What's up with M4A ASMR-?

[tiredpigeon]

Yes. I listen to ASMR. I have extremely bad anxiety and to be honest, sometimes the voice of an icy anime fck boy is what I need.

I'm a trans dude, so listening to anything referring to the listener as 'beautiful' or 'darling' is dysphoria triggering.

Lately, anything marked as M4A (male for androgynous) has been so obviously targeted for a female (I say this in the sense that they use extremely feminine compliments- beautiful, gorgeous, pretty- etc.) that it's not even the dysphoria upsetting me, I'm just mad. Does anyone else have a problem with this, or is it just me?

Don't know what I'm talking about? Listen to this. It's marked as M4A for some reason-

[VibrantFox]

1, Hello asmr comrade cause as many comments as I've seen i never thought i'd encounter a fellow listener

2, Totally agree

I literally do not know what it is or why but there's definitely vids that will have and M4A or F4A label but use very specific gendered compliments or terms like you've mentioned. Like the vid you posted is one of cardlin's older vids but there's still a lot of the "beautiful, gorgeous, pretty" as you mentioned even now

I'd love to see asmr-tists mix it up but idk if it'll ever happen and since it seems the audience skews female that's just...the default

now that i'm thinking about i wonder if this is why i just kinda wound up backing off of them that or like the insane amount of yandere/vampire/mha audios

[tiredpigeon]

Greetings!- Everyone I know that listens irl is just an MHA stan-

All the yandere stuff is why I stopped listening for a long time- A lot of the time that is what triggered my panic attacks

I don't know why they use feminine compliments in the ones marked GN- I mean, they obviously know not just females are listening to it, so why don't they just accommodate for the minority-?

The only amsrtist I know that actually uses neutered compliments is Bear-

[VibrantFox]

I don't know why they use feminine compliments in the ones marked GN- I mean, they obviously know not just females are listening to it, so why don't they just accommodate for the minority-?

Yeah I'm wondering if it's been brought up but I've never really gone too deep to find out. Still tho it definitely should be marked a little more accurately and accommodating shouldn't be that difficult there's lots of non-gendered terms of endearment to choose from

[tiredpigeon]

At this point, I can't tell whether it's ignorance or not..

I think it might be just the lack of care for people who are gender variant but idk.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I have no idea for the specific example, but could it be that it is for people who do not consider such words gendered? As a NB I use them indifferently for males or females unless I get a clear negative reaction from someone; and also like when people use words at random for me.
Obviously that works only if it is a mix of neutral, ' for female' and 'for male' words, i.e. just used randomly.

[WillowTree]

I was wondering if it was something like this too. My husband gets a goofy grin anytime I say he's beautiful or say his eyes are a gorgeous color or anything like that and it's never crossed my mind that those compliments are just 'for women'

[tiredpigeon]

It's totally fine if the person is comfortable with it, but when you're created for a broad audience, and it's marked gender neutral, I just think you should try a little harder to make sure everyone is comfortable.

[Kelheor]

But what would be gender neutral then? I get it, English language has this strange difference between "beautiful" and "handsome" (even though it's pretty stupid), but how is "gorgeous" exclusively feminine?

[tiredpigeon]

I'm not saying that those compliments are just for women- If someone's comfortable with it, then go ahead! The videos are marked gender-neutral, so for everyone. Like @VibrantFox said, there are gender neutered terms of affection that can be used the same way as beautiful is.

[vothnthorvaldson]

Yeah, I don't know enough the context to understand fully.
I was just giving a possible explanation.
I do personally consider using any word at random to be at least as neutral as using only neutral words, however I probably would not have felt like that at every time of my life.

It is a bit a shame, but it's a fact that some generally gendered words can bring dysphoria. The main reason it does not happen to me anymore is because I'm surrounded by cis people of both genders who accept and use these gendered words at random, so I don't associate them with gender anymore.

This is the dilemma between refusing gendered words or reclaiming them as 'just words' the same way some people say clothes are just clothes and are not essentially gendered.
But this is more of a background issue and may not apply to this specific example.

[tiredpigeon]

I never said it was exclusively feminine- but, when it's paired with the listener being called angel, beautiful, and a plethora of other stereotypically feminine compliments, it reads that way.

I was just saying as a trans guy, it makes me very uncomfy. It gives me dysphoria which is a very sucky feeling that I have to live with.

As for gender-neutral compliments, there's alluring, beckoning, captivating, enthralling, enticing, stunning, etc.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

it seems the audience skews female

I kinda think the opposite, that the ASMR audience is more male than female on average. There are, of course, artists who have the majority of subs male or female. I admit to having no statistics to back up my impression, though. Certainly, the artists are mostly female.

[VibrantFox]

my reference was audiences for male asmrtists in that generally the male vas have more female followings and female vas have larger male audiences not that theres more female listeners overall

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Ah! Got it. I agree completely with that clarification. Thank you.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I also listen to ASMR and the preponderance of makeup & hair care stuff requires I sort of rearrange my viewing to make me an observer more than a direct recipient of the artist's "care". Sometimes, I can just let it go, like "sure, I don't use makeup but if you wanna put some on me today, I'm game."

But I do often have my immersion bumped when complements rain down that don't apply or are (I know in my mind) not ones I'd ever hear in real life. It doesn't generate (I suspect) anything like the anxiety for you, but it does sometimes leave me feeling more introspective and down than when I started viewing.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I know a lot of artists don't script their content, they're doing it improv. And I think that makes it harder to weigh each word for impact on disparate audience segments. Editing one's speech on the fly, while trying to stay in character, while trying to sound natural, while trying to invent the next things to say, would probably result in a sort of mental paralysis.
IOW, I don't believe it's because they don't care, per se. I know of a few artists who do the things you are sensitive about, and I know they are actually very supportive.