I think historically though Russian ladies got less hate for being empowered. Wasn’t Tchaikovsky married to a female physicist? [correction: it was Shostakovich] The revolutionary upheaval of 1917 that led to the collapse of the Tsarist monarchy was started by women who worked in textile factories in Petrograd. And it was on International Women’s day! Now that would be something we all should celebrate.
Did you know that they were the first in the world to legalise abortion? 1920. And literally no feminist suffrage because women’s rights were the bread and butter of the communist philosophy and writings. The Bolshevik government led by Lenin bestowed legal and social rights and equality on his female compatriots decades ahead of the West (voting, marriage, reproduction, economic participation). It seems no gender slant in living out individual “liberty and freedom” in communism vs democracy.
— Salisa to Henry, April 15th, 2026
[In Iran] Men are expected to show their emotions—take Mossadegh’s tantrums. If they don’t, Iranians suspect they are lacking a vital human trait and are not dependable. Iranian men read poetry; they are sensitive and have well-developed intuition and in many cases are not expected to be too logical. They are often seen embracing and holding hands. Women, on the other hand, are considered to be coldly practical. They exhibit many of the characteristics we associate with men in the United States. A very perceptive Foreign Service officer who had spent a number of years in Iran once observed, “If you will think of the emotional and intellectual sex roles as reversed from ours, you will do much better out here.”
— The Silent Language, Edward T. Hall
Let us summarize how the love act contributes to the deepening of consciousness. First, there is the tenderness which comes out of an awareness of the other’s needs and desires and the nuances of his feelings. The experience of tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of isolated selves but a union. In this love act, the lover often cannot tell whether a particular sensation of delight is felt by him or his loved one – and it doesn’t make any difference. A sharing takes place which is a new Gestalt, a new field of magnetic force, a new being.
— Love & Will, Rollo May
In the West, brainy Tanguy would be dating artsy Betty or someone with an equally respectable talent. That’s what makes a relationship, you know. Should I write you a guide to Western romance for dummies?
— Salisa to Anton, May 7th, 2026
Salisa to Anton, May 7th, 2026:
You do know that in both countries you’ve been living in strong traditional gender roles often dictate that men aren’t allowed to display emotions, right? I’d say your home country especially. Men be tough, women be submissive. Or at least women don’t appreciate weaklings who show emotions or vulnerabilities. Thus ideals of masculinity undermine and dehumanise men. Marriage reduced to something akin to an economic arrangement and has a weak emotional foundation (emotions aren’t shared or appreciated). Well, the West hasn’t been like that for like decades. Men can cry like babies nobody faults them for being so. Didn’t you see Mark Carney crying at the public memorial of that school shooting by a trans kid last year? Anybody made a big fuss about that? If anything, people praised him. He has children after all. Would be quite psychopathic if he didn’t. And aside from the resurgence of certain far-right movements (anyone surprised Erika Kirk turned out to be quite psychopathic? They certainly didn’t marry each other because they liked or respected each other that’s for sure), The West for the most part has certainly been deconstructing gender ideals or has now completely deconstructed them. None of my Western partners so anal about appearing “sensitive” or full of feelings, even a few generations before me. How do you think love develops?
So I don’t understand why every time I read your writing there is a consistent undercurrent in the subtext promoting the “new-fangled” fad of men giving into their emotions and women embracing them. It would be very new and subversive like half a century ago probably. You’re writing for the wrong audience, or rather in the wrong language. I’d say that despite the Japanese still having strong gender expectations in the social and economic realms men can still have whimsies and write poesies. Culturally Japanese men aren’t so anal about it and are privately and quietly individualistic. They are as weird and wacky as they come. So you shouldn’t be crafting your messages in Japanese either. As far as I know there are sub-tropes in Japanese anime about strong silent women and sensitive romantic men. My Thai ex filled me in on this ages ago but I forget about them now. So despite sexualising and trivialising women in a lot of cases the Japanese certainly have no illusions about women… Or men for that matter. I’d fault them for being in their heads too much.
It’s just a bit insulting when you write with the presumption that your audience shares your worldview, that’s all. It’s so outdated these days. I’d say that the West started embracing the emotional complexity and sensitivity of men since the days of Shakespeare (if he in fact turns out to be a man and not a woman). Don’t you know his love sonnets? Read British poetry in the last two hundred years. Some of the greatest love verses written by male poets. Anybody made a big fuss about that? This is why it helps to be well-rounded. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats a sensitive bunch with deep, expansive interiority. Sturm and Drang in Germany or Prussia at the time? Anyone made fun of Goethe for writing Werther in his prime? Or Werther for being such a “simp” in that story? Seriously, stop being such an ignoramus pretending that your culture speaks for the whole world. One great thing you can do since you are trilingual is to popularise the lyrical literature so famous in Europe in your native tongue. They say that Shakespeare “invented” psychological language that made it possible for us to explore the complex mental landscape of human emotions and struggles and morality for the first time. Harold Bloom I think. The Brits would know what I’m talking about. When you read great European and American writers and poets, you can tell there is such a big inner expanse and interiority to them. In your case, your native culture constrains you.
That, or stop caring what your culture tells you. I give my own culture a big middle finger since I was 15. Why are you acting like a wimp and let benighted men entrain your thinking? If I have to describe you in one word, I’d say “conformist”. You are very conforming after all despite using the word “normie” at times. You care too much what other people think. Fundamentally we are too different. I’m a radicalist (in some ways) and obviously so is Pootookie.
I was in one of the largest bookshops in Moscow a month ago and one curious thing I got was an aisle full of translated detective stories. Seriously? Of all the great English literature, you guys just dig Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, huh? Do you know that Shakespeare became very popular in Germany and a cornerstone of their literature as early as the 18th century?
And on the French side we all know their greatest export Rimbaud and Verlaine were lovers. Anybody made a big fuss about that? I read Musset’s Confession of a Child of the Century a year ago and it was an absolute masterpiece. I recommend you read it. I mentioned it in my journal that it’s a parallel to our story. I’d like to hear what you think.
[…]
Ever read Seducer’s Diary by Kierkegaard? That’s an equally interesting interpretation of you as Musset’s Octave and Brigette. Either way I profess my lack of interests in you.
Salisa lohavittayavikant 