Janina Matthewson

We regret to inform you that there has been a discourse. Ian Dunt is worried about men getting laid. He's worried that all the advice for men on getting laid comes from right wing dipshits like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and that the left doesn't talk about it at all. Literally he says that the "progressive left seemingly has no opinion on men getting laid." He then has some ground breaking advice like talking to women as if they're human beings. Pretending women are men to help you see them as people. I'm actually not that mad at the advice – it's basic but there will always be people who need basic advice. What the problem is, what the problem always is, is that he doesn't appear all that interested in why (not all) men have to be told to see women as people in the first place.

The way I've seen a lot of men online talk about sex it's clear they see it as an achievement. This, I think, is why they put such emphasis on bullshit concepts like high quality women, why they're resistant to the idea that we also want to have sex – casual sex even! Because if we're having sex with them simply because we want to it lessens their achievement. The sex is a trophy to show that they deserve sex and if someone is just offering sex for the fun of sex, well, where's the value in that? They want to have sex because of what having it says about them. They want to have it because having it affirms their masculinity, which they are insecure about because they've bought into an ideal of masculinity that is deeply fucked up. It's not new that. Behaving in dysfunctional ways to affirm a fucked up ideal of masculinity is ancient.

The claim that the left needs to concern itself with the sex lives of straight men as a counter to the right seems, on its face, fair. After all, the right is setting their arguments within a broader call for the return to a system that deliberately subjugates women. Forced pregnancies, restrictions on education, tradwives – patriarchy classic rebranded for the internet age. We have to find a way to meet the one need, without capitulating on all the other shit. Men are lonely, men want to get laid, these are realities we have to face up to and apparently we can't do anything about the fact that the onus is still always on women. The problem is that romantic and sexual success isn't actually a cure for loneliness.

It's not just that no one is owed a date, no one is owed sex, no one is owed a relationship, although obviously all that is true. It's that none of those things will solve the actual problem. The problem is that too many men and boys never learn how to be vulnerable with each other. Straight men on the left who want to provide an alternative to the manisphere, your job is actually quite simple: have friends. Invest in your friendships. Make plans to see each other where seeing each other is all you do. Talk about your problems. Invite your friends to talk about theirs. Hug each other. Be open and vulnerable and close. I honestly believe you could change the world.

Wrote about those lonely, lonely menfolk

ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/men-hug-your...

Recession indicator

This feels like that but so much worse

A few years ago my sister commented about how sad it was that her kids only ever want lego in kit sets. They would make sets and have fun but they weren't just fucking around with a bunch of lego to build whatever they wanted, the way we did when we were their age

You see it in like Under the Skin and Hail Caesar, and she's been so desperate to be in Little Shop of Horrors

Scarlett Johansson imo

Hire Jamie you bunch of nerds

I'm actually not that mad at the advice – it's basic but there will always be people who need basic advice. What the problem is, what the problem always is, is that he doesn't appear all that interested in why men have to be told to see women as people in the first place. Which is not that surprising when you consider that the progressive left has been talking about straight men and sex for genuinely decades. It's just that it's mostly been women talking, so I guess Ian Dunt hasn't noticed. Women had an entire sexual revolution over what we're looking for in the bedroom and we have not shut up about it since. We've explained carefully in columns and books and movies what it is we need; if you want a crib sheet on how to successfully bed a woman, we have provided you with so many. They all boil down to one thing, really: we want men to be willing to communicate with women in general well enough to learn what the specific woman they are into wants.

Coming to your inbox on Friday
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io

The good news is my next newsletter will actually be on time because all this has me *on quite the tear*

The phrase "consider tennis" just added ten years to my lifespan

Terribly sorry that the chaps are lonely again, have they tried volunteering? Only, there’s an awful lot needs done.

I actually think it's much more important to teach men how to build strong friendships, like there is systemic stuff that punishes men for exploring platonic intimacy, dating is not the first problem to solve

WE CANNOT DO ANYTHING IF THE MEN IN QUESTION DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO US, that is the ENTIRE PROBLEM and at some point you have to acknowledge that what they want is not sex, it is control

Straight women on the left have been trying to tell straight men how to fuck us for FUCKING YEARS the claim that no one talks about this is FLAT NONSENSE it has been discourse since the LITERAL SEXUAL REVOLUTION

This is the thing that I come back to again and again. When there is insufficient institutional help we are also robbed of the ability to help others. We are born to be part of a community, we are connected to everyone else whether we like it or not, and when we live in a system that lionises individualism that instinct for connection becomes agonising. When we are forced daily to confront a suffering that we can do nothing to alleviate, when that is coming on top of our own survival becoming so hard to achieve – this is corrosive to the soul. Everyone I know is currently navigating life under the constant burden of our helplessness. Everyone I know is wrestling with this baffling reality that we have no recourse to prevent a genocide everyone can see on their phones every day.

buff.ly/YnVaTdT

Just give me a nice little stamp on it to tell me it's fine!

It's wild because the whole point of state regulations is so that ordinary people don't have to research every single thing we do before we do it

367BCE, somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea He woke in a cold sweat and, for a moment, he didn’t know why. His cabin was still and empty. The wood of the small ship creaked around him; he could hear the gentle splashing of the waves. He hoped, briefly, that it had just been a nightmare, but then he saw it: a small puddle in the corner of the room. He darted towards it and pushed up the trick floorboard he’d rigged before setting sail, pushing his hand into the small cavity below. It was empty.

1923CE, somewhere in Mayfair Nell Bartlett had decided to cut her hair. She sat at her dressing table, gazing at her reflection, conducting a careful survey. Two lips, indifferent red, and so forth. Quite a serviceable face, if we’re honest, and perfectly suitable to its purpose. Or the purpose it had had until recently, but we’ll get to that. Straight black brows, cool blue eyes, with a slight droop to them, and hair falling to her waist that could most accurately be described as ordinary brown. Nell had never been dissatisfied with her appearance, but she’d woken up with a sharp yearning for change. Something to suit her new circumstances.

I've made the first instalment of my new serial free to read! I would love it if you'd read it and enjoy it and subscribe for future instalments and tell your friends and families and representatives to read it and enjoy it and subscribe for future instalments!

buff.ly/SWAW0AN

Let me tell you about the four figure advances in four instalments over two and a half years that you'll never earn out because you got zero promotion that awaits you on this side of the fence

Look. Now look here.

💯

It's like if scythe husband had no actual skills, you know? I want to live in a world where everyone gets to try to be scythe husband for at least a bit and most of them will turn out to be Brooklyn Beckham but that's ok!

Look, I'm a socialist because I believe everyone deserves the chance to fart around as much as Brooklyn Beckham does

Also you should be cut off from any family wealth for this time and have to live entirely off what you earn

This is the same property company that's been extorting the Prince Charles right? Like, fuck this guy, take his shit, but also all rental properties should be state owned, good god the way I am more radicalised by the DAY

I want a central London full of shops owned by freaks with hyper-fixations, reclaim soho for the perverts

Take them all into state ownership and offer them at low rent to local weirdoes with niche interests, I am so serious about this

About In 1920s London newly independent Nell Bartlett is drawn into an aeons old cold war over a mysterious artefact with the power to unleash a devastating curse. When she meets a mysterious stranger she ...

An Announcement:
I am launching a serialised work of fiction via ghost. It is a fantasy/supernatural adventure story and the first instalment will be released in one week!
calamitystrinket.ghost.io/about/

About In 1920s London newly independent Nell Bartlett is drawn into an aeons old cold war over a mysterious artefact with the power to unleash a devastating curse. When she meets a mysterious stranger she ...

An Announcement:
I am launching a serialised work of fiction via ghost. It is a fantasy/supernatural adventure story and the first instalment will be released in one week!
calamitystrinket.ghost.io/about/

A Dichotomy of Bops, Bangers, and Jams I've been trying to explore, musically, this week. I do this thing – I don't know if you've heard of this – where I tend to only listen to things I already know, and I'm trying to be better at…

It's about time someone did some Important Journalism around here

ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/a-dichotomy-...