For getting into the better part of 3 years, I’ve been criticizing and downright disproving many feminist arguments and social justice constructs due to their being based purely on very fallible opinions and assertions that just don’t work in reality. At the same time, I do realize that I myself have my own failings and imperfections because I am human. I am a man in every sense of the word. Now about a week and a half before the release of this particular article two things predicated its writing. The first is a twitter thread that I delved into while bored at work, not expecting deep reflection. The other is a video by Steven Crowder that Brian has covered due to Crowder’s abject misunderstanding of the Men’s Rights Movement, incels (involuntary celibates), and the source of male motivation.
I won’t go in depth on the Crowder video as that has been be done better by Brian and Alison both. The primary place where it fails is basing itself purely on the Christian faith and Crowder’s personal opinion masquerading as fact, a mistake I’m refusing to make here out of principle. However, this will be my opinion on what I find attractive, in not just a woman, but in friends overall because one of the things I’ve found brings us our friends is a different type of attraction than that we use to find a mate. In light of that here is your disclaimer: you can and should have your own views on what you find attractive and how you interpret said attractions to people in your life, the only reason I’m providing mine is to show you the vein of thought I used which may help figure your own path out, even if that path means Going Your Own Way. With that established Let’s Hammer This In!
First I should specify what I find attractive. I’ve made joke in the past about being a chubby chaser and that is true, I do find those in the chubby to Big Beautiful Women range attractive. Though at the same time I do have my limits as I don’t find say the SSBBW range or Tess Holliday types to be attractive. In fact Tess Holliday disgusts me outright, as do many of the ‘fat acceptance’ proponents, this has to do with mindsets as what I find extremely unattractive is the victimhood mindset and its variants. ‘Fat acceptance’ is based upon the idea of being a ‘victim’ of most people being repelled by the morbidly obese. I, however, will admit that I do find some women in the ‘average’ to standard range attractive given one VERY key mental trait: They must refuse to be a victim.
What do I mean by this? Most important is their reaction to adversity and how they approach it. If they face it head on with no concern for their own safety then I might be remotely attracted for a short time but will likely get away from due to a sense of no care for their own well-being much less that of others. While victims aren’t attractive neither are the blatantly suicidal. Now someone who is concerned for their own safety but will set that aside to defend other people, that is pretty hot. But enduring hardship and not letting it get to you, not letting it define you and therefore working past having been subject to it, that is downright titillating!
Now how did I become attracted to this particular trait in not just my beloved wife but my friends? Well if you have read any number of my articles you’ll find this stems from my enjoyment of Japanese media. To be honest, my childhood fictional character crushes were on characters like Phantasy Star IV’s Hunter Alys Brangwin, Final Fantasy VI’s General Celes Chere, and the Space Pirate Emeraldas. As you can likely tell these three each have their own distinct bodytypes and imagery attached. However it’s obvious each isn’t without their flaws. Some are obvious such as Emeraldas’ facial scar – one obtained from protecting another in most media where gaining it is depicted. Some are not, such as Alys’ irritation at someone revealing her dimensions.
What ties them together is the thing I find attractive of all three. They would rather do the right thing and face a problem head on and not let it affect them. Even more, they embrace it and accept it as part of them. It’s this inner strength, this seemingly rare ability to go against the typical hypergamous and self-serving traits attributed to women and take hold of their own agency that I find desirable. If something is gonna happen to them they are going to be responsible for it and not let anyone else tell them otherwise! Each one takes their fate into their own hands and molds it into something honest.
So, why do I find this self-reliance and impetus to not let themselves stay a victim alluring? Well it does go back to my mother, as I’ve mentioned before she has stolen from my son before he was born but what I’ve never gone too much into is her other abuses and her severe Munchhausen’s and how she used that to fuel her own consistent victim narratives. Even when my little brother died it became about how it affected HER life and not simple grief over him. Honestly, she purposefully relived his hard life in her mind every day for a while just to fuel her guilt train. My mother was a revolting person, a perpetual child in every sense of the world, constantly refusing to take responsibility for anything she could change, constantly imposing her difficulties onto others. Even now that she has passed on the shadow of her self-imposed victimhood looms over my elder brother and her brothers and sisters as they accrued the costs. My only escape was how I estranged myself from them.
This is not me asking for money for myself nor my family. Far from it actually. My brother was foolish enough to fund her self-loathing and despair for 7 years after my stepfather’s death – something else for her to consider herself a victim of. That is his battle to work through and I’m not about to rob him of the lessons from it. He needs to learn how to let go of things and this might actually put him down that path. Though any concern is appreciated, he’ll be fine. I only bring it up to highlight one of the biggest reasons as the title of this article says – in my opinion, victimhood is not attractive. It drains at people in multiple ways, makes them a label, drags those around them down into the depths. It robs a person of their individuality and demoralizes them. However, overcoming adversity turns a person into something more….increases their individuality and lets them thrive not on empty morals bestowed by another, but stronger morale which motivates them to keep soaring. This is why meritocracy wins out nearly every time because its fueled by morale, not morals.
“But wouldn’t morale be boosted by giving someone everything they need to be comfortable?”
Not at all! Being given something for no reason other than existing actually hampers morale because its not earned, therefore it is not appreciated. It also breeds complacency as one doesn’t have to push to get better. If you already have everything needed, your quality of work suffers. Granted some employers hold their bars for improvement a bit high. However, that doesn’t change the motivational need for self-improvement. Even though there are those who fundamentally despise the ‘git-gud’ philosophy. For me, as someone who has been a life-long gamer and is now teaching these merits to my son, I just love a challenge. For example in the recently released Mega Man 11 I had to work hard on optimizing the timing of jumps in Bounce Man’s stage because if you didn’t time your press of the jump button right you were getting nowhere fast.
This being my overall outlook, a woman who refuses to be a victim or subject to anyone else’s whims excites me because she inspires me to try to be better than I am. This is not because I’d want to ‘control’ her, but because I want to be able to keep up and hopefully, the feeling be mutual. Does this mean I wanted my wife to be a lot like myself? Not really. While we have a few things in common (gaming, anime, crippling depression) there are things that are vastly different. For one I’ve always enjoyed bullet hell shooters like R-Type and games that take a lot of grinding to get good at. My wife has always been more for The Elder Scrolls games and survival horror fests like Fatal Frame and Ku-On. I’ve been a huge mecha and shonen nut while my wife is huge into seinen works and would snort Higurashi if she could. Regardless, just because we do prefer some over others, that doesn’t mean that we don’t trade our interests to broaden them. We do so all the time….just don’t ask us to go into hentai, that might scar you into a catatonic state.
Well then, how does this apply to friendships? Very much the same way – just don’t think about getting romantic about it. Many friendships I’ve made in real life and online, I’ve made from the beginning by being honest about what they are getting into by talking to me. That is, a fuckton of geeky shit like kitbashing model kits, watching a ton of anime, and plowing through some older games just because I feel like it. With that in mind I may wanna dust off the PS2 Slim and my PS1 memory cards. I haven’t played LUNAR: Silver Star Story in a while… Oh sorry, random moment, maybe I should just go into what I’m planning on for next time. I’m gonna do a 3 episode review of the highly controversial Goblin Slayer anime! Yes, the one with all the rape in it. Until then Please Remember to Game Freely!
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