Another wedding scam

https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvicecanada/comments/14dhxf9/when_a_wedding_celebration_is_cancelled_do_guests?sort=controversial

Crazy Mother in law

https://old.reddit.com/r/weddingshaming/comments/14d6yda/the_mother_in_law_wanted_to_control_everything?sort=controversial

Random woman wants to go to weding dressed as bride

https://i.imgur.com/a/eBkpQSE

Another random woman eho is quest at wedding

Some foid nonsense

This lovely wedding

https://old.reddit.com/r/weddingshaming/comments/wqry1a/my_sister_is_turning_into_the_biggest_bridezilla?sort=controversial

And cherry on top

These are just some nice stuff in /r/weddingshaming

Basically weekly you see bunch of post telling how people go absolutely crazy over some event where priest talks silly and gives couple premission to put peepee in vagina.

!foidmoment

https://old.reddit.com/r/ActLikeYouBelong/comments/12ln5ss/starving_male_kenyan_college_student_enters/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/kittypassdenied/comments/12la5ba/male_player_disguised_as_woman_at_kenya_open/?sort=controversial

Cope of the Current Year:

Kylie Palm, a biological male, pretended to be pregnant and then said he had a still birth. He raised money to help with his grief. He attended birthing classes with women, some of who were kicked out of the class for saying he was a man pretending to be pregnant. pic.twitter.com/ntiZBAqoed

— Pit and Pendulum (@PitandPendulum5) April 4, 2023

It's called Mpreg and there's a community, some of these guys also demand access to stillbirth support groups.

NEW: Former Howard Stern employee Elisa Jordana goes viral for a wild fight with a man on live-stream while driving pic.twitter.com/CGZmJE3HKG

— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) April 9, 2024

https://old.reddit.com/r/DabblersAnonymous/comments/1bz95xq/video_elisa_jordana_being_attacked/?sort=controversial (this foid cut off the start of the video lol I hate women)

https://old.reddit.com/r/DabblersAnonymous/comments/1bz6fq8/anyone_else_just_see_elisa_jordana_get_assaulted/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/howardstern/comments/1bzese3/elisa_jordana_more_footage_of_her_altercation/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/howardstern/comments/1bz7wnj/elisa_jordana_gets_in_a_brutal_fight_on_livestream/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/CrazyFrickingVideos/comments/1bzkm8t/former_howard_stern_employee_livestreams_fight/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1bz810w/former_howard_stern_employee_livestreams_fight/?sort=controversial

This is a sequel to my post from yesterday about an entirely different thread that poses the same question

https://rdrama.net/h/toomanyxchromosomes/post/259497/why-do-ugly-women-taylorlorenzcrying-annoy

DAE find it odd how they just can't even?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Edit:

When you turn 35, you become invisible to most men. It's actually kind of awesome because the sexual harassment stops, too. Ignore men like that, they won't be in your life for the long term anyway.

There's always a comment everytime

Woman gets upset about not being noticed, gets upset about being noticed later on after putting in effort to be noticed.

OP responds to quite a few of the most downvoted comments. Many comments have been jannied.

Kinda want to get this off my chest, but… Went to this house party I was invited to, it was a small gathering and I'm the new friend in an established group of friends.

I turned up with my wavy hair all tussled because I didn't have time to blow dry it properly, so car blow dried it, no makeup… Besides maybe mascara… Everyone was quite nice, and introducing one another.

There was this one guy though, in particular who doesn't have the best reputation, completely dodging me all night, not even asking my name, or introducing himself. Basically in a, “I'm to good to talk to you” particular way. Now I shouldn't care what he thinks, because of his poor reputation … Context: (“Tik Tok'er”) that has young girls thirsting over him, million likes, etc, brags about the women he pulls… Even though he's 25, dating a 19 year old…

But it immediately just flashed me back in High School, where guys would treat you awfully, or wouldn't even acknowledge your existence unless you were attracted to them.

Today we all went again (another small gathering party), and he was there again. This time I actually had my makeup done, my hair blow dried, and a cute casual outfit.

Immediately that's when he decides to come and approach me, asking what was my name, etc, and acknowledging my existence.

I don't know if anyone else has experienced behaviour like this, but it's quite vile, and honestly sad.

Reminder: This is a subreddit for women. "Not all men" and "Women do it too" posts from men are not ok.

Treat him the same way he treated you the first meeting and just brush him off and ignore him.

I do! I avoid him all the time. I feel so sorry for his young girlfriend. Such a sweet girl, with a horrible dude. (OP)

Or maybe the guy was just playing the aloof, hard to get type. Or maybe he just shy. Or maybe we all use eachother when we want something from eachother.

I'm sure you treat guys you're not interested in just like that guy treated you, we all do it. We'll probably have a handful of relationships in our lives where the person we're attracted to feels similarly towards us and that feeling lasts enough for us to turn a blind eye to their shortcomings enough to build something together.

We simply don't have the time or energy to invest in every person we meet, unless you're the extrovert, social butterfly type, in which case your attention is not the type romantically interested people actually want. [jannied]

It never ceases to amaze me how many men will come in here and give excuses for other men acting like trash, and the second we return the favour we're actually the aggressors, actually actually

Don't force your "turn the other cheek" nonsense on us. Go lecture the butthole. And kindly buzz off until you understand the meaning of "double standard"

I just have to put it into perspective, cause I find the phrasing troublesome.

You go to a party, "everyone was quite nice", one guy ignores you = men are vile.

Incel perspective: I go to a party, everyone is quite nice, one girl whom I find attractive ignores me = women are vile. [jannied]

It's not just that he wasn't very welcoming or nice.. it's that he treated her differently (seemingly) depending on how cute she looked. If he always ignored her then I doubt this post would even exist.

The problem is that you make just as many general and broad claims across the board as any misogynist who has also had many individual, bad experiences with women. None of it equates to the majority of the population of the opposite s*x being that way. It is dishonest at best, and alienating at worst and will only help create a bigger divide than there already is. Your phrasing was literally that "everyone was being nice." But that one guy was a jackass and now men are vile. You single out the one bad experience, amongst all the rest and highlight it as the overarching experience you had, while in reality your experience was vastly more positive than negative.

Now, we are all victims of this, and we all hyper focus on the negatives over the positives in our lives. Streamers are an excellent example of this, 95% of the comments in the chat are positive and praising. One chatter says something stupid, the streamer will typically single out that individual, pull them out and make some sweeping general statement about how horrible people online are. I can relate to this in my life, on so many levels, because if there's one that's already way more critical about myself than anyone else, it's me. I have had to learn to take a step back to look at the bigger picture and put these individual instances into perspective, as to not drive myself mad. What is my overall experience with people? Is it truly majority negative, or is the negative experience just the one that I put the most focus on? [jannied]

The gaslighting and victim blaming is hilarious in this. My post has nothing to do with “incel” garbage. I'm not trying to hookup with anyone, etc.

I am disgusted by the mere fact that I am not treated like a human, but dog waste on someone's shoe, solely because I don't look “attracted enough” for a man.

Which is a common behaviour that women have to deal with from men, in our teen years, and adult life.

I didn't look “homeless” either, I just wasn't wearing makeup, which is disgusting to be treated that way.

It's really not hard to be polite and kind. It's bare minimum.

The amount of triggered men on my post trying to take over and or make their own twisted events is alarming. (OP)

Why do u care about not getting noticed by a idiot guy? You alredy knew that he only dates young and pretty girls, so why do u have some kind of expectation on him? Just get over it.

Because people should be kind, and polite. It's bare minimum. Treating people like dog waste on their shoe, is absolutely rancid. Behaviour like this deserves to be called out, because many women go through it even in their teen years. Being disrespected by boys, or men, treated awfully because they aren't the top tier pretty girls.

It's vile behaviour, plain and simple. (OP)

This is just an incel talking point repackaged.

No. All men think this way

Do you like the guy? I feel like you like the guy.

Why are you thinking about how he in particular treats you? I think it's because you like the guy.

You see, I think it's the same in both directions: Attractive men tend to be buttholes (not all, but many) because they have many women competing for their attention, hence, they will pick and choose. And invest time only in the ones they are attracted to.

Attractive women tend to be rude and mean (not all, but many) because almost every man they meet wants to frick. So they "filter" the men they are not attracted to. And invest their time in the attractive guys that aren't creepy.

It's a normal human thing. You can't expect people to not have eyes or instincts. I doubt you are interested in talking to every single person around you all the time.

I stopped reading at your first sentence. I do not like the guy nor is he my type. I think men treating people who they deem unattractive cruelly is disgusting behaviour. (OP)

Yes this is common with men unfortunately. I agree it's vile. It's a byproduct of them not seeing women as complete/real people.

This is not a gendered thing at all. If anything it's more prevalent in the opposite case. Attractive women also treat unattractive and average men with less respect and will avoid them. Average and unattractive men on the other hand tend to treat women who are in their own league with respect while average and unattractive women seem to have less respect for and avoid men in their own league.

Both are bad. All people should be treated equal no matter their appearance. But to claim this is common with men and not women is just dishonest. It is common for both genders but more common for women.

The OP could literally be a genderswapped post from an incel sub. Like this is a very stereotypical incel complaint. They often express frustration at this exact same phenomena though usually they are complaining about women in their own league (as opposed to much more attractive in the case of OP) not treating them with the same respect they treat attractive men. [jannied]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What the frick.

Incels = women only care about looks. I will never get a girlfriend (that I'm entitled to) 100% because of my looks. It has nothing to do with how I act. Women ONLY care about looks. I hate them all. Ropefuel.

OP = wow, has anyone else noticed that men ignore you when they don't find you attractive?

You are so fricking wrong, I can't even imagine how anyone could have made this insane leap. Work on your critical thinking skills - PLEASE. Think about what you're saying for more than one second.

I'm reporting your comment and I hope you get banned. These trash opinions need to stop being spewed everywhere., It's disguising. Go spew your shit to incels.

I'm sorry my statement enraged you so much that was not my intention at all. My statement was accurate. This post literally could be reposted, word for word, with only the genders swapped, and it would be a very normal post on an incel sub. I used to debate incels on purplepilldeabge and they made this identical complaint regularly. It was the thing they whines about more often than anything else.

It's understandable in both cases. Treating people with more or less respect based on their physical appearance is disgusting. No matter their gender. I genuinely do not understand why that angers you so much? No one should be treated with less respect because they are less attractive.

Please think about why my comment enraged you so much. All people deserve empathy no matter their gender. It's wrong when women are disrespected because they are deemed less attractive but it's also wrong when the same happens to men. It's sad that you guys can't empathize with eachother when dealing with the exact same experience.

Please do some introspection to see why me pointing this out pissed you off so much. You must have realized it was an accurate observation and just really wish that wasn't true. [jannied]

Lolol “my statement was very accurate”

Yeah… according to you, right?

Edit: Also, this is very mansplain-y

Weird how much you complain about the male gaze and now that you don't have it...

Please tell me you blew him off! In a very dismissive tone!

I'm too passive but I just gave him the same energy back, by avoiding him all night and not interacting with him. (OP)

I was going to say-also vile how they treat you when they find you attractive.

Match that energy, ladies. I treat all men I meet like they are beneath me.👸

Bonus threads by OP:

Have you guys ever dealt with hot and cold behaviour and then stalking you? During No Contact.

They never post the new girlfriend?

Does anybody else always feel awful seeing people live their perfect lives through social media?

Nope. Not how that works.

When I was 6 I found women in their early 20s to be the most attractive. When I'm 60, I'll find women in their early 20s to be the most attractive. And that's not just me. That's all men ever, historically and presently. Simps will lie to you, but this…

— PJ Cornell (@cornell_pj) April 5, 2024

I can't see my husband because of the shame I feel after we both fulfilled a fantasy of mine.

Probably karma farming coombait fanfiction but still lmao.

I got up and remembered everything we did, I was stunned and my face turned red with shame, I don't know How to approach the subject today when I see it, or if we need to talk about it, last night we gave each other a lot of affection after s*x and we went to sleep, and I remember that this morning he woke me up to tell me that He loved me before he left.

It seems stupid but the truth is I'm quite embarrassed even though it was all my idea, what do I do or say? Did I talk to him about it? Please help, has anyone had the same thing happen? How do you approach it? or did you let things flow? Because the truth is I would like to repeat it but I am embarrassed to bring up the subject.

Edit: Since many are asking in the comments and I already said in once: it was r*pe roleplay with me as the victim, yes, we had our limits and safe word clarified, and yes, the contradiction of begging to stop at the same time I was having the best moment of my life are too much for now, specially knowing it's quite a sensitive topic, I just believe I went a little to far with my sub kink and I feel ashamed I enjoyed it a lot and even want to be "r*ped" again, the very idea makes me feel aroused and ashamed at the same time.

The first time my man spited on my face was accidentally because he pointed to the garbage box

Yes, he apologized immediately, but something awakened inside me

I suppose is not for everyone, it can be gross for some people

Small thread with a bit of seethe about a term for an intellectual disability being used in reference to a developmental disability which often has comorbid intellectual disability.

Random slapfight besides the seethe:

“A small but mounting body of evidence describes female psychopaths as prone to expressing violence verbally rather than physically, with the violence being of a relational and emotional nature, more subtle and less obvious than that expressed by male psychopaths,” he noted, adding that may include spreading rumours and lies for personal advantage.

https://medium.com/@sepideghate/gender-bias-in-public-bathroom-designs-c72d2a38660c

Found this post on reddit and somehow everyone involved has just missed the problem is women being

I never knew this was her comic, but she's great! I'm going to only post the watermarked version from here on out.

One of my most popular cartoons (which had the watermark removed by some butthole at some point- not sure who- but luckily my “art” style is bad and distinctive enough that everyone still knows I made it) depicts a phenomenon that I've long believed to be true: the nerds are having better s*x than the cool kids:

I noticed this back when I was on Reddit. Reliably, you can go to /r/s*x for “questions” that are actually thinly-veiled brags by people who, in my estimation, recently realized that they are able to have s*x and are extremely excited about it.

I lost my virginity at fifteen. Not endorsing this, by the way, in hindsight I think it was a bad experience that was psychologically damaging, but anyway…I was very proud of it. I knew that most girls my age had not had s*x, and I felt that being a non-virgin made me special. I mean, I had suddenly entered a club that included both Hillary Clinton and Britney Spears. What could be more exciting? I would regale my virgin friends with pseudo “concerns” like “Hey guys, after having s*x do you ever feel like your legs kind of ache? Oh, just me? Weird!”

/r/S*x is a bit like this. Every day someone will post something like “Is it normal that I LOVE going down on my girlfriend more than I enjoy penetrative s*x?” or “My boyfriend made me c*m 15 times yesterday…is this normal? Should I go to the ER?” At first I found it irritating, but then I realized I don't even subscribe to that subreddit and never did, I was going there specifically to read these posts for whatever reason, and ultimately it was easy to ignore them if I found them tiresome.

But it got me thinking.

Reddit is for nerds (generally.) These nerds are posting about a lot of wacky s*x they're having. It's easy to dismiss these stories as fake (and I'm sure some of them are, I would know a thing or two about fake Reddit posts) but I also think a decent amount of them are real. Because there is nothing about being a nerd that makes you less sexual. Liking dungeons and dragons does not make you impotent. Being an annoying girl who wears cat ears and talks like an anime character doesn't cause vaginal dryness. The nerds are having s*x.

This seems incomprehensible to some because nerds are typically late bloomers. You don't see a lot of nerds losing their virginities before the age of 18, and I would argue many of them don't until college or later. I remember playing a game of “never have I ever” with some nerds in college, wondering why all the prompts were “never have I ever been to Minnesota” or “never have I ever seen a Komodo dragon in person” and it dawning on me that everyone playing the game was a virgin (perhaps even a third base virgin), despite being over the age of twenty...

Read the rest...

And you should subscribe to her substack because she's great.

A very very very online 30-something mom and fashion enthusiast. Former Reddit troll who earned a total IP ban.

@CartoonsHateHer if you're already a poster here, say hello and I'll give you tons of DC and awards.

i'm not even kidding when i say i'd break up over this 😭 pic.twitter.com/xIn4UITAbE

— sleepytime vanilla (@miacockucci) February 18, 2024

this is so quintessentially male, wow.

Males are irreparably, inherently, and innately damaged. Deficient of something really important, I don't know what to call it but "humanity" or "empathy" come close. I think they lack a soul for sure.

!biofoids stop deceiving scores

NYT article on “boysober” comedian and her fans is unintentionally dark. https://t.co/ZoI3xBGoIN pic.twitter.com/W4fn54WTLN

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) February 4, 2024

Article Link

Archive Link

NYTimes Twitter Link

!foidmoment

I think Stone might be

There's like a dozen of these books and they all sound the same. How many dudes are on a hockey team, anyway?

!bookworms has anyone read a Sawyer Bennett?

Who is your fave Pittsburgh Titan? I think I like Camden

He can puck me with his stick right in the penalty box any day (I don't watch hockey)

Edit: OMG this is actually at least the second hockey-themed smut series she's written. Don't miss Cold Fury: From the grumpy team captain to the goalie who falls for the league's only female GM, the Cold Fury is hot as puck from the opening drop to the final buzzer.

Maybe it's because all the hockey boys at my school were brain-damaged Leafs, but I can't imagine having this much of a fetish for hockey players.

Third!

The league's newest team, the Arizona Vengeance is ready to take the sport by storm. Whether it's a fake relationship with the coach's daughter, the billionaire team owner falling for the sister of one of his players, the playboy falling for the local bookstore owner, or the man spiraling out of control following the death of his fiancée, the Arizona Vengeance series will have you on the edge of your seat cheering for more.

Sorry, Sawyer, but there's only only room for one Dax in my heart

r/neoliberal sneed: https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1agjhus/polyamory_the_ruling_classs_latest_fad?sort=controversial

The chattering class has a new fixation: polyamory. What began as a trickle of discourse a few years ago---as shows including Succession and Scenes From a Marriage streamed open relationships into our living rooms---has become a veritable flood. The past weeks and months have seen stories ranging from wide-eyed to prurient in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Financial Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal.

At the center of the recent discussions is More: A Memoir of an Open Marriage, by Molly Roden Winter, an unsparing account of a polyamorous life---at least, a polyamorous life as lived by a white, wealthy, heterosexual Brooklynite.

More---and the present interest in polyamory more broadly---is the result of a long-gestating obsession with authenticity and individual self-fulfillment. That obsession is evident today in Instagram affirmations, Goop, and the (often toxic) s*x positivity of an app-dominated dating scene, but its roots go back decades. As the historian Christopher Lasch wrote in 1977, this worldview "assumes that psychic health and personal liberation are synonymous with an absence of inner restraints, inhibitions, and 'hangups.'" And what could offer more liberation than throwing off the constraints of one of humanity's oldest institutions, monogamous marriage? Indeed, the desire to discover her true self is Molly's stated reason for engaging in "ethical non-monogamy." When she prepares to go on one of her first extramarital dates, she thinks, "Who is my 'self' if not a mother and a wife? I honestly don't know. Perhaps it's time to find out."

Despite the book's slick marketing---which takes great care to cast the author as a "happily married mother"---Molly's polyamorous journey toward self-actualization does not seem to bring her much happiness. It seems to make her miserable, while taking her attention away from the real issues: a husband who behaves like an butthole, an unbalanced division of household labor, an unorthodox childhood, a desire to please everyone no matter the personal cost. Her attempt at finding a "deeper truth" through sexual enlightenment not only provides little truth or enlightenment; it keeps her from seeing her problems clearly.

In this way, More is a near-perfect time capsule of the banal pleasure-seeking of wealthy, elite culture in the 2020s, and a neat encapsulation of its flaws. This culture would have us believe that interminable self-improvement projects, navel-gazing, and sexual peccadilloes are the new face of progress. The climate warms, wars rage, and our country lurches toward a perilous election---all problems that require real action, real progress. And somehow "you do you" has become the American ruling class's three-word bible.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that, since at least the late 20th century, Western societies have been defined by "a generalized culture of 'authenticity,' or expressive individualism, in which people are encouraged to find their own way, discover their own fulfillment, 'do their own thing.'" Taylor describes a phenomenon that's all too easy to recognize in today's pop psychology and the maundering of wellness influencers, but his concept doesn't quite capture the extent to which this relentless quest for self-optimizing authenticity has infused our social and even political sensibilities.

We might call this turbocharged version of authenticity culture "therapeutic libertarianism": the belief that self-improvement is the ultimate goal of life, and that no formal or informal constraints---whether imposed by states, faith systems, or other people---should impede each of us from achieving personal growth. This attitude is therapeutic because it is invariably couched in self-help babble. And it is libertarian not only because it makes a cult out of personal freedom, but because it applies market logic to human beings. We are all our own start-ups. We must all adopt a pro-growth mindset for our personhood and deregulate our desires. We must all assess and reassess our own "fulfillment," a kind of psychological Gross Domestic Product, on a near-constant basis. And like the GDP, our fulfillment must always increase.

Therapeutic libertarianism is ubiquitous. And bipartisan. Among the right, a new kind of reactionary self-help is ascendant. Its mainstream version is legible in the manosphere misogyny of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Tate, while more eldritch currents lurk just beneath the surface. The Nietzscheanism of internet personalities like Bronze Age Pervert---who combines ethnonationalist chauvinism in politics and personal life with a Greco-Roman obsession with physical fitness---is only one of many examples of the trend the social critic Maya Vinokour has called "lifestyle fascism."

On the left, what gets termed "wokeness" is indissociable from self-help. How should we understand superficial, performative expressions of "anti-racism" or preening social-media politics if not as a way for self-described good-hearted liberals to make grand public displays of pruning their moral shrubbery? Progressives blather incessantly about the need to "do the work," a mantra which is invariably treated as a synonym for the self-improvement slogan "work on yourself."

Polyamory, as More demonstrates, entangles many of these tendencies at once. Early on in More, Molly is given homework by her therapist: to create a list of things she wants freedom from ("pressure to be punctual," "self-imposed obligations," "guilt," "pleasing others") and lists of things she wants freedom to be or freedom to do ("spontaneous," "imperfect," "my own priority," "things that are fun and just for me"). Molly carries these lists around with her everywhere, tucked safely in a pocket, as she navigates the at times fiery and frigid waters of ethical non-monogamy. What the author is trying to find in her open relationship is not s*x, but self-understanding---what it means, how we get it, whether s*x can provide it. And although the answers Molly arrives at are not cheaply won, they are cheap all the same.

Near the end of the memoir, the author's mother provides the empty epiphany toward which the text careens. "Everything that happens in life," her mom offers, "is an opportunity to learn about yourself. Marriage. Motherhood. Relationships. Even anger and illness. Nothing that happens is good or bad in and of itself. It's all just an opportunity to learn and grow." With this maternal revelation, Molly's "skin starts to tingle." She relates that the advice "feels almost holy."

But though Molly may tell herself and her readers that she is on a journey of learning and growth, the ugly truth is that More feels like a 290-page cry for help. Molly does not come off as a woman boldly finding herself, but rather as someone who is vulnerable to psychological manipulation and does not enjoy her open marriage. I am not holding a magnifying glass up to the text in search of hidden signs of discontent. I am not paternalistically projecting my Protestant values or wintry Northeast prudishness onto the author. I simply read the book. And if it seems like Molly Roden Winter does not want to be in an open marriage, it is because she often lets us know that she doesn't want to be in an open marriage.

She makes this clear to the reader, her husband, her psychiatrist, her marriage counselor, and herself again and again and again. Sometimes she wails it through tears and sometimes she shrieks it through the phone and sometimes she coats it in rough-edged irony, but the message remains the same. When a couples therapist asks the pair why they're in counseling halfway through the book---prompted by a breakdown Molly experiences that stems from their marital arrangement---she explains: "We're here because I don't want to be in an open marriage anymore, but Stewart does."

There are precious few s*x scenes where Molly seems to be enjoying herself. When Molly is in the middle of a squirmy threesome she's been dreading, she literally dissociates from her body, pretending that she is a director staging a scene in which her physical person is merely an actor. Molly describes how she performs her role with "a clinician's detachment" and leaves the apartment rapidly so as not "to be pulled back into this scene." After one of her dates repeatedly removes his condom without her consent---an act known as "stealthing," which is considered a s*x crime in a number of countries and the state of California---she contracts a series of urinary tract infections. Stewart's response to the UTIs is not concern for his wife but irritation: "This guy is breaking all my toys," he grumbles. When she gets upset that her husband keeps calling her a "c*nt" and a "whore" during s*x---something he professes not being able to help---Stewart does not change this habit. Instead they strike a preposterous bargain: "He will try his best not to scream c*nt during s*x, and I will do my best to ignore him if he does."

But for all the unpleasantness she endures, Molly spends most of the book deluding herself that she's in charge and having a grand old time. When a date treats her dismissively after she gives him a public blowjob: "Never mind," she tells herself, "I'm having adventures. I am living." When she's uncomfortable about sleeping with a new partner in the apartment he shares with his fiancée: "This is what it's all about," she tells herself, like a lapsed Catholic repeating a catechism in which they have lost all faith. Winter is trapped in her therapeutic worldview, one imposed on her by an American culture that has made narcissism into not simply a virtue, but a quasi-religion that turns external obstacles into opportunities for internal self-improvement.

These obstacles include, in her case, profound gender inequality relating to Molly's life as a parent to two sons, and a troubling family history. Molly's mother joined a cult---and indoctrinated the author into it as a child---at the urging of a male partner in her own open marriage. The book makes tacit comparisons between Molly's mother's initiation into a cult at the behest of an extramarital partner, and Molly's own initiation into an open marriage at the behest of her husband. It also seems to make a connection between Molly's mother's chronic illness (which the latter believes is caused by "repressed rage") and Molly's chronic headaches.

Indeed, throughout More, the dominant emotion Molly reports is not lust but rage---primarily at the deeply unequal child-care burdens that are placed upon her. "I think about all the years I've spent my night alone with the kids---the dinners, the bedtimes, the dishes, the loneliness of doing it all by myself---because Stew had to work," she laments at one point. That Stewart is now spending late nights not working (if he ever was) but rather schtupping his endless reserve of mistresses pushes Molly further to the brink: "I feel my jealousy mingle with the resentment I've kept at bay for years," she confesses. Then she adds, "But looking at my anger is like looking at the sun."

Except in fleeting moments, she doesn't look at her anger. Instead, Molly doubles down on her quest for self-actualization through the relentless pursuit of bitter novelty: new sexual experiences that she rarely seems to enjoy, new partners who rarely treat her kindly. "It's like, as a mother, you're supposed to give up your whole self, like you're not allowed to have a self at all," she remarks. But this misogyny feels unmovable, too culturally sedimented. The only solution Molly can imagine is to persist in an open marriage, rather than push for an equal one. Inward sexual revolution plainly feels more possible than a revolution in who does the dishes.

Reviews of More have similarly missed what the real problem is. For example, an article in The Washington Post reserves its criticisms for Molly, noting that the author's open marriage got an "unethical start" because she slept with a man who was cheating. The reviewer complains that Molly spends too much time paying the "Mother Tax" in the memoir (i.e., talking about her children) but fails to mention that Molly's husband and her various inamoratos have serious character flaws, or that Molly is perpetually disconsolate. The Financial Times review is also distorted, blithely referring to Molly's emotional bruises as "genital waxing and its discontents." And once again, her husband gets off the hook. When the reviewer described Molly's husband as the "rock-solid center of her life," I actually gasped.

Of course, even as memoirs belong to the nonfiction genre, there is always some storytelling at work. In interviews, and a recent op-ed titled "Why I Love My Open Marriage," Molly makes her relationship seem stronger and happier than it does in her book. Where the truth lies is ultimately impossible to say, and it would be a mistake to assume that the "Molly" or "Stewart" who are represented in More exactly capture flesh-and-blood Molly and Stewart. But we can be sure that the characters we encounter in More do not present a flattering or ethical image of polyamory, no matter how much reviewers praise its titillating frankness.

In his 1978 best seller, The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch argued that American narcissism should not be understood as simple self-obsession. Narcissism is a survival strategy: If we are fixated on finding fulfillment and endless self-reinvention, it is because our own inner lives feel like the only thing most of us have control over. The therapeutic cult of personal growth is a response to external problems that feel insoluble, a future that feels shorn of causes for hope.

In an earlier book, Lasch wrote about open marriage as the logical end point of a narcissistic, survivalist culture. "The fear and rejection of parenthood, the tendency to view the family as nothing more than marriage, and the perception of marriage as merely one in a series of nonbinding commitments, reflect a growing distrust of the future and a reluctance to make provisions for it," Lasch claimed.

One doesn't need to look far to find wellness nonsense in the current raft of polyamory coverage: It's positively thick with it. New York magazine's recent spread on open relationships---the cover festooned with an adorable quad of groping cats generated almost as much discourse as the issue itself---is redolent with therapeutic pitter-patter. "I feel deeply committed to the journey of the truth of my own soul," a woman named Sarah explains in the feature story. "And I believe a lot in self-awareness and self-knowledge. That's something that is always undulating and changing for me." When her primary partner, Nick, grows uncomfortable with the lack of boundaries in her other relationships, she redirects him with dulcet psychobabble: "How can we get curious about what the psychological experience is for you?" Nick dryly remarks, "Sarah's favorite activity for the two of us to do is couples therapy."

The magazine's "Practical Guide to Modern Polyamory" undulates with the therapeutic-libertarian ethos. A section titled "Should We Come Up With Some Rules?" treats boundaries as understandable but likely unworkable restraints on relationship growth that the successful poly pair should eventually discard. "If you had a set of rules, it would almost feel very strict, like monogamy," says a woman named Olivia, sounding like someone doing their best Rand Paul impression. Like good libertarians, the elegant polyamorists mostly seem to believe that any intervention or imposition on personal freedom is an intolerable affront that must be deregulated.

My problem with all of this is not a moral one. Although I am happily, monogamously married, how two (or three, or four) other consenting adults want to live their lives is not simply no one's business. It doesn't strike me as a matter of right or wrong at all.

My issue with the new open-marriage discourse is not ethical but political, and my criticism is aimed not at polyamorists in general or Molly Roden Winter's book in particular, but at anyone eager to valorize the latest lifestyle fad that is little more than yet another way for the ruling class to have their cake and eat it too. The Marxist philosopher Daniel Tutt has pointed out that a "new intimacy" has come to govern modern relationships: an intimacy that "has fused with market terms" and is "centered on protecting one's self-worth, self-esteem and dignity." But Tutt notes that even as modern relationship etiquette is dressed up in progressive pieties, its goods are primarily reserved for the elites. "The new intimacy based on self-worth is egalitarian seeming," he observes, "but its promises are not widely experienced. Since the late 1970s and accelerating up to the present, the prospect of marriage and family have receded for many people, especially for the working class."

There is something obtuse about the recent polyamory coverage, disproportionately focused as it is on trendsetters: The very class of Americans who most reap the benefits of marriage are the same class who get to declare monogamy passé and boring. The rich---who marry within their social class to combine their wealth, exacerbating inequality---enjoy the advantages of the double-income, two-parent household and then grow tired of these very luxuries. From their gilded pedestals, they declare polyamory superior to monogamy. Media reports rarely note these tensions, or explain that this brand of "free love" requires the disposable income and time---to pay babysitters and pencil in their panoply of paramours---that are foreclosed to the laboring masses.

Meanwhile, others have turned to ethical non-monogamy precisely because our society is not set up to their advantage. They practice it not as part of an individual journey of self-discovery, but as a way to have more support, materially and emotionally. In 2022 the writer and disability-rights activist Jillian Weise wrote a thoughtful essay, also for New York magazine, exploring the freedom polyamory provides to her as a disabled person. That piece did not generate the breathless coverage of either More or New York's canoodling cats.

Open relationships really do provide some people---like Weise---the freedom that they want and need. But a quick tour through the voluminous polyamory Reddit forums, for example, also reveals the downsides of applying therapeutic libertarianism to our personal lives: Beautiful souls seeking absolute freedom may find only abjection. Look no further than Molly herself, who nods and breaks down into tears when her therapist asks whether she worries that "open marriage is giving you an illusion of freedom" rather than actual freedom. It is one of those fleeting moments when Molly seems on the verge of a breakthrough, only to have it slip away.

The average RS foid is frumpy, stimulant addicted and an r-slur.

!foidmoment

TikTok influencers and finance watchdogs are warning of scammers posing as a 'sugar daddy' or 'sugar mamma' and conning targets out of thousands of dollars via dating and cash-transfer apps.

The scammers find targets on Tinder, Bumble or another dating or social media app, presenting themselves as a wealthy suitor before sucking their victims into a scam and draining their bank accounts.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB), which monitors frauds, warned on Friday of the approach, a new twist on the 'romance scams' that saw some 70,000 victims lose $1.3 billion in 2022.

TikTokers have for months posted about being duped into thinking they were getting an 'allowance' paid into their digital wallet, only to discover later that the money had vanished

One victim told BBB they lost $19,500 to a con artist, who mailed them checks that initially appeared to have cleared into their bank account.

Scammers increasingly present themselves as a 'sugar momma' or 'sugar daddy' and offer to pay an allowance of hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars

Next, the scammer sends targets a check, or pretends to transfer money into their bank account

In return, they often ask for a favor — buying a gift card, transferring part of the money to a needy friend, or donating money to a charity

After they've parted with their own cash, it emerges that the benefactor's payment never materialized, and the con is revealed.

The one on the right (avatar magnified) can't understand why more people like the one on the left than her. pic.twitter.com/5XoubMq1Ha

— Dane (@UltraDane) January 23, 2024