• 2 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023
  • swampwitch@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•‘I don’t date at all now’: one woman’s journey into the darkest corners of the manosphereEnglish
    1601·
    1 day ago

    I stumbled upon /r/theredpill(?) many years ago as a 17 year old girl who had never had a boyfriend, and it lead to me developing a severe distrust of men for several years after. I simply had no solid concept of this type of male sex culture, and it eventually lead me into the rabbit hole of the manosphere. I read through their new posts and “strategies” frequently, mostly out of a sort of morbid fascination, but also a desire to protect myself from men.

    It made me believe that, as I grew into a young woman, I had to be careful, as men are terrible predators that only care about sex and the feeling of conquest. I started to understand that the way I perceive relationships might be vastly different from a certain male ideal. Ironically, what I wanted from a relationship was inspired by a quote written by Louis de Bernières, a man:

    Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

    The only thing that undid those feelings was putting myself in the position to make friends with guys – “beta males”, specifically, made me feel a lot less threatened – and coming to understand that what I feared was a certain type of man, which did not represent every man. Now, I feel that I’m quite capable of navigating around toxic masculinity and keeping it out of my life, and have been with my partner for over a decade in a relationship that has developed roots.

  • swampwitch@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•Trump adds Europe to the list of US trade partners he's threatening with tariffsEnglish
    16·
    4 months ago

    Probably influenced by the enormous amount of money oil barons spent on him, of which they almost certainly did with an expectation of return on investment.

    His desire to “Drill baby drill!” and relax restrictions on oil drilling—including drilling into a wilderness reserve previously uninterrupted by man—and his apparent distaste for EVs and green energy, makes it pretty obvious whose hand has firmly lodged itself right up his arsehole.

    The man needs oil to sell to please his owners, and belligerently trying to force the EU to increase their purchases is just another one of his hare-brained schemes.