masculinity is a scam conversation.

[Schizophonia]

@Emerald 

I've seen that women also have these kinds of fantasies, just more twisted in other ways.

Because it's a fantasy, there's even a sense of disappointment in considering its falsehood.

It's the possibility of a more "optimistic" paradigm that's being repressed and downright frustrating for reasons that remain to be elucidated. 

Personally, if I focus on why I'm tempted by this scenario:

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

But yes, definitely a lot of insecurity and self-flagellation in these kinds of perspectives as its reflective of a common fear of "Any woman who is interested in me is just settling and waiting for someone better to come along." or "Women will never like me because I'm just an average guy. They are just lacking options and settling out of loneliness and being rejected by the Chads. And of course a woman who's attracted to me would be defective and therefore rejected by the Chads."

The answer that comes is that for some reason it gives me a "casus beli" to express aggression and take power in this way.

It's like, "Being imposing is illegal in my system, so if I get proof that life isn't on my side, then that gives me the right to be aggressive, to attack others, to become a Nazi, or whatever (unconsciously becoming "phallic," in a depraved way).

We're back to the Oedipus complex and obsessive-compulsive neurosis, or paranoia.

Edited Friday at 06:56 PM by Schizophonia

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

Well, I think the problem is that you’re talking about love, and I’m talking about desire - and the two are always at odds, no matter how much of a hopeless romantic you want to be about it.

Of course, I agree with everything you said. Even when you love someone, with all their idiosyncrasies - which is definitely real (and trust me, I’m firmly in the hopeless romantic camp too) - what you desire is a whole different beast, and much of it operates unconsciously.

Desire is always this je-ne-sais-quoi, that much is certain. But it’s also something that’s constantly receding, something that can never truly be possessed - which is why desire so often fades in long-term relationships unless both people keep evolving, riding out the shifts through ongoing transformation.

What I’m describing is simply the underlying current of desire and where it statistically tends to flow. That doesn’t mean you can’t subvert it or be conscious about it. I intentionally painted it in a bleak and mechanistic way to make the structural forces visible - so they can actually be worked with rather than ignored.

And again, I offered what I think is a very optimistic horizon with my references to Deleuze, Guattari, and queer theory (if you want to go back and read it). So I’m not some psychoanalytic or evolutionary-psych fatalist.

I am talking about love and desire as well... which tend to come as one and the same thing for women.

The deeper the level of intimacy a woman feels with a man, the deeper her desire for him grows. And the desire women feel towards a man in these instances isn't about a man having some objectively attractive quality... or about the sum of his parts.

So, it is not like the desire that men experience when they look at breasts.

It's a more heart-centered and deeply erotic desire for merging and a swooning, melting-away feeling. And you cannot get that unless you feel like you want to merge with a very specific guy.

So, for women... love and sexual desire are always deeply intertwined, and they both operate to deepen one another.

But love and desire tend to come separately for men where he can have "Ooh nice figure. I want to fuck her." level of sexual desire towards a woman he's meh about... and love a woman he feels little sexual desire for if he's already deeply pair-bonded to her.

And so men tend to project the separation between love and desire onto women... where love and desire come together for women and deepen over time, as long as her emotional needs are met in the relationship and emotional rifts are worked through. 

So, that's where the disconnect is... the projection of male tendencies onto women and an assumption that the male MO is just the way humans operate.

Women don't operate like men.

But this projection of male mating dynamics onto women happens because you haven't experience what it is to be a woman whose love and desire are inseparable and who feels desire mostly as an expression of deepening levels of love towards a specific guy as a personality.

You are instead assuming that women's sexual desire comes through trying to find the highest guy in the hierarchy like you would feel the "Ooh sexy. Want to fuck her." desire for a woman who has a pretty face or a nice figure.

But that appreciation of the man's positive objective qualities only mean something through the lens of his personality and the deepening of intimacy with that particular guy.

So, while male sexual desire comes from a woman as exactly the sum of her parts and male love finds the desire element irrelevant as long as the basic level of attraction is there... female desire and love comes from experiencing and riding the wave of a particular man as greater than the sum of his parts.

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Basman said:

A lot of guys tend to see mating only through the male perspective and assume that women are as obsessed with looks as they are. It's a lot of projection, as overused that word is.

100%

When a man is afraid that "women only go for the top 20%", this tends to arise from his own knowledge that he would leave his partner if a better looking woman came along.

And he is projecting that tendency onto women as a group because he can't fathom of a different way to see dating/relationships because he hasn't yet experienced loving a particular woman... so he cannot fathom of a woman loving him as a particular man.

Instead, he tries to find logic within the way that he operates relative to women... which is to see them as fungible pretty faces that he will leave for a prettier pretty face if one shows him the attention.

But this creates an extreme anxiety for him as he imagines a woman doing the same thing to him... and recognizes "If all women operate towards me like I operate towards them, I will either just be settled for and resented for being an inferior male specimen and/or left for the Chads who are superior to me as a male specimen."

If one lives by the sword of objectification, they also dies by the sword of objectification. 

Edited Friday at 07:58 PM by Emerald

[Nilsi]

34 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I am talking about love and desire as well... which tend to come as one and the same thing for women.

The deeper the level of intimacy a woman feels with a man, the deeper her desire for him grows. And the desire women feel towards a man in these instances isn't about a man having some objectively attractive quality... or about the sum of his parts.

So, it is not like the desire that men experience when they look at breasts.

It's a more heart-centered and deeply erotic desire for merging and a swooning, melting-away feeling. And you cannot get that unless you feel like you want to merge with a very specific guy.

So, for women... love and sexual desire are always deeply intertwined, and they both operate to deepen one another.

But love and desire tend to come separately for men where he can have "Ooh nice figure. I want to fuck her." level of sexual desire towards a woman he's meh about... and love a woman he feels little sexual desire for if he's already deeply pair-bonded to her.

And so men tend to project the separation between love and desire onto women... where love and desire come together for women and deepen over time, as long as her emotional needs are met in the relationship and emotional rifts are worked through. 

So, that's where the disconnect is... the projection of male tendencies onto women and an assumption that the male MO is just the way humans operate.

Women don't operate like men.

But this projection of male mating dynamics onto women happens because you haven't experience what it is to be a woman whose love and desire are inseparable and who feels desire mostly as an expression of deepening levels of love towards a specific guy as a personality.

You are instead assuming that women's sexual desire comes through trying to find the highest guy in the hierarchy like you would feel the "Ooh sexy. Want to fuck her." desire for a woman who has a pretty face or a nice figure.

But that appreciation of the man's positive objective qualities only mean something through the lens of his personality and the deepening of intimacy with that particular guy.

So, while male sexual desire comes from a woman as exactly the sum of her parts and male love finds the desire element irrelevant as long as the basic level of attraction is there... female desire and love comes from experiencing and riding the wave of a particular man as greater than the sum of his parts.

Ok, at this point I feel like I’m just being projected onto.

For the record, my experiences with women have been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve been in intimate, loving relationships, and I’d even describe myself as both a feminist and a queer ally. If anything, what I’m sensing from you now is a degree of contempt. I’ve never said anything degrading about women - yet it seems like you’re reducing my perspective to something shallow, when in fact I was trying to discuss desire from a systemic point of view.

And frankly, I’m not sure who you’re trying to convince with this holism rhetoric. Desire is always particular. You never desire "the whole" person - you desire an elusive, shifting quality that’s hard to pin down. And riding that current within a monogamous relationship is incredibly difficult unless both people are truly exceptional and committed to personal growth and keeping the connection alive.

Let’s be honest: most people kid themselves about these things and end up repressing unconscious desires. So I’m not especially impressed by this kind of moral posturing, unfortunately.

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

@Emerald 

I've seen that women also have these kinds of fantasies, just more twisted in other ways.

Because it's a fantasy, there's even a sense of disappointment in considering its falsehood.

It's the possibility of a more "optimistic" paradigm that's being repressed and downright frustrating for reasons that remain to be elucidated. 

Personally, if I focus on why I'm tempted by this scenario:

The answer that comes is that for some reason it gives me a "casus beli" to express aggression and take power in this way.

It's like, "Being imposing is illegal in my system, so if I get proof that life isn't on my side, then that gives me the right to be aggressive, to attack others, to become a Nazi, or whatever (unconsciously becoming "phallic," in a depraved way).

We're back to the Oedipus complex and obsessive-compulsive neurosis, or paranoia.

When I was in my 20s, I was transferring a lot of inner turmoil and fears of abandonment onto men. And this came out in the form of the fear "What if men are not capable of truly loving a woman."

And from the time I was about 22 until I was about 30, I had this sense that as soon as I hit 30 that I would forever lose the ability to be loved by a man because I really believed that men were only capable of experiencing love towards a woman he finds ideally attractive. 

On some level I knew this wasn't true because I would look around Walmart and see couples of all sorts of ages and levels of attractiveness. But I would project that even the least attractive of the men were just settling for the women as all of these men would leave their wives if a more attractive woman came along.

Like if there was a guy who was a 1 who has a female partner who's a 6... he's still just temporarily settling for the 6 and is going to leave her for a 10 if a 10 shows him some attention.

And I'm sure that was probably true for about 30% of them, as that wouldn't be the most uncommon thing in the world. I knew that if I, as a 20-25 year old woman, went up to some 50 year old guy with a wife... there was probably a 50% chance that he'd be willing to cheat on his wife with me, and a 25% chance I could get him to leave his wife for me.

So, I also had these bits of evidence that seemed to support my fears that men are not capable of love. And I would keep looking around for evidence to support this hypothesis.

And there was a really intense fear that it was true... and I was projecting that fear onto the uncertainty and blanks that I had relative to the male subjective experience (because I have never experienced the internal subjective experience of being male and having a male body).

And I was projecting certain elements of female sexuality onto them... as (for me) sexual desire and romantic love always go together. But men don't age out of it and it's mostly personality based, so it can grow over time.

So, I was projecting that element of my own internal subjective experience onto men... where I was thinking that men will lose both sexual desire and love at once, once I age out of peak sexual desirability age. It was like this impossible sense of "Men can be loved their whole life by a woman... but women can only be loved by a man until she's 30. Past that the man is just settling."

But the reality is that men tend to love from a place that's quite detached from sexual desire which tends to be more from a desire to selflesslessly give to the one he loves and to be a part of her life. And men's experience of sexual desire is more purely physical... and doesn't take that much to ignite. 

And because of that, men are capable of loving longterm and maintaining a sufficient amount of sexual desire for their partners as they age. It's just that the love element and desire element are separate... which enables him to be more detached from his own gratification desires in a romantic relationship, which is actually a good thing.

But that's abstract for me (and for women in general), since love and desire have always come together and have been a major part of pair-bonding and merging. And the desire element comes more from the subjective experience of him as an individual.

But through interacting with many men and reading men's perspectives on the internet and working with male clients that I've learned how men actually operate... and it filled up the blank projection screen of men's internal subjective experience that I used to project my fears onto with things that were more accurate to the way men actually operate relative to love and desire. 

This is why I always try to share my own internal subjective experiences of desire and love on here... because I see the same tendencies to project fears into the uncertainty of the female subjective experience of men, when there is nothing there to fear. 

And I feel like if the men who worry "What if women aren't really capable of love and can only love the top-hierierchy guy?" were to experience the internal subjective experience of how a woman comes to love and desire an average man, that these fears would drop away and make it a lot easier for them to connect with women.

[Nilsi]

47 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I am talking about love and desire as well... which tend to come as one and the same thing for women.

The deeper the level of intimacy a woman feels with a man, the deeper her desire for him grows. And the desire women feel towards a man in these instances isn't about a man having some objectively attractive quality... or about the sum of his parts.

So, it is not like the desire that men experience when they look at breasts.

It's a more heart-centered and deeply erotic desire for merging and a swooning, melting-away feeling. And you cannot get that unless you feel like you want to merge with a very specific guy.

So, for women... love and sexual desire are always deeply intertwined, and they both operate to deepen one another.

But love and desire tend to come separately for men where he can have "Ooh nice figure. I want to fuck her." level of sexual desire towards a woman he's meh about... and love a woman he feels little sexual desire for if he's already deeply pair-bonded to her.

And so men tend to project the separation between love and desire onto women... where love and desire come together for women and deepen over time, as long as her emotional needs are met in the relationship and emotional rifts are worked through. 

So, that's where the disconnect is... the projection of male tendencies onto women and an assumption that the male MO is just the way humans operate.

Women don't operate like men.

But this projection of male mating dynamics onto women happens because you haven't experience what it is to be a woman whose love and desire are inseparable and who feels desire mostly as an expression of deepening levels of love towards a specific guy as a personality.

You are instead assuming that women's sexual desire comes through trying to find the highest guy in the hierarchy like you would feel the "Ooh sexy. Want to fuck her." desire for a woman who has a pretty face or a nice figure.

But that appreciation of the man's positive objective qualities only mean something through the lens of his personality and the deepening of intimacy with that particular guy.

So, while male sexual desire comes from a woman as exactly the sum of her parts and male love finds the desire element irrelevant as long as the basic level of attraction is there... female desire and love comes from experiencing and riding the wave of a particular man as greater than the sum of his parts.

By the way, I’m totally fine with this being a normative framework. But I’m fundamentally an immoralist, and - again - I’m talking about desire here. If you’re willing to turn down the desire knob for the sake of a long-term relationship where, granted, there can be a lot of love - that’s fine.

It’s just not what I’m talking about.

[Emerald]

5 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Ok, at this point I feel like I’m just being projected onto.

For the record, my experiences with women have been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve been in intimate, loving relationships, and I’d even describe myself as both a feminist and a queer ally. If anything, what I’m sensing from you now is a degree of contempt. I’ve never said anything degrading about women - yet it seems like you’re reducing my perspective to something shallow, when in fact I was trying to discuss desire from a systemic point of view.

And frankly, I’m not sure who you’re trying to convince with this holism rhetoric. Desire is always particular. You never desire "the whole" person - you desire an elusive, shifting quality that’s hard to pin down. And riding that current within a monogamous relationship is incredibly difficult unless both people are truly exceptional and committed to personal growth and keeping the connection alive.

Let’s be honest: most people kid themselves about these things and end up repressing unconscious desires. So I’m not especially impressed by this kind of moral posturing, unfortunately.

I wasn't writing that about you in particular, nor implying anything about you. And there was no contempt or anything personal in what I wrote.

I was writing it as a rebuttal to your statement that love and desire are a separate thing.

Love and desire are separate for men... but not for women.

That's the gist of what I wrote. It wasn't meant to imply anything about you... other than that you're projecting the male MO onto women, when women operate differently.

And women love and desire the whole person as greater than the sum of their parts... while men feel desire for parts and love for the whole person in a separate way.

That's the main difference. For women, love and desire are holistic and come together towards the whole person. For men, they feel love towards the whole person but only feel desire towards the parts and qualities.

[Basman]

4 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I have a feeling you’re just reading the outrageous bits and ignoring all the context this is situated in.

And I stand by these claims, by the way. Yes, women generally play the role of selectors, not men - that’s where the asymmetry comes from.

But all of this only makes sense when you look at it from a macro, systemic perspective. These are emergent, statistical patterns - not necessarily what you’d notice just by observing individual people.

No. People are not fungible like that. It's an overly reductive way of thinking. And this kind of theorizing is just unconstructive and at worst damaging to guys who are struggling. It is almost trolling.

[Emerald]

4 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

By the way, I’m totally fine with this being a normative framework. But I’m fundamentally an immoralist, and - again - I’m talking about desire here. If you’re willing to turn down the desire knob for the sake of a long-term relationship where, granted, there can be a lot of love - that’s fine.

It’s just not what I’m talking about.

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying.

For women... there is no trade-off between love and desire because female desire has to do with a desire to merge deeply with a particular person.

So, love toward that person deepens desire and that desire softens her and deepens love and increases desire to merge.

And women bond more deeply to a man through the experience of desire and intimacy... and the sense of erotic merging and desire for closeness.

It's like, the more desire you feel as a woman the more open and soft your heart becomes. And you want him in particular close to you and inside of you. And all the body chemicals that arise make you feel so bonded to and addicted to that particular person.

And as long as there is good communication and partners work through emotional rifts so that intimacy can happen, this doesn't go away over time. It only deepens.

As long as you fuel it with real human to human intimacy... the softening can happen, and desire for merging emerges and love and bonding deepen.

And that's what the subjective experience is like for a woman when she loves a man.

This is also why women tend to see sex and love as deeply connected... while men don't as much.

[Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I wasn't writing that about you in particular, nor implying anything about you. And there was no contempt or anything personal in what I wrote.

I was writing it as a rebuttal to your statement that love and desire are a separate thing.

Love and desire are separate for men... but not for women.

That's the gist of what I wrote. It wasn't meant to imply anything about you... other than that you're projecting the male MO onto women, when women operate differently.

And women love and desire the whole person as greater than the sum of their parts... while men feel desire for parts and love for the whole person in a separate way.

That's the main difference. For women, love and desire are holistic and come together towards the whole person. For men, they feel love towards the whole person but only feel desire towards the parts and qualities.

Ok, I see. Still, I don’t buy that. I’ve met and been with a woman or two in my life, and yeah - they desire the same way men do.

Again, I don’t buy into this whole binary, or the sacred archetype stuff, or left-brain/right-brain theories, or whatever. Desire is universal. Everybody desires. And desire is always deferred. It’s always some elusive quality that’s immaterial - it doesn’t reside in a single person, object, or trait.

By definition, it’s impossible to desire wholeness. I’m sure that experience of wholeness can be blissful, and I’m sure there’s a lot of love in it. But that’s not desire. Desire is the irrational pursuit of the impossible. Wholeness is actually the concession of the pursuit itself. And also - why would that be something only women are capable of? That’s some pretty wonky stuff.

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying.

For women... there is no trade-off between love and desire because female desire has to do with a desire to merge deeply with a particular person.

Again, I do understand - I just disagree. Honestly, I’m not sure where you’re getting this from. I mean, I kind of get it, because you’re not the first woman I’ve heard frame it this way. But to me, that’s bullshit - with all due respect.

[Nilsi]

10 minutes ago, Emerald said:

This is also why women tend to see sex and love as deeply connected... while men don't as much.

Maybe we’re just having a language problem here. I’m not talking about sexual desire per se. Desire - even the sexual kind - isn’t really about the person, their body, or any specific quality. It’s always about some possibility, something that’s not even fully there.

There’s that famous Lacan line: “There is no sexual relationship.” It points precisely to the elusiveness of desire - that there’s always an other present in the sexual act. It’s not just deep intimacy between two people and that’s it. There’s always a gap. And that gap is exactly where desire resides.

And again - please don’t take this the wrong way. That doesn’t mean there aren’t profound, intimate experiences. I’m all for developing those kinds of relationships. But it is what it is. There’s no getting around this rupture in reality. You’re never truly present with someone. It’s literally impossible. So how can you fully desire them?

[Emerald]

1 minute ago, Nilsi said:

Ok, I see. Still, I don’t buy that. I’ve met and been with a woman or two in my life, and yeah - they desire the same way men do.

Again, I don’t buy into this whole binary, or the sacred archetype stuff, or left-brain/right-brain theories, or whatever. Desire is universal. Everybody desires. And desire is always deferred. It’s always some elusive quality that’s immaterial - it doesn’t reside in a single person, object, or trait.

By definition, it’s impossible to desire wholeness. I’m sure that experience of wholeness can be blissful, and I’m sure there’s a lot of love in it. But that’s not desire. Desire is the irrational pursuit of the impossible. Wholeness is actually the concession of the pursuit itself. And also - why would that be something only women are capable of? That’s some pretty wonky stuff.

You're just incorrect. And I know you're incorrect because my subjective experience of desire has always been holistic.

Women's desire operates differently from male desire... observably so.

That's why women tend to get hyper-focused on one guy that they like as an object of desire... while men just want to get good with women as a whole group.

Men and women's experience of desire is different, and that's okay

Now, a caveat here is that women are capable of desire in the way men have it as well. It's just not that gratifying or motivating the way it is for men.

Like I can see an attractive guy and be like "He looks good." And I can admire certain objective qualities, and that might make me more receptive to be interested him in an initial meeting kind of way.

But it doesn't get anywhere close to the ambrosial ecstatic feelings that I feel towards a particular man when I love and desire him. 

It's like a particular man's personality is a flavor... and if I am into a guy, I desire that flavor to move through me.

Here's a song that captures the essence of the experience of how love and desire feel together from the female perspective...

 

[Emerald]

1 minute ago, Nilsi said:

Maybe we’re just having a language problem here. I’m not talking about sexual desire per se. Desire - even the sexual kind - isn’t really about the person, their body, or any specific quality. It’s always about some possibility, something that’s not even fully there.

There’s that famous Lacan line: “There is no sexual relationship.” It points precisely to the elusiveness of desire - that there’s always an other present in the sexual act. It’s not just deep intimacy between two people and that’s it. There’s always a gap. And that gap is exactly where desire resides.

And again - please don’t take this the wrong way. That doesn’t mean there aren’t profound, intimate experiences. I’m all for developing those kinds of relationships. But it is what it is. There’s no getting around this rupture in reality. You’re never truly present with someone. It’s literally impossible. So how can you fully desire them?

I don't really think there's been a miscommunication.

I understand what you're trying to say. I just don't agree with what you're saying.

And I am familiar with Lacan's line about there being no sexual relationship... which I haven't looked into his argument deeply. 

But I also related that statement to Lacan being male and having a male experience of sexuality and seeing his male experiences as universal to how humans operate.

It's a huge issue that women's sexuality and internal subjective experience tends to get papered over by all sorts of religions, philosophies, and paradigms that were created by men who project male patterns onto women.

And so, it becomes difficult to be understood... and difficult to communicate your experiences and needs as a woman.

And a side effect of this is that men can create a lot of untrue and ugly anxiety-inducing narratives over top of female sexuality, which is actually really beautiful and operates in favor of a particularized love towards a specific man. 

[Schizophonia]

14 minutes ago, Emerald said:

You're just incorrect. And I know you're incorrect because my subjective experience of desire has always been holistic.

Women's desire operates differently from male desire... observably so.

That's why women tend to get hyper-focused on one guy that they like as an object of desire... while men just want to get good with women as a whole group.

Men and women's experience of desire is different, and that's okay

Now, a caveat here is that women are capable of desire in the way men have it as well. It's just not that gratifying or motivating the way it is for men.

Like I can see an attractive guy and be like "He looks good." And I can admire certain objective qualities, and that might make me more receptive to be interested him in an initial meeting kind of way.

But it doesn't get anywhere close to the ambrosial ecstatic feelings that I feel towards a particular man when I love and desire him. 

It's like a particular man's personality is a flavor... and if I am into a guy, I desire that flavor to move through me.

Here's a song that captures the essence of the experience of how love and desire feel together from the female perspective...

 

What you say is also true for men.

I see women as holistic pastries; This affirmation is funny, but that's basically it.

The only difference from what you described is that I can't stand it when people try to dominate me, in the sense of taking away the last word.

I suppose women will globally be more submissive. 

Edited Friday at 09:18 PM by Schizophonia

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, Emerald said:

You're just incorrect. And I know you're incorrect because my subjective experience of desire has always been holistic.

Women's desire operates differently from male desire... observably so.

That's why women tend to get hyper-focused on one guy that they like as an object of desire... while men just want to get good with women as a whole group.

Men and women's experience of desire is different, and that's okay

Now, a caveat here is that women are capable of desire in the way men have it as well. It's just not that gratifying or motivating the way it is for men.

Like I can see an attractive guy and be like "He looks good." And I can admire certain objective qualities, and that might make me more receptive to be interested him in an initial meeting kind of way.

But it doesn't get anywhere close to the ambrosial ecstatic feelings that I feel towards a particular man when I love and desire him. 

It's like a particular man's personality is a flavor... and if I am into a guy, I desire that flavor to move through me.

Here's a song that captures the essence of the experience of how love and desire feel together from the female perspective...

 

Good song - I love Björk, I’ll give you that.

But what do you expect me to say to this? I’m not going to argue against your experience. Maybe we’re just using words differently.

Anyway, my experience is completely different. I’ve never observed the kind of difference you’re describing. I’ve been with women who actually shared your views to some extent, but nothing I saw in them made me believe anything like what you’re describing was really at play.

Take that Björk song. What makes it so good? Can you put your finger on it? People have been writing about her for decades and could keep doing so for millennia - and still, that je-ne-sais-quoi would remain.

It’s the same with desire. A woman might love her man. She might even grasp him in his entirety. But his being changes. It’s fluid, not fixed. And so is desire. What you desire is just a temporary assemblage. There’s no stable correlation between signifier and signified as you’re making it out to be. Desire can proliferate in all sorts of directions. Even now, you probably desire something particular to this moment that keeps your experience moving forward.

And it’s the same when you’re with your man. He’s not the embodiment of desire itself. Some of that desire gets projected onto him - when you’re thinking about him, spending time together, passionately making love, or whatever. Yet there’s always an element of the yet-to-come in desire. That’s why it’s impossible to fully desire the concrete, the already, the embodied.

[Schizophonia]

2 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Good song - I love Björk, I’ll give you that.

But what do you expect me to say to this? I’m not going to argue against your experience. Maybe we’re just using words differently.

Anyway, my experience is completely different. I’ve never observed the kind of difference you’re describing. I’ve been with women who actually shared your views to some extent, but nothing I saw in them made me believe anything like what you’re describing was really at play.

Take that Björk song. What makes it so good? Can you put your finger on it? People have been writing about her for decades and could keep doing so for millennia - and still, that je-ne-sais-quoi would remain.

It’s the same with desire. A woman might love her man. She might even grasp him in his entirety. But his being changes. It’s fluid, not fixed. And so is desire. What you desire is just a temporary assemblage. There’s no stable correlation between signifier and signified as you’re making it out to be. Desire can proliferate in all sorts of directions. Even now, you probably desire something particular to this moment that keeps your experience moving forward.

And it’s the same when you’re with your man. He’s not the embodiment of desire itself. Some of that desire gets projected onto him - when you’re thinking about him, spending time together, passionately making love, or whatever. Yet there’s always an element of the yet-to-come in desire. That’s why it’s impossible to fully desire the concrete, the already, the embodied.

This is nitpicking.

[Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Emerald said:

But I also related that statement to Lacan being male and having a male experience of sexuality and seeing his male experiences as universal to how humans operate.

There are plenty of female psychoanalysts who’ve developed these ideas independently of Lacan.

Jessica Benjamin argued that mutual recognition is always unstable - there’s always a gap or asymmetry in desire and relationality.

Luce Irigaray critiqued phallocentrism and argued that women’s desire is multiple, non-unitary, and resists being fully captured by male-centric psychoanalytic structures.

Julia Kristeva, though focusing more on the semiotic and abjection, also emphasized the irreducibility of desire and the impossibility of full relational closure.

So what now? Are they just not "real women," or have they been coerced by the patriarchy too?

And honestly, I even get that psychoanalysis itself is often framed as a patriarchal discourse - which is why I aligned myself with Deleuze and queer theory from the start. I already anticipated this might come up.

[Nilsi]

1 minute ago, Schizophonia said:

This is nitpicking.

That’s the entire point I’m trying to make - and it’s super important and fundamental. So how is that nitpicking?

[The Crocodile]

@Nilsi @Schizophonia He just says random stuff that sounds cool, and that's the only standard. The rule of cool.

 

19 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

can't stand it when people try to dominate me

WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME YOU PUNK