted

Well, there's a twee expression "a bun in the oven", which usually is the result of making pizza together.

Be rude or stay hungry.

Those are not the only options.

Cannibalism is never aceptable Amadan.

I'd kind of be miffed by "hey would you make me a pizza," though I wouldn't make it a federal case.

Here, though, the question is more analogous to "hey, want to make a pizza together sometime?" Which is entirely reasonable.

"We like to fuck" does not mean "We like fucking without even an implied relationship or commitment."

But that's not the message being discussed here. The message being discussed here is, "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" Which absolutely means "without even an implied relationship or commitment" (beyond the FWB relationship in this case).

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

The analogy here is quite different from the menu one, but I can engage with it. If the message "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" is analogous to "I like making pizza," then the analogous behavior to asking someone to be fuckbuddies would be more like "hey, want to make some pizza together?" Which would be a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone in your friend group if you know that they like making pizza, especially if you also like making pizza. The whole thing about being fuckbuddies is that it's cooperative, not that one party is being demanded to serve the other person on a whim.

I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

I can see how a socially obtuse person could infer the second statement from the first, but this goes back to the need to help socially obtuse people navigate social messaging that usually communicates things beyond the surface level.

  • -10

I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

That is the message people - including some feminists - have gotten.

There's been a recent push for post-Sexual Revolution feminist philosophy for laymen and, from what I've heard from Louise Perry, that is one of the major bones of contention. That a lot of the messaging was basically that: "anything you can do we can do as well, or better"

From a review of her book (which matches what I've heard from her):

Well, not quite everything, as the author herself understands. True, women understandably celebrated their new freedom from unwanted pregnancy and successfully created a culture in which the traditional double standard seemed like the absurd relic of an oppressive age. Yet, over the ensuing decades, as sexual taboos melted away, women found themselves marching to the beat of another set of equally ill-suited norms. These norms largely aligned with the preferences of those high in sociosexuality, which generally means men, writes Perry. The idea was to be able to “have sex like a man,” in Sex and the City’s memorable phrase—purely for fun, without any messy emotions or attachments. Perry catalogues magazine and web articles explaining how to avoid “catching feelings” after a hook up, examples of women who can’t quite explain why they’re unhappy in a friends-with-benefits “pseudo-relationship,” and porn showing women “begging men for painful or degrading sex acts.” The cool kids, goes the message, should be comfortable with any and everything purported to bring sexual pleasure: oral, anal, polyamory, threesomes, BDSM, breath play (i.e., choking). The only limiting factor, the only moral imperative really, is consent from both parties.

https://www.city-journal.org/review-of-the-case-against-the-sexual-revolution

So, even for some feminists, the message was not necessarily that nuanced IRL.

I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

I don't think this quite gets at the heart of it. It's not that "exactly the same attitudes" are implied, but certainly SOME sort of attitude is. Because the concept of "liking" something comes with it certain attitudes. If you like pizza so much that you'd eat it even if you're so full as to throw up or accompanied with chocolate cake or if the pizza is cold, and you're told that someone else likes pizza as much as you do, you'd reasonably be surprised if they only wanted fresh pizza from a specific restaurant and when they're hungry. Even if they clearly got just as much enjoyment out of that pizza as you did and would move heaven and Earth to get to that restaurant for that delicious, delicious pizza. That's not someone who meaningfully likes pizza as much as you do.

I can see how a socially obtuse person could infer the second statement from the first, but this goes back to the need to help socially obtuse people navigate social messaging that usually communicates things beyond the surface level.

Yes, this I agree with, and I think we can say that the types of feminist messaging about which we're talking is for the benefit of the socially apt at the cost of the socially obtuse. Perhaps all social messaging is like this to a large extent, though some are probably better than others at elegantly handling its predictable failure modes.

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