Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
Not that many years ago, I was attracted to "masculine" men. Long hair was gross; if a dude wore a skirt this made my vagina shrivel into sand. Then I joined a culture where masculine signalling was done differently - skirt wearing and long hair were *countersignalling* - 1/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
done as subtle social evidence that these men were so confident in their power that they could wear a skirt and still be high social status and attractive - similar in theory to how rich people sometimes wear very distressed/ill fitting clothing. After this, my experience of 2/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
masculinity changed in a way I didn't know it could. Now I'm basically *only* attracted to men who feel comfortable presenting feminine - this indicates that they're stronger and more powerful than the men who would would lose status by presenting feminine, and strength is manly.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
But my point here is something else - I'm recounting an experience of sexuality, of culture, attraction, gender, and presentation going through a deep shift for me after I found different cultural norms. It turns out very old and ancient sexual patterns can take a myriad of 4/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
unusual new forms; there's lots of different ways to represent strength/submission/loyalty/power. I think the people who are absolutely convinced that no good man would ever marry a "whore" are failing to understand the variety of ways culture can treat the same principles. 5/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Monogamy/trad stuff is a 'stable setup' - there's a set of norms and expectations that makes things predictable and workable. But there's lots of other 'stable setups' - and it can be really hard to understand how it works if you haven't seen it up close, just like how I didn't 6
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
get how some of my female friends could possibly stand their partners sometimes wearing makeup, before I entered that culture and realized the signals actually meant quite different things than I thought. Promiscuity culture can be extremely stable, and there's norms inside it.7/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
The trad perspective of promiscuity culture is absolutely *not* how promiscuity culture actually works. Promiscuity culture signals mean very different things than they mean in traditional communities, but trad people see those signals, misinterpret, and get horrified. 8/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
For me, a man in a skirt meant weakness, but when it started meaning strength, I was attracted. The signals change, but the values underneath remain stable. The values underneath promiscuity culture are surprisingly similar to the values underneath trad culture, imo.
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