There are lots of guys who spend their formative social experiences in male-only or male-dominant spaces. This leads to a confusion where “being myself in public” gets conflated with “being myself around other dudes”, and it leads to misunderstanding and conflict. I’ll give an eg

I saw a nerdy infographic in a group chat recently, and my first impulse was to type “bro, nerdy infographics like this make my dick rock hard”. (I didn’t post it.) I’ve been thinking about that impulse. I think it’s a sort of bawdy male cameraderie move, like a sports ass slap

The sports ass slap actually is probably a useful analogy all the way through. Imagine a guy who only ever socializes by playing sports with other dudes, who all slap each other’s asses cheerfully and laugh. And the first time he interacts with a woman, he slaps her ass

There are lots of other versions of this sort of phenomena. Consider the social rules around swearing. When is it appropriate to swear? When is it not? There’s no centralised rulebook, but we all navigate it nevertheless, and mostly well most of the time