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What makes a social construct any less real or any more mutible than physiology?

Again, the gay community has been arguing for a while now that gender itself is a social construct. Suppose we have a nice lesbian couple. Then one day, one if the women says to the other “it has taken me a long time to realize this, but I’m actually a man. I’m going to start boxing, shooting guns, focusing on earning lots of money, and rebuilding a Trans Am.” If his (formerly her) partner hears this and loses attraction to him - not through any rational mechanism nor potential change in body shape or dress, but simply because she is turned off by the cultural construct of masculinity - then does that make her attraction discriminatory?

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Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s an interesting question. I’d say, with what i have learned over the time, that there is of course some validity here; as you say, these things can change attraction. But I also have to acknowledge that simply the fact that a man won’t rule out men as sexual partners, regardless of if he even realizes that desire, makes him undateable for a lot of women, which i can only see as bigotry - maybe those women see other men as something they can’t compete with, and that is a completely made up thing.

If a man hears from his female date that she doesn’t have reservations against women in her bedroom because she thinks it’s hot, you wont get that same reaction. Probably has to do with the fact that men seldom fear being replaced with a woman. (which is the same kind of bollocks as the fear that women show regarding being replaced by a man - both have about the same probability, the only thing that changed is the amount of selfesteem)

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- blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  But I also have to acknowledge that simply the fact that a man won’t rule out men as sexual partners, regardless of if he even realizes that desire, makes him undateable for a lot of women, which i can only see as bigotry - maybe those women see other men as something they can’t compete with, and that is a completely made up thing.
  
  I mean, I don’t believe that this doesn’t exist. But also, I think you are still failing to consider that most peoples sexual/relationship preferences are not logically derived, but are instead driven by very deep psychological drives that the individual has little if any control over.
  
  Also, I’m not trying to insult you here, but I feel like you should take a step back and consider something else, which is that you yourself may be falling into a very common thought pattern of men who do not feel sufficiently desired by women. The great abundance of slash fiction should be evidence enough that many women find men who sleep with other men attractive. Why not just date those women? Or to put it another way - if you had 8 different women blowing up your phone to suck your bi dick, would you really be all that concerned with the women who weren’t interested in you?
  
  I feel like what is really going on is that you aren’t getting the female attention you want, so you are boiling it down to whatever your biggest insecurity is (you are bi) and then concluding that women are bad people (they are bigots). But we can easily swap in something else: I don’t get the female attention I want because I’m short and women are shallow. I don’t get the female attention I want because I’m poor and women are gold diggers. I don’t get the female attention I want because I’m Indian and women are racist. Etc. And these guys do have a legitimate complaint of unfairness. They do get less attention from women than they would otherwise if they were tall, rich, and white. But it is sort of like complaining that a bird shit on your shirt - yeah it sucks. But it is no one’s fault, and the only thing to do is accept it and start dealing with it.
  
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  - Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I have to disappoint you, this really isn’t about me. I have lived in monogamous heterosexual relationships for the last 27 years, and my interest in men is only in a way where i would discuss the views of my female partners regarding their desires. I would see myself at a 1 on the Kinsey scale - Men can be good looking, but they really arent something that excite me sexually.
    
    At the moment i am very content with NOT having a partner at all. Being in a relationship always was a huge stressor in my life (something i have been realizing for the first time in my life starting a few months back), and for the first time ever i am experiencing being free from external pressure at all. I really don’t want to change a thing at the moment - being this free is a very liberating experience for me.
    
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