• “Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.”

    Richard Wright

  • I’ve seen a few posts going around with advice on how to persuade a guy to use a condom if he doesn’t want to, or saying things like “if the choice is a condom or no sex, he’ll pick the sex”. Well, I’m here to tell you all that if a guy is that indifferent towards your physical safety and comfort, you should absolutely not have sex with him at all. I’m tired of always being asked to cajole and wheedle men into treating women decently. I don’t want advice that tells me that if I don’t want to have sex with a guy, I should try to bargain him down to a less invasive sex act. I don’t want advice that tells me I need to find ways to deal with men who don’t care. I want advice that tells me how to say no to these kinds of guys, because no matter how much you beg and negotiate, they’ll still be trash. I should have my boundaries respected. 

  • Would like to point out; some guys actually stealthily take off the condom, so saying “Condom or no sex he’ll pick sex” means jack shit.

    If a man refuses to respect your boundaries, head for the door.

  • Arguing with you about wearing a condom needs to be an absolute deal breaker, because if he’s going to argue with you about violating this boundary, he’s going to argue with you about violating other boundaries. Those arguments, and violations, are never going to stop. Ever.

    And this doesn’t just apply to sex in relationships, it also applies to any form of  casual sex including one night stands. If he doesn’t care about your comfort, safety, and boundaries to the point of arguing about whether or not to wear a condom, he doesn’t care about your comfort or pleasure, meaning it’s almost guaranteed that it’s going to be very bad and uncomfortable sex. It’s also very likely that if his respect for your boundaries is that low that he puts up a fight to use a condom he will try to violate other boundaries during sex and not listen when you say you don’t want to do something, for example how many men don’t listen when a woman says she doesn’t want or like anal and will go ahead and try to stick their finger or penis in the anus anyway (which is sexual assault btw, if you don’t consent to a sex act and he does it anyway even if you’re consenting to a different sex act, it’s assault) If a guy ever starts arguing about putting on a condom, it’s a red flag about how much he respects your boundaries, get up and leave.

  • “Harmange’s “hatred” of men amounts to distrust based on personal experience and statistical probability. And the statistics are damning indeed. In 2017 in France, of death threats against partners, 90% were made by men. Of murders committed by a partner or ex-partner, 86% were committed by men. Of the few women who killed their partner, 69% of them were themselves victims of domestic violence (by men). 96% of all domestic violence convictions were men, and 99% of sexual violence convictions were men.

    The statistics are much the same in the U.S. 99% of offenders arrested for rape in the U.S. are male. This doesn’t mean that women can’t commit sexual assault or that men can’t be victims of it, but it does mean that rape and assault are, by a massive margin, predominantly male activities. 

    The smaller-scale stuff adds up too. “There is nothing more tedious than to see a man being covered in plaudits that are completely disproportional to the miniscule effort he makes,” writes Harmange, “while women continue to be subject to impossible standards that mean they’re always the ones to lose out. We have to stop praising men for such pathetically trivial things as leaving work early to pick up their kid from school.” 

    Where is the lie? 

    When will the standards be higher? When will we stop making excuses for men? When will it stop being meme-funny that a man can’t find that thing in the pantry that’s right in front of his face, or that a man took a midday snooze while his wife who got up three times with the baby last night entertains the kids in a bone-tired stupor, or that a father’s packing list for vacation has four things on it while the mother’s has 82 because she alone is responsible for the children’s needs? 

    None of these are funny. They’re all examples of men being shitheads and society normalizing it by acting like it’s funny.”

    This is what I’ve been trying to say. When women say they hate men, they mean they’re tired of the constant rape, abuse, harassment, and femicide that happens both to themselves and other women around them. When women hate men, they mean they’re tired of the violence and subjugation and want men to stop it or at least leave them alone. When men hate women, they mean they hate women who aren’t being sexy and subservient enough. When men hate women, they rape, abuse, assault, and murder women. Misandry and misogyny are not comparable at all.

    I’m so tired of seeing self declared feminists and leftists all over this site and twitter saying women who hate men are just as evil and violent and bad as men who hate women and that misandry is as equally bad as misogyny. These same people will balk at or mock the idea of reverse racism, or heterophobia, or cisphobia, because they realize hatred for your violent oppressor is in fact not comparable to the hatred of the oppressed class. I’m tired of internet leftists dismissing sexism / misogyny as a “lesser” or even “not real” or “not serious” form of oppression. I’m so fucking sick of it. Women are being violently assaulted, mutilated, and murdered by men every fucking day. Women are justified in their feelings of rage, hatred, and distrust. If you think misandry is equivalent to misogyny, or that sexism is a “lesser” form of oppression, then you’re a clown and can fuck right off.

  • “i hate men” is not about bioessentialism anymore than “i hate white people is” btw. And misandry is no more real than reverse racism. If you can get it in one oppressive system you can get it in another.

  • Marry your best friend. I do not say that lightly. Really, truly find the strongest, happiest friendship in the person you fall in love with. Someone who speaks highly of you. Someone you can laugh with. The kind of laughs that make your belly ache, and your nose snort. The embarrassing, earnest, healing kind of laughs. Life is too short not to love someone who lets you be a fool with them. Make sure they are somebody who lets you cry, too. Despair will come. Find someone that you want to be there with you through those times. Most importantly, marry the one that makes passion, love, and madness combine and course through you. A love that will never dilute - even when the waters get deep, and dark.

  • The Power of the Right Question


    #CourtesansandQueenswithNina #SocialSkills


    Courtesans, geisha, and queens who stayed in their feminine were master conversationalists and students of human nature who knew how to fascinate and put others at ease through their speech.


    Josephine was known for being someone who smoothed things over for Napoleon with her amazing social skills. She was gracious, a good listener, always remembering the details of what someone shared.


    In his book How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie advised us to "ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering."


    A research team at Harvard tested this advice and confirmed his wisdom: asking questions, when the right kind, can indeed strengthen connections!


    A few notes from their research below adapted from the book Social Chemistry:


    🥀 The researchers investigated the relationship between the number of questions that someone asked and how much they were liked by their conversational partner


    🥀 "In one study, four hundred participants were recruited to have a fifteen-minute online chat in the researchers' behavioral lab. After pairing participants, one person in the duo was randomly assigned to ask either no more than four questions or at least nine questions... People who randomly received many questions liked their partners roughly 9 percent more than people who were on the receiving end of only a few questions."


    🥀 The researchers then examined question-asking among 110 speed daters outside of the lap, with microphones capturing the conversations. "Again, they found that people who asked more questions were more likely to make a connection with a stranger. More questions were associated with a higher likelihood of getting a second date."


    🥀 But of course, not all questions were equal. Researchers considered six different kinds of questions: introductory questions, full switches, partial switches, follow-ups, mirrors, and rhetorical questions.


    🥀 "An example of an introductory question is the perfunctory 'How are you?'"


    🥀 "Full switches and partial switches change the topic. For instance, [someone] is telling you about her job as an accountant and you interject to ask her about her hobbies. That is a full switch."


    🥀 "Follow-up questions ask about something your collocutor was just discussing. "


    🥀 "A mirroring question is similar in content to the question just asked of you but now turned toward the questioner. If someone asks you how many kids you have and you respond, 'I have three kids. How about you?' you've asked a mirroring question. Mirroring questions differ from follow-up questions because they are preceded by a question rather than a statement."


    🥀 Follow-up questions were the most powerful form of question!


    🥀 People tend to talk about and try to sell themselves in conversations. This is particularly true in new social situations like job interviews, first dates, meeting someone new in a party. But by trying to 'sell' ourselves, we can sell themselves short!


    🥀 "Questions, and particularly follow-up questions, help establish rapport through their focus on the other and by evoking self-disclosure. Conversational behaviors that are other-focused -- saying their name, matching their language style, affirming their statements -- have all been shown to increase liking."

    Credit Maria Al Massani

  • ❤️ The value of the educated, smart, and strategic woman…


    In a recent post, I commented that no matter what bubble gum femininity coaches say, women who marry into the elite are smart, strategic, and educated.


    So let me dive into that.


    Bubble gum femininity argues that…


    😠 In order to find an active, successful, and strong man, you have to be passive, confused, and certainly not goal-oriented.


    😠 Smart, successful women intimidate successful men.


    😠 You cannot possibly be good at something, driven, and successful at that thing, whether that’s being a business women running her online company or an expert in a field, unless you want to attract a loser.


    To sun up, you have to be a loser to attract a successful (alpha!) man.


    Ha!


    So that got me thinking. In my former #womentolearnfrom series, we saw how it was the super smart and strategic women that made a difference and married their matches.


    Cleopatra and Livia Drusilla, both of whom were renowned for their strategic minds and ability to use soft power to exercise political influence, seduced the three most prominent figures in ancient history, Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, and Emperor Augustus, through their ability to support them on the way to power and use their wits to consolidate that power.


    I’m doing extensive research about the rise of the Medici family for my dissertation. Guess what I found in an old letter?


    ✍️ The patriarch of the family, Cosimo de’ Medici, praised his son’s wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for “being the only man in the family” when she stepped up at a time when both her husband and father in law were beset with gout. So he valued her not just because she provided their children with the best tutors and best education, but also because she could hold up the front when crises occurred.


    (Side note: if you read her letters to the male members of the family, she gives her opinion very, very subtly; then, she always concludes with “I trust you know best” or something along those lines).


    Later, Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was known for his deep interest in philosophy, literature, politics, and poetry, didn’t even bother seduce his wife; he deemed her intellectually lacking. Even though she had all the resources available, she didn’t try to learn and challenge herself with new models of thought, which made her boring in her husband’s eyes. So he kept a mistress who read philosophy and allowed him to grow as an intellectual.


    Well, if at a time when women typically had no rights per pe, but these ladies were valued for their strategic mind and intelligence, how can one say that 21st century women should not be smart, well-read, strategic, etc?


    Because if we were to look at women we aspire to be like — Amal Clooney, Melania Trump, Queen Letizia — it won’t take us long to discover they are extremely Street smart and strategic. Most are very well educated, too, even if that means being self-taught.


    Meanwhile, stunning models who marry up but don’t invest into inner work and education, have a hard time staying married. Think about Kendra Spears.


    So bubble gum girls are worst off. Then, the ones who marry well but don’t know how to develop themselves. And, finally, there are the Cleopatra types.


    Now, there are some movies who illustrate that. Of course, there are historical exaggerations and all, but I guarantee they will give you food for thought when it comes to feminine intelligence.


    Look for the smart, strategic women who is the actual femme fatale of these films.


    🎥 Domina, 2021

    🎥 Dangerous Beauty, 1998

    🎥 Casino Royale, 2006

    🎥 La Riffa, 1991

    🎥 Cleopatra, 1963


    I hope you enjoy!


    P.S. please share your thoughts. Do you think intelligent women are that intimidating or are the the biggest turn-on there is — for partners and friends alike?

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