Cryptoscience

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

A small fat bird, like the above, is the hieroglyph used in Ancient Egyptian to mean “wicked” or evil”.

The phrase above him (the inscription should be read from the top down) is “Nb s3″ or “Lord of the son of”. Genitive is usually implied in this sort of phrase without a connecting word, meaning:

Three new cards! The Six of Cups in particular has a very interesting and personal story behind it. It is only my second or so serious self-portrait. You can read about this and all the other cards in greater detail, and follow along with my process in creating them on my Patreon!

…players can define their romantic experience in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey by courting either male or female characters, regardless of their main character’s gender.

here’s a long list of LGBT+ historical events worth googling and learning about. i’m not sure if all the dates and details are spot on, but, again, this is really just a guide for what to research on your own. to warn you, a lot of this history is ugly, including things like the conflation of pedophilia and LGBT+ people, genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia, nazis, and wide scale persecution.

Free Resources:

an interactive timeline of LGBT+ world history

The 1950s and the Roots of LGBT Politics (American-centric)

Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (warning: this documentary was made in the 80s and is dated in a lot of respects as a result; it also features quotes from Allen Ginsberg, who we now know was a pedophile, but it’s still very informative in terms of history)

a brief history of the bisexual movement from the 1960s-early 2000s (American-centric)

Bisexual.org has a TON of resources on bi (and often pan) history, historical figures, research, and media

“Here’s A History Of Bisexuality, From Ancient Egypt To Stonewall”

a brief timeline of trans history, beginning in the 1890s (European and American-centric)

“Gender Variance Around the World Over Time”

Some Purchasable Resources:

(most of these can be bought used online for pretty cheap and some can be found in libraries)

Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context by Vern L Bullough (it’s a bit dated, but still informative)

A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World by R. Parkinson

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women (Intersections) by Leila J. Rupp

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora) by A.B. Christa Schwarz

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal Ortiz

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution by Susan Stryker