I disagree it’s hyper-reductionist. I see it as just textbook definition.
But you’re not focusing on the most common textbook definition (and the one that’s used colloquially), you’re focusing on a secondary definition. For example, Merriam Webster lists these definitions:
usually intense or unbridled sexual desire
an intense longing
(obsolete) pleasure, delight
You’re using the second definition while completely ignoring the first one. But how can people reading your comments know that you mean the less common definition? They can’t - they’ll assume at best that you mean both, at worst that you only mean the first.
And that’s ignoring that deriving a “lust for coffee” from a person holding a coffee cup is, by textbook definition, hyper-reductionist.
Yes in that I am beginning to realize that people are irked when I use dictionary definitions, but i have yet to learn which words are sensitive or buzzwords.
Again, it’s not about “dictionary definitions”, it’s about using secondary definitions of words which necessarily carry the connotation of their more common definitions. Even leaving that aside, words with similar definitions usually imply different strengths of their meaning. To give an example, imagine a photo of a university student studying at home while smiling. Which of the following descriptions is more accurate/better/less weird?
Focusing on the last example, a lust for studying would be those academia animes where it is the fetishistic appearance of studying. My conception for a lust for studying would be like school outfits or the words or ideas associated with studying. It may even be the smell of paper books, or the sensual things around the act of studying.
This is different from enjoying studying because that is more like love. I don’t think love and lust are the same thing, which explains that people are attracted and regret it afterward. The enjoyment of studying is more like passion.
I could also be using the wrong words. I don’t know what word to descrbe this odd but common “lookist” phenomena where people are just so infatuated with the mere appearnce of “studying” rather than the actual studying.
I understand that it seems silly on the surface to compare coffee to sex, but the motivation for sex and food are the same pathways in the brain. There are also idioms that compare sex to food and food to sex. People say that a hot woman makes their mouth drop and salivate. Why? Are you going to eat the woman? Oh yeah actually that relates to “eating out” like oral sex … or maybe “eating out” could mean going to a restaurant. Do you see how these are not that arbitrary to connect? An intense sexual desire is very generalizable outside of sex. This is what a fetish is too. A fetish is a sexual desire for non-sexual objects. However, I use lust has it is a bit more generalizable than a fetish which as clinical or medical connotations. Fetish has a more overt sexual connotation than lust … in my mind anyways.
I agree that I could try using the primary or first entry of the definition of words. I never thought they were categorized by popularity like that. I wonder if that’s true. if so, thanks for bringing that to my attention
I understand that it seems silly on the surface to compare coffee to sex, but the motivation for sex and food are the same pathways in the brain.
Oh, so you actually meant the sexual connotation? Then it should be even more clear why you got the reactions that you did: not only were you hyper-reductionist (“She holds a cup of coffee? She must be addicted!”), you also sexualized a woman doing something absolutely normal and non-sexual in a safe space for women. That’s actual incel behavior.
That’s like the least charitable intepretation possible. Clearly motivated reasoning and intellectually bad faith. I had the impression that you were going to play nicely
No, it’s not motivated reasoning or bad faith. I’m honestly telling you how you come across to me (and likely others).
Every time I’ve seen someone take the route you did (focusing on everyday things/activities and extrapolating them towards something sexual without any contextual reason) that person turned out to be an incel, or at least incel-adjacent. That doesn’t mean you are either of those! But it does mean that’s how you come across to some.
If you don’t want to come across like this, you should avoid sexualizing things that aren’t explicitly sexual.
Thanks for the feedback. I encourage you to exercise the creativity muscles and imagine what I could be possibly saying. I feel like we are not making a connection, like the ball is being dropped. I throw you a ball and you don’t catch it, sort of thing. I send you an idea, concept, and you miss the ball and instead say the ball looks ugly. Like ok sure the ball is ugly, or “the words have incel vibes”, but can you please just catch the ball and get what i’m saying? Thanks
Hm… I get what you mean, but that’s because I’m not interested in engaging with the discussion. Mostly I just wanted to give you actual feedback on why you got banned in that case, since you said somewhere else in this thread that you didn’t understand/didn’t get feedback on why.
I wanted to give you this feedback because I too used to struggle with being understood the wrong way. It can be difficult - in my head I know exactly what I want to communicate, yet trying to find the right words to bring it across sometimes just doesn’t work. But the big thing I’ve learned is: the person I’m talking to is not wrong for misunderstanding what I’m saying, especially not if it happens frequently with different people! Instead I have to learn how to properly communicate my thoughts, and part of that is knowing what subjects are appropriate to touch on, and which ones aren’t. And sexual topics are very often inappropriate, so touching on them (even tangentially) can throw a conversation completely off course.
It still feels inappropriate to me to bring up any sexual topics with the image you initially commented on, so I don’t want to engage in the discussion.
… so touching on [sexual topics] (even tangentially) can throw a conversation completely off
This was helpful. I oscilate between speaking my mind freely but also believing I ought to speak strategically. This is one of those times where I just spoke off the cuff. In real-life interactions, being mindful of taboo topics is good. I don’t hold a taboo with those words that I used in a strong manner. I don’t even experience intense emotions very frequently.
Especially when talking in safe spaces for women and minorities, one needs to be mindful of the history of negative experiences of those groups. Women still struggle with unwanted sexualization today, often leading to very negative interpersonal experiences and general disadvantages in their lives. So your response in that thread is being interpreted under that light.
To give a very inappropriate comparison - it’s kinda like being invited over for dinner at a friend’s house, and their whole family is jewish. During dinner they talk about family members they’ve lost in the Holocaust, and you suddenly crack Holocaust jokes. No matter how funny/clever/subversive your humor might be, there is no world in which that’s a good idea!
I made a post trying to articulte what this concept i have is. Perhaps “lust”, “fetish”, or “wordfetish” are subpar words to use. I would find it helpful if you could help describe this phenomena where people not only not care but almost unable to understand meaning of words and instead rely of peripheral cues (such as system 1 thinking) and general surface level impression of how the words sound. That’s what I mean by lust because lust is also “surface level” and related to perception “how the words sound”. – https://lemmy.world/post/35953036
But you’re not focusing on the most common textbook definition (and the one that’s used colloquially), you’re focusing on a secondary definition. For example, Merriam Webster lists these definitions:
You’re using the second definition while completely ignoring the first one. But how can people reading your comments know that you mean the less common definition? They can’t - they’ll assume at best that you mean both, at worst that you only mean the first.
And that’s ignoring that deriving a “lust for coffee” from a person holding a coffee cup is, by textbook definition, hyper-reductionist.
Again, it’s not about “dictionary definitions”, it’s about using secondary definitions of words which necessarily carry the connotation of their more common definitions. Even leaving that aside, words with similar definitions usually imply different strengths of their meaning. To give an example, imagine a photo of a university student studying at home while smiling. Which of the following descriptions is more accurate/better/less weird?
Focusing on the last example, a lust for studying would be those academia animes where it is the fetishistic appearance of studying. My conception for a lust for studying would be like school outfits or the words or ideas associated with studying. It may even be the smell of paper books, or the sensual things around the act of studying.
This is different from enjoying studying because that is more like love. I don’t think love and lust are the same thing, which explains that people are attracted and regret it afterward. The enjoyment of studying is more like passion.
I could also be using the wrong words. I don’t know what word to descrbe this odd but common “lookist” phenomena where people are just so infatuated with the mere appearnce of “studying” rather than the actual studying.
I understand that it seems silly on the surface to compare coffee to sex, but the motivation for sex and food are the same pathways in the brain. There are also idioms that compare sex to food and food to sex. People say that a hot woman makes their mouth drop and salivate. Why? Are you going to eat the woman? Oh yeah actually that relates to “eating out” like oral sex … or maybe “eating out” could mean going to a restaurant. Do you see how these are not that arbitrary to connect? An intense sexual desire is very generalizable outside of sex. This is what a fetish is too. A fetish is a sexual desire for non-sexual objects. However, I use lust has it is a bit more generalizable than a fetish which as clinical or medical connotations. Fetish has a more overt sexual connotation than lust … in my mind anyways.
I agree that I could try using the primary or first entry of the definition of words. I never thought they were categorized by popularity like that. I wonder if that’s true. if so, thanks for bringing that to my attention
Oh, so you actually meant the sexual connotation? Then it should be even more clear why you got the reactions that you did: not only were you hyper-reductionist (“She holds a cup of coffee? She must be addicted!”), you also sexualized a woman doing something absolutely normal and non-sexual in a safe space for women. That’s actual incel behavior.
That’s like the least charitable intepretation possible. Clearly motivated reasoning and intellectually bad faith. I had the impression that you were going to play nicely
No, it’s not motivated reasoning or bad faith. I’m honestly telling you how you come across to me (and likely others).
Every time I’ve seen someone take the route you did (focusing on everyday things/activities and extrapolating them towards something sexual without any contextual reason) that person turned out to be an incel, or at least incel-adjacent. That doesn’t mean you are either of those! But it does mean that’s how you come across to some.
If you don’t want to come across like this, you should avoid sexualizing things that aren’t explicitly sexual.
Thanks for the feedback. I encourage you to exercise the creativity muscles and imagine what I could be possibly saying. I feel like we are not making a connection, like the ball is being dropped. I throw you a ball and you don’t catch it, sort of thing. I send you an idea, concept, and you miss the ball and instead say the ball looks ugly. Like ok sure the ball is ugly, or “the words have incel vibes”, but can you please just catch the ball and get what i’m saying? Thanks
Hm… I get what you mean, but that’s because I’m not interested in engaging with the discussion. Mostly I just wanted to give you actual feedback on why you got banned in that case, since you said somewhere else in this thread that you didn’t understand/didn’t get feedback on why.
I wanted to give you this feedback because I too used to struggle with being understood the wrong way. It can be difficult - in my head I know exactly what I want to communicate, yet trying to find the right words to bring it across sometimes just doesn’t work. But the big thing I’ve learned is: the person I’m talking to is not wrong for misunderstanding what I’m saying, especially not if it happens frequently with different people! Instead I have to learn how to properly communicate my thoughts, and part of that is knowing what subjects are appropriate to touch on, and which ones aren’t. And sexual topics are very often inappropriate, so touching on them (even tangentially) can throw a conversation completely off course.
It still feels inappropriate to me to bring up any sexual topics with the image you initially commented on, so I don’t want to engage in the discussion.
This was helpful. I oscilate between speaking my mind freely but also believing I ought to speak strategically. This is one of those times where I just spoke off the cuff. In real-life interactions, being mindful of taboo topics is good. I don’t hold a taboo with those words that I used in a strong manner. I don’t even experience intense emotions very frequently.
Ah, that’s probably where the disconnect is!
Especially when talking in safe spaces for women and minorities, one needs to be mindful of the history of negative experiences of those groups. Women still struggle with unwanted sexualization today, often leading to very negative interpersonal experiences and general disadvantages in their lives. So your response in that thread is being interpreted under that light.
To give a very inappropriate comparison - it’s kinda like being invited over for dinner at a friend’s house, and their whole family is jewish. During dinner they talk about family members they’ve lost in the Holocaust, and you suddenly crack Holocaust jokes. No matter how funny/clever/subversive your humor might be, there is no world in which that’s a good idea!
I made a post trying to articulte what this concept i have is. Perhaps “lust”, “fetish”, or “wordfetish” are subpar words to use. I would find it helpful if you could help describe this phenomena where people not only not care but almost unable to understand meaning of words and instead rely of peripheral cues (such as system 1 thinking) and general surface level impression of how the words sound. That’s what I mean by lust because lust is also “surface level” and related to perception “how the words sound”. – https://lemmy.world/post/35953036