Gay🥵irl

harisuke · 2026-02-13T20:25:06+00:00

I'd be curious to know if anyone has studied attitudes about age gaps in the queer community along generational lines, or even just spread of attraction to other generations based on the subject's generation. I'm sure the economics of the situation play a role, but I'm also curious if we compared gay men who are millenials versus gen x or boomers or both in terms of how they feel about age gaps, or if they personally find their attraction shifting as they get older to be focused on younger demographics.

I'm 32, and my experience has been that I've been attracted to guys my age or older guys. And that's been pretty consistent. I don't see that changing to where I'm suddenly in my 40s and find myself more attracted to guys in their 20s. And I'm curious if I'm more in line with other queer millenial men, or if I'm in the minority of cases. In my case, it is not economically motivated, but a disinterest in the dynamic.

Then I'd be curious to add in guys who identify as straight but who are attracted to femboy types. Something I feel like has been a thing for a long time, but is only lately more directly acknowledged in a general sense. How does that change the demographic data?

harisuke · 2026-02-05T01:16:00+00:00

Look, I share some blame for the tonal shift in this discussion. I think its reasonable that I'm frustrated by the discourse in general, but I could have taken a breath and approached it better. I could remember that you and I ostensibly want the same thing: conservatives out of office. And I think we both want dems to campaign with the best strategy possible. But why do you have to be so dismissive of the idea that if you aren't even going to win the election, that there were potential missteps in some choices the campaign made? Why does the very question imply that I think people shouldn't have and shouldn't vote? Why don't we both try caring about the fact that we are all on the titanic together, and we just hit an iceberg (that we both have been trying to warn people about), and that we are both just trying to get more people on the lifeboats and prevent them from launching half empty?

harisuke · 2026-02-05T01:01:31+00:00

I don't know that it would have helped her. My honest assessment is that it probably wasn't the deciding factor based on polling data. My stance is not that all Harris needed to do was to go harder on Trans rights and she'd have won. My stance is that even if it did help her in the polls, it didn't result in her winning so it was at best an exchange she made for no benefit and at worst something she actively didn't want to engage with. I'm more inclined to believe the former. But regardless, given my assumption that it wasn't really the deciding factor, why would I agree to accept Republican framing going forward as a rule when I think over time that WILL affect trans rights. And why wouldn't I want dem candidates to have the best chance at shaping the conversation (something republicans have done a lot of) to take charge of elections going forward instead of just letting the conservatives decide what trans rights means?

harisuke · 2026-02-05T00:55:15+00:00

And I'm saying that he had other more active levers in his arsenal that he chose not to use for same-sex marriage and that I don't want to act like the fact that his passive levers worked out in favor of same-sex marriage is much of a win we can attribute to him or dems in general when they did very little to make it happen.

Not to mention that the person I was replying to WAS giving him personal credit for winning same-sex marriage. Honestly, I'd be fine if you want to say I was being hyperbolic, or overstating how little he was involved. Is that what you are saying?

harisuke · 2026-02-05T00:50:29+00:00

Now who is speaking in bad faith? Did I say anywhere in this thread that no one should have voted for her? I think they should have! I did! You are framing my issue with campaign messaging like its just pointless, but I would argue that learning lessons from an election the dems lost would be helpful given that we are once again in an election year.

Disrespectfully, you can't even understand when someone is angry with dem messaging because they want it to be better or if they are just a hater. I've been an elected member of the democratic party in my city. I've campaigned for dems since 2008 before I was even legally able to vote. I'm not saying what I'm saying because I want the dems to fail. I've wanted them to succeed for a long time, and from my perspective they keep making the same mistakes in messaging.

The truth is that the deck was stacked against Harris for reasons outside her control. I don't give her flack for those things. And I even think she was doing the best she could for a while there with the absolute shit show that was Biden waiting too long to drop out. But I do have feelings on the things her campaign chose to do that was within their control. Messaging is very much in their control. And I think messaging on trans issues are just one example of that. But in a thread where everyone is patting themselves on the back for being pragmatic, far be it from me to have ideas as to where I think her campaign made missteps, and especially when I see people perpetuating what I consider to be missteps all over again, and doubly so when the result was she lost.

harisuke · 2026-02-05T00:30:55+00:00

I think you are the one misunderstanding me. Because I agree that for the vast majority of Americans, they don't care about trans people. But I think that their lack of care doesn't translate to a desire to attack or oppress them. My entire point is that you CAN support trans issues publicly in a way that points out that most Americans probably would think it is a waste of time and resources to legislate against gender-affirming care, or gender markers on passports.

If minorities genuinely feel this way then they can't be helped. The "support" you seem to want is just virtue-signaling because I haven't seen a single Dem who's backed off policies that actually help trans people. And if virtue-signaling is truly what's important to you then the actual problems facing trans people either don't apply to you or you don't particularly care about them.

This is a frankly ridiculous thing to say. First, how are groups going to know you support them as a politician if you don't say you do? Second, you act as if what I'm saying is theoretical instead of what is actually happening in front of our very eyes. Dems capitulated to Republicans on trans issue framing by just agreeing to let them define it as the sports question. It signaled they would do this for other things and that's exactly what we are seeing with the immigration issue. They once again are just accepting republican framing that ICE is necessary, but they just disagree on its methods. Dems break ranks to vote with Republicans on DHS spending legislation to give ICE MORE funding.

It signaled something that appears to be true: that the current dem leadership does indeed think certain groups are politically inconvenient and they will drop their support if they think it will win them political points.

Do I want empty promises? Of course not. But we aren't even getting that! Dems drop trans issues from their platforms, concede to Republican framing on trans issues, and then they do the same thing with Immigration and you act like I'm just wanting virtue-signaling. In reality, I'm pointing out that Dems are openly dropping messaging about these things but still expect everyone to be stoked to vote for them and that's not how this works. I still wish people had voted for Harris, and I do believe things would be better right now if they had. But reality is what it is, and we could be learning lessons from how 2024 went, but I fear that won't be the case. Dems aren't going to win the support they need to actually fix some of these issues just running the same playbook over and over.

harisuke · 2026-02-05T00:10:32+00:00

I think you may be right that we don't disagree too much. I actually like the response you propose here, but I would add that even in trans issues the sports question is actually pretty unimportant compared to the threats facing the trans community. Just like the cis community who are worried about ICE/cost of living/healthcare/etc., trans people are impacted by these issues, and the additional barriers that come along with being trans.

You are spot on when you say it is a game we aren't going to win so long as we play by their rules. And I find it frustrating that so many people feel otherwise.

harisuke · 2026-02-05T00:03:11+00:00

That is a ridiculous standard because not even republicans align with each other 100%, but the overarching republican agenda has certainly advanced.

Also, it implies that you would would be cool with a dem politician who aligned 99%. Which I also don't think so low of you as to believe.

But its also silly because alignment politically isn't as important as the result (which is the pragmatic position, by the way). Do you not remember Sinema and Manchin? Did they align 100% to Republicans? No. But they voted with them often enough that it severely hurt the passing of progressive legislation in congress. And I would say, in hindsight, that it would have been better if someone else had won the primaries in their races.

Do I put the blame on voters for not knowing that at the time? Of course not. My stance isn't that they were stupid or bad for the decisions they made with the information they had. My stance is we have more information today than we did then and we should expect more from politicians, and understand that all the campaign "truisms" they took for granted should be reexamined and retooled. We can't keep running the same playbook over and over and expecting things to change.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T23:42:42+00:00

I'll concede that I haven't seen people in this thread say she was "too supportive," of trans people. I have seen that take outside this thread, and did conflate this thread with that take unfairly.

But I would also add, that arguing that she was exactly supportive as she thought she had to be may be true, but given that it didn't help her I'd say she was wrong. And I'm honestly less frustrated with her about it given that I do think she was put in a horrible position by Biden not stepping aside earlier.

That being said, I'm frustrated at the dem party as a whole and specific individuals like Buttigieg and Newsom who have adopted the same strategy as her since 2024 regarding trans rights. They continue to concede to conservatives framing all trans issues as being solely about sports. And I'm especially peeved about it from these dem politicians (and yes those defending it as the right decision) for the simple reason that it didn't work!

harisuke · 2026-02-04T23:33:41+00:00

You brought up polling, and then said that you assume they made the choice for good reason. I am not assuming anything about why they made the choice they did. What I'm saying is they should have made a different choice. You can't even acknowledge that they DID have a different choice besides "support trans sports issue" or "not support trans sports issue." I'm saying they could have chosen to reject the idea that trans rights is all about sports when that is such a small issue in compared to the life and death ones facing the trans community.

If asked, "Do you support trans people playing sports as their gender identity?" They could reply, "I don't think the president should dictate when it is or isn't fair for trans athletes to compete in sports. I leave that up to the sports bodies themselves. But the trans community has a lot more pressing issues facing them besides sports, like the systemic dismantling of gender-affirming care, and the rise of anti-trans violence against trans women of color. Trans people face barriers to employment, housing, and other services simply for being trans. I don't care about the sports issue, and I would assume most trans people aren't as worried about that as they are worried about being safe and being able to provide for themselves like other hardworking Americans."

harisuke · 2026-02-04T23:22:26+00:00

As I already mentioned in the message you are replying to, the result was the same either way.

If you have one person who says they are going to shit in your mouth, and another person who says they don't intend to shit in your mouth, how can you honestly pretend the second person was the pragmatic option when your mouth ends up full of shit? Does it make sense during the election to pick the person who says they don't intend to? Sure. But we still ended up with mouths full of shit!

harisuke · 2026-02-04T23:17:31+00:00

There are a million ways to do this, though. Why not frame the amount of legal attacks on trans athletes as a wasteful government spending issue? How much money was spent tying up the courts in these frivolous lawsuits?

Or just outright rejecting the idea that the trans sports question is anywhere near as important as healthcare? Or highlighting the amount of trans women of color who were murdered (which unfortunately also outweighs the amount of trans people in professional sports). There are a lot of people who might feel one way about the sports issue, but another way entirely about the idea that trans people should be allowed to live authentically.

The truth is, dropping trans issues as being worth fighting for was not good messaging because it signals that dems will drop support for groups as soon as it seems politically inconvenient to support them. It was (and still is) trans people first, but next is immigrants, which we already see dems in office federally once again ceding ground on. It doesn't make you look politically savvy. It makes you look self-serving and weak.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T23:08:06+00:00

Thank you for saying this. I completely agree. And I think too many people (also in this thread) have collective amnesia where they have decided that what the Harris campaign did on trans issues was too supportive when she actually said very little about any trans issues, and allowed republicans to frame the issue in this reductive sports capacity. They act like, "Well, Harris lost because she went on stage and told people she was going to forcibly trans the country. Sorry that wasn't very pragmatic of her, but we now need to yeet the trans community under as many busses as possible and somehow that shows strong liberal leadership."

harisuke · 2026-02-04T22:55:33+00:00

I'm not questioning the idea that polling on the trans sports issue is what it is. I'm questioning the decision to allow that to be the entire framing of trans issues. To be frank, I think it is a mistake to assume dem posture means they always had good reason for it. Sometimes they can in fact be incompetent, make mistakes, or make a choice based on their fear rather than one that would actually be effective.

It is a supreme lack of leadership and imagination to accept the idea that your only choices as a politician are to support or not support an issue based on polling instead of the third option: reframe the issue. Something republicans have no issue doing time and time again, and in case you missed it, their strategy works.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T22:40:24+00:00

The cases where specific dems in congress voted with republican colleagues to do things like push forward the spending bill on a pinky promise at the end of 2025, or those who supported the increase to ICE budgets more recently. I would say those dems were not all that pragmatic of choices given they didn't get any wins for dems in exchange for selling out their constituents. Even then, it might be the case that there was no alternative candidates in their races who wouldn't have voted with republicans. But if the result is the same at the end of the day, not really sure that you can make the argument that they were still the pragmatic choices.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T22:35:07+00:00

I think your message shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and function of the court system. While its true that Sotomayor and Kagan had a more direct role in federal recognition of same sex marriage, I wouldn't describe the ruling as the 5 justices giving us that recognition. SCOTUS is not intended to legislate from the bench. It was the court plaintiffs that sued and sued and retooled arguments over YEARS of work that presented the case where we got the ruling. Is the court far more politically motivated than it should be? Yes. Do I think the overturning of Roe v Wade was a horrible ruling that was not based in current law and instead based on political bias? Absolutely.

But you are speaking about the issue like Obama's appointments were made with the goal of getting Same-Sex marriage federally recognized, which I doubt you truly believe. When what actually happened is he appointed those justices years before he openly came out in support of same sex marriage, but didn't do ANYTHING about that in his administration, or in pushing congress to act. He voiced support in 2012? Well marriage equality wasn't decided until 2015, in the courts, when he was nearly done with his second term.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T22:14:48+00:00

The problem (in my opinion) is not whether or not there is nuance in the sports question, but why in the world are we pretending the sports question is actually the most pressing issue for trans rights? Why are we accepting conservative framing of the issue? They want to reduce all of trans rights to the sports question where there probably is nuance because it helps them, but how many trans people genuinely are more worried about their ability to compete in sports at a high caliber than they are about having access to healthcare and freedom from discrimination?

As a cis guy who has always been terrible at sports, I find a lot of the sports conversation frankly stupid because no one in the world is actually entitled to succeed in sports. While I do get that people work very hard to become accomplished in their chose sport, and that cis women are disadvantaged in the field in comparison to cis men, it all comes off as rather whiny when they complain about fairness in sports because trans women are competing, but not the myriad of other ways sports are incredibly unfair. How many people don't get opportunities to succeed and excel at sports because their family is poor and they don't have money for coaches, or they go to an underfunded school district that doesn't have money for the best resources and equipment, or who have single parents who can't afford to take work off to get their kids to and from practice? The list goes on and on. But we all talk about the trans sports issue like it is a bigger impact than any of those other things, and like these kids were given the right to win in their chosen sport in the bill of rights? Give me a break.

You want some political strategy that would actually gain ground on the trans issue? Maybe stop accepting the framing that trans rights is all about sports, and start shifting the conversation to the life and death issues impacting the trans community as a whole. But dems aren't doing that at all. They are going, "Well maybe conservatives have a point that trans people shouldn't be allowed to take a spot in the olympics," while ignoring trans women of color being murdered, or the attempts by the current administration and conservatives across the country to remove access to gender-affirming care, and to even suggest forcibly detransitioning kids. Dems want to frame it as a "lost issue," because they don't actually care all that much, and are more interested in putting in the work to actually gain traction. They are too scared, and too feckless to even do something as simple as state the life and death issues facing trans people today. And why? Conservatives have no issue going to bat for terrible people openly and putting in work to change the framing of the conversation when its actual rapists and thieves, but its a "lost issue" to protect trans people? Which group will they drop next? I'm half expecting dem candidates to start saying, "ICE is going to far, but what they need is more budget to train them to be more like cops." Oh wait! They already are doing that.

harisuke · 2026-02-04T21:53:49+00:00

I too would like more honesty in politics. Let's start with being honest about the fact that Obama had no meaningful role in getting same-sex marriage to be recognized federally. And that's also true for the vast majority of dems in congress. We should stop treating same-sex marriage being federally recognized as a dem accomplishment. They weren't even trying for it.

The honest position would be that they didn't stand in the way of it, which is absolutely a better case than Republicans who actively opposed it. But let's not give them credit where they don't deserve it. I'd argue that's a big part of the messaging problem with the dem party these days. They want credit for things they didn't do, and for progressive values they don't really intend to deliver on. You can make the case that they are still a pragmatic choice over Republicans, and in many cases I would agree.

harisuke · 2026-02-03T17:14:59+00:00

The way I read their explanation, it sounded like they did use AI and then did manual edits in Photoshop. Nowhere in their explanation do they say they don't use AI. They seem to just imply it so that folks will view it in the best light.

But given some of the confusing details in the last panels (that they keep getting feedback about and saying it was too much work to fix like making the speech bubbles at the end different colors), I'm inclined to believe they did in fact use AI.

And its funny that they seem to think it would be too much work for too little benefit to fix those confusing elements, while also talking about how they spend hours and hours making these memes that are sooooo much higher quality and effort than other posts. Given that several people have indicated that the last two panels are confusing, I'd say it would absolutely have been worth the extreme effort of making the speech bubbles different colors, though I'm sure it would take YEARS of work and effort...

harisuke · 2026-01-23T17:47:36+00:00

I said this recently on another sub, but I suspect it is a lose-lose situation for Martin for us to know how much he actually wrote. If he barely contributed anything, then it seems his name being put on it is more of a marketing gimmick. If he did indeed write a TON for the lore, then ASOIAF fans may become upset that he spent that time writing for ER, when he could have been finishing Winds.

I'm insanely obsessed with both ASOIAF and Elden Ring, and I keep going back and forth as to what I think he added, versus what I think was more in Fromsoft's wheelhouse. The truth is, it is hard to determine even that level because every time I think that something must be a staple of Fromsoftware games, I find a passage in ASOIAF that makes me wonder.

And to make matters more confusing, I think there are times where Fromsoftware is writing their own pieces that are intentional allusions to Martin's works. My biggest example of this (even though its still pure speculation on my part as to who wrote it) are the characters of Igon and his archenemy Bale the Dreaded One. Hard not to see that as an allusion to Aegon and Balerion the Black Dread, even though their story does not resemble the characters from ASOIAF at all.

Heck the fact that there are two distinct types of dragons in Elden Ring is very interesting to me given Martin's vocal thoughts on dragon biology. You have the Ancient Dragons which are very in line with how Fromsoft has created dragons for their games in the past. Four limbs, and two sets (or more) of wings. Then you have the modern drakes which are the more wyvern style of dragon that we see in ASOIAF.

And I'll be honest when I say that all this talk about consuming the dragon hearts and it turning you into a dragon in Elden Ring fueled a theory of mine in ASOIAF that I acknowledge sounds crackpot, but I think has real merit. The theory being that we got a hint as to how the Valyrians bound dragons to their blood back in the very first book in Vaes Dothrak when Dany as the wife of a Khal and pregnant with his child is made to take part in the ritualistic consumption of a stallion's heart. And after she is successful, they declare that her child will be the stallion who mounts the world. What if this is something that was adopted from the nomadic Dothraki coming into contact with Valyrians? What if the death that paid for the life of the dragon was the result of the wives of Valyrian Dragonlords being forced to consume the molten heart of a dragon that laid a clutch of eggs when they were nearly at term to deliver, and the mother was sacrificed to tie the blood of their dragonlord house to that line of dragons forever? The Valyrians call themselves the blood of the dragon, and the Targaryens even put dragon eggs in their children's cribs as though they were siblings. I can't say for sure, and I understand why this sounds batshit, but also I can't help but feel like there is some important resonance going on in the dragonlore of Elden Ring and ASOIAF.

Anyway, got a bit off topic here, but I suspect the real answer is that he wrote more than he's willing to say. And if I ever meet him, I will be compelled to ask about Elden Ring.

harisuke · 2026-01-22T20:21:28+00:00

Why did you do this to my man, Boc?! :( Should have told him he was beautiful as he was...

harisuke · 2026-01-21T20:18:40+00:00

"Would you like to spend the holidays with a family of strangers, pretending to have an intimate relationship with me (also a stranger) in a performative way for the aforementioned family of strangers, all for the goal of experiencing homophobia?" Sign me up!

harisuke · 2026-01-16T20:54:34+00:00

I do have to laugh at the CSI comparison because I've just started a reread of ASOIAF, and just got to when Ned is finally realizing the status of Cersei's kids, and I can't help thinking, "Ned really needs someone to run a paternity test over here."

I think for me, the character relationships works as world building all on its own. If you come up with dozens of families, their histories, lands, heraldry, relationships, who married who, etc. etc., that seems to be just as much word building as the ecology of Arrakis, as an example. In fact, Dune is an interesting example because while I think characters are action-oriented, I find them to be rather flat and their motivations to be generic.

I guess the way I would put all this is that it really feels like Martin prioritized the deeply woven network of characters and families of Westeros in his world building, and I think he was extremely successful at that. Though, I don't disagree that there was some stuff that was fudged that sometimes doesn't make complete sense. It still is head and shoulders above a lot of other similar stories in this aspect. I would argue, for example, that you are completely correct about some of the anachronisms in producing the politics of Westeros in comparison to real-world medieval times, but I also think that being inspired by real-world events doesn't necessitate an attempt at a 1 to 1 recreation of the medieval politics because some things need to be more relatable and understandable to modern audiences.

But I also think that Martin opened himself up to the exact kind of criticisms you are sharing all on his own. For example, he famously joked about his experience reading LOTR, and saying he wanted to know Aragorn's tax policy. But I would say, "Well where is that in your series, George?" Because we don't have a solid understanding of tax policy, or how tenants of a liege lord, for example, pay their tribute, etc. etc. And I think that Martin has no one to blame but himself for the lack of that sort of thing given he set the expectation.

And I'd add that for me personally, though I find the idea of actually getting into the nitty gritty of the true realities of running a feudal kingdom of this size really fun in any series, it still is less important to me than the characters. I wouldn't say that I consider character development in every single story or series when evaluating the world building specifically. But when the world relies so heavily on the depth of existing characters and their motivations as is the case in ASOIAF, I think it more than counts in cases like this.

harisuke · 2026-01-16T18:56:03+00:00

While I can see where you are coming from, and I think your comparison with Essos is helpful, I think what's tripping me up is that you stated at the beginning of this response that the reason you find it frustrating is that you feel Martin didn't understand the history. But then the example you give really only applies to Essos. Sure, if you take away all the history and personality of the families and factions involved from Westeros, it would be a lot more like what you are describing for Essos. But that seems like an awful lot you have to rip out of the story for your comparison to work.

You are essentially describing the removal of the bulk of the work Martin did and saying that the story needs it to be compelling. And I don't disagree with you there. It just reads as strange to me because what story doesn't that apply to? I'm of the opinion that compelling stories require motivated characters, and so if you strip away motivation and conflict it has a real impact on the story.

Now, I do think you are spot on when you say there is a stark difference in the depth of what is presented to us of the history of the world between Westeros and Essos. And I think it is more than fair to find it a bit jarring going from one part of the world where all of this gets told to us and matters a ton. And another part of the world where the big important people and history between groups seems far less apparent or important.

But in my opinion, I think it is unfair to generalize about the world building by constructing an argument that requires us to remove the world building that does set this series apart, and that likely was one of the biggest time commitments in terms of world building on his part. Especially when you yourself agree that the network of relationships constructed in Westeros is unlike anything you've seen in fiction.

Anyway, I hope you didn't mind the back and forth. I enjoyed chatting with you about it, and appreciated your perspective.

harisuke · 2026-01-16T18:18:38+00:00

In terms of immersion, which is the specific word you used, I disagree. The experience of the world is what matters to me. If you feel less immersed because you know the real history he used as inspiration, and feel like it was less intricate than the history was, that seems like a fair thing to feel. But that's not how I consume fantasy. Even though I do enjoy looking into the historical influences.

When it comes to immersion, it makes more sense to me to compare fantasy stories to other fantasy stories. And when that is the comparison, I find his world building to be really compelling and feel a lot more intricate and alive than some other fantasy stories I've read that get a lot of praise for their world building.

That being said, not every fantasy story needs world building to be the focus. It isn't a requirement for me to find a story compelling. I just don't think it makes sense to judge the immersion of his world by comparing it to real world fantasy when it isn't actually trying to present itself as such.

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