Vreyan31

As someone who only speaks English, the cognitive map made by that language is kind of disgusted to think of toes and fingers interchangably.

Fingers are (or should be) clean, and are allowed to touch many things. I am perfectly comfortable touching many things with my fingers that other people's fingers have touched.

But toes? Toes are gross. They are not interchangeable with fingers. Unless I'm in the shower cleaning my toes, if my fingers touch my toes I probably need to wash my hands after. And other people's toes?...

No - toes and fingers are not the same thing. My toes are great, I'm glad to have them for balance while walking or running. But they are not fingers, or vis versa

Yeah sure... The long-standing obesity rates in southern states has nothing to do with butter being the baseline sauce on everything

To be fair, this kind of kinetics-as-pevention works.

I use this strategy to prevent eating too many snacks -- I do not keep them at home. I can't have them if they are not here. If 90% of the time I would "choose" not to have chips, not-having-them stops me the other 10%

I think the difference is the perceived energy barrier if one wanted to fool around on their partner if they a bi vs het.

A bi guy could, hypothetically, find a guy on grindr pretty much on a whim if he wanted to. This is a much lower barrier than straight guys face unless they seek a sex worker. If you are a woman in the early stages of dating someone, where you don't know yet how much you can trust a guy, if a guy tells you he is bi that can come off as a higher cheating risk than a straight guy.

Straight guys dating a bi-girl don't have a similar perceived risk increase. Early in the relationship, guys may not even see the potential of a bi-girl hooking up with a girl as 'cheating', vs a bonus for his enjoyment. But also - finding a new girl to date is considered harder than finding an interested guy. So the 'cheating' risk doesn't feel that much higher for guys dating a bi-girl compared to a straight girl; he may feel like he is still mostly competing against other guys.

Is this fair or even realistic? No, this is based on perceived stereotypes rather than the behaviors and character of individuals.

But this plays out at a stage of dating where people don't know each other well yet and are relying on heuristics.

Oh no. Ohhhh no.

It's simply what consequences are dished out for.

This is mob rule government. If you are part of the 'gang', and are loyal to the gang, you can get away with murder. Or raping children.

Everyone else is under the bootheel though.

That is why they are trying to ban the facts you just shared.

Nothing but pro-White Nationalism propaganda allowed

I disagree that 'comfort' was a cause. That line of thinking comes from the same puritanical austerity narrative that has been used to tell the working class that our circumstances are due to poor character rather than because we were talked out of demanding more.

It's victim-blamey, but like all victim-blaming narratives it has the virtue of restoring a sense of control, a sense of "this is the thing that I can decide to do that would have prevented this."

...which isn't to say that I don't think we can't identify things that could have stopped this. But I don't think a vague assertion that people here are more distracted or 'comfortable' than elsewhere helps. Also - a lot of people are not comfortable. But they may deal with that by at least enjoying the distractions or not staring into the sun of things they don't think they can change.

Ultimately, we ended up here through corrupt systems. The Trumpers were right to want to 'drain the swamp', they are just so blinded by antimosity that they fell for a grifter because he promised to hurt people.

All the pillars of democracy have been under attack since Reagan - high quality journalism and education to maintain an informed voter base, a voter base with enough time to research issues, and political campaign laws to keep government working in the public's interest.

Occupy Wall Street tried to sound the alarm, but journalism was already too corrupt and the movement was successfully sold to the public as 'annoying college kids demanding free things'.

So now we have a significant chunk of the voter base that doesn't know what habeas corpus is, or anything about how our checks and balances are supposed to look, and thinks what makes this country "a free country" is that we blow shit up with fireworks on July 4th - and doesn't see why authoritarianism would be so bad.

And the rest of us who are looking on aghast are honestly afraid of our police, of Trumpers openly talking about lynching us (and yes - they have more guns than us. Most liberals still refuse to consider becoming armed), and of losing everything and dying in a prison cell run by a for-profit corp.

This is a stage-4 cancer diagnosis on a social scale, and people are still figuring out if we want chemo or to try to ride this out as long as we can.

On top of that, while conservative social media spaces are full of people threatening violence, all of the platforms are coming down hard on any space that discusses anything more provocative than holding a sign in a nonn-threatening manner in a way that abides any police order given.

There is no place to organize, and no one is proposing or organizing any serious strategy. Seriously -- I've gone to local meetings, and all any activist org or politician will say is "organize with your neighbors (organize what?) and try to do mutual aid".

That is not a meaningful response to an organization like the Heritage Foundation.

Most of the people here live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford a $500 emergency.

So the risk of even just getting arrested, and held in custody for a week, would be enough to ruin one's life.

That puts a damper on protesting, until you or your family are directly impacted. It also inhibits willingness to strike.

And it also explains why so many protesters are of retirement age -- they don't have a job to lose if they miss work unexpectedly for a few days.

In a lot of ways, we were already conquered.

Startups typically have to offer both higher pay and a lot of shares.

It's basically the same thing that scammers do - they know they have a terrible approach, but that's fine because they are only looking for the easy marks who are too oblivious to sense anything is wrong.

This CEO is preventing anyone with self preservation or a sense of actual industry norms from applying, increasing the proportion of aps from the gullible.

The horror of parasocial distance collapse

I'm aro/ace and not dating, but my circle of friends is progressive and most have become poly over the last 5 years.

So I'm acquainted with probably +25 poly guys, most of whom skew progressive (but there are a few who lean more libertarian in there too, and a couple anarchists), and am good enough friends with probably 5 progressive poly guys to have a good sense what they have learned, how they treat their partners, and what their partners find appealing.

To be fair, to me polyamory looks like an insane amount of effort for the payoff - bc I am not interested in even one relationship let alone the intense effort of managing multiple. But from what I have seen, successfully being poly means learning a ton about boundaries, communication, and maintaining respect because all parties constantly have to manage jealousy and limited attention each of their partners. If you don't respect one partner - poof!! -- that relationship is over. And your other partners will likely hear about it, in detail, from both sides and litigate it bc they have a stake both in you and in being someone with you. It is a ton of drama.

But it also seems to be a crucible for learning how to negotiating needs and figuring out how to talk about it openly with each other to build connection - and that process both requires and builds respect for your partners.

Like I said, the guys I know who have stuck with it and learned the necessary people skills now have the problem of having too much interest. Including one friend who had terrible luck dating before and who I worried was on the verge of becoming an incel. Then he dated one of my first friends who was poly, and she kind of taught him in no uncertain terms how this works. Between that and his next poly girlfriend, I watched him become someone who is deeply considerate of his partners and is also confident about his boundaries and what he can offer. He's got like 4 relationships going on, 2 of which are long term.

And again - the biggest change I saw in him was that he stopped seeing the women he wanted to date as games to win or challenges to overcome, and stopped carrying the frustration and shame that comes with the 'failure' to 'score'. He still looks at women with clear desire, but that desire doesn't make him feel like he has to be manipulative or play games.

I don't know how to explain it except that he has a respect for the women he courts that most single guys do not. Maybe it's that he has less to fear from rejection, so he doesn't have to mentally dehumanize women as a coping mechanism. And this is a feature I see in most poly men, and have seen emerge in men as they fall into poly.

Actually - I'm going to ponder the 'able to respect women more bc they have less to fear from rejection' idea more, personally.

That alone may be a big part of their appeal, because a lot of the threat that women have to navigate when being courted is how to safely disengage if a promising flirtation turns sour. There is a lot more enthusiasm to explore or move fast when you are free to say no without fear of a possibly violent meltdown.

And poly guys aren't going to meltdown. They are ok with a no, they are emotionally braced for that and have been through worse feelings already. And they have other relationships to fall back on.