seriously though bisexuality being defined as attraction to men and women is a heterosexual’s definition of bisexuality actual bisexual groups and organizations have been defining it as attraction to two or more genders or same and other genders since the nineties and plenty of nb people actually id as bi and refusing to accept how we define ourselves is so absurdly biphobic and heterosexist and jfc it’s 2014 can other queer people fucking realize and acknowledge this
The purple stripe on the bi flag is meant to represent attraction to nb genders and the bisexual manifesto published in Anything That Moves includes the lines “Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature … In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders.” That was published in 1990. It’s older than a lot of people here, including me, and older than terms like “pansexual” and “polysexual” by at least a decade. Bi history is important.
why do they always showcase ‘bullies’ in cartoons as being some punk with a mohawk like
when was the last time you saw a cool guy in a leather jacket not minding his own business it’s usually some basic asshole in a graphic tee that has something to say
So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don’t want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves
Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack
You know that whole trope where like, the protagonists get teleported up into the aliens’ spaceship or base or whatever and the alien appears to them only it doesn’t appear as it really looks like but rather, since it doesn’t want to scare the protagonists, it takes the form of something we find familiar and pleasing and is like, “I look like your dad or whatever–is this form okay?” Like I think about that trope a lot and I think like, what if the alien couldn’t pick out a form via telepathy and only had earth media to try and decide what form would scare its human guests least and be accepted almost immediately and honestly the more I think about it the more options for what form that might be are just really fun to me.
“I have chosen the form of your earth playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda–do not be afraid. I come in peace.”
“Greetings. I am Glofnorbo of the cloud you call the ‘Pegasus Nebula.’ I have scanned your earth media from afar and empirically decided that you would find the form of the one known as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson most pleasing. I have come to confer with your leaders.”
“Do not be panic. I come in peace. I have assumed the form of your insectoid demigoddess ‘Hatsune Miku’ so that we may communicate peacefully without my true form horrifying you.”
“It was decided that I would assume the form of your ‘Mister Rogers’ in order to best welcome your world to the galactic neighborhood without frightening your kind.”
“…So did your colleague take on the form of Jack Black for that reason too?”
“No, that is the actual Jack Black. We do not know how to make him leave.”
sparksoffandommagic 