My mentions are full right now of people saying "sex isn't a need" and if a man's wife stops having sex with him, he'd better get used to masturbation.
This is… Such a heartless take. Sex is similar in need to social acceptance, and nobody is this angry about social acceptance.

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 23, 2020

And the weird thing is that this absurd assertion is primarily a liberal take! The conservatives react unhelpfully, but they at least understand how strong the sexual urge is (yes, in both women and men) and how it’s an actual need in the vast majority of humans.

I really don’t know why liberals have such trouble distinguishing immediate needs (air, food, water) from other needs that are just as vital but not immediately and obviously harmful due to their lack. It seems like they must be lying when they’ve told various groups things like, “No one needs sex/love/social acceptance,” etc (Some liberals do even claim no one needs social acceptance, usually when talking about incels or undesirable men). How can anyone possibly believe any of this and say it with a straight face?

Aella is exactly right here. We’d never tell anyone, “You don’t need friends or social relations with anyone.” It’s equally cruel and heartless to tell anyone, “You don’t need sex or lovers or sexual contact with anyone.” What an impoverished world some people wish to live in.

I’m just rehashing, essentially, the works of several different philosophers here, so don’t think any of this is original — though I’m restating their points quite differently.

Anyway, identity bullshittery and the digital age go hand in glove. They are complements of each another and catalyze one another as well. Existing as we do more and more as avatars in the digital realm, one’s identity (like gathering armor and apparel in an RPG) becomes relatively of greater import. This identity construction and maintenance is a way to make one’s self distinct and to belong to a tribe at the same time. Furthermore, it gives one the feeling of “choosing one’s choice,” even though the actual choices at hand are carefully constructed and very limited in nearly all ways — but it appears expansive, and that’s what people care about.

In this digital netherworld that is liminal to the meatspace one and where both are merely in a darkening umbra beneath an algorithmic monolith, identity is the constrained yet “chosen” marker of who one aspires to be, what one aspires to achieve, rather than what one is. And because this aspiration now is all we have, it’s defended even unto death itself — real death, not an avatar with a hundred lives defeated by a pixel balrog.

This is why identity is so powerful and so dangerous.

there's a lot of backlash to the casting of an autistic character with a neurotypical actress, and imo if the backlash has any effect it's gonna be closer to the industry just deciding to never portray autistic characters at all. https://t.co/GpXsimHdK6

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 21, 2020

Aella is right. What’s next, only a waitress can play a waitress, only a welder and play a welder?

Identity bullshitery is just absurd and it hurts the people the “liberals” believe they are helping.

I just watched it because it had Margaret Qualley, but this might be the best ad I’ve ever seen in my life:

Lord that’s big fun. Would be nothing without Qualley, though. (Part of it is that it’s rare that a really beautiful woman can ever give way to complete outlandish zaniness, and Qualley is more than fine with that and even seems to enjoy it a lot. I think that’s why comedians [male and female] tend not to be very beautiful, but I’d love to see Qualley do some real physical comedy. I bet she’d kill it. To be clear, I like Qualley because she’s beyond talented. She’s also undeniably beautiful; even I can see that.)