Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Male sexuality is indeed surprised even moreso than female sexuality. There are opportunities to flaunt the latter, but the "ideal male body" is exactly part of how people get into the alt right pipeline.

It starts with objectively good advice like "work out and go to the gym to get a good body". Which is surprisingly on the downside in K-12 education. Then it drips in the narrative: "revenge training" to get fit not for your self-esteem but to make a bad breakup regret it, then into the "sigma male grindset", then if you do all this and you still aren't appealing it must be because of women. You worked hard, they don't get it or are too picky, or are looking for some famed gigachad with 8 packs and making 200k a year.

It's a slow drip into the pipeline.

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tangent: but in media male sexuality is much more suppressed too. You can show quite a bit of nudity in R rated films, but absolutely not a boner in any way 99% of the time. I don't think that changes much in society, food for thought.

> It starts with objectively good advice like "work out and go to the gym to get a good body"

This advice is given almost exclusively by men to other men. Similar to how women enforce toxic beauty standards on other women

And I mean, just because you don't see boners in films doesn't mean that society thinks that boners are bad. That's like saying that not seeing vaginas in films means society thinks vaginas are bad

Well, it's indirectly given by women. You don't hurt get "the body" with purely diet. Gyms I've been to are closer in gender ratio than you'd expect for such societal expectations. Even if women tend to focus more on cardio than men and men focus more on resistance/strength training.

And yeah, it's given because it appeals to men. A chance to move about, physically push themselves, perform specific tasks for a specific amount of time, etc. Men and women are drawn to different things (for a variety of reasons), so men just resonate more with that than women.

>just because you don't see boners in films doesn't mean that society thinks that boners are bad. That's like saying that not seeing vaginas in films means society thinks vaginas are bad

In a vacuum yes. In the history of the MPAA, the reasons and reactions make you wonder...

But it's ultimately a non-sequitir. Its just some tangential food for thought.

If you're doing the "sigma male grindset", wouldn't YOU be the one with an 8-pack and 200k a year? Both are absolutely attainable by a motivated male with average intelligence. Not trying to defend any right/left partisan nonsense here.

Both are theoretically attainable but far from practical. And that "possible but really hard" aspect is by design.

That sheer gap may make some work harder. It will likely discourage many who will then look for quick solutions, and that's where the next steps set in. Where they either sell you their fitness products or their pyramid scheme.

If that was true, then the average male salary would be higher

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