I mean genuinely yes, this looks amazing.

I might have to come out of hibernation for a meal like this lol.

Assert dominance: Piss on the guard.

… Is Margot supposed to be a spiteful bitch?

She’s also just wrong. As a man, I can tell you that men are entirely capable of oogling your ass or even legs as you go up a flight of stairs, in shorts.

Or your feet, as Margot specifically mentions.

Also… who… is running up and down stairs near your house… barefoot?

This is how you end up needing a tetanus shot, or worse.

In conclusion, Margot is a stupid, mean person.

The actual figure drawings are pretty good though!

I’m not myself a fan of the ‘Disney Princess circa 201X+’ style, but it is well executed.

Also you have functioning public mass transit where you can have someone else convey your drunk ass to the other side of town, for little to no expense.

Uh, no, I don’t.

The entire origination of my critique was against the claim that monogamy is unethical.

Thats… what started the entire thing.

You are confusing a subtype of monogamy with all possible variants of monogamy.

You’re describing patriarchichal, state/religiously sanctioned and ordained marriage.

I’m describing two people who are just having a relationship with each other, who discuss and agree to how that relationship works.

Doesn’t have to involve religion or even the state.

Just a commitment between two people, none over the other, both as close to equal as possible.

I’ve gone to significant lengths to explain how yes, monogamy is often formalized in a fucked up way… but it doesn’t have to be.

I keep saying that actual literacy is a required prerequisite to media literacy… pretty scary how many people functionally can’t read these days.

All that complicated logic should in theory apply to all those relationships as well, but it does not.

It does though.

Your friends could say they don’t like your partner.

Your partner could say they don’t like your friends.

Your partner could love or hate the idea of you fucking one of your friends, etc.

When you involve sex and/or deep commitment as a partner, like, a life partner… emotions and condiserations get more complex and of greater magnitude.

So… the more people you are partnered with, the more people there are with strong and complex emotional considerations going all ways.

But anyway, none of this addresses my original critique:

You have not demonstrated that broadly, monogamous relationships are unethical, de facto, 100% of the time.

I don’t think nonmonogamy nor monogamy are inherently, de facto, all the time unethical.

I just think that nonmonogamy is more difficult to do ethically.

You said monogamy is unethical.

Do you still hold this view?

If so, why, for what reasons?

I think that its more difficult for a stable, persistent, nonmonogamous, romantic/sexual situation to persist mainly because there are more people involved.

Everything that would be a one to one discussion, is now A to B and A to C and B to C, and potentially A to BC and AB to C and AC to B… this gets more complex, geometrically, with more members.

With more people and no mandatory/imposed hierarchy, It complexifies, with more chances for miscommunication, with all the intensity of emotions that comes along with a serious relationship… which can often lead to drama.

I don’t think that this is conceptually difficult to do ethically, if everyone involved communicates very well.

But that almost never occurs in practice, in mono or nonmono setups.

I think it is difficult to do ethically in practice, moreso when there are more members, because people have emotions that cause them to do irrational things, they have limited amounts of time and energy, imperfect information, because people can change their minds about things, because sometimes people don’t really know why they do some things.

The more people you have in a persistent arrangement like this, the more complex and thus unstable the entire situation is.

Granted, that reasoning only applies to certain kinds of non monogamy, others are or can be less complex…

But basically my whole thrust here is that more people = more complicated = more chances for drama / intentionallly or unintentionally hurting other people.

There are just more potentially shifting sets of boundaries and rules, that may or may not apply equally to all others in the group, and those boundaries themselves may or may not be problems for other members of the group.

And I appreciate your reply, though I do disagree.

(and for what its worth, i didnt downvote you)

I follow your food allergy metaphor, but this makes sense analogously only if you essentially do not view sex as any more sacred, or complex and meaningful, than food… you view it only as basic human need that is not entwined with the very emotional structure of a relationship.

Say that you’re both ostensibly members of a religion that forbids eating pork, or you’re both fairly hardcore vegans, and you in particular are also allergic to pork.

If your partner goes out and eats pork, away from you, yes this is not literally directly harmful to you, but it betrays the values that you both ostensibly claim to believe in.

Furthering the analogy, the partner could just say they’re not a member of that religion, or they’re not a vegan, or they have different interpretations of the concepts of those… and then you could say:

‘well, the beliefs that I have are important to me, and I thought that you had those same beliefs, and that they were important to you to… so if you do not have those beliefs, we should probably not be a couple.’

So, you have clarified your line of thinking, your preference or worldview or what you want to call it, but you have not explained how the preference or worldview that I explained is unethical.

I don’t inherently think that ENM or poly or relationship anarchy are inherently impossible to do ethically… I think they are difficult to do ethically, without causing a ton of drama, a lot of emotional distress and complexity… but i do not think they are just de facto unethical in concept.

I do agree with you that monogamous relationships very often are problematic in that they come with baggage by way of people having unstated assumptions of what the roles and rules are.

But this can be solved with forthright communication and actually discussing with the partner what those roles and rules are or should be.

That goes the same for nonmonogamous relationships, they’re just inherently more complex as they involve more people.

Tons of people are, imo, not emotionally mature enough, not honest enough with themselves, do not have the communication skills required to be in any kind of a serious relationship, monogamous or otherwise.

How is consensual monogamy unethical?

Like really, you seem to genuinely hold the opinion you do, please explain to me how two people mutually agreeing to trust, support, love and fuck just each other … how is that unethical?

Yes, of course historically the concept is full of examples of other practices that get attached to it that are definitely harmful and bad.

Yes, there absolutely are a good deal of people who force monogamy on others as a means of control, who are hypocrites that don’t even follow the same rules or standards they impose on others.

But how is it inherently unethical for a fair and mutual relationship between just two people to exist?

Some people are into open relationships, ENM, polycules, just being a single stud or unicorn, etc.

Some people, arguably most people, either strongly prefer or can only emotionally handle having a single serious romantic relationship with one other person at a time.

The entire thing about cheating in a monogamous relationship is that it is lying, it is a massive breach of trust and respect.

If everyone involved is informed and onboard with expanding the relationship, that’s one thing… cheating is another.

For quite a lot of people, its not primarily that they want to posses or control their partner’s genitals.

Its that they want to be able to very thoroughly trust and relate to a single other person, to be the sole person that their partner also sees that way.

For these kinds of people, if their partner asked to open up the relationship, and they weren’t comfortable with it, they’re totally able to just realize at that point that their partner doesn’t want what they want, and just end the monogamous relationship, let their now former partner go pursue what they want.

So… how is this unethical?

Oh no!

I will continue not paying a dime for any media I see ever, unless I really support the creators, as I have been doing for … 20 years now?

In addition to broadly prevalent ‘traditional’ norms promoted and espoused by men in many, many parts of the US, that assert that caring for a child is innately feminine…

Tons of American women also actively promote patriarchy, they’d call these guys gay and not real men, for taking care of their kids, for being stay at home dads.

To be fair, there absolutely were Christian servers back in the old days, that absolutely would ban you for cursing or taking the Lord’s name in vain.

I saw this in … shit, Battlefield 1942/Vietnam/2, Garry’s Mod before it was even sold for money, various source games and mods… Red Orchestra… all kinds of games that had dedicated servers back in the early 00s, there would usually be a couple that were explicitly Christian and would ban you for swearing.

This is objectively the correct thing to do if you are from an abusive family that has aggressively attempted to destroy your life, same thing if you are essentially the cuck/punching bag of a friend group.

If you’ve been surrounded and gaslit by horrible people your whole life, yeah, running away and hiding is actually the right call, at least untill you develop an actually healthy sense of self.

Its also just fine to be an introvert, just try to mix that up with at least a smidgen of regular socializing.

Yeah, this aggresively does not make sense.

There are a ton of eggs that have been broken by way of playing New Vegas.

Wow, its like… direct action works, when complaining loudly and formally doesn’t!

I can still hardly believe that the tech industry at large just decided to broadly roll out LLM integration into essentially every element of their businesses, having just no idea what they actually do.

Like 2 years ago now, I was figuratively pulling my hair out, reading the discussion panel schedule for Microsoft led conferences on LLMs and cybersecurity.

Literally every topic was a different kind of way that smashing an LLM into a complex business system… increases potential failure points, broadens attack surfaces… because networked LLMs literally are security vulnerabilities.

Not a single topic about how to use LLMs defensively, how to use them to turbocharge malware signature recognition, nothing like that.

All just a bunch of ‘make sure you don’t do this!’ warnings, and then everyone did them anyway.