treesah

[treesah]

If you see someone with a really bad fandom take, I’m begging you to open your emails and write a strongly worded missive to your local government official about something bad happening in your community or country.

If you’re in Canada you could email a rep about concerns about Elon musk interfering in our next federal election.

If you’re in the US the list is endless.

If you’re in the UK you could email about trans health care.

If you’re in Australia, what about dental care in Medicare?

If you’re in Europe, look into some EU initiatives of particular concern. Perhaps something to do with nature and biodiversity? Idk

Just today I emailed my local mla about coal mining in the Rocky Mountains and tomorrow I’m going to pick something else and do it again

[treesah]

Another thing to remember is that no one is universally attractive or compatible, not even the conventionally hot people. If you get rejected, it’s not a big deal and it probably wasn’t even for a reason that had anything to do with anything or that could be coherently articulated.

This is where the pickup artists are right—sex and dating are a numbers game. Just like you’re going to get hundreds of rejections from jobs before you land an interview, much less a job offer, you are going to get rejected at least dozens of times, perhaps more, before someone says yes to having sex with you or staying with you until you both die of old age or whatever your goal is. THIS IS NORMAL. And just like tons of jobs will reject you for something arbitrary and silly before they even get a chance to know how awesome you are, many people you want to have sex with and/or date will do the same!

Once upon a time, a man who I wanted to take me home told me at a party that I smiled too wide and my teeth were too large, and did not take me home. My smile is very nice and my teeth are normal sized and are perfectly aligned in such a way that could only have been accomplished with nearly $10,000 of orthodontic work performed over five years, my body count is in the double digits, and I have been happily married for eight years (together with my husband for a total of thirteen years), so I know I am an attractive and lovable person. There’s no accounting for taste most of the time so don’t take anything personally!

This is a LONG post about how to combat Incel beliefs online and in the people you know. 

I’ve had a long-term fascination with Incels, and at times have belonged to some online communities aimed at deradicalizing them. Here are some of the facts, statistics, and logical arguments I’ve accumulated in a few years of having these conversations with self-identified Incels.

I want to make it clear that there is no point in having these arguments with the “women should all be shipped to government-run rape camps” kinds of Incels. I’m talking more about the “I’m going to die alone because I don’t have 100k for leg lengthening surgery” variety, who are in the pipeline but not all the way there yet.

Even within that, if you're a woman, don’t bother having this debate with someone who is incapable of having a respectful conversation with a woman – if you catch a whiff of “that’s exactly what a lying femoid would say,” just cut your losses. The people you want to target are people you have a strong pre-existing relationship with (“my little brother has started watching terrible YouTube videos”) and people who admit to being unsatisfied with their worldview (“believing in the Blackpill is making me miserable, I just want to be normal, but I keep getting sucked back in because I find it so convincing.”)

When you’re trying to deradicalize someone, it helps to meet them where they’re at by admitting anything they’re correct about. 

The two Incel beliefs that I freely admit are correct are: it is easier to get sex/romance if you’re conventionally attractive (more on why this doesn’t mean everyone else should give up later) and, there are plenty of hideously sexist and depraved men who get pussy all the time, so it’s obviously not true that the only reason some people are Incels is because they have bad attitudes towards women. (I call this “sex and love are not a meritocracy.”)

Someone who is capable of engaging with you in good faith will usually become much more relaxed and willing to listen if you concede these two points – which, I cannot stress enough, are obviously true. There is no point in trying to sell someone on the idea that respecting women is the true key to getting laid. Anyone with eyes can see that some men who respect women don’t get laid and plenty of men who get laid don’t respect women. 

In only the loosest possible order (roughly moving from the world of provable facts and statistics to the world of more theoretical logical argument) here are some common responses to standard “Incel” or “blackpill” arguments.

The sexual marketplace favors women. Women are all out there fucking Chad while increasing numbers of men are sexless. There are way more virgin men than virgin women.

Between the ages of 20-24, 14% of men and 12% of women self-identify as virgins. This is a 2% difference. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/on-late-in-life-virginity-loss/284412/

It's over for you if you didn't date/have sex in high school or college.

While 14% of men are virgins between the ages of 20 and 24, only 5% are still virgins in their late 20s, and only 0.3% are still virgins by 40 (and this number includes the voluntarily and religiously celibate.) So even if you are a virgin at age 22, your chances of having sex by age 40 are around 99.7%. You are statistically MUCH more likely to be a "late bloomer" than a lifelong Incel. (Source: The CDC quoted in the article above) Also, only about 50% of people have had sex by the time they graduate high school. So whether you do or not, you're completely normal either way. It's a coin flip. Source: The CDC https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2017/201706_NSFG.htm#:~:text=The%20data%20represent%20all%20teens,%2C%20the%20percent%20was%2044%25

The average modern young woman has had sex with dozens or hundreds of men, and an inexperienced man could never satisfy her!

Some women have! But while the average lifetime number of sexual partners for both men and women varies by study, it is consistently fewer than 10. I find this belief is often based on poor statistical reasoning – a friend or acquaintance tells you that she hooked up with a guy this weekend and a different guy two weeks ago, so you extrapolate that she’s been fucking two different men per month since becoming sexually active, and assume her number must be in the hundreds. Most people have a varied sexual career that includes some casual hookups, some FWBs or flings, some dry spells, and some periods of long-term monogamy.

To the extent that the average “body count” may have gone up in recent decades, this is likely less because today’s young people are uniquely promiscuous and more because they tend to settle down with a life partner later – if you become sexually active at 17 and marry monogamously at 30, you will probably fuck more people in your lifetime than if you became sexually active at 17 and monogamously married at 24.

I would add here, it is really important to try to ground people in the statistical reality of typical “body counts” rather than going whole hog on trying to convince them that body counts don’t matter. It’s perfectly understandable to feel that someone who’s had 0 sexual partners and someone who’s had 100 may have different enough attitudes towards sex that a relationship between them might not work out. “You’re actually misogynist trash if you’d be intimidated to date a woman who had 100 past partners” is less effective for our purposes than “It’s possible that you wouldn’t be compatible with a woman who had that many past partners – you may not want her and she also may not want you! – but that’s just one example of the many reasons people can be incompatible that don’t come down to one of them being Bad and Unloveable.” 

Women are much more harsh and shallow than men, as evidenced by the studies where they rated 80% of men as Below Average on OKCupid. Women only message the most attractive men.

That study has been reported in SUCH a misleading way that it actually proves the opposite of what Incels think it proves. Although women WERE harsher in their ratings, they were actually MUCH MORE LIKELY THAN MEN to message users whose photos they didn't rate that high in attractiveness – possibly reflecting that women are more likely to realize that how you feel about someone’s picture isn’t a perfect predictor of whether you’ll find them attractive irl. (Just anecdotally speaking, most women I know report that men don’t take great pictures of themselves, so they may be giving them wiggle room for that.) The percentage of messages that goes to the most attractive women compared to the average woman, is much more extreme than the ratio for men. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJxteLDlJ-ORw_Sw-tDDYhHv0Xnvaco4Vk-d3mPRZg_Cu9ckzOf9FS-vbGz75_mnw7-uyqoldlf7-wEmbLo4KiFsvzkbw9kn9X3qTDZC9-ubfR9EXH54a0QVJ1QkyK1xK8osO_M9mGyNRK-ShWwPoEGt9ROicoGA4bIFnQnRe0cO

If you're not in the top 20% hottest men, no woman will ever want you.

71% of men between the ages of 25 and 44 have been married. It is mathematically impossible for 71% of men to be in the top 20%.

Women spend their youth fucking hot Chads and then settle down with ugly men later after they 'hit the wall'.

People of all genders tend to prioritize attractiveness more in a partner when they're young, their bodies are at Peak Sex Hormone, and their relationships are more about fun and passion than building a life together. People of all genders tend to increasingly prioritize stability, compatibility, and other life-building qualities once they're looking for someone to settle down with and start a family. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just smart. 

Looks obviously matter! It’s not true that dating is all about personality and respecting women! There is a middle ground between believing that looks don't matter at all and being fully blackpilled. "It's easier to get a girlfriend when you're tall and hot" is straightforwardly true, but so is, "regardless, literally millions of men who aren't tall or conventionally hot get laid and have loving relationships." I always say it like, being super conventionally attractive may mean you get to date on easy mode, but refusing to play the game because you didn't get to play it on easy mode is YOUR choice.

I’m too afraid to actually talk to women, but I can just tell that they all hate me!

It's impossible to judge whether you're actually unsuccessful with women if you never talk to them. If you aren't actually shooting your shot with the women you like, then you are “volcel” regardless of how you see yourself, just the same as how if you were unemployed and never applied to any jobs, that would make you unemployed by choice. Imagine you had a friend who was always complaining about how miserable it is to be unemployed and bemoaning all the things that make him unemployable, but then you found out he'd never applied to a single job -- or applied to fewer than ten before giving up altogether. That's most Incels, as far as dating is concerned.

For what it’s worth, this is why pickup artistry sometimes works much better than you would expect it to. Despite the obvious manipulation and general weirdness of pickup artist tactics, the fact remains that if you take a guy who was previously sitting in his bedroom hoping for pussy to fall from the ceiling, and you convince him to go out and hit on a bunch of women, his chances of getting laid will increase. Going out and talking to the people you find attractive is no guarantee of getting laid, but it is generally a prerequisite. 

I saw a bunch of Tweets and TikToks from women belittling short men and saying they’d never date one! Some of them had hundreds of thousands of likes!

You simply cannot take things that assholes say on the internet personally. I'm a 34 year old woman with Bipolar Disorder and 11 tattoos. Do you know how many heavily-liked Tweets there are about how women over 30, women with mental illnesses, and women with tattoos are untouchable garbage that no self-respecting man would ever entertain a relationship with? And yet... I'm married. Turns out a bunch of keyboard warriors raving about how no man would ever want me didn't actually prevent men from wanting me. You probably would think I was being a little unfair if I told you that seeing those posts made me despise all men, and a little unrealistic if it made me give up on dating. Literally ask any woman with blue hair and a septum piercing if men IRL find her as disgusting as men on the internet say they do.

If you read all this, thank you! And as always remember that I block absolutely everyone who annoys me on my posts, so if you feel moved to argue that anything short of trying to persuade avowed Incels to adopt full-bore sex-positive feminism is capitulation, or that we should just kill them all, or whatever, just remember you'll be arguing with yourself. Peace and love on planet Earth.

[treesah]

"Hi y'all, it's Chronomaster42, the only Youtuber with the ability to travel through, and control, time and space, here with another taste test. I'm here in 1976, and I'm gonna get some fries from Mickey D's before they changed the recipe, and then I'm gonna take 'em back to 2022, and get fries from the same McDonald's, so I can compare. Now, I've got my Nixon, uh, Ford? Carter? Era fries right here, so now I'm gonna"

*everything appears stretched and distant, and then the camera flies through space, through the sun, over millions of different Earths, past the faces of individual people in a thousand different timelines, splintered day by day, the long-dead alive once more, their varied futures lying before them. They appear to be screaming*

"annnnnd here we are, gettin' the new fries, today. I have to say, I like the old fries a bit better, bit more crisp, but Mickey D's fries are still Mickey D's fries, y'know? Anyway, I know some of you guys were freaked out at all the screaming time faces last video, but like, I'm used to 'em, and they aren't even audible to me? But y'know what is audible? That's right - Audible, use code -"

[treesah]

there’s been a really bizarre trend in the past couple years of TERFS/radfems getting pissed off about biology posts. posts about the bilateral gyandromorph cardinal (one half male, one half female), posts about older hens beginning to crow and act like roosters, posts about animals being animals. and it’s hilarious because they interpret these posts as some kind of agenda. no! these are animals not choosing any gender identity or sexuality but being born into bodies they have no control over. weird how that happens in nature huh

[treesah]

So since you’re obviously trying to be obtuse about Sabrina carpenter - people are mad because it’s misogynistic and anti-feminist. Have you even seen the album cover? She’s on her knees with some dude holding her by the hair. Since you’re being a little bitch about it I won’t start on the politics of why this matters even more right now. Get the fuck out of here you stupid Russian skank

I'm sorry everybody I know I'm supposed to do some kind of zinger in reply but this is genuinely so fucking funny

[treesah]

wake up babe the holy father is posting white sox fan cope on x, the everything app

[treesah]

Romantic Composers and their resemblance to popular Chinese dishes

For Chinese speakers: original Chinese ver. under the cut

[treesah]

at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"

which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress

[treesah]

Sometimes when my life is going really well I have the urge to fuck things up for myself by staying up all night playing Civ 5

[treesah]

I have so many people blocked. I have blocked men and women and children with wild abandon. I have blocked so many people that the borders between days have ceased to have meaning. my connection to my own humanity buckles and crumbles under the crushing weight of my infinite blocklist. I will never be forgiven, and my only hope is that, at the pearly gates, I will stand before st peter long enough to block him, too.

[treesah]

It's pretty crazy that nobody at Boeing is ever going to be held legally accountable for these plane crashes or the whistleblower they assassinated

[treesah]

you know, the cactus situation is actually a great example of RACK vs SSC philosophies. deciding you're going to beat your partner with a cactus is definitely RACK, if uh. ill advised.

[treesah]

It’s too bad that Hell is just a fantasy made up by Christians for kinky sex reasons because basically all our politicians deserve to go there.

[treesah]

Have you ever looked closely at a car windshield?

The edge of the glass is painted where it is glued to the car but it has these small dots between the clear and painted glass.

These are there for a reason. When the sun hits the glass the painted areas and the clear areas will absorb heat at different rates. This causes the glass to expand and contract differently putting stress on the glass.

These dots help the glass to warm up more evenly over a larger area so the glass does not suffer stress that could cause it to spontaneously explode.

Fun fact: the Tesla cybertruck doesn’t have these.

Yes, the glass will spontaneously crack or explode in the sun.

[treesah]

a fools guide to not wanting to die anymore

by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore 

never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.

find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.

talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore

picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else

if someone makes you feel bad most of the time, stop talking to them. making yourself hang out with people who drain you is self harm. stop it.

[treesah]

Good points about avoiding conspiracy thinking and Islamophobia and antisemitism, but kosher and halal meats aren’t immune to contamination problems. There was literally just a public health alert last month on halal meat that might have had E. coli.

Personally, I’m not eating any meats I only enjoy rare (so, goodbye steak, although my wallet thanks me for it), and fully cooking everything else.

Saw a post about how halal and kosher meat will likely be the only reliably safe options in the US because their safety and cleanliness standards aren't dictated by what's the barest legal minimum that government food safety regulations demand.

So you're like 5 years away from "ever notice how the musulmans and jews never get sick from bad meat? clearly this is proof that they are poisoning us" right now.