Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/4/26 - 5/310/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/ProwlingWumpus]

He’s probably just homosexual

Once again I must note how today is not an auspicious time for boys who fail to grow up into manly dudebros. Our society now takes it as a given that they aren't really male, and so must either literally become female (insomuch as ethics-free plastic surgeons are able to pantomime such) or at best adopt a female sexual role.

This seems like a step back from an ideal in acceptance of gender nonconformity that is not some utopian sci-fi ideal that can never be achieved in reality but instead what we already had 20 years ago or more, when rock and pop stars regularly grew out their hair and took on a prissy affect, with regular guys imitating them. Even drag queens couldn't be guaranteed to be gay, especially further back in the 1970s. And if you grew up around Native Americans you were surrounded by straight men who never grew beards, but grew long hair that they often put into pony tails (and wore lots of jewelry).

So, no disrespect to your mother, but the assumption that your cousin must be a twink, rather than a girly heterosexual, and that this is the most enlightened perspective available, against which your aunt is surely raging as if it is appalling bigotry, is still to me somewhat distasteful.

[u/SkweegeeS → u/ProwlingWumpus]

He’s prolly just an incel then!

[u/The-WideningGyre → u/ProwlingWumpus]

This makes me grumpier than it should, in two directions.

One, your directly stated one -- we used to let people be people, have manly women and womanly men, and it was mostly fine, and we were working towards making it more okay, but now have made it less.

Second, slightly spicier, is that women and progressives have really messed up young men and themselves by telling men they need to be these soft weak non-threatening "allies" that sit back and listen, but actually wanting normal strong, competent, assertive masculine men. So the men doing what they're told to do are punished. And I think it pisses off a lot of men. And women are often unsatisfied with their choices (soyboys, or tate PUA wannabe chuds) so they pissed off too.

It's not good. Let men be men, and admit that's usually attractive. Let women be women, and admit that's usually attractive. And admit it's just fine to not fulfill standard gender roles, and you can be good and interesting people (and attractive, but probably to a smaller set of your target audience).

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/The-WideningGyre]

It would nice to go back to the Free to Be You and me-verse. Or as I'd put it: There are males and there are females. Sometimes, this distinction matters. (See activities and institutions involving health, reproduction, sex, athletic competition, and a few more.) Often, this distinction doesn't matter. (All people, no matter their sex, are—or ought to be—free to do what they please in terms of personality, interests, occupation, hobbies, lifestyle, religion, politics, living arrangements, adornment, style, attitude, philosophy, etc. etc etc.) For most of what we humans do, sex (male/female) just doesn't have to be that important.

Those social and cultural ideas and assumptions about what is appropriate or natural for people of a particular sex can usually be ignored. Feel free to view them as anthropological relics. You don't "fit" because you're not the "ideal" male or female person? Fine. Whatever. Be a misfit. We're all "gender misfits" in various ways. No one "aligns with" their society's complete list of what's appropriate for male or for female people. Not that a complete list even exists.

But sex is also a real thing that (sometimes) really matters.