(while this is inspired by meta events this isnt a meta post its just feelings im having about it right now. Im going to have to vageuly explain that without being too specific though).
When you have like, wholesome motives for something, and someone imposes untoward motives for the thing. That sucks a lot!
Ive always had trouble with people like… imposing thoughts when only I own and control my brain. My mom used to like, accuse me of being selfish for things like, say, when our adult cousins came over to help with some work on the house, and I sat in my room relaxing because it was the weekend, and she started yelling at me that Im supposed to ask to help. And my problem was she was accusing me of being actively negligent by not doing so when it was more that my brain never even thought of that in the first place. I wasnt being malicious because its not like I thought of it and proactivly ignored it. I just didnt think of it.
And now today I had warm family emotions towards an image and shared it with others, and they impsosed sexual motives towards me that I didnt have. And that really upset me because my feelings about the image werent about that at all.
I just wish people wouldnt assume like that.
This kind of vagueposting is unhelpful and the reason people assumed sexual motives for your post - Here, not talking about the specific event made me assume there was an issue with it, so I checked the modlog to find your post, and it’s a big boobed blonde farmer-chic waifu carrying a baby and what I assume is lemonade. You captioned it with a double bill of “I swear I’m not a retvrn/traditionalist” and “this makes me feel something [towards family]”.
The first part, “I swear I’m not”, acknowledges the appearance of the situation (posting a waifu) but assures us, without evidence or explanation, that you don’t have those motivations, it’s just a similarity in the act. It’s like jumping up as soon as someone comes in the room to loudly declare that you’re not masturbating - Regardless of whether it’s true or not it is extremely suspicious to deny something before any accusations have been thrown around.
The second part, again, lacks explanation - you feel “something”, not defined as positive or negative, just a vague feeling. Combined with the picture and denial, readers have already been primed to think you’re just in denial about being horny.
When you only leave room for assumptions, people are going to make them.
On the other hand, your mum just sounds like an ass. If your adult cousins have to come over and do it you’re either too young or lack the skills to actually help out, and will probably just be getting in the way. It is polite to ask if they need help with anything, but it’s also polite to stay out of the way and not distract them while they’re working.
I really did not want to further this discussion lol, but I do have some things to say in response to this now that you did. I actually sincerely did want to discuss the overall feeling of having things imposed on you rather than the specific incident.
Sorry, but that is completely unfair of them. And i thought we assumed good faith of each other here. In fact, since mods have removed posts of people assuming bad faith of me before, I thought it was a rule that we assume good faith from other Hexbears. It certianly makes this place safer for me as an autistic person when we do!
Why are big boobs inherently more sexual then small ones? Why is half the userbase here afraid of women’s bodies? I realize that second question is very confrontational especially but its just a repeated thing I dont get about this place. The image is either not or barely sexualized to me, and the reaction I have gotten outside of Hexbear when I show people it and ask them what their take on it is re sexualization and “tradwifeism” has beared out that this pretty strongly a Hexbear-bound phenomenon because everyone else Ive asked (all leftists, at least one VERY sensitive to things like male gaze) have been absolutely baffled by the reaction it got here.
I didnt even notice that she had cleavage before i posted the image and someone called it horny. Like that part of it literally didnt register with me and I was shocked that that was people’s takeaway. Obviously from the title I wasnt shocked that some people took away traditionalism or whatever, but that title was like half joke and half an attempt to difuse a certain reaciton before it happened.
I get the part about how my title primed people for a certain reaction, but I have a tendency to want to difuse situations before they happen because of my autism, so people still took that very much the wrong way. Like I get paranoid about reactions things might get and try to put up shields against those things before they happen, but for some reason a lot of the time those things make them worse. (Also in spite of that paranoia, I STILL was completly blindsided by the idea that me posting that was horny).
It’s not unfair to assume at all, as your next statement illustrates - assuming people are posting in good faith is still an assumption. You were making an assumption about how other people would view the piece when you posted it. The mods especially have to make assumptions when removing posts or banning users - assuming that people’s behaviours aren’t going to change, for example. They might be perfectly reasonable assumptions with plenty of evidence to back them up, but they’re still assumptions.
Big boobs aren’t inherently more sexual, but they’re the focus of the picture in this case. The image is centered on her chest and bare shoulder, and they have much more detailed shadows and sweat than the rest of the picture. Plus a dropped shoulder strap to really show off the shape of the whole breast. It’s a very horny picture.
Just telling people it isn’t what they think it is does not diffuse anything, it primes them to think that it is exactly what they think it is. If you don’t provide a motive, they will assume one, because telling people what something isn’t doesn’t tell them about what it is. Without explanation the mods are left having to assume the reason for the posting, and they can’t protect users by assuming everything is done in good faith - when your title is effectively “I’m not a reactionary, but this makes me feel things” they aren’t going to assume that you mean non-reactionary thigns.
From one autistic person to another, vagueness is a way to hide information while ensuring that other people know that you are hiding it. If the reason for hiding the information isn’t obvious from its nature (e.g avoiding doxxing yourself) people are going to want to know why you’re hiding the information. If you don’t want people to focus on a peice of information, you need to not mention it at all, not be vague when referring to it. Saying what something is not is being vague - In order to stop unwanted situations from developing, state outright what you mean, rather than what you don’t mean.
Alright, I’ll take the rest of it as advice, but I simply do not see the part about the “focus on the boobs” part at all because they were the last thing I noticed. I noticed her hat, then the lemonade, then the baby, then the dialouge. And hadnt evne noticed the cleavage until someone said something. And agian, Ive run this image by a bunch of people outside this server, including someone who is VERY sesnative to male gaze, a self described “misandrist lesbian”, and none of them see what Hexbear sees in this image. I think people here have horny-dars that I find… confusing and often offputting. Like Ive got like 10 people outside of the Hexbear sphere all saying “its not that horny, I dont see what they’re so up in arms about” so I cant really see this as anything but a hexbear-bound phenominon.
I literally mean that if you divide the picture into thirds vertically and horizontally the central 1/9th of the picture is her chest and shoulder, almost exactly framed by the pitcher and child on either side and lips and waist above and below, as well as the additional detail - just compare how detailed her upper body is next to the hand or child. I’m not saying it’s the first thing any person would notice, but the artist was evidently concentrating on it much harder than the rest of the image.
Incredibly funny to be scrolling through the comments feed, start reading the first paragraph, and then run into the booba discussion immediately following that
deleted by creator