this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
808 points (97.9% liked)
Witches VS Patriarchy
935 readers
401 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe if we didn't divide people by sex and assign gender norms from birth we would learn how to interact before puberty without sexual objectification. It would make navigating teenage years a lot easier if we started than with a gender/sex diverse social group opposed to the current default being through the lens of objectification.
Most kids do if you leave them alone. It's the adults that have them problems with it. I had zero interest in sex until at least 15 at the earliest. Adults are the problem, as per usual.
That's interesting, I remember thinking teachers classmates moms were hot when I was in kindergarten and 1st grade. I didn't really know what to do with that feeling but it was definitely there.
As someone who hit puberty at 8 and had a shitty mustache at 11 I concur. But it is probably highly variable based off of biology, like I was jacking off like a spider monkey way too early by most peoples standards. Weirdly enough I am aromantic legit don't get the appeal, meanwhile I've got a libido that put a cat in heat to shame.
Stop shaming cats in heat! They can't help it!
Wow same.
Agreed and yeah that's the point.
Not being comfortable socially with girls/women and being force-fed masculinity made my life and the life of women around me so much more difficult in my teens/early adulthood. Social skills are so much harder to develop, and cognitive biases so much harder to correct as an adult.
I'm 54. Still zero interest in sex. I can't fathom why people have to be so obsessed with it, because life is fine without it, but that's probably just me.
Literally just hormones. I can't explain horniness better than... idk, sleepiness? Hungriness?
Trying to explain to a horny person not to think about sex is a bit like trying to explain to an itchy person not to think about scratching.
And, a lot like with itching, once you've done it the urge only gets worse. Losing your virginity is like opening up an emotional floodgate. Once you've experienced it, you're a soppy emotional mess just pining for the next opportunity.
Man Who Hasn't Just Downed a Full Pot of Coffee: "You keep squeezing your legs shut and looking for a toilet. Why don't you just calm down?"
I didn’t mean people shouldn’t be that way, only that I can’t personally fathom it.
I also can’t personally fathom why some people are obsessed with food. I don’t mean they’re wrong, just that I can’t understand their POV. Like I get they feel that way, and it’s not wrong, it’s just outside my reckoning. Like I eat enough to live, and I don’t obsess over it. That’s foreign to me, thinking about food 24/7 even when you’re not hungry.
E: just ruminating here, not judging. I’m sharing and want other people to share. I’m not great at sharing without offending people, sorry.
That seems fairly straightforward.
For me? no. I can’t imagine thinking about anything that much. Like, to the exclusion of other things, I mean. Or, focussed on one thing (other then nothing – I can turn everything off, but throttling is very hard).
I know we don’t all think this way, but being that passionate without control is kinda foreign to me.
That's just brain development. Psychological control is as muscle you build as a bicep or a glut. And it's muscle that can be exhausted or atrophied over time.
I would have killed to not have been obsessed with sex from 18-35. Now that I'm nearly 50 it's finally calmed down. What a pain that was - I wonder if I could have gotten medication for it. Is that a thing?
Oh yeah. They chemically castrated Turing with meds that just didn’t make him horny anymore, and he killed himself because of it. That wasn’t by choice, though.
It must have done something more than turn the horny off... Why would not being horny make you suicidal? Doesn't make sense
It makes total sense to me! As someone who was extremely horny growing up and isn’t really anymore, losing that part of me at that time would have been DEVASTATING. That is maybe the worst thing that could have happened to me. I don’t care as much anymore, but when I did, I would have killed myself as well.
But if you're made to not miss it why would you be depressed. That's like not being hungry anymore and being sad you don't want to eat.
My gay lover that the government is punishing me for loving doesn’t mind if I don’t be as hungry as I was, and I am fine not being as hungry around my gay lover that the government I HELPED TO DECIPHER THE SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHY NOBODY ELSE COULD DO but being forced lose a part of me where I can physically love my gay lover would do a BIT OF A TOLL on my mental health, wouldn’t it? Is it really that difficult to understand why being fucking castrated would take a horrible toll mentally on someone in that situation, when they’re minding their own business and just called the cops because their house was broken into?
But sure, it’s just like not being hungry.
Probably hormonal, so yeah. I’ve always been too low on the spectrum, and there’s a healthy balance. If it was disruptive for you, you may have been off-balance the other way. I’m not a doctor though, so…
Part of the problem with teenagers - particularly young teenagers - is that they're very self-obsessed and mood driven. Like, it's easy to say "just raise your kids better" when you're not deal with the bubbling caldron of hormones kettled inside a head that literally physically hasn't fully developed the faculties to process the emotions.
That's not to defend gender norms. But it's certainly easier to go with the "Lord of the Flies" flow than it is to bend the tidal force that is clichish, selfish, horny, and often violent teenage base tendencies.
It's helpful when teenagers have a group they can empathize with at an early age. But that doesn't work at a summer camp full of people who haven't met before.
Kids routinely can and do self-segregate along age and appearance and behavior. It takes a lot of human labor to undo the natural impulses of young kids.
And that means hiring more people, which costs more money, which cuts into the profit of the camp owners.
We definitely make it hard on parents. I'm making no conjecture on such a societal difference would impact parental workloads. That's another conversation worth having though.
That said, i think it should be pretty easy not to tease or shame children for being friends with the other sex. And gender neutral clothing costs the same as gendered clothing so 🤷
I think a lot of parents of young girls are terrified that their kids will be attacked by young boys. So they cloister them deliberately.
A lot of parents of young boys are terrified that they'll turn out gay. So they pressure them to be toxically masculine.
They're significantly cheaper, by and large. But by the time you're dealing with teenagers, they're largely dressing themselves.
Try to explain to a 15 year old that he shouldn't be emulating hyper-masculine/feminine media personalities.
Parents biases/behaviors impact their children for sure!
Again, I'm talking about how the teenage years can benefit from a different approach in earlier childhood than traditional norms. Teens are learning to be adults, they need autonomy and space to explore themselves. I only commented that they have the capacity to understand consent.
E.g. a 6yo doesn't benefit from being dressed in pink or robin egg blue, and children pick up on this stuff even if unconsciously because the rest of society reacts to it.
But that's logical! /j
While it would definitely help, the truth is kids brains are a hormonal mess. No matter what and how well we teach 'em, there comes a 'breaking point' where the chemical imbalance will override any 'training'
While double standards absolutely suck and should be eliminated wherever possible I think it's totally fair to have rules like this for kids (at least for now)
Just because my 13 year old brain knew 'girls are people too doesnt mean my 13 year old hormones cared about that when saying 'I like this'
This is not something that can be fixed overnight or in a single generation. And it will never be fixed 100%.
I can pretty much guarantee that even in the remote villages where toplessness is a normal part of everyday life there are still the 'oddballs' who love boobs and sexualize them.
Besides what the other person said, it's much deeper than "boobs = sexy." It's a culture that blames young girls for boys and grown men finding them sexually attractive. Even in your "oddballs" example, we don't ban people from going barefoot because some people are into feet (probably the most common fetish in the world thanks to biology). If people have a problem with that, it's their problem, not the person that they're objectifying.
I agree that it's not a quick fix, but it starts with teaching boys to have some simple self control and basic empathy and not making the girls shoulder all the responsibility of boys being horny. But that also starts long before you ever get to a summer camp, and that's also an important part of the topic. Like I said, it's a deeply rooted cultural issue.
Never said there was an overnight or one-stop fix.
I'm suggesting that with children developing socially together throughout childhood without being forced to conform to pink and blue norms we would be a lot better off navigating the social challenges we face during sexual development.
That opposed to the experience we had in my youth of peeking over the proverbial wall staring into the garden at what we had been told our whole lives were strange creatures that bore sex as their primary purpose rather than being people who had the same human experiences and emotions as us.
Also i disagree with your sentiment about training and breaking points. Children can easily understand consent. They do, however, need mentors facilitating an environment safe enough they can talk through feelings.
E: rewording some stuff to avoid binaries, assigning genders, etc