erin

I certainly am. My current partner is an excellent communicator and respects my boundaries. I have no idea how my ex is now.

Oh, she did. As do I. But she refused any and all suggestions or offers of help, and simply chose to make it my responsibility for her. Needless to say, the relationship couldn’t go on like that.

My ex was a big fan of that phrase, “I can’t read minds.” I did all the managing of her emotions for her. There definitely can be a lack of communication, but I think the meme rings of “I refuse to empathize with you without you needing to do all the work bridging that gap,” but that also might just be my own experience. If I wanted to be heard and understood, I had to explain it like a toddler.

As an example, “hey love, leaving dirty cookware out to get crusty means it’s not available when I want to cook” did not elicit a change in behavior. Neither did the next two times, “hey, you left the pan out again, if you do that it makes it difficult for me when I need to cook.” She made excuses each time. When I finally hit my breaking point and spell it out, “it really upsets me when you don’t clean up after yourself. please stop doing that! clean your dishes after you use them. I have made it very clear that this behavior upsets me, it hurts me that you keep doing it,” I get the classic “I can’t read minds,” because I didn’t explicitly tell her to clean up after herself.

The same went for eating snacks I purchased for myself, or leaving wet clothes in the washer, or leaving trash out, or not taking the full trash out and instead piling on top of it, etc. If I didn’t explicitly say “I need you to do this. Please do this. Do this now,” it wouldn’t get done, even if I have made it very clear how that behavior makes me feel. When commiserating with friends, it is clear that this isn’t just me that has experienced this. “I can’t read minds” seems to more often be used by those that cannot empathize or listen to their partners, regardless of gender.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of examples of those that do not communicate well and expect as it was put, mind reading, but far more often it seems like that phrase is really just a crutch for the emotionally unintelligent. No one should require explicit instructions to empathize with your partner. If my partner is clearly upset by something and I’m not sure what, I ask them, and a good partner will never expect you to know already (unless they’ve already told you multiple times and you cannot take a hint). Pay attention to what your partners say and make your expectations and desires clear.

I don’t know what you’re conflating that with but no, yuri is a term from Japanese media for lesbian romance, while yaoi is the gay equivalent.

I definitely feel this! I haven’t dealt with dysphoria in a long time, and I rarely deal with any form of bigotry in my personal life, but I still feel that pressure! I’ve been late to things because the stubble on my legs was just a little too long, even though it’s unlikely anyone would notice it, and I had to shave. Hell, even today I wore a long skirt instead of shorts because I didn’t have time to shave! Super annoying, especially because no one would likely notice or care, but I’m sure someone made an off comment when I was impressionable and now that’s psychic damage I gotta live with.

I’ll give some advice that helped me and my partner, with the exact same issue. I have no problem orgasming, but my partner struggles. We have found that focusing on the most gender euphoric parts helps her finish, in her case it’s gently playing with her boobs while she’s topping, which allows her to focus on that rather than the other physical sensations. Penetration, while not a negative experience for her, in fact she very much enjoys topping, still isn’t the most important part of sex for her. This advice might not be relevant to you if topping is very euphoric for you, but focus on the parts of sex that are most euphoric. Fulfilling each other’s kinks also helps us!

The term pre-op does sound presumptuous, but the idea that bottom dysphoria could play a role isn’t truscum. My partner loves topping and is on the fence about getting bottom surgery, but still has bottom dysphoria and that’s a huge part of why she has trouble orgasming.

I personally am really sick of frame generation and scaling being the only way modern games are playable. The graphical improvements are minor, but the performance cost is enormous. Your average person shouldn’t need to buy a GPU worth as much as a used car just to squeeze out average performance. Scaling and frame generation are never seamless, and it can’t create information where none exists. Especially in PvP games, I’ve noticed how much worse the graphical fidelity is with distant targets or people peaking around corners. I’d genuinely rather play the game at a lower framerate or resolution than be losing vital information in my computers attempt to make sense of the handful of pixels representing the gun of my opponent peeking the corner, and turning it into a blurry section of wall instead.

In singleplayer games it’s not as bad, but I have found that a game that isn’t chasing perfect true-to-life graphics but has a gorgeous art direction looks far better to me personally. I’m just sick of AAA and tired of having my super computer from 4 years ago struggle with the latest releases in native resolution. Slightly more realistic lighting and realistic hair and cloth simulation are not nearly as important to me as good performance and visual style.

Sbren sbeve :)

I wouldn’t generalize trans (or cis) people like that. I’m trans, but feel no pressure to conform, I chose to be the unique person that I am. That person happens to dress and look feminine, and enjoy some things that are stereotypically feminine. She also enjoys plenty of things that are very much the opposite. I am absolutely choosing to be who I am and who I want to be, and that person happens to align with many cultural norms. Every other trans person I know is similar. I’ve run into people saying things similar to your comment, with varied levels of severity, all relying on the same essential misunderstanding.

Some people whose gender doesn’t align to any societal stereotype seem to believe that this is because of some enlightenment they have found, and that anyone that conforms to those gender norms must be insecure or brainwashed. What they fail to realise is that their gender just happens to not conform, and that for many people their truest self just does align with the societal norms to some degree. Those norms did not arise from a vacuum. To a large degree, they’re “just” a social construct, but social constructs reflect an average of the realities that society experiences, shaped through a lens of social pressure, class, culture, and other filters.

I highly recommend you read “Who’s Afraid of Gender” by Judith Butler. It’s a great look at what gender really means, why people present the way they do, and what “performative gender” really means. All gender is performative, fundamentally. This is not to say that it’s obsolete or inferior, but simply the nature of gender itself.

Sounds like weaponized incompetence to be honest.

All the labels are made up, there are no rules, and you might identify with multiple categories. I use the labels bisexual, pansexual, and lesbian interchangeably, because they have different connotations and familiarity to most people. Need to communicate that I’m with a woman? A lesbian relationship. Want to make it clear that I’m attracted to all sorts of gender identities? Bisexual/pansexual, depending on who I’m talking to and what terms their familiar with/how specific I feel like being.

The labels don’t have hard and fast rules. I’m attracted to women, I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m non-binary, etc. It doesn’t matter. They all apply to me and can overlap to varying degrees. I know a trans guy that calls himself both a gay man and a lesbian. I know trans women that refer to themselves as twinks. Specificity and semantics aren’t as important as communicating what you intend to whoever you’re talking to.

Gender and sexuality aren’t hardwired rules, but influenced by our culture and environment. This is true for everyone. This isn’t to say that someone’s gender or sexuality isn’t intrinsic to that person, but how they think about those and present them are part of an ongoing performance for themselves and others. If you’re interested in learning more on the subject, I can recommend some excellent books on the subject, or feel free to ask followup questions here or in DMs.

Those are great questions to be asking. An artist may intend one thing, and the viewer gets another. That’s the nature of art. There is no objective right answer. I always ask myself, why did the artist make the choices they did? What is this painting trying to say by the choices in techniques and composition? Those might be hard questions to answer, depending on how much context you have, but thinking about them anyways is valuable.

Personally, I get what Pollock was going for, but it falls flat for me, whereas Rothko and others made that point more effectively. When I first view a Pollock, for example, I think, what is the subject of this painting? There is no obvious center of focus, and the play between positive and negative space is relatively even. Perhaps the subject is color, or contrast, or randomness, or even art itself. I consider each option. On first glance, I see randomness. I look closer, I see that there is intentionality, but the technique was simple (dripping). The artist is clearly capable of more advanced techniques (the background is evenly applied with precise brush strokes, and perhaps I’ve seen another painting of his that uses different techniques) but chose something simple instead. Why? Maybe to say art doesn’t need skill? Maybe to say that simplicity is beautiful?

There are no right answers, but by asking these questions I develop my critical thinking ability and understanding of art. You might ask these questions and still arrive at the answer, “I hate it, and it’s dumb.” That’s okay. It is still art, and art can mean different things to different people. It just wasn’t for you. Pollock isn’t for me, but I still gained something by thinking about the meaning and the purpose behind his paintings.

If you are interested in developing a greater appreciation, or at least understanding, of art, study the history. Even a cursory understanding of the social, political, and artistic movements of a time can tell you a lot about why an artist made the choices they did. Impressionism was a movement born out of an era of photorealism and perfect proportion. Pollock’s paintings came from an era of established subjects and rigid techniques. Regardless, you don’t need to know the history to think about art.

You clearly didn’t read my whole comment. Your argument is the exact same that was made against Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. It’s not about the artist. I didn’t say it was, and I don’t understand why you replied like I did. It’s about the meaning behind the art, the statement it is making. It has nothing to do with whatever influencer thing you’re talking about, and everything to do with what the art is saying.

By rejecting the traditional realism of their time, artists like Van Gogh and Monet made a statement that perfection and realism weren’t all there is to art, and that impressions of the subject can be beautiful. Artists like Rothko made the statement that the subject does not have to be literal, but can be the art itself. Cubism was all about this. Pollock is doing the exact same thing, but pushing it to an even more dramatic extreme.

IT ISN’T ABOUT THE ARTIST. Do me the basic respect of understanding this one part of my statement. It’s about art meaning something because of what techniques were used, how it is presented, when it is presented, and the context that inspired it.

What is on the page is important, but why it’s on the page and what message the art is conveying is equally so, and I’d argue much more. You continue to misinterpret this fact as not only less than quintessential to art, which any artist will tell you that it is, but insignificant and silly to consider.

Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don’t have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You’re making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don’t have to like Pollock’s work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn’t art, or that the things we’re saying with art don’t matter, would be pretentious.

I don’t like Pollock’s art. I don’t think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this “just focus on the paint on the canvas” thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It’s why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI’s best Monet facsimile.

Hitler didn’t kill millions of people to make you think about his art. Pollock intentionally wanted to create art that makes people think about what counts as art. His methods certainly worked.