Assault them till they love you - in films real men don't need consent

[noblegiraffe]

A long but fascinating article about how men are groomed by the media from a young age into some very troubling views about women.

www.cracked.com/blog/how-men-are-trained-to-think-sexual-assault-no-big-deal/

I feel like on this forum I have to carefully craft every single post otherwise people home in on some perceived slight and then fail to engage with anything else that I wrote.

You mean like when you have to look immaculately made up and can never raise your voice because otherwise you will be called "hysterical" and no one will listen to you?

Sounds familiar.

Perhaps what you experience here is the loss of male privilege. A valuable learning experience.

bangs head against the wall no one is saying date or be in a relationship with someone you are not attracted to, but for heavens sake zoom out a little. Look at a whole person maybe you could develop physical attraction as a friendship develops. Why is it so cripplingly important that physical attraction is catered to first and foremost at all times?

Consider this example it's practically expected for men to trade in for younger models, but a woman even raises a loss of attraction for a husband and she is branded superficial. There is a clear double standard here.

I am incredibly sorry if you find me condescending, it just seems very very basic to me. If you are trapped in a box it is one of your own making so I understand you lashing out at me. I'll try and work on reframing my rhetoric into something more palatable, but if I fail I apologise in advance.

Over the last couple of years this has been a topic of debate in my household. I met my DH when we were 18 and 19 and from then until now at 36 he has never pressured me or 'tried anything on'. The reason I started thinking about this a couple of years ago was the startling realisation that I nearly ended our relationship in it's infancy because I didn't think he fancied me enough. It was only the fact that (without being too crude) he was very obviously receptive to intimacy that made me stay with him.

I'm not saying your experience is invalid, that's yours to keep. I'm just trying to say behind door number 2 may be some ideas you could add to it. I'm just asking to open your mind just a little. I'm looking for a win/win interaction here not trying to attack you.

To clarify, and I don't know if this is unusual but I think it isn't, the range of women I find to be physically attractive is extremely wide, it is therefore of no concern to me that I would be able to easily find a partner to whom i was attracted (as in that qualification is easy enough to fulfill, not that "it is easy for me..."). What I'm saying is that you can almost take that as a given, so if they have what i consider a nice personality and I like spending time with them and feel comfortable and relaxed in their company, then I would highly doubt the physical aspect would be a barrier to a relationship. That probably sounds particularly shallow now I write it out.

But regardless, if I did feel comfortable in their company and like them but there was zero sexual interest, I wouldn't be pursuing a relationship in the hope it materialised.

Apologies also Dervel, thanks for your clarification.

"Perhaps I ought to have said that physical attraction is a very important part of a relationship, especially to begin with. Is that better ?"
Not really, if what you mean by 'physical attraction' isn't just 'they're clean and they don't pong', but the vagaries of how they happen to look. It's the difference between 'I'm attracted to her eyes (because they're her eyes)', and 'I'm attracted to her because of her eyes'.

(unless, of course, she is a collector of prosthetic glass eyes, and you share a similar interest, so that is why you found her initially attractive!).

The physical attraction thing is interesting. Men seem to be much more comfortable in expecting that their love interest will be attractive enough for them, and in punching above their weight. Also if a beautiful man is with an average looking woman a lot of people including women will be uncomfortable with that and assume that the man will eventually cheat. Yet we are so used to seeing ugly men with beautiful young women, Trump comes to mind. Not making any particular point but I myself have dated and married men in my younger years that I wasn't physically attracted to, my friend bought me a fridge magnet in the end, 'life's too short to dance with ugly men' to remind me to do better in future. I have often wondered what all this is about. I think from my own point of view I was trained when young to be a nice kind girl, and put other peoples wants and needs above mine, and also had very low self esteem, what was important to me that the man liked me. Even now I have a couple of exes who are trying to win me back, one I'm not attracted to at all sexuslly, yet I have still been seriously considering it and possibly giving him ambiguous signals. This thread is making me think about my own behaviour in all this. I too have absorbed some seriously effed up ideas about sexuality and all of the above have had and still are having a huge effect on my life.

Regarding women going after men in fiction, Gillian anderson's character did in the fall. Usually for a ons. When another male colleague was about it she called him out on it, pointed out that he probably had no problem with 'man fucks woman' but he did with 'woman fucks man', or words to that effect.