Is Your Partner A Grownup Or Do You Just Not Care About Them?

www.quora.com/Is-it-ok-for-your-spouse-to-go-out-all-night-and-not-let-you-know-what-they-are-doing-or-that-theyre-ok-Do-you-expect-a-courtesy-call-if-theyre-going-to-be-home-at-4-am-or-are-they-grown-and-can-do-whatever-whenever/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is it ok for your spouse to go out all night and not let you know what they are doing or that they're ok? Do you expect a courtesy call if they're going to be home at 4 am or are they grown and can do whatever, whenever, without any concern for you?

A. Since my spouse lives 5,000 miles away, I would find it very odd indeed if he gave me a courtesy call to let me know that he would be home at 4 AM.

Aside from that, though, I think the question is loaded. When I have lived with partners, I do not expect a call telling me what their plans are. They are grown adults and can make their own choices.

I would not say this is “without any concern” though.

If, for some reason, I had an *expectation* that they would be home at a certain time, then I would expect a courtesy call because that’s what courtesy is. If a live-in partner told me that they would be home for dinner and I was making dinner for the both of us, I would be both irritated and concerned for their safety if they did not come home reasonably close to the time they said they would.

If my partner has a regular and predictable schedule, and they failed to come home at a time that it would be reasonable to assume or expect that they would be home, I would probably be concerned for their safety.

If my platonic friend promised to meet me for coffee one day and didn’t show up, I would be concerned about the friend. If my sister said she would call me tonight to talk about our plans to give our parents an anniversary gift, and she didn’t call me, I would probably be concerned about her. If my coworker was supposed to have a business meeting with me and didn’t show up, I would probably be concerned about them.

If I have an expectation about the whereabouts of another person, the first thing I would do is examine if that expectation is reasonable. If that expectation is reasonable (i.e. they *said* they would be there and they’re not), then I would be concerned.  But I do not generally expect people to keep me notified of their movements and behaviours unless those impacted me directly. My partners’ schedules are not mine to keep. Their time belongs to them. That’s part of what makes them autonomous human beings.

I eat my meals when I want to eat. I go to bed when I want to sleep. I wake up when I need to wake up. None of those things require a partner’s presence. My partners can come and go as they please, providing they are meeting their obligations and are considerate of how their actions affect other people.

Which is the expectation I would have of *anyone* I was dating and living with, dating and not living with, or living with and not dating. When I moved back in with my parents after college, my sister playing loud music in the room next door when I was trying to sleep was inconsiderate. It didn’t matter that she was my sister, we were sharing space. If a partner did the same thing, he would be equally inconsiderate.

And, likewise, I did not keep my sister’s schedule and had no idea what she was doing or where she was unless it was relevant for me to know. We often talked to each other about our lives outside of home, just because we love each other and sharing is a form of intimacy, but I had no *expectation* of knowing her schedule. We just talked to each other because that’s what people do when they like each other.

A partner would be no different. If my sister was supposed to be home for dinner so that she could wash the dishes, I would have been very irritated for her to not show up and do her chores. Same with live-in partner. But while she was out? Whatever, she’s capable of making her own decisions about how to live her life. Same as my partners.

It’s not without *concern*, it’s without *expectation* and with respect for their autonomy. Their time and their lives and their decisions belong to them. How those things impact *me* is when it becomes reasonable for me to have a say in them, insofar as the impact that I will allow. My partners can stay out all night if they want, but if I come home to make dinner for us and they keep not showing up, that’s wasting my time and efforts, so I can choose not to keep coming home and making dinner if they’re not going to respect my time and efforts.

If my expectations continue to mismatch with the reality of their behaviour, then *I* am the one with a choice to make - either adjust my expectations to match or leave the relationship to find someone who is a better match.

So, yeah, my partners can go out all night and not let me know ahead of time what their plans are. But it’s not without concern, it’s just without expectation.

How Do I Make My Wife Care About Her Own Orgasm?

www.quora.com/What-can-I-do-if-I-would-like-for-my-wife-to-have-an-orgasm-but-she-doesnt-care-if-she-does-or-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What can I do if I would like for my wife to have an orgasm but she doesn't care if she does or not?

A. Let it go. It’s her body, her orgasm, so her desire to have one or not is the only one that matters.

Stop making her orgasms about you and what you want. If she’s ever going to have one, it won’t be while feeling pressured to have one just to make you feel better about giving her one.

I’m going to say this again: stop making her orgasms about you and what you want.

It’s so frustrating being a straight woman when so many men want to make my pleasure all about them. Take some lessons from lesbian sex - it’s not all about the orgasm. If you make sex all about the orgasm, you’re missing out on about 99% of the fun of sex.

1. It’s not about you.
2. It’s not about the orgasm.
3. It’s not about the penetration.

Just let her enjoy sex the way she wants to enjoy it, if you care about her experience at all. She doesn’t need to experience sex in the same way that you do for it to be a pleasurable experience for her. And she definitely doesn’t need for her ability to orgasm or not to become some kind of statement about you.

3 Ways Men Wanting to 'Focus On Her Pleasure' During Sex Can Still Be Sexist - Everyday Feminism - https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/focusing-on-her-pleasure/

Guys, You Can Learn A Lot From Lesbian Sex - https://www.bolde.com/guys-you-can-learn-a-lot-lesbian-sex/

Have You Ever Invited Another Person Into Your Marriage?

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-invited-another-person-into-your-marriage-If-so-what-was-the-outcome/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever invited another person into your marriage? If so, what was the outcome?

A. No, because it’s not possible.

People seem to think that they can build a house (a relationship) with someone, get it just the way they like it, then decide that they want it a little bit bigger, and merely add on a rumpus room to the back with no extra muss or fuss so that the house is mostly unchanged, just a little bit bigger and with little inconvenience to those who already lived there.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
 

Each relationship is its own thing, and requires nurturing in order to thrive. Even when 3 or more people are all romantically involved with each other, it’s not the same house just with more rooms. It’s more houses, perhaps all on the same property but sometimes not even that.

The more successful open relationships (and I define success by the happiness and satisfaction of the participants both during and after a relationship, not the longevity) operate on principles of individuality and respect for agency. Only when people who are partnered can see themselves as whole people, not halves of a whole, not partial people, not a relationship construct, are those people capable of having dynamic, vibrant, healthy, nuanced, 3-dimensional relationships with other people.

The people you get involved with deserve to be involved with a whole person, not a construct. They are not “joining your marriage”, they are relating to *you*, a human being, and anyone else they are getting involved with as well. That’s multiple relationships to maintain, not one giant relationship blob that just gets larger and subsumes everyone in its path.

I was polyamorous before I met my now-spouse. We got into a relationship as poly people and the relationship was polyamorous from the start. He and I have always had other partners and we had other partners when we started dating. Since we are both straight, the odds of us both dating the same person are almost nil.

However, one of his other girlfriends and I have a queerplatonic relationship that basically looks like a romantic relationship in all respects except for the sex. She was not “invited into our marriage”. He met her years ago at a kink convention that he and I and his other girlfriend attended. They hit it off. They began dating. She and I knew of each other through online poly communities, but after they started dating, we became very close and will remain “family” even if one or both of us ends our relationship with our mutual partner.

She is not a part of “our marriage”. She has her own relationship with him and her own relationship with me. Same as all of his other partners and he does the same with my other partners. Most of the metamours and metametamours (a metamour is one’s partner’s other partner) know each other and have friendships or other kinds of independent relationships with each other, so we have a large family dynamic together.

But each dyad, each partnership is its own relationship. And that’s the only way that each relationship can remain healthy.

Read these articles:

• The Most Skipped Step[s] When "Opening A Relationship" + 1 - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/376186.html
   
• Triads Are Advanced Polyamory Not The Beginner Starter Poly Package for Just Opening Up n00bs - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/390353.html
   
• You Cannot "Add Someone To Your Relationship". Stop Saying That - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/364636.html
   
• "Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/375573.html
   
• Honey, Let's Add On A New Girlfriend To Our Existing Relationship! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/334953.html
   
• How Impact Bias Affects Polyamory, Poly n00bs, And Couples Wanting To "Open Up" - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/384668.html
   
• How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html

The Magical Thinking Of Guys Who Love Logic

https://theoutline.com/post/7083/the-magical-thinking-of-guys-who-love-logic

I have a couple of exes like this, and pretty much all of my online flame wars are with dudebros like this (with an exception being a small number of actually "emotional" people who are feeling feelz that are not necessarily connected to reality and expecting everyone around them to cater to those feelz).

And this is the reason why I consider myself a New Atheist but refuse to associate with the "movement" and I don't attend atheist events. I believe in anti-theism, which is what the New Atheists are more or less founded on, but their toxic pseudo-logic justifications for sexism and racism make the community a place that I just don't want to be around.

"Specifically, these guys — and they are usually guys — love using terms like “logic.” They will tell you, over and over, how they love to use logic, and how the people they follow online also use logic. They are also massive fans of declaring that they have “facts,” that their analysis is “unbiased,” that they only use “‘reason” and “logic” and not “emotions” to make decisions. ...

These words are usually used interchangeably and without regard to their proper usage, squished together in a vague Play-Doh ball of smug superiority, to be thrown wherever possible at their “emotional” and “irrational” enemies"

"Any dialogue attempted by these men was not made — at least as far as their partners could tell — with the goal of exchanging views and opening themselves to being challenged. Their goal was to assert their beliefs as fact; to teach their partner the truth,"

"But for the Logic Guys, the purpose of using these words — the sacred, magic words like “logic,” “objectivity,” “reason,” “rationality,” “fact” — is not to invoke the actual concepts themselves. It’s more a kind of incantation, whereby declaring your argument the single “logical” and “rational” one magically makes it so — and by extension, makes you both smart and correct, regardless of the actual rigor or sources of your beliefs."

The 5/4 Trick And Why Music Is Math

Watch on YouTube

As a former musician and a dancer, this really gets under my skin. As someone who is proficient enough in music to have developed an intuitive sense of things, but who was never trained on how to *teach* this stuff, I can't always explain it.

But when I teach people how to dance, I actually use math. Because music is fundamentally a mathematical construct.

And I know that this [4/4 time - 2nd and 4th beat] thing is a product of my culture. It's why I had a hard time with some Bhangra dancing, because a lot of tribal and folk music emphasizes the 1st and 3rd beat (when it's 4/4 time, which is not always true in folk music). I'm aware this is a cultural thing.

But in Western music, this is one of my pet peeves. Which is why I love Harry Connick Jr. so much.

Surprising Things I Have Had To Explain To Adults

www.quora.com/What-are-the-simplest-things-you-had-to-explain-an-adult/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the most surprising thing you've had to explain to an adult?

A. I find it very surprising that I have to explain to adults that my body belongs to me and nobody else. And not only my body, but my time, my emotions, my money, my labor, and my attention. For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that I owe them things that belong to me, or that they get to have a say in what I do with the things that belong to me.

Some people seem to think that their dearly held desires for my things are at any way equal to my own dearly held desires for my things, and that what I want to do with my things somehow affects them even when it doesn’t, just because they happen to have strong feelings about my things.

And also that the things that happen *to my body* and *in my body* are also things that only I should have any control over. If I can prevent you from harvesting my organs even as a corpse, and if I can refuse to give you my organs even if it would save your life *even as a corpse*, then anything else I do with my own body even if it involves someone else’s life is my own business too.

And no, not even my spouse owns these things. Even he does not get a say in what I do with the things that are mine.

---

Another thing I was surprised to have to explain to an adult was that women don’t get “crotch rot” from living on a submarine. Yes, seriously.

You see, his CO explained to him that women can’t live on submarines in the Navy because they get “crotch rot” *specifically from being underwater* and it’s too expensive to keep resurfacing to get them proper medical treatment (and, by implication, men don’t get this because it literally has to do with vaginas being under water, they don’t have medical personnel or equipment onboard, and that subs never have to surface for men’s health issues, with or without this dearth of medical treatment capabilities).

---

I was also surprised to explain to an adult that the people who utilize the county health services facility for things like STD testing and counseling are not all homeless, diseased, drug addicts (not that those people deserve to go without medical treatment either). That this is an affordable medical service and all kinds of people utilize it because that’s what it’s there for.

---

Another surprising thing to explain to an adult was that two people speaking Spanish in public in his vicinity was not an offense committed against him, nor is it “rude” because they might be speaking about him without him being able to tell. I had to explain to him that we were talking about those same two people behind *their* backs, so if merely talking about people “behind their backs” was rude, he was equally as guilty.

But besides that, people have every right to privacy in a conversation, even in public. We may or may not be able to hear or understand what they’re saying, but we don’t have a right to insert ourselves into the conversation just because they happen to be *in* public, when they are not addressing us or the public.

Also that people do not always have the luxury of learning to fluently speak another language before moving to the country. And that you have no idea if they live here or are visiting, and lots of tourists (especially in Florida, where we live) do not bother to learn an entire language before vacationing. And also maybe they *are* learning the language, but he just happened to cross paths with them at a point early in their education.

---

I am frequently surprised at how often I have to explain that monogamy doesn’t prevent people from feeling jealousy, so there’s no reason to be biased against non-monogamy on the basis that the people might feel jealous in non-monogamous relationships.

---

I am often outright shocked at having to explain to grown adults that just because it’s a woman doing it to a man, hitting one’s partner, threatening them with knives, throwing things at them, *and attempting to run them over with their own trucks* are all examples of physical abuse. I’m actually losing count at how often I have to say, specifically, that attempted vehicular homicide is abuse. Property damage is abuse. Controlling your social circle and isolating you from external support is abuse. Name calling is abuse. All the things that men do to women that is abusive is still abusive when women do it to men or when any gender does it to any other gender.

---

I can’t believe, in this day and age, that I still have to explain to grown adults that evolution really happened, that “just a theory” is nonsense and then I have to explain what “theory” actually means, that vaccines do not cause autism but lack of vaccines do cause mass death, that the planet is really round(ish), that magic sugar water will not cure anything, that the fad diet du jour or “miracle food” is not going to help you lose weight or get healthy *except inasmuch as generally eating better and eating fewer calories than you burn does anyway*, that you can’t “boost your immune system” and even if you could you wouldn’t want to because that’s what allergies and rheumatoid arthritis are … I could go on and on and on for literally years about the kinds of bullshit that I regularly have to explain to adults (I know, because I have been going on for years about this bullshit). I still find it surprising though.

---

I am disappointingly, heart-brokenly surprised every time I have to explain empathy to adults. When I have to explain that we shouldn’t do a thing simply because it hurts other people, and especially when I have to explain I don’t need the threat of eternal damnation to prevent me from doing things that hurt other people because I have empathy and I just don’t want to hurt people, I feel deeply sad and surprised at the same time.

Basically, there are a lot of things that I am surprised that I have to explain to adults about.

---

[Edit]  Because apparently people can’t quite get past this part, I’m going to clarify.  The asshole with the crotch rot story is not talking about any legitimate medical condition.  He was very specific that vaginas *rot* under water and in a pressurized cabin, and that the treatment for this “condition” could not be taken care of with the medical supplies and personnel aboard a submarine, so the sub would have to surface regularly to get people with vaginas to proper medical treatment.

Because people with other sets of genitals also get things like jock itch and bacteria infections, and these things can happen to other body parts too, and if humidity or pressure was a contributing factor to it happening in a vagina, it would also happen to other body parts.  As pointed out in some of the comments [on the original post], foot fungal infections are quite common and pretty much anyone who could serve on a military sub has feet.

This asshole also never served on a sub himself, nor was he affiliated with any medical training.  He was a ground-pounder who got dishonorably discharged.  He is not smart enough to be anything other than cannon fodder.  We’ve had many other arguments about many other topics.  It’s astounding the complete lack of basic knowledge this fucker had.  I’m honestly surprised he can tie his shoes in the morning.

It's Your Home Too. Pick Up Your Fucking Trash

Miranda Crim tlSeFeebgdpgrachuiuoacanrsyh 18,od drn201e9cd · Well, while trying to prove a point to my kids, we’ve just surpassed the 48hr mark of the “who will pick up the random piece of trash that they KNOW isn’t supposed to be there” challenge... Between the kids AND the husband, and MULTIPLE trips in and out of the bathroom, this little piece of heaven may just be in it for the long haul! #easymoney #justdotherightthing #decorativefeature #stopthemadness

I wonder if this might have changed the course of my triad relationship.

But, then again, someone would have had to actually pick something up in order to discover the money, which would lead to a change in behaviour "just in case" money was on the bottom of everything.  The main reason, I think, that women still do the majority of the domestic labor in relationships, or if not the labor, then the Household Management labor, is because we are conditioned to both believe that things will not get done unless we do it and then conditioned to be "bothered" by things before everyone else.

As long as we really are "bothered" by the mess sooner, then the people we live with never have to learn how to be "bothered" by it themselves.  It will always get done.  We have to really learn how to not do shit until either the consequences for not doing it get bad enough or the reward for doing it is high enough that people will learn how to be "bothered" themselves.   That's how we were conditioned, after all.

In the last days before my triad imploded, the house was a fucking disaster.  You see, we had an unequal distribution of income, so we redistributed the other parts of the household to compensate.  The person who made the most money was responsible for the highest financial contribution and that was it.  The sole household "job" she had was to write on the shopping list what she wanted from the store because I am not a mind reader.

(incidentally, she refused to put anything on the shopping list, because she didn't want to "bother" me by requesting things even though that was the point of the shopping list.  So I outright refused to buy her groceries, even those few that I did happen to remember she wanted or liked.  She ended up paying more than her share simply because she also had to buy her own food in the house.)

The person who made the least amount of money had no financial contribution other than donating his food stamps to the household groceries.  Instead, he was responsible for all the household chores.  Since his most recent job *was as a personal house cleaner*, this should not have been difficult for him.  

My job was to make up the difference in the finances, to manage the finances, and eventually to manage our houseboy because he wasn't doing any chores at all by the end.

We were so poor, that one time I took a 6-week contract job that took me out of the house for a month and a half.   The amount of money I made for that job should have paid for my share of the bills and given me a cushion for the next month.  While I was gone, he was responsible for managing himself and she became responsible for managing the finances, including paying the bills on time and doing the shopping.

I came home to find the electricity and gas shut off, no food in the house, and an overflowing litter box.  She had forgotten to pay for 2 months in a row and he didn't clean anything.  So all my "cushion" went towards reconnect fees.

By the end, I had given up.  I had previously put a trash can in literally every room of the house, so that nobody even had to get up to throw something away.  And yet, trash would pile up on tables, furniture arms, any available surface, including the floor.

A few weeks before I moved out, I spotted some trash sitting on the floor next to the trash can in the living room.  One of them had thrown it towards the trash can from the sofa and missed and then left it there.  The bin happened to be in the path between the living room / kitchen and the hallway that led to their bedrooms and the only bathroom.

Which means that you literally had to step over that trash to get to anywhere in the house except *my room* which was an add-on on the other side of the house.   Anyone using the bathroom had to step over it.   Anyone going to his or her bedrooms had to step over it.   Anyone coming from their bedrooms or the bathroom into the living room had to step over it.   Anyone going into the kitchen had to step over it.

That bit of trash was still on the floor when I moved out about 5 months later.  Since all the furniture was mine, I cleaned out the entire house in all the rooms except their own bedrooms (and I did go through their rooms too, looking for my things - he had a habit of leaving his dirty dishes piled up behind his computer desk and they were all my dishes).

But I left that fucking piece of trash right there on the floor of the empty house.

If I had had the money at the time, I wonder if this would have worked?  I did use my father's tactic of taking anything they left in the common area that shouldn't be there and putting it out on the curb (Dad has OCD and would accidentally throw away my homework if I left it out on the table, just because "it shouldn't be here" got expressed in his brain as "I will throw it away then").

But all that did was teach them not to leave things they wanted to keep in the common rooms.  It didn't stop them from from leaving *trash* around, and if I had picked up their trash for them, that would only have reinforced the problem.  I wonder if I could have retrained them with positive reinforcement instead, since they clearly weren't bothered *enough* by the mess to fix it themselves.  But someone would have had to pick up that first piece to find the positive reinforcement in order for that to work.

So I applaud this person for attempting such a creative solution to this pervasive problem.  My cynical brain, however, is not at all surprised that it doesn't seem to be working.

Men: PUT ON YOUR BIG BOY PANTS AND START MANAGING YOUR OWN FUCKING HOMES.  Don't wait for the women in your life to tell you what needs to be done, just fucking do it.   And start getting on your friends' backs about them doing it too.

My Honest Obituary

I won't actually care, because I'll be dead. But a more fitting memorial than flattering stories for me would be honesty, as that's one of my strongest held values.

She had a fierce temper. She pissed off a lot of people. That's because she liked cats more than people. She was wicked smart but had "gifted kids syndrome" and suffered from depression and anorexia, so her life never quite went in the direction of her childhood dreams. She made a lot of mistakes, but learned from most of them.

She felt empathy so strongly that she was frequently overwhelmed by it and lashed out at those she felt were harming the ones she felt empathy for. She had a strong protective streak, but not a maternal one - it was more like an avenging angel of punishment and retribution, only without any cool superpowers.

She was not good, she was not evil; she was a meat body driven by a belief engine and influenced by her environment and experiences, which means that she was flawed but she tried, and that's OK.

I Cuss Because You Fucking Need To Feel Uncomfortable

This is partly why I cuss.  I deliberately and consciously include swear words in my vocabulary for 2 reasons:

1) to point out the arbitrariness of assigning an "offensive" value to a collection of sounds when a different collection of sounds with the same meaning is acceptable;

and 2) because of this.  I'm swearing because the topic deserves to be cussed out.  I swear because the content is worthy of all the rage and offense that comes with "bad words".  I swear because fuck you if you are more concerned about those 4 letters in that order than about the violence, brutality, and evil I am using those 4 letters to talk about.

My all-time highest shared post was also one of my angriest.  It was a cuss-laden rant about fuckers adding anti-trans bathroom bills to their local legislation.  I got bombarded with "I like the sentiment but you shouldn't use so many bad words because I can't share this on my timeline" and "well I would agree with you but your language is so foul that it turned me off your argument".

Unfortunately for them, I also got bombarded with share notifications.  It may not have gotten news media attention and re-shared by celebrities or buzzfeed or whatever, but pretty much all of my shares are in the double digits or less, while this one hit 4 digits.

So fuck them and fuck you if you are more concerned with the comfort of the reader over language use than what that language is used to say.
 The N-word is "bad" because of what it *means*.  "Bitch" is bad because of what it *means*.  "Shit" is not bad because it's acceptable to say "poop" in its place.  If the meaning stays the same while the letters change, then clearly the meaning is not bad.  "Asshole" is not bad when you're talking about an anus, but probably bad when you're calling someone one because the first is a neutral meaning and the second is a deliberate insult.  The meaning is what makes the word "bad".

"Fuck" is not bad when it doesn't mean anything you wouldn't want to say anyway, just as long as you don't use those specific 4 letters in that specific order.  If you are so uncomfortable over the presence of certain letters than the topic being discussed, then you're just looking for a reason to not hear the message.

Because this shit is far more disturbing than a bunch of arbitrary, random sounds that we've designated as "bad".

Masculinizing Feminine Fashion

I am in love with this corset vest meant for masculine fashion. I need to make one with feminine lines for me now.

Y'know, in my copious spare time.

The other corset vests seem to be more like standard corsets but with masculine lines.  The one in the thumbnail looks more like it's double-layered with a corset underneath and a vest on top.   That's the one I like and that's the one I'll be making, if I ever get around to it.

There was a great forum thread somewhere about how to make dresses for masculine fashion / male bodies.  The discussion was about how the trick was to not just put men in dresses, but to tailor non-pants to male bodies using "masculine" lines.

Feminizing male bodies or mixing masculine & feminine fashion is a different thing.   This was about taking "women's" clothing and turning it into something masculine people can wear and still be masculine.  Women have tons of examples of taking "men's" fashion and turning it into "women's" fashion by re-tailoring it to fit curvy bodies or using more feminine lines and elements.  Darting a button-up collared shirt, for example.

That's part of how we got away with expanding our available fashion choices into more masculine avenues, such as wearing pants - we feminized pants and now women in pants is just seen as "normal", whether they're feminized versions or not.

If men in our extremely patriarchal, fragile masculinity culture are ever going to move towards more freedom of fashion expression and break out of their much more narrow fashion boxes, one of the ways to do it is to masculinize traditionally feminine clothing, the way we feminized traditionally masculine clothing.

The examples in the thread (that I wish I could find now, so I could share it) gave some really great examples of do's and don't's for masculine skirt-wearing.  One suggestion was to avoid emphasizing the waist, which is the opposite recommendation for feminine styles because emphasizing the waist in a feminine style is intended to highlight the curve of the hips, waist, and ribcage.

Instead, drop or raise the waist, or pair it with shirts, blouses, or jackets that go about butt-length, to make more of a rectangular or triangular shape rather than an hourglass figure.  We see this in tuxes, where the waistline is hidden beneath a cummerbund or vest and the jacket extends to below the butt or even as low as the knees.  This elongates the torso and creates rectangle or triangle shapes instead of curved hourglass shapes.

This corset vest manages to both shape the midsection and also follow the above guideline by not shaping it in the same way that feminine corsets do with hourglass silhouettes and extending to the upper hip, creating a long triangular shape by extending the shoulders with the curve in the seams, which is very masculine.

As a straight woman, I'm attracted to masculinity. I just am, I can't help it. I think if I saw a man wearing this in real life, I might just swoon.