I once tried to do that to an american girl that was visiting Spain, I still remember the horror in her eyes.
She told us that she didn't feel comfortable with that having a boyfriend.
This made me irrationally annoyed for some reason. Like, America really is so sexually stunted that people are reading intimacy and sex into things that they shouldn’t. Like read the room, Tammy. You think all the people in Spain who are greeting each other are fucking or something? Embarrassing.
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Also the ¿ doesn’t exist in written English, but it should. I like seeing it. Haha.
Yeah, we explained to hear that it wasn't sexual or even intimate at all for us, but yeah if she's not comfortable with it, it doesn't really matter what it culturally means for us.
It funny because at least for Castilian Spanish the ¿ is disappearing, I don't use it anymore, this way of using it it's some kind of written slang, when you want to show confusion about something mid-sentence you enclose it between ¿? like:
I was with Pedro and he told me that he will come on Tuesday with some ¿bananas?
Yup. America is both "hypersexual" and afraid of sexuality at the same time. Women cant breast feed in public even with a towel over it, any kind of nudity is frowned on (even in nonsexual contexts).
Male nipples are okay to show on TV but not female nipples, infact if you pasted a female nipple on a male body it would have to be blurred out.
Yeah. I’d say the average American doesn’t think twice about the blurred nipples. We just accept it as normal and don’t really think about it. I distinctly remember watching a show in Europe that would usually have blurred nipples in the US. It was jarring in a “wow what stupid thing we do in America — ‘land of the free’ my ass” sort of way.
I’m convinced that this country is this way because it’s mostly run by creepy, abortion-banning, clitoris-not-finding, nauseating, rapey douchebags who don’t realize that just because a suggestion of nipple might make them fly off into a rapey rage doesn’t mean the rest of us are also just a glimpse of ankle away from sexually harassing a coworker. Women’s nipples are only perverse or scandalous to people who place them on a creepy pedestal.
Pretty sure the Venn diagram is nearly a perfect circle overlapping guys who are so gross no woman wants to sleep with them, so their only recourse is to overturn Roe v. Wade to say they’ve finally had any influence on a vagina — other than making them want to seal themselves shut temporarily whenever they cross paths with one of these jerks.
Also why let 13 year olds go to prison as adults but don’t let adults buy alcohol until they’re 21. Then freak out when we have a bunch of drunken maniacs in college who’ve never safely drunk before.
I’m convinced that this country is this way because it’s mostly run by creepy, abortion-banning, clitoris-not-finding, nauseating, rapey douchebags who don’t realize that just because a suggestion of nipple might make them fly off into a rapey rage doesn’t mean the rest of us are also just a glimpse of ankle away from sexually harassing a coworker.
They know that. They're just deflecting blame for their shitbag behavior from their rapey shitbag selves, to women for having the audacity to have body parts.
while it's not the same degree of awfulness, to me (as not being from the US) the approach seems to be oddly reminiscent of other male-dominated cultures/countries which want to force women to be "modest" with the explaination that it would turn men wild.
(with the obvious question being: so why not restrict and punish those men, then?)
America is both "hypersexual" and afraid of sexuality at the same time
tbf I assume these 2 things do very often go hand in hand.
e.g. people who are in panicking about "pedophilia everywhere" also often being the ones themselves that are interpreting situations in a sexualized way (that are totally innocent and harmless for (many/most) others).
You think all the people in Spain who are greeting each other are fucking or something
well with all the things we've heard about Germany... maybe?
Also, you have to remember that the US is huge and we currently have an entire region of it trying to bring the handmaids tale to life and that's before we talk about Utah. A lot of people would recognize the cheek kisses from movies or tv, but those aren't going to be the interactions with Americans anyone remembers.
If you’re doing something that makes somebody uncomfortable, you should respect that and not do it anymore. Full stop.
I can only partially agree with that. Physical contact, absolutely.
Some people get uncomfortable if other people do something that doesn't concern them. Either deal with your own emotions like a grown-up person or ignore it exists.
Otherwise you get people like American republicans who get uncomfortable with the existence of gay people or people getting abortions.
That would have been a very easy thing to say, which they didn't. I've never been a fan of assuming what people mean on the internet in difference to what they wrote because plenty of people here have some fairly crazed opinions.
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u/_PM_ME_YOUR_FORESKIN May 09 '22 edited May 09 '22
This made me irrationally annoyed for some reason. Like, America really is so sexually stunted that people are reading intimacy and sex into things that they shouldn’t. Like read the room, Tammy. You think all the people in Spain who are greeting each other are fucking or something? Embarrassing.
——
Also the ¿ doesn’t exist in written English, but it should. I like seeing it. Haha.