On Romance~
Twenty-five years ago, if I had been asked about romance, I probably would have replied “That’s icky stuff, girls are gross.” Twenty years ago, I would have said, “cards, candy, flowers” …essentially the staples of any Valentine’s Day.Fifteen years ago, I would have said the previous, but added in secluded dinners for two, fireplaces, getaways, etc.
When you get older you understand it’s not just a matter of giving of material gifts, but it’s also to a certain extent ‘being thoughtful’ and paying attention to the complex, bizarre, mostly contradictory and irrational wants and desires of your partner. And then satisfying those desires with material objects and emotional validation. Women need to be reassured that they’re still attractive. Women need to be reassured that they’re still sexy. Women need to be reassured that they’re still appreciated. Women need to be reassured that they’re still women.
You see it all in contemporary television, and if you look at it with a scrutinizing eye, you see the ever-popular scene: man forgets anniversary or birthday or valentines day or whatever, and becomes a nervous wreck buying a last-minute present that he hopes will appease the woman. Maybe my chauvinism is showing a little, but I can see that scene in dozens of different dramas and sitcoms and errata- women are being programmed to expect unnecessary amounts of gifts. Women are idols that must be sacrificed unto. Men are stupid, bumbling idiots that have to be reminded of their place: which is to say sacrificing hard-earned money and groveling at the feet of the woman in the hopes that she deigns to grant him the use of her vagina.
There are solutions, though. By not buying into the shallow, materialistic ideas of romance perpetuated by the misandric feminist movement, by not collapsing into complacency and pursuing your girl consistently, by consistently providing attention, affection and appreciation, you can avoid emasculating yourself (and your wallet) for the sake of the almighty vagina. Alternatively, the Japanese have come up with a unique solution: simply abandoning women in totality.
The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?