Curiosities: March, 2025
Men, sex work, demons, Christian civilization, and a celebration.
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Happy March, kittens! Welcome to Curiosities, my monthly series in which I give some updates and feature the best articles I read on Substack over the past month.
But first, I must thank you, my audience, for helping me reach an important milestone.
Sacred Tension is now a Substack Bestseller!
It is still completely mad to me that strangers on the internet are willing to pay me for the words I write down. It’s the dream, and it is entirely due to you. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
To celebrate, I am offering 40% off paid year subscriptions for the next two weeks. Half my work is behind a paywall, so this will unlock all my content, and it ensures that I can keep writing, working, and building financial stability. Please use this button to upgrade:
And remember: this Substack is a crucial part of my income, but if you are truly unable to afford a subscription, please DM me on Substack or reply to this email, and I will give you 6 months free, no questions asked.
Music I enjoyed in February
This extraordinary live set from British drum and bass outfit Chase and Status:
Books I completed in February
The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease by Marc Lewis
Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Perry
Highlights from the stream.
and I host a weekly live stream on Substack in which we and a special guest discuss the latest hot topics. In February, we were joined by of The Golden Horde to discuss masculinity and religion; MAGA defector to discuss sexuality, Elon Musk’s baby mama, and spreadsheet culture; and personal essayist to discuss her excellent series about her extramarital affair. All three of them are excellent writers and deserve a subscribe.Lirpa and I will keep doing the livestream and bringing on fascinating guests as long as you keep joining us. It is a good time to hang out with fellow creators, meet new people, and relax after the mayhem of the the work week. We’ve been going live Sunday evenings at 7 PM ET, though that is subject to change. Lirpa and I always announce the upcoming episodes in our chats and notes.
Here’s me exploring the differences between gay and straight dating with Jeff Giesea.
And here I am defending my practice of writing about weird, taboo topics:
Lirpa and Kerry share their thoughts on unconditional love, particularly the love Kerry received from her husband after cheating on him:
Here, I add some thoughts of my own, and I explain how the unconditional love I’ve received from my husband transformed my self-injury habit.
My articles from February
Alright, enough about me. Here are the most interesting articles I read in February.
This is a quick reminder that inclusion in the Curiosities series does not necessarily equate to agreement or approval. An article is included here because it made me think and moved me in some way, either intellectually or emotionally. If you want to know what I think about a particular topic, ask me directly or see my own writing on the subject.
If you are interested in being featured in an upcoming edition of Curiosities, please see this footnote.1
: you need to take more nudes
if you literally cannot stand to look at your naked body, there’s your entry point.
if you only get naked for sex (okay or showering), if you only get naked with the intention to please another person, if you get naked and hide yourself as quickly as possible…
darling, you have work to do.
and here it is: get in front of the mirror, or the camera, and start LOOKING.
learn to see yourself. learn to see beauty in your physical presence. i promise Aphrodite will be looking upon you in pleasure and approval.
: Welcome to the Hypocrisy Famine
By admitting fallibility while glorifying a higher standard, Seneca’s ideas became beloved by Christians to such an extent that the early church leader Tertullian referred to him as "Our Seneca." His ideas were adopted into Christianity and the Christian moral revolution that’s bettered the world over the last few centuries is at its heart a Senecan one.
Seneca informed the chivalric tradition of the Middle Ages, the writings of Montaigne, and the Enlightenment philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire. It was these philosophers who inspired Thomas Jefferson to boldly proclaim that “all men are created equal,” an echo that took 1,700 years to bounce back.
So in the end, by espousing grand ethical ideas they couldn’t live up to, Jefferson and Seneca changed the world by setting a higher bar that others would live up to.
: In Which I Declare War on Beloved Entertainer Bo Burnham
But there is that other layer that Burnham never acknowledges and may not even be aware of, which is that publicly detailing the contours of his illness is, paradoxically, one of the symptoms of that illness. And that, in my opinion, is the real epidemic of the modern age.
Somewhere, right now, a teenage girl just recorded herself crying for a TikTok video but, when she went to edit it, realized her mic wasn’t plugged in and so now she’s making herself cry a second time to get another take. Next door is some dude with a great job, healthy body, a loving partner and lots of friends who, after a long day of fairly easy work and an evening watching Netflix, will tweet, “Another wretched day enduring the horrors, my thoughts are with all of you who know that just surviving this absolute hellscape is an accomplishment all its own.”
: Men
Men that possess integrity. Men that practice chivalry. Men you become a fucking Queen for. Men that you journey to the Underworld and back for, and if you know your mythology, you know I do not mean go through hell for when I say that. Men that put you on a throne. Men that you can fucking worship, just the way they worship you back. Men that make you realise that criminals, abusers and losers are the exception, not the norm. Men that make you rightfully question a lot of the modern narratives of womanhood that you were thinking were ‘empowering.’ Men who make you want to make a soup and listen to Sade and Naika. Men that truly, deeply, actually empower you and your entire life. Men whose entire playlists you want to listen to, and whose every favourite book you want to read, just to learn how to love them a little better. Men whose hearts have electromagnetic fields that waltz with yours. Men who penetrate you like The Divine itself is making love to you. Men who fill you up like you were born and designed just for them. Men who caress you, love you and fuck you like your union was the reason for the entire Universe to exist. Men who make you feel like there’s nobody more disconnected from life than women who hate men.
: The Vagabond King
Christianity is, and always has been, a radical counter-culture. God’s wisdom, as St Paul tells us, is foolishness to the world, and we see this in the teachings of Jesus. Giving away wealth we have worked hard to earn; allowing our enemies to mock or strike us; leaving our homes and families behind for a promise of paradise instead; refusing violence; loving our neighbours and enemies; understanding that our true neighbours may not be our own kin but strangers or foreigners - none of this makes sense on an everyday level. But it is no good claiming that such instructions are somehow ‘not to be taken literally.’ We surely have to take God incarnate at his word - and then figure out what it means for us in our lives. However that plays out, it seems clear to me that there is no way to live such teachings at the centre of a worldly culture. This is why Christians have always been outsiders - even when ‘Christianity’ was nominally in power.
: Restoration of the Demon
We viewed the information age as an age of reason, governed by the scientist and the mathematician. We’re now coming to realize it’s altogether different — an enchanted age, governed by the myth-maker and the mystic. To render the world as information is a process of de-materialization, and in de-materialization’s wake comes enchantment. In replacing objects with representations of objects, with information, we have slowly but inexorably dissolved reality. We have opened — “widened” might be the better word — a portal to the paranormal. Aberrations of vision spread through media as easily as aberrations of behavior do.
The demon is the perfect manifestation of the hyperreality in which we live today and of which Baudrillard was the prophet. The demon has no referent in the material world. The demon exists as an image, an “ideal confusion,” to borrow a term the philosopher uses later in his talk. It’s an image, moreover, with the surprising, seductive, emotionally stirring qualities that define viral content. Bloodied claws. Made of light. Glitched into reality. When everything’s mediated, when images take precedence over “a reality whose nature we are less and less able to grasp,” the hyperreality of the mythical and the mystical seems deeper, truer, than the tepid reality of the actual. The true reality is the “bizarre reality” that lurks behind material reality and that can, at any moment, pounce.
: The Curious, Unparalleled Ickiness of Videogames
A few months back, a tweet circulated that ranked hobbies that women found repulsive and unflattering in men, claiming that playing video games outmatched other leisure activities by a wide margin in inspiring negative affect among females. The stats were of questionable provenance and maybe downright phony, but they captured a real phenomenon anyway—like Ken Kesey once wrote, “it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” And the truth is that women generally despise the idea of their male partner playing video games. It’s a shockingly fierce and commonplace antipathy—husbands from years ago who caught hell for watching sports all day or playing a bit too much golf had little idea how innocuous their doings would be regarded by comparison to video games.
: A day in the life of a dystopian OnlyFans prostitute
There is no normal daily routine when you work on Onlyfans. In fact, once you get the first 200 subscribers, there is no day and night anymore. You have to be awake, happy and flirtatious at all times, otherwise the punters will request charge backs (I will explain what that is). The idea that you are an empowered girl boss choosing her own working hours is an utter lie perpetuated by the woke agenda and the porn industry lobbyists. Onlyfans is the virtual brothel, the punters are your pimps and you are some sort of dystopian sex slave. You are up and working when they want you to.As a result of their non-stop demands for sexting, webcam sessions and custom photos and videos, I didn’t see the sun light for months. I would stay up all night (to match the time zones of various well paying punters) and sleep during the day.
Similarly to the cam sites, no one (and I mean literally no one) subscribes to Onlyfans because they want to watch adult content. Hundreds of ignorant men have asked me “Why would anyone pay for your videos and photos, when there is so much free porn online?” The answer is: they don’t. They subscribe in order to become able to message me and talk me into dating them. It is paid sexual harassment 24/7. My assistant, Cindy, who was also working as my Onlyfans chatter (person paid to text the subscribers and pretend to be the pornstar in the videos) would often tell me that in just one day, she had over 50 requests for paid sex, fetish sessions and creepy men who demanded to know my real location, name and relationship status, otherwise they would be requesting a charge back from Onlyfans because “they didn’t want to waste their time”. I was paying her three times the amount she was making in her old job (mainly out of guilt for getting a civilian like her into the sex industry and exposing her to all of that filth) and despite earning a much higher salary, she eventually became burned out and quit.
: Benson Boone and the Partisan Battle for Youth Sex Appeal
In recent decades, the left’s messaging about sex has centered around threats to abortion rights and gay rights, HIV prevention and ending sexual assault. All very important, but also very serious. Intentionally or not, the left has tended to overlook the fun side of sex (Hotties for Harris was a notable exception). Most young men say they have been in relationships, even “serious” relationships. While not many young men explicitly point to having a busy sex life as essential to their definition of manliness, the current array of who is popular on YouTube and TikTok (and who isn’t) suggests there is clearly a market for helping young men navigate sex, romance, and everything in between. It may be hard for Millenials, Gen Xers and Boomers to wrap our heads around, but Republicans and their influencers have positioned themselves as the party with sexual energy (even if, in practice, sexual frequency seems pretty similar across parties). And Democrats aren’t giving young people an aspirational vision of sex, wealth, or strength (even if, in practice, plenty of Democrats have sex, are rich, and lift heavy). We might hope people vote on tax policy or foreign affairs, but they also vote based on who they want to be associated with, and aspire to, culturally.
: Donald Trump is Not a Monster
Monsters are fictional. Nobody is a monster. People who do terrible things, and stand for appalling ideologies, are nonetheless human beings. In referring to these people as monsters, Reich yields to the impulse of representing political enemies as evil, subhuman creatures, rather than as human beings who behave destructively.
This is a very tempting error. It’s tempting because it is reassuring. In denigrating people as monsters, we implicitly assert that they are categorically different from ourselves. They are “other”—essentially different from “us” and (unlike us) bad to the bone.
That’s all for now. Stay curious.
Posts must be well-written with a minimum of grammatical and spelling errors. Most of us don’t have professional editors so a few mistakes are inevitable, but the piece needs to be readable.
I must find the article moving or interesting, which is completely subjective. Just because a piece doesn’t ring my bell doesn’t mean it’s bad.
No authors will be featured two months in a row. So, if you were featured in last month’s post, you will by default not be included in this month’s post.
Sometimes I run out of space, time, or energy, and your piece just gets left on the cutting room floor as a result. Don’t despair! You might be Shapespare, I just work too many jobs and I’m too overwhelmed and your piece fell through the cracks. Feel free to remind me of your article again, and I will make time to read it!
What did you think of Marc Lewis's book? One of my faves!