So, my wife and I stopped shaving everything in the beginning of Nov.  It was pretty nice, I must say.  She is cis and I was amab.  So, the effect of hair on my body is a bit different for me, since it strikes up memories of boy mode.  Now that it is over we both hacked much of our bodies down....lol- she is WAY hairier than me.  Anyhoo, I decided I am not shaving my armpits now, and probably won't for the entire winter.  I think they are sexy with hair, which it contrary to what I thought I would feel about them due to my amab, and all.  In the past I would cringe if I saw something like that in the mirror and would instantly feel dysphoria about it...it would scream MALE! to me.  I see it as progress for me to keep them hairy and enjoy them.  Just more letting go of that dysphoria.

Anyone else do the no-shave November thing?  My sons do it and man, I love it when they hack those beards down.  They're so handsome when they go from mountain man beard to groomed men!

Ainsley,
   Maybe it just screams you are French. That is their style. Had any cravings for fries or toast lately?
Moni

Quote from: HappyMoni on December 01, 2017, 03:31:36 PM
Ainsley,
   Maybe it just screams you are French. That is their style. Had any cravings for fries or toast lately?
Moni

I don't think so because when my wife's legs were hairy like a man's I was like Girl, you need a trim!  I am pretty sure the French don't stop at armpits. ha!

Been eating lots of toast lately and now I'm seriously jonesing fir frites! Hmm, go out or just make them here? Tough call.

And no I didn't not shave my legs for November, in fact I shaved 'em for the first time in ages in honor of a visit to my electrologist for her to inspect Dr Wittenberg's work (she approved). In fact I waxed legs last night, so much better than shaving!! Was gonna post about how lovely it worked out later today.

Never have shaved armpits, I think it's time!

I will be interested in reading your leg waxing post.  I have thought about it quite a bit.

I have never heard of no shave November. But I would never not shave my armpits. I don't have much underarm hair and it's very soft and of course it's white but I can't stand the thought of having hair under my arms. My legs have the same type of soft white hair but I have a thing about them being absolutely smooth before letting my boyfriend touch them. As for beards I totally hate them. I don't mind my boyfriends blondish red scruff if he hasn't shaved in a couple of days but a full beard is an instant turn off to me. The guy next door had a long bushy beard like a derelict. One day I was outside and he came out to get his trash cans in and he had shaved. I was totally blown away. He is really handsome and he's much younger than I had thought he was. It was amazing. I always thought if a guy had a full beard then he mjust have an ugly face and used the beard to hide it.  I found out that's not always true. I just can't understand why a cute guy would want to hide his handsome face with a nasty beard.

This is theoretical cause I am with a woman, but I think a guy with a beard is kind of hot. One of the benefits of watching hockey at playoff time! If the beard is too long it is not attractive though. Of course, I don't have experience kissing with a beard involved so that is a possible sticking point. On me, I would rather have no hair. At Christmas I am doing an all out on my face to finish it up. If I have extra time scheduled after that the hair on the mons is going. I don't like the feel of it. Smooth is so much better. Let's face it, hair means friction. The rest of the genital area is already clear.
Moni

Quote from: HappyMoni on December 02, 2017, 04:38:39 PM
This is theoretical cause I am with a woman, but I think a guy with a beard is kind of hot. One of the benefits of watching hockey at playoff time! If the beard is too long it is not attractive though. Of course, I don't have experience kissing with a beard involved so that is a possible sticking point. On me, I would rather have no hair. At Christmas I am doing an all out on my face to finish it up. If I have extra time scheduled after that the hair on the mons is going. I don't like the feel of it. Smooth is so much better. Let's face it, hair means friction. The rest of the genital area is already clear.
Moni

I don't know about kissing a guy with a full beard but kissing a guy with scruff can hurt. A few times after I kissed Tristan when he had scruff I got beard burn. I had a sunburn like rash around my mouth from his stubble.

Ahh yes, my mons isn't bare and I'll start waxing soon as it needs to be, especially now as I've tested the recipe on legs.

And yes I can say authoritatively beards are hot. I've made out with a guy with stubble also bit less hot but it still works.

Beards are pretty hot on women also, also best when shorn kinda close. I'd post a picture to prove that but ...

Quote from: Julia1996 on December 02, 2017, 09:14:28 AMI just can't understand why a cute guy would want to hide his handsome face with a nasty beard.

Could be he's a trans woman trying to pass as male.  That's why I had my beard for 30 years.  It's pretty good camouflage.

I have always found women that did not shave their armpits hot.  I find it empowering for them, too. 

I asked my wife about kissing me back when I was in boy mode with my beard and she said it hurt sometimes, but she didn't mind it.  She is a keeper!!  We've been together 28 years, so we are not in the new love/new dating stage, and body hair, no matter where it is, will not be a 'turn off' for either of us. lol 

I tried a beard back in the 70's, part of my trying to fit in time. My face does not grow hair uniformly so I looked moth eaten. Have been clean shaven ever since. One advantage of shaving daily. If you want to dress up you don't have to explain why you shaved because you are clean shaven every day.

Quote from: ainsley on December 04, 2017, 09:22:21 AM
I have always found women that did not shave their armpits hot.  I find it empowering for them, too. 

I asked my wife about kissing me back when I was in boy mode with my beard and she said it hurt sometimes, but she didn't mind it.  She is a keeper!!  We've been together 28 years, so we are not in the new love/new dating stage, and body hair, no matter where it is, will not be a 'turn off' for either of us. lol

I don't ever have underarm hair just because I don't like it. But if a woman doesn't want to shave I see nothing wrong with that at all. A lot of guys do though. My brother was looking forward to going out with this girl he was lusting over. He came early and said she had really hairy underarms and it skeezed him out. I wonder how women shaving got started. Before the 20th century and bathrooms people only bathed once in a while (Ewww) so I know they didn't shave their arms and legs. How did it become a beauty standard for women I wonder? Why not men too? They would look a lot better if guys shaved their underarms before wearing tank tops. My brother has birdnests under his arms. I don't know how deodorant can even reach his armpits. I would think it would just sit on top of all that hair.

Body shaving probably started somewhere around the early 1920's when the hemlines came up with the Flappers. Prior to that, women kept their legs covered. It is possible that women shave their legs before that if they were actors wearing skimpy stage outfits or if their job involved entertaining men but it wouldn't have been common practice.

As for shaving underarms, I primarily do it because I have found I get more body odor when I don't shave. I don't have much hair there in the first place so it only takes a few quick swipes to solve the problem.

Quote from: Dena on December 04, 2017, 03:00:41 PM
Body shaving probably started somewhere around the early 1920's when the hemlines came up with the Flappers. Prior to that, women kept their legs covered. It is possible that women shave their legs before that if they were actors wearing skimpy stage outfits or if their job involved entertaining men but it wouldn't have been common practice.

As for shaving underarms, I primarily do it because I have found I get more body odor when I don't shave. I don't have much hair there in the first place so it only takes a few quick swipes to solve the problem.

Actually Dena and I may be mistaken shaving started way back in the Roman Empire. Pubes and all. Also Homosexuality.

The Barbarians that raided Roman outposts used to make fun of the women in the Roman outposts for being totally hairless.

Although I may be mistaken but don't fault me on that.

Quote from: Julia1996 on December 04, 2017, 12:09:38 PM
I don't ever have underarm hair just because I don't like it. But if a woman doesn't want to shave I see nothing wrong with that at all. A lot of guys do though. My brother was looking forward to going out with this girl he was lusting over. He came early and said she had really hairy underarms and it skeezed him out. I wonder how women shaving got started. Before the 20th century and bathrooms people only bathed once in a while (Ewww) so I know they didn't shave their arms and legs. How did it become a beauty standard for women I wonder? Why not men too? They would look a lot better if guys shaved their underarms before wearing tank tops. My brother has birdnests under his arms. I don't know how deodorant can even reach his armpits. I would think it would just sit on top of all that hair.

At least 2 of my male friends are always going on about hair removal. One is particularly obsessive about it. Way more than some chicks I know. I don't know many girls who would Veet their buttcrack (much less tell everyone they do), or go to this extent every 2 weeks, but this guy does.

I would imagine the practice comes from each one of the sexes thinking they need to be as opposite from each other as possible, and most women seem to like the feeling of hairless body and men seem to like that on women too. So the practice stuck in places where people have access to ways to get rid of the hair.

Then again there are places like France, lol.

Quote from: Jenntrans on December 04, 2017, 03:17:34 PM
Actually Dena and I may be mistaken shaving started way back in the Roman Empire. Pubes and all. Also Homosexuality.

The Barbarians that raided Roman outposts used to make fun of the women in the Roman outposts for being totally hairless.

Although I may be mistaken but don't fault me on that.

If you look at our primate cousins you'll see homosexuality, rape, warfare, bestiality, incest, biga- or poly-andry.  Going by memory, I forget which of these knuckle walkers do what to what, but homo sapiens didn't invent homosexuality in any way shape or form!

They've found shaving implements in tombs from other ancient cultures, Egyptian royalty were big on smoothness I believe.  What the peasantry of their culture did would be a different matter, though.  I'd guess like other commoners they were doing busy laboring to spend a half hour in the morning scraping hair off their bodies.

Quote from: Lucy Ross on December 05, 2017, 06:51:44 PM
If you look at our primate cousins you'll see homosexuality, rape, warfare, bestiality, incest, biga- or poly-andry.  Going by memory, I forget which of these knuckle walkers do what to what, but homo sapiens didn't invent homosexuality in any way shape or form!

They've found shaving implements in tombs from other ancient cultures, Egyptian royalty were big on smoothness I believe.  What the peasantry of their culture did would be a different matter, though.  I'd guess like other commoners they were doing busy laboring to spend a half hour in the morning scraping hair off their bodies.

Animals are not prone to homosexuality. When they mount another male or female it is for dominance purposes only and not sexual gratification. Just watch canids and even those that we consider pets and family. They hump but not for sex unless it is a female being humped by a male when the female is in heat. So animal behavior and what humans consider sexual the animal is purely dominance over another in the same sex and not sexual. we humans tend to enjoy sex but animals do not. It gets really rough and even violent at times. Then... when canids are mating they do get stuck together. then it may come to biting or whatever else. Most men when it comes to women or even transwomen or other men if they are gay seem to want to roll off, have a cigarette or grab a snack and go to sleep. cnaids don't have that option because I have never seen a male dog eat a bologna sandwich, go wash off if need be or smoke a cigarette after. Sometimes they are stuck together for a time to insure that the mating takes hold.

Humans are different than Animals when it comes to sex, gender and coming together. Some people tend to see it as a type of natural homosexuality but it isn't. There is nothing sexual about it. It is just a dominance thing. This goes for troops, pack, herds or whatever else when the animal has a social type of hierarchy.

Humans enjoy sex but to humans it is less about mating than it is emotional connections. Even if those emotional connections last only for one night.

Do we really need to point to the animal kingdom to justify our own sexual desires. Should we not face them head on with no excuses or reasoning? We are humans and we are higher in brain and mind functions than all of the other animals on the planet. So instead of looking to animals now let us look at the humans from the past and how different cultures viewed sexuality and gender identity. Many native American nations recognized a third gender. If you look hard enough you will find it. But judging humans by animal behavior to me and only in my opinion lowering our self perceptions to the level of beasts instead of humans. Yes primates and humans share a common ancestor but no gorillas have built sky scrapers or learnd how to make fire or learned how to invent a firearm to make war or learned how to harness the power of a substance like the tarry oil and invent and engine to go 300 miles per hour though internal combustion. Animals when in front of a mirror see just another animal. Humans see themselves and that is self realization.

As for the incest in animals that is pretty much why we have thoroughbreds or specific dog species and so on in animals. With the human genome it is a little different. Maybe a hundred thousand years ago not so much in humans but now it poses a big problem in brain and mind development. Humans are still animals but we are way different than the rest that occupy our planet. We past the animal mark a long time ago and now we are different. so what happens with animals and yes some people are more animal than human but we don't have to be.

Quote from: Jenntrans on December 06, 2017, 01:46:37 PM
Animals are not prone to homosexuality. When they mount another male or female it is for dominance purposes only and not sexual gratification. Just watch canids and even those that we consider pets and family. They hump but not for sex unless it is a female being humped by a male when the female is in heat. So animal behavior and what humans consider sexual the animal is purely dominance over another in the same sex and not sexual.

Scientific studies on Bonobo Chimps would disagree. They have an even more sexually exploratative 'society' than humans do. They appear to have sex for greeting, bonding or passing the time purposes, not just dominance. They have same-sex sex all the time; they have far more sex than human beings on average and have incorporated it fully into regular social behavior.

I'm not sure where you're getting your surety about dominance from. I've seen female dogs trying to hump other female dogs in the manner of a male without any of the hallmarks of dominance behavior, but they were definitely in heat, and it only occurred when they were in heat, and not when they weren't. It certainly looked to me like they were just really damn horny, and they preferred this behavior with other female dogs over any male dogs present.

You'll find instances of complex sexual 'play' in almost all species considered highly intelligent. Including dolphins. This sounds to me like you're trying to distance human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom by claiming there's no such thing as complex sexual behavior comparable to that of humans in animals. You may not be aware of the number of studies racking up out there of animals being sighted - in the wild - engaging in complex sexual activity. But they're increasing. Humans are not as elevated from them as you might like, and animals are not necessarily as mechanical and "beast like" as you would expect.

Quote from: Viktor on December 06, 2017, 04:51:17 PM
Scientific studies on Bonobo Chimps would disagree. They have an even more sexually exploratative 'society' than humans do. They appear to have sex for greeting, bonding or passing the time purposes, not just dominance. They have same-sex sex all the time; they have far more sex than human beings on average and have incorporated it fully into regular social behavior.

I'm not sure where you're getting your surety about dominance from. I've seen female dogs trying to hump other female dogs in the manner of a male without any of the hallmarks of dominance behavior, but they were definitely in heat, and it only occurred when they were in heat, and not when they weren't. It certainly looked to me like they were just really damn horny, and they preferred this behavior with other female dogs over any male dogs present.

You'll find instances of complex sexual 'play' in almost all species considered highly intelligent. Including dolphins. This sounds to me like you're trying to distance human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom by claiming there's no such thing as complex sexual behavior comparable to that of humans in animals. You may not be aware of the number of studies racking up out there of animals being sighted - in the wild - engaging in complex sexual activity. But they're increasing. Humans are not as elevated from them as you might like, and animals are not necessarily as mechanical and "beast like" as you would expect.

Look Vicktor my whole point was that we should not be looking for answers of who and what we are. I see it in wild wolf packs all the time and dogs especially females will challenge the female alpha but not for pleasure. Hell it may itch even. But in pack animals there is an alpha male and an alpha female. Hell I have a puppy and he was humping my male dog which is fixed the other day. Not for pleasure because the little lipstick did not even come out and the older dog is fixed but he is seeing what he can get away with in canid behavior. Once the older dog got enough then they went at it and the puppy came to me yelping. It is the same way with the older male and I have an older female and both are fixed yet they will hump one another but being fixed what pleasure can they have?

This is a highly debateable subject and I admit I don't live in a place where there are primates other than humans so I don't know too much about Chimpanzees but still do we need justification to love someone? The sensual thing seems to be with more social animals so dolphins ususally congregate in pods and have a certain type of hierarchy. It is the same way with primates I assume. Man is a primate yet we have enough intelligence and I have been screwed so many times in day to day life but not sexual though or anything resembling sex but I have been screwed our of money employers, screwed out of promotions and so on. I have been hit, cursed, condemned and persecuted. That is why I chose to tdo what I do for a living because I got so sick of being screwed out of money. Well animals don't have money they use brute strength and dominance. So yeah I tend to believe that studies like what you mentioned seem to be trying to justify loving your partner and pointing to nature. The other side uses the same argument that I do against it and loving your partner as being a crime against nature. I personally think we as humans are more complicated than animals. We are still animals but I have never seen a chimpanzee drive a car on the 405.

To be totally honest if there are animals that are homosexual I really don't care. If there are then there are. But I don't need it for affirmation to love someone that some other human may say goes against nature. Since when did love either for one day or forever a "crime against nature"? I mean even for a one night stand you feel emotions for the person. It may not last for more than whatever but even with what I have done there was some type of emotion. I have been with my BF for almost ten years so definitely there is something there and I don't really need to feel justified by nature because if someone don't like it or is offended by it then they know what they can kiss and where they can go and what they can do with themselves when they get there .

But when you look at studies you also have to look at agendas to either prove or disprove something. Since there are studies that are so differing I do believe that one side of the argument is trying to prove something and the other side trying to disprove something.

But to be honest I don't really care. I am who and what I am and just because I am I am justified to be me. Now when it comes to anthropology then we can begin to understand why humans do what they do. But I am no animal psychic, may just a psychotic human but still not psychic so I don't know what dogs are thinking. I don't even know if they feel love the same way as we do and that goes for all animals. The whole religion thing and society is what gets me. We should not look anywhere else other than ourselves to be who we are. We should not have to look for any kind of justification because throughout human history there have been homosexuals, trans genders and hermaphrodites. In some ancient cultures Hermaphrodites were considered special. I mean Hermes and Aphrodite. Male and female in the same body. Now it is called inter sexed. Not near as elegantly named but still the same. Native Americans had MTF in their midst and would be taken as wives. About the sex I really don't know if the warrior had sex with them but they were revered enough if their husband died they would be taken in as another wife by another warrior or higher up in the tribe after they did their grieving like any other wife. Joan of Arc was a great warrior or leader but when she/he or whatever was of no more use the Church decided to end her/his life. Now she has been Canonized. So there is more through anthropology that supports sexuality and gender identity than you will ever find in the animal kingdom because we can understand the minds of humans more than chimps, wolves or dolphins. We should be looking for any proof through the ages of mankind instead of animals that can't even recognize their own face in a mirror.