The Wired — tooiconic: capitalistcocaine: ...

You are one of the best parts of my dashboard, @fawnfreckles.

you are so sweet!!

If someone wolf whistled at me I’d be in shock tbh

Maybe I’m just shallow, but I’d be super flattered.

It’s definitely a confidence boost for guys.

Here’s the thing: men are pretty constantly de-sexualized. No men ever get together and go shopping for clothes, let alone makeup or lingerie. Hell, male lingerie only even exists as a fucking joke! Guys barely ever talk about emotions, let alone romance. Commenting on another guy’s attractive qualities is deliberately avoided. 

What sexy role models are there for men besides muscular actors, which are typically gruff poorly-written characters anyway? Even in a committed heterosexual relationship, men are expected to escalate the situation in any romantic or sexual context. Men don’t get compliments for what they are, but rather what they’ve done, or plan to do.  Hell, pornography is usually made with a male point of view, and even that somehow manages to completely ignore any suggestion of the guy’s personality or character traits. What male pornstar is marketed based on a defining feature, on a specific “style”?

If you ask single men to recall the last time someone they weren’t dating deliberately complimented their appearance, most will hesitate and dodge the question for a while, before sheepishly revealing some innocent non-sexual compliment. If you press them further for details about when this happened, they reveal it was months or even years ago. Events like that are so rare, they frequently become cherished memories that men still think about years later. 

This has some curious and disturbing side effects, like unsolicited dick pics. 

Occasionally, people will ask men who send those dick pics what the fuck could possibly be motivating them when everyone else in society openly despises that specific act. The answer seems to be a sort of gambling mentality: they decided that even a shitty 1-in-50 chance of a positive reaction is still preferable to being unknown, ignored, and forgotten. For many of them, even a strongly negative reaction is still considered a success, purely because someone acknowledged them in a sexual context. None of them misguidedly believe women enjoy getting surprised by a picture of their penis. They keep doing it anyway, because the act of sending it is a psychological relief all by itself. 

Of course, that’s only half of the story. The other half is how women dramatically misunderstand that motivation. For example, I read an article by a woman who was so sick and tired of getting unsolicited dick pics that she decided to turn the tables on men, and send her own unsolicited pussy pics!

It backfired dramatically, with 100% of the straight male recipients reacting positively. Instead of feeling violated like she did, every single man felt validated. Most men don’t consciously realize it or simply refuse to admit it, but they’re starved for the tiniest scrap of attention whatsoever, and any compliment is a deeply pleasing experience. Some respond so strongly to any suggestion of someone explicitly validating them that they become willing to accept any acknowledgement at all, even if it’s disgusted or downright hostile. 

Conversely, and maybe as a direct result, women are absolutely submerged in catcalls, compliments, and advice on how to improve their appearance. The experience is TOO MUCH: if there’s a sexual or romatic context, then women are in it. People gossip about it constantly. They make an entire genre of fucking TV shows for it! 

The resulting gap in experience causes the real problems. When one side reaches out, the other can’t relate. Trying to describe your point of view without the huge fucking wall of text (see above) is nearly impossible. To them, you experience isn’t just unfamiliar, it’s downright foreign and unrelatable. If a man is dying of thirst in a desert, why would drowning ever cross his mind? If a woman is drowning with no shoreline in sight, why would she worry about being a little thirsty at the time?

TL;DR 
Feel free to whistle. They’ll tell you when to stop.

This was certainly an interesting way to put it🤔

This was a good intellectual read.