Back in the 1920s they successfully treated anorexia with insulin, recognizing that it was a metabolic disorder and not a psychological one. But then along came the psychologists and they needed a reason to exist.
I’d wager that 95%+ of these problems are to do with the absolute shit diet that is consumed in the West, full of sugar, glyphosate/pesticides/chemicals, seed oils, fake coloring, and fake genetically modified crap, for a short list. Throw in some SSRIs and ADHD drugs from the age of six, and you can end civilization faster than you can say Hannibal.
I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much that this is your mindset. There are many many good men who are to what you describe. I will be praying for peace for you. No, this is not a “thoughts and prayers “ random comment. I mean that I will pray, for you. 🥲
You're on time out for a week. If you behave like this again you're banned for good. Read the damn article before you start screaming at people in my comments, and actually, just don't scream at people in my comments. Act like a civilized human being.
Man, all kinds of absolute insanity at work this week and I totally missed this whole tiff. Real life is where we all live and yet some people get their panties all in a wad over someone’s opinion on the internet lol I don’t understand why people can’t manage to be civil, but it reiterates my point that nutrition and mental health stability are tightly linked.
Farming was a metabolic disaster that took generations to get some adaptation to so it was less disastrous (and the adaptation wears off as you age). The processed food diet is also a metabolic disaster. Including for mental health. https://brainenergy.com/
From the abstract of the paper about the metabolic effects of a farming diet: “Skeletal analyses of human remains from early agricultural centers throughout the world indicate that this revolution significantly affected overall human health. This paper will address some of the drastic effects of this transition as evidenced by craniofacial changes related to masticatory function, declines in oral health, increased spread of pathogens, infectious disease, and zoonoses, as well as a variety of ailments which have been linked to nutritional deficiencies and increased physical stress on the human body.”
Adding testosterone to bodies not designed for it in a population with an extremely high rate of psychological co-morbidities: what could go wrong with that?
Studies done in Sweden found a possible link between SSRIs and uninhibited negative behaviors. Such as if one has a tendency to anger or drink or IDK, their inhibition is removed or their say...anger issues get out of control.
I read about it on the U.S. health resource. Someone mentioned it and I looked it up. The U.S. hasn't done studies on it, but they reported about it being done in Sweden and an abstract. Very intriguing.
SSRIs are a big money maker. The people making a fortune at the top don’t care what happens due to the side effects. Suicide, school shootings, self destructive behavior, broken families- they don’t care. They love money more than they love their fellow man.
SSRIs cause “flat effect” where one feels no empathy and dis-associative feelings, which could lend itself towards mental instability you see in some of these people. These side effects persist long after the drugs are ceased to be taken - IF one can even manage to get off them.
Trying to find the ultimate root cause is like nailing jello to the wall. Humans are complex creatures, there are always multiple variables, which you cannot control for, but I believe that environmental exposures (food and drugs) are causing mental instability in the general population, which in turn has caused a cascading failure in society.
Yeah I read that somewhere once and was floored. I don’t know why they don’t pursue that as a line of treatment now, except that in this degenerate age, wallowing in one’s misery is considered ideal.
Or how bad their airlines are. That's another big one. If you've never traveled outside the US you have no idea how much the monopolistic airlines are fu*(#(@ you at the airport. I've flown bargain flights in India, Vietnam and Indonesia that were FAR nicer than Delta or United.
Zinnia, amazing work! I have a 17 year old daughter and I’m trying to help her navigate these times. We have had a couple rough times but my husband and I keep loving her and she’s turning into a lovely young lady/ almost a woman! The posting of sexy photos, sneaking out with a stranger at night, I feel so blessed she’s still alive and thriving. I feel like having a strong father figure in her life that loves her unconditionally is something so many girls don’t have. It’s vital to a woman’s development of healthy male friendships. I didn’t have that and I can see and feel the difference in her. Please keep writing! Your insight into the “why” of trans- and transgender is so so important, I definitely learned something today I never may have understood.
I can totally relate to your comment. I didn't have any real stable role models growing up, especially male role models. I grew up to be pretty but very self-conscious about it and had great difficulty navigating when boys were attracted to me. I wanted the attention but once I had it, didn't know thing one about what to do next. It was very painful and I pushed people away instead of facing the fear of rejection. So, l learned a lot from this article. I'm 71 now and am married but if I had to be single again and younger, even though I would have more confidence due to life experience, it would still be an unsure path full of confusing obstacles in dealing with my own feminity.
An interesting perspective/insight on the issue at hand. I've a daughter who is beautiful (objectively so, not just parental predjudice) who is completely asexual and surrounds herself with young people who are either going through a "transition" or are considering such. Of both genders. This helps immensely in trying to understand where the source of this may originate. She is 21 so that water may already be under the bridge but this was helpful. At least in providing a different perspective on what we, as parents, have been trying to understand. Our son (24) didn't have a similar experience through these years. Same house, same (ish) access to social media etc. Different result. Thought provoking to be sure.
That's definitely a significant factor. I suspect the lack of butter, fish, eggs, and red meat and the vital nutrition they provide has contributed to the rise in "trans" youth. That and ... grooming via social media.
T. Paine, I agree that diet, nutrition and exercise are essential and assist in mental health well being (MHW). However, MHW also requires root causes. Auditing interruptions in standard early childhood development and evolving belief systems; what people believe about the world, themselves and others is critical as well. Flushing out and challenging false perceptions is paramount to soul care. I completely agree the APA has become a deeply political toxic wasteland. They forgot about the patients and see them as ideological lab rats - really terrible!!! New policies and DSM V diagnoses are evidence of this.
I see you’re a psychiatric resident. Do you really want to help your patients? If you do, please investigate the metabolic link to psychiatric problems. Ketosis cures a lot of brain issues. There’s all kinds of research on it. It’s not profitable tho. So you can help people, or you can be a shill for the pharmaceutical companies.
I'm well aware of the connections being drawn between metabolic issues and psychiatric issues, and I'm familiar with the work being done with ketogenic diets for serious mental illness. Yes I have read the keto golden boy Chris Palmer. I absolutely agree that diet, exercise, and derailments of the physical body have causal power in mental health issues. I'm also aware of the long history in psychiatry of how frequently people like to reduce complex issues to certain totalizing levels of explanation and think that in working at this level they can offer a panacea. The one thing a history of psychiatry shows is that there are no panaceas, and that these problems are stubbornly resistant to reductionism.
10 years ago the keto lobby was offering it as a cure for cancer narrowly citing the Warburg effect; it can be useful as an adjunct in some cases, but it also accelerates many cancers, and has no effect in many others.
I've worked with many patients with anorexia, and etiology is heterogenous. It is a mistake to think that the explanation is so simple and the answer will be so simple. The refutation is in the proposal: if the problem is ubiquitous environmental exposure, then why are we all not anorexic? The obvious: there are a lot of factors at play.
I'm not aware of any research regarding 1920's insulin treatment for anorexia. My guess would be that there is mistaking of the cachexia of individuals with type 1 diabetes, or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), or what insulin was used for in psychiatric patients in the 1920's - inducing a seizure for shock therapy.
Really well done, original, beautifully written and a window into a reality I had no idea about. I have a 32 year old daughter caught in a career trap. Hopefully she will get out of it before it's too late. I also have a 34 year old son I tried to steer away from porn at age 13. That didn't go too well either, but at least he married and has had one kid, so far. Parents need to refuse their kids all screens. But some 2-3 year-olds among extended family are already addicted. Oh well. It's all coming down soon, in chaos and madness. Best wishes.. from a new Zinnia subscriber.
You can tell the difference in gen z already. Yes, some of us Gen X parents managed to do their jobs. Very few though. Most grew up in the online world depicted so beautifully in this essay.
We've done a very good job keeping our kids away from the screens, but it seeps in through the culture and the school. My son, 8 now, never has had and never will have an iPad or a smartphone, but his school friends very much do. And you can tell. They are obsessed with these games, Minecraft and fortnite and all the rest.
The school is the worst, they mandate use of these Google tablets. I found out that the kids spend part of their days playing computer games on these stupid things during school hours. Not surreptitiously, but directed and approved!
My boy is top of class in both reading and math. We don't do anything special. We just read all the time. He sees me reading, newspapers and books. We do math homework together. All run of the mill normies stuff when I was young, but now it marks him out as a borderline savant.
So true. Bullying wouldn't exist if it weren't for public school. I also notice that it is the schools, and only the schools, that have measles, chickenpox, lice, etc. Other concentrations of human beings in our society never seem to have these problems.
Stick children in prison-like environments, marvel that they consistently fall into prison-like behaviors and cause prison-like problems, conclude that the problem is you need a bigger budget for more administrative staff. The hamster wheel we've been on for 100 years now.
If you have a small town of like 50 people (like in the pioneer days) there is no meaningful difference between a "public" school and a "private" school, one in the same.
I'm a substitute teacher and hate the way iPad/Chromebook classroom. It's a lazy way to teach and it creates tension in the class. The other day I was subbing first grade. They have 20 minutes of choice time at the end of the day. The teacher gave me specific details about what their choices could be. She has 7 iPads in the classroom so not enough for each kid, but they weren't listed as a choice. When I told the children this, they got angry. First at me. Then two boys ran over and took one even though I said they couldn't. Then a girl did it. The class erupted into madness. They'd actually been so kind and earnest the rest of the day. Such a personality change in one moment. All for an iPad. That is addiction.
“Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.”
How women might “come to terms” with their oft frustrated carnal desires for beauty and power is through the worship of something higher. Something that won’t destroy them, and instead, will feed their souls. The same goes for men, of course.
the first few songs i wrote were on this subject. i wrote them from a male and a female perspective......the incorrectness of identifying too much with the body and not the inner being, in conduct and expression. "self assurance based on physicality" is a very sad state of affairs, and empty , super limiting and false. leaves out the virtues you have cultivated, the talents you have nurtured, and the relationships you have built. the very depth of your soul.
Clearly that is the problem. We have lost our connection with the divine. "All we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way." We are sheep without a shepherd. No wonder we have problems.
My daughter is 24 and a 6'2" broad-shouldered professional athlete, who thank God, has a wicked sense of humor about her continuing singlehood -- "I'll die alone!" she says.
Meanwhile, my 26-year-old son can't seem to find any women who aren't terrified of real-life interactions with men.
All three of my kids grew up without TV in the house or cell phones until high school, and now they're like unicorns. Capable, kind, socially adept... and lonely.
What the hell is going to happen to this generation, and the one following it??
Glad you enjoyed the article! Feminism has had the effect of making the sexes terrified of each other; men are afraid of accidentally being creepy and objectified, and many women interpret any advance outside the context of a dating app as a threat. The result? Social collapse
Traditional societies had specially dedicated institutions and rituals for when and how to approach potential spouses that were significantly more functional than the current dating app scene.
Those institutions and rituals were also in place to matriculate children into men and women in advance of marriage.
The patriarchy existed to safeguard those things from nature's way of escaping into its base directives. We killed the patriarchy in the pursuit of equality, of fairness, and the great leveling of society.
But we could not kill our nature. So we get base instincts not just kept in check and sublimated toward pro-social and pro-civic behaviors, but inverted as virtues that are ultimately dyscivic and destructive.
I have been around numerous GenX friends and peers with teen and earl 20's children. Exactly none of them are encouraging behaviors, cultivating values, exemplifying virtues, and supporting social structures that solve toward early marriage and family formation.
Even the ones with the tenuously "successful" marriages seem to not want their daughters to follow their path. Even with the cold headwind of reality signaling the coming storm of the failed progressive experiment.
All of them, however, are encouraging their children to pursue the zero-sum, defect-defect, adversarial and self-interested ad-hoc relationships rooted in material want and comforts. They literally say out loud that they want their kids to experience life, get an "education", travel, work, "date" a lot of people, etc. Marriage is simply not a priority.
This is a revealed preference time and again. Same as when I was a single man and refused to enter the Great Swipening. This is also how I have made millions selling "I love my fur-grand-babies" bumper stickers.
The rest is just give your kids a smart phone, reap the whirlwind. You wouldn't want them to be "weird" now would you?
The grown ups need to get back in the room. Literally. Set up a dinner at home, get the kids together. Johnny won’t get TikTok shamed for a lame approach or accused of rape and Sally won’t get raped.
You can get a glimpse of amongst the Orthodox Jewish and the Amish. I am an only child was raised in the 70's and 80's (when that was rare) and pretty much left to my own devices and was lucky that something dreadful didn't happen to me as a young woman.
She/her/they/him (whatever she identifies with, covering my bases here in case) has been quite antagonistic throughout the comments, going as far a suggesting that Zinnia the author is a man in disguise.
I see it as a prime example of the troubled mindset that this very same article tried to explain… there’s a lot of hate, angst, fear, lostness in this; both towards the self and the opposite gender.
This article has opened my understanding in ways that I can’t describe on something I had no clue about. Suffice to say, I don’t feel annoyance nor upsetting ticks at this types of “obtuse” responses.
And to be clear, she isn’t being obtuse in the traditional sense, she is likely defending herself from a perceived threat.
Glad you raised this too often ignored aspect of these stresses in the romantic prospects of young people like your son and daughter. I posted this on Zinnia's own new 'Stack: "Something that gets very little attention in journalism about romantic and sexual pair bonding is the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Most sex-relations journalism is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones BETWEEN the sexes...... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
It’s the same 10% of ‘players’ screwing (and also screwing over 😂) the same 90% of the women (at least once) (and also done if those women know fully well what they’re volunteering for 😂).
But don’t expect a roomful of these Strong & Independent women to raise their hands in public and admit “Me too!” 🤣🤣🤣
It’s the same 10% & 90% in GenZ, who are the third-generation products of 1960’s-style 2nd-wave “feminism” as it was for us GenX’er 1st-generation products of the continuing Battle of the Sexes.
What’s different today isn’t simply technology; Civilized Man had no problem finding bad ideas before social media 😂.
No, what’s different is that we’re three generations deep into 2nd-wave feminism. In my day, we were only one generation into socioeconomic dysfunction.
In retrospect, GenX got off light. Especially the sweet ‘n’ sensitive intellectual boys like me. I eventually learned to play the Dating Game like the 10% for whom it comes naturally, but instead of chewing through the 90% like a pack of gum, I used my newfound power for Good (instead of for Evil 😂). I married an anti-feminist Oriental girl, and I’ve been made happy by her virtue & by my own virtue 👍🙂 and at my suggestion in 2014 we moved the family back to her native Tokyo metro region.
And one of the primary motivating factors - no exaggeration here - was that we don’t want our sons to have to look for a wife on the USA Dating Scene 😔
God help the Western dating scene. I’d like to say that today’s Western dilemma is the End Result of three generations of feminist sexuality run amok, but I don’t think it’s the End yet, very unfortunately.
mine are lonely too.....i just hope he find a nice amish girl or a rodeo princess, or farm girl, something......because the ones so far.....are very suicidal and manipulative.....
Hi Mary! I also raised my two sons without TV and no smartphones or computers or gaming systems of their own till they had jobs and driver's licenses. I see a huge difference between them and their peers. My 24 yo son has found a solid girlfriend, but my eldest at 26 is finding it hard to interact with women his age. I keep telling him to date older, like 40 😉.
serious advice but if you throw a corset on your daughter, it could correct her hip-shoulder ratios. I've seen people change their body shapes even in adulthood; it's far from impossible.
Ask yourself why so many women avoid men and interacing with them, including men like your son. What led them to that conclusion? What do you think they've been through?
Men are the problem. And yet the moid who wrote this simply couldn't figure it out. What a genius.
More face to face interaction with boys would go a way in reducing this Zoomer girl anxiety. All of these perceptions are more accurately notions - within the head. Believe it or not Zoomer girl, men generally aren’t focused on your every perceived “flaw”. It’s been a while but from memory boobs were boobs when I was a young man - big, small, misshapen- all good ... cos boobs! I don’t imagine that has changed overly. It’s a scary time for both sexes - in hindsight you always wish you could have told your younger self not to worry so damn much about what the rest of the world thinks about you and to just concentrate on becoming a “good” person, defined by your own inner compass. This cliché obviously is unhelpful to those going through it. One can’t help but wonder if less time online isn’t at least a partial salve? Great article.
haha! I was mostly generalizing how women think about their bodies. I would agree that face to face interaction with men would solve the problem, unfortunately zoomer men have been castrated by MeToo and refuse to make moves on women unless it's on a dating app. Glad you liked the article!
I did. You write very well with deep insight. I am not in a position to comment too deeply on this phenomenon. I just turned 50. Suffice to say it’s a pickle of a problem. I know what you’re saying though - I was talking to a young woman in a bar once, much younger than myself. I was talking to her - that’s it. I wasn’t trying to pick her up. We were just having a friendly chat and some young guy came over to me to tell me to stop talking to her. Naturally I told him my thoughts concerning his concerns, in somewhat colourful language. The castration that men now experience in approaching women is the topic of another article entirely. But I still think the answer lies somewhere in less online time and more real life interactions. Bring back the barn dance! Okay ... I’m not that old.
Yeah I was blindsided by that one. Seriously dude? She’s half my age! The irony being of course he probably felt incapable of approaching her himself, despite being in her demographic.
TBH I don’t generally find I have much in common with 20 something year old females. That’s where I was coming from. But sure, in theory I see no problem with it.
By the standards of the World According to Manosphere you should be irresistible to women half your age if you wave your fat wallet around, flash a Rolex watch, and let them know you drive an expensive muscle car. These automatically make older men "high value Alpha Chad's." Tell them that you have a higher "body count" than Ted Bundy, insult them, act like an arrogant jerk. If she walks away it must be the guy is too short or his jawline is too soft and women are just too picky.
When I saw that they had instituted rules and a name for the scrum in front of the stage at punk & skinhead gigs, I knew it was over.
Not to mention this:
"Sir? You can't take your glass from the bar to the table! If you want to drink at a table, you must order from there!"
Fuck. That. I wouldn't have stood for it when I was 5 or 15, ain't gonna do it now.
(And in Sweden tipping is optional and isn't figured into the pay to staff, so that's not the issue - the issue is control, nudging and micromanaging into learned helplessness and mental dependency.)
It was all over the moment they banned smoking in bars and everyone let them do it. There's an alternate timeline where the punks, metalheads, scenesters, and ravers simply refused to comply. In that timeline there were no lockdowns in 2020.
that would work too. screen things are NOT real life, people are not machines, or ideologies or politics. pickniks, barbq.....there is nothin' like the real thing....
No, not at all. Co-ed is a travesty, and it’s particularly abusive to boys. If our Western societies honored & respected the “male gaze” (which is just a metaphor for the oppressive weight of the sex drive that Mother Nature lays on each boy’s shoulders), then our societies would fund same-sex education. Instead, our sociopathic Ruling Class uses our tax money to fund co-ed education - they see us as serfs, and they treat us that way 😂
Maybe we could get two big islands on opposite sides of the earth, one for the incels, one for the femcels. And the rest of us could start to heal in their absence.
Why use more than one island? Dump them all in the same place and isolate them completely - no Internet. Check back in a couple decades. They'll either all be dead or happily married.
Lol, who's doing the chasing? Why is Tinder 76% male? You think women are just chasing down men, including you, while women are literally fleeing away from this?
for a while now it has dawned on me the the new transgender movement is always a reaction to the feminine. in MtF its always an overt embrace of the feminine (the shoes, the dresses, the makeup) whereas the FtM is always a rejection of the feminine (baggy clothes, short hair, top surgery).
nowhere in this movement represents the masculine at all...hence the constant accusations of misogyny...
I've seen a lot of girls with foul haircuts - the 'mullet', combined with nose-ring. It's a mixture of dyke and tranny and I can only think is intentionally awful.
The "masculine" seems to be missing, especially on the micro idividual level, but it's just obscured. Big Patriarchy got the trans mania ball rolling. (Ironically Big Libfem Matriarchy took it over, but that's another topic.) If in the beginning the sexes had been switched and women made the declaration that they were really men inside and demanded the privilege to impersonate men out in society in all ways, they'd have been laughed out of the room. Instead of being believed, taken seriously and indulged with laws.
Speaking of young girls deciding that they're really gay men, our author failed to mention the impact of anime escapism and its psychological effects at play within trans mania. Specifically fujoshi enjoyment by young females. An understandable oversight (or maybe an editing decision) as the trans-anime connection is a huge and complex topic.
It's pure masculine. It's perversion, violence, lack of awareness, reducing women to a costume, talking over women, invasion of our spaces, and total lack of embarrassment.
That is nothing but masculine. You people are morons. You have no clue what's going on.
"in MtF its always an overt embrace of the feminine...whereas the FtM is always a rejection of the feminine "
^ how i know you don't know any actual trans people in real life. what an absolutely moronic claim you could only treat as "true" if all of your information were gleaned from internet outrage peddlers
They've reduced being a woman to nothing but a costume--and they think that's fine precisely because they hate women and think it's essentially whatever they want to do.
It's pure, sheer misogyny. "Trans" is male stupidity and perversion personified.
> Why are young women today so deranged? Because no one is honest with them and they cannot be honest with themselves. Parents lie to you, teachers lie to you, friends lie to you, everyone lies to you.
The Boomers were notoriously bad at giving the necessary "girl to girl talk" and "man to man talk", delegating it to a school that taught largely nonsense. It used to be a mom and other older authority figures would take their daughter out and give them a frank talk that even their husband would not be privy to, and that is a good thing. It's gotten even worse will Millennial/GenX parants. Instead, it's now done through neurotic teachers, their equally confused teen friends, and the sewer of social media.
I used to wonder why women were the way they were until I realized they were biologically programmed to desire and tame a human being that are bigger, stronger, and incredibly dangerous. It's not something you walk into alone without a lot of wisdom from experienced women.
What makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; he has not only to learn one trade, but to learn it so well as to uphold him in a more or less ruthless society. This is generally true of males from the first hunter to the last electrical engineer; each has not merely to act, but to excel. Nimrod has not only to be a mighty hunter before the Lord, but also a mighty hunter before the other hunters. The electrical engineer has to be a very electrical engineer, or he is outstripped by engineers yet more electrical. Those very miracles of the human mind on which the modern world prides itself, and rightly in the main, would be impossible without a certain concentration which disturbs the pure balance of reason more than does religious bigotry. No creed can be so limiting as that awful adjuration that the cobbler must not go beyond his last. So the largest and wildest shots of our world are but in one direction and with a defined trajectory: the gunner cannot go beyond his shot, and his shot so often falls short; the astronomer cannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way. All these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and seen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different paths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. It is right; there must be people traveling to different towns; there must be specialists; but shall no one behold the horizon? Shall all mankind be specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers; shall all humanity be monomaniac? Tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be monomaniac. It has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman and a Jack-of-all-trades. But it has also decided, among other things, that the Jack-of-all-trades shall be a Jill-of-all-trades. It has decided, rightly or wrongly, that this specialism and this universalism shall be divided between the sexes. Cleverness shall be left for men and wisdom for women. For cleverness kills wisdom; that is one of the few sad and certain things.
But for women this ideal of comprehensive capacity (or common-sense) must long ago have been washed away. It must have melted in the frightful furnaces of ambition and eager technicality. A man must be partly a one-idead man, because he is a one-weaponed man—and he is flung naked into the fight. The world’s demand comes to him direct; to his wife indirectly. In short, he must (as the books on Success say) give “his best”; and what a small part of a man “his best” is! His second and third best are often much better. If he is the first violin he must fiddle for life; he must not remember that he is a fine fourth bagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand at whist, a gun, and an image of God.
I think the 'modern age' will have to begin to accept reality before this will sell. There is a lot of 'sex appeal' in the old fashioned view of marriage. Indeed so much sex that moderns are offended by it.
Authenticity is a one size fits all product on the shelf above fitting in, and two spots over from rebellious. For the more discerning consumer with the deeper pockets. For sale now wherever identities are sold.
Craving what you lack, and hollowing it out into a fetish of itself, is sadly very human.
It is also a very lucrative impulse to exploit.
Why sell a simple four-wheeled baby carriage with an underslung luggage-rack, made of stainless steel and with high-quality tires, good washable and mendable cloth that will last your grandchildren - when you can sell a beach stroller, a city carriage, an off-road carriage, a city stroller, and an indoors version of all of them?
As I breath in depleted uranium, looking out over the vast ruins of a failed world.
Finally, we have achieved equity.
That's where we are headed if people can't learn to meet in the middle. The humans ingenuity is a blessing and a curse at the same time. We need to be more careful with our 'inventions', be those physical or societal, is of no real consequence. All are equal in terms of their potential to cause more harm than good. War is now imminent and if we don't turn things around soon, there will be no more free and comfortable space to debate the philosophy of the ages, such as that of the sexes.
LOL, just say you can't get a match on Tinder and be on your way. We're not the ones shooting up schools after watching hours of violent internet porn.
Thank you for the article. I have a (very) young daughter, so I'm trying to stock up on as many insights into young women's minds as I can. My takeaways from this are: 1) I need to get my wife to read it and share her thoughts, and 2) no social media for the kids for as long as I can manage (which was already on the to-do list). Any other insights are welcome, and I'm subscribed for more!
My biggest regret was not limiting social media. My daughters are now 20, 18 & 16, I allowed access once they hit high school (here in Australia that’s about at ages 12-13). Once they were on it everything changed. I also found being fairly transparent (meaning we keep it pretty real in our house, no bandying about) works well. Having both mum and dad for a female vs male perspective. They tend to go to their dad more now for advice when it concerns boys, to get his take on a situation. And I love that they do
My parents took away the family TV when I was three and didn't give it back until I was 21. Had a computer, one hour pd only when the internet was mostly nerds and soft porn. It can be done.
It will be hard work (harder than it should be in today's society) to limit social media/screen time for kids, but if I'm not willing to spend energy to raise happy, healthy children, what am I saving it for?
Mine were 16&18 before they got their own smartphones. Neither used social media until then. They also didn't get gaming systems till then either. Now they mostly use discord. Probably reddit. Anyway, for me it was to keep them from watching porn all night long as they came of age. They shared my computer till then for homework and I taught them to code and type. But I figured once they had jobs and driver's licenses and I'd shared both the moral, sexual, and neurological reasons for keeping porn out of your life, they could have them. This was not a hard thing to do. Honest.
As I read this, my first thought was, wow, so much has changed since I was a teenage girl.
My second thought was, wow, nothing has changed since I was a teenage girl.
Your raw honesty is appreciated, Zinnia. As a grey-haired 50-something year old who has “been there and done that,” here’s what I wish someone had told me a few decades ago:
1. Don’t worry about wanting to be pretty and attractive to boys. Almost all girls have aspired to this, since time immemorial. It gets overwhelming only because this completely normal urge has been monetized. Plus, social media amplifies all the regular awkwardness that comes along with figuring out how to manage the “I want to be wanted” urge. Practise moderation in all things and you’ll be fine.
2. Don’t get drawn into psycho dramas. Just because a guy notices you doesn’t mean that rape is the next item on the menu. That’s just feminist clap-trap.
3. Resist narcissism. Take an interest in the world and people around you, including your male peers. Sometimes the best way to overcome your own problems is to recognize those of others.
4. Don’t fall into the victimhood trap. It’s a total waste of your time and energy.
5. Do enjoy being a girl and a woman every day of your life. Feel good in your own skin. It’s the best revenge to take on any motherfuckers out there, male or female. And the truly good guys and men will inevitably be attracted to you.
You’re off to a good start! Good luck with your blog.
Great topic to explore. As parents of 4 girls (2 still in high school), we could see the storm coming. Quite a few commenters have stressed the importance of NO screens. Yes, absolutely. But what takes their place?? We raised our girls with: Grimms Fairy Stories (the original, not Disney), Bible stories, Greek and Norse legends. Ie, archetypal imprinting through story; those stories have endured, so they speak some pretty essential truths about men and women, and life in general. Homeschooling up to high school age (big piece of work), real food (raw milk, garden veges, etc), lots of outdoors (hiking, hunting), and finding similar families so they had friends. Seems to have worked so far.
Yes, those are the essential elements. It's no great secret and not especially complicated, despite which very few parents are able to accomplish what you have.
Yes. “No screens” really is just metaphor for “no pop culture.” Our family of seven here in Japan is on a similar wavelength as your family: Real Food, Natural Ways of Life. Our children learn English through the screens 👍🙂 but they learn to reject pop cultural values through us parents.
The use of social media is a trap specifically unleashed on women to completely wreck their lives. Someone is always prettier, has more fun and more security than she does. Being basic human being the girls simply cannot stand it and many lash out. No telling how many lives are completely ruined with just a few clicks.
It's like high school cliques on steroids. Teenage girls were mean spirited when I was in high school in the 1980's. Now they can be mean without ever having to face the victim of their cruelty. It's harder to be mean when you are face to face. Girls want to fit in with their peers and be liked and they want boys to like them. And those who did not fit in easily and were not liked by the boys might pursue physical relations with boys in order to get male attention, which we know is pretty tempting for teen boys.
Are girls the ones making AI pornographics pics of their classmates? Or is that boys? And why are boys giving attention to young girls who do--what? What is it they're praising?
Yeah they might have had an excuse early on that they were just doing what users seemed to respond best to. But then they started hiring psychologists and anthropologists to min/max the effect, were told exactly what they were trying to do, and simply filtered out the ones who objected.
One of the things that disgusts me the most about their "Trust and Safety" bullshit is how transparent it is if you know what's going on inside. These sites are junkie flophouses that brag about having no sharp objects (other than needles) because they care so much about "safety". Then they use every trick in the book to sabotage anyone who tries to get clean. Truly the scum of the earth, these people.
It's possible there's a direct connection between SV's moralistic preening and its predatory, sordid reality. EA, Trust & Safety, TOS, etc. - these are all just copes, by means of which they purchase indulgences to assuage their conscience.
Thank you for introducing Zinnia to your audience. I subscribed. I have a 12 year old grand daughter. I need to know what is going on contemporaneously, and Zinnia seems attune to the times.
My teenage boys, almost driving age, ask me about the 80s and 90s often. They marvel at the freedom I had and admit that it sounds like it was more fun to grow up in.
The downside of ever less modest clothing and too easy to access porn is that wives lose a beauty advantage over other women.
With that said, even in Victorian times women were mutilating themselves for beauty purposes: corsets, toxic cosmetics, belladonna... There were reasons women used to faint a lot.
Modesty standards are probably key to this. I've been playing with the idea of Internet purdah: online men must show their faces; women must not show their faces. Seems to me that would insulate both sexes from many of the worst psychological dangers posed by an unfettered visual sexual arms race.
How about women need to cover their butts? Thong bikinis are still illegal in public in some states, but even on non-porn sites or even broadcast TV...
Come to think of it, there was a time when it was impossible to buy groceries without seeing Kim Kardashian's bionic buttocks.
I think less public whoreishness is a better idea. Women go to my MMA gym with leggings right into the arse-crack. Fucking get dressed! Men don't walk about like that!
Think about the conversation that would need to take place between a mom and her daughter on why they should dress modestly. It would cover almost everything in this post if done successfully. Of course it doesn't happen because of poor relationships, the mom herself doesn't know why, it is counter to feminist ideals, and so on. Indeed it isn't about the clothing per se.
Yeah, men are so rational that they immediately lose it over a woman's looks, I guess that's why burkas work so well and women in Afghanistan have got it great...oh wait...
Having ridiculous levels of nudity taboos is also bad. Those hitting puberty need to see some skin of the opposite sex for proper imprinting. Otherwise you get Afghanistan. Bleah!
But having *some* public nudity taboo is useful for defending marriage.
Here I must interject that said war erupted not in 2010 or 2020, but in the period between 1850-1920.
With the rise of (then) upper-class liberal feminism, scientism, the engineer hero-archetype coming into its own, futurism and rationalism, sex as an organic and intrinsical part of you instead was made into an external /thing/, to be analysed, scrutinised, and vivisected.
Thereby making it artificial, unreal and unnatural.
Witness the rise of transsexualism in the Weimar Republic, the first surgeries. The "playing with gender roles" as we would say today. The hate spewed against the organic and natural - the family - from prominent liberal and feminist and marxist writers of the time.
All made smooth and appetising by the language of Freudian psychology, a faux science if ever there was one - even modern day gender studies apply more of the principle of science than did Freud ever attempt.
The ideal for the british and french and american bourgeoise upper (middle) class woman being the androgyne: eminently fuckable, but without the fear of pregnancy, of motherhood, or any "women's problems". And the men of their class responded in kind - look at the photos Oscar Wilde and his homophile cronies took of underaged boys dolled up as girls (and of themselves too, for that matter.
Fascism, the wars and the Cold War kept a lid on the worst of it, because war makes men and women strong (or dead), but with the End of History triumphantly declared in 1990 with the Fall of Communism the path chosen was one of weakness:
No one was to be The Enemy. No one, no matter what group you chose to point at. No matter their ideas, -isms and faiths. No, capitalist business-monkeys would make Them into Us (or rather: into US).
We now live the ideology of the elite.
I, being a reactionary atavism, say this: know the man by his choice of enemy. Men choosing women as enemies aren't men at all; they are neuters, castrati, eunuchs - by their own proud choice, apparently.
To me, they are lower than the nose-ringed Michelin man flab-bedecked woman-hating feminazis.
The war between the sexes is as old as humanity. It's raged hot and cold, it's seen long periods of armistice and truce, but it has always simmered under the surface of human society, providing essential creative tension to our interactions.
We've been stretched to an extreme due to the evolutionarily novelty of techno-industrial society, however, of that there is no doubt. But if the bow does not crack in half the tension it is under will launch an arrow very far indeed.
Males got away with treating women like shit for centuries, now they can't get away with a few things and they're mad about it.
That's not a war. It's males losing privileges and getting bitchy about it. When beating your wife to death wasn't a crime in ancient Rome (that's the law of paterfamilias) and now it's considered a crime, of course moids are mad.
And now you think calling it a war excuses the fact that men think not being able to get laid on Tinder is a violation of their rights. Pathetic.
You realize the purpose of the timeout was to give you a chance to calm down, catch your breath, center yourself. Yoga, scented candles, bath bombs, chamomile tea. Then maybe come back and try engaging in something resembling intelligent discussion.
Instead you, what, seethed for a week? And the moment you could came back in to scream at everyone again?
1850-1920, that was the peak of the Industrial Revolution, when human prosperity and population soared, particularly in Europe and North America. When lemmings overpopulate they run off cliffs. When humans do so they turn gay and wage World Wars.
Problem with the issues these days, boys are cutting off the wrong parts!
Eunuch jokes. Tasteless. Cut that joke right out anyways, no regrets. I'm dangerously close to identifying as trans right now if I don't straighten right up. Lol, I can't stop.
I'm sorry but we never have and never will take the trans movement seriously.
Beautiful breasteseses... Yes, we can take those very very seriously at a moments notice. Truck Boat Truck and funny hats drinking with Early on the front porch, harvesting mud. No Mam!
Something I've long wondered and have even asked Rechts-gedanken friends and colleagues is this:
"Why are they so uncreative when they have their medically speaking harmful surgeries? Why just two fake breast for transsexual man? Why not three? Why not a pair on the back too?"
When the outrage dies down, the irritation bubbles to the forefront, since the Rechts-gedanken realise on an unconscious level that yes, the surgery is harmful and only furthers the eminent psychosis called transsexualism; the cognitive dissonance ensuing between what their deep mind tells them is true conflicts most mightily with their learned and conditioned rote responses and opinions.
It is very droll, and a guilty pleasure, akin to tricking dogs by hiding treats and playing "find the pea" with them.
Our society no longer teaches boys how to become men or girls how to become women. The institutions that performed those functions over millennia - family, church, community - have all been debased, disassembled or disregarded.
Not necessarily. This touches on the concept of the natural man and natural law. For those with ears to hear and eyes to see. The medium of the message is just as powerful as the message itself. Or how about this one; The man whom reads newspapers all day long is less informed than the man whom reads nothing.
Are we products of our environment? Are we animals, instinctual in nature? Or both? So no, nobody needs to teach anyone how to be themselves, because they already are themselves. It is when we seek to influence that people lose touch with whom they really are.
Back in the 1920s they successfully treated anorexia with insulin, recognizing that it was a metabolic disorder and not a psychological one. But then along came the psychologists and they needed a reason to exist.
I’d wager that 95%+ of these problems are to do with the absolute shit diet that is consumed in the West, full of sugar, glyphosate/pesticides/chemicals, seed oils, fake coloring, and fake genetically modified crap, for a short list. Throw in some SSRIs and ADHD drugs from the age of six, and you can end civilization faster than you can say Hannibal.
That's fascinating and quite plausible. A lot of psychological problems are just bad diet.
Or other environmental factors, for sure
For the most part, I do focus on men.
The author of the essay is a woman.
Which you'd have known if you knew how to read.
Feminism is cancer. I just wanted to be a wife and mother. This was considered to be a toxic thing to say. It’s sickening.
Nope, not a troll. Not a male either. I didn’t ask if you wanted me to pray for you, it’s just what I do. So, pay me no mind, but people do care.
I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much that this is your mindset. There are many many good men who are to what you describe. I will be praying for peace for you. No, this is not a “thoughts and prayers “ random comment. I mean that I will pray, for you. 🥲
You're on time out for a week. If you behave like this again you're banned for good. Read the damn article before you start screaming at people in my comments, and actually, just don't scream at people in my comments. Act like a civilized human being.
Why just a week?
Man, all kinds of absolute insanity at work this week and I totally missed this whole tiff. Real life is where we all live and yet some people get their panties all in a wad over someone’s opinion on the internet lol I don’t understand why people can’t manage to be civil, but it reiterates my point that nutrition and mental health stability are tightly linked.
This essay was written by a woman, Kat
Farming was a metabolic disaster that took generations to get some adaptation to so it was less disastrous (and the adaptation wears off as you age). The processed food diet is also a metabolic disaster. Including for mental health. https://brainenergy.com/
BS
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/187/
From the abstract of the paper about the metabolic effects of a farming diet: “Skeletal analyses of human remains from early agricultural centers throughout the world indicate that this revolution significantly affected overall human health. This paper will address some of the drastic effects of this transition as evidenced by craniofacial changes related to masticatory function, declines in oral health, increased spread of pathogens, infectious disease, and zoonoses, as well as a variety of ailments which have been linked to nutritional deficiencies and increased physical stress on the human body.”
Is that why males keep snapping and shooting up schools?
Don't forget FTMs.
Adding testosterone to bodies not designed for it in a population with an extremely high rate of psychological co-morbidities: what could go wrong with that?
Studies done in Sweden found a possible link between SSRIs and uninhibited negative behaviors. Such as if one has a tendency to anger or drink or IDK, their inhibition is removed or their say...anger issues get out of control.
I read about it on the U.S. health resource. Someone mentioned it and I looked it up. The U.S. hasn't done studies on it, but they reported about it being done in Sweden and an abstract. Very intriguing.
SSRIs are a big money maker. The people making a fortune at the top don’t care what happens due to the side effects. Suicide, school shootings, self destructive behavior, broken families- they don’t care. They love money more than they love their fellow man.
No, that’s SSRI-induced.
Did not know that, daaamn
Also, troonacy IMO has biological origins, the part of the brain that maps the body is fucked, and that’s why more autists troon out
Just a theory but one that makes more sense than the “wrong body” silliness they like to say causes it
SSRIs cause “flat effect” where one feels no empathy and dis-associative feelings, which could lend itself towards mental instability you see in some of these people. These side effects persist long after the drugs are ceased to be taken - IF one can even manage to get off them.
Trying to find the ultimate root cause is like nailing jello to the wall. Humans are complex creatures, there are always multiple variables, which you cannot control for, but I believe that environmental exposures (food and drugs) are causing mental instability in the general population, which in turn has caused a cascading failure in society.
I meant the part about insulin curing anorexia actually, should have been specific. I know SSRIs are evil.
Yeah I read that somewhere once and was floored. I don’t know why they don’t pursue that as a line of treatment now, except that in this degenerate age, wallowing in one’s misery is considered ideal.
Move to Asia. The diet here is better as well.
Asian food is great, yes.
Indeed. Idk where in Asia you live, but I'm in SEA and eat like a king. Healthy food, freshly prepared
North Americans have no concept of how bad their diet actually is.
Or how bad their airlines are. That's another big one. If you've never traveled outside the US you have no idea how much the monopolistic airlines are fu*(#(@ you at the airport. I've flown bargain flights in India, Vietnam and Indonesia that were FAR nicer than Delta or United.
To say nothing of the airports themselves 😬
The Libyans are having a laugh at our infrastructure :D
I’ve flown in and out of Baghdad International Airport. It was much cleaner and better maintained than Newark.
Asiana for the win. Real food on real flatware using real utensils. This was 10+ years ago but heaven in the skies.
Plus hot Korean skywaitresses.
Zinnia, amazing work! I have a 17 year old daughter and I’m trying to help her navigate these times. We have had a couple rough times but my husband and I keep loving her and she’s turning into a lovely young lady/ almost a woman! The posting of sexy photos, sneaking out with a stranger at night, I feel so blessed she’s still alive and thriving. I feel like having a strong father figure in her life that loves her unconditionally is something so many girls don’t have. It’s vital to a woman’s development of healthy male friendships. I didn’t have that and I can see and feel the difference in her. Please keep writing! Your insight into the “why” of trans- and transgender is so so important, I definitely learned something today I never may have understood.
I can totally relate to your comment. I didn't have any real stable role models growing up, especially male role models. I grew up to be pretty but very self-conscious about it and had great difficulty navigating when boys were attracted to me. I wanted the attention but once I had it, didn't know thing one about what to do next. It was very painful and I pushed people away instead of facing the fear of rejection. So, l learned a lot from this article. I'm 71 now and am married but if I had to be single again and younger, even though I would have more confidence due to life experience, it would still be an unsure path full of confusing obstacles in dealing with my own feminity.
Men are the source of the problem.
Your daughter is not the problem. John is the problem.
No, you are the problem.
Nobody said her daughter was the problem...
An interesting perspective/insight on the issue at hand. I've a daughter who is beautiful (objectively so, not just parental predjudice) who is completely asexual and surrounds herself with young people who are either going through a "transition" or are considering such. Of both genders. This helps immensely in trying to understand where the source of this may originate. She is 21 so that water may already be under the bridge but this was helpful. At least in providing a different perspective on what we, as parents, have been trying to understand. Our son (24) didn't have a similar experience through these years. Same house, same (ish) access to social media etc. Different result. Thought provoking to be sure.
Well, sons and daughters do behave differently.
That's definitely a significant factor. I suspect the lack of butter, fish, eggs, and red meat and the vital nutrition they provide has contributed to the rise in "trans" youth. That and ... grooming via social media.
T. Paine, I agree that diet, nutrition and exercise are essential and assist in mental health well being (MHW). However, MHW also requires root causes. Auditing interruptions in standard early childhood development and evolving belief systems; what people believe about the world, themselves and others is critical as well. Flushing out and challenging false perceptions is paramount to soul care. I completely agree the APA has become a deeply political toxic wasteland. They forgot about the patients and see them as ideological lab rats - really terrible!!! New policies and DSM V diagnoses are evidence of this.
I suggest reading "The tragic story of Karen Carpenter, one of the greatest vocalists of all time"
https://www.smoothradio.com/artists/carpenters/karen-carpenter-death-story-solo-album-husband/
Quite intriguing
This is a really terrible take, discouraging how many people are liking this.
I see you’re a psychiatric resident. Do you really want to help your patients? If you do, please investigate the metabolic link to psychiatric problems. Ketosis cures a lot of brain issues. There’s all kinds of research on it. It’s not profitable tho. So you can help people, or you can be a shill for the pharmaceutical companies.
I'm well aware of the connections being drawn between metabolic issues and psychiatric issues, and I'm familiar with the work being done with ketogenic diets for serious mental illness. Yes I have read the keto golden boy Chris Palmer. I absolutely agree that diet, exercise, and derailments of the physical body have causal power in mental health issues. I'm also aware of the long history in psychiatry of how frequently people like to reduce complex issues to certain totalizing levels of explanation and think that in working at this level they can offer a panacea. The one thing a history of psychiatry shows is that there are no panaceas, and that these problems are stubbornly resistant to reductionism.
10 years ago the keto lobby was offering it as a cure for cancer narrowly citing the Warburg effect; it can be useful as an adjunct in some cases, but it also accelerates many cancers, and has no effect in many others.
I've worked with many patients with anorexia, and etiology is heterogenous. It is a mistake to think that the explanation is so simple and the answer will be so simple. The refutation is in the proposal: if the problem is ubiquitous environmental exposure, then why are we all not anorexic? The obvious: there are a lot of factors at play.
I'm not aware of any research regarding 1920's insulin treatment for anorexia. My guess would be that there is mistaking of the cachexia of individuals with type 1 diabetes, or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), or what insulin was used for in psychiatric patients in the 1920's - inducing a seizure for shock therapy.
Would you like to explain why you think it’s a terrible take, or are you just going to resort to logical fallacies like most people nowadays?
No. Drugs are not the answer- especially insulin. Glyphosate is safe. I bet your anti chemical religion came from the 70’s
Yeah Agent Orange is safe too. That’s what they told my dad when he was in Vietnam.
If you believe that glyphosate is safe, I have a bridge for sale in Oklahoma with a beautiful beach front view.
lol! mine was a response to childhood abuse, and rape s teen. and what she said.
Really well done, original, beautifully written and a window into a reality I had no idea about. I have a 32 year old daughter caught in a career trap. Hopefully she will get out of it before it's too late. I also have a 34 year old son I tried to steer away from porn at age 13. That didn't go too well either, but at least he married and has had one kid, so far. Parents need to refuse their kids all screens. But some 2-3 year-olds among extended family are already addicted. Oh well. It's all coming down soon, in chaos and madness. Best wishes.. from a new Zinnia subscriber.
In the future there will be two species: screenheads and the kids whose parents kept the screens away and their offspring to read.
You can tell the difference in gen z already. Yes, some of us Gen X parents managed to do their jobs. Very few though. Most grew up in the online world depicted so beautifully in this essay.
glad you liked the article!
Thank you for the article. It is heartbreaking in so many ways.
Seems the old way of "you shall not commit adultry" was a far easier path. It didn't deny nature, just provided rails in dealing with it.
Keep writing.
It’s brilliant and wickedly insightful (from a father of four girls). Thank you.
We've done a very good job keeping our kids away from the screens, but it seeps in through the culture and the school. My son, 8 now, never has had and never will have an iPad or a smartphone, but his school friends very much do. And you can tell. They are obsessed with these games, Minecraft and fortnite and all the rest.
The school is the worst, they mandate use of these Google tablets. I found out that the kids spend part of their days playing computer games on these stupid things during school hours. Not surreptitiously, but directed and approved!
My boy is top of class in both reading and math. We don't do anything special. We just read all the time. He sees me reading, newspapers and books. We do math homework together. All run of the mill normies stuff when I was young, but now it marks him out as a borderline savant.
The schools mandating the use of tablets is a form of child abuse.
Schools are a form of child abuse.
☝️
So true. Bullying wouldn't exist if it weren't for public school. I also notice that it is the schools, and only the schools, that have measles, chickenpox, lice, etc. Other concentrations of human beings in our society never seem to have these problems.
Stick children in prison-like environments, marvel that they consistently fall into prison-like behaviors and cause prison-like problems, conclude that the problem is you need a bigger budget for more administrative staff. The hamster wheel we've been on for 100 years now.
No wonder the 20th century was so bad.
Public schools could work better with smaller classes, but they never will while egalitarianism reigns.
If you have a small town of like 50 people (like in the pioneer days) there is no meaningful difference between a "public" school and a "private" school, one in the same.
Homeschool, for your kid's sake.
I'm a substitute teacher and hate the way iPad/Chromebook classroom. It's a lazy way to teach and it creates tension in the class. The other day I was subbing first grade. They have 20 minutes of choice time at the end of the day. The teacher gave me specific details about what their choices could be. She has 7 iPads in the classroom so not enough for each kid, but they weren't listed as a choice. When I told the children this, they got angry. First at me. Then two boys ran over and took one even though I said they couldn't. Then a girl did it. The class erupted into madness. They'd actually been so kind and earnest the rest of the day. Such a personality change in one moment. All for an iPad. That is addiction.
I’m reminded of a David Foster Wallace quote:
“Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.”
How women might “come to terms” with their oft frustrated carnal desires for beauty and power is through the worship of something higher. Something that won’t destroy them, and instead, will feed their souls. The same goes for men, of course.
the first few songs i wrote were on this subject. i wrote them from a male and a female perspective......the incorrectness of identifying too much with the body and not the inner being, in conduct and expression. "self assurance based on physicality" is a very sad state of affairs, and empty , super limiting and false. leaves out the virtues you have cultivated, the talents you have nurtured, and the relationships you have built. the very depth of your soul.
Clearly that is the problem. We have lost our connection with the divine. "All we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way." We are sheep without a shepherd. No wonder we have problems.
So well-written and highly affecting, zinnia!
My daughter is 24 and a 6'2" broad-shouldered professional athlete, who thank God, has a wicked sense of humor about her continuing singlehood -- "I'll die alone!" she says.
Meanwhile, my 26-year-old son can't seem to find any women who aren't terrified of real-life interactions with men.
All three of my kids grew up without TV in the house or cell phones until high school, and now they're like unicorns. Capable, kind, socially adept... and lonely.
What the hell is going to happen to this generation, and the one following it??
Glad you enjoyed the article! Feminism has had the effect of making the sexes terrified of each other; men are afraid of accidentally being creepy and objectified, and many women interpret any advance outside the context of a dating app as a threat. The result? Social collapse
Traditional societies had specially dedicated institutions and rituals for when and how to approach potential spouses that were significantly more functional than the current dating app scene.
Those institutions and rituals were also in place to matriculate children into men and women in advance of marriage.
The patriarchy existed to safeguard those things from nature's way of escaping into its base directives. We killed the patriarchy in the pursuit of equality, of fairness, and the great leveling of society.
But we could not kill our nature. So we get base instincts not just kept in check and sublimated toward pro-social and pro-civic behaviors, but inverted as virtues that are ultimately dyscivic and destructive.
I have been around numerous GenX friends and peers with teen and earl 20's children. Exactly none of them are encouraging behaviors, cultivating values, exemplifying virtues, and supporting social structures that solve toward early marriage and family formation.
Even the ones with the tenuously "successful" marriages seem to not want their daughters to follow their path. Even with the cold headwind of reality signaling the coming storm of the failed progressive experiment.
All of them, however, are encouraging their children to pursue the zero-sum, defect-defect, adversarial and self-interested ad-hoc relationships rooted in material want and comforts. They literally say out loud that they want their kids to experience life, get an "education", travel, work, "date" a lot of people, etc. Marriage is simply not a priority.
This is a revealed preference time and again. Same as when I was a single man and refused to enter the Great Swipening. This is also how I have made millions selling "I love my fur-grand-babies" bumper stickers.
The rest is just give your kids a smart phone, reap the whirlwind. You wouldn't want them to be "weird" now would you?
What is wrong with experiencing life?
+++
The grown ups need to get back in the room. Literally. Set up a dinner at home, get the kids together. Johnny won’t get TikTok shamed for a lame approach or accused of rape and Sally won’t get raped.
You can get a glimpse of amongst the Orthodox Jewish and the Amish. I am an only child was raised in the 70's and 80's (when that was rare) and pretty much left to my own devices and was lucky that something dreadful didn't happen to me as a young woman.
And the traditional Catholics: https://www.fisheaters.com/domesticchurch.html
Whoever wins your daughter will breed a race of heroes.
I'm biased, naturally, but I tend to agree 😂
Women aren't prizes to be won, pig.
Thanks for proving my point. Shut up and leave us alone.
Did you ever hear the phrase “win their heart?” or are you being intentionally obtuse?
She is being obtuse, and obnoxious. Feminism is an inherently glass half-empty ideology.
She/her/they/him (whatever she identifies with, covering my bases here in case) has been quite antagonistic throughout the comments, going as far a suggesting that Zinnia the author is a man in disguise.
I see it as a prime example of the troubled mindset that this very same article tried to explain… there’s a lot of hate, angst, fear, lostness in this; both towards the self and the opposite gender.
This article has opened my understanding in ways that I can’t describe on something I had no clue about. Suffice to say, I don’t feel annoyance nor upsetting ticks at this types of “obtuse” responses.
And to be clear, she isn’t being obtuse in the traditional sense, she is likely defending herself from a perceived threat.
Prizes are valuable and are highly sought after and she just said she’s not a prize. Maybe she’s right, I dunno...I don’t know her.🤷♂️
She has a sick twisted mind full of propaganda. Obviously watches way too much television.
Glad you raised this too often ignored aspect of these stresses in the romantic prospects of young people like your son and daughter. I posted this on Zinnia's own new 'Stack: "Something that gets very little attention in journalism about romantic and sexual pair bonding is the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Most sex-relations journalism is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones BETWEEN the sexes...... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
It’s the same 10% of ‘players’ screwing (and also screwing over 😂) the same 90% of the women (at least once) (and also done if those women know fully well what they’re volunteering for 😂).
But don’t expect a roomful of these Strong & Independent women to raise their hands in public and admit “Me too!” 🤣🤣🤣
It’s the same 10% & 90% in GenZ, who are the third-generation products of 1960’s-style 2nd-wave “feminism” as it was for us GenX’er 1st-generation products of the continuing Battle of the Sexes.
What’s different today isn’t simply technology; Civilized Man had no problem finding bad ideas before social media 😂.
No, what’s different is that we’re three generations deep into 2nd-wave feminism. In my day, we were only one generation into socioeconomic dysfunction.
In retrospect, GenX got off light. Especially the sweet ‘n’ sensitive intellectual boys like me. I eventually learned to play the Dating Game like the 10% for whom it comes naturally, but instead of chewing through the 90% like a pack of gum, I used my newfound power for Good (instead of for Evil 😂). I married an anti-feminist Oriental girl, and I’ve been made happy by her virtue & by my own virtue 👍🙂 and at my suggestion in 2014 we moved the family back to her native Tokyo metro region.
And one of the primary motivating factors - no exaggeration here - was that we don’t want our sons to have to look for a wife on the USA Dating Scene 😔
God help the Western dating scene. I’d like to say that today’s Western dilemma is the End Result of three generations of feminist sexuality run amok, but I don’t think it’s the End yet, very unfortunately.
Thanks,
Gerald
“done if” = “some of,” spell checked.
mine are lonely too.....i just hope he find a nice amish girl or a rodeo princess, or farm girl, something......because the ones so far.....are very suicidal and manipulative.....
Hi Mary! I also raised my two sons without TV and no smartphones or computers or gaming systems of their own till they had jobs and driver's licenses. I see a huge difference between them and their peers. My 24 yo son has found a solid girlfriend, but my eldest at 26 is finding it hard to interact with women his age. I keep telling him to date older, like 40 😉.
😂
serious advice but if you throw a corset on your daughter, it could correct her hip-shoulder ratios. I've seen people change their body shapes even in adulthood; it's far from impossible.
how tall are your kids?
Ask yourself why so many women avoid men and interacing with them, including men like your son. What led them to that conclusion? What do you think they've been through?
Men are the problem. And yet the moid who wrote this simply couldn't figure it out. What a genius.
Men being raised by single mothers is the problem. There I fixed it for you.
Men & women raised by single mothers, if you don’t mind me interjecting here. Plus, here’s her starter house cat & electric wine cellar 😂
More face to face interaction with boys would go a way in reducing this Zoomer girl anxiety. All of these perceptions are more accurately notions - within the head. Believe it or not Zoomer girl, men generally aren’t focused on your every perceived “flaw”. It’s been a while but from memory boobs were boobs when I was a young man - big, small, misshapen- all good ... cos boobs! I don’t imagine that has changed overly. It’s a scary time for both sexes - in hindsight you always wish you could have told your younger self not to worry so damn much about what the rest of the world thinks about you and to just concentrate on becoming a “good” person, defined by your own inner compass. This cliché obviously is unhelpful to those going through it. One can’t help but wonder if less time online isn’t at least a partial salve? Great article.
haha! I was mostly generalizing how women think about their bodies. I would agree that face to face interaction with men would solve the problem, unfortunately zoomer men have been castrated by MeToo and refuse to make moves on women unless it's on a dating app. Glad you liked the article!
I did. You write very well with deep insight. I am not in a position to comment too deeply on this phenomenon. I just turned 50. Suffice to say it’s a pickle of a problem. I know what you’re saying though - I was talking to a young woman in a bar once, much younger than myself. I was talking to her - that’s it. I wasn’t trying to pick her up. We were just having a friendly chat and some young guy came over to me to tell me to stop talking to her. Naturally I told him my thoughts concerning his concerns, in somewhat colourful language. The castration that men now experience in approaching women is the topic of another article entirely. But I still think the answer lies somewhere in less online time and more real life interactions. Bring back the barn dance! Okay ... I’m not that old.
Getting cockblocked by a Chevalier Blanc in a bar when you're not even trying to pick up is peak 2020s.
Yeah I was blindsided by that one. Seriously dude? She’s half my age! The irony being of course he probably felt incapable of approaching her himself, despite being in her demographic.
Sounds like he was jelly and was hoping to save her and win her for yourself.
That said, since when has half your age been a problem? That is some feminist programming imo.
TBH I don’t generally find I have much in common with 20 something year old females. That’s where I was coming from. But sure, in theory I see no problem with it.
According to Rollo Di Tomassi indeed it is, a feat born from competition anxiety.
By the standards of the World According to Manosphere you should be irresistible to women half your age if you wave your fat wallet around, flash a Rolex watch, and let them know you drive an expensive muscle car. These automatically make older men "high value Alpha Chad's." Tell them that you have a higher "body count" than Ted Bundy, insult them, act like an arrogant jerk. If she walks away it must be the guy is too short or his jawline is too soft and women are just too picky.
I agree, bring back the barn dance, & I am that old! ;-)
Barn raves are great.
When I saw that they had instituted rules and a name for the scrum in front of the stage at punk & skinhead gigs, I knew it was over.
Not to mention this:
"Sir? You can't take your glass from the bar to the table! If you want to drink at a table, you must order from there!"
Fuck. That. I wouldn't have stood for it when I was 5 or 15, ain't gonna do it now.
(And in Sweden tipping is optional and isn't figured into the pay to staff, so that's not the issue - the issue is control, nudging and micromanaging into learned helplessness and mental dependency.)
It was all over the moment they banned smoking in bars and everyone let them do it. There's an alternate timeline where the punks, metalheads, scenesters, and ravers simply refused to comply. In that timeline there were no lockdowns in 2020.
Remember when you would simply ask someone who stepped out of line like that:
"Want to step outside and sort it out?"
And the doorman would do nothing except make sure things didn't go overboard.
Pepperidge Farm remembers!
that would work too. screen things are NOT real life, people are not machines, or ideologies or politics. pickniks, barbq.....there is nothin' like the real thing....
No. We need less interaction.
Males are the problem.
Women are just as able as men to be evil manipulative jerks. Neither gender has a lock on being more virtuous than the other.
Exactly
bring back disco dancing.
No, not at all. Co-ed is a travesty, and it’s particularly abusive to boys. If our Western societies honored & respected the “male gaze” (which is just a metaphor for the oppressive weight of the sex drive that Mother Nature lays on each boy’s shoulders), then our societies would fund same-sex education. Instead, our sociopathic Ruling Class uses our tax money to fund co-ed education - they see us as serfs, and they treat us that way 😂
Thanks,
Gerald
We need less interaction with males, not more.
Males are the source of anxiety, and you're all too fucking stupid to see that you are the problem. That's the issue.
Shut the fuck up about boobs. This is exactly why women don't want anything to do with moids. Thanks for proving why.
That’s a great idea. Please, stay away from us.
Maybe we could get two big islands on opposite sides of the earth, one for the incels, one for the femcels. And the rest of us could start to heal in their absence.
Why use more than one island? Dump them all in the same place and isolate them completely - no Internet. Check back in a couple decades. They'll either all be dead or happily married.
Lol, who's doing the chasing? Why is Tinder 76% male? You think women are just chasing down men, including you, while women are literally fleeing away from this?
Go play video games.
Women are the passive sex and liked to be chased. Men take, women receive.
No, stupid. I'm asking who is pushed by their impulses and who is out there as the majority of dating apps.
It's males. Males are the ones who are seeking, and they are the ones who need to change if they want attention. Males are the problem.
Get back to your video games. I don't care about your problems.
Okay. Pew pew pew ... kaboom! Make me a sandwich?
for a while now it has dawned on me the the new transgender movement is always a reaction to the feminine. in MtF its always an overt embrace of the feminine (the shoes, the dresses, the makeup) whereas the FtM is always a rejection of the feminine (baggy clothes, short hair, top surgery).
nowhere in this movement represents the masculine at all...hence the constant accusations of misogyny...
I've seen a lot of girls with foul haircuts - the 'mullet', combined with nose-ring. It's a mixture of dyke and tranny and I can only think is intentionally awful.
The Tryke? :D
I may use this. Quietly.
The "masculine" seems to be missing, especially on the micro idividual level, but it's just obscured. Big Patriarchy got the trans mania ball rolling. (Ironically Big Libfem Matriarchy took it over, but that's another topic.) If in the beginning the sexes had been switched and women made the declaration that they were really men inside and demanded the privilege to impersonate men out in society in all ways, they'd have been laughed out of the room. Instead of being believed, taken seriously and indulged with laws.
right? can U imagine a hoard of former females, all jacked up on T, working out and running around like libertine gay men? never would happen!
all sorts of implications here...
Speaking of young girls deciding that they're really gay men, our author failed to mention the impact of anime escapism and its psychological effects at play within trans mania. Specifically fujoshi enjoyment by young females. An understandable oversight (or maybe an editing decision) as the trans-anime connection is a huge and complex topic.
The masculine isn't missing.
It's pure masculine. It's perversion, violence, lack of awareness, reducing women to a costume, talking over women, invasion of our spaces, and total lack of embarrassment.
That is nothing but masculine. You people are morons. You have no clue what's going on.
"in MtF its always an overt embrace of the feminine...whereas the FtM is always a rejection of the feminine "
^ how i know you don't know any actual trans people in real life. what an absolutely moronic claim you could only treat as "true" if all of your information were gleaned from internet outrage peddlers
ok, fair enough. what am I missing? or where did I go wrong?
Males aren't embracing the feminine.
They've reduced being a woman to nothing but a costume--and they think that's fine precisely because they hate women and think it's essentially whatever they want to do.
It's pure, sheer misogyny. "Trans" is male stupidity and perversion personified.
It isn't "male" stupidity; it's only a tiny subset of men who push that crap. Liberal women are the people behind the trans movement.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/
Good article, but it misses the mark. The people are all either gay or Jews. Has nothing to do with being white.
> Why are young women today so deranged? Because no one is honest with them and they cannot be honest with themselves. Parents lie to you, teachers lie to you, friends lie to you, everyone lies to you.
The Boomers were notoriously bad at giving the necessary "girl to girl talk" and "man to man talk", delegating it to a school that taught largely nonsense. It used to be a mom and other older authority figures would take their daughter out and give them a frank talk that even their husband would not be privy to, and that is a good thing. It's gotten even worse will Millennial/GenX parants. Instead, it's now done through neurotic teachers, their equally confused teen friends, and the sewer of social media.
I used to wonder why women were the way they were until I realized they were biologically programmed to desire and tame a human being that are bigger, stronger, and incredibly dangerous. It's not something you walk into alone without a lot of wisdom from experienced women.
Chesterton:
What makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; he has not only to learn one trade, but to learn it so well as to uphold him in a more or less ruthless society. This is generally true of males from the first hunter to the last electrical engineer; each has not merely to act, but to excel. Nimrod has not only to be a mighty hunter before the Lord, but also a mighty hunter before the other hunters. The electrical engineer has to be a very electrical engineer, or he is outstripped by engineers yet more electrical. Those very miracles of the human mind on which the modern world prides itself, and rightly in the main, would be impossible without a certain concentration which disturbs the pure balance of reason more than does religious bigotry. No creed can be so limiting as that awful adjuration that the cobbler must not go beyond his last. So the largest and wildest shots of our world are but in one direction and with a defined trajectory: the gunner cannot go beyond his shot, and his shot so often falls short; the astronomer cannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way. All these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and seen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different paths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. It is right; there must be people traveling to different towns; there must be specialists; but shall no one behold the horizon? Shall all mankind be specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers; shall all humanity be monomaniac? Tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be monomaniac. It has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman and a Jack-of-all-trades. But it has also decided, among other things, that the Jack-of-all-trades shall be a Jill-of-all-trades. It has decided, rightly or wrongly, that this specialism and this universalism shall be divided between the sexes. Cleverness shall be left for men and wisdom for women. For cleverness kills wisdom; that is one of the few sad and certain things.
But for women this ideal of comprehensive capacity (or common-sense) must long ago have been washed away. It must have melted in the frightful furnaces of ambition and eager technicality. A man must be partly a one-idead man, because he is a one-weaponed man—and he is flung naked into the fight. The world’s demand comes to him direct; to his wife indirectly. In short, he must (as the books on Success say) give “his best”; and what a small part of a man “his best” is! His second and third best are often much better. If he is the first violin he must fiddle for life; he must not remember that he is a fine fourth bagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand at whist, a gun, and an image of God.
Wow, great quotes. / Going to need more sex appeal if this will sell in the modern age though. Lol.
I think the 'modern age' will have to begin to accept reality before this will sell. There is a lot of 'sex appeal' in the old fashioned view of marriage. Indeed so much sex that moderns are offended by it.
That last. That you could build a life on.
I'm not completely sure what you mean there.
Isn't it sadly ironic that Zoomers crave "authenticity" yet refuse to be honest even to themselves or each other?
Authenticity is a one size fits all product on the shelf above fitting in, and two spots over from rebellious. For the more discerning consumer with the deeper pockets. For sale now wherever identities are sold.
Craving what you lack, and hollowing it out into a fetish of itself, is sadly very human.
It is also a very lucrative impulse to exploit.
Why sell a simple four-wheeled baby carriage with an underslung luggage-rack, made of stainless steel and with high-quality tires, good washable and mendable cloth that will last your grandchildren - when you can sell a beach stroller, a city carriage, an off-road carriage, a city stroller, and an indoors version of all of them?
And so the hunt for the real goes ever on.
As I breath in depleted uranium, looking out over the vast ruins of a failed world.
Finally, we have achieved equity.
That's where we are headed if people can't learn to meet in the middle. The humans ingenuity is a blessing and a curse at the same time. We need to be more careful with our 'inventions', be those physical or societal, is of no real consequence. All are equal in terms of their potential to cause more harm than good. War is now imminent and if we don't turn things around soon, there will be no more free and comfortable space to debate the philosophy of the ages, such as that of the sexes.
LOL, just say you can't get a match on Tinder and be on your way. We're not the ones shooting up schools after watching hours of violent internet porn.
Clean your own house, you stupid moids.
Ma'am. I'm married with 5 kids.
I don't even see how my post was insulting to women. Quite the opposite.
Ignore the sick feminist. She is obviously deranged.
I feel sorry for your sons and your daughters. Now we know why the world is so messed up.
No “we” don’t. It’s just a figment of your imagination.
Thank you for the article. I have a (very) young daughter, so I'm trying to stock up on as many insights into young women's minds as I can. My takeaways from this are: 1) I need to get my wife to read it and share her thoughts, and 2) no social media for the kids for as long as I can manage (which was already on the to-do list). Any other insights are welcome, and I'm subscribed for more!
Keep them as far away from social media, and in general from screens, as you can. That's really the single most important thing right now.
My biggest regret was not limiting social media. My daughters are now 20, 18 & 16, I allowed access once they hit high school (here in Australia that’s about at ages 12-13). Once they were on it everything changed. I also found being fairly transparent (meaning we keep it pretty real in our house, no bandying about) works well. Having both mum and dad for a female vs male perspective. They tend to go to their dad more now for advice when it concerns boys, to get his take on a situation. And I love that they do
> no social media for the kids for as long as I can manage
How about realistic goals.
My sister's kids are 11 and 13 and have never been on social media.
My parents took away the family TV when I was three and didn't give it back until I was 21. Had a computer, one hour pd only when the internet was mostly nerds and soft porn. It can be done.
There wasn't a tv in the house until I left for college. Did me no harm.
It will be hard work (harder than it should be in today's society) to limit social media/screen time for kids, but if I'm not willing to spend energy to raise happy, healthy children, what am I saving it for?
Mine were 16&18 before they got their own smartphones. Neither used social media until then. They also didn't get gaming systems till then either. Now they mostly use discord. Probably reddit. Anyway, for me it was to keep them from watching porn all night long as they came of age. They shared my computer till then for homework and I taught them to code and type. But I figured once they had jobs and driver's licenses and I'd shared both the moral, sexual, and neurological reasons for keeping porn out of your life, they could have them. This was not a hard thing to do. Honest.
Keep her away from males in general.
They are the problem.
You're demented. There's medication for that. Ordinarily pharma solutions are no solution at all, but a case can be made for someone like you.
As I read this, my first thought was, wow, so much has changed since I was a teenage girl.
My second thought was, wow, nothing has changed since I was a teenage girl.
Your raw honesty is appreciated, Zinnia. As a grey-haired 50-something year old who has “been there and done that,” here’s what I wish someone had told me a few decades ago:
1. Don’t worry about wanting to be pretty and attractive to boys. Almost all girls have aspired to this, since time immemorial. It gets overwhelming only because this completely normal urge has been monetized. Plus, social media amplifies all the regular awkwardness that comes along with figuring out how to manage the “I want to be wanted” urge. Practise moderation in all things and you’ll be fine.
2. Don’t get drawn into psycho dramas. Just because a guy notices you doesn’t mean that rape is the next item on the menu. That’s just feminist clap-trap.
3. Resist narcissism. Take an interest in the world and people around you, including your male peers. Sometimes the best way to overcome your own problems is to recognize those of others.
4. Don’t fall into the victimhood trap. It’s a total waste of your time and energy.
5. Do enjoy being a girl and a woman every day of your life. Feel good in your own skin. It’s the best revenge to take on any motherfuckers out there, male or female. And the truly good guys and men will inevitably be attracted to you.
You’re off to a good start! Good luck with your blog.
thank you for your thoughtful comment; glad you enjoyed it!
Same advice for the boys. The zeitgeist has them just as screwed up.
Excellent comment and very good points from a man’s perspective. N°5 was actually quite moving... I wish a lot more women thought like this.
Great topic to explore. As parents of 4 girls (2 still in high school), we could see the storm coming. Quite a few commenters have stressed the importance of NO screens. Yes, absolutely. But what takes their place?? We raised our girls with: Grimms Fairy Stories (the original, not Disney), Bible stories, Greek and Norse legends. Ie, archetypal imprinting through story; those stories have endured, so they speak some pretty essential truths about men and women, and life in general. Homeschooling up to high school age (big piece of work), real food (raw milk, garden veges, etc), lots of outdoors (hiking, hunting), and finding similar families so they had friends. Seems to have worked so far.
Yes, those are the essential elements. It's no great secret and not especially complicated, despite which very few parents are able to accomplish what you have.
Yes. “No screens” really is just metaphor for “no pop culture.” Our family of seven here in Japan is on a similar wavelength as your family: Real Food, Natural Ways of Life. Our children learn English through the screens 👍🙂 but they learn to reject pop cultural values through us parents.
Thanks,
Gerald
Haha, I still have four homeschooled boys, unmarried, in that age range. (The other five are married.) Maybe they should meet? 😁
The use of social media is a trap specifically unleashed on women to completely wreck their lives. Someone is always prettier, has more fun and more security than she does. Being basic human being the girls simply cannot stand it and many lash out. No telling how many lives are completely ruined with just a few clicks.
It really has hit girls like a psychological nuke.
It's like high school cliques on steroids. Teenage girls were mean spirited when I was in high school in the 1980's. Now they can be mean without ever having to face the victim of their cruelty. It's harder to be mean when you are face to face. Girls want to fit in with their peers and be liked and they want boys to like them. And those who did not fit in easily and were not liked by the boys might pursue physical relations with boys in order to get male attention, which we know is pretty tempting for teen boys.
Are girls the ones making AI pornographics pics of their classmates? Or is that boys? And why are boys giving attention to young girls who do--what? What is it they're praising?
So who is the origin of the problem?
Could it have been planned ... that way?
The slot machine engineers building silicon valley's skinnerboxes knew exactly what they were doing.
And any social network that doesn't do this loses clicks to one that does.
Yep. Crack cocaine outcompetes Snickers bars every time.
Yeah they might have had an excuse early on that they were just doing what users seemed to respond best to. But then they started hiring psychologists and anthropologists to min/max the effect, were told exactly what they were trying to do, and simply filtered out the ones who objected.
One of the things that disgusts me the most about their "Trust and Safety" bullshit is how transparent it is if you know what's going on inside. These sites are junkie flophouses that brag about having no sharp objects (other than needles) because they care so much about "safety". Then they use every trick in the book to sabotage anyone who tries to get clean. Truly the scum of the earth, these people.
It's possible there's a direct connection between SV's moralistic preening and its predatory, sordid reality. EA, Trust & Safety, TOS, etc. - these are all just copes, by means of which they purchase indulgences to assuage their conscience.
100%
Thank you for introducing Zinnia to your audience. I subscribed. I have a 12 year old grand daughter. I need to know what is going on contemporaneously, and Zinnia seems attune to the times.
glad you enjoyed the article! thank you for subscribing
That crossed a line. Goodbye.
I am definitely not the person to provide insight into twelve-year-old girls 😅
Yeah I definitely cannot relate to this as a Gen X man who remembers the world b4 internet and smart phones
My teenage boys, almost driving age, ask me about the 80s and 90s often. They marvel at the freedom I had and admit that it sounds like it was more fun to grow up in.
I'm not. The author is.
You should try reading things before screaming at them, you'd look like less of a crazy person that way.
The downside of ever less modest clothing and too easy to access porn is that wives lose a beauty advantage over other women.
With that said, even in Victorian times women were mutilating themselves for beauty purposes: corsets, toxic cosmetics, belladonna... There were reasons women used to faint a lot.
Modesty standards are probably key to this. I've been playing with the idea of Internet purdah: online men must show their faces; women must not show their faces. Seems to me that would insulate both sexes from many of the worst psychological dangers posed by an unfettered visual sexual arms race.
How about women need to cover their butts? Thong bikinis are still illegal in public in some states, but even on non-porn sites or even broadcast TV...
Come to think of it, there was a time when it was impossible to buy groceries without seeing Kim Kardashian's bionic buttocks.
Sure. But I don't think clothing is actually the core of the issue.
I think less public whoreishness is a better idea. Women go to my MMA gym with leggings right into the arse-crack. Fucking get dressed! Men don't walk about like that!
Uhm akshully...
Nah, trying to be funny and failing aside, some men do - me and a mate did it on a dare once.
Put on the kind of tights you wear when you're cross-country skiing.
We got lots of laughs from most of the other guys at the gym, and some funny comments from the 50+ women.
And mortified, horrified, outraged looks from the iPhone-girl crowd.
Was really fun but damned uncomfortable, I tell you that for free.
That's an impressive commitment to the art of the troll.
Think about the conversation that would need to take place between a mom and her daughter on why they should dress modestly. It would cover almost everything in this post if done successfully. Of course it doesn't happen because of poor relationships, the mom herself doesn't know why, it is counter to feminist ideals, and so on. Indeed it isn't about the clothing per se.
Yeah, men are so rational that they immediately lose it over a woman's looks, I guess that's why burkas work so well and women in Afghanistan have got it great...oh wait...
You morons.
Having ridiculous levels of nudity taboos is also bad. Those hitting puberty need to see some skin of the opposite sex for proper imprinting. Otherwise you get Afghanistan. Bleah!
But having *some* public nudity taboo is useful for defending marriage.
"War between the sexes erupts."
Here I must interject that said war erupted not in 2010 or 2020, but in the period between 1850-1920.
With the rise of (then) upper-class liberal feminism, scientism, the engineer hero-archetype coming into its own, futurism and rationalism, sex as an organic and intrinsical part of you instead was made into an external /thing/, to be analysed, scrutinised, and vivisected.
Thereby making it artificial, unreal and unnatural.
Witness the rise of transsexualism in the Weimar Republic, the first surgeries. The "playing with gender roles" as we would say today. The hate spewed against the organic and natural - the family - from prominent liberal and feminist and marxist writers of the time.
All made smooth and appetising by the language of Freudian psychology, a faux science if ever there was one - even modern day gender studies apply more of the principle of science than did Freud ever attempt.
The ideal for the british and french and american bourgeoise upper (middle) class woman being the androgyne: eminently fuckable, but without the fear of pregnancy, of motherhood, or any "women's problems". And the men of their class responded in kind - look at the photos Oscar Wilde and his homophile cronies took of underaged boys dolled up as girls (and of themselves too, for that matter.
Fascism, the wars and the Cold War kept a lid on the worst of it, because war makes men and women strong (or dead), but with the End of History triumphantly declared in 1990 with the Fall of Communism the path chosen was one of weakness:
No one was to be The Enemy. No one, no matter what group you chose to point at. No matter their ideas, -isms and faiths. No, capitalist business-monkeys would make Them into Us (or rather: into US).
We now live the ideology of the elite.
I, being a reactionary atavism, say this: know the man by his choice of enemy. Men choosing women as enemies aren't men at all; they are neuters, castrati, eunuchs - by their own proud choice, apparently.
To me, they are lower than the nose-ringed Michelin man flab-bedecked woman-hating feminazis.
The war between the sexes is as old as humanity. It's raged hot and cold, it's seen long periods of armistice and truce, but it has always simmered under the surface of human society, providing essential creative tension to our interactions.
We've been stretched to an extreme due to the evolutionarily novelty of techno-industrial society, however, of that there is no doubt. But if the bow does not crack in half the tension it is under will launch an arrow very far indeed.
It started in the garden and continued outside the garden, East of Eden.
There was no war between the sexes.
Males got away with treating women like shit for centuries, now they can't get away with a few things and they're mad about it.
That's not a war. It's males losing privileges and getting bitchy about it. When beating your wife to death wasn't a crime in ancient Rome (that's the law of paterfamilias) and now it's considered a crime, of course moids are mad.
And now you think calling it a war excuses the fact that men think not being able to get laid on Tinder is a violation of their rights. Pathetic.
You realize the purpose of the timeout was to give you a chance to calm down, catch your breath, center yourself. Yoga, scented candles, bath bombs, chamomile tea. Then maybe come back and try engaging in something resembling intelligent discussion.
Instead you, what, seethed for a week? And the moment you could came back in to scream at everyone again?
😂😂😂
1850-1920, that was the peak of the Industrial Revolution, when human prosperity and population soared, particularly in Europe and North America. When lemmings overpopulate they run off cliffs. When humans do so they turn gay and wage World Wars.
To borrow from Tolkien; when Sauron was defeated and Isildur held the Ring, he - Isildur - was at the height of his power and triumph.
From there you can only fall.
“When humans do [overpopulate] so they turn gay and wage World Wars.” Sadly, I dread there is a good deal of truth in what you say.
history, impressive. Yes, it was a test run, perhaps. this is why i worry for the future........
Problem with the issues these days, boys are cutting off the wrong parts!
Eunuch jokes. Tasteless. Cut that joke right out anyways, no regrets. I'm dangerously close to identifying as trans right now if I don't straighten right up. Lol, I can't stop.
I'm sorry but we never have and never will take the trans movement seriously.
Beautiful breasteseses... Yes, we can take those very very seriously at a moments notice. Truck Boat Truck and funny hats drinking with Early on the front porch, harvesting mud. No Mam!
Something I've long wondered and have even asked Rechts-gedanken friends and colleagues is this:
"Why are they so uncreative when they have their medically speaking harmful surgeries? Why just two fake breast for transsexual man? Why not three? Why not a pair on the back too?"
When the outrage dies down, the irritation bubbles to the forefront, since the Rechts-gedanken realise on an unconscious level that yes, the surgery is harmful and only furthers the eminent psychosis called transsexualism; the cognitive dissonance ensuing between what their deep mind tells them is true conflicts most mightily with their learned and conditioned rote responses and opinions.
It is very droll, and a guilty pleasure, akin to tricking dogs by hiding treats and playing "find the pea" with them.
Just be patient. Transgenderism is simply the gentle introduction. Transhumanism awaits just over the horizon....
I’ve got three grown daughters, six granddaughters, and a great granddaughter... Now I finally have something wise to say to them!
Thanks for a great article.
Our society no longer teaches boys how to become men or girls how to become women. The institutions that performed those functions over millennia - family, church, community - have all been debased, disassembled or disregarded.
See the essays I linked at the beginning ;)
Human adulthood is a skill that must be taught. Thank you for helping do so.
Not necessarily. This touches on the concept of the natural man and natural law. For those with ears to hear and eyes to see. The medium of the message is just as powerful as the message itself. Or how about this one; The man whom reads newspapers all day long is less informed than the man whom reads nothing.
Are we products of our environment? Are we animals, instinctual in nature? Or both? So no, nobody needs to teach anyone how to be themselves, because they already are themselves. It is when we seek to influence that people lose touch with whom they really are.
God is a frequency within you. Tune in.
Not entirely. They still exist (in diminished forms) out here in America's rural Midwest.