Question for the heterosexual men of AF

[henryp]

Are you implying that people with psychological disorders are somehow feeble and damaged, and shouldn't be compared to 'regular' folks?  

Didn't you just condescendingly do the same thing he did in your rebuke?

No and no. I'm not in the mood to deal with your frustration, I would have criticized him no matter the situation.

It was just funny that you were inadvertently insulting the person you were defending.  Don't worry about it, just something for me to get a chuckle over.  The worlds a funny place.

[Edwardo Piet]

If the choice was this person and nobody ever, it'd be a different decision.  Then I'd start rationalizing using the arguments your making.  Well, it's not a penis anymore.  And it looks like a normal vagina.  It's an unrealistic hypothetical about a different version of me, so who knows where I'd end up.

The point is, if every time you think of the person you're attracted to you are triggered to think about something else you find unattractive because reasons... that doesn't mean you are no longer attracted to the person when it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

If I love apple pies but every time I think of one I'm reminded of dog shit and feel yucky and don't feel in the mood for apple pie.... that doesn't mean I don't like apple pies even if I am completely convinced that it does mean that and I say "apple pies are ruined for me" (that's deluded they're not ruined for me at all, I just keep thinking about dog shit. The experience of enjoying tasty apple pie is ruined, but I still like apple pie, I'm just not able to access that experience anymore because dog shit), it means I don't like dog shit, it doesn't mean that I don't like apple pie, and it means that something weird and irrelevant has triggered that thinking-about-dogshit response in me.

And in the case of transwomen, I think transphobia has triggered it.

[Shell B]

I don't like beef stew because I ate it once when I had a stomach bug. I might still like it if that hadn't happened, but I'm still not going to fuck it.

[Anomalocaris]

Because I have an active imagination, and don't like thinking about dicks.

I don't think about them either. I hope you can work around this thing you don't like. 


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It’s not exactly dicks everywhere.  It’s dick at a particular spot where a real dick with all the right tissue and function really was, and where a thing that is only cosmetically like a vagina and lacking the right tissue type and function is now.

Not saying that can’t be enough, but it is perfectly understandable if that is not enough for some people.

[henryp]

The irony of saying I didn't grasp basic thought experiments while not even understanding the pink elephant metaphor is razor sharp. I doubt you'll really avoid talking to me. Half my responses on this forum seem to come from you. I think you like me, deep down. I'm who you'd like to be, confident, social, good with women, athletic, educated and smart. I spend all my time outside and am never depressed.

Lol come on Cap, you can't say stuff like that. That's a bit harsh.

Do you ever worry holding some people to a higher standard than others is condescending to the 'others'?  Sometimes it reads as:

"So and so is a mush brained idiot, so they can't help themselves, but you, a non-mush brain, are capable of being better."

Which may very well be true, but I'd worry the mush brained folks see what you're doing, and it makes them feel worse than someone being a jerk to them on a forum where everyone is a jerk to everyone.

[notimportant1234]

No and no. I'm not in the mood to deal with your frustration, I would have criticized him no matter the situation.

It was just funny that you were inadvertently insulting the person you were defending.  Don't worry about it, just something for me to get a chuckle over.  The worlds a funny place.

So if someone says to me" you would wish to have eyes as good as mine" and another person comes to my defense and says " f you he has myopia", the person who defended me also insulted me because he pointed out that I have eye problems?

[Shell B]

Oh, come on. A post quite that self-aggrandizing isn't common here, or anywhere else. It practically begs to be criticized. Part of me hopes he was being sarcastically smug, because that would actually be pretty funny.

[Catholic_Lady]

Lol come on Cap, you can't say stuff like that. That's a bit harsh.

Do you ever worry holding some people to a higher standard than others is condescending to the 'others'?  Sometimes it reads as:

"So and so is a mush brained idiot, so they can't help themselves, but you, a non-mush brain, are capable of being better."

Which may very well be true, but I'd worry the mush brained folks see what you're doing, and it makes them feel worse than someone being a jerk to them on a forum where everyone is a jerk to everyone.

I see your point. I guess I can't help but feel a little defensive of Ham because of my autistic nephew. It's an emotional response on my end, but I see how it can be condecending to both my nephew and Ham.

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Oh, come on. A post quite that self-aggrandizing isn't common here, or anywhere else. It practically begs to be criticized. Part of me hopes he was being sarcastically smug, because that would actually be pretty funny.

I'm pretty sure he was just playing it up a bit to be funny, for the most part. The first time I saw him do it was aimed towards me and I hated him for months until I figured him out lol.

Still harsh though, considering the circumstances.

[henryp]

If the choice was this person and nobody ever, it'd be a different decision.  Then I'd start rationalizing using the arguments your making.  Well, it's not a penis anymore.  And it looks like a normal vagina.  It's an unrealistic hypothetical about a different version of me, so who knows where I'd end up.

The point is, if every time you think of the person you're attracted to you are triggered to think about something else you find unattractive because reasons... that doesn't mean you are no longer attracted to the person when it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

If I love apple pies but every time I think of one I'm reminded of dog shit and feel yucky and don't feel in the mood for apple pie.... that doesn't mean I don't like apple pies even if I am completely convinced that it does mean that and  I say "apple pies are ruined for me" (that's deluded they're not ruined for me at all, I just keep thinking about dog shit. The experience of enjoying tasty apple pie is ruined, but I still like apple pie, I'm just not able to access that experience anymore because dog shit), it means I don't like dog shit, it doesn't mean that I don't like apple pie, and it means that something weird and irrelevant has triggered that thinking-about-dogshit response in me.

And in the case of transwomen, I think transphobia has triggered it.

If the apple pie was baked in a tin that used to be used for collecting dog shit.  But you know the tin has been cleaned and has no more dogshit on it.  But you'd still have that association.  At one point the tin was filled with dogshit.  Maybe someone even has a picture of pie plate filled with dogshit.  If you could just go get a apple pie baked on a non dogshit tin, and you did instead of eating out of the dogshit tin, I don't think that'd be weird.

Wanting a vagina that was never a penis doesn't seem radical.  I'd almost say it's more homophobic than transphobic.  

For example, if it was a supermodel biological female, who identified as a man, but had no intentions of going through any surgeries.  Making that work would be a completely different set of issues compared to the penis issue.  That would be a 'gender' situation.  The penis-vagina situation would be a biological hangup.

[The Industrial Atheist]

I read a book about CBT one time. Well I read part of it. But one of the main points was when you tell yourself "Stop thinking about that. Stop thinking about that." it doesn't help because when you tell yourself that, you are necessarily thinking about what you don't want to think about. It's particularly bad when you start feeling guilty about not being able to stop thinking about whatever it is. It's better to accept it and not judge yourself. When you do that, often those thoughts seem to lessen. I've had minimal or no intrusive thoughts for most of my life, but I've found this works well with other thoughts I don't particularly want to have.

But yeah you don't really have control over your thoughts.

It's actually what makes OCD so difficult. You have to learn to just have the thought. The more you try to fight it, the worse it gets.

I may not have experienced the exact same thing, but a few times the intrusive thoughts got bad. It must be very challenging and I can imagine, sometimes painful. You have my sympathies.