It’s because there’s a significant proportion of people whose preferences are something behind “skinny, white, conventionally feminine woman”, and so when people outside of that demographic are featured in media, it freaks them out because their preferences are limited to people who fit within that narrow description, so wider diversity of people depicted in media is, to them, synonymous with a push for unattractive people in media.
That in and of itself isn’t a problem — they have every right to their own preferences, and I have no interests in trying to convince them of anything. The problem is because they have attached themselves to the idea that their personal preferences are the objective standard. So when they see more diversity in media, and others thirsting for people they would consider to be objectively unattractive, this destabilises the idea that their preferences are The Truth. This means that, rather than just accepting that people like what they like, they contort themselves into believing that this is all a big conspiracy to try to push objectively unattractive people into media. Framing things like that means they end up seeing this as something that is entirely a political push to erode all foundations of society as part of some Woke ploy. They feel threatened and genuinely scared that there will be a future where there is literally no-one who they find attractive represented in media. Which is to say that someone who is accustomed to being the boot distrusts people who want there to be no boot, because surely they must be lying so that they can seize power and be the boot and crush everyone else.
At the heart of this is a zero-sum way of thinking of the world. They have deeply internalised that if one group in society gains rights, or power of any sort, then it must come at the cost of someone else. Some of them occasionally show awareness of the moral awfulness of them using their privilege to oppress others in society, and they briefly have moments where they understand that if the oppressed wished to take our retribution against them, we would be justified. However, they are incapable (or unwilling) to actually reckon with all the cognitive dissonance they’ve built up, and so their fear causes them to become ever more rigid in their worldview.
I find it fascinating, really. I am a fat, queer punk, and my existence is viscerally horrifying to them, because I am the epitome of so much of what they hate, and it breaks their brains to imagine that someone could find me attractive (tbh, it still sort of breaks my brain a bit too, but I’m getting there with improving my confidence). They genuinely believe that THE WOKE LEFT want everyone in media to look like me, even though that would be the opposite of the diversity we actually want.
They don’t believe us when we say this though. Their zero sum thinking combined with their willful inability to acknowledge that their own preferences are as subjective as anyone’s means they don’t believe us when we say this though, and that this is all part of our dastardly plot to seize absolute power for ourselves and make them be the oppressed ones.
It’s quite sad for them in the end. I’ve found that a huge part of what has allowed me to become more confident in myself has been acknowledging and embracing all the non conventional things I find attractive in other people. For instance, I firmly believe that the most beautiful point on basically any human body is the point where the curvature of the calf turns from being convex to concave. And because I don’t feel the need to convince other people of this, I can just let myself like what I like and be free to bite my partners’ calves. Even if their tastes do genuinely align with what is considered to be this narrow notion of “conventionally attractive”, I can’t imagine they feel very free to actually enjoy their own desires and their own bodily potential
It’s because there’s a significant proportion of people whose preferences are something behind “skinny, white, conventionally feminine woman”, and so when people outside of that demographic are featured in media, it freaks them out because their preferences are limited to people who fit within that narrow description, so wider diversity of people depicted in media is, to them, synonymous with a push for unattractive people in media.
That in and of itself isn’t a problem — they have every right to their own preferences, and I have no interests in trying to convince them of anything. The problem is because they have attached themselves to the idea that their personal preferences are the objective standard. So when they see more diversity in media, and others thirsting for people they would consider to be objectively unattractive, this destabilises the idea that their preferences are The Truth. This means that, rather than just accepting that people like what they like, they contort themselves into believing that this is all a big conspiracy to try to push objectively unattractive people into media. Framing things like that means they end up seeing this as something that is entirely a political push to erode all foundations of society as part of some Woke ploy. They feel threatened and genuinely scared that there will be a future where there is literally no-one who they find attractive represented in media. Which is to say that someone who is accustomed to being the boot distrusts people who want there to be no boot, because surely they must be lying so that they can seize power and be the boot and crush everyone else.
At the heart of this is a zero-sum way of thinking of the world. They have deeply internalised that if one group in society gains rights, or power of any sort, then it must come at the cost of someone else. Some of them occasionally show awareness of the moral awfulness of them using their privilege to oppress others in society, and they briefly have moments where they understand that if the oppressed wished to take our retribution against them, we would be justified. However, they are incapable (or unwilling) to actually reckon with all the cognitive dissonance they’ve built up, and so their fear causes them to become ever more rigid in their worldview.
I find it fascinating, really. I am a fat, queer punk, and my existence is viscerally horrifying to them, because I am the epitome of so much of what they hate, and it breaks their brains to imagine that someone could find me attractive (tbh, it still sort of breaks my brain a bit too, but I’m getting there with improving my confidence). They genuinely believe that THE WOKE LEFT want everyone in media to look like me, even though that would be the opposite of the diversity we actually want.
They don’t believe us when we say this though. Their zero sum thinking combined with their willful inability to acknowledge that their own preferences are as subjective as anyone’s means they don’t believe us when we say this though, and that this is all part of our dastardly plot to seize absolute power for ourselves and make them be the oppressed ones.
It’s quite sad for them in the end. I’ve found that a huge part of what has allowed me to become more confident in myself has been acknowledging and embracing all the non conventional things I find attractive in other people. For instance, I firmly believe that the most beautiful point on basically any human body is the point where the curvature of the calf turns from being convex to concave. And because I don’t feel the need to convince other people of this, I can just let myself like what I like and be free to bite my partners’ calves. Even if their tastes do genuinely align with what is considered to be this narrow notion of “conventionally attractive”, I can’t imagine they feel very free to actually enjoy their own desires and their own bodily potential