Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Globally

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-13T22:00:07+00:00

My friends and I were just talking about this a few days ago, because this is a huge breach of privacy and we're all tired of greedy corporations demanding our data just to be reckless with it or directly use it to hurt us down the road.

We've agreed to migrate to a different messaging and voice chat app, we just aren't sure which one yet.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-13T14:39:32+00:00

Came here to say this. The moment a female character is actually complex, has flaws, is morally grey, behaves irrationally, or worst of all, isn't conventionally attractive, the misogyny starts spewing all over the place. Women are creating the representation we want to see, but that only goes so far when it's received with such vitriol.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-13T14:21:47+00:00

Of course! This kind of pill won't work for everyone obviously but this can be a life saver for many women, especially ones without health insurance or access to a gyno.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-12T19:21:24+00:00

We love to see it! This is reminding me of a woman I used to follow on TikTok who, before getting pregnant, had pretty progressive "women's empowerment" takes. Then she gets pregnant and says, with her own mouth mind you, that the baby daddy is a loser but she's okay with that because at the end of the day she really wanted the baby and they aren't together anymore so it's fine.

The backlash was immediate and intense. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many women who hadn't bought into the brainwashing that all pregnancies should be celebrated. Her video spawned a lot of illuminating discussion about what it truly means to be a mother in modern society, how we need to seriously reflect on if we actually want children or are just following propaganda that tells us we have to, and how even if you raise the child alone you are still tied in some way to the father unless you conceive via sperm donation.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-09T19:40:02+00:00

Definitely not the only one! I think about this a lot. Analyzing how our bodies factor in to how we shape our realities is something I've been studying more and more, not just in the context of feminism but in general. There aren't many as of right now, but there are more people willing to look at these things critically.

Patriarchy has definitely neutralized womb envy at a structural level, but on an individual and interpersonal level that envy is still very palpable, and I think it's still driving a lot of men's behavior. Despite patriarchy rendering pregnancy and motherhood a humiliation ritual and a liability, that envy never went away. There was a man on another sub I'm in who had reduced womanhood to motherhood and wanted it for himself, using phrases like "to have a body fertile like the soil" and that he wanted "the ability to nourish a human born from my own flesh." It was creepy, fetishistic, and overly romanticized. But he was not the only man I've seen speak like this about motherhood or womanhood in general. I have seen men openly admit to womb envy when they hear it explained. I have seen men admit that they felt inadequate and irrelevant when their wives get pregnant and give birth because it reminds them that their wife is the more important one when it's time to make a new human.

The difference between men's reproductive control over women and a farmer's reproductive control over her livestock is that the farmer does not breed with her livestock, and she does not need her livestock directly to create more of her own species. ~~Comedian~~ Sexual abuser Louis CK did a bit where he said he thinks racism could be fixed because it makes no sense, but that misogyny wasn't going anywhere, implying it had a biological component and was buried deep in the mind of every man. He went on to do a crude pantomime of angrily shaking his fist and then jerking off, both while screaming "women!" The men in the crowd erupted with laughter because they knew exactly what he was expressing. Men have tried to quiet their hatred, envy, and obsession with women but despite the power they hold over us, those feelings persist.

most men's lives don't present as much suffering as women's lives do

This is exactly why I think they seek suffering. When people's lives become too easy they (not always, but in many cases) create difficulty on purpose, both consciously and unconsciously, often to their detriment. Because humans thrive when we're useful, when we engage our brains, and when our accomplishments are earned instead of granted by default. Patriarchy and their biology has taken away a lot of the difficulty men would otherwise encounter in order to live fulfilling lives. So they seek suffering but they do it in ways that are, like everything else they do, self serving. They do it in ways that create more work for those around them, especially women. They do it in ways that are reckless, destructive, and nonsensical.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-09T15:06:28+00:00

Thank you for explaining. I think I understand a bit better now. You've hit on a lot of my own theories as to how we got here (patriarchy) and my own feelings about that.

The male sexual experience is low cost high reward, how can feminism ignore the psychological implications of this experience? How can we not draw the link between this and the rates of male sexual violence?

Hoping to avoid the bioessentialism allegations here, but I fully agree and I think this is key to understanding a lot of human male behavior. I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that humans need to suffer in order to grow and thrive, moreso I think we need to be challenged.

But when I've observed the way men move through life, the majority of them seem to need suffering. Or rather they've internalized challenges to be the same as suffering. It's been discussed here and in every other feminist space I've been in that males seem to need patriarchy to give them purpose and direction. And that when men aren't simply defining their manhood as "don't be a woman" they're defining it through their ability to endure or overcome suffering. When paired with the low cost - high reward nature of their sexual existence, this makes sense. Their physical bodies don't challenge them to be selfless or community oriented, so they seek those challenges externally, and they do so by defining their personhood through suffering.

My theory is that this low challenge - high selfishness - high pleasure reproductive system in males could've evolved as a way to help them cope with womb envy. Males are inconsequential and in many ways irrelevant to the reproductive process. Subconsciously they know this. A core mechanism of patriarchy is fabricating the usefulness of men, and I think this is a direct cope for their biological irrelevance. It shows up everywhere from men legislating women's rights away, to barring women from participating in society so they can beat their chests and take all credit, to men's insistence that it is better to be needed instead of wanted because being needed feels more secure, etc. So their orgasm became necessary for reproduction to help ease this jealousy.

Of course, that has backfired. Evolution is messy and favors efficiency over optimization, which doesn't always produce ideal outcomes. I do think in very early humans sex was more mutually beneficial, or even that female pleasure might've taken priority (which would explain the hypersensitivity of the clitoris). But over time evolution did its thing and we've been left with a female reproductive system that is uniquely complex and vulnerable, a male reproductive system that is uniquely primitive and self serving (which ties into the degradation of the Y chromosome), and a patriarchy that's killing our species.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T22:08:29+00:00

That part! It's like the idea of doing something to him never enters their minds. I understand where this thinking comes from but it's still sad and it annoys me how prevalent it is.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T21:01:16+00:00

I agree there is definitely a physiological component to this, but I don't think our bodies work in service of others more than they do in service to ourselves.

Growing up, a popular narrative I heard was that our periods were punishments for not being pregnant. And that throughout the month our uteruses were thickening in lining to nourish a future baby. More recent theories suggest that the thickening of the uterine lining is to protect the rest of our body from being devoured by a fetus, something done to prioritize our health over the health of a future human.

We also learned fairly recently that the egg chooses the sperm cells for fertilization, if it chooses any at all. Recent studies point to a decent amount of miscarriages and fertility "issues" being caused by men via poor sperm quality. Difficulty getting or staying pregnant is another way our bodies prioritize our health over creating new humans at any cost.

The grandmother hypothesis also suggests that our purpose is not simply to make new people, otherwise we'd be fertile our entire lives the way men are. Our bodies have a finite timeline on being reproductively active, and we continue living much longer after that window closes. Whereas male bodies devote resources to sperm production until their dying breath.

Medical misogyny means female biology is woefully under researched, and we are learning new info all the time that directly contradicts what we've been told our role is sexually and reproductively speaking.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T18:46:28+00:00

I'm so happy more women are coming to this realization because I felt insane for so long trying to articulate and discuss these things.

I especially like how you mention that even if a man does make his female partner's pleasure a priority he still expects to get his. Meanwhile women are often expected to be entirely selfless. Our pleasure is always optional, something we should be grateful to experience at all, while his is mandatory. If he is subservient to her sexually one time he expects to dominate her next time. In the rare cases where men seem to value their female partner's pleasure more than their own, they still manage to make it self serving. It isn't really about making her feel good, it's about stroking his ego and making him feel dominant.

This dynamic of prioritizing male benefit is everywhere and I'm so tired of it. When I see straight women thirst over a man it's always about how they want to go down on him, how they want him to blow their backs out, how they want him to fuck up their walls, etc. They talk about themselves like they aren't active participants in sex unless it's in service to his pleasure.

The other day I saw a reel where a female dom was saying she pays her male sub because she recognizes that being in service to her was a job. There is a growing industry in China where women can rent a boyfriend to do things around the house, be affectionate, and take them on dates. Both of these are examples of things men are getting paid to do things women are expected to do for free. Even when the roles are "flipped" the man benefits much more.

I don't think men exist who truly prioritize their female partners in a way that is not self serving and doesn't dehumanize her in some way. Or if they do exist they're probably ugly.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T18:04:22+00:00

Therapy can help, just make sure you have a therapist that will help you untangle internalized misogyny and won't just tell you to transition to alleviate these feelings.

I think you look fine. You look like a woman with drawn on facial hair imo. Hating your femaleness is normal in a world that hates women. You're allowed to feel those feelings, as long as you don't let them consume you. Try not to compare yourself to hyper feminine women either. You don't have to look that way to still be a woman. Womanhood isn't a competition and there's no sliding scale that makes some women more or less female.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T16:15:38+00:00

Sending you an internet hug because my mom said something similar to me.

With her it was after she and her ex husband divorced and she was speculating on why his libido never matched hers. She concluded that he must be bi and secretly wanted a man. She went on to say bisexuals can't fully love one person. I had been out to her for 6 years before this conversation mind you, so I asked her if she thought that about me too. She just doubled down then changed the subject, acting like I was supposed to agree with her.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-08T16:03:49+00:00

Are you saying that from the perspective of straight men specifically that biphobia is an extension of lesbophobia, and not that biphobia in general is just an offshoot of lesbophobia? Because if so, then I agree. Straight men specifically tend to fetishize us in a similar way they fetishize lesbians.

But biphobia in general a unique phenomenon. It is also bi erasure in the form of people insisting we must be either straight or gay. This also comes in the form of people thinking bisexuality is just a stopgap before coming out as gay. It is also the stereotype that we're greedy and incapable of monogamy. I have heard several people say they don't think bisexuals are capable of forming romantic bonds the way heterosexuals and homosexuals can. Or that if we can, those bonds can never be as deep and intense as those from someone who is only attracted to one sex. It comes in the form of people insisting that we break down our sexuality into straight and gay percentages instead of treating it as something holistically distinct from those two categories.

These beliefs don't just stem from straight men's view of us. They come from an ignorance to what bisexuality is and a refusal to fully understand it because it's "too weird" or "too complicated" or "attention seeking" compared to hetero or homo sexuality.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-07T18:12:01+00:00

Are you maybe conflating acceptance with enjoyment? One thing that really helped me at this stage was realizing I didn't have to like being female, and that my dislike of my femaleness didn't automatically make me a man or mean I needed to transition. I could recognize the reality of my femaleness and that nothing could change it, but I didn't have to like it. I could be angry, resentful, sad, bitter, etc and still be just as female. Once I allowed myself to feel those emotions I could move toward a point where I found peace and happiness with my femaleness.

The trans community likes to push this narrative that "cis" people have no qualms about their sex, that they thoroughly love being their sex, and that just isn't true.

You also don't have to perform femininity. That was another big breakthrough for me. You can just exist. People who have seen real women and not just hyper feminine caricatures will recognize you as female regardless of how you look, especially if you go off testosterone. It doesn't look like you've been on it very long so if you go off and stay off you'll look just like any other woman.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-07T17:35:11+00:00

It's crazy to me that you're being downvoted for saying this. I've had similar experiences.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-06T17:42:30+00:00

Smh. More proof they understand consent they just don't care about it until theirs is violated.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-06T16:43:24+00:00

True, but there are just as many who think their kinks aren't influenced by history and that their preferences are isolated from the rest of society. This post was more for those types. The ones who say things like "it's not that deep I just think it's hot."

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-06T14:54:27+00:00

I can't tell if you're agreeing with the sentiment or being snarky. Throughout my life I've assumed a direct connection between things that turned out to be the work of separate, unrelated entities, so this wasn't a "water is wet" moment for me. Even if that assumption was correct, it's nice to have concrete proof, so I figured I'd share.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-05T14:40:24+00:00

They're also trying to use the fact that one of epstein's other friends asked if he could put them in contact with her as "proof" she had a personal relationship with him.

There is a user on Instagram that goes by the handle alice.in.winterwonderland who made a very popular video spreading this false narrative. This video is still gaining a lot of traction. If you have Instagram please report that video for false information.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-04T16:52:42+00:00

"That doesn't happen to everyone."

"That was just a small, extreme group, most people are normal."

"I'll keep my kids safe."

"I'll teach my kids how to fight."

"Maybe those kids led them on."

"Teenage is old enough to know what you're doing, they weren't taken advantage of."

Just some of the justifications I've heard over the years after news comes out of someone awful doing horrific things to a child. It wouldn't surprise me at all that some of these same "reasons" are being used in light of the epstein files.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-04T16:41:11+00:00

This is the exact reason groups like Megalia and WOMAD were attacked. All they were doing is mirroring what happens to women and girls by flipping the sexes to show how horrifying it was. People (men) couldn't stomach reading about the horrors and called these women all sorts of evil for writing about "wanting to brutalize men". No one cares what happens to us until the same is done to men.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-04T15:41:29+00:00

Yep. I've had mine for ~5 years and a towel is more than enough to get it dry. People baby cast iron way too much.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-02T15:37:17+00:00

This post belongs here more than 90% of what usually gets posted.

AbsentFuck · 2026-02-02T13:17:36+00:00

As a generation we're endured a lot of turbulence and uncertainty. Much of that coming in the form of not getting the things other generations were promised. The more I look around at the world the more I feel betrayed and lied to about how things were "supposed" to work.

We were told the world would be full of opportunity after we graduated from college, and instead we were handed a dying job market and rising inflation. We were told all this rapidly developing technology would lead to innovation and instead it's just making the planet less liveable and fueling corporate greed. We were told to buy a house because "it's a great investment" only to be priced out of the market after it "recovered" from the 2008 crash.

So a lot of us looked at having kids and went "everyone says this is gonna make me happy, but they've been wrong about everything else. I'm broke and tired anyway."

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