niqabisinparis:

i noticed this thing with a lot of men. they tend to be really generous and kind only to women they’re attracted to. duh, obvious statement to most of you but it’s jarring when you see it first hand and it’s so prevalent and insidious to the point that it feels uncomfortable accepting help from a strange without thinking of the possibility of him having ulterior motives. and it’s disheartening knowing that if you’re in a position needing a man’s help, a lot of times it will depend entirely on whether or not he’s attracted to you. and the problem is that they think this goes both ways. i can show a simple gesture of kindness and a man will take it as me coming on to him. me letting you go in front of me on the checkout line because you have one item, me offering change because you don’t have any, or anything other well-intentioned act of kindness results in a man trying to eventually make a move thinking that it’s mutual. how sad it must be to think that there’s no kindness for the sake of kindness. that all good done in this world is based on sexual impulses instead of the desire to help another human being just how you like to be helped. 

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

Perhaps one reason why it takes some people a long time to realize that they’re not straight is because conventional beauty standards about what is “hot” and “not hot” just don’t always resonate with them.

You could show me an image of the Sexiest Woman in the World as voted by all straight cis dudes in the world and I might think she’s pretty. I guess. Maybe if I got to know her as a person, I would see the appeal… but she’s not really doing it for me right now.

If you’re not attracted to this walking talking Aphrodite, this ideal of a woman, you must not be attracted to girls, right?

Anyway, maybe eventually you realize that your tastes just don’t match up to conventions – at least not heterosexual conventions. Maybe traits that general, straight society maligns as “ugly” are actually really appealing to you. 

Or maybe it’s as simple as realizing you’ve just… never actually been the intended target of a narrative of attraction. Commercialized sexuality hasn’t been created with you in mind – or if it has, it’s meant to cater to straight people at the same time. 

philtatos:

“There’s a second interesting tidbit in all that “lesbians are more likely to be fat” business. As it turns out, queer girls (lesbians AND bisexuals) are ALSO more likely to NOT THINK they’re fat, even when their BMI puts them in one of the “overweight” categories. On the flip side, straight girls are more likely to think of themselves as fat even when they’re not. That’s right, “overweight” queer ladies tend to be less critical of their bodies than straight women. Researchers want to call this a problem of self-perception, but I have a different theory. It could be, perhaps, that queer girl culture doesn’t suffer the incessant, unreasonable pressure of the male gaze in the same way that straight girl culture does. After all, if you don’t have to concern yourself with attracting men as romantic partners, it’s considerable more reasonable to not give a fuck about their photoshopped-magazine-and-mainstream-pornography-fueled beauty standards, and you might be less likely to internalize that garbage. A dig through some psychology journals show that I’m not making this up. One study showed that lesbians tended to rate the attractiveness of bigger women higher than straight women did. A later study showed that women who felt a strong connection to the lesbian community scored better in personal body image and had fewer indications of depression.”

— Lesbian Obesity Study Misses the Point: We Don’t Care If We’re Fat | Mari Brighe for Autostraddle  (via gaywrites)