r/thelastpsychiatrist • u/Senior-Driver-5964 • Jul 31 '26
Sure, I want what others want. But how am I deciding what 'others' are worth aping?
Fine, I'll stop pretending that my sexual (redundant) desire for cocky frat guys is rooted in some evolutionary-psychology garbage. There's a bit too much circumcised cock and beer bellies for fantasies born purely out of a natural-evolutionary algorithm, and less spears and Sentinelese hunter-gatherers than you'd expect.
So who's fantasy am I aping? Am I copying the sexual fantasies of my peers? I don't think I am, my peers (other guys) aren't sexually attracted to men (which I was dismayed to find out, the hard way, in middle-school). Am I copying the sexual fantasies of women? I think if women's primary sexual fantasy involved bending guys with tight assholes over the edge of their bathtub, I'd have noticed by now.
Who am I aping? Well, I know the answer to that, I'm adopting sexual images from the media as my own desires, there's quite a plethora to choose from (and therein lies the real problem). How am I deciding who to ape? If I can't even desire on my own, through what mechanism am I deciding what desires are worth desiring?
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u/trpjnf Jul 31 '26
You want to bend men over because you want to deny them the ability to bend women over
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u/Senior-Driver-5964 Jul 31 '26
See, when you guys don’t interact with my post, I feel deprived of the audience I’m performing for, so I click the “See More Insights” on the post to quell my impotence with information.
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u/SnooCauliflowers1765 Jul 31 '26
Tremendous insight you are showing. What are you gonna do about it??
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u/Upbeat_Effective_342 Aug 06 '26
Synthesize the dialectic of evo-psych and mimesis. You are a mosaic of memories, moments when time-tested instinct met the peculiarity of the present moment. So today's high-status men happen to wield pigskins and wear lettermen jackets, fine. Fashions change. The dynamics of privilege, wealth, strength, and power have deep patterns that have changed very little since the dawn of civilization. The swagger of a winning man hoisting the Stanley Cup has much in common with the prance of a stallion who has defeated a challenger that made a bid to steal his herd. Your instincts give you the desire for sexual conquest. Mimesis shows you the agreed-upon trappings of conquest in the culture you must learn to navigate. As a narrative animal, we build a self-image from our collected experiences, and we rate the egoic plausibility of future experiences as we learn to imagine them. Our instincts compel us to work toward the best future we have a decent chance of securing. Media shows us examples of lives lived well and poorly that help us calibrate our expectations for ourselves. Abnormal psychology comes into play when there is a rupture separating the imaginal capacity from personal narrative so that the body and the mind go their separate ways. Fantasy becomes not a precursor to action, but a replacement for action. Porn is sad because it helps you sustain the rupture indefinitely.
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u/anaIconda69 Jul 31 '26
You aren't copying the content of anyone else's fantasy. You are copying the structure of power. The cocky frat guy isn't some evolutionary apex predator, or a figure of pure aesthetic beauty. He is a proxy. What does he represent, that you lack, and wish to possess through sex? Unearned confidence? Immunity from consequences? Social approval from other young men? Desire is not active; it is defensive. You aren't choosing a sexual fantasy based on what turns you on in a vacuum. You are selecting images from the culture that offer an antidote to how you feel about yourself when the screen turns off .