(edit 15th May 2024)
Dear Diary, Dear Readers,
I thought this flair could be fitting since I'm talking about my thoughts.
There was never a time where they weren't present. But I reject them. It's a part of myself I hate. My violent thoughts.
Here an example: The News: Bad Politician does bad thing. My immediate thought: Kill that guy.
Or, hears about another case of r1pe in the news paper. Me: Castrate the guy that did it.
Or: Person does selfish behavior that ruins my aunt's wedding. Me: Id like to slap this Person across the face to give her some of my opinion.
I have never in my Life, except for one Situation, acted on these thoughts. And the Situation I found myself in, I had to protect a child from harm. It does not excuse violent behavior but I felt in the right because this kid was about to get hurt.
Anyways, back to the original statement. Any time I feel negative about someone's action or behavior the first thoughts that come to my mind are extremely violent. I do not know where they originate from. I HATE violence and War. Besides that one Situation, I have never thrown hands with another Person. I am all for diplomacy and get disagreements over with a good talk. Yet my mind is always dreaming up these Hollywood like scenarios where I punch a bad guy in the face or shoot them and the day is safed. I. Hate. It.
I want it gone. It's so SO far away from what I live for. So far away from my values and who I want to be. I have to battle these thoughts EVERY day it's so exhausting. And they make me feel bad because what if I ever get loose and act on one of these thoughts? They frighten me. I don't want to hurt no one. But something inside me wants to. And it doesn't stop trying
-Jane

BARPOD relevance: WPATH files/surgical intervention, strange internet communities; gender identity, Body-modification (Helen Lewis’ former BMEzine interest in episode 210!), potential new kinks for Katie to tease Jesse about;
Initial warning: NSFW discussion of surgery (in medical context and self-performed)
A couple of “interesting” unrelated stories in the last week that "maybe" have some interlinking ideas (feel free to challenge my logic on this!).
Obviously starting with the "main event", in the UK a ringleader of a pay-per-view website where users could watch men “consensually” having their genitalia amongst other body parts removed (the full case reports are harrowing and not for the faint of heart) largely as a fetish practice* has been jailed for a minimum of 22 years (actually an extremely long sentence here; by contrast a high-profile acid attacker received a 6 years minimum and served just 9 but that’s another story!). Now live-streamed castrations aren't exactly my cup of tea for casual supper-time viewing (Dr Pimple Popper on YT is more my thing), but I suppose the saying “one man's meat is another man's poison” is rather apt! The ringleader himself had also had the “surgery” (done with a popular brand of kitchen knife I happen to own as the BBC had to share - mine's used strictly for culinary use) to become a eunuch or a “nullo”. The case has called to mind a few prominent legal precedents such as R v Brown 1993 (confirming once and for all that hammering nails into certain sensitive body parts for pleasure is a crime - we Brits are such prudes!) or R v Peacock 2012 (aka the “fisting trial”) and where the murky question on the legal thresholds of consent were discussed.
'Eunuch-maker' mutilator jailed for 22 years - BBC News (worryingly BBC's reporting is tamer than others!)
I found the above an interesting contrast with similarly timed news on other bodily amendment: the article on the complex case of the man with Body Integrity Disorder legally having fingers removed (shared by a fellow BARPOD member, linked below), and an article (it's Daily Mail, but is 100% legitimate) on a wave of novel reassignment surgeries for nonbinary individuals (or "bigenital" or "salmacian" genders) available in the States. I had heard of “nullo” surgery (i.e. the Ken/Barbie doll surgery) as part of the WPATH “Standards of Care 8 (Section 88 referencing Eunuch surgery), but this newer surgery offers the option of a hybrid to ultimately have both a penis and a vagina. What does shock me is how unlike with classic transgender surgeries where there is a much longer history of research into both Gender Identify Disorder and physical/psychological impact of surgery dating back to the early 20^th century (albeit much we are finding now to be low quality), with nonbinary surgery there really is…. pretty much nothing. There is barely any scientific or even social consensus on how this identity is defined (no clinical thresholds like with traditional GID), only a handful of sociology surveys – this truly is “experimental” treatment, much akin to the advent of puberty blocker use.

Looking into one of the leading surgeons in this space performing this surgery (I won't name here to avoid any pile-on and as I think this discussion is bigger than one surgeon alone) it doesn’t give much reassurance for me – obviously they have all the appropriate medical qualifications for surgery, but also a degree minor in Gender Studies. I’ll admit perhaps an unfair mental stretch on my part but it did make me wonder the extent the known capture on campuses/medical academia in general PLUS in this case the more radical/laissez faire ideas coming from Queer Theory in these sorts of "grievance studies" courses, could influence upon into the boundaries a surgeon feels comfortable pushing (is it a case of “anything to satisfy the patients whims”). My biggest hang-up here is how these surgeons have now accepted that an individual could "naturally" and "healthily" desire something that they themselves have had to invent on the operating table (not found in nature beyond maybe some intersex deformities) - it feels very far-removed from wanting the bodily appearance of a healthy member of the opposite sex (e.g. a transman wanting pecs as per a biological man).

In terms of the crossover, whilst taking place in different states (UK, Canada, USA), I can’t help but wonder how different the first-mentioned legal case would have looked had the individuals involved essentially performing somewhat similar bodily modifications to find their “true selves” had actively identified as “non-binary”, BID, or “nullo” in the trial (even if superficially as a sneaky legal defence). Would they have received lesser sentences for being higher up on the “progressive pyramid”? (I'd place good money saying yes and the guy should look sternly at his lawyers for not suggesting this tactic!) - if he did would Trans Rights Activists and the non-binary community protest fiercely on the streets for them to be pardoned? - would left-wing publications like Pink News describe the case with more sympathy (e.g. how they were "let down" by the medical system for failing to provide accessible surgeries)?
*BIG caveat with all the above: obviously for the "Eunuch-maker" this was very clearly a kink/fetish practice (whereas non-binary surgery would not necessarily have any sexual motive, and is coming from a place of compassion, even if arguably misplaced), but given the extremeness and permanence involved and seeming "contentedness" at the results for him, this for me does almost cross the line into a Body Integrity Disorder space as afterall that too can involve a paraphilia. I do think it poses questions about whether kinksters could fall into using these new legitimate medical channels, and exactly how far we should allow voluntary body modification. I'm a lefty-liberal so my gut always leans to "you have one life, do what you want with your body", however my fear with the nonbinary surgery is this could go the way of puberty blockers and trans reassignment surgery whereby it is no longer a last-resort but advocated as the first and most appropriate treatment.
Inside the bizarre rise of the 'phalgina': Cosmetic clinics are offering 'grotesque' £10,000 surgery to craft non-binary people a penis AND vagina Daily Mail Online (obviously coming from a particular bias and not the most compassionately written, but does summarise the surgeries accurately)
Also mentioned:
Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve 'body integrity dysphoria' : BlockedAndReported (reddit.com) (Eartern_Camera_2222's post)
R v Brown - Wikipedia
R v Peacock - Wikipedia (worth it for the cheeky photo alone)
Fantastic (and bizarre) long read on the Peacock case and others and this area: One lawyer’s crusade to defend extreme pornography Law The Guardian
WPATH World Professional Association for Transgender Health

I know im going to get shit for this but… in a game where the primaries are all nerfed and the devs say themselves “We want you guys to be using your stratagems more” it makes no sense that you would have a planet modification that 1.) gives you less stratagems 2.) makes you wait more to call in said stratagems
I get that you want to make the game interesting but removing castrating one of your main mechanics is not the way to do it. I always play helldive and you really feel the difference.
I know what some of you are going to say, “just play a planet that dosent have the modifiers” i do, i exclusively dont play planets that have modifiers i dont like. HOWEVER the major order is to kill 2 billion bots and all the bot 3 planets HAVE THIS MODIFIER. I could understand that if one planet had it but all three is extreme.
Tldr, waiting around for your stratagems and having one less SUCKS make one modifyer per planet. Rant over have a good day

Readers asked for more. So away we go!!!
Beth:
So much has changed for me over the last 5 years.
Antonio closed the restaurants and took a job in Las Vegas, running a club. I had found peace and tranquilly living upstate on a beautiful farm with a charming house and barn to match. A much smaller version of the property Tex had in Virginia, but it reminded me of those days and it made me happy. The thought of leaving such a place to start over did not excite me.
As a result, Antonio and I decided to divorce amicably and believe it or not, I gave him full custody of our daughter. She was a daddy’s little girl and they were so close. It was the best thing for all of us. Being single again and being on my own felt good.
In a small world type of thing, I was shopping at the local supermarket when I ran into William, he was Julia “Lady” Stern’s ex husband. She was doing life for Tex’s murder and the two had divorced after she went away. We got some coffee and talked.
“Isn’t she horrified that you left when maybe she needed to know you were still there for her?” I asked.
He explained that Julia was quite popular in prison and had girlfriend’s all over the cell block.
“She left me!” He said laughing.
He went on to say, like me, he decided to leave city living for the country life. We both laughed. What were the odds of us landing just a few miles from each other?
As we spoke, I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was. William was a German through in through. Blonde hair, blue eyes, very rugged. Muscular, very funny with a dry sense of humor. We decided to see more of each other.
We dined a few times before I finally invited him home. We had some delightful sex, it was so wonderful. I had missed it greatly since my divorce but with William, I realized, it was worth the wait.
In bed, I finally asked the question that I was afraid to bring up.
“Didn’t you and that fat whore Monica date? And didn’t you guys really hurt Charlie in a video?”
Of course, I was talking about Charlie, my ex slave and weirdly enough, ex husband. A freak of a guy. William explained everything.
“Monica and I were friends but I never dated her! We also had a film company doing the hardcore Femdom thing before the business imploded. Yes, we did castrate him, we cut his nuts clean off. At the time, the three of us needed the money and a scene like that was really profitable.
I admitted I saw the clip. It was all over the internet. It was gruesome but erotic too. Monica the whore stroked Charlie to a lather, he then shot his last load I guess and then William did the cutting. It ended with the whore smiling ear to ear, holding up Charlie’s severed balls.
“Was Charlie ok with it? Did he sign off on such a thing?” I asked not sure what to believe.
“He did wherever Monica told him to do. He was very loyal to her.”
“So, what became of Monica and I guess Charlie too?” I asked.
“Monica made so much money from that clip, she got weight loss surgery and found happiness. She’s married now to a nice guy, a plumber. She’s in a good place and she looks fantastic.”
I was happy for her.
“And Charlie?” I asked
“Well, after your restaurants were closed, he lost his job so Monica threw him out, I think he became homeless.”
I teared up a little upon hearing that.
“Didn’t he have some money from the thingy?” I asked making a scissor motion with my fingers.
“Nah, he gave it all to Monica. Again, a loyal little sissy.”
“Did he fully recover?” I asked still too embarrassed to say the word, “castration.”
“I’m not sure. I mean, I knew what I was doing from my years growing up on a farm in Germany but those were animals, not humans. Still, we took good care of him.”
William kissed my tears. He could see I was feeling bad for Charlie.
“I’m sorry I did that to him but at the time, I needed money to help keep Julia off death row. It was money well spent. I mean when you think about it, she saved Charlie from being shot so I guess you could say this was his way of returning the favor.”
Charlie:
The streets were mean, they were lonesome and I had nothing. I was a ballless sack of dirt reduced to begging and pleading for money and food. A weakling of a man, if I could still be called that, my castration had turned my body into an extremely fat, doughy mess. I was a total loser and other homeless people were always robbing me.
I would think about Beth and Antonio on those lonely freezing nights. I pictured them under their warm covers, naked, in love. I imagined her sucking on her husband’s penis and fondling his balls. Despite my castration, I still got hard but that was it. I still desired sex, but I could not climax, I could not satisfy my desires. My life was hell.
Beth:
William taught me all about the opera. Together, we traveled to the city every few months to enjoy it.
It was an unusual chain of events that led to what William called, “The Reunion.” We were walking up 8th Ave when I noticed a fat, dirty, homeless man begging for change, so quickly I looked the other way, and holding William’s hand tightly, we kept walking. I felt the creep’s eyes were upon me so I didn’t look back.
After the performance, we made our way out of Lincoln Center when again I saw the fat bum. This time he spoke.
“Beth.”
I turned, it was shocking. It was Charlie! He was indeed homeless and rather disgusting to look at. The smell was even worse.
“It must have been quite a site. A beautiful well dressed couple being confronted by a street freak. A cop quickly noticed and before I could say a word, he shooed Charlie away.
“Get lost!” Was all he said.
The cop tipped his cap and smiled. I smiled back.
Charlie:
Beth looked beautiful. To my horror, she was with William, the German who cut me. Seeing his face brought back the horrific memory of that awful day. His evil smile, the smell of booze on his breath. His laugh as I screamed before everything went dark. Then waking up and being forced to suck on his feet as Monica rode his dick. My castration turning those two psychopaths on.
To think Beth and William were friends or maybe more? What about Antonio? I was so confused.
I watched them walk away. Not once did Beth look back.
Beth:
We were staying at a midtown hotel, it was quite nice and cozy, especially on such a cold and snowy night. We quickly had sex, the opera always moved me so, I enjoyed making love soon after!
Of course, as we fucked, my mind turned to Charlie. He was a disgusting bum. He looked gross. I really hoped never would I have to see him again. Then the guilt set in.
“William, he needs our help. I can’t just turn my back on the guy. He needs money, he needs something. Food?”
William had a suggestion.
“You can bring him to the farm. He’s experienced dealing with animals and horses. He did that for you and Tex? Right?”
He did. Tex used him as a slave hand and Charlie was a real pro. I kissed William gently.
“Let’s go save his life!”
William kissed me back.
“First, I need your mouth here.” He said pointing at his monster cock.
I did not disappoint.

What does the evidence say in favour of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoric youth? As we will see, it doesn't say much, at all. Systematic reviews are at the top of the evidence-based medicine pyramid, examining the literature in depth using non-biased, objective measures to determine its quality. We'll be looking at those, as well as what the guidelines for paediatric gender medicine are in some European countries. If you were to pick out countries that have an interest in deliberately misconstruing evidence to push an ideological narrative, these countries, some of the most progressive in the world, wouldn't even be in the hat.

Evidence

First, let's look at a systematic review funded by WPATH, you can't get any more pro trans than this. If any review were to find high quality evidence on these interventions, it would be this one. After finding studies that met certain inclusion criteria, they used prestigious Cochrane guidelines to evaluate their quality. For all outcomes but death by suicide, evidence was graded low, death by suicide evidence was graded insufficient. For a study funded by WPATH, this is the first indication that the evidence for these interventions is remarkably weak. We've all heard the phrase "do you want a living son or dead daughter?", and we now know it is based on no substantive evidence of any kind.
Next, there was a systematic review funded by the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU) to construct guidelines for treating gender dysphoric youth in Sweden. They concluded;

GnRHa treatment in children with gender dysphoria should be considered experimental treatment of individual cases rather than standard procedure.

Swedish guidelines are as follows;

At group level (i.e. for the group of adolescents with gender dysphoria, as a whole), the National Board of Health and Welfare currently assesses that the risks of puberty blockers and gender-affirming treatment are likely to outweigh the expected benefits of these treatments

They say that using these treatments are only warranted in "exceptional" cases, whatever this means. They also state that these experimental treatments should only be offered within the context of a research setting, not standard treatment for gender dysphoria.
Both Swedish and Finnish guidelines state that psychosocial therapy as first line treatment for gender dysphoria, as well as looking at the presence of other mental health co-morbidities.
We also have a report from the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (Ukom) which investigates systems and processes in healthcare, identifying factors that could have led, or could potentially lead, to harm for patients. This is regarding the evidence for sex trait modification in youth.
They say;

The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-confirming treatment (hormonal and surgical), is deficient and the long-term effects are little known. This is especially true for the adolescent population where the stability of their gender incongruence is also not known. There is a lack of research-based knowledge on the treatment of patients with non-binary gender incongruence. In order to safeguard patient safety, Ukom considers it necessary to strengthen the knowledge base on gender incongruence and gender dysphoria, and to align the health service offering with the knowledge base.

Puberty delaying treatment (puberty blockers) and hormonal and surgical gender reassurance treatment for children and adolescents are defined as investigational treatment. This is especially important for teenagers with gender dysphoria.
Investigational treatment in this context means: all treatment where efficacy and safety are not sufficiently documented for the treatment to be included in the ordinary treatment offer. I.e. puberty blockers and CSH shouldn't be included in routine treatment for gender dysphoric youth. It isn't routine treatment because there is insufficient evidence that it is actually effective and that the benefits outweigh the risks.
Additionally, there is a German systematic review of the evidence that was released earlier this year, building upon the NICE reviews out of the United Kingdom performed a few years ago.

The available evidence on the use of PB and CSH in minors with GD is very limited and based on only a few studies with small numbers, and these studies have problematic methodology and quality. There also is a lack of adequate and meaningful long-term studies. Current evidence doesn’t suggest that GD symptoms and mental health significantly improve when PB or CSH are used in minors with GD. Psychotherapeutic interventions to address and reduce the experienced burden can become relevant in children and adolescents with GD.

The Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association passed a resolution calling on the German Federal Government to restrict the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for under 18s to a controlled research setting only, aligning with Swedish and Finnish practice. They cite the reasoning;

The current medical evidence clearly states that puberty-blocking drugs (PB), cross-sex hormone treatments (so-called cross-sex hormone Administration [CSH]) and gender reassignment surgery (e.g. mastectomy) do not improve GI/GD symptoms or mental health in minors with GI/GD. These are irreversible interventions in the human body in primarily physiologically healthy minors who cannot give informed consent in the absence of evidence for such measures.

This is in direct opposition to pro-trans-affirming draft guidelines published by the smaller association AWMF, which is odd given the aforementioned systematic review showing no good evidence for sex trait modification of minors in treating GD. But even if these guidelines are finalised, the GMA resolution strongly signals a possibility that they won't be widely accepted.
So, to any person reading who is in favour of turning children into sterile, life-long medical patients, what's more likely, do the health authorities in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany and the UK all hate transgender people and want gender dysphoric youth to kill themselves, or are you simply the party who is wrong on this topic?

Safety

We have considered the evidence in favour of sex trait modification in youth to treat gender dysphoria, as we have seen, there is no good evidence that they produce improved mental health outcomes. First, it must be emphasised that there are no long-term longitudinal studies on children given puberty blockers to block normally timed puberty looking at effects that might arise in adulthood, there are none of this nature. We know that over 90% of kids who are treated with puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones which most probably results in permanent sterility, as there are no methods of fertility preservation. Meanwhile, most kids not given medication desist in their dysphoria over time. This lends credence to the view that puberty blockers "lock in" a certain gender identity, and thus the hypothesis that blockers are "buying time to think" is false, as they almost always go on to take cross sex hormones. Children are not mature enough to give up future fertility entirely in return for unsupported mental health benefits.

Since nearly all participants started GnRHa after turning 13 and underwent a thorough diagnostic assessment before treatment was started, it is likely that most people starting GnRHa experienced sustained GD. Still, one cannot exclude the possibility that starting GnRHa in itself makes adolescents more likely to continue medical transition

https://academic.oup.com/jsm/article/20/3/398/7005631?login=false
Profound effects on future sexual function may even occur when puberty is paused and later allowed to proceed, since the precise timing of hormone exposure during the peripubertal window is a determinative factor in adult sexual function
There may be a possible underlying cause for why it is practically guaranteed for children that receive puberty blockers to go on to receive cross sex hormones, which collectively entail permanent castration. We know that the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) has been implicated in playing a predominant role in the neural basis of visual/body perception, and that alterations in this area of the brain pays a role in the pathophysiology of anorexia nervosa. Interestingly, even after for controlling for sexual orientation, which we know can cause brain-sex atypicality in the case of homosexuality (and thus confounding for gender dysphoric persons), studies have shown reduced white matter integrity in the IFOF in transpersons, the same area of the brain that is altered in cases of anorexia nervosa. It has been reported that a dose dependent inverse relationship exists between amount of puberty blocker given to gender dysphoric adolescents and white matter integrity in the IFOF, in essence, this may be a potential mechanism as to why puberty blockers solidify the gender dysphoria.
There is also a concern in regards to brain maturation as a result of adolescent sex hormones, neural circuits to do with executive functioning are thought to be rewired during this critical period of puberty. If this is case, brain maturation during puberty may be temporarily or permanently disrupted as a result of these puberty blockers. This could have significant long term neuropsychological consequences including impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions. Because we have no long term studies on the usage of puberty blockers, extreme uncertainty about its long-term effects make prescribing such drugs undesirable, especially given the fact that no good evidence exists for their efficacy.

I've asked female friends, now I would like a male perspective
It's a tough battle for me. Those who I've talked with probably see a pattern in my post and comment history, but I digress
How should we challenge or combat this notion? I see many misandrists seemingly advocating for female supremacy, with males possibly going extinct and the world becoming safer, more peaceful, more prosperous, etc. The best argument I see people have is usually deontological, that they just want men to stay because they like men. There's nothing wrong with that, but what about from a utilitarian sense? Do men collectively offer something extremely beneficial that women do not? And are men just more likely to be pieces of shit?
And how do you combat the group guilt and shame? Therapy hasn't helped any with this, and I despise the notion of "well you're not raping and pillaging so you're automatically in the 1%", or the idea that male behavior inherently needs to be corrected to society, that males are inherently the problem
I've seen people suggest things from having male rights revoked, castration from birth, males being eradicated, and more I'm probably forgetting. How can we show that the world needs both men and women?
Edit: combat as in argue and debate about why men should not be prejudiced against, not deny the existence of stats or acknowledge it isn't true

I've read many articles online and threads in reddit here that say that Aphrodite is based on Ishtar and Astarte and I get the feeling that they want to say that she is entirely a Near Eastern goddess with no equivalents in Indo European mythologies. But she does and I will explain here. Aphrodite is a mixture of NE and PIE goddesses.
Aphrodite is immediately similar to Eos, the dawn goddess. Both are characterized by their great sexuality and share Ares as a lover, in fact Aphrodite curses Eos with insatiable lust for sleeping with Ares, which is a bizarre thing when you consider she never(to my knowledge) acts this way with any other "rival" and that this curse doesn't seem to be that negative compared to standard curses. It's even discussed that Aphrodite and Eos were originally aspects of each other.
In addition to that, Aphrodite's birth story in the Theogony sounds extremely similar to the Rigvedic hymn of Indra defeating Vritra probably because it's a reflex myth.
Aphrodite is born after Kronos defeats and Castrates Uranus, Ushas is liberated after Indra defeats Vritra, certain translations even saying Indra castrates Vritra. And like the PIE Dawn Goddess and Ushas, Aphrodite is the daughter of the Sky Father, whether he's Uranus or Zeus. Even Eos is the daughter of of a Sky Father since Hyperion translates to "The One high above" and his kids and grandkids are sky and light deities.
Lastly, Aphrodite's name means sea foam and she is born from sea foam. Another goddess who gets born from sea foam is the Goddess Lakshmi, she is born from the churning of the ocean in order to obtain Amrita/Soma.

yeah, you know - we're in this together. we're not like other girls, you know, AFAB cis wombyn, we're way better than them - we're like you! we were MEN once, and we're still just one of the boys! we all have masculine hobbies and just love to kick it with the dudes you know? and that's why men's rights should be a huge focus as transfems! i mean we're BASICALLY just like men and we shouldn't associate with women, honestly, i don't even like women! they're actually extremely privileged! it's sad, even us, as trans women, have more rights than the lowly cisgender male! it's tragic! i mean, just look at male suicide rates - THE MALE LONELINESS EPIDEMIC?? HELLO? AND WHO'S FAULT IS THAT??? Umm... yeah.... you already know... our community even derides men who try to date us as "chasers" - what's wrong with loving a trans woman for her penis? it's perfectly normal, why would that make you upset at all? why are you so hateful? as trannies, we can't be very judgemental of people for degeneracy haha! we're LITERALLY castrating ourselves and ruining our perfectly fine male bodies (which are superior to women's bodies btw, lol) - that's pretty weird! liking GIRLCOCKDICKPENISMEATRODFLESH is more normal than that L.M.F.A.O. Honestly being trans is awesome because you get to have MORE privilege in society. being a man is LITERAL NIGHTMARE VETERAN DIFFICULTY BRO! (remember, I KNOW video games, unlike stupid women lol... i mean cis women) and being a woman is LITERALLY just sunshine and roses..... men SWOONING for you everywhere.... i mean wouldnt anyone want that??? to be desired everywhere you go by every weird old decrepit man around you????? all of us trannies LOOOVE men of course........ we don't talk about icky transbians... theyre AGP, EW! they're not even trans! theyre PREDATORS! unlike cis men, who literally don't hurt fucking ANYONE, but of course, SHITTY WOMEN have to make up lies (FEMALE TRAIT LOL) about them to keep them down. Bullshit man. Us trans girls always have your back BRO.
Male socialization is fucking epic dude. I wouldn't trade it for the god damn world!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I fucking love it I love it I love it bro dude pal buddy
YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MY BROTHER MAN

Possible MtF here, some possible signs are listed below:

• I always have a resistance to short boyish hair, and it is not just a sensory issue(I am autistic), and I feel hurt and insulted more if family members praise me for having such a hairstyle. I get horrified by the idea of getting a head shave or a buzzcut and a shaved head or a buzzcut is a very conventionally masculine hairstyle. (fortunately never really got one though). I think I just want long hair no matter what lol.
• I play dress-up games. I once saw classmates playing a dress-up flash game during a computer class in middle school, then I tried to get the same game for my computer, and later I started to get more dress-up games to play.
• I don't socialize well with people in general, but I always prefer to get along with girls and tend to get along with girls better.
• Feminism as a concept seems rather natural to me, and I only realized very recently that a lot of straight males fail to see from the perspective of females, no matter the education level they have attained.
• Instead, I find it hard to understand the thoughts of certain straight cis males...especially incels, and I always had problems with men's talk(I seem to defy the extreme male brain hypothesis as an autistic person lol).
• I never developed an interest in sports, either playing or watching them, and I have a younger brother who eventually developed an interest in watching sports.
• I never did well in physical education classes and did not take parts in activities in such classes much.
• I seem to care about my weight more and I want to be thin.(and stereotypical males don't care or want to be physically strong)
• I also lack interest in competition in general and once rejected a chance to take a competition in physics in high school(I excelled in math and science back then.)
• I also lack interest in many other stereotypically masculine interests like driving cars, riding motorcycles, or collecting Gundam models.
• I seem to not identify with the male protagonists and I seem to prefer to read something featuring a female protagonist or a protagonist that suddenly became a female overnight.
• I dislike the presence of males when watching NSFW things.
• I once tried to write something, and when writing something NSFW, I have a preference for writing a female protagonist from a first-person perspective.
• I asked my mother what if I were born as a girl at least twice, and I also once said something like "I want to be a girl" after a school club activity in high school. I also once imagined waking up as a girl I think.
• I never became dominant or assertive and did not do leading much, nor did I have much interest in them.
• When in university, I once tried to castrate myself by binding my balls to have them fall off after days, though my reason back then was trying to control my sex drive.
• I only learned to use swear words when I was like 11 or 12 years old, and stopped using them in speech after losing the sense of novelty and such I guess.
• When playing LEGO, I have certain interests in playing the female LEGO figurines.
• When using the internet, I found that I like being seen as a girl and I am reluctant to the idea of coming out as a male at birth when being online. And I still have a preference for interacting with females(and MtF and sissy males) online as sisters and such, and I like being called "sis" instead of "bro" by online friends.
• When playing games, I have a preference for playing female characters, even if the design is not sexualized(and I prefer non-sexualized outfits on female characters)
• I don't like competitive video games against other players much either; instead, I seem to play games like The Sims series(it's a more detailed version of dollhouses) more and always try to beautify my female sims.
• I cried when being spanked and such when younger.
• I have read some Shoujo manga.
• I wanted a gift for girls when the teacher or a classmate wanted to give every child in the class a gift that comes along with a pack of chocolate.
• I don't get it when some people, especially males, show hate towards children or child things.
• When joining school clubs, I never joined anything related to sports.
• I have liked to draw girls since middle school, and I disliked it when classmates "added" some "sex" elements to them. I recently also drew a self-character...as a girl, though not taking a stereotypically feminine role.
• There's an overrepresentation of LGBT+ people among participants of one of my main and artistic interests.
• I wanted a little sister when I was little, but maybe it is not relevant.
• My score in sex role tests are undifferentiated or feminine, never got masculine.
• In recent years I got more thoughts of becoming a female, and yes I do want to be like certain girls in arts and also be like certain females who are internet personalities...and recently also started reading something about transition and such.
• I did the online gender dysphoria test and found that my score already hit the "strongly indicative of dysphoria" range recently...
• I feel I look creepy and don't really want to try to cross-dress as of now though.

VIII: The Flight from Feeling: Sociopsychology of the Sex War
The Trivialization of Personal Relations
Bertrand Russell once predicted that the socialization of reproduction - the supersession of the family by the state - would “make sex love itself more trivial,” encourage “a certain triviality in all personal relations,” and “make it far more difficult to take an interest in anything after one’s own death.” At first glance, recent developments appear to have refuted the first part of this prediction. Americans today invest personal relations, particularly the relations between men and women, with undiminished emotional importance. The decline of childrearing as a major preoccupation has freed sex from its bondage to procreation and made it possible for people to value erotic life for its own sake. As the family shrinks to the marital unit, it can be argued that men and women respond more readily to each other’s emotional needs, instead of living vicariously through their offspring. The marriage contract having lost its binding character, couples now find it possible, according to many observers, to ground sexual relations in something more solid than legal compulsion. In short, the growing determination to live for the moment, whatever it may have done to the relations between parents and children, appears to have established the preconditions of a new intimacy between men and women.
This appearance is an illusion. The cult of intimacy conceals a growing despair of finding it. Personal relations crumble under the emotional weight with which they are burdened. The inability “to take an interest in anything after one’s own death,” which gives such urgency to the pursuit of close personal encounters in the present, makes intimacy more elusive than ever. The same developments that have weakened the tie between parents and children have also undermined relations between men and women. Indeed the deterioration of marriage contributes in its own right to the deterioration of care for the young.
This last point is so obvious that only a strenuous propaganda on behalf of “open marriage” and “creative divorce” prevents us from grasping it. It is clear, for example, that the growing incidence of divorce, together with the ever present possibility that any given marriage will end in collapse, adds to the instability of family life and deprives the child of a measure of emotional security. Enlightened opinion diverts attention from this general fact by insisting that in specific cases, parents may do more harm to their children by holding a marriage together than by dissolving it. It is true that many couples preserve their marriage, in one form or another, at the expense of the child. Sometimes they embark on a life full of distractions that shield them against daily emotional involvements with their offspring. Sometimes one parent acquiesces in the neurosis of the other (as in the family configuration that produces so many schizophrenic patients) for fear of disturbing the precarious peace of the household. More often the husband abandons his children to the wife whose company he finds unbearable, and the wife smothers the children with incessant yet perfunctory attentions. This particular solution to the problem of marital strain has become so common that the absence of the father impresses many observers as the most striking fact about the contemporary family. Under these conditions, a divorce in which the mother retains custody of her children merely ratifies the existing state of affairs - the effective emotional desertion of his family by the father. But the reflection that divorce often does no more damage to children than marriage itself hardly inspires rejoicing.
Battle of the Sexes: Its Social History
While the escalating war between men and women have psychological roots in the disintegration of the marital relation, and more broadly in the changing patterns of socialization outlined in the preceding chapter, much of this tension can be explained without reference to psychology. The battle of the sexes also constitutes a social phenomena with a history of its own. The reasons for the recent intensification of sexual combat lie in the transformation of capitalism from its paternalistic and familial form to a managerial, corporate, bureaucratic system of almost total control: more specifically, in the collapse of “chivalry”; the liberation of sex from many of its former constraints; the pursuit of sexual pleasure as an end in itself; the emotional overloading of personal relations; and most important of all, the irrational male response to the emergence of the liberated woman.
It has been clear for some time that “chivalry is dead.” The tradition of gallantry formerly masked and to some degree mitigated the organized oppression of women. While males monopolized political and economic power, they made their domination of women more palatable by surrounding it with an elaborate ritual of deference and politesse. They set themselves up as protectors of the weaker sex, and this cloying but useful fiction set limits to their capacity to exploit women through sheer physical force. The counterconvention of droit de seigneur, which justified the predatory exploits of the privileged classes against women socially inferior to themselves, nevertheless showed that the male sex at no time ceased to regard most women as fair game. The long history of rape and seduction, moreover, served as a reminder that animal strength remained the basis of masculine ascendancy, manifested here in its most direct and brutal form. Yet polite conventions, even when they were no more than a façade, provided women with ideological leverage in their struggle to domesticate the wildness and savagery of men. They surrounded essentially exploitive relationships with a network of reciprocal obligations, which if nothing else made exploitation easier to bear.
The symbiotic interdependence of exploiters and exploited, so characteristic of paternalism in all ages, survived in male-female relations long after the collapse of patriarchal authority in other areas. Because the convention of deference to the fair sex was so closely bound up with paternalism, however, it lived on borrowed time once the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had destroyed the last foundations of feudalism. The decline of paternalism, and of the rich public ceremonial formerly associated with it, spelled the end of gallantry. Women themselves began to perceive the connection between their debasement and their sentimental exaltation, rejected their confining position on the pedestal of masculine adoration, and demanded the demystification of female sexuality.
Democracy and feminism have now stripped the veil of courtly convention from the subordination of women, revealing the sexual antagonisms formerly concealed by the “feminine mystique.” Denied illusions of comity, men and women find it more difficult than before to confront each other as friends and lovers, let alone as equals. As male supremacy becomes ideologically untenable, incapable of justifying itself as protection, men assert their domination more directly, in fantasies and occasionally in acts of raw violence. Thus the treatment of women in movies, according to one study, has shifted “from reverence to rape.”
Women who abandon the security of well-defined though restrictive social roles have always exposed themselves to sexual exploitation, having surrendered the usual claims of respectability. Mary Wollstonecraft, attempting to live as a free woman, found herself brutally deserted by Gilbert Imlay. Later feminists forfeited the privileges of sex and middle-class origin when they campaigned for women’s rights. Men reviled them publicly as sexless “she-men” and approached them privately as loose women. A Cincinnati brewer, expecting to be admitted to Emma Goldman’s hotel room when he found her alone, became alarmed when she threatened to wake the whole establishment. He protested, “I thought you believed in free love.” Ingrid Bengis reports that when she hitchhiked across the country, men expected her to pay for rides with sexual favors. Her refusal elicited the predictable reply: “Well, girls shouldn’t hitchhike in the first place.”
What distinguishes the present time from the past is that defiance of sexual conventions less and less presents itself as a matter of individual choice, as it was for the pioneers of feminism. Since most of those conventions have already collapsed, even a woman who lays no claim to her rights nevertheless finds it difficult to claim the traditional privileges of her sex. All women find themselves identified with “women’s lib” merely by virtue of their sex, unless by strenuous disavowals they identify themselves with its enemies. All women share in the burdens as well as the benefits of “liberation,” both of which can be summarized by saying that men no longer treat women as ladies.
The Sexual “Revolution”
The demystification of womanhood goes hand in hand with the desublimation of sexuality. The “repeal of reticence” has dispelled the aura of mystery surrounding sex and removed most of the obstacles to its public display. Institutionalized sexual segregation has given way to arrangements that promote the intermingling of the sexes at every stage of life. Efficient contraceptives, legalized abortion, and a “realistic” and “healthy” acceptance of the body have weakened the links that once tied sex to love, marriage, and procreation. Men and women now pursue sexual pleasure as an end in itself, unmediated even by the conventional trappings of romance.
Sex valued purely for its own sake loses all reference to the future and brings no hope of permanent relationships. Sexual liaisons, including marriage, can be terminated at pleasure. This means, as Willard Waller demonstrated a long time ago, that lovers forfeit the right to be jealous or to insist on fidelity as a condition of erotic union. In his sociological satire of the recently divorced, Waller pointed out that the bohemians of the 1920s attempted to avoid emotional commitments while eliciting them from others.
Since the bohemian was “not ready to answer with his whole personality for the consequences of the affair, nor to give any assurance of its continuance,” he lost the right to demand such an assurance from others. “To show jealousy,” under these conditions, became “nothing short of a crime…. So if one falls in love in Bohemia, he conceals it from his friends as best he can.” In similar studies of the “rating and dating complex” on college campuses, Waller found that students who fell in love invited the ridicule of their peers. Exclusive attachments have way to an easygoing promiscuity as the normal pattern of sexual relations. Popularity replaced purity as the measure of a woman’s social value; the sentimental cult of virginity gave way to “playful woman-sharing,” which had “no negative effect,” as Wolfenstein and Leites pointed out in their study of movies, “on the friendly relations between the men.”(*) In the thirties and forties, the cinematic fantasy in which a beautiful girl dances with a chorus of men, favoring one no more than the others, expressed an ideal to which reality more and more closely conformed. In Elmtown’s Youth, August Hollingshead described a freshman girl who violated conventional taboos against drinking, smoking, and “fast” behavior and still retained her standing in the school’s most prominent clique, partly carefully calibrated promiscuity. “To be seen with her adds to a boy’s prestige in the elite peer group…. she pets with her dates discreetly never goes too far, just far enough to make them come back again.” In high school as in college, the peer group attempts through conventional ridicule and vituperation to prevent its members from falling in love with the wrong people, indeed from falling in love at all; for as Hollingshead noted, lovers “are lost to the adolescent world with its quixotic enthusiasms and varied group activities.”
These studies show that the main features of the contemporary sexual scene had already established themselves well before the celebrated “sexual revolution” of the sixties and seventies: casual promiscuity, a wary avoidance of emotional commitments, an attack on jealousy and possessiveness. Recent developments, however, have introduced a new source of tension: the modern woman’s increasingly insistent demand for sexual fulfillment. In the 1920s and 1930s, many women still approached sexual encounters with a hesitance that combined prudery and a realistic fear of consequences. Superficially seductive, they took little pleasure in sex even when they spoke the jargon of sexual liberation and professed to live for pleasure and thrills. Doctors worried about female frigidity, and psychiatrists had no trouble in recognizing among their female patients the classic patterns of hysteria described by Freud, in which a coquettish display of sexuality often coexists with powerful repression and a rigid, puritanical morality.
Today women have dropped much of their sexual reserve. In the eyes of men, this makes them more accessible as sexual partners but also more threatening. Formerly men complained about women’s lack of sexual response; now they find this response intimidating and agonize about their capacity to satisfy it. “I’m sorry they ever found out they could have orgasms too,” Heller’s Bob Slocum says. The famous Masters-Johnson report on female sexuality added to these anxieties by depicting women as sexually insatiable, inexhaustible in their capacity to experience orgasm after orgasm. Some feminists have used the Masters report to attack the “myth of vaginal orgasm,” to assert women’s independence of men, or to taunt men with their sexual inferiority. “Theoretically, a woman could go on having orgasms indefinitely if physical exhaustion did not intervene,” writes Mary Jane Sherfey. According to Kate Millett, “While the male’s sexual potential is limited, the female’s appears to be biologically nearly inexhaustible.” Sexual “performance” thus becomes another weapon in the war between men and women; social inhibitions no longer prevent women from exploiting the tactical advantage which the current obsession with sexual measurement has given them. Whereas the hysterical woman, even when she fell in love and longed to let herself go, seldom conquered her underlying aversion to sex, the pseudoliberated woman of Cosmopolitan exploits her sexuality in a more deliberate and calculating way, not only because she has fewer reservations about sex but because she manages more successfully to avoid emotional entanglements. “Women with narcissistic personalities,” writes Otto Kernberg, “may appear quite ‘hysterical’ on the surface, with their extreme coquettishness and exhibitionism but the cold, shrewdly calculating quality of their seductiveness is in marked contrast to the much warmer, emotionally involved quality of hysterical pseudo-hypersexuality.”
[*. The transition in American movies from the vamp to the “good-bad girl,” according to Wolfenstein and Leites, illustrates the decline of jealousy and the displacement of sexual passion by sexiness. “The dangerousness of the vamp was associated with the man’s intolerance for sharing her with other men. Her seductive appearance and readiness for love carried a strong suggestion that there has been and might be other men in her life…. The good-bad girl is associated with a greater tolerance for sharing the woman…. In effect, the woman’s attraction is enhanced by her association with other men. All that is needed to eliminate unpleasantness is the assurance that those relations were not serious.”]
Togetherness
Both men and women have come to approach personal relations with a heightened appreciation of their emotional risks. Determined to manipulate the emotions of others while protecting themselves against emotional injury, both sexes cultivate a protective shallowness, a cynical detachment they do not altogether feel but which soon becomes habitual and in any case embitters personal relations merely through its repeated profession. At the same time, people demand from personal relations the richness and intensity of a religious experience. Although in some ways men and women have had to modify their demands on each other, especially in their inability to exact commitments of lifelong sexual fidelity, in other ways they demand more than ever. In the American middle class, moreover, men and women see too much of each other and find it hard to put their relations in proper perspective. The degradation of work and the impoverishment of communal life force people to turn to sexual excitement to satisfy all their emotional needs. Formerly sexual antagonism was tempered not only by chivalric, paternalistic, conventions but by a more relaxed acceptance of the limitations of the other sex. Men and women acknowledged each other’s shortcomings without making them the basis of a comprehensive indictment. Partly because they found more satisfaction than is currently available in casual relations with their own sex, they did not have to raise friendship itself into a political program, an ideological alternative to love. An easygoing, everyday contempt for the weaknesses of the other sex, institutionalized as folk wisdom concerning the emotional incompetence of men or the brainlessness of women, kept sexual enmity within bounds and prevented it from becoming an obsession.
Feminism and the ideology of intimacy have discredited the sexual stereotypes which kept women in their place but which also made it possible to acknowledge sexual antagonism without raising it to the level of all-out warfare. Today the folklore of sexual differences and the acceptance of sexual friction survive only in the working class. Middle-class feminists envy the ability of working-class women to acknowledge that men get in their way without becoming man-haters. “These women are less angry at their men because they don’t spend that much time with them,” according to one observer. “Middle-class women are the ones who were told men had to be their companions.”
…
Strategies of Accommodation
Because the contradiction exposed (and exacerbated) by feminism are so painful, the feminist movement has always found it tempting to renounce its own insights and program and to retreat into some kind of accommodation with the existing order, often disguised as embattled militancy. In the nineteenth century, American feminists edged away from their original programs, which envisioned not only economic equality but a sweeping reform of marriage and sexual relations, into a protracted campaign for woman suffrage. Today many feminists argue, once again in the name of political realism, that women need to establish their influence within the two-party system, as a kind of loyal opposition, before they can raise broader issues. Such tactics merely serve to postpone the discussion of broader issues indefinitely. Just as the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century drew back from discussions of love and marriage when they met with public hostility, so strong forces in the National Organization for Women today propose to improve woman’s image, to show that feminism in no way threatens men, and to blame “social conditions” or bad attitudes, not male supremacy, for the subordination of the female sex.
More subtle forms of accommodation pose as radical challenges to mainstream feminism and the status quo. Some militants have revived discredited theories of matriarchal origins or myths of the moral superiority of women, thereby consoling themselves for this lack of power. They appear to the illusory solidarity of sisterhood in order to avoid arguments about the proper goals of the feminist movement. By institutionalizing women’s activities as “alternatives to the male death-culture,” they avoid challenging that culture and protect women from the need to compete with men for jobs, political power, and public attention. What began as a tactical realization that women have to win their rights without waiting for men to grant them has degenerated into the fantasy of a world without men. As one critic has noted, the movement’s “apparent vigor turns out to be mere busyness with self-perpetuating make-work: much of it serving in the short run to provide its more worldly experts with prestige, book contracts, and grants, its dreamers with an illusory matriarchal utopia.”
“Radical lesbians” carry the logic of separation to its ultimate futility, withdrawing at every level from the struggle against male domination while directing a steady stream of abuse against men and against women who refuse to acknowledge their homosexual proclivities. Proclaiming their independence from men, militant lesbians in fact envision a protected enclave for themselves within a male-dominated society. Yet this form of surrender - the dream of an island secure against male intrusion - remains attractive to women who repeatedly fail to find a union of sexuality and tenderness in their relations with men. As such disappointments become more and more common, sexual separatism commends itself as the most plausible substitute for liberation.
All these strategies of accommodation derive their emotional energy from an impulse much more prevalent than feminism: the flight from feeling. For many reasons, personal relations have become increasingly risky - most obviously, because they no longer carry any assurance of permanence. Men and women make extravagant demands on each other and experience irrational rage and hatred when their demands are not met. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that more and more people long for emotional detachment or “enjoy sex,” as Hendin writes, “only in situations where they can define and limit the intensity of the relationship.” A lesbian confesses: “The only men I’ve ever been able to enjoy sex with were men I didn’t give a shit about. Then I could let go, because I didn’t feel vulnerable.”
Sexual separatism is only one of many strategies for controlling or escaping from strong feeling. Many prefer the escape of drugs, which dissolve anger and desire in a glow of good feeling and create the illusion of intense experience without emotion. Others simply undertake to live alone, repudiating connections with either sex. The reported increase in single-member households undoubtedly reflects a new taste for personal independence, but it also expresses a revulsion against close emotional attachments of any kind. The rising rate of suicide among young people can be attributed, in part, to the same flight from emotional entanglements. Suicide, in Hendin’s words, represents the “ultimate numbness.”
The most prevalent form of escape from emotional complexity is promiscuity: the attempt to achieve a strict separation between sex and feeling. Here again, escape masquerades as liberation, regression as progress. The progressive ideology of “nonbiding commitments” and “cool sex” makes a virtue of disengagement, while purporting to criticize the depersonalization of sex. Enlightened authorities like Alex Comfort, Nena and George O’Neill, Robert and Anna Francoeur insist on the need to humanize sex by making it into a “total experience” instead of a mechanical performance; yet in the same breath they condemn the human emotions of jealousy and possessiveness and decry “romantic illusions.” “Radical” therapeutic wisdom urges men and women to express their needs and wishes without reserve - since all needs and wishes have equal legitimacy - but warns them not to expect a single mate to satisfy them. This program seeks to allay emotional tensions, in effect, by reducing the demands men and women make on each other, instead of making men and women better able to meet them. The promotion of sex as a “healthy,” “normal” part of life masks a desire to divest it of the emotional intensity that unavoidably clings to it: the reminders of earlier entanglements with parents, the “unhealthy” inclination to re-create those relations in relation with lovers. The enlightened insistence that sex is not “dirty” expresses a wish to sanitize it by washing away its unconscious associations.
The humanistic critique of sexual “depersonalization” thus sticks to the surface of the problem. Even while preaching the need to combine sex with feeling, it gives ideological legitimacy to the protective withdrawal from strong emotions. It condemns the overemphasis on technique while extolling sexual relations that are hermetically free of affect. It exhorts men and women to “get in touch with their feelings” but encourages them to make “resolutions about freedom and ‘non-possessiveness,’” as Ingrid Bengis writes, which “tear the very heart out of intimacy.” It satirizes the crude pornographic fantasies sold by the mass media, which idealize hairless women with inflated mammaries, but it does so out of an aversion to fantasy itself, which so rarely conforms to social definition of what is healthy minded. The critics of dehumanized sex, like the critics of sport, hope to abolish spectatorship and to turn everyone into a participant, hoping that vigorous exercise will drive away unwholesome thoughts. They attack pornography, not because they wish to promote more complicated and satisfying fantasies about sex, but because, on the contrary, they wish to win acceptance for a realistic view of womanhood and of the reduced demands that men and women have a right to make of each other.
The Castrating Woman of Male Fantasy
The flight from feeling, whether or not it tries to justify itself under an ideology of nonbinding commitments, takes the form above all of a flight from fantasy. This shows that it represents more than defensive reaction to external disappointments. Today men and women seek escape from emotion not only because they have suffered too many wounds in the wars of love but because they experience their own inner impulses as intolerably urgent and menacing. The flight from feeling originates not only in the sociology of the sex war but in the psychology that accompanies it. If “many of us,” as Ingrid Bengis observes of women and as others have observed of men as well, “have had to anesthetize ourselves to [our] needs,” it is the very character of those needs (and of the defenses erected against them) which gives rise to the belief that they cannot be satisfied in heterosexual relations - perhaps should not be satisfied in any form - and which therefore prompts people to withdraw from intense emotional encounters.
Instinctual desires always threaten psychic equilibrium and for this reason can never be given direct expression. In our society, however, they present themselves as intolerably menacing, in part because the collapse of authority has removed so many of the external prohibitions against the expression of dangerous impulses. The superego can no longer ally itself, in its battle against impulse, with outside authorities. It has to rely almost entirely on its own resources, and these too have diminished in their effectiveness. Not only have the social agents of repression lost much of their force, but their internal representations in the superego have suffered a similar decline. The ego ideal, which cooperates in the work of repression by making socially acceptable behavior itself an object of libidinal cathexis, has become increasingly pallid and ineffective in the absence of compelling moral models outside the self. This means, as we have seen, that the superego has to rely more and more on harsh, punitive dictation, drawing on the aggressive impulses in the id and directing them against the ego.
The narcissist feels consumed by his own appetites. The intensity of his oral hunger leads him to make inordinate demands on his friends and sexual partners; yet in the same breath he repudiates those demands asks only a causal connection without promise of permanence on either side. He longs to free himself from his own hunger and rage, to achieve a calm detachment beyond emotion, and to outgrow his dependence on others. He longs for the indifference to human relationships and to life itself that would enable him to acknowledge its passing in Kurt Vonnegut’s laconic phrase, “So it goes,” which so aptly expresses the ultimate aspiration of the psychiatric seeker. <“Western” Buddhism>
But although the psychological man of our times frightens himself with the intensity of his inner needs, the needs of others appall him no less than his own. One reason the demands he inadvertently imposes on others make him uneasy is that they may justify other in making demands on himself. Men especially fear the demands of women, not only because women no longer hesitate to press them but because men find it so difficult to imagine an emotional need that does not wish to consume whatever it seizes on.
Women today ask for two things in their relations with men: sexual satisfaction and tenderness. Whether separately or in combination, both demands seem to convey to many males the same message - that women are voracious, insatiable. Why should men respond in this fashion to demands that reason tells them have obvious legitimacy? Rational arguments notoriously falter in the face of unconscious anxieties; women’s sexual demands terrify men because they reverberate at such deep layers of the masculine mind, calling up early fantasies of a possessive, suffocating, devouring, and castrating mother. The persistence of such fantasies in later life intensifies and brings into the open the secret terror that has always been an important part of the male image of womanhood. The strength of these pre-Oedipal fantasies, in the narcissistic type of personality, makes it likely that men will approach women with hopelessly divided feelings, dependent and demanding in their fixation on the breast but terrified of the vagina which threatens to eat them alive; of the legs with which popular imagination endows the American heroine, legs which can presumably strangle or scissor victims to death; of the dangerous, phallic breast itself, encased in unyielding armor, which in unconscious terror more nearly resembles an implement of destruction that a source of nourishment. The sexually voracious female, long a stock figure of masculine pornography, in the twentieth century has emerged into the daylight of literary respectability. Similarly the cruel, destructive, domineering woman, la belle dame sans merci, has moved from the periphery of literature and the other arts to a position close to the center. Formerly a source of delicious titillation, of sadomasochistic gratification tinged with horrified fascination, she now inspires unambiguous loathing and dread. Heartless, domineering, burning (as Leslie Fiedler has said) with “a lust of the nerves rather than of the flesh,” she unmans every man who falls under her spell. In American fiction, she assumes a variety of guides, all of them variations on the same theme: the bitchy heroine of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzegerald; Nathanael West’s Faye Greener, whose “invitation wasn’t to pleasure but to struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love”; Tennessee Williams’s Maggie Tolliver, edgy as a cat on a hot tin roof; the domineering wife whose mastery of her husband, as in the joyless humor of James Thurber, recalls the mastery of the castrating mother over her son; the man-eating Mom denounced in the shrill falsetto of Philip Wylie’s Generation of Vipers, Wright Morris’s Man and Boy, Edward Albee’s The American Dream; the suffocating Jewish mother, Mrs. Portnoy; the Hollywood vampire (Theda Bara), scheming seductress (Marlene Dietrich), or bad blonde (Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield); the precocious female killer of William March’s The Bad Seed.
Child or woman, wife or mother, this female cuts men to ribbons or swallows them whole. She travels accompanied by eunuchs, by damaged men suffering from nameless wounds, or by a few strong men brought low by their misguided attempts to turn her into a real woman. Whether or not the actual incidence of impotence has increased in American males - and there is no reason to doubt reports that it has - the specter of impotence haunts the contemporary imagination, not least because it focuses the fear that a played-out Anglo-Saxon culture is about to fall before the advance of hardier races. The nature of impotence, moreover, has undergone an important historical shift. In the nineteenth century, respectable men sometimes experienced embarrassing sexual failures with women of their own class, or else suffered from what Freud called “psychic impotence” - the characteristic Victorian split between sensuality and affection. Although most of these men dutifully had intercourse with their wives, they derived sexual satisfaction only from intercourse with prostitutes or with women otherwise degraded. As Freud explained, this psychic syndrome - “the most prevalent form of degradation” in the erotic life of his time - originated in the Oedipus complex. After the painful renunciation of the mother, sensuality seeks only those objects that evoke no reminder of her, while the mother herself, together with other “pure” (socially respectable) women, is idealized beyond reach of the sensual.
Today, impotence typically seems to originate not in renunciation of the mother but in earlier experiences, often reactivated by the apparently aggressive overtures of sexually liberated women. Fear of the devouring mother of pre-Oedipal fantasy gives rise to a generalized fear of women that has little resemblance to the sentimental adoration men once granted to women who made them sexually uncomfortable. The fear of women, closely associated with a fear of the consuming desires within, reveals itself not only as impotence but as a boundless rage against the female sex. This blind and impotent rage, which seems so prevalent at the present time, only superficially represents a defensive male reaction against feminism. It is only because the recent revival of feminism stirs up such deeply rooted memories that it gives rise to such primitive emotions. Men’s fear of women, moreover, exceeds the actual threat to their sexual privileges. Whereas the resentment of women against men for the most part has solid roots in the discrimination and sexual danger to which women are constantly exposed, the resentment of men against women, when men still control most of the power and wealth in society yet feel themselves threatened on every hand - intimidated, emasculated - appears deeply irrational, and for that reason not likely to be appeased by changes in feminist tactics designed to reassure men that liberated women threaten no one. When even Mom is a menace, there is not much that feminists can say to soften the sex war or to assure their adversaries that men and women will live happily together when it is over.

I used to go from relationship to relationship because I needed other people to give me attention to make myself feel worth the attention…or worthy of anything, for that matter.
As the years have gone by, my BPD symptoms get worse and worse. Especially since I got diagnosed last December. I’ve come to this place where I understand my BPD, albeit in a pessimistic, detached outlook.
Love is pain. Fear. Excruciating loneliness regardless of a partner’s presence, worse, even. Said in short, relationships are extremely painful for me, and I wonder if I’m just happier or better off alone.
I love the idea of romance; maybe it was put in my head by the rom coms my sister used to make me watch with her. But when I get in a relationship and have the opportunity to take part in the real deal. And then I fall in love too fast, or explode over something objectively little, or get “clingy” as a response to fear, it falls apart so quickly. It’s like whiplash. I’m starting to realize it’s just not worth it.
Regardless, I’m terrified by the prospect of d*ing alone. I just want it to not hurt, that’s all.
I’ve become this completely s*xless, castrated (for lack of a better term) human being that can’t find anyone attractive. It’s like I’m not even trying. My body is doing it with or without my consent.
Am I alone in this? How do I reconcile the fear of dying alone with the overwhelming pain of being in love? So in love that I feel like I’m being torn in two? Is this bad? If so, how do I solve it?

Some things before I get into why:
I'm a 19-year-old man. This isn't for religious reasons (I'm an atheist). I'm autistic and have some other mental disorders (ADHD, OCD, anxiety). I consider myself asexual/sex repulsed and have told others that I'm asexual, or that I'm on the asexual spectrum. I'm not aromantic (I love women!!!). I still want a romantic relationship and have been trying to create one for many years now, to no success. My ideal romantic relationship would consist of me and a woman who love each other, who hug, cuddle, and kiss, but never (or rarely) have sex. I realize that this very much limits my options when it comes to choosing a romantic partner. Lastly, I would only do this through the proper means (bilateral orchiectomy or whatever procedure is appropriate). I would never do it by myself with scissors or anything like that.
Why I want to be castrated:
I really don't like it when I get sex urges. It feels like I'm becoming someone else, twisted and warped, when it happens. I hate having to masturbate to get rid of sex urges, even if it feels good during it.
I can't really conceive of a situation where I would want to have sex with someone, for a few reasons. I don't think I can ever share my body with someone in that way (i.e. just being fully nude around anyone), not to mention putting myself inside them, because I'm extremely self-conscious about my physical appearance. This is to the point where I'm scared to wear a T-shirt and shorts in public, but that's not the point and might have to be addressed differently.
It feels like I'm losing myself whenever I have a sex urge or whenever I masturbate. It's just not who I want to be, and I'm disgusted by it. I want to be able to live life free of this and to be able to focus on my passions without being distracted. I don't want to be pulled around by my balls, and it's for that reason that I want them gone.
I'd like to keep my dick, though. Always having to pee sitting down is an unacceptable tradeoff.

i have had my female mini lop for about a year and a half now, and a few months ago took in a male (approx 6 months old by now) english spot as a foster for a local rabbit rescue.
i have kept them separated all this time but i had told the rescue my intention was to try to bond the two eventually, because i have been worried that my girl might be lonely - the rescue and i agreed that if bonding doesn’t work out they will advertise him up for adoption to someone else.
my girl is EXTREMELY friendly, sociable and outgoing. she LOVES people. but she has been really apathetic towards the boy since he got here so i have already been second guessing the necessity of it. ignoring that, the male was finally castrated and so i’ve been gradually working up to a “face to face” interaction- they’ve met through fences etc and been fine (well, he was very interested and she usually tried to hop away).
anyway today i finally put them in the bathtub together for the first time and the boy was instantly humping her non-stop until i couldn’t take it anymore and took her out. then he started thumping and lunging at me.
now i don’t want to repeat the situation, i know it’s maybe childish and pathetic but i literally started to cry at the thought of my girl being confused wondering why im doing this to her, i know they’re animals and it’s “their nature” but she is my baby and i can’t sit and watch her suffer i don’t know im so conflicted - will he stop doing that or will it keep happening? should i trust my instincts that are telling me she’s not really interested in a friend or is her apathy just par for the course at first?

It must be nice to be a Steward for your liege in CK3. You get a huge salary, tax perks, and you don't even have to do anything. Kick your feet up and enjoy the cash flow. And the same is true for every council position there is! Free perks, with no actual duties.
With administrative empires coming along, and travel being a thing now, this presents an opportunity to overhaul this... incredibly placeholder-y mechanic.
Councillors should have actual jobs to do. Forget stacking bonuses, you gotta earn your position on the Council. If I am promoted to spymaster, it comes with it's perks, but duties and responsibilities alongside.
Every 3 years (or some adjustable number based on balance and levels of frustration), as a councilor, you are required to complete a small activity, based on the duty that you have been assigned. If you don't do it, you may not get your bonuses, your salary, your liege won't get his bonus, and he may be upset with you.
For instance, if you've been promoted to Spymaster, your liege may assign you to "Find Secrets" in Constantinople. You should be required (within a reasonable timeframe) to travel to Constantinople and complete an activity where you'll be given some choices based on your skills as a spymaster. If you fail to do so, your liege gets no secrets, you get no secrets, you don't get any bonuses, and your liege is grumpy with you. Repeated failures may result in getting fired, jailed, title stripped, castrated, whatever.
This would provide a lot of fun opportunities for narratives and strategic gameplay. Maybe you're a duplicitous spymaster, or a double agent. You complete your tasks but keep the juiciest secrets to yourself. Maybe you're a Chancellor making rounds to improve relationships between strained nations... Now you actually have to do that. Or maybe you're an extremely busy King, you have enough shit on your plate and don't want to be a Councillor.
Each councilor task could have its own activity associated with it. Inspiring recruitment could involve touring the countryside, foreign relations could involve traveling to foreign courts, promoting development could involve traveling to the targeted county, and supporting schemes could involve traveling to the target's location.

I personally never experienced anything extremely brutal, but I have an acquaintance with the same condition I do (Cerebral Palsy) and he went through an agonizing experience. To preface this upcoming story I better explain the context. When it comes to disabled men, we are often seen by women as asexual beings. My experience with this concept is when women go into graphic details of their sex lives, but this guy faced something even worse. He developed a “friendship” with a group of women who essentially used him as a prop for their insta and tiktok for what’s called “inspiration porn” basically farming clicks by bragging they were so inclusive for having him around. He did have a rapport with these women but they treated him more like a mascot or a pet in my opinion. The shocking part is some of them would walk around naked or undress in front of him, not realizing how humiliating it was. These women did not see him as a man, but as some castrated mewling paralyzed creature. He was basically a eunuch in their eyes and nothing more.

Post gaza war gaza will be not fitting to human life due power / water / electricity / 70% housesntotal loss / no farming as most farmlands taken for gazan soil security strip / never any work visas to israeli soil ever again for gazans, Gaza economy will never recover, most gazans are traumotized and wont have the stomach to see forever idf night arrests like in judea, post war israel will almost for sure bribe countries for $ or cheap arms sales to offer gazans green cards, just as golda meir in the 70s through the mossad that made the chile palestinian community. There are claims that 100k already left gaza and 45k that died, thats 8% -+ of gaza dead or emmigrated mid war. Most likley gaza will be left with only 1M +- by 2035.
At the same time i expect a 500k allayah wave from mainly uk / france jewish communities with a bit from the usa. The rising level of islamic antisemitism and fear of physical jihadi terror attacks on fr / uk jews is very high.
After the gazan emmigration and the allayh waves there will be 66-68% jews from the river to the sea including judea areas a+b / gaza, at this point both due security concerns from 300km long "green line" border that could never be guarded from 7.10 raids thats 80 of judea arabs soppurt, as well as just rage and refusal for a palestinian state in near 50 years by the jews because of the 7.10. The palestinians will not have a lot of options as vast majority of israelis agree leaving judea is security suicide, hate them in blind hatred post 7.10 and the demographic concern will be voided.
What i guss they may do in this situation to break that deadlock,
1) do a 20x 7.10 from judea on 48 area and settelments, with jerusalem as the main goal, While betting on either jihadi frenzy in the arab world to join / betting israel will do in revenge an explicit open total nakba / open physical genocide and hope some army coalition will come and rescue them from the total war they started. 2) demand in a frenzy in all international forums 1man 1 vote country betting on it being misrable to anyone till critical mass amount of israeli jews will leave and once they have the power to start a civil war and invite an invasion. But its a huge risk, 7.10 will become a national memorial day with museum all school children must go to, due to that so many extreme autrocites were filmed and that 7.10 was openly celebrated by most palestinian society i expect a permamant extreme jewish radicalization, Imagine there will be a website by 2025 that has castrations and burning alive vides / gang rape of eye gouged teens with gazan street parades celebrations compilations near them. With such extreme radicalized jewish society with 1 man 1 vote country they may get hurt themselvs and not just attrite the jews to leave, like river to the sea vote referndum of buying out the muslim quarter in east jerusalem, or river to sea referndum of splitting the temple mount into 2 with jewsh half, they coulndt say a thing as its pure democratic vote river to the sea beside start a civil war, which there will be a lot of people with "no mercy" / "us or them" atitude this time. By end of the day, i think a very large war will come in the near 25 years with over 250k dead.