So the behaviors are the same kind of things that you’ve seen forever among people who can get away with it. Immaturity, bigotry, cruelty, etc. However I myself am a liberal, and live in a liberal area of the country. A lot of people use liberal rhetoric to behave in an objectively toxic way, often by coding criticism of their actions as conservative or the toxic actions themselves as liberal.
I mentioned sexism from women, so I’ll focus on that:
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them. This is often talked about as a sort of a sexual identity, with the implication that hating on this is the same as hating on a gay relationship or a woman who chooses to be single.
As I mentioned earlier, women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.
In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”. This assumption is not only a massively sexist generalization, but is never logical. If a man is tall and built he gets the benefit of the doubt, despite being objectively more of a threat than a short chubby guy. The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift. This is despite the fact that my SO is often not with me, and that there are a million different true crime stories involving a heterosexual couple both being evil. All of this is justified with progressive #metoo rhetoric
There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding. When things inevitably go wrong they make sweeping statements about men. Despite this being more or less nonsense, it’s considered sexist to call them out.
There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.
Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.
This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.
Of course, sexism is just one example. I use it because I find this stuff is the most egregious. I also have a lot of frustration about other things, most notably shitty people making a huge deal about how much they love drag queens in what I view as an effort to obfuscate from how shitty and judgmental they are.
My response to all of this has been to become more conservative. Note the delta. I’m not conservative. However I am also in no way shape or form a progressive anymore. I don’t think liberals have nearly the moral superiority they think they do when it comes to how you treat people on a day to day basis. I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment. I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.
Gonna be honest with you, these all mostly sounds like toxic masculinity, which isn’t really dealt with well by conservatives, mostly because they don’t like critical thinking and all that.
a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them
Um, I actually think it’s the opposite? It’s not cheating if all partners consent. If you don’t want to date someone who is ENM, then… don’t?
Most ENM people don’t want to date monogamous people! That’s why you tell everyone before you do it (that’s the ethical part.)
women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.
I don’t see the problem here? Is it bad to support women, or is it that they somehow support bad women? Do men not do similar?
In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”.
This has some truth to it, and while I understand that this is, indeed, a sexist take, it’s one that is perpetuated by a patriarchal culture. Men have unreasonable standards thrust upon them the same way women do, but the standards are not necessarily equal in how they affect us, even on an individial level. Men are indeed seen as more violent as a whole, just as women are seen as sex objects as a whole, and working to change those societal pressures to conform to them is the point of pointing to “toxic masculinity.” There are good aspects to masculinity to admire, that we can try to positively adopt those, the same way that women try to adopt positive aspects of feminimity!
I actually see this the worst among conservative men and women. Conservative men and women tell you to “man up”, that “men don’t cry”, that you need to “take it with your own hands”, the idea of “alpha and beta males”. Very aggressive, and that’s a toxic mindset. The hard part about those cultural aspects is that they DO affect us all! Part of feminism is undersranding these biases within yourself and actively working to change them.
The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift
This actually goes both ways, too. Women very often have to tell men they aren’t interested, trying to tell them gently that they are taken. (There is the joke of “I have a boyfriend.” out of the blue to the most innocuous things.) This is a consequence of a society that pushes men to be the active pursuer of relationships. It is, frankly, stressful to have every interaction possibly be taken as a signal that you want a relationship. It is easy for me to understand their perspective because it feels like how my PTSD manifested. Trauma is hard to deal with, and being understanding and accomodating can also be hard, too.
There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding.
Very much applies to anyone of any gender, so I’m not sure of the issue. I have seen this in cis-men, cis-women, trans-men, trans-women, enbies, gay men, lesbian women, and so on. This is not exclusive to women, and never will be.
There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.
Okay? Don’t date them? I don’t see the issue, but discussing your partners isn’t particularly weird, and men do this too, and if it bothers you, well, don’t date anyone who does it.
Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.
There’s some truth to that. Women are, ostensibly, an oppressed group, having less rights than men do, as well as being the one responsible when they get pregnant. They maintain a level of risk that most men do not have to face (though you could consider it a different type of risk, since men also face their own adversities that women typically do not.)
However, that’s irrelevant because none of the things you listed were women-exclusive behaviors, but I figured I would explain why it might be important just in case.
This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.
Don’t date them, then? I mean, I get it. I like when my dates offer to split, and I do judge them if they don’t. But it’s definitely silly to bring up as though they aren’t a feminist for engaging in that behavior. Progress is made incrementally, and sometimes we aren’t aware lf our own biases.
I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment.
Hey man, monogamy is a dating choice, just like ENM. No one makes you have to be one or the other. It is okay to be monogamous, but no one has ever oppressed monogamous people.
I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.
It is really weird to me that you thought calling people weird for legitimately fascist behavior as a way of denormalizing that behavior was somehow a step too far, but the behavior that provoked it wasn’t, as if they hadn’t attempted to call the behavior out beforehand and were ignored.
If that was gonna dissuade you, then I think you might have bigger problems.
Jesus fucking christ why do I bother. You didn’t ask because you wanted to actually know what I thought. You just wanted to lecture me why I’m wrong. There was absolutely nothing I could have said that you wouldn’t have used as a launching off point.
I did ask because I wanted to know. I just thought they were reasons to come to a different conclusion. Societal and cultural pressures on men aren’t dealt with to the same level as women, and we do leave men to fend for themselves because many men learned a set of behaviors that were tolerated until they weren’t. And that change can feel unfair. I think we can express masculinity in a positive way, allow us to focus on positive character traits and not physical ones.
There was a sentiment that you were hurt by someone who was ENM, and whether that was because you tried ENM and didn’t like it or whatever, it did seem to be tacked onto your perception of women. I just thought I’d try and give another view of it, in the off-chance that you or someone else reading this needed some more perspective.
You didn’t read my comment with an open mind. You asked for my input so you could give me specific things to lecture about.
I am not in an “ethical non monogamous” relationship. I have never been. However I have seen multiple men in long term relationships get strung along because their partner decided they want to leverage dating apps to have a harem. It has always ended up being a slow motion train wreck, that always ends up essentially being akin to cheating plus gaslighting. They always justify it in the same way you are doing.
You are sexist, plain and simple. You are sexist because you hold men and women to completely different standards in a comical way. You just use liberal rhetoric to justify it.
Your mentality is incredibly common. The world is full of assholes justifying shitty behavior under the guise of liberalism. It’s just an updated version of how evangelicals operated in the 80s and 90s. I’m sick of giving this shit a free pass.
Then your issue isn’t with ENM. It’s with men (I should also note that this equally applies to women and nonbinary people, but we’ll ignore them for now) staying in an ENM relationship that they clearly do not want. Why are they staying in that relationship? It’s worth exploring that.
Is it loneliness? Is it dependency? Is it a fear of not being able to find another partner? These are issues that we don’t often explore and try to help in men.
I definitely am sexist, likely in ways I don’t even know. I am working to fix those biases as I encounter them. It is tough, though in this particular situation, I don’t see those biases, so I’m trying not to be inconsiderate. I think I am holding men, women, and non-binary people to the same standard in this case.
But you are directly holding women responsible for ENM relationships when they didn’t really do anything wrong. If a man did the same thing, would you have an issue with it? If you want a harem and tell everyone in the harem about it, what’s the problem?
Sexual exclusivity is not a prerequisite for all relationships. ENM is a relationship based on the concept of sexual and emotional non-exclusivity. That’s the entire basis of ENM. If you disagree, please explain what keeps these men in the relationship that they can’t leave.
Why do you blame women for these relationships? Men and non-binary people are also ENM, but you seem to think it’s exclusively women.
You know you’re wrong because you haven’t bothered asking why those men don’t leave the relationship if they think it’s cheating? If they were cheating, then you would be telling them to leave. But you don’t. Why not? Would you tell a woman to leave a relationship if she were being cheated on?
Seriously, why is it exclusively the woman’s fault and not the man’s? Is the woman holding something in the relationship hostage? Children? Money?
You know you can be on the left without falling into the trap of identity politics. Many (most) of us that consider ourselves leftists also find liberals annoying, and liberalism is not the highest ideal of the left as common notions in the US would have you believe.
Look Trump is a uniquely awful candidate, but why should I be associated with liberals? I’m a Jewish man. In liberal culture sexism towards men is normalized and antisemitism is normalized.
There’s nothing stopping me from just coming up with my own philosophy while treating both liberal and conservative culture with skepticism. While right now that’s gonna be more on the liberal side, I don’t see why I should associate myself with people who normalize toxic behavior towards people of my religion/gender. That’s basically asking to be next on the target list.
I always bring up the ethical non monogamy because it’s the most objectively insane thing. It’s so obviously toxic and unfair. It would soon obviously be considered emotional abuse if genders were reversed. Yet the more liberal someone is, the more they’ll suggest I’m sexist for having an issue with that behavior.
Look, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I recognize that I do not have all the answers and I think it’s both damaging and a waste of time to bicker about who or what is and isn’t “sexist”.
All I’m saying is that liberalism and the left are not the same thing or even really all that amenable to each other, and identity politics are largely a distraction from more important issues. There’s a whole Wikipedia article that sums up various criticisms of it from a few different perspectives.
You are right, liberals are wrong about a lot of things and easily fall for ploys which only serve to divide us from each other. Choosing not to associate with liberals or to have more nuanced opinions in the face of their bickering does not mean that you have to be conservative or that conservatism is the only other thing left on the table. It’s a false dichotomy.
I always bring up the ethical non monogamy because it’s the most objectively insane thing. It’s so obviously toxic and unfair.
Seems to me you’ve only found bad examples of ENM. For me, a relationship is about honesty, communication and wanting the same thing (except BDSM). If people are lying to each other or don’t really want the same thing then it’s not really a good relationship and should end. That’s most relationships really but that’s human nature for you.
The few ENM couples i know have near perfect relationships because they’re pretty clear with each other on want they want, and they want the same thing.
I get that women get a free pass for a lot of bullshit they do because they’re women and how dare you, you’re sexist and See? it’s the patriarchy but i’d wager most toxic behavior is 50/50. Humans are assholes regardless of gender.
What behaviors do you mean and how does that correlate to being conservative?
So the behaviors are the same kind of things that you’ve seen forever among people who can get away with it. Immaturity, bigotry, cruelty, etc. However I myself am a liberal, and live in a liberal area of the country. A lot of people use liberal rhetoric to behave in an objectively toxic way, often by coding criticism of their actions as conservative or the toxic actions themselves as liberal.
I mentioned sexism from women, so I’ll focus on that:
Of course, sexism is just one example. I use it because I find this stuff is the most egregious. I also have a lot of frustration about other things, most notably shitty people making a huge deal about how much they love drag queens in what I view as an effort to obfuscate from how shitty and judgmental they are.
My response to all of this has been to become more conservative. Note the delta. I’m not conservative. However I am also in no way shape or form a progressive anymore. I don’t think liberals have nearly the moral superiority they think they do when it comes to how you treat people on a day to day basis. I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment. I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.
Gonna be honest with you, these all mostly sounds like toxic masculinity, which isn’t really dealt with well by conservatives, mostly because they don’t like critical thinking and all that.
Um, I actually think it’s the opposite? It’s not cheating if all partners consent. If you don’t want to date someone who is ENM, then… don’t? Most ENM people don’t want to date monogamous people! That’s why you tell everyone before you do it (that’s the ethical part.)
I don’t see the problem here? Is it bad to support women, or is it that they somehow support bad women? Do men not do similar?
This has some truth to it, and while I understand that this is, indeed, a sexist take, it’s one that is perpetuated by a patriarchal culture. Men have unreasonable standards thrust upon them the same way women do, but the standards are not necessarily equal in how they affect us, even on an individial level. Men are indeed seen as more violent as a whole, just as women are seen as sex objects as a whole, and working to change those societal pressures to conform to them is the point of pointing to “toxic masculinity.” There are good aspects to masculinity to admire, that we can try to positively adopt those, the same way that women try to adopt positive aspects of feminimity!
I actually see this the worst among conservative men and women. Conservative men and women tell you to “man up”, that “men don’t cry”, that you need to “take it with your own hands”, the idea of “alpha and beta males”. Very aggressive, and that’s a toxic mindset. The hard part about those cultural aspects is that they DO affect us all! Part of feminism is undersranding these biases within yourself and actively working to change them.
This actually goes both ways, too. Women very often have to tell men they aren’t interested, trying to tell them gently that they are taken. (There is the joke of “I have a boyfriend.” out of the blue to the most innocuous things.) This is a consequence of a society that pushes men to be the active pursuer of relationships. It is, frankly, stressful to have every interaction possibly be taken as a signal that you want a relationship. It is easy for me to understand their perspective because it feels like how my PTSD manifested. Trauma is hard to deal with, and being understanding and accomodating can also be hard, too.
Very much applies to anyone of any gender, so I’m not sure of the issue. I have seen this in cis-men, cis-women, trans-men, trans-women, enbies, gay men, lesbian women, and so on. This is not exclusive to women, and never will be.
Okay? Don’t date them? I don’t see the issue, but discussing your partners isn’t particularly weird, and men do this too, and if it bothers you, well, don’t date anyone who does it.
There’s some truth to that. Women are, ostensibly, an oppressed group, having less rights than men do, as well as being the one responsible when they get pregnant. They maintain a level of risk that most men do not have to face (though you could consider it a different type of risk, since men also face their own adversities that women typically do not.)
However, that’s irrelevant because none of the things you listed were women-exclusive behaviors, but I figured I would explain why it might be important just in case.
Don’t date them, then? I mean, I get it. I like when my dates offer to split, and I do judge them if they don’t. But it’s definitely silly to bring up as though they aren’t a feminist for engaging in that behavior. Progress is made incrementally, and sometimes we aren’t aware lf our own biases.
Hey man, monogamy is a dating choice, just like ENM. No one makes you have to be one or the other. It is okay to be monogamous, but no one has ever oppressed monogamous people.
It is really weird to me that you thought calling people weird for legitimately fascist behavior as a way of denormalizing that behavior was somehow a step too far, but the behavior that provoked it wasn’t, as if they hadn’t attempted to call the behavior out beforehand and were ignored.
If that was gonna dissuade you, then I think you might have bigger problems.
Jesus fucking christ why do I bother. You didn’t ask because you wanted to actually know what I thought. You just wanted to lecture me why I’m wrong. There was absolutely nothing I could have said that you wouldn’t have used as a launching off point.
I did ask because I wanted to know. I just thought they were reasons to come to a different conclusion. Societal and cultural pressures on men aren’t dealt with to the same level as women, and we do leave men to fend for themselves because many men learned a set of behaviors that were tolerated until they weren’t. And that change can feel unfair. I think we can express masculinity in a positive way, allow us to focus on positive character traits and not physical ones.
There was a sentiment that you were hurt by someone who was ENM, and whether that was because you tried ENM and didn’t like it or whatever, it did seem to be tacked onto your perception of women. I just thought I’d try and give another view of it, in the off-chance that you or someone else reading this needed some more perspective.
You didn’t read my comment with an open mind. You asked for my input so you could give me specific things to lecture about.
I am not in an “ethical non monogamous” relationship. I have never been. However I have seen multiple men in long term relationships get strung along because their partner decided they want to leverage dating apps to have a harem. It has always ended up being a slow motion train wreck, that always ends up essentially being akin to cheating plus gaslighting. They always justify it in the same way you are doing.
You are sexist, plain and simple. You are sexist because you hold men and women to completely different standards in a comical way. You just use liberal rhetoric to justify it.
Your mentality is incredibly common. The world is full of assholes justifying shitty behavior under the guise of liberalism. It’s just an updated version of how evangelicals operated in the 80s and 90s. I’m sick of giving this shit a free pass.
Then your issue isn’t with ENM. It’s with men (I should also note that this equally applies to women and nonbinary people, but we’ll ignore them for now) staying in an ENM relationship that they clearly do not want. Why are they staying in that relationship? It’s worth exploring that.
Is it loneliness? Is it dependency? Is it a fear of not being able to find another partner? These are issues that we don’t often explore and try to help in men.
I definitely am sexist, likely in ways I don’t even know. I am working to fix those biases as I encounter them. It is tough, though in this particular situation, I don’t see those biases, so I’m trying not to be inconsiderate. I think I am holding men, women, and non-binary people to the same standard in this case.
But you are directly holding women responsible for ENM relationships when they didn’t really do anything wrong. If a man did the same thing, would you have an issue with it? If you want a harem and tell everyone in the harem about it, what’s the problem?
You’re literally making excuses for women cheating on and gaslighting men. Bullshit you’d be behaving the same way of genders are reversed.
Sexual exclusivity is not a prerequisite for all relationships. ENM is a relationship based on the concept of sexual and emotional non-exclusivity. That’s the entire basis of ENM. If you disagree, please explain what keeps these men in the relationship that they can’t leave.
Why do you blame women for these relationships? Men and non-binary people are also ENM, but you seem to think it’s exclusively women.
You know you’re wrong because you haven’t bothered asking why those men don’t leave the relationship if they think it’s cheating? If they were cheating, then you would be telling them to leave. But you don’t. Why not? Would you tell a woman to leave a relationship if she were being cheated on?
Seriously, why is it exclusively the woman’s fault and not the man’s? Is the woman holding something in the relationship hostage? Children? Money?
You know you can be on the left without falling into the trap of identity politics. Many (most) of us that consider ourselves leftists also find liberals annoying, and liberalism is not the highest ideal of the left as common notions in the US would have you believe.
Look Trump is a uniquely awful candidate, but why should I be associated with liberals? I’m a Jewish man. In liberal culture sexism towards men is normalized and antisemitism is normalized.
There’s nothing stopping me from just coming up with my own philosophy while treating both liberal and conservative culture with skepticism. While right now that’s gonna be more on the liberal side, I don’t see why I should associate myself with people who normalize toxic behavior towards people of my religion/gender. That’s basically asking to be next on the target list.
I always bring up the ethical non monogamy because it’s the most objectively insane thing. It’s so obviously toxic and unfair. It would soon obviously be considered emotional abuse if genders were reversed. Yet the more liberal someone is, the more they’ll suggest I’m sexist for having an issue with that behavior.
Look, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I recognize that I do not have all the answers and I think it’s both damaging and a waste of time to bicker about who or what is and isn’t “sexist”.
All I’m saying is that liberalism and the left are not the same thing or even really all that amenable to each other, and identity politics are largely a distraction from more important issues. There’s a whole Wikipedia article that sums up various criticisms of it from a few different perspectives.
You are right, liberals are wrong about a lot of things and easily fall for ploys which only serve to divide us from each other. Choosing not to associate with liberals or to have more nuanced opinions in the face of their bickering does not mean that you have to be conservative or that conservatism is the only other thing left on the table. It’s a false dichotomy.
Seems to me you’ve only found bad examples of ENM. For me, a relationship is about honesty, communication and wanting the same thing (except BDSM). If people are lying to each other or don’t really want the same thing then it’s not really a good relationship and should end. That’s most relationships really but that’s human nature for you.
The few ENM couples i know have near perfect relationships because they’re pretty clear with each other on want they want, and they want the same thing.
I get that women get a free pass for a lot of bullshit they do because they’re women and how dare you, you’re sexist and See? it’s the patriarchy but i’d wager most toxic behavior is 50/50. Humans are assholes regardless of gender.