the thing is i think for most people a crush just means they feel a romantic attraction to someone to varying degrees, most people do not think about the word that deeply or have such negative connotations to it. that’s not to say it’s wrong to have a different internal definition of a word but you are maybe universalizing something that the good majority of people conceptualize differently.
just ask them out to get over it quickly
this also isn’t universal. i know plenty of femme peeps who dislike being asked out cold by people they barely know, it makes it feel like they can’t just Exist and that interest in them is purely based on physical attraction (because again, they hardly know the person), it feels closer to a boundary cross/sex pesty behavior than starting as friends in a low-to-no pressure way for them. different people are - shocker - different!! i’d also argue it’s actually less appropriate in the workplace or in organizing because it gives the impression that the ask-outer is just there for that, and particularly in the latter space femmes really do struggle to feel like they can just exist as serious participants.
also completely out of the question for, say, demisexual people as well, simply not how they’re wired.
I don’t feel especially drawn to being a woman, although being male is very ehh honestly.
i don’t really resonate with the egg-crack language b/c it feels very binary trans centric to me (maybe that’s just internalized phobia though, i really don’t know), but it took me a while to realize cis men and cis women don’t generally feel indifferent toward masculinity and femininity respectively, and that made me consider whether i might be on the agender spectrum. it’s just something to consider - honestly, when you get into the realm of “very gender-nonconforming cis guy” and “some flavor of enby,” the line gets kind of murky and arbitrary (in a freeing - not minimizing - kind of way, in that gender can really be whatever Feels Right). to elaborate, someone in this thread already brought up how being cis-but-gay opens up so, so much more variance in socially acceptable gender expression, and a lot of more outwardly queer gay dudes are probably more nonconforming than I am and are comfortable at “he/him” whereas I’m not, so there truly is a very vibes-based, it-is-what-you-feel dimension to all this.
i do think immediately saying “hehe eggposting” isn’t very respectful of your individual journey and falls into the trap a lot of queer people do where they project their personal self discovery process onto others as some universal roadmap, and can lean into gender essentialist bullshit. i’ve also never been a fan of the “cis people don’t think about gender, if you’re thinking about it a lot you’re trans” line because, while it may contain a grain of truth, i think everyone should be encouraged to think about gender intentionally. e.g., you really think a super cishet gymbro isn’t chasing some version of gender euphoria trying to get swole?? (also, certain anxiety disorders cause you to obsessively interrogate questions of identity even if the experiences of those identities clearly don’t line up with your personal experience (iykyk))
management’s passive aggressive office cops who use indirect violence rather than direct - theyve got the same role, to protect the company and therefore, capital. don’t think i’ve ever met an HR person who hasn’t filled me with loathing and/or creeped me out, either malicious automata programmed to deal death through a rictus, artificial smile, or snide 15 year olds stuck in the bodies of 20-30somethings.
the infosec concerns are legit and extend to any journalposting about people in our personal lives who aren’t us, if the site has to have that conversation more formally then that’s fine. i think people here (me included) have maybe gotten too comfortable treating hexbear like an actual IRL community/friend group/safe space, when it’s really not: it’s a social media site.
we’re not really each other’s friends or each other’s comrades - i’m sure plenty of us have plenty of both in real life, and those of us who do know how radically different those relationships are vs semi-anonymous shitposting acquaintances. if the site needs to enact a policy that any kind of posting that might involve other people in our lives be relegated to DM only, then OK - the megathread might kind of slowly die out and i’m not sure how clear the line would be in terms of moderator enforcement, but i can see the logic there.
privacy concerns aside though, you don’t actually know the people involved or their relationships to each other - people develop complicated bonds & feelings toward one another in literally every single social context and have done so since we have had to get together as a species to survive, it’s weirder to expect otherwise & imo is a symptom of atomization. i think there are a lot of assumptions based on vague Icks around these posts that everyone is an incel stalker until proven otherwise…but maybe more often than not the people involved actually do have genuine, meaningful-but-complicated friendships? again, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s appropriate to talk about on a semi-anonymous forum in detail, but that doesn’t seem to be your main gripe (it’s way less bad privacy-wise than say a dating call-in show, or the whole host of weird dating advice subreddits)
you just really don’t know, and literally everyone i have ever gotten remotely close to in real life is vastly more normal about people developing these kinds of feelings/the messy complications of dating and romance than chapo chat users. any discussion beyond whether this type of conversation is appropriate for an internet forum reads to me as attempting to police people’s feelings & expressions of vulnerability in a way that’s unrealistic at best & weirdly repressed at worst.
and honestly, if you have to post a meme like this you are definitely not as emotionally normal as you think, and you also need to reevaluate your relationship to your online life. you could probably also afford to practice sharing potential concerns with people about blind spots, privilege, and potentially problematic behavior in a less bullying way. like it’s obvious you on some level want to have a sincere effortpost sesh about this…so why a weeaboo meme putting people down and joking about beating them to death?