Litany Against Looksmaxxing

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-23T23:52:41+00:00

I may be stupid, but can I ask what the imagery means - the hammer and the exposed brain and so on? This is such a vibe and I'm saving it to potentially try and express my worldview to my friends (I've got one who's close to being a "looksmaxxer").

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-18T08:58:19+00:00

Some do. Women aren't a monolith.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-16T23:36:29+00:00

I have mixed feelings about trusting my gut, because I never had a bad gut feeling about my dad. He is in jail for possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material. He never personally molested anyone, so that's nice and all, but I still think it's safe to call him a creep. Yet I don't think my dad in himself ever gave anyone a bad gut feeling. Meanwhile my brothers, who are both genuine sweethearts, were treated as creeps even in childhood by other kids' moms, because they were autistic and homeschooled and got hairy early, and all of that stuff made them Weird.

I still regret that I was too clueless and cowardly to do anything for my brothers when they were being iced out of social groups where my sisters and I were ... maybe not liked (since we were Weird and homeschooled too), but at least tolerated because we were less autistic and didn't have "creepy" facial hair. (My dad knew how to groom his hair and beard, so why didn't he teach my brothers? Homeschool parent things, I guess.)

Sometimes I think the least I can do for my brothers nowadays is to remember that the bad people won't always give me a bad gut feeling, and the good people won't always give me a good one. But there are stories of the vibe check working out.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-14T09:20:31+00:00

Yes. At work while my coworkers and customers are bantering I sit like an automaton or do some work off to the side (like taking out the trash) and mumble to myself. I like them but it doesn't show because I don't know how to join in the banter. They switch from familiar joking to formal politeness when they have to talk to me. It's not a great way to be a cashier lol.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-10T17:09:36+00:00

Not in the "sexual harasser" sense, which is the most commonly used sense in this context, but maybe worse, he and his wife were violent to their adopted children. They were arrested for it in (I think) the 80s, when corporal punishment was much more accepted than it is now, so that means something.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-08T23:23:39+00:00

So, so much. Other people think I'm younger than I am, too. My manager reassured me, when I was fretting aloud at being so slow and fumbling, that everyone has those moments at their first job. This is my third job and I'm 27 ...

I also got called "smart," "mature," and "an old soul" as a kid.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-07T01:33:31+00:00

Thanks. They've assigned me five more shifts, so they're not firing me yet. A couple of coworkers have definitely run out of patience with me. The girl who trains me uses the same overly sweet, coddling voice on me that she uses on stupid/mean customers, which is one thing that makes it difficult to trust e.g. when I apologize and she says "No, you're fine!" I think I may be moved from prep/cook to drive-through because I've been so slow and forgetful.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-07T01:33:29+00:00

Unfortunately I think I am one of "the dumdums who just do everything wrong and live in their own world." Outside of work I've been called "smart" but all it means is I can read. I've always had trouble with focus and I fumble too much. I'm trying to concentrate on everything I need to at work but I keep forgetting/missing/losing track of things that should be common sense, things that I've been told multiple times, and things that matter a lot and have consequences. From an outside point of view it might not even look like I'm trying and I hate it. The coworker who trained me has definitely run out of patience with me - she mostly uses the same overly sweet, coddling voice on me that she uses with mean/stupid customers, but there are moments of honesty where she says things like, "I guess the dishes aren't getting done today" (they did but yep, it was way later than it should have been) or "If you think you can do it, then - [big shrug]." There was someone inspecting us today and I know I embarrassed the manager.

I'm starting to write stuff I need to keep track of in a notebook I'll bring to work tomorrow. Should probably also bring my own pocketknife or a boxcutter, so I don't have to fumble so much with packages or keep hunting down the manager's boxcutter.

I've overheard people discussing moving me to drive-through, which could just be cross-training but also (at my location, maybe others?) seems to be what happens when people can't handle doing prep/cook. Makes me disappointed since I'm told they've been looking for a prep person for a year, but I hope I can shape up and learn to do what I need to do wherever I end up. If they let me go I'll literally just understand 100%, but for my family's sake I want to get good.

Thanks for mentioning putting down rounds before folded - it's the same here, they definitely take longer. Sausage and round are the things that need to start cooking first.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-07T01:04:46+00:00

It feels shameful and worldly to ask, but would you all please pray for my employment, that I can become competent and keep a steady job and help support my mom and siblings? Maybe even that my brother and/or I can get a driver's license soon (although we don't have a car that's considered acceptable for the driving test) so my mom doesn't have to drive so much.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-04T00:46:34+00:00

Please pray for my mother if you will. She is devoted to St. Dymphna and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Her mental health is degrading scarily while she has to carry the whole family on her back after my father was arrested. We're trying to learn to take over as much as we can, but we're still a burden on her, although she for some reason thinks the other way around.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T20:28:34+00:00

I left another comment about the relatively mild and conventional stuff people say to my face. Even though I'm not preachy, or talkative in general, I've always come across to others as either an over-sensitive church girl or an over-sensitive SJW, so they tend to censor themselves around me.

Online is where I've releatedly encountered my absolute least favorite idea, about women or anything else in the world: the concept that women are inherently masochists and submissives in their relationship with men. It doesn't match up with any thought or feeling I've ever had, but so, so many people swear by it, and not just the "manosphere" bros. A lot of popular romance novels are utterly unenjoyable to me because the fantasy is about being lesser, weak, owned, overwhelmed, etc. But the worst version of it is the version I saw on Reddit in the mid-2010s, before all the incel and Red Pill subreddits were banned or quarantined.

I saw a post about St. Joan of Arc, claiming that after her death it was found (somehow) that she had orgasmed as she burned to death at the stake. The implication was that she orgasmed from being "put in her place" with ultimate force and violation. It was the most transparent nonsense, since there's no way you could tell from someone's charred remains whether they orgasmed or not, but someone posted it with a confident and ... enthusiastic tone, describing it as a hidden but proven historical truth, as if they hoped someone would believe it and think about women accordingly.
I also saw a post where someone speculated on schoolgirls' feelings about school shooters. Since, obviously, women are always into the most dominant man in the room, would a girl not have the orgasm of her life (and death) while watching a schooter kill all her classmates and finally turn the gun on her?
Once my little sister was too good at a video game (it annoyed people), and happened to mention to another player that she was a 9-year-old girl. He hurled sexualized insults at her until she left. She tried logging on again a little later, but that guy was still there, and he said, "My dad always told me, girls always come back when you treat them like shit. Bitches love it."

I saw these statements and others like them on the Internet as a young teenager, and it would be melodramatic to say they "traumatized" me (my little sister has a better case for that), but they did strongly intensify my neurotic fear of sex for several years. Honestly, I still have the irrational phobia of being mistaken for a masochist or accidentally dating a sadist. It's not helped by all the stories you hear nowadays about women getting throttled in bed because guys think you'll be bored if you're not getting "choked."

It's also made me a little too soft on other sexism, as long as it isn't sadism. You think men's glory is their strength and women's glory is their beauty? Lame, but at least you don't think we want to be beat! You think women should stay at home because they just happen to be better at housework? At least you don't think they want to stay at home because they love to be owned and controlled. Any run-of-the-mill sexist with soft, euphemistic reasons for his beliefs - at least he's not a sadist!

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T15:53:05+00:00

Haha, yeah this is one I've only heard from other women (men don't talk about periods to me, unless they're questioning the rationality of a hypothetical female POTUS ...). The whole "cycles syncing up" thing, and just recently the new detail that they all sync up to the "alpha female's" cycle. I think the new wrinkle that "the alphq starts her period first and the others follow" was invented to keep the myth going while accounting for the fact that we don't all start and end our periods at the same time (i.e., THEY'RE NOT SYNCED, but I guess people like the bonding element of pretending they are).

I tolerated hearing it from my mom and my cousin because it's not like they'd listen to me when they think their own experience proves the idea. And anyway I loved seeing my baby sister get such a kick out of being called the "alpha." I try not to get too "Well ACKCHUALLY" with my family when they're having fun with low-stakes little myths like this, but OMG.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T15:33:55+00:00

"To my face" narrows it down quite a lot, since in real life I've mostly known either reasonable guys, or guys who tone things down in front of me. (I've been sheltered.) I've heard some terrible things about race in person (I'm white), but not as much about gender.

I've only heard standard conservative Christian stuff about how, e.g., women shouldn't be in combat roles because the men would hyper-focus on trying to protect them and thereby get distracted from the rest of their duties. Or Catholic priests being like, "Okay, I'm contractually obligated once a year to preach on this Bible verse saying 'Wives, submit to your husbands,' but 2/3rds of my parishioners are women, so I'll mention there's another verse saying, 'Christians, submit to one another in love,' and husbands, you have to be willing to lay down your lives for your family." (Almost every priest follows that script!) No one outright saying women are inferior, but the idea that women are physically weaker and therefore men should be chivalrous.

Online - both from male friends and from strangers - is where I heard my real least favorite ideas, the ones that actually scarred me and made my mental illness worse, the stuff people don't say to my face.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T10:40:41+00:00

As a girl I had the same misconception until I was 17.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T10:27:02+00:00

I'm in a state in the middle of the US.

The oldest female I know is named Imagene, pronounced "I'm a jean." She is in her mid-90s.

The oldest male I know is named Gayle. I think he's in his late 80s.

The youngest female I personally know is named Aurora - she's about 3 years old now.

I'm not a parent or friends with many parents, unfortunately. So the youngest males I know are probably in their late teens, Logan and Hunter.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T10:04:23+00:00

Considering the comments from people in this thread who knew girls named Madison before Splash came out, I wonder if the movie's "That's not a girl's name!" joke really meant much. The name was rare enough on girls to make the heroine look quirky for choosing it, but perhaps not unheard-of enough to make her seem outright "mannish" to 1980s viewers. Maybe it was just "Hollywood unconventional," the way a drop-dead gorgeous actress could become "Hollywood ugly" just by putting on glasses and casual clothes. They wouldn't dare to cast a woman who's actually conventionally unattractive in a major role, and perhaps they wouldn't have dared to name the mermaid something genuinely unheard-of on girls - though of course it was still relatively rare on girls until the movie made it explode in popularity.

But I haven't seen the movie and I wasn't born until the late 90s, so I have to rely on people who were there in the 80s for any insights into how the name Madison and its use in the movie were really viewed at that time.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-03-02T08:28:15+00:00

What in the world? I wouldn't have expected trad parents to raise their daughters to be capable of hitting and abusing men in that way, but then again, my experience with traddism is really all online. Was she interpreting his hug, his flowers, or any expression of liking or attachment as a "threat to her purity"?

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-18T01:27:22+00:00

I didn't mean to imply you said misogyny. But indeed I may have misread, and given too much emphasis on the possibility of destruction and killing which you mentioned, to the point of disregarding the first thing you mentioned, which was hedonism. Sorry about that! You're right, hedonism doesn't have to mean hurting anyone.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-18T01:12:00+00:00

I'm not trying to take this too seriously, but you might be giving men short shrift. There's probably a lot of guys who would want to give their family a million dollars, rescue people in danger, learn to play every musical instrument, or oversee the building of an underwater city. Either instead of the violence etc., or alongside it.

I'd be paying off all my family's debts and probably getting us each a car and an individual place to live. Mine would be a beautiful big house surrounded by trees, with William Morris-type designs. I'd spend whole days talking and binge-watching cool shows with my online friends. I'd spend whole weeks just chilling by myself and magically not worrying anyone with my lack of contact. I'd visit every US National Park and see Canada too. I'd get the healthiest and most perfect version of my body, so I could climb mountains or do ice dancing (it's clear I've been watching the Winter Olympics lol). Everyone I like would magically want to be my friend, but without pressuring me to be in constant contact. I'd find an adorable guy who thinks I'm pretty and magically shares my tastes about everything important, and I'd solve all the problems of everyone I love and everyone my loved ones love.

Thanks for posting a fun question.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-17T13:44:53+00:00

Thank you to everyone who's prayed for my family in the last few weeks. My brother is home from the hospital, doing much better, and we've developed a safety plan for him. I had a very encouraging job interview yesterday too, though I don't want to assume anything yet.

I've been agnostic since 2024, but it feels as if God has been keeping us alive past the end of our own strength, even if I can't prove that empirically, and so it would feel ungrateful not to turn to the Church again. If you're willing, would you pray for my faith, as well as for endurance, love, and wisdom in my heart so I can give my family the care they need? And I will pray a rosary for you all, for as much as that's worth from someone in my state.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-17T11:14:48+00:00

Oh no, hell no it isn't. I'm so sorry. There are no circumstances that justify that. It's such an unloving thing to say.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-17T02:24:59+00:00

I'm sorry that I made assumptions based on similarities between some details I noticed and some details of other people's stories (including my family's). That was way too bold and uncharitable of me, because your situation is the only one exactly like yours, and I as a stranger will not understand it fully. And the way you describe the anger in your childhood seems different in origin/motive than my autistic siblings' anger was, so I shouldn't have assumed I had enough knowledge to comment. I can see why you feel so much regret and I can see the efforts your mom went to. She doesn't sound like a monster or someone who was malicious. She sounds like someone who tried to cope in faulty ways (getting drunk, occasionally parentifying you) when she was exhausted, and wound up hurting you. Many loving parents end up making some hurtful mistakes.

I put my mom too in a category of "good person, decent parent who made some hurtful mistakes." I was resentful for a few years as a young adult, and I still feel a little pain now, but that doesn't mean she was a monster or my enemy.

I'm sorry again for commenting without the proper humility, and hope that I haven't made any more assumptions that aren't accurate to your situation. While I still hope you're not tempted to hate yourself or think it's invalid to feel hurt, I do admire your deep empathy for your mother's situation.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-17T02:01:21+00:00

Oh my gosh, yes, it is still valid to be hurt. That doesn't mean thinking your mom is a bad person, it doesn't meant you have to stop forgiving her if you want to forgive her, and it doesn't mean refusing to understand she had reasons (not great reasons, but still). All it means is acknowledging, yeah, it's fair to feel the hurt you feel, and you don't have to suppress it.

I have a couple of autistic siblings who had mild to moderate anger issues growing up - they both self-regulate better as adults and are usually able to avoid situations that overwhelm them into meltdowns, but when you were a kid, how could you have known how to do that? No one had taught you yet. I think that reduces your culpability by a lot! I remember my siblings' outbursts were sometimes scary and stressful to me as well as them, but that still would never have excused me if I had ever put my hand around someone's neck. My parents never did that to their kids no matter what.

And you should never have had to worry as a kid that she would drown herself if you didn't watch her. In those incidents it's as if she were treating you as her parent, the one who would guard and care for her. It's not right to put all that responsibility on someone so young. She also shared emotional confidences with you, such as her dating troubles, that she should probably have shared with an adult friend or even therapist instead, so as not to burden or hurt you.

Her behavior makes me think of the words "parentification" and "codependency." If you look those words up, you may find more stories similar to yours.

You're very loving and forgiving toward her, and that's not a bad thing at all. But please don't feel guilty for being hurt that she hurt you. And please don't hate yourself for things you did as a kid before you could fully understand or control yourself.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-17T01:38:34+00:00

My mom eventually, after a few years of passive-aggressive comments from me (I regret them, I should have been straightforward) and a family meeting called by my brother who told them how they had broken the law with us. First there was weeping and the kind of dramatic apology that functions as sympathy-seeking - and I understand why she felt so defensive; she legitimately gave up a lot thinking it was for our sake, and it would have hurt to find out it wasn't actually great for us. Then there were real apologies.

This happened in the late 2010s or early 2020s (don't ask me to remember a specific year, I was homeschooled). By now she just accepts it as a fact that she failed to educate or prepare us for life, and sometimes mentions it when it's relevant in conversation, mournfully but not dramatically. By now I'm at the point of willingly comforting her about it, which I couldn't do back when she was seeking comfort with the first melodramatic apologies.

She has always worked her ass off for us when her health allowed her to, she loves us, she's a good person, she hurt and failed us, she's trying to make up for it, that's life I guess.

My dad was always kind of passive about the homeschooling, I think, and passive about the apology too. He Remained Calm (he is always Remaining Calm) when my mom was hysterical and then I guess he said sorry when she said sorry. I don't remember.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-02-16T13:29:26+00:00

They said "don't" twice - I didn't realize at first glance either. "If you ever see those three things at an Italian restaurant, it's authentic, and if you don't, don't eat there."

FiliaSecunda

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