I’ll be downvoted for this but fuck it. I’m reacting to the post about vaginal/vulva odors.
I’m sorry but simply stating that OP “might be gay” is pure toxic masculinity.
As someone who also struggles with that and has heard this talk in real life, be aware that it’s neither funny nor intelligent. If you’re personally comfortable with these odors, then you’re lucky, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re straight either.
It’s also the kind of talk you hear when someone has a non-stereotypically male interest, and God knows how much trauma it created for billions of boys around the world.
Just stop it. Whether on Reddit or in real life, stop it. Plus, it reveals an archaic and simplistic vision of sexuality and sexual preferences in general.
Struggling with vaginal/vulva odors is (obviously!) multifactorial, and ranges from hypersensitivity to a different psychological approach to the female sexual organ.
If you have nothing else intelligent to add to this nuanced complexity, then STFU.
Respectfully.
Comments
It’s hard to understand from my own perspective. I love the smell of a woman and the touch of a woman and the smell of a vagina is VERY attractive to me personally.
That being said though not every human is built the same. I would happily eat a vagina after a sweaty gym session. Some people who are more hyper sensitive to smells will struggle. I believe there is products you can buy though that are safe for skin and smell nice down there.
The toxic masculinity is a problem.
It’s the internet. Don’t take everything so seriously. That was clearly a joke.
Your point that it’s Reddit is exactly the point. It’s the internet and I think you’re taking it too seriously.
Making a post being offended by another post seems pretty gay.
Yikes. Complaining about comments on another post seems awfully gay.
Recognizing comedic inference versus toxic masculinity should be an actual litmus test. The fact remains that discussing women’s physiology is uncomfortable for some, so a little comedic humor lightens the load for those of us who can provide real answers without offending men, women, trans, or non-binary folks. Lighten up.
Because you have serious expectations and expect the whole world to have them too. Plus, that is a medical question that should be entertained by a doctor, find the right audience
Because we’re on a social media site. So no matter what, the majority of people are going to comment with whatever they think will get attention and engagement, rather than with actual opinions or anything helpful. People put about as much thought into the comments here as the people who fake-applaud when a restaurant server drops a plate. Just banal shit to get a predictable reaction.
Congratulations! You’ve won the most pompous post on Reddit award, very well done.
“be aware that it’s neither funny nor intelligent”, okay da.
The last time 95% of the people who post on this sub interacted with a vagina they were being pushed out of it into the hands of a doctor.
You can safely ignore them.
This is the gayest post I have ever seen on the internet
But in that thread, and many other, you could get a niuanced and constructive advice or opinion.
AND you could also get the less contructive. This, Jenn, is the Internet.
And it is still the BETTER part of Internet, as amount of negative, destructive comments on social media is times higher.
Some of you are online too much
I found that joke funny. Take it as it is, as a joke. Why does it bother u that much? I find that weird, sounds like ur just a unpleasant person to be around not every thing has to be 100 percent serious
The idea that anyone in the various askmen subreddits knows the first thing about female reproductive anatomy is preposterous
Some of it is people who don’t know how to joke while punching up.
Some of it is people who have no answers but don’t know how to be quiet.
Some of it is straight up bullying.
But most aren’t worth it, and like anywhere else on the internet, it’s your responsibility to filter out the garbage and find what’s useful to you. For your original question, a sex based subreddit is probably a more informed positive place to ask it, because at the common flair on this sub states, “we’re all virgins”
YUP the responses are so predictable to threads like that every single time. Grow the fuck up, people.
I mean, why don’t you ask yourself why you aren’t evaluating the nuances within this topic?
Is it that it is difficult to ‘get’ a nuanced opinion or that the contexts where you seek opinions make them less likely to be nuanced? We cannot always express opinions fully and comprehensively, particularly in a place like Reddit.
Sometimes the nuance is such that we even lack the words to express the truth exactly, and so have to settle for less nuanced language. So much of education is just learning the words to express that which we can already observe.
I find if you want nuance, you need long form content that has a specific focus of some kind to hold it all together. Books, documentaries, sometimes YouTube videos.
Looking for nuance on Reddit or Facebook is like looking for water in a dessert. Possible, but much easier if you look for more fertile pastures.
> I’m sorry but simply stating that OP “might be gay” is pure toxic masculinity.
I think it was just a joke.
Well it’s only logical to atleast consider the gayness. It should be on the table at least don’t you agree?
A bit sensitive are we?
If you don’t like the smell they make flavored lubes that smell/taste like candy/fruit.
I enjoy the smell of a maintained clam and still use those to change the flavor profile like an experienced sommelier.
Mmmm, noice!
It’s because of one or all of these reasons:
It’s really sweet of you to be protective of your boyfriend like this OP
This reminds me of a thread way back when (10-15 years ago?) on a body builder forum I stumbled across. A guy was asking about the smell he noticed from his female work-out buddy’s crotch when he spotted her or something. Every single response was “stop working out with your mother.”
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Take a look at this post you made.
You claim it is “toxic masculinity” without explaining how. You throw it out there like an unthinking buzz word.
You claim it is not funny but humour is subjective. You are placing your preferences in humour above others.
You assert that this behaviour causes mass harm but give no evidence that such harm exists or how this one comment contributes to such harm.
Your whole post seems to be coloured by your past trauma and lacks a logical structure.
I find it unreasonable to expect such carefully structured posts and comments from all people at all times. Sometimes it is just fine to declare “fake and gay”.
I realized a long time ago that people suck. Once i understood that, i stopped expecting anything from the human race.
I just went to that post and it had a lot of really good and constructive comments. The top comment was one about them being gay but after I scrolled past that I saw a bunch of helpful comments offering various advice.
So my personal advice to you, focus on what you’d prefer to see and ignore what you don’t like seeing. If it’s not harming anyone (and it was pretty obviously a joke from what I can tell), then why does it matter? Let people have their fun, life is too serious as it is.
Also I gotta say it. Calling that “toxic masculinity” is kinda toxic behavior from you. Let Men be Men!! And I don’t mean (let Men be jerks and insult others), I mean if it’s obviously a joke then let them joke. Yes some jokes go a bit too far, if it crosses your boundaries then let them know and decide what to do after that. Or just block them on everything, whatever idc but leave them alone to their own jokes.
Toughen up. Dear Lord this is so whiney
Issa joke, my guy. Besides, there’s a formula to reddit. Top comment is usually a silly joke, and the second top is an actual answer.
There were plenty of helpful responses under that post.
I didn’t catch that post, but seeing as people have the right to post their opinions or comments, even if they are sometimes unintelligent, I don’t see how you getting offended gives you any right to tell anybody to STFU.
Just downvote the post and move on…
Maybe the weirdest post I’ve ever seen.
Just stop eating so much sugar and cheese op.
We’re all dying a little inside so humor makes the day easier.
Not easier for the poster, but easier for us.
AAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Because the internet is idiotic and you’re faced with a binary upvote/downvote system here which removes nuance and encourages simplistic claptrap.
The problem with the internet is that the vast majority of mature/intelligent/rational people just tend to nod and be silent.
Inb4 I get a reply that me writing this comment instead of being silent means I am none of those things. I know Internet-Fu.
And regarding that smell, I’m sure it’s just one of those things that way more people agree with but just don’t talk about. People enjoy different smells and fish-tacos comes with all kinds of recipes and seasonings.
I love natural smells. Some are stronger and different. Usually, it’s diet and health related.
Some people like sterile smells. Some people don’t.
Sometimes I have trouble ignoring people’s opinions on the internet .
You’re right that it’s way more complex than people make it out to be. These kinds of topics deserve actual nuanced discussion instead of just defaulting to tired stereotypes
Its an acquired taste… I bet my dick tastes just as bad.
Its like eating healthy food. I’d much rather be eating a big greasy cheese burger, but I get more out of a salad in the long run.
Because some people want to watch the world burn.
If you’re looking for intellect, reddit is not the place..
Some men like stank pussy in their face..Makes them real men.
I think you’re expecting too much from randos on the Internet. Unfortunately social media pushes people to have opinions on things they have no business having opinions on. If you don’t want half-baked opinions, don’t ask your question publically. Bring it up with a therapist or friends.
Back in the good old days people DID STFU about most things because they had no platform the semi-anonymously broadcast on.
I think part of what makes AskMen great compared to subs like AskWomen is we don’t take things TOO seriously.
Gay.
I can tell a lot of people that come here don’t have a lot of male interaction in real life
Put a serious tag on it if you don’t want joke answers. Until then, accept that you’re paying nothing for any “advice” you get from the internet and you get what you pay for.
Nuanced and constructive opinions and feminist opinions don’t have a 100% overlap, so we just use the shittiest Occam’s razor to shred out anything outside the overlap
Is it though?
One of my gay friends is actively grossed out by vulvas. He tried dating and having sex with women before he came out and had a really hard time when it came to sex w/ women.
If anything, getting butthurt about it may be more toxic masculinity than anything. In a non-toxic masculine space, where being non cis het is accepted without judgement, suggesting someone might be gay because they don’t like pussy seems pretty straightforward and totally fine to me.
Maybe I’m missing some nuance though.
I don’t see what’s so problematic about it as a legit answer. The biological factors triggering that repulsion may in fact be tied to a person’s sexual preferences. There are studies done with worn and sweaty t-shirts that largely confirm my point. I take greater offense to your keyboard-warrioring your offense to such a statement.
Some people are neither nuanced nor constructive.
And they get a lot of upvotes, because they’re funny as hell.
Not a man? But one big reason it’s hard to get nuanced and constructive opinions from people is because nuance is, by and large, punished. Either ignored as “TL;DR” or false dichotomied to death.
So you’re a woman who came here to try to shame men into behaving how you want them to about something they weren’t even involved in?
Am I understanding this correctly? You came here to tell us not to say anything about pussy odor?
There are a lot of people in the original post and here that are ragging on you, but I want to say that I hear you and I see the point you are getting at.
I can relate to what you’re saying because this is something I used to get pretty annoyed by too. Speaking for myself, my perspective on this shifted once I eventually realized that as a large publicly-accessible social media site, everyone posting on Reddit is coming to it from a unique place and for for their own reason.
For some people, it’s a fun time-wasting app on their phone that they’re looking at memes on and overall not taking too seriously. For others, it’s a specific forum to go in depth about a hobby. And for other still, it’s an environment to get opinions from the wide range of other people who use this site. And I’m willing to bet that for a lot of people, it’s all three of these and more just at different times.
While it’s great (arguably, but that’s besides the point) that there’s a little something for everyone, the downside of that too is that with Reddit in particular it’s a lot harder to curate your experience and tailor it to exactly what you want to get out of it. For every 1 insightful comment that you want, you might get significantly more that are trolls, ChatGPT bots, low-hanging jokes, and the Internet equivalent of Road Rage. Why? Because frankly those are way less-effort to produce, not everyone is coming to Reddit to engage in nuanced discussion, and that’s simply the culture this site has cultivated.
The other point I want to emphasize here is that none of these approaches are necessarily wrong in and of themselves (with a few specific exceptions, but again that’s besides the point). Someone spending 5 seconds to post a song lyric in a comment chain in a meme subreddit is using this site just as validly as someone asking an actual serious question. (It bugs me too a slight bit, but that’s just like my opinion man. A personal taste preference. Who among us doesn’t enjoy some memery every now and again?)
I want to affirm that you are totally valid for asking an actual serious question, and even moreso in being frustrated that people aren’t taking you seriously. That is completely a legitimate experience. And honestly yeah, I do agree that the “might be gay” responses do reinforce aspects of toxic masculinity. In the context of this and your other thread, I think many commenters do mean it as a quick and harmless low-hanging fruit sort of joke that don’t need to be taken too seriously. But the thing is, it can be a nonserious joke and propagate aspects of toxic masculinity at the same time. There probably isn’t a whole lot of overlap between the people making these easy jokes and the people wanting to engage in nuanced discussions over the Internet because they’re just not engaging with Reddit for the same purpose. (And let me be clear, toxic masculinity is bad, and these jokes do reinforce it, but I do also wonder if this most effective forum and approach for having these sorts of discussions. Not to say we shouldn’t have these sorts of discussions as men in a society, but as I’m sure you’ve already seen, there are people here in this thread not taking you seriously either. I wish these were discussions we could have here, but like I said that’s just a matter of my personal taste in how I like to engage with Reddit.)
My perspective has always been that if you don’t like the culture of the space you’re in, it’s good to try and shop around for a more comfortable niche. When you have a message in a bottle and you throw it in the ocean, you can never really control the underwater currents it flows through or what kind of algae sticks onto the bottle. It makes sense that you’re frustrated at this, and my hope for your own sake is that you’re able to not take the non-answers personally. My practical suggestion would be to try and find a more receptive forum to have these conversations; whether that’s other trusted men in your own life IRL, or perhaps literally another forum with a different and more discussion-based culture.
What you’re saying may be true (about what can cause the issue you’re describing) but I think you need to drop the expectation that everyone needs to filter themselves to protect whatever sensitivity you have. In saying that, the fact that this triggers you implies you think there is something wrong with being gay?
if anything id think male gay sex would be even more odorous
I prefer to live life archaically and simplistically.