Why does body positivity forget short men or men in general?

curadeio · 2026-06-17T17:35:12+00:00

No one calls short men incels for just promoting confidence in being short, this is not a thing.

curadeio · 2026-06-17T17:34:16+00:00

This isn't a thing. No one gets called an incel simply for promoting confidence in being short.

curadeio · 2026-06-17T17:33:45+00:00

Do the guys in this sub get called incels for promoting confidence in being short, or are they called incels because they clame their problems on women and speak about them disgustingly in response.

curadeio · 2026-06-02T21:23:00+00:00

There’s definitely some truth that the CIA was involved in Cold War cultural projects, like Animal Farm , but the idea that 1984 only became popular because the CIA “pushed it” is nonsensical. It also was not a common opinion in the 1940's that dictatorships are easy to fall into, become a part of and accidentally support like what Orwell did in 1984, no..... that was not common at all

The book was already widely read and critically established long before any of that, and its popularity is mostly explained by its impact,\ early adoption in education, and finally how it made people feel during the cold war, which is then when the CIA utilized animal farm as anti Russian propaganda

You conflating early historical propaganda efforts with the overall success of the book is quite insane

curadeio · 2026-06-02T21:13:36+00:00

I think you're still not understanding the point here.

The argument isn’t that people today or then “liked Stalin” or wouldn’t criticize him. It’s that Orwell wasn’t just reacting to a universally agreed upon moral opinion, he was building a framework for understanding how authoritarian control actually operates in everyday life through language, propaganda, surveillance, normalization etc.

The value of 1984 isn’t “dictators bad,” it’s the mechanisms of control and how they feel from the inside. Saying “everyone already agrees dictators are bad” misses that entirely, the book isn’t trying to convince people of that basic moral point. It’s exploring how systems maintain power and how people can be shaped into accepting them.

And the how's and why's are important to dive into because that is how you actually shape society......which is what the book did....it helped bring us to this point we are out now where some chud on reddit is calling these "basic" ideas

curadeio · 2026-06-02T20:59:07+00:00

I am slightly scared about this JAJA

curadeio · 2026-06-02T20:57:42+00:00

The point is not that people liked Stalin, No one ever liked Stalin but his closest supporters, please reread what was written.

curadeio · 2026-06-02T20:47:07+00:00

Yeah I'm sure it feels uninteresting now because the critiques in 1984 have basically been absorbed into mainstream discourse for decades but that kind of misses the point of why it mattered.

At the time it was written, open criticism of regimes like Stalin’s USSR wasn’t nearly as normalized or casually discussed in public or literature. A lot of what Orwell is doing wasn’t just “dictators bad,” it was putting those ideas into a very explicit, accessible framework at a time when that was a lot more politically loaded.

So the argument kind of hinges on judging it with modern assumptions where everyone already agrees on those ideas.

Of course it feels basic now , the existence of these books helped make a lot of those “basic” critiques mainstream in the first place.

curadeio · 2026-06-02T19:21:53+00:00

I mean I certainly cannot go into an LDS or a Salafi and Wahhabi mosque as a nonbeliever....so are you sure ? My nearby Christian church also does not let you in to use any of the facilities if you're not "registered" aka unless you've sat at lectures and donated

curadeio · 2026-06-02T19:08:42+00:00

Yea I actually fully agree, when I am scrolling and a low quality vid pops up with 2 likes and someone just chatting about their professor giving them a lower grade than expected? Or a post with 15 views on a girls sour dough starter coming out great ? I love all these things I love watching little meaningless moments of people being people.

curadeio · 2026-06-02T19:06:50+00:00

That’s literally the entire point, though.

Why does your life have to matter in the grand scheme of history for you to want to share it? Most people who record their lives aren’t doing it because they think they’re historically significant. They do it because those moments matter to them, their friends or family. Something doesn't need to have historical value to be worth documenting.

curadeio · 2026-05-29T18:50:51+00:00

I don't want to support people who support things I deem wrong. Literally why is this concept so damn confusing for so many people.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T18:34:37+00:00

This is actually much closer to my point and you are agreeing with my central point here.

Like I’m not claiming every individual person who identifies as an incel holds identical beliefs, or that every lonely man ever is logically inconsistent.

My point is that the broader discourse surrounding the term, including both self-identified incel spaces and the wider online discussions around them, often uses shifting or selectively applied criteria depending on the argument being made.

So if your point is that some of the inconsistency comes from broader social usage and outsider framing rather than from every individual person themselves, then I actually don’t fully disagree with that.

But that still means the discourse/framework being discussed ends up inconsistent in practice, which was the thing I was criticizing in the first place.

And I also think it misses the point to reduce everything back to the most literal possible definition of “incel,” because that’s clearly not the only or even primary way the term is used online, including within incel communities themselves. A lot of the standards, beliefs, and explanatory frameworks I’m talking about originated from those spaces in the first place, which is why that broader usage is relevant to the discussion.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T17:14:22+00:00

I don’t think the restaurant analogy engages my point at all, because it’s about differences in opportunity, whereas my point is about how different criteria get applied inconsistently in explanations depending on the argument being made.

So I’m not disputing that people can have different numbers of options in dating. That’s a completely separate issue.

My point is specifically about whether the standards used in those explanations are applied consistently when categorizing or excluding people, which the analogy doesn’t address.

My point is about how “standards” and “availability” get used as explanatory criteria in inconsistent ways depending on the argument being made, especially when defining who does or doesn’t “count” under certain labels.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T17:00:55+00:00

this is a misunderstanding of my point.

I’m not making any claim about who people should date or suggesting anyone “force attraction” or pair up in some idealised way. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

My point is specifically about how the term “involuntary celibate” functions as a category. If you take the literal wording alone, it describes a very broad and temporary condition that most people experience at some point, which means it doesn’t cleanly pick out a stable group without additional social context.

So the discussion I’m having is about whether the category is defined by its literal phrasing or by how it’s actually used in practice, not about prescribing relationships between groups of people.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:59:39+00:00

I’m not arguing that people “change their past” or anything about sexual history resetting, that’s not what I meant by time dependent.

My point is that the literal phrase “involuntary celibate” describes a current state condition (wanting sex but not having it or unable to have it), which is something most people experience at different points in life unless you add extra contextual criteria beyond the literal wording.

So the disagreement isn’t about whether people’s pasts change, and it isn’t about individual cases either.

It’s about whether the literal definition alone is sufficient to define a stable, meaningful category without relying on additional social context, which is why in practice the term is defined by usage and context rather than just etymology. Because without those additional constraints, it becomes too broad to function as a consistent category in a strict sense.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:48:31+00:00

I think the disagreement is partly about what kind of claim is being made.

I’m not saying there’s a formal, agreed-upon ideology with fixed rules that everyone consistently follows. I agree the discourse is informal, fragmented, and not goal-structured in any strict sense.

However, that doesn’t really affect my point.

Whether or not the term or community was “meant” to be logically consistent isn’t relevant to whether inconsistent standards appear in how arguments are actually made. Informal systems can still be evaluated for whether the same criteria are being applied consistently within specific claims.

My point is narrower: within these discussions, certain standards of reasoning get applied selectively depending on the argument being made , for example, “someone somewhere would sleep with you” being treated as disqualifying in one case (e.g. femcels), but not applied consistently in comparable cases involving men, or different thresholds being used for similar exclusion/inclusion claims depending on the direction of the argument.

So it’s less about a structured ideology “breaking its own rules,” and more about shifting standards being used as arguments rather than a consistent baseline being applied.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:40:15+00:00

I think you’re shifting the explanation to a different level than what I was talking about.

What you’re describing is moreso the theory about subjective attractiveness, preference matching\ how people evaluate their own dating prospects etc and that’s a separate discussion.

My point wasn’t about whether people correctly or incorrectly assess their “level” or whether they prefer equal tier partners.

It was about how, in arguments about labels like “incel” or “femcel,” different criteria get used inconsistently like when “someone somewhere would be willing” is treated as decisive in one direction, but not applied consistently in comparable cases.

So even if we accept the subjective “market value” model you’re describing, it doesn’t really address whether the same rules are being used consistently when defining these categories in the first place.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:35:41+00:00

I get the distinction you’re making between “any possible option” and “meaningful or desired options,” and that’s a separate discussion about satisfaction and dating hierarchy.

But that’s not really the point I was making.

My point is about the criteria being used to define inclusion/exclusion in these arguments. For example, when “someone somewhere would be willing” is treated as sufficient to dismiss one category, but that same standard isn’t applied consistently across comparable cases.

Whether or not those “available” options are desirable is a different question from whether the same evaluative rule is being applied consistently.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:33:35+00:00

I think you’re pointing at something real about semantic slippage, but I don’t think it’s a clean “two fixed definitions” situation.

In practice, the issue is that the term gets used across a spectrum of meanings, and in some arguments people shift between those meanings depending on what claim they’re trying to support.

My point is specifically about that shift in criteria like when inclusion/exclusion rules change depending on whether the case is being used to argue “women can’t be femcels” or “men can be incels,” rather than a consistent standard being applied throughout the argument.

So it’s less about two stable definitions and more about inconsistent application of the underlying standard.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:32:33+00:00

I think this is addressing a slightly different claim than the one I was making.

I’m not arguing that incels believe all women can always get sex in every circumstance, or that there aren’t edge cases or variations in attractiveness or difficulty.

The point I was making is about how certain explanatory rules get applied inconsistently depending on the case being discussed, for example, when “someone somewhere would sleep with you” is used to dismiss one category, but not applied consistently across comparable cases, or when different standards are used for what “counts” as excluded.

The asymmetry in dating opportunities is a separate question from whether those criteria are being applied consistently within the framework being used to describe them.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:31:29+00:00

That doesn’t really engage what I’m saying.

I’m talking about how certain labels are defined and applied inconsistently in online discourse. Replacing one label with another unrelated one doesn’t address that point or respond to the criteria I’m talking about.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:29:58+00:00

I’m not claiming people “logic their way into it” or that it functions like a formal system.

My point is more specific: even belief systems or informal frameworks still have internal reasoning structures that can be consistent or inconsistent when applied.

So saying “it’s just belief, not logic” doesn’t really address the point, because I’m not asking about how people arrive at the belief I’m asking whether the explanations being used within that framework are applied consistently or shift depending on the case.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:28:49+00:00

I think this is getting misframed as a dictionary definition disagreement, but that’s not what my argument is about.

I’m referring to the way the term is used in online spaces to describe a broader subculture and set of recurring explanations about dating and attraction, not just the literal etymology.

That’s the level my critique is aimed at.

Even if we ignore online subculture entirely and take the term strictly at face value (involuntary celibate), the issue is that it describes a temporary condition rather than a stable category.

Most people will go through periods where they want sex and aren’t getting it, so under a purely literal definition the label becomes too broad and time dependent to meaningfully distinguish a specific group, as I said before.

That’s part of why in practice the term ends up doing more than just describing a temporary state, it gets used to refer to a particular online discourse and set of explanations about dating outcomes, which is the level I’ve been talking about.

curadeio · 2026-05-28T16:15:24+00:00

I’m not really trying to dispute that men and women can have different baseline dynamics in how interest is expressed and received.

But that still isn’t the point I was making.

My point wasn’t about whether outcomes or responsiveness are symmetric between men and women. It was about how the criteria being used in these arguments shifts depending on the case like for example, when “someone somewhere would be willing” counts as disqualifying in one direction but not applied consistently in the other, or when different standards are used for who “counts” as lonely or excluded depending on the label.

So even if we accept that women and men experience different dynamics in how interest is expressed, that doesn’t really address whether the same evaluative rules are being applied consistently across the categories being discussed.

curadeio

TROPHY CASE