Tag Archive | Feminism

The Cesspool of Hate and Bigotry Right Under Many Parents’ Noses

Jul31

Let me make some feminist observations coming from a place you probably wouldn’t expect to find feminist observations at all – online video gaming and especially massive multiplayer online video gaming (MMOs).

One game I’ve played is called Black Desert Online (hereafter abbreviated BDO). It has one of the most extensive character customization editors in the entire online gaming world. The character face alone has 39 separate small regions that can be adjusted in every conceivable dimension including the ears. The body has 19 separate regions adjustable via sliders and that’s not counting the hands, each of which has 3 adjustable regions per finger and the palm region which is a total of 51 potential adjustments across the body from neck to foot. (Toes are not individually adjustable.)

You can create a character template and then save it. You can share saved templates publicly. And shared templates can be named.

I’ve seen some incredible templates done, which look nothing like the default character that Pearl Abyss has created. I’ve seen hundreds of celebrity templates that, depending on the gender of the specific class (classes are gender locked), look like famous actors, actresses, sports figures, or even a few politicians.

But for all of this extremely creative work, we then find the other templates. You don’t find this with male gender classes, only female gender classes.

Templates in which the character’s breasts are so large you wonder how the character can possibly stand. Character templates with buttocks so large that you wonder if something is medically wrong with them. Character templates titled “Mommy”, “Waifu”, “Cutie”. There used to be a lot of “Ho” templates but Pearl Abyss apparently cracked down and forced those to be retitled or deleted. You do still see some character templates with “THOT” in them.

Another game I’ve played is Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). SWTOR doesn’t have character creators. You can basically choose one of 4 body types but you can make extensive face adjustments, just nothing like BDO. But SWTOR’s brilliance is that it has so many character outfits you can put your character into. Mandalorian armor sets (a few dozen choices), Jedi robe or armor sets (a few dozen choices), Sith robe and armor choices, several dozen choices that look like smuggler and bounty hunter type armor. And the beauty of this system is that almost any class can wear almost any outfit set. (A tiny number are gender locked.)

And given these choices, as a role-player, I almost always had my female characters dressed in full coverings most of the time. The rare time they were not was usually some in-character function, like attending a gala and wearing an evening gown.

And further, you can have dozens of potential companions in SWTOR to fight alongside you (one companion at a time but you can switch any time except in the middle of a fight). And many of those characters are female too.

So what do many of those female characters and companions get dressed in most often? The least covering most revealing outfits possible.

Then let’s talk about MMO game chat systems. Most MMOs have channels that are pretty wide reaching. In BDO there are several channels that reach the entire instance of the game world. In SWTOR there are general channels that reach wide sections of the game world. In WOW, there are general channels that reach wide segments of the game world.

These are a built in feature of almost every MMO in existence. And if you listen to these channels, you find yourself immersed in a total culture of absolutely pure misogyny and hate. Hatred of women, hatred of anyone not white (the use of the N-word is common), hatred of anyone who is queer but especially hatred of trans women and gay men, and more.

These channels are among the most toxic, abusive channels of communications in the world today. And none of these companies police these channels. No policing action is done. The most vile, hateful things are said in these channels.

There is non-stop racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic chatter going on in these game channels 24 hours a day, 7 days a week except when the servers are down for maintenance.

People talk about 4Chan and 8Chan as toxic places on the dark web but MMO game chat systems, and the cultures they create which are inhabited by MILLIONS OF YOUR MEN AND TEENAGE BOYS are conditioning these young men and teenage boys to become bigots in every part of their corrupt little souls.

Are there those that resist? Sure, but most don’t fight the tide. Those who don’t want to hear it, because they have no real policing powers and the owners of the games refuse to police their chat systems, usually just turn off global or wide reaching channels that becomes hotbeds of bigotry.

The online social media culture of hate and negativity that we see on Facebook, Threads, BlueSky, X, and other social media platforms did not arise overnight from whole cloth. It arose from these MMO game chat systems that have been unpoliced since the mid-1990s, places of toxic hate and abuse against anyone the majority deems “less than”. Then those people grew up and moved on to other social media where they brought their sense of entitlement, hatred, and bigotry with them.

You cannot clean up social media systems without first going after related communication systems like MMO game chat systems, the systems that start programming kids who are in their early teens to hate and mock anyone different from themselves.

And that’s going to require legislation that neither major party wants to touch right now.

Big tech is out of control, not just in AI, but in its open support of sexual abuse, its support of production of child sexual assault materials (CSAM), it’s production of openly racist materials.

If this is not reigned in on a society wide scale, it will destroy civilization. Elon Musk fears people of color and people of religions other than Christianity. He and his tech bros are a bigger threat to civilization than any other single factor right now.

The Truth About Sapphic Divorce Rates

Jan7

This information was originally posted as a thread by bambi_girl_wlw (Sumaya Si) on Threads. I have consolidated this thread here for easy reference for anyone that wants to use the data. Everything between the separators here is her work.

Lesbian divorce rates are not unusually high. Reality is lesbians have the lowest rates of cheating and some of the highest relationship satisfaction. This thread debunks a widely misunderstood statistic—using real data.

The “70%” figure comes from ONS data from England and Wales, but it is often misunderstood. The data do not say that 70% of lesbian marriages end in divorce. What the ONS data actually state is that among all same-sex divorces, about 70% involved lesbian couples and 30% involved gay male couples. Importantly, the absolute number of divorces is low for both groups.

If we look further into the ONS data, the percentage of same-sex divorces involving lesbian couples was:

  • 2017: 74% female couples, 26% male couples
  • 2019: 72% female couples, 28% male couples
  • 2021: 67.2% female couples, 32.8% male couples

From this, we can conclude that the gap has been narrowing each year.

You might still think this is high compared to gay male couples. However, lesbians are more likely to get married than gay men. In England & Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the female share of same-sex marriages was:

  • 2014: 56.1%
  • 2016: 55.7%
  • 2018: 57.2%
  • 2020: 57.2%
  • 2022: 62.8%

This shows that the marriage rate among lesbian couples is increasing. If we look closely at 2021–2022, the share of marriages and divorces was almost the same. 

According to the 2021 Census and recent surveys (which measure individuals, not couples):
About 2.8% of men identify as gay
About 1.2% of women identify as lesbian
This means there are fewer lesbians overall, yet they make up a larger share of same-sex marriages, suggesting that a higher percentage of lesbians are getting married. 

Yes, in most countries, lesbians do have higher divorce rates than gay men. However, there are exceptions. For example, in Taiwan, gay men actually have a slightly higher divorce rate. From Taiwan MOI / GEC data, when used consistently:
65–70% of same-sex marriages are female couples
~30–35% are male couples
~60–63% of same-sex divorces are female couples
~37–40% are male couples
When these numbers are normalized, gay male couples show a slightly higher divorce rate per marriage. 

Reasons why lesbians may initiate more divorces compared to gay men 

  1. Lesbians are more likely to get married A summary of LGB adults from the Williams Institute showed that: About 51% of women who identify as lesbian were married or cohabiting Only about 35% of gay men reported being in a partnered relationship In most countries, there are more gay men overall, yet lesbians make up a larger share of marriages. I reviewed multiple datasets across different countries, and most showed the same pattern. This suggests that many lesbian women getting married earlier.
  2. Multiple studies suggest that gay men are more likely to be in open relationships than lesbians: In an analysis by Blumstein & Schwartz (cited in Peplau & Beals), 82% of gay male couples reported being non-monogamous, compared to 28% of lesbian couples According to Wikipedia’s summary of available data, about 33% of gay men reported being in open relationships, versus only about 5% of lesbians This suggests that gay men may be less likely to divorce due to adultery or cheating.
  3. Parenting and child-related stress According to U.S. Census data (2019): 22.5% of female same-sex couple households had at least one child under 18 6.6% of male same-sex couple households had at least one child under 18 Overall, lesbians are more likely to have children than gay men, which may mean that parenting-related conflicts are less common in gay male couples. Additionally, lesbian women are more likely to experience pregnancy- and postpartum-related stress, which affect marriages.
  4. Lesbians are the group least likely to cheat on their partner. According to the study “Extradyadic Sex and its Predictors in Homo- and Heterosexuals” by J. Haversath & Kröger (2014):
    4% of lesbian women
    34% of gay men
    29% of heterosexual women
    49% of heterosexual men reported extradyadic sexual contacts (aka cheating).
    This explains that lesbians are individuals who leave the relationship instead of committing adultery.
  5. Lesbians are the happiest and most satisfied among all couples. This suggests that lesbians tend to leave bad relationships earlier. Studies show that lesbian’s tend to be the happiest and most satisfied among all types of couples. For example, a longitudinal study tracking lesbian, gay male, and heterosexual couples over time found that lesbian couples consistently reported the highest overall relationship quality on average across all assessments
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18855506/

In another Swedish follow-up study of couples after assisted reproduction, researchers found that lesbian couples reported greater relationship satisfaction and maintained stable, happy feelings—even when facing the stress of treatment.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12905-014-0154-1

When comparing lesbians specifically to heterosexual women, research also reveals significantly higher levels of satisfaction for lesbian couples.

Again, this information was compiled by bambi_girl_wlw (Sumaya Si) on Threads, and all credit should be extended to her.