this has been on my mind a lot. I follow some lesbian meme shitposting groups and there's tons of memes that are just like "This girl looked at me and I died and then she smiled at me and I came back to life" and I just cannot think of any cishet men's spaces that bring that have that level of absolutely dorky dysfunctional love for women. And, like, cishet men, their whole thing is supposed to be being in to women, and that just strikes me as really weird that there's not an equivalent. Like the closest I can think of is wife guy memes but that's just one wife, usually.
Do any spaces like that exist? Is it even possible given the way gender works in society?
In a hypothetical situation in which I was a guy whose eyes were temporarily replaced by cartoon stars due to the attention of a cool lady, I would not feel comfortable indulging in that feeling online due to fears of both the potential negative reaction of other men and the potential negative reaction of women.
Exactly.
I feel like changing the observer to a cis man changes the dynamic significantly. It can easily come off as desperate or some other negative associations. It also seems a bit like the default. "Oh, you're a man that likes women? No way, wow."
I love women and cute ladies but I'm not about to be making memes about that any time soon.
Right! It feels like that sort of sentiment expressed by a man would generally come off as creepy or threatening to a woman reading it. That's no fault of the writer or reader, it's just a nice sentiment buckling under the weight of... well, all of human history w/r/t gender. I'm sure there are places where one can express such things (here? maybe?), but in general, it feels much safer to just not bother.
It's one of the many reasons that I enjoy seeing the viewpoints of trans folks. I'm a cis man, but the way trans women express appreciation and affection toward women on this Internet is lovely and resonates with me