It somewhat galls me that this woman's job is to write about sex and relationships and yet she seems to approach things with the perspective of 'we all think that straight men just care about...
It somewhat galls me that this woman's job is to write about sex and relationships and yet she seems to approach things with the perspective of 'we all think that straight men just care about carnal fulfillment and couldn't care less about emotional attachment, but what if we're wrong about that?'.
Is that really an assumption even regular people make, let alone someone whose job it is to write about intimacy?
Small sample size of N=3, but as someone who runs a few NSFW subreddits and has gotten requests for interviews, I've found that those who have a job like that DO tend to think like that.
Small sample size of N=3, but as someone who runs a few NSFW subreddits and has gotten requests for interviews, I've found that those who have a job like that DO tend to think like that.
I didn't get the impression that was what she (currently) believes. She says at the beginning: It's what she thought as a teenager because it's a message she ran into frequently in the media. She...
I didn't get the impression that was what she (currently) believes. She says at the beginning:
Fourteen-year-old me watched McMullen confidently state: “We can build your dream girl for you.” This is what straight men desire, I thought.
It's what she thought as a teenager because it's a message she ran into frequently in the media. She even later says:
my work routinely complicates stereotypic assumptions about straight men’s sexuality. Of course, I’ve come up against plenty of the predictable tropes I anticipated as an HBO-watching teenager, but I’ve more often found that men defy the cliche of superficial, unemotional wanting.
I think she's fully aware of the reality and trying to let her audience understand it.
A lot of this mindset has to do with exposure. For example, if you take a person who works in tech support and ask them if they think people who use tech support are entirely unable or unwilling...
A lot of this mindset has to do with exposure.
For example, if you take a person who works in tech support and ask them if they think people who use tech support are entirely unable or unwilling to solve problems themselves, you'll get a pretty resounding yes. I've pushed back against this insular mindset on this website many times, especially since we've all called upon tech support at some point in our lives (even if it was through googling problems to find someone else's experience) yet it is still quite prevalent and understandably so. After all, I've been there too, and I hated every second of it.
The reality is it's a protective adaptation. This woman is working in a very niche market and the kinds of people she is going to be interacting with are people who are in some fashion choosing to interact in this way. This selection bias is going to make a certain kind of person seem more prevalent in society than they actually are and if that particular kind of person is off-putting in any way or needs to be handled in a certain way, it's going to make the employee jaded in a very particular fashion. If you've ever spent any significant time with an adult entertainer such as an exotic dancer, an escort, porn star, etc. you'll find that they often have a persona they put on in order to serve their customers and their usual self is going to be extra isolated or protective against certain kinds of individuals. This is noticeable in other fields as well, but the amount of psychological damage that can happen from the kind of abuse that an adult entertainer might suffer is quite a bit less than say a grocery clerk or car salesperson.
It's a meme. It is something that we can easily interact with. It has been around forever. Memes don't have to be true. And if the author didn't interact with that cultural subtext around sex...
It's a meme. It is something that we can easily interact with. It has been around forever.
'we all think that straight men just care about carnal fulfillment and couldn't care less about emotional attachment, but what if we're wrong about that?'
Memes don't have to be true. And if the author didn't interact with that cultural subtext around sex dolls I think that would be disingenuous.
It somewhat galls me that this woman's job is to write about sex and relationships and yet she seems to approach things with the perspective of 'we all think that straight men just care about carnal fulfillment and couldn't care less about emotional attachment, but what if we're wrong about that?'.
Is that really an assumption even regular people make, let alone someone whose job it is to write about intimacy?
Small sample size of N=3, but as someone who runs a few NSFW subreddits and has gotten requests for interviews, I've found that those who have a job like that DO tend to think like that.
I didn't get the impression that was what she (currently) believes. She says at the beginning:
It's what she thought as a teenager because it's a message she ran into frequently in the media. She even later says:
I think she's fully aware of the reality and trying to let her audience understand it.
A lot of this mindset has to do with exposure.
For example, if you take a person who works in tech support and ask them if they think people who use tech support are entirely unable or unwilling to solve problems themselves, you'll get a pretty resounding yes. I've pushed back against this insular mindset on this website many times, especially since we've all called upon tech support at some point in our lives (even if it was through googling problems to find someone else's experience) yet it is still quite prevalent and understandably so. After all, I've been there too, and I hated every second of it.
The reality is it's a protective adaptation. This woman is working in a very niche market and the kinds of people she is going to be interacting with are people who are in some fashion choosing to interact in this way. This selection bias is going to make a certain kind of person seem more prevalent in society than they actually are and if that particular kind of person is off-putting in any way or needs to be handled in a certain way, it's going to make the employee jaded in a very particular fashion. If you've ever spent any significant time with an adult entertainer such as an exotic dancer, an escort, porn star, etc. you'll find that they often have a persona they put on in order to serve their customers and their usual self is going to be extra isolated or protective against certain kinds of individuals. This is noticeable in other fields as well, but the amount of psychological damage that can happen from the kind of abuse that an adult entertainer might suffer is quite a bit less than say a grocery clerk or car salesperson.
It's a meme. It is something that we can easily interact with. It has been around forever.
Memes don't have to be true. And if the author didn't interact with that cultural subtext around sex dolls I think that would be disingenuous.