109. The Desirability Politics Episode: Should We Dismantle Our Conception of Who is Attractive?
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We know that "pretty privilege" can affect everything from who society deems worthy of sex and intimacy all the way to who gets promotions, housing and friends. But it's not as obvious as with other forms of inequities what we should do about it. We can pretty much agree that everyone deserves housing and healthcare but attraction by definition requires another person to be attracted to you, and we can't force people to be attracted to each other. It's also a unique form of privilege because it is more changeable than a trait like race or gender.
We talk with Hina Wilkerson, a member of the Salted Logic media collective, to talk about all of this and why we don't talk about it. It's a conversation that teeters between being exciting and edgy and also dark because it encompasses funny topics like Chads hitting on you at the gym all the way to rape, pedophilia, murder, and missing women.
And when you are on the "low" end of the desirability spectrum, the stakes can be pretty high. We already live in a society of ever-growing alienation, social anxiety, and isolation that is being fueled by social media and whether people find you attractive can be the difference between hugely opposite reactions, from revulsion to your creepiness, to elation that someone is sexually interested in you and you have no way of knowing how someone will react, which is why flirting is such a dangerous game.
Especially as society at large is moving in a direction to be more pro-kink and pro-fetish, we also get into how this interacts with what we allow ourselves to be "into" and whether we should be questioning that, and when that questioning verges into shaming. No spoilers, but raceplay and virginlust are inevitably mentioned.
Links:
Hina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hinarising/
Salted Logic, Hina's woman-owned media collective: https://saltedlogic.com/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.
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