This can refer to several interpretations of the classic fairy tale. One interpretation focuses on the psychological phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome, where a captive develops positive feelings for their captor. Another interpretation focuses on the idea of beauty privilege, where attractive individuals may receive preferential treatment. The Beauty and the Beast phenomenon is the trope of the beastly man, and the lovable, beautiful woman: this trope lets male characters be morally unjust and grotesque under the disguise of being a ‘’beast’‘ physically or metaphorically, and further makes the woman fall in love with a morally unjust man, falling for the disguise of the beast. This originated, of course, from the movie Beauty and the Beast, however, before this movie was released, it was still happening. This trope not only accentuates a woman’s love into being purely unconditional, but also lets the narrative say that romance lies within loving someone who is morally unjust because you can change them. Sinister narratives lie within this, and one example of this is domestic violence: this narrative, that also contributes to real life scenarios and situations, pushes the idea that if a man acts like a Beast, you can wait it out, you can change it and ultimately live happily ever after.

The Beastly Man can get away with almost anything with the excuse of him being non-human, monstrous, while the Beautiful Woman must stay beautiful and pure for this Beast, if she runs to the other side, she is not the Beauty, she is the Beast. From this, I dare say this phenomenon originated from real life situations too: the Beautiful Woman is abused, perhaps even murdered by the Beastly Man as seen before, and the Beastly Man is let off as it is said to be in his nature, the abusers nature: this is a witty justification of the abuse, and further, torture, of women. Not only is it a witty justification, it also plays into gender roles excessively. The masculine man (the Beastly Man) is violent or aggressive in nature, reinforcing his masculinity and solidifying this ideology of being a masculine man, while the feminine woman (the Beautiful Woman) is soft, gentle, beautiful, the perfect 1950’s archetype of femininity, solidifying her femininity into not just a sociocultural construct, but her entire being.

This phenomenon interests me deeply as it is rarely ever talked about, but also because it is reality. From this, those two factors are what play into where the mockery of feminist literature was bred. In fact, this phenomenon is not exclusive to Beauty and the Beast. The trope of women falling in love with monsters has been around for a long time—think The Phantom of the Opera, or any book or movie with a vampire (like Dracula or Twilight)—and we, as the audience, are not repulsed by this. On the contrary, we fall in love with the monster too. Anthony Lane, also writing in The New Yorker, says that “the scent of sex” permeates the 1946 French version of Beauty and the Beast. And he’s right. But it’s not just that version, and it’s not just Beauty and the Beast. Think of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom seducing the innocent Christine: “Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation.” Or consider that the bestselling Twilight series was written to be a metaphor for the value of abstinence before marriage—Edward’s desperate hunger for Bella’s blood means he is drawn to her but must hold back lest he condemn her to his own dark fate.

Why does the mockery of feminist literature exist? From the phenomenon I spoke about, to misogyny in society, all of it interplays. The mockery of feminist literature is not a silent joke, or even a whispered manual of how to attract certain women: it is neither of the two. The men that mock feminist literature do not want to attract feminists, so why do they use feminist literature as a guide to do so, or to look like they are? These men use feminist literature in the way a male bird may dance to catch a female birds attention: it is pseudo-intellectualism, and it has no science or logic behind it. Men only care or find interests in feminist ideology when it is to either sleep with a woman, or to just attract a multitude of women, it is a perverse way of displaying misogyny while pretending it is feminism. Feminist ideology lays, in it’s core, critical of gender, critical of gender roles, critical of pornography and the sex work industry, critical of hair removal, makeup, critical of patriarchal society, etc., etc., and if these men read feminist literature, they would not be mocking it. Men who know the basis of feminist ideology do not mock it, but instead, uphold it, compliment it, display it; they criticise the very things the ideology does. For misogyny to exist without criticism, it needs to be displayed in the mockery of misogyny while simultaneously mocking feminism: in that way, men can uphold misogyny and misogynistic narratives without being criticised. The same men mocking feminist literature also frequently watch pornography, say sex work is empowering, and expect their female partner to remove every strand of hair on her body excluding her scalp, eyebrows and eyelashes. Another thing that contributes to this is the fact that movies or TV shows currently will add rape scenes within the film to make it more realistic, yet, you’d never see a woman who is unattractive being loved wholeheartedly (Beauty and the Beast phenomenon). As Andrea Dworkin said, “Men mock feminism, laugh at it, distort it, caricature it, misrepresent it, degrade it, and beat women who believe in it—and then ask why women don’t ‘choose’ equality.” — paraphrased from several speeches, closely aligned with sentiments expressed in Right-Wing Women (1983). In the eighteenth-century, satirists like William Hogarth and Charles James Fox caricatured the “learned lady” as a freakish hybrid: owl‑eyed, quill‑clawed, emitting unfeminine screeches of rationality. These engravings did more than lampoon individual women; they inaugurated a visual grammar in which feminist speech itself was monstrous. These engravings adumbrate later political cartoons mocking suffragettes as nagging harpies on bicycles, and that same visual vocabulary resurfaces in today’s media that depict feminists as shrieking, blue‑haired gorgons. Thus, the mockery is not episodic but genealogical, an inherited iconography of contempt. Feminists are seen as unshaven, blue haired liberals, but feminists are more commonly natural haired leftists; feminists have been depicted as blue haired for no other reason other than media showing women who express their sense of self freely in fun ways, and apparently, having blue hair is making a statement to them: if you have blue hair, you’re automatically a man hater. Though again, feminists are not liberals, they are leftists, you cannot be a liberal feminist as liberalism inherently supports and upholds capitalist ideology and capitalism itself. Byron’s heroes (Heathcliff, Rochester’s literary cousins) are bestial yet bewitching. Their narrative arc proposes a specious redemption through a woman’s suffering love, establishing what is the Beastly Man pre‑cept. Brontë’s Jane Eyre both participates in and critiques the trope: Rochester is maimed and blinded before his union with Jane, an implicit punishment, yet the novel still celebrates marital convergence. Feminist critics from Gilbert & Gubar to Adrienne Rich wrestle with that ambivalence, and male commentators have parodied those feminist readings as humourless overreach. Now fast‑forward to digital modernity and the figure of the “male feminist” who flaunts Judith Butler or Andrea Dworkin quotes to harvest female trust. This is parody weaponised as seduction: feminism recast as a mating display, this is what radical feminists term “sexualised subordination”—the appropriation of liberatory language to lubricate coercive dynamics. To pretend to engage in feminist analysis is to actively mock feminism and the suffering of women. The scripted “feminist” scenarios in pornography, too, play a part in this: (e.g., the professor‑student fantasy etc.) mock real critique by folding it into sexual spectacle. Here, misogynistic ridicule becomes profitable entertainment, underwriting an entire industry that parasitically feeds on feminist vocabulary while eroding its political edge. It is quite strange to me that if one wants to display intellectualism or understanding of feminist ideology or analysis, that they also only buy surface level critiques, but likewise, it also doesn’t surprise me at all: they aren’t interested in it, nor are they reading it out of pure interest. The so-called “man-hating feminist” becomes not only a punchline, but a fetish: something to be conquered, tamed, or used for kinky role-play. In pornography, if you search the word feminist, you’ll get recommended videos titled ‘‘feminist gets pissed on’’ or ‘‘feminist turned into a slut’’, re-branding feminism as sex work and submission while also branding it as man hating and domination: it is nuanced.

The mockery of feminism has long been happening, and it, most likely, will not stop as long as conservatism and anti-intellectualism is on the rise. Pseudo-intellectualism is bred by all of these combining factors, thus creating a superiority complex to those who engage in it, and to those who engage in literature.

The Superiority Complex That Comes From Pseudo-intellectualism

We are familiar with the anti-intellectualism discourse, but I’ve noticed even models are now carrying books down the runway (Skall Studio) as a fashion statement during the rise of superiority complexes in persons who engage in literature, especially classic literature. It’s extremely obvious why books are symbols of intellectualism historically and in the present, we had to read certain books in our education, and the act of reading itself has always been a prioritised skill and political in its roots (book banning, women in lower classes not being able to indulge in the act for centuries), all empowering speeches almost always include and emphasise the importance of literacy and reading, and how it will help most people in life, and especially how it is necessary for women and men not as privileged to have the right to do so. Books have also been a sign of status or wealth in history. While sectionalism was increasing and the Civil War loomed upon America, a woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe published a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. It was an anti-slavery novel that depicted the reality of slavery. The book sold over 300,000 copies in just the first year: by showing the reality of slaves and that they were actually people and deserved to be treated better, Stowe managed to increase the sectionalism between the North and South over the issue of slavery. This is due to the fact that many Northerners read the book and they realised how unjust slavery was for the first time. Thus, Northerners started to be increasingly anti-slavery, and, with increasing opposition to slavery, Southern slave owners worked even harder to defend the institution of slavery. Both sides grew more and more radical, and this eventually exploded in the Civil War, the bloodiest war fought on American soil. Although Stowe’s novel didn’t directly cause the war that would abolish slavery and change the course of history, it did play a part in it. Without it, many Northerners wouldn’t realise how inhumane slavery was, and they wouldn’t have been so against it. Perhaps the war wouldn’t even have happened had those people’s opinions weren’t influenced. In fact, Abraham Lincoln himself, when he met Stowe in 1962 said to her “So you’re the little lady that started this great war”, demonstrating Stowe’s role in the Civil War. During the early 1900’s, America was undergoing its Progressive Era. Many people were bringing forth issues they found with society and attempting to change them. Many of these issues centred around urban cities, big business, and factory regulations. Journalists, called muckrakers, took on the mission to spread just how horrible these issues were by going undercover and publishing their finds. Over the next few years, when people read these publications, they were horrified at what they found, which sparked immediate reform. One of these books was How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis. His publication of photojournalism documented the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880’s. An early example of photojournalism as a vehicle for social change, Riis’s book demonstrated to the middle and upper classes of New York City the slum-like conditions of the tenements of the Lower East Side. His photographs depicted homeless children sleeping in the streets, whole families living in a tiny room, and the unhygienic nature of NYC slums. Following the book’s publication and the resulting public uproar, proper sewers, plumbing, and trash collection eventually came to the Lower East Side. Keep in mind that much of America was oblivious to the conditions in slums, factories, and cities because many upper and middle-class families lived better lives. When they heard about these awful conditions, their outroar helped bring about change and reform legislation, which made muckraking extremely effective in social change. Other famous muckraking books include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which depicted the disgusting conditions of how America made meat, which brought about the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and Ida Tarbell’s A History of Standard Oil, which discussed the corruptness of Rockefeller’s oil monopoly, which resulted in the breakup of Standard Oil into smaller companies. When the 1930’s brought the Great Depression in the United States, it also brought with it the Dust Bowl in the mid-west. Poor agricultural practices, wind erosion, and high temperatures contributed to dust blowing all across the Western and Southern United States. People and livestock were killed and crops failed to thrive. Farmers, already hard-hit from the Great Depression, suffered even more due to the Dust Bowl. During these tumultuous times, thousands of Oklahoma farmers migrated to California in hopes of finding work. They were met with limited success and were hated by the local Californians who were also competing for jobs, and they dubbed the new migrants as “Okies”. Seeing these struggles, a man named John Steinback published the book The Grapes of Wrath, which evoked the harshness of the Great Depression and aroused sympathy for the struggles of migrant farm-workers. The book advocated for major social change by showing the unfair working conditions the migrants faced when they reached California. It was a major success and ignited a movement in Congress to pass laws benefiting farm-workers. When Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, the committee specifically cited this novel as one of the main reasons for the award. The Grapes of Wrath also won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and is now considered an American classic. Today, the environment continues to be a huge issue on Earth. Although many new sources of renewable energy are being developed, the amount of fossil fuels and trash being produced is deeply hurting our planet, including the plants and animals that live on it. The first environmental movements occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The spur of this movement can be credited to a woman named Rachel Carson, who in 1962 published her book Silent Spring. Her book drew attention to the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment, especially that of DDT (a pesticide) on bird populations. At a time when technological solutions were the norm, she pointed out that man-made poisons introduced into natural systems can harm not only nature but also humans. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it was a major success and due to heightened awareness, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Rachel Carson is also considered a founder of the contemporary environmental protection movement. There have been many “waves” of women’s movements in history, and one of the more recent waves has been the 1970’s women’s movement. After WWII, the 1950’s established a new role for women in society. They were expected to stay at home, raise the kids, provide for her husband, and upkeep the house. Everything they did was to show everyone how perfect her family was. However, this proved difficult because, after WWII, where women held many jobs previously held by men, many women refused to go back to the domestic sphere. Women argued for equal rights and opportunities in the workplace (to break the glass ceilings in workplaces) and greater personal freedoms for women. The feminist movement sought women’s equality on both a political and personal level. A piece of literature that greatly affected this “second wave of feminism” was The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedman. Her book broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfilment outside of their traditional roles, influencing many women in the United States, helping spur the movement. Friedman was also a prominent feminist who helped advance the women’s rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organisation for Women (NOW). Due to Friedman’s accomplishments, the women’s movement worked towards dismantling workplace inequality, such as a denial of access to better jobs and salary inequity, via anti-discrimination laws. Another example being, in the first century, Seneca wrote about his dislike of people who own a large number of books, but who didn’t actually indulge in the act of reading them. He said that many people without a proper education use books as decorations rather than for studying. In 2020, people sold around 60 million more books than the year before, even now they remain over 10% above 2019. The superiority complex that is bred from the act of reading comes from the glorification of being a thin white woman living in wealthy areas. Where young black girls in certain parts of the world cannot get an education and cannot read, thin white women have every opportunity at mass, and they post about their reading on social media like it is a lifestyle instead of a privilege. I first saw the concept of ‘‘real readers’’ vs ‘‘performative readers’’ around two years ago when internet aesthetics were growing into popularity at a staggeringly high rate (my essay Obsession With Over-Identification talks about this very briefly). My first thought was to not critique what somebody is doing because it may be performative, as it does not impact me. With these aesthetics (cottagecore, dark academia, y2k, light academia, etc.), the reading aesthetic also came to be. In my personal view, the superiority complex comes from the decline of literacy, and believing that if you do not fit that category, you must be superior. Reading is, of course, a symbol of intelligence for most people, but reading classics does not make you intellectually superior. Reading has become, on social media, a persona, rather than a hobby. People flaunt how many books they own, but they don’t read them at all, it’s just for decoration and to fill the gap in their bookshelf(s). If someone on social media has over 200 books, they must be incredibly intelligent, but then, they must be intellectually inferior to the person who has over 200 classic books, regardless of if they have read them - for both people. There are posts with thousands of likes and shares talking about which books to read that make you a ‘‘hot girl’’, and the category of ‘‘hot girl books’’, Lapvona and The Bell Jar and Dostoevsky come into play with almost all of these posts, along with the overused pomegranate metaphor. In a time where people preach to eachother in comment sections to ‘‘go outside’’ or ‘‘get a job’’, they sure do follow trends. Simultaneously, they’ll write poetry talking about the same cannibalism as a metaphor for love or pomegranates as a replacement for fig trees. When one person in the literary realm makes something beautiful, everyone jumps and copies it before celebrating it—the social media realm of literature is full of sheep with no individuality at all, yet they believe themselves to be superior for reading. Young girls with internalised misogyny preach how they are better than other girls that read romcoms or romantasy because they read Dostoevsky and Kafka, as if they aren’t two of the most popular authors in the world. This pretentiousness comes from this superiority complex. The disingenuous act of reading has plagued our screens, and so have the men. BookTok is plagued with superiority complexes, and it also transferred into the men who came across it. Men have now started insulting women of BookTok, saying that all they read is pornography and that is it comparable to video pornography. 3,000 in 13,000 video pornographies have abuse or rape towards women, while books are words on paper. The romanticisation of the Dark romance genre is concerning for obvious reasons of the blurry lines of consent, or outright misogynistic male characters who rape the women and then that gets glorified. But otherwise, 5 pages out of 300 involving sexual intimacy is not pornography, that is just romance. Criticising this is infact a side of purity culture, though leave it to men to always indulge in purity culture and to express their hatred toward women who do not conform to it. These men will go on to tell women to read real literature while reading shitty poetry that is actually just sentences broken up into lines. ‘‘He cried, I cried, I miss him, ugh’’ yes, I am referring to that one author. These superiority complexes are deeply unsettling. You are not special for reading classic authors, and the person next to you reading a romantasy is not inferior compared to people who read said classic literature. Reading a behemoth of a giant classic does not make you intellectually superior, but instead, perhaps, patient and ambitious. Take the Count of Monte Cristo for example, it has 1308 pages if I am not mistaken, and yet, no person on TikTok has flexed that piece of literature for their superiority complex as far as I have seen: so why? Why is it only feminist literature or romantasy etc.? Pseudo-intellectualism. It’s all become a performance. Reading isn’t a quiet, personal thing anymore. It’s a character you play online. Once-subversive women writers (like Plath, Woolf, or even Ottessa Moshfegh) are rebranded into girlboss icons stripped of their complexity, rage, and discomfort. A feminist reclamation piece. Virginia Woolf’s A room of ones own has become a bestseller for the men mocking feminist analysis, and that book is still only surface level. There is no logic in shaming others who read romantasy. Studies show that reading romance—and fiction in general—can improve empathy, making it easier to understand different perspectives, emotions, and reactions. This, in turn, can lead to better communication, stronger relationships, and a more compassionate approach to life. It has been argued that fiction may elicit stronger emotional and behavioral effects than nonfiction reading (e.g., newspapers and nonfiction books). Hence, a difference can be made between fictional narratives and non-fictional writing. Bruner argued that narrative cannot be separated from fiction because every narrative told by an individual includes an interpretation of an event, and the narrator’s goals in telling the story. Hence, the difference between fiction and non-fiction is difficult to establish, and the narrative structure of the text determines the extent to which the text is able to influence a reader. Bruner, however, distinguished logico-scientific mode of thinking and the narrative mode. While the first is aimed at seeking universal truth conditions through argumentation and logic, which can be represented by for instance scientific publications and newspapers (henceforth nonfiction). The central focus of the narrative mode is believability, as assessed by the reader. This narrative mode of thinking is best represented by fictional literature. Fiction focuses on believability; a fictional text is not assessed on its consistency as is the case in non-fiction, but rather on whether it establishes verisimilitude, or truthlikeness. A reader will be affected by a fictional narrative only when it creates a narrative world that is real within its context, and more importantly, when it is realistic for the reader, thereby creating an opportunity to be drawn into the story, which is discussed in more detail later on. However, nonfictional logico-scientific thinking will not be able to elicit those feelings. Fictional narratives present characters, events and the setting of a story in such a way that the reader can become transported and hence change through the narrative. Even though little research has been conducted on the effects of fiction reading on empathy, there are several researchers who have explained why fiction reading influences empathy. Mar and colleagues argued that fiction reading may have profound effects on empathetic skills of the reader. When an individual reads a story, emotions are triggered by that story, such that an effective impression is elicited by the narrative. According to Oatley, fiction presents a simulation of real-world problems, and therefore has real consequences for the reader. Often when someone reads a fictional story, identification with the characters in the story and emotional involvement in the story causes the reader to sympathise with the characters, and perhaps even experience the events in the story as if the reader experiences the events themselves. Consequently, the reader practices being empathetic while reading a fictional story. We define empathy in line with Davis as: the cognitive and intellectual ability to recognise the emotions of other persons and to emotionally respond to other persons. It includes sympathy and concern for unfortunate others. There are several reasons why fiction reading may be related to empathetic skills. First, the simulation of real-world experiences in fiction might be associated with processes that people use in daily life to comprehend what happens in the world. Consequently, through this sensemaking process, people gain a better understanding of the world and how they should interact with other people. People learn from fiction about the human psychology, and gain knowledge about how to react to other people in social situations, as argued by Mar et al. When an individual reads a story, they predict the actions and reactions of the characters, by inferring what they are thinking, feeling, and intending. In order to do this, the reader sympathises with the characters in the story, through taking the perspective of the characters and to experience the events as if it is the reader’s own experience. Moreover, some stories are able to make sense out of the senseless, and offer possibilities to understand other people across time and space, an opportunity which is not readily available in daily life. The sympathy a reader feels for the characters is then integrated in the self-concept of the reader, through which the reader accumulates his/her ability to take the perspective of others, and to feel empathy. Moreover, enhancement of empathetic skills through fiction reading can contribute to people’s goals of who they want to be in their lives, such as to become a person that cares for other people’s welfare. Hence, sympathetic reactions to fictional characters are integrated into broader response patterns in daily life, and empathetic skills of the reader are enhanced. Second, Mar et al. argued that fiction experiences enhance imaginative thinking. In line with the Immersed Experiencer Framework, fictional words and stories activate neural processes that reflect real-world events which are similar to the story. Fiction is primarily aimed at eliciting emotions. To become engaged in a fictional story, a reader suppresses the notion of fictionality of the story and the characters to experience the emotions of the characters. According to Goldstein, a person reading fiction tends to react more strongly towards a story than when they would read a non-fictional story, because fiction provides a safe arena in which a reader can experience emotions without the need for self-protection.

It was bred by misogyny—men, historically, dating back thousands of years, have sexualised the female body so much that women value having exaggerated proportions [more than attainable healthy ideologies and personalities—in short, a self] to appear attractive—which, by society, is coined the most essential thing for a woman or girl, and in my male friends words himself yesterday: “it dictates 70% of your worth,” right before calling me a ‘‘foid.’’ Many women around the globe are critical of their bodies, resorting to eating disorders, one of the most common being anorexia nervosa to attain these standards: they are told if they become skinny enough they become worthy enough. Objectively, worthiness doesn’t come from physical appeal, it comes from within, the root of all. A soul is what makes you worthy, and every person born is worthy, though it is their choice on whether they stay worthy or not. Serial killers, for instance, are not worthy, they contribute nothing but evil, and yet, people don’t need to contribute things to be worthy. It’s nuanced.

Mid-9th-Century Text Featuring The Oversexualisation Of The Female Anatomy and Female Characteristics

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

1. Latin original (section 974):

“Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres facere solent? Prosternunt se in faciem, et discoopertis natibus, jubent ut supra nudas nates conficiatur panis… Si fecisti, duos annos per legitimas ferias poenitas.” (Translation: Did you lie face‑down, uncover your buttocks, have bread made on your nude buttocks, then feed that bread to your husband to inflame his love? If so, two years penance on prescribed holy days.)

2. “Have you smeared honey over your naked body, rolled in wheat, collected the grains into flour, baked bread, and fed it to your husband—killing him? If so, forty days penance on bread and water.”

3. “Have you taken your menstrual blood, mixed it into food or drink, and given it to your husband to increase his love? If so, five years penance on fast days.” etc. etc.

There is many more that you can find online, this book (or books, as he wrote many) are disturbing and quite insightful.

From that earliest record from my one year of research on the oversexualisation of female bodies, that is what I have found—I have used that example plenty of times before. There is no biological imperative for preferring these things, it has just been socialised in humans to believe so; if you ask a man what his type is, and he says big breasts, hourglass figure, or exaggerated characteristics, it is a red flag. Though more so, I wouldn’t call it a red flag for women. The reason to that is because women were the first people to be socialised into believing it is desirable, attainable, and attractive, and that is what their worth is based on: yet for men, they were the second to be socialised into believing that is what a woman’s’ worth is determined on. Men are the main cause of women being socialised, though, factually speaking in a guess, women would have been socialised first, then a man after the first group who believed this ideology. There have been multiple studies conducted that have proven having these extreme standards for women also correlate with those same persons having and holding misogynistic rhetoric and values and ideology, or violence toward women.

The hypersexualisation of breasts

While breasts are often sexualised in many cultures, they are not inherently sexual organs. Breasts are primarily designed for breastfeeding and are considered secondary sex characteristics, meaning they develop during puberty but are not directly involved in reproduction. Their sexual association is largely a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one. From a biological standpoint, female breasts are considered secondary sexual characteristics. This classification means that while they are not the organs actually used for reproduction (primary sexual characteristics) they are dimorphic between the sexes. Breasts aren’t necessary for modern day reproduction but they were essential rearing children back in the day, so the justification of the hypersexualisation of breasts being ‘‘it’s in men’s biology to be attracted to them’’ is factually wrong as of now. A neanderthal man may have been attracted to larger breasts, and that would make sense, though now, it does not. Women’s breasts act in a manner that a evolutionary biologist would call a fitness indicator. All mammals have mammary glands (breasts), but in nearly all cases, the mammary glands are very small until pregnancy happens. Humans are different. Human men evolved to find women with larger breasts more attractive because they tend to be more fertile. However, this does not mean they are inherently sexual organs or that is is moral to sexualise them. This attraction is in biology, however, the sexualisation of breasts and the act of calling them ‘‘sexually necessary’’ is disgusting. The only purpose of a woman’s breasts is to feed a child, or children, and to make it illegal for a woman to not wear a shirt is ridiculous in my perspective. Some men are attracted to feet, it is not illegal to walk barefoot, yet men are attracted to breasts and it’s suddenly illegal for women to not wear a shirt when men can. They are sexualised, but they are not sexual. That’s the difference. The Free the Nipple campaign – named after Lina Esco’s 2014 film – is a global push to desexualise women’s breasts and allow women the freedom to be topless in the same places in which it is acceptable for men and boys to do so. But are such campaigns ridiculous in a hypersexualised porn culture? Much of the discomfort and shaming surrounding public breastfeeding stems from the overwhelming understanding of breasts as sexually arousing to the viewer. Other parts of women’s bodies have been viewed as more enticing than breasts, including buttocks, legs, ankles, hair, and feet. Bound feet (or the ‘golden lotus’) in ancient China had strong erotic connections and acts that could be performed with them were detailed in illustrated sex manuals. Some of these body parts have no connection to a woman’s capacity to reproduce or nurture her offspring, as is often suggested to explain the modern fixation on large breasts. (Greater breast size, or more fatty tissue, does not mean that a woman can produce more milk than a smaller breasted woman.) Breasts are an example of concealment feeding into sexual attraction today, but there are other instances that reveal how this process is not the result of an innate, ‘hardwired’ desire. Buttocks and breasts might be sexualised, in part, because of their proximity to genitalia and status as secondary sexual characteristics, but how can the eroticisation of women’s ankles be explained? In Victorian Britain, respectable women wore long skirts and dresses that covered the entirety of their legs. As the author Jane Nicholas put it in The Modern Girl, the fact that these areas were always concealed meant that “a glimpse of an ankle or calf could be erotic” for men. These taboos on the exposure of women’s ankles and hair in public illustrate that the parts of women’s bodies that are considered sexually arousing are changeable in different times and places and that concealing them only adds to their forbidden allure. When thinking about the Free the Nipple movement, there is also the obvious point that many traditional cultures around the world did not require women to cover their breasts until the intervention of Christian missionaries or introduction of Islam. In locations where women are routinely topless, attitudes towards breasts are, unsurprisingly, different to places in which there are prohibitions on their exposure. None of this is to deny that many people derive pleasure from looking at breasts or that women themselves often derive sensual pleasure from their breasts. But when it comes to the debate about whether women should be able to appear in public topless, we can challenge the idea that an unstoppable desire to gaze on women’s breasts in a sexual way is an inherent part of male biological makeup that will never alter. Just as we might not understand why a Victorian woman could not stride down the street with her calves exposed, so too might we look back in future with some mystification at the idea that a few topless women having a picnic could provoke debate or even violent misogyny. It is not in a man’s biology to stare down a woman’s shirt, or to catcall a 14 year old girl because she has bigger breasts, that is another witty attempt at a justification for being perverted and misogynistic.

For women to desperately want to attain this exaggerated body type is for women to feed into a misogynistic narrative they have been fed and socialised into wanting. I am not saying it is misogynistic for a woman to want these things, though desiring that ideal body type is bred from misogyny, making the desire itself misogynistic as it hypersexualises women, and puts women on the scale of ‘‘what is attractive’’ and ‘‘what isn’t attractive’’. This also plays into misogynistic rhetoric. Men will not find a thin woman with large breasts that are the same as what a curvy woman has—neither will they find a curvy woman without the stomach or arms that come with it. This culture of what a woman has to look like inherently shames other women for not having that figure naturally, but then shames a woman for achieving it by surgery—you cannot win in the face of ‘‘the peak female body’’, you will not achieve it unless you have it in your DNA. To desire this body as a woman is almost natural due to being socialised into it for years upon years, yet it is also the opposite. It is against our nature completely to desire something unattainable, to desire accentuating our features to please men who will only base our worth on that very thing. A man who says his type is the peak female body is the same type of man who will end a relationship over you saying you won’t give him a blowjob, or you won’t do anal, or you won’t get slapped and hit and punched during sexual activity.

Even in Greek statues, the sculptors accentuated the stomach and thighs with wet drapery on the female form, but they never did accentuate the behind, and even then you do not see hypersexualised female form, you see, what I dare to call, the average female form. There is no double-D or F-cup breasts and huge behind and tiny shrivelled waist, there is just a natural body of the female characteristics. Even in other forms of women in statues, they have stomach rolls, which is indicative of the natural female form as women biologically have more fat composition than men (an active woman will have 21% to 24% body fat, whereas an active man will have 14% to 17%).

The Racism That Lies Beneath Context (Of Ideal Female Form)

“We live in a culture where to an extent, White women—especially white middleclass women—are able to define, ‘‘play with,’’ and explore their sexuality in ways women of color are not (e.g., the ‘‘Slutwalk’’ movement) and Black women are defined by their sexuality and as their sexuality.”

This culture of ‘‘peak form’’ in women is inherently racist. And you may have a counterargument by saying ‘‘black women have this ideal figure most of the time’’, and while that is true, that is why. Black women and girls are, and were, judged for years, being told they are ‘‘too grown’’ just for having that ‘‘peak form’’ naturally, and even today, some black women and girls are judged for having it, while a white blonde woman has millions of followers on Tiktok or Instagram for having that same figure, most times not naturally. This culture is based on racist beauty standards and misogyny, black women being the main people to suffer from the shame brought upon it. Yet today, you may also see black women being fetishised for this body, and that is true. The sapphire (or “matriarch”) archetype is the image of an aggressive, dominating, angry, emasculating Black woman. The jezebel (or “sexual siren”) is the image of an immoral, sexually promiscuous, and sexually available Black woman (West, 2008; Woodard & Mastin, 2005). Another more recent archetype of Black women is that of the “welfare queen,” which is connected to images of Black women as “breeders” dating back to slavery (Collins, 2000). Black female academics report stories of people mistaking them for waitresses, administrative staff, or prostitutes (Byrd & Solomon, 2005; Thomas et al., 2004; West, 2008). There also is evidence that the archetypes associated with Black women continue to be relevant; research shows that current stereotypes of Black women have close connections with the historical, stereotypical archetypes or images (e.g., Donovan, 2011; Ghavami & Peplau, 2013; Goff, Thomas, & Jackson, 2008). For example, Donovan (2011) found that Black women, compared to White women, were stereotyped as stronger and more domineering, consistent with the sapphire archetype. Goff, Thomas, and Jackson (2008) found that Black women were perceived as less attractive than White women; Black women were perceived as more masculine, because of the strong association that people hold between “Blackness” and “maleness,” which is also consistent with the sapphire archetype. More specifically related to sexuality, Black American women continue to be stereotyped as promiscuous, hypersexual, sexually available, and as having “animalistic” sexuality, all of which have a long history connected to the sexualized exploitation of Black women during slavery and are consistent with the jezebel archetype (Collins, 2000; Davis, 1981; hooks, 1990; Thomas et al., 2004). Black American women also continue to be stereotyped as poor, uneducated, young, single mothers who sleep with and use men for money (“gold diggers”); they are stereotyped as purposefully having children to take advantage of public assistance programs, and as being unable to have the financial resources to adequately care for their children (Collins, 2000; Roberts, 2002). Participants spontaneously reported unique stereotypes about Black women being overweight, confident, assertive, promiscuous, not feminine, and aggressive, as well as having “big butts” (Ghavami & Peplau, 2013). Consistent with this studies hypotheses, it found that among a sample of undergraduates, a Black female target, regardless of pregnancy status, was perceived as having had sex with more people in the past month, less likely to use birth control regularly during sex, more likely to have children and to have been pregnant some time in the past, more likely to receive some form of public assistance, to have lower education, and to earn less income per year than a White female target. These effects support the studies hypotheses that there are negative stereotypes about Black women related to sexuality, motherhood, and socioeconomic status that are consistent with the historical images of the jezebel and welfare queen archetypes. One out of fifteen black women who are raped report their assault, and more statistics reveal other negatives.

1. Male Hypersexuality

Hypersexuality in this context of the article is not the diagnosable hypersexuality, though the concept of hypersexuality within infidelity and oversexualised narratives, etc., one example being a man with multiple wives, or the basic claim of men being ‘‘biologically more sexually driven, or more sexual in general, than women: that women are less sexual beings’’ and others of the sort.

This narrative, since the dawn of history (source in my post On The Female Body), has attempted to tell society that female sexuality is sinful, shameful, or unnatural, something grotesque, and that should be buried under the surface, not shown—while male sexuality, and, in most cases, hyper-sexuality, should be valued in family life and relationships more than anything else—some narratives even going as far to say that if you don’t let your partner watch pornography, it is the same as starving him, letting him live without food. This is treating watching women get abused (and jerking off to it) as a biological necessity, rather than an immoral act. That is one example, and I have also written an essay on this too (Pornography Is Evil), though there are many more. For male sexuality to be valued more than female sexuality, society must be going backwards; in order for proper reproduction to work, women should at least feel some pleasure, and for reproduction to be a major part of sex, why is the mans pleasure treated as more significant, more special, when the woman’s matters more? Female orgasm plays a role in sperm retention and increases the chances of conception, so even when reproducing, the mans orgasm is still valued more, and that is not because it is a necessity, that is because of women’s’ pleasure being undermined; evidence I have found supporting this being: the fact that, during sex not meant for reproduction, male pleasure is still treated as so much more important. During sexual activity, most men ask for oral, and around 60% of those men also make the woman gag during his receiving of oral. What is arousing from suffocating your partner? Nothing, essentially; though that is one piece of evidence contributing to my belief of why male sexuality is valued more than female sexuality, because men would never let a woman suffocate them with her genitals every time they had sex, no matter how much they joke about it, it wouldn’t be at the same rate, ever. Secondly, over 80% of women in heterosexual relationships do not orgasm during sex, and over 80% of heterosexual women cannot orgasm from penetration alone, yet men apparently cannot find the clit. Most of them actually can on a diagram and on the female body; this is just an attempt at justifying not letting their partner experience pleasure. This view is deeply embedded in many cultures and has shaped the way both men and women understand their sexual roles. However, this myth doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Studies have shown that while men may report having more sexual partners, this is often a result of socialisation, not an inherent biological drive. This myth also perpetuates the narrative that all sexuality is based on male desire; bisexual women are said to desire men much more than women, and that bisexual women are actually heterosexual, that their claim of bisexuality is a lie, while bisexual men are said to desire men more than women, and that bisexual men are actually homosexual; this rhetoric accentuates the problem, the problem that all sexuality is founded off of men, and that all sexuality innately centres men, it does not, no study confirms this, it is just spewed homophobia that may be internalised in the individuals that spew it. There is no study that concludes men are {biologically} more sexual than women, yet it always gets preached like it is a commandment in religious contexts; like how Christians preach the Bible commandments, or how Muslims preach Allah’s commandments, yet the truth lies in exactly that: religious commandments are not truth—they are not found in studies to be true, it is just a biased argument on morality or which or what should be done, or what is done. There is a lay assumption that men experience stable and high sexual desire, an attribute inherent to “maleness” (Regan & Berscheid, 1995). Women’s sexual desire, on the other hand, is thought to be more variable because it is more readily influenced by psychological and situational factors. For example, it is assumed that women’s desire may change from moment to moment depending on factors such as how desirable they feel, or how they feel about their relationship (Regan & Berscheid, 1995). This applies to how confident a woman is, and with societal pressure put on women to be Barbie dolls constantly, that is not too apparent, and with over 60% of heterosexual marriages ending in divorce, libido is decreasing there too. One of the most prominent theories of within-person changes in sexuality over time is erotic plasticity theory (Baumeister, 2000). According to erotic plasticity theory, women are more variable than men on three dimensions: sexual attitudes, sexual behaviour, and sexual desire. In developing the theory, Baumeister (2000) reviewed research on changes in women’s and men’s sexual expression over time, focusing on intra-individual change. The notion that men are naturally more promiscuous can be traced back to ancient times. Early human societies, particularly those in the West, were often patriarchal, with men holding more power and control. Men’s sexual freedom was seen as an extension of their power, while women’s sexuality was often viewed as something that needed to be controlled and protected. According to research by Dr. David Buss, a renowned evolutionary psychologist, both men and women have evolved to value sexual relationships differently, but not in a way that supports the myth of male promiscuity. Men may be more likely to seek multiple partners due to evolutionary pressures, but that does not mean they are “naturally” more promiscuous. Women, on the other hand, may be more selective about their sexual partners due to the greater biological investment involved in reproduction. The fact that pornography used to be consumed exclusively by men created the impression that males of the species are sexually hyper responsive. This encouraged speculation that women, by contrast, must be under responsive. Over several decades, researchers have dispelled this myth in various ways. During the 1970’s, swinging parties were fairly common in California and women evidently received a great deal more pleasure from these events than men. Women experienced more orgasms whereas men quickly got tired out, many women also engaged in sexual relations with other women, something that was unlikely in other contexts. Cultural conditioning, rather than inherent biological differences, may play a significant role in how sexual desire is expressed and perceived across genders. If male hypersexuality isn’t criticised, but upheld, rape crimes will go up. And they do; male sexual violence is bred by male entitlement. 1 in 4 women have been subjected to some form of sexual violence since the age of 16, 1 in 6 children have been sexually abused, 94% of survivors of rape, or attempted rape, are women, and 97-99% of rape victims are women, with 98% of rape perpetrators being men, and only 2% of rapists being convicted. If it wasn’t for misogyny being rampant, and young girls falling victim to misogynistic narratives, male hypersexuality wouldn’t be endorsed, it wouldn’t be believed that it is intrinsic, etc., though it would be criticised as it is now. From BDSM being romanticised in media, to rape victims not being believed, this is all the cause of the myth of male hypersexuality. Your partner hitting you during sexual intimacy is not normal, your partner, especially male, punching you during sexual intimacy is not normal, and your partner degrading you during sexual intimacy is not normal; he should not find these things arousing, and participating in these things, and defending them, is a form of choice feminism, and conflating female liberation with female abuse just to seem educated in the subject. BDSM is not natural, nor is it normal—it is actually a form of self-harm in women (predominantly) to let their partner hit them, or strangle them—it is strangulation, not choking. Choking is when something is down your throat and you attempt to cough it up, strangulation is the two hands around a womans neck seen in pornography, and the reality of it is that a woman who has suffered a non-fatal strangulation incident with their intimate partner is 750% more likely to be murdered by the same partner. A man who loves you would not strangle you, nor hit you, nor would be ask you to re-enact rape. The normalisation of women being abused during sexual intimacy is what reinforces this myth, and reinforces misogyny and the torture of women at the same second. It is not surprising that male hypersexuality is prioritised in a patriarchal society, or to suppress female desire and sexuality, or to support women’s abuse, yet it is surprising society has believed the myth of it being intrinsic for so long. With conservatism and right-wing politics on the rise, it does not surprise me that such things are still happening (In the United States, roughly 54% of adults between 16 and 74 years old lack proficiency in literacy, effectively reading below a sixth-grade level, according to the Literacy Gap Map. This translates to about 130 million Americans.) in accordance with these two things. Freud argued that young girls experience “penis envy” upon realising they do not possess a penis, which leads them to develop a sense of inferiority and sexual passivity. According to Freud, the female psyche is defined by lack—of power, of genitalia, of desire. This theory reduces female sexuality to a reactionary wound, not a subjectivity of its own. It constructs women not as beings with autonomous erotic will, but as fractured men—always missing something. As feminist theorists have noted, Freud didn’t describe female sexuality, he denied it. While Freud explained how some young girls come to realise they are oppressed, and automatically, inferior, and lesser than, less sexual, very well; it is inherently disingenuous, women are not tiny men, nor do they ‘‘envy penises’’, they envy superiority within society: perhaps not even superiority, perhaps they just want to not be inferior. Freud’s early work focused on hysteria, a now-debunked diagnosis applied overwhelmingly to women. The term derives from the Greek hystera, meaning womb, and was historically believed to stem from a “wandering uterus.” Freud recast this ancient superstition into psychoanalytic terms: hysteria became the physical manifestation of repressed sexual desire. This created a binary: women were either sexually dysfunctional (frigid) or pathologically oversexed (hysterical)—but in both cases, they required a man (doctor, husband, or analyst) to interpret or “cure” them. Female sexuality became a male problem to solve. Again, female sexual desire becomes something men can infiltrate automatically, offering, or rather forcing, their opinions inordinately. Freud posited that some men divide women into two categories: the Madonna (pure, to be respected) and the Whore (sexual, to be used). This internal split in male erotic perception has been used to pathologise female sexual agency. But what it really reveals is how patriarchy projects its anxieties onto women—blaming them for male discomfort with desire. Female sexuality is framed as grotesque, taboo, while male sexuality is upheld, complimented, desired with love instead of lust. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin introduced the concept of sexual selection, a form of evolution that arises not from survival pressures, but from mating choices. He argued that men evolved traits like strength, aggression, and competitiveness to win over passive, choosy females. This gave rise to a long-standing myth: men are naturally promiscuous, women naturally monogamous. Darwin himself wasn’t a misogynist in the vulgar sense, but his framework was interpreted through patriarchal lenses, especially by later Social Darwinists, who used it to justify male dominance and female submission as “natural law.” This again reinforces the narrative that men are intrinsically aggressive during sex, and that is a justification for the violence during sex, or the violence when rejected in sex-based dynamics or situations. Darwin viewed the female as a selector—she chooses which male traits continue—but in this view she is an instrument, not an agent. She exists to filter, not to initiate. The male performs, the female watches. Such assumptions reinforced Victorian gender roles and justified a lack of sexual autonomy for women. Darwin’s work, when twisted by his followers, became the basis for biological determinism: the belief that male aggression, territoriality, and high libido are evolutionary facts rather than social behaviours. It was used to naturalise sexual violence—men are just wired that way—while female desire was framed as deviant or dangerous when expressed outside narrow, reproductive contexts. Men are not inherently more sexual than women. The idea that men have a stronger or more frequent desire for multiple partners is a social myth rather than a biological fact. Research shows that both men and women are capable of desiring multiple partners and experiencing sexual desire at varying levels. Cultural expectations and socialisation heavily influence how men and women express their sexuality, often exaggerating differences that do not have a clear scientific basis. Ultimately, sexual desire is complex and individual, not determined by gender alone. Everything within this paragraph links back to biological essentialism, another silencing technique pushed upon women: gender roles are bred from biological essentialism, and they are the very thing that have held back women’s sexual desire (along with conservatism, anti-intellectualism in media, and, of course, right-wing political ideologies, and anti-feminist agendas).

2. ‘‘Testosterone Breeds Sexual Desire’’

Another point of mine is that the argument of testosterone being a primary driver of libido is an oversimplification of hormones and biology in relation to sexual desire, preaching that testosterone is a sole indicator of sexual desire also preaches that women are never aroused, or can barely be able to, again feeding into purity culture rhetoric; and this statement or ideology is no different to scientists or doctors claiming women are just ‘’little men’‘ or that they don’t need to conduct research on women’s’ bodies because they are the ‘’same as men’‘ with just few changes, in reality, that’s entirely false and disingenuous, a pseudoscientific lie, and again, rooted in misogynistic ideology. If testosterone were the sole indicator or cause of high sexual libido or sexual promiscuity, women wouldn’t become significantly more aroused across the globe while ovulating, because the hormone that experiences a large surge during the ovulationary phase is the luteinizing hormone (LH), otherwise, some other women experience heightened sexual desire in the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, while estrogen levels are high and rising, and the follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is also elevated. If testosterone were the main cause of hightened libido, this would not happen in women. Even in websites debunking this very myth, they use images of fully clothed women with a flower on top of it where a vagina would be, but for men, they often just have a penis on the screen; that is also inherently puritan: it may be a compliment, or something that tells us female sexuality is beautiful, but why, compared to men, are women clothed, with flowers on top of them?—why are the men fully naked and flaccid? This myth and the ideology surrounding it is essentially everywhere. Libido is influenced by a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. Hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone play a significant role, along with neurotransmitters such as dopamine; additionally, factors like stress, relationship issues, and even medications can affect libido. Just like how you can (supposedly) inherit fetishes from grandparents, you can also inherit your parents sex drive, testosterone is not the sole cause of high sexual libido, it never has been. During the fertile window, a woman’s body is briefly flooded not with androgens but with luteinising hormone and a crest of oestrogen; in longitudinal work that confirmed ovulation with urinary LH tests, sexual fantasies, masturbation, and self‑reported libido all rose in lock‑step with these non‑testosterone signals. When researchers give exogenous testosterone to men whose baseline levels are low, desire does simmer higher—but only modestly, and the effect evaporates into statistical noise once normal ranges are reached. A meta‑analysis of 17 placebo‑controlled trials found small, inconsistent changes in libido and none at all in overall satisfaction among eugonadal men. The masculine myth, therefore, is left standing on a narrow ledge: testosterone can rescue desire when it is pathologically absent, yet it is no sovereign monarch of lust. A Lancet meta‑analysis of 8,480 post‑menopausal participants showed that transdermal testosterone lifted facets of pleasure and responsiveness, but the effect size was modest and braided with oestrogen context; the authors cautioned that lipids, weight, and acne shifted alongside libido, an endocrine quid pro quo that disqualifies testosterone as a singular, innocent aphrodisiac. monash.edu Even endogenous androgens account for only a “moderate” share of variance in female desire, leaving vast provinces of erotic life governed by psychology, relational atmosphere, and neurotransmitters. Transgender medicine offers a natural experiment that severs testosterone from destiny. In a multicentre European cohort, transgender females experienced a brisk surge in sexual desire three months after beginning testosterone, yet by three years the curve drifted back to baseline; transgender males, whose serum testosterone was pharmacologically suppressed, saw desire dip briefly, then rebound to equal or exceed pre‑treatment levels. There are, moreover, bodies that cannot hear testosterone at all. People with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (46,XY karyotype, but receptors deaf to androgens) nonetheless report ordinary female psychosexual orientation and the capacity for orgasm. My conclusion being… testosterone is not the sole breeder of sexual desire or libido, environmental and sociocultural factors are. The claim that testosterone is the main, or only, cause of sexual desire is not only a lie, but an odd one, that cannot be backed by any source at all, whereas other lies, in most times, can with other disingenuous sources. In sum, the notion that testosterone is the primary or sole driver of sexual desire is a biologically reductive myth unsupported by the complexity of human endocrinology. While testosterone can play a role in libido for both men and women, it is only one factor among many. Female sexual desire, in particular, is influenced by a dynamic interplay of hormones—such as estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)—as well as by neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin, psychological context, emotional intimacy, and sociocultural conditioning. To claim testosterone as the key determinant of libido erases the lived sexual realities of women and reinforces gendered myths that depict female arousal as unnatural or secondary. This narrative not only upholds puritanical values but also justifies the neglect of women’s sexual health in medical research and public discourse. A scientifically accurate understanding of libido must acknowledge its multifactorial nature and resist the urge to distil desire down to a single hormone—especially when doing so serves ideological ends more than empirical truth.

3. Men are not naturally polygamous, despite being socialised into ‘‘needing multiple partners’’

Men are not naturally polygamous, neither is a woman, they are just promiscuous. There is no biological or scientific programming in a typical man or woman that inherently drives us to seek multiple sexual partners. The desire for ‘frequent sex’ does not equate to a desire for ‘multiple partners’. These are distinct concepts. It is entirely possible for an individual to have frequent sex with a single partner and be content. Conversely also, someone can have multiple sexual partners without engaging in frequent sexual activity with them. In other words, the desire for ‘frequent sex’ and the desire for ‘multiple partners’ are not synonymous. Advancements in DNA testing have demonstrated that women are also capable of having multiple sexual partners. This underscores the fact that the desire for multiple partners is not exclusive to men. Numerous scientific DNA cases have been documented where the presumed fathers of children were found not to be the biological fathers due to the women’s extramarital affairs. Therefore, anyone who claims men are naturally polygamous is either ignorant or trying to find a shallow justification to cheat. It is incorrect to claim that men have a higher propensity for multiple partners compared to women. It is proven that both genders are capable of engaging in such behaviour, and there is no evidence to suggest that men necessarily do it on a higher level than women. Unfortunately, this narrative has been perpetuated and reinforced over a long period of time, to the point where it is widely accepted as truth. Also, polygamy is a religious construct. It is almost as though God ‘endorses’ it. It is not debatable that certain religions, particularly the major ones- Islam and Christianity- explicitly or implicitly endorse polygamy. For example, in Islam, men are permitted to marry up to four wives, and in Christianity, the Bible does not explicitly condemn polygamy except for Bishops, who are instructed to have only one wife. The existence of these religious doctrines allows men to feel justified in having multiple partners, and it also contributes to the perception of men as polygamous. Moreover, some highly respected patriarchs within these religions had multiple partners, further reinforcing this perception. The increasing ‘monetisation’ of intimate and sexual activities can contribute to men engaging in multiple relationships. Society is evolving, and economic hardships have pushed individuals to view wealth as a means to acquire multiple partners. Many women, particularly in recent times, have commodified their bodies by enhancing their physical appearance through artificial means and cosmetics, in order to appear more attractive to men (my post On The Female Body speaks about this). Consequently, it becomes easier for men with wealth to “purchase” the attention of women, thereby perpetuating the perception of men as polygamous. It is important to note that this practice is not a recent development. In the past, individuals such as kings, warriors, farmers with large flocks and land, among others, could afford to support multiple wives, and this historical context has contributed to the belief that men are naturally polygamous. The average man inherently has a bloated ego, and polygamy serves as one outlet for men to display and feed their egos. This notion stems from the idea that the average man often desires to “conquer” or assert dominance, and one way they may seek to achieve this is by pursuing and ‘conquering’ multiple women. Within this framework, obtaining more women can be perceived as a form of conquest, reinforcing their sense of strength and power. In this perspective, the act of having multiple partners becomes intertwined with notions of virility, attractiveness, and social status. It becomes a means for men to validate their masculinity and assert their desirability within their social circles. By accumulating a greater number of partners, men can potentially enhance their perceived social standing and reaffirm their self-worth. They are pathetic, and they are immoral. From the Bible days to now, every recorded polygamous relationship came out the indiscipline of the man. Men who are not able to control their sexual desires and discipline themselves often end up in polygamous relationships. The decision to engage in polygamy can be seen as a manifestation of this lack of self-discipline, as it involves pursuing multiple partners despite one’s commitment to monogamy. In such cases, the individual’s inability to control their desires leads them to seek gratification through multiple relationships, disregarding the potential consequences on themselves and others involved. Women may not find themselves with multiple partners because they are seen to be morally stronger, and generally disciplined than men, especially when it comes to sexual activities. That is why it shocks society, and makes news headlines, when a woman is ‘caught’ engaging in multiple relationships. In sum, the claim that men are inherently polygamous lacks credible support from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, or psychology. While human mating behaviours are diverse and influenced by a complex interplay of environmental, cultural, and individual factors, there is no conclusive evidence that men are biologically hardwired for multiple sexual partners any more than women are. What persists instead is a deeply entrenched cultural narrative—reinforced by religious doctrine, economic hierarchies, and gendered socialisation—that excuses male infidelity as natural while pathologising or punishing similar behaviour in women. This is not biology; it is a socially manufactured double standard masquerading as scientific truth. The conflation of libido with moral licence has allowed generations of men to justify betrayal under the guise of inevitability, while women are shamed into silence or celibacy. Dismantling the myth of innate male polygamy requires not just better science, but a cultural reckoning with the ideologies that have long distorted it.

4. The Shame Surrounding Female Sexuality

Shame surrounding female sexuality is a pervasive and deeply rooted issue that often stifles women’s exploration, and expression, of their sexual desire. Cultural, societal, and religious influences, along with gender inequality, contribute to the development of this shame. Despite these findings, the myth that men are naturally more promiscuous persists. This is partly because of how men and women are socialised. Men and boys are told, very often, that their sexual desires are natural, non-shameful, that they need to be affirmed to and accepted, and in some cases: their desires turn into rape, sexual violence, and abuse, and then, consequently, they are left without their punishment of doing so—that is because of this very myth. Women and girls are told, very often, that they must be quiet about their sexual desires, to not speak of their periods, to never share that they are ovulating because that means they are ‘teasing’ other males, or that they must remain covered, because, otherwise, they are still teasing other males. This gendered socialisation reinforces the idea that men are naturally more promiscuous, even when there is no biological basis for this belief; there is no scientific consensus that supports this claim or narrative, yet we treat it as such more than we do otherwise, it even persists in the words ‘’slut’‘ or ‘’whore’‘ or the phrase ‘’ran through’‘ or, especially, ‘’loose’‘. Women are often shamed for having sex, and told they are now worn out or loose so the women stop having sex; they are shamed for feeling pleasure, and told a filthy lie so they keep quiet about it, so they don’t let themselves feel said pleasure anymore, and even virgin women are scared of sexual intimacy or sexual pleasure on her own in fear of becoming ‘’too loose’‘ and ‘’not being able to please her male partner’‘, men do not experience this myth. Men do not get told their dicks run down into tiny nubs, so much they won’t be able to please a woman, and there are two reasons for that. One being, men don’t suffer from the same prudish narrative that women do, and two: men aren’t socialised to value women’s’ pleasure, so they wouldn’t care for that. However, women and girls are socialised to value male pleasure, perhaps more than they are socialised to value their own pleasure. This narrative creates an unhealthy society surrounding sex, and it feeds into purity culture—I assume you know how bad that is, if not, it’s on my other articles somewhere. Men are often taught to view their sexual experiences as a marker of their masculinity, while women are often taught to view their sexuality as something to be guarded and controlled. Take pornography for example, what are the main titles; the titles that get the most views? Slut gets owned, bitch gets pounded, lesbian turned straight, etc., and again, female homosexuality is fetishised, and female pain is also fetishised, leaving us with what? Oh yes, only the two mainstream choices, get into sex work while simultaneously supporting and upholding the sex work industry, or become a woman who preaches purity and upholds misogyny, they never discuss the other option: the option of being none of these things, but instead, educated on the subject. In 1857 the gynaecologist William Acton declared: “The majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.” Besides the fact he is a male gynaecologist; this shows, even further, how female sexuality is condemned to unnecessary fate under a society that praises male hypersexuality: it shuts down women’s desire completely, even if you’re in professional contexts. The Theatre of Hysteria (late 19th-century) sexualised women in a strange way, while also judging female sexuality in the same brief moment: Women diagnosed with “hysteria” were exhibited before crowds of male doctors, students, and artists. These “hysterics” were often hypnotised and photographed mid-seizure or contorted in states of ecstasy, pain, or passivity. Their suffering was aestheticised, sexualised, and dissected—all without their subjectivity. It was a performance, and the audience was entirely male. Look at: Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière (1876–80) — photos of “hysterical” women mid-seizure, often semi-dressed or weeping, or, artists like André Brouillet, who painted “A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière,” showing Charcot surrounded by men, demonstrating on a fainting woman. Charcot referred to these women as “living symbols of medical knowledge.” His protégé, Freud, would inherit the metaphor, internalising woman’s desire as symptomatic, a code to be interpreted, and subsequently, lied upon. In 19th-century British and American ideology, women were placed in a rigid binary: the “angel in the house” versus the “fallen woman.” The former was pure, chaste, domestic, self-sacrificing. The latter had lost her virtue (whether through premarital sex, rape, or even rumour, etc.) and was seen as irredeemable. “Fallen” women were often portrayed as dying young, alone, or repenting in poverty. They were both condemned and fetishised: eroticised for their downfall, then punished for it. This binary was used to control women’s sexual behaviour. It also underpins the logic of slut-shaming today: a woman who exercises sexual agency falls out of grace, loses her value, and becomes morally expendable. In conclusion, the myth of males being biologically hypersexual harms not only women, but everyone; it is a perversely misogynistic narrative that spreads like wildfire, and it is barely ever put out. Women’s rape being scrutinised, instead of the woman’s rapist, will continue to happen under the disguise of men being more innately sexual than women, and so will every other narrative I have spoke about in this essay, along with others I haven’t. None of the claims I criticise in this are backed up with fact-checked studies, or scientific reviews, they have no basis apart from blatant sexism and oppression-based rhetoric, because sexism will never have logic, every insult from a man that is misogynistic is most likely a confession: the same goes for this. In conclusion, the shame surrounding female sexuality is not a product of biology, but of centuries of patriarchal conditioning, religious moralism, and gendered socialisation. There is no scientific basis for the claim that women are inherently less sexual or more ‘modest’ than men—these are cultural scripts, not biological facts. Research in endocrinology, neuroscience, and psychology consistently demonstrates that women possess complex, multifaceted sexualities influenced by hormonal fluctuations, psychological states, and social context. However, these realities are continually overwritten by reductive, moralistic narratives that reward male desire and punish female agency. The enduring stigma against female pleasure—manifest in language, media, and even medical practice—reinforces purity culture and undermines women’s health, autonomy, and subjectivity. Challenging these norms is not a matter of personal rebellion, but of scientific literacy and cultural responsibility. Until we dismantle the ideological scaffolding that frames female sexuality as shameful, we will continue to perpetuate a society that silences women under the guise of biology.

5. Christianity Being Part Of The Foundation

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{Verses} shaming female sexuality:

One: After Judah pays Tamar for her services, he is told that she “played the harlot” and “is with child by whoredom.” When Judah hears this, he says, “Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.” - Female sexuality preached as something worth being burnt alive for; more extreme and radical purity culture enticed upon society.

Two: If you “entice” an “unmarried maid” to “lie” with you, then you must marry her, unless the father refuses to give her to you, in which case you must pay him the going price for virgins. - The going price for virgins, like women are stock, without an independent will or independent desires, not humans. Misogyny. (22:16)

Three: “Their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.” God always blames the women; it is they who “go a whoring” and then “make” the men “go a whoring.” - Another form of slut-shaming vocabulary, and in my opinion, deeply problematic terminology (as women have faced such terminology for years, thousands of years even), which both intertwine with purity culture, etc., and are harmful and wholly unbeneficial: just hateful. (34:16)

(There is more to each one of these, though these are only some examples)

{Verses} Supporting male polygamy {or hypersexuality}:

One: Esau “takes” two wives. (26:34) - Objectification-like terminology

Two: Esau, who already had two wives (26:34), “takes” another. (28:9) - Objectification-like terminology

Three: Lamech is the first of a long line of biblical men with more than one wife. (4:19, 23) - Infidelity treated as superiority.

Four: Leah, not to be outdone, gives Jacob her maid (Zilpah) “to wife.” And Zilpah “bare Jacob a son.” (30:9)

Five: God’s instructions for taking a second wife. (21:10)

Six: Jacob has two wives and two concubines, continuing the biblical tradition of polygamy. (32:22)

Seven: Esau (Isaac’s son) had several wives (continuing the tradition of polygamy, with no editorial comment from the Bible). (36:2, 6)

Eight: “Reuben went and lay with his father’s concubine.”

(There is more to each one of these, though these are only some examples)

{Verses} Misogyny as it’s own subject:

One: “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. ... Thy husband ... shall rule over thee.” God punishes Eve, and all women after her, with the pains of childbirth and subjection to men. (3:16)

Two: Adam is also punished, although less severely. He now will have to work for a living because he “hearkened unto the voice” of his wife. (3:17)

Three: Finally, sometime in the next 800 years, Adam begat some daughters. These nameless ones are the first (and nearly the last) girls to be born in the Bible. (5:4)

Four: “The male and his female ...” Notice that in the Bible female animals are the property of male animals, as women are the property of men. (7:2)

Five: God gets angry with king Abimelech, though the king hasn’t even touched Sarah. He says to the king, “Behold, thou art but a dead man,” and threatens to kill him and all of his people. To compensate for the crime he never committed, Abimelech gives Abraham sheep, oxen, slaves, silver, and land. Finally, after Abraham “prayed unto God,” God lifts his punishment to Abimelech, “for the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah.” (20:3-18)

Six: God “closed all the wombs” because Abimelech believed Abe’s lie. (20:18)

Seven: “She was barren.” In the Bible it’s always the women that are “barren”, never the men. And when God “opens their womb,” the resulting babies are always little boys. (25:21-26)

Eight: “Give me children or else I die.” Rachel considers herself worthless if she cannot produce children for her husband. But luckily she has an idea. She says to Jacob, “Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her.” She solved the problem the same way as did Sarah (16:2). “And Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son.” (These arrangements rarely produce daughters.) (30:1-4)

Nine: Dinah’s brothers, to justify the massacre of a town for the rape of their sister, say: “Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot?” To the author of Genesis, rape is a crime against the honor of men rather than against a woman. (34:31)

Ten: Rachel dies in childbirth; but at least she had another son. And in the Bible, a woman is expected to die happily as long as she has a son. (35:17-18)

Eleven: After Judah pays Tamar for her services, he is told that she “played the harlot” and “is with child by whoredom.” When Judah hears this, he says, “Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.” (x2 used)

Twelve: How to sell your daughter , and what to do if she fails to please her new master. (21:7-8)

Thirteen: Three times a year God wants to see all of the males. The females he never wants to see. (23:17)

Fourteen: When a king sins only the best sacrifice will do, he must offer a male goat to God. But if a commoner sins, a female will do. (4:22-28)

Fifteen: “She shall be unclean.” Women are dirty and sinful after childbirth, so God prescribes rituals for their purification. (And baby girls make them twice as sinful and dirty as baby boys do.) (12:1-5)

Sixteen: “If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days ... And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days.”

Seventeen: If a boy is born, the mother is unclean for 7 days and must be purified for 33 days. (12:2, 4)

Eighteen: “But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks ... and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.” If a girl is born, the mother is unclean for 14 days and be purified for 66 days. This is because, in the eyes of God, girls are twice as dirty as boys. (12:5)

Nineteen: “She shall bring a lamb ... for a burnt offering, and... a young pigeon, or dove, for a sin offering.” After a woman gives birth, a priest must kill a lamb, pigeon, or dove as a sin offering. (12:6)

Twenty: “She shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood.” (12:7)

Twenty-one: “If she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons ... and she shall be clean.” (12:8)

Twenty-two: “The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.” (15:18)

Twenty-three: God’s law for menstruating women: they are unclean and sinful. Anything that they touch is unclean. Anyone who touches anything that they touch is unclean. Stay completely away from them. (15:19-30, 33)

Twenty-four: “If a woman have an issue, and her issue... be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.” (15:19)

Twenty-five: “And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.” (15:20)

Twenty-six: “And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.” (15:21)

Twenty-seven: “Whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall ... be unclean until the even.” (15:22)

Twenty-eight: “And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even.” (15:23)

Twenty-nine: “If any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean.” (15:24)

Thirty: A man who has sex with a menstruating woman “shall be unclean seven days.” (15:24)

Thirty-one: “If a woman have an issue of her blood ... she shall be unclean.” (15:25)

“Every bed whereon she lieth ... and whatsoever she sitteth upon shall be unclean.” (15:26)

Thirty-two: “Whosoever toucheth those things shall be unclean.” (15:27)

Thirty-three: “But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean.” Women are unclean while menstruating and for seven days after bleeding has stopped. (15:28)

(There is more to each one of these, though these are only some examples)

The biblical texts foundational to Christianity present a pervasive framework that systematically undermines female sexuality, enshrines patriarchal control, and normalises male polygamy under religious sanction. Through repeated shaming of women’s sexual agency, the imposition of purity culture, and the depiction of women as property or vessels of sin and impurity, these scriptures embed misogyny deeply into religious and cultural consciousness. Concurrently, male hypersexuality and polygamy are not merely tolerated but institutionally legitimised, creating a double standard that valorises male sexual dominance while punishing female desire and autonomy. This dual dynamic fosters societal structures where women’s bodies and choices are controlled, policed, and devalued, perpetuating gendered inequality. To understand the enduring impact of these narratives is to confront how religious doctrines have shaped( and continue to shape) cultural norms that restrict female sexuality and maintain patriarchal power.

Men are not biologically more sexual than women; that is misogynistic propaganda set out to shame women’s sexuality, and to suppress female desire.

The female human thus attempts to escape this oppression; she is given the opportunity around the 18th century to free herself from boring literature, thus she reaches to romance as romance is thinly veiled abuse within that time for most female humans. Then, consequently, the romance genre sells to women excessively, though what happens afterward? That genre becomes a plague, the male humans (bourgeoisie) berate the female humans (proletariat) and the genre (the subtle freedom) while under capitalism and patriarchy. Thus, what else does the female human have left other than to attempt to find romance in that system? The female human begins to read bourgeoisie (rich oppressor) man and proletariat (poor oppressed) woman romance. In this new system the female human has created, the oppression turns into love, in this system of romance, the proletariat becomes the bourgeoisie (and vice versa) and thus the woman is free and in love—she now has comfort and freedom. The genre rises in popularity after say a hundred years for an entirely different reason: the proletariat has romanticised the cage she is tied to, the bourgeoisie is now the one with the lock: the one who contains the bird, yet the bird has developed Stockholm Syndrome. The bird begins to love the bourgeoisie system, the bird says and believes that the system (male, oppressive, bourgeoisie human) will provide for her; that the system will provide the money she needs, the food she needs, the love she needs—the system will provide everything. But the key is not provided. The female human claims that political traditionality is the natural system, that the female human belongs to the oppressed sexclass and the oppressed working class, and thus that the male humans (who are not feminine nor gay) belong to the bourgeoisie class and the oppressor sexclass: that woman is in modern terms the conservative woman. That woman is the main writer of these romances, yet the target audience is the opposite from her; and that is not the bourgeoisie male, but rather the proletariat woman who is still in the cage. From endorsing the conservatism, the previous bird is let free, yet she is bound by a rope instead of inside of a cage; in terms which are more simple, the conservative woman is still as oppressed as the leftist woman, yet she endorses the oppression.

Now the proletariat male is in the same group as the proletariat female: their main link being femininity, innnate and not innate—the proletariat male suffers oppression of some degree,however a lesser degree to the female, because of this femininity, yet the system oppressing him is the system that created the concept of femininity. From this, we understand now that the system holds every being who has innate or created femininity to a strange cage, though the conservative feminine human, she belongs on a leash. Thus with this oppression, women begin to, metaphorically perhaps, develop this Stockholm-Syndrome-like psychological romanticism toward the system oppressing them, and the thought process is a simple one: if I am bound to a cage, I will imagine this cage to be prettier.

One of the misogynistic rumours spread about Amber was that she lied about the abuse & rape she suffered from Johnny Depp to gain his wealth. Among the unsealed documents was a letter from Amber's divorce attorney commending her for being true to her word that she wasn't after Depp's money. The letter debunked the narrative that Amber was merely a gold digger out for his wealth, as it revealed she turned down her right to half the profits he made during the year they were married. Depp filmed Pirates of the Caribbean 5 during that year, and under California law, she was entitled to half of the earnings from that film regardless of any other circumstances, such as accusations of abuse. A forensic accountant for Amber's attorney estimated that she was potentially turning down over $20 million dollars by declining this right. Instead, Amber settled for $7 million, and she pledged all of it to charity. The judge excluded the letter, stating that the issue of the divorce wasn't relevant. The judge did however allow the issue of Amber not donating the full $7 million which came from the divorce to be scrutinised, despite the fact that she had been paying in installments up until Depp sued her in 2019. Depp knew this, as his attorney sent a check from his account on Amber's behalf on the day the divorce was finalised.  Amber was even ahead of the outlined payment schedule. After the lawsuit in the UK, in which Amber was a witness, and the lawsuit against her specifically in Virginia, she put the payments on hold because of the legal expenses she was incurring at that time. However, according to the ACLU, Amber made her last payment in December 2018, and she was still on the donor roll for the Children's Hospital Los Angeles in 2017 and 2018. It's worth noting that Depp's continued litigation against her cost her millions of dollars. In the unsealed medical notes from her therapist, Bonnie Jacobs, she confessed that she thought Depp was trying to intentionally bankrupt her as punishment. The image below is a letter from Amber’s divorce attorney.

Amber Heard is one of the biggest victims of online misogynistic hate speech; she never claimed to never fight Johnny Depp back in response to the rape & abuse, she did fight back. A woman will never be the perfect victim, and Amber could have killed Depp: she still would have been abused & raped by him. Self defence doesn’t diminish the cause of the need to defend. Mutual abuse does not exist, it never will, and it never has. “The burden of proof was easier for him there, The Sun had to actually prove that it was true. And the court found there — and we weren’t allowed to tell the jury this — but the court found that Mr. Depp had committed at least 12 acts of domestic violence, including sexual violence against Amber. So what did Depp’s team learn from this? Demonize Amber and suppress the evidence. We had an enormous amount of evidence that was suppressed in this case that was in the UK case. In the UK case when it came in, Amber won and Mr. Depp lost.” Among the evidence suppressed were “very significant” medical records which showed “a pattern going all the way back to 2012 of Amber reporting this to her therapist”, Ms Bredehoft said. The attorney also said that jurors had been influenced by the “lopsided” social media frenzy around the case, which skewed dramatically in Johnny Depp’s favour.

This is an unsent Email Amber wrote to Johnny. - This email talks about the rape and burn threats Johnny Depp texted to his friend Paul Bettany.

Part 2 - Depp admitted in the UK trial that he sent the burn and rape texts out of anger that Amber was insisting he give up drugs and drinking.

Amber is hiding multiple bruises in photos.

Johnny Depp had forcefully inserted a wine bottle inside of Amber, he had raped her this way, and while Amber retold this rape for the Court, she was ridiculed and berated for crying. I will never forgive the world for being this inhumane toward her, and neither should you. There was photo evidence of blood on white bed sheets from her scalp, where he had pulled her by the hair to force her onto the bed, and other blood from the rape.

Dostoevsky, well-known author, who sometimes gets passed off as pretentious himself, wrote this in such perfect tone, though it’s such a ramble, and I think it’s one of a lot of people’s favourite short stories. I think Dostoevsky, in himself, is a great writer, and I wish he had written more, as even after reading every single one of his works, I still yearn for more, sometimes it’s something a little girl could read, and other times it’s complex, though they all have beautiful meaning, and I think that is what makes him so great.

'It was a wonderful night, the kind of night, dear reader, which is only possible when we are young. The sky was so starry, it was such a bright sky that looking at it you could not help but ask yourself: is it really possible for bad-tempered and capricious people to live under such a sky?' - The Dreamer often speaks of the sky, as it does so in the title too, and he often speaks of how it looks, it's beauty, the descriptions make it seem like reality, perhaps it brings back memories of when somebody else looked up at the sky and felt the same dysphoric melancholy the Dreamer did, I think it's beautiful. I think the Dreamer attempts to seek solace in the sky, sometimes with loneliness, the world feels like you're stuck in it's core, all numb and squished, trapped, the mind has wonderful ways, delusional ways at that, to make things that aren't beautiful at the time look so beautiful. I do not think the sky was beautiful, I think the sky was barren, lifeless, a figment of the Dreamers imagination, and his brain had tried to transform that lifelessness into something that did have life, a very odd obfuscation, but well.

'He’s even noticed me and shows a cordial concern for me. Should it happen that I’m not at the same place on the Fontanka at a certain hour, I’m positive that he would be crestfallen.' - It seems to me that the speaker in White Nights has utmost delusion, perhaps about how strongly he feels due to the all consuming loneliness he's experiencing, but perhaps it just is; either way, his delusions of people who, most likely, haven't given much thought to him, and where he thinks other wisely the opposite, I think it shows what loneliness can do to a person. God, it is bad, it's horrible, a sickening, deafening feeling, though you can cope if you put your mind to it–or if your mind puts you to it. I admire the fast ramblings and delusions in the first few passages of this story, it's realistic and raw and earthly, always familiar. I think due to the loneliness that the Dreamer holds in his heart, he mistakes common acquaintances with deep care, devotion almost. It’s not clear in the book whether it is actually delusion, or just a softer name for hope, the kind that grows like mold in empty spaces, that desperate magic that transforms coincidence into companionship, but they intertwine a lot.

'I also have houses that are my acquaintances. As I walk, it’s as if each one I come to runs out into the street in front of me, looks out at me with its windows wide open and almost says: ‘Hello, how do you do? And I, thank God, am well, but in May they’re going to add a floor to me.’ - The knowing of what the houses on the street are going to look like almost makes me think he sought out information to keep himself busy, though ofcourse he's free, and he can walk anytime he likes, and do anything he wants, a lot of lonely people don't do this, it's shattering, boring, numbing. I think the Dreamer needs to seek out information, not because of his wanting of company, even with bricks and things without a soul or thought process, but because of how it sometimes keeps people occupied. When you're lonely, you either drown in it, and end up clawing your way up, salt water fills your lungs and it's hard to breathe, almost unbearable, for a while, until you can breathe again, or you indulge in delusion while you're already drowning, your hands tied down like strings on a puppet, you're not able to claw your way back up. People live and breathe to feel comfort, love, bravery, compassion, romance, people live and breathe as they are to find happiness, without companionship or happiness, you really are just a puppet with strings. Even if you're alone, and you love it–I'll admit I love it wholeheartedly actually, I love being alone so much I sometimes wish to be alone forever–it almost always grabs you, pulls you down under the ocean, ties it's knots around your throat, it either kills you, or you live. You have so much to say, but you don't know how to breathe, the book is a living painting, trembling on the edge of a dream, but how long does it take for us to wake up? Humans, in their natural state, when do we learn to breathe on our own? Not with our lungs, but with solidarity, we take our first breath at the first disgustingly numbing feeling of depression or melancholy or a state of absent mind, and we think we'll suffocate if we do it again. I almost think the houses, and their despair with the reinforcements forced upon them, and how the Dreamer hears the houses, that it is not delusion there, maybe before, though at those points, his mind seems to be projecting the feeling of not being in control onto inanimate objects, the Dreamer feels still, unable to move, like this loneliness is being forced upon him, he has to cope by imagining different scenarios in which he can find comfort in this feeling. The city becomes a whispering companion, buildings blooming into voices where none remain. He doesn’t walk through Petersburg so much as he haunts it. Perhaps he is more ghost than man, and perhaps the houses—like the dead—recognise their own. The Dreamer’s ache isn’t for intimacy but for absolution. He wants to be loved not for who he is, but for how much he hurts. His pain is not a bridge to another, but a mirror in which he demands to be admired. And isn’t this a kind of violence too, a soft one, one that asks women to bleed in empathy until they disappear? He does not simply walk the streets of Petersburg; though he slips between its vertebrae. Each building is a vertebral disc in the spine of a city that, like him, groans under the pressure of time and silence in his blanket of comfort. The streetlamps twitch like dying neurons. The bridges sigh like lungs. The city becomes a mausoleum of unmet glances. Loneliness.

'And with bewilderment I examined my green, sooty walls, and the ceiling from which hung a cobweb that Matryona had been cultivating with such resounding success;' - I know all the uh, anti-deep analysis English students won't like me for saying this, though I do also believe the cobwebs in his home, despite the fact it's green, and that's ugly enough, show that his home is also decaying, lonely, solitary. Anyone with a comfortable home doesn't have many cobwebs, especially in places where it can be cleaned, even the seven dwarfs would clean a cobweb so obvious.

From seeing a young woman crying, to then calling her his, 'not far from my unknown girl,' he immediately recognises the one person he wants to speak to as his property almost. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said to my unknown girl, ‘and he won’t dare bother us anymore.’ Us, my girl; hes establishing the situation as something together with just the first words he's spoken to her, and again, claiming her as property. 'delighted that my girl,' 'to say that I am perishing all alone, so that she wouldn’t drive me away, that I don’t have the means to get to know any woman; to suggest to her that a woman is duty-bound not to spurn the timid entreaty of such an unfortunate man as I,' the Dreamer seems to not just want to form a bond and relationship with women, but rather to, in some form, manipulate them into feeling bad for him, and to then in turn stay with him. From the point of me reading this now, it seems that he does have capability of loving truly, though I don't know if he knows how to. 'I’m a dreamer; I have so little real life that I regard such moments as this one, now, to be so rare that I can’t help repeating these moments in my dreams. I will dream of you all night, for an entire week, all year long.' Like a delicate fever-dream caught between worlds, White Nights conjures a universe where pain blooms like flowers in the dark. Beauty, like a wound, festers in his being, in how he lives and sees the world, echoes haunt the hollow cathedral of the chest 'it seemed to me that you were crying, and I couldn’t bear to hear it… it made my heart ache.' Through the language of decay, White Nights strips existence down to its trembling core. I am far too complex to be bound by the simplistic layers of my flesh, all humans are, loneliness fills up the labyrinth and crumbles it until you're free again. Isn’t this how loneliness, when starved long enough, begins to believe it’s owed something? That a woman’s kindness is a contract? That because he has suffered, she must stay? The Dreamer’s longing is so delicate it almost seems pure, until you realise it’s not love he’s seeking, but devotion. He does not fall in love with her, not truly anyway. I think he falls in love with the echo of his own yearning reflected in her eyes. He falls in love with the version of himself who might be loved by her. The Dreamer turns people into vessels. She is not a woman—she is a mirror. Dostoevsky essentially writes men as ruins and women as lamps to light them, and for the story, it is perfect. He understands suffering, yet even he cannot always see when that suffering curdles into demand, his beauty is sharp.

Maybe humans don't want to wake up from binding dreams, we want to stay warm and comforted, free in our childhood bedrooms, I wish I never drowned. I couldn't breathe for years. I was stuck at the bottom of the ocean floor, cold and unfeeling, it trapped me, waiting for my final breath, the most I could do was talk, though I never talked with my mouth, I was only able to write, and write, and write, and I kept writing until, in the end, I burnt out, and I finally collapsed onto the jellyfish waiting for me to fall, just so they could sting me. I waited, and I prayed, I'd say I would've actually, though I'm not religious, and I'd say I'm a deistic animist, that I believe fate had lead me there so young, though fate had left me a long time before. The Dreamer projects life onto the sky, enraptured in its beauty, the stars that shine like sea glass after thunder, because nobody is there for him to project life onto anymore; no human or soul or being close enough is there for life to shine and bring radiance to the world, everyone is gone, they've left, sailed down the same waters we have on little boats and left. Perhaps the sky was only bright because he was not—perhaps the stars didn’t glisten, but he needed something to sparkle, even if it was only in his mind. We often grant the universe what we cannot find in ourselves. I have written more than I have lived. I have felt more in imagined love than in real arms. And perhaps that is what loneliness really is—not absence, but the surplus of a heart with nowhere to go.

"I am a dreamer; I have so little of real life." - I wholeheartedly believe this, much more, proves my point of how fabrication of the world around him destroys, though slowly; the story is rich with development, in some forms, confessional. He slips this phrase in the story like just another line, he is someone who has replaced the world with something softer, something mutable, something under his control. By this, the story seems to function by itself through his dreams and delusions. There is development in the story, yes, but it’s not the kind of development we find in real life. It is a dream’s development—erratic, symbolic, more concerned with emotional climax than cause-and-effect. The Dreamer does not exist within a reality, but rather overwrites it, projecting his emotional needs onto whatever surface can hold them—be it the city, a stranger, or the fragile figure of Nastenka. And the projection works, Nastenka is mostly hated by the whole entirety of White Night’s readers just for not reciprocating a half-incel mans love.

“Why is it that we so keenly and so jealously cherish even the most foolish of our dreams?” - The world becomes a bottomless pit for hopeless romantics, and for dreamers too, it’s exceptionally inescapable, for dreamers, they’re stuck in a labyrinth. They’re going to find the end goal of their dream, and its floating in a bubble above the clouds, they inch to grab it, and the maze changes, again, again, again, again, until they finally get lost enough to sit and wait to be sheltered by it. The Dreamer asks this question almost defensively, as though he knows his attachment to delusion is embarrassing, but he cannot escape it. It seems he’s the one trapped under the water, his throat full of salt. This line touches on shame, on longing, on the desire to hold onto something even when you know it’s killing you psychologically, and Dostoevsky always brings in psychological lines, that’s why he’s so popular. "My nights came to an end as usual, lonely, and melancholy, and I would return home with a heavy heart." - Even with his delusion, the company of houses, and their vibrant colours, warm personalities, his dream is never ending, it’s never going to be fulfilled, it’s never going to stop. Loneliness becomes a rhythm—familiar, predictable, even beloved in its sorrow. This is the kind of loneliness that becomes so constant, so unchanging, that to be touched by another feels like violence.

Petersburg in White Nights breathes, it gazes, it speaks, the city is a companion, a mirror, a phantom echoing the Dreamer’s inner world. His loneliness does not bloom in a vacuum; it curls and expands into the very streets he walks, and the buildings he greets, the bridges he haunts like a melancholic spectre. The buildings getting damaged may be his delusion believing he’s spreading this state—the condition of the human mind. The city becomes anthropomorphic, responsive: he converses with the houses, he believes they know him, that they anticipate his passing like old friends. It’s essentially a vision of urban intimacy that borders on delusion, great delusion, yet it also speaks to the aching human desire for recognition, for presence in the world. The Dreamer cannot find true companionship in people, so he constructs it from walls and lamplight. The Fontanka, the crooked alleys, the gaslit streets—they all become participants in his solitude, each a quiet witness to the life he is not quite living. Petersburg is more alive in his imagination than any human figure, including Nastenka; the city listens when she cannot, a replacement for his unbearable loneliness. And it too is painted in contradictions, beautiful and barren, illuminated and empty. This city, in his hands, becomes a dreamscape, a haunted architecture where memory and hope fuse into myth. I think the Dreamer does not walk through it so much as dissolve into it, his spirit absorbed into its fog and frost, his dream becoming reality, almost rapidly, he belongs more to it than to himself. In this way, the city becomes not only a character, but a metaphor for the Dreamer himself—his stillness, his yearning, his decay. Like him, it is dressed in façades and full of stories no one stops to hear. The loneliness he feels is not just inside him—it has built itself into every stone, and he knows it.

''I want to be omniscient — I want to know everything. I want to be a scholar of the world’s philosophy. I want to know the names of all the birds and flowers and the trees and the fishes and the animals and the reptiles. I want to know where all the words came from. I want to be able to recognise any painting, any piece of music, instantly. I want to learn languages and I want to read everything. I want to know everything and I am afraid that I will die before I have learned enough. And yet there is not enough time. I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.'' — Sylvia Plath, I fear I relate to this quote more than I should, and I recite it and write it more than I should, and I feel it relates to the Dreamer, and inevitably me, more than it should. Like Plath, the Dreamer wants to feel everything, know everything. But the tragedy is that the world is too slow, too stupid, too physical. The dreamer and the poet share this same grief: that their minds are too vast for the cages of their bodies and the bondage that is their flesh. Dostoevsky said that we do not need to search for happiness, or love, or wealth, or health, but rather find meaning in our suffering; and that is when we will be content. Is to be loved to be seen like branches change throughout the seasons? When in summer they bloom and flourish, though in winter fog the leaves snap off their skeletons and leave sharp endings behind them? Is to be loved to bloom, shine, and thrive—only to break off from your core again?

What do we really, truly, honestly, want?

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1To right-wing men, women are private property in the sense of how they desire women to be confined to the walls of their home, barefoot and pregnant with multiple children while the husband works and contributes nothing but money (which will most likely not provide, and almost never does, enough for her, him, and the children (which she is almost always forced to have continuously—a form of abuse within homes, domestic abuse specifically, to keep a woman pregnant without breaks long enough to heal psychologically and physically.) To left-wing men, women are public property in the sense of how they desire women to be open to everyone, they desire women to be sex-workers, they preach sex-work is empowerment, and they desire women to be open to men’s, often deranged and abusive, sexual fantasies forced upon them, for women to be in public ready to be fucked and degraded while they preach like it were a Bible commandment how empowering it is; they want women to be free, open, liberated, to be abused in pornography, or in almost half of the cases, raped, and uploaded, under the disguise of liberation.

Pornography wouldn’t exist if misogyny didn’t too; this is in the sense of how pornography, in every form, even if '‘safe’’, is evil and misogynistic. Let’s build a hypothetical scenario of pornography, in the future or now, hypothetically, being non-violent, no rape occurs, no abuse occurs, every actor is above 25 and every actor is safe and consenting, and the pornography shows women experiencing real pleasure. Some may think that would be the ideal for pornography; but that is still misogynistic; no matter what you do in the name of pornography, selling women’s bodies online as a form of erotic entertainment is misogynistic and still perpetuates the narrative of how women can supposedly be bought and coerced by money into sexual acts. Even if that hypothetical happened, it would still apply to what I have just stated—it would still be misogynistic. Now let’s focus on pornography currently, how it rampantly perpetuates disgusting ideologies and rhetoric. Pornography teaches young boys and girls (Many children are first exposed to pornography at a very young age. A significant minority of children access pornography at very young ages: 10% had seen it by age nine, 27% had seen it by age 11 and 50% of children had seen it by age 132) that women, and girls, can be bought as long as it’s uploaded, that women, and girls, can be coerced into sex with money (a form of coercion, it is rape if the women—and men—are coerced with money no matter if they consent to it) and for that to be safe, that women enjoy being choked, slapped, spat on, degraded, and abused, and that all of these behaviours are perfectly acceptable and erotic. It teaches young boys especially that forcing your dick down a woman’s throat to the point of suffocation is okay, and that her throwing up is perfectly fine and it’s erotic. (A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that adolescents who had visited sexually explicit websites were more likely to report multiple sexual partners, substance use during sexual encounters, and higher sexual permissiveness scores compared to those who had not been exposed.3) This creates a rising culture of misogyny and abuse toward women. Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895—The Protection of Children Act 1978 (and its subsequent amendments) makes it illegal to take, permit to be taken, make, distribute, show, have in one's possession, publish or cause to be published any indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child (defined as someone under the age of 18 years old). It took 103 years to ban children in pornography. 103 years worth of children were being abused and shown to people worldwide.

If you watch pornography, or know someone who does, they are supporting the abuse of women—no matter if you watch ‘safe’ or ‘non-violent’’ pornography, you are still supporting it by watching it. All you need on major pornography sites to upload a video is an email, not an age verification, and some of these videos you see are either underage children or revenge porn uploaded by ex-partners to get revenge on their ex-partners—no consent is involved with either of these. By watching pornography, you engage with, and support, and uphold, violent and misogynistic cultures, such ones specifically being purity culture, rape culture, and hookup culture. Purity culture condemns women to be sexually active, neglecting them of their own bodily autonomy and degrading any women who doesn’t conform to the violent culture; in some purity cultures, women are mutilated in order to stop them from experiencing pleasure or love—on wedding nights, there is blood on the sheets and they glamorise it; romanticise it. In the west, some cultures that are aligned with purity culture cut off women’s clitoris’ to stop them from experiencing pleasure that is not penetration, (bare in bind over 80% of women cannot orgasm from penetration alone) and they, in some cases, sew shut women’s vaginal canals, disrupting the natural menstrual bodily function, which can lead to infections spreading, and in some cases, death—all for a woman to remain ‘pure’ in their eyes. It is not just misogyny—it is torture; oppression, woman-hating cultures infiltrate this. In rape culture, rape victims are shamed for getting raped, in some corners of it women get killed for getting raped, saying it makes her impure and not to marry or fall in love with her, condemning victims for a chance for real love after experiencing the most unjustifiable crime on the planet. They shame victims if they come out, they tell women they are lying and that they just want to ruin the rapists life, they want to take money, or they had sex and regret it. And the truth is, false allegations of false allegations are so much more common than actual false allegations. Only 2% of rape cases are false allegations, and only 2% of real rapists get convicted—while false allegations are disgusting, horrible, abhorrent acts, we need, and men need especially, to focus on real victims of rape more than we do of false allegations. Men preach that women are liars, gold-diggers (for gold that isn’t there), and condemn them for speaking out against their rape, yet when a man is raped, they congratulate him instead of comforting him, but when a man speaks out about a rape, does he face false allegations as much as a woman would on the internet of committing a false allegation? From my years of research, he does not. In hookup culture, women with trauma weaponize sex and become victims, they often self-harm to try and ‘‘heal’’ themselves with sex, and they often get raped themselves for being so vulnerable. Those are the three cultures, for women to be free, all of them need abolishing, but with pornography around, they never will.

Women bleach their skin in order to fit the white-centric, misogynistic, and racist beauty standards, they bleach their vulva in order for it to be ‘‘pink’’ like a child’s would, they shave excessively, putting themselves at risk of infections, chronic infections too, in order to conform to patriarchal beauty standards in erotic video, they wax, which harms the skin barrier, to fit it, they shave every day, every 2 days, every 3 days, they don’t care as long as they’re like a prepubescent child, or in their words—a dolphin. Women get labiaplasty so they don’t look ‘‘loose’’ or ‘‘worn out’’ or so it doesn’t look like ‘‘roast beef’’. They are terrified of sex in fear their vaginas will be judged if they aren’t silk smooth, pink, pristine, and like a child sexually. The beauty standards for women’s genitalia (which is bizarre, that there are beauty standards for genitalia) are the picturesque of a childs’; it is pedophilic, misogynistic, and in some cases, abusive and degrading. Women take vitamins and put soap inside of their vaginas so they don’t smell ‘‘fishy’’ (while over 80% of women worldwide will have atleast one infection in their genitalia throughout their lifetime), which then causes them to actually get such an infection. Women are often shamed for smelling ‘‘fishy’’, despite the main reason being the fact that their male partners give them the infections due to not being clean. Men preach how they want girls and women with ‘‘daddy issues’’ or mental illness as if mens systematic failure to take accountability for not beign there as fathers, and their systematic failure to even be fathers, correlates to sex; it doesn’t—but what it does correlate to if women’s fear of men, women’s fear of abandonment. Women’s pain is romanticised. Think of a woman’s breakdown in film, it’s most likely her crying, but just right, not too much emotion on the face like Fiona Gallagher, because that isn’t pretty—she has to be perfectly beautiful even while grieving or having a breakdown or self-harming because if a woman’s pain is not beautiful, it’s not worthy to notice at all. A woman cannot get loose, but pornography plays the part in that misogynistic narrative. Around 30-50% of women refrain from engaging in sexual activity in fear that she will get ‘‘loose’’ and won’t be able to please her partner—in most cases, that partner is jerking off to other women behind a screen, some of these women being raped, and he doesn’t even know it. Women are forced to degrade themselves so men are pleased, so men are able to masturbate to it, so men are fulfilled in their deranged sexual fantasies. But when does it stop? It hasn’t now. 200 years pornography has been around, it isn’t gone yet.

A 2022 survey found that 60% of U.S. men who watched pornography in the past 24 hours reported feeling lonely and isolated, compared to 38% of non-viewers. Additionally, 78% of these viewers expressed dissatisfaction with their physical appearance.4 Pornography addiction has been linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. The compulsive nature of consumption can lead to feelings of shame and isolation, exacerbating mental health issues.5 Viewing pornography has been associated with increased aggression and unethical behaviour. A study published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that participants who recalled watching pornography were more likely to engage in unethical behaviour, such as lying and shirking work, due to increased dehumanisation of others.6 The normalisation of sexual violence in pornography has been linked to increased acceptance of rape myths and greater tolerance of violence toward women. This desensitisation can contribute to the sexual subordination of women and the perpetuation of gender-based violence.7 Numerous studies have shown just how dangerous prostitution is: a majority of women selling sex have experienced severe and repeated violence, with more than two-thirds suffering from PTSD at levels comparable to war veterans. Women in pornography have higher rates of PTSD than soldiers, and people still defend pornography.8 The U.S. Department of State's 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report highlighted cases where traffickers posed as modeling or acting agencies, coercing individuals into pornography through fraudulent contracts and threats.9 Former performers have reported being coerced into sex acts they never agreed to, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol. One former performer testified that women are lured in, coerced, and forced to do sex acts they never agreed to, and given drugs and alcohol to help get through hardcore scenes.10

A 2025 study revealed this:

84% had PTSD. 
65% were raped during filming. 
69% had attempted suicide. 
77% were exploited in porn as children. 
88% were subjected to sexual assault as children. 
96% were subjected to assault/abuse as children. 
51% had been choked during production. 
33% had been tortured during production. 
45% had some form of disability. 
86% had been part of "traditional" prostitution.

Choice feminists and left-wing men may defend sex work, and pornography adamantly, but being in denial of a fact doesn’t make the fact a lie. And money from sex-work is not enough to defend it; it does not matter if the money solved world hunger if it just puts more women than the starving people in poverty too. One study found that 50% of female performers reported living in poverty, leading some to spend their earnings quickly on substances. It is not enough, and the substances? They’re on drugs while recording, those women are being raped and uploaded onto the internet. If you wish to sit there and defend or watch pornography, you are supporting and defending the torture of women worldwide. You are no better than the person seeking out clips of women being abused outside of pornography, you are no better a person if you defend abuse (‘‘kink’’) in sexual dynamics than the person who strangles and beats women outside of sexual dynamics, you’ve just fallen into the choice-feminist hole. Right-wing men hate pornography, not because they don’t want women to not be abused, but because they want women to be pure. Left-wing men love pornography because, even though they’re abused, they’re ‘‘wow uplifted!’’ Feminists hate pornography because it’s abuse.