When it is forbidden to criticise people for immutable bad attributes and mandatory to criticise people for mutable bad attributes determining the mutability of attributes becomes the paramount concern.
Yes, in fact, enormous fights might develop over such things…
SSC’s latest seems like a classic case of letting gender politics obfuscate power and class issues that cut across gender.
He quotes some PUA:
Polyamory — multiple and simultaneous sexual relationships — means, in practice, a few high value dudes hording all the pussy.
And then he uses both his intuitive experience and his LW survey data to show that men and women in polyamory date about the same number of people. There’s at least no clear cut numerical advantage to men. My experience also agrees.
But what if we neuter that sentence, and look at it again:
Polyamory — multiple and simultaneous sexual relationships — means, in practice, a few high value people dudes hording all the dates.
Which is to say, charismatic and confident people of either gender, dating a lot of people, and awkward and introverted people of both genders dating no one, only one person, or being a hanger on in a larger polycule that doesn’t get a lot of attention from the partner regardless.
That sounds… less implausible. It doesn’t exactly match my observed experience, but it’s not super far from it either. I’ve certainly seen in nerdy groups a Queen Bee that is dating half the men, in a way that seems parallel to the alpha-males that PUA’s fear/worship.
It’s not at all clear that this is bad. This seems just as likely to be the result of “some people want more partners, and are more socially outgoing to find them, while some people want less or are less willing to put themselves out there to meet them,” which would be fine. Or it could be this high-value thing. (I detest rat-tumb’s focus on high-status-males as the evil beneficiary of social engineering, which seems both empirically and ontologically unsound, but from a capitalist-critical perspective, “liberalizing trade regimes” often means “the rich people get more stuff and poor people somehow have less.”)
But, I’m also not going to be surprised by the subjective perspective of people low on the social totem pole. Before, they had hope in this pigeon-hole thing, where each person could get at most one partner, so eventually the people as attractive as them would realize their best chance for a life long relationship was with fellow low-class dates like themselves. It was a bad model, but I’m aware people believed in it. Now they worry no one will be left waiting for them, and they’ll be entirely alone forever. So there’s some people who seem to be having a lot of sex (stealing their jouissance) and they aren’t reaping the benefits.
The answers they come up with are usually dumb, but they are at least seeing/feeling a thing.
Bambam honey darling kun, and also @slatestarscratchpad friend,
I love weird nerds but weird nerds aren’t a representative sample for the behavior of typical relationship norms.
A better example for normies applying this would be all the other countries, territories and communities where polygamy is practiced, as well as communities within the US where one man will have 11 kids by 8 different women.
No full poly until Tranhumanism makes it possible to ‘defect’ from both your sex and sexual orientation, pls.
Anonymous asked:
Dearest Anon-kun,
My representation is a bit more dire than how I actually interpret the situation, in part because it’s intended as a counter-balance to mainstream feminism, which strips women of their agency and refuses to critically examine their role in the social dynamics which create these situations.
“Women are powerless” is really quite deeply normalized almost everywhere! It’s very insidious.
Comments regarding even cishet neurotypical women should be regarded as generalizations that do not uniformly apply to the population, and many subgroups don’t necessarily fit them. Additionally, low-status women also exist. In fact, women that don’t fit this mold are more common in my subcultures!
Additionally,
1) I have a reasonable shot at making it to the Transhuman era.
2) I have a close relationship to my ex WRT expressed vulnerability & female companionship, though not sexually.
3) Have you observed the number of self-identified “traps” and other such individuals among the Alt Right? I believe this represents a sign of an impending Male Gender Meltdown, the consequences of which are hard to predict. Overall, I do think progress is being made, as indicated by the appearance of multiple male gender movements.
Also,
All my exes are bisexual (and therefore have no set reason to behave in a certain pattern of attraction), and this blog will continue to not disclose my sex/gender.
Kind Regards,
Miti
P.S. If you are secretly the tumblr user known as BA, this blog hopes for your swift recovery regardless of whether that is low in probability. If you are secretly tumblr user RO, this blog hopes for an increase in your available useful energy.
dudebro is just a terrible word for any kind of progressive purpose given that it entirely concedes masculinity to the opposition.
I think we’re more than prepared to concede masculinity to the opposition. What redeeming qualities does it have? Everything I’ve seen masculinity be is aggression, envy, or pride, all of which are, uh, mortal sins.
…are you joking?
Or have you just already defined masculinity as everything you hate?
If it turns out that a significant number of straight women actually like masculine men and haven’t been brainwashed into it, what is your plan?
How can a male build a healthy self-identity if to be male is nothing more than to be a flawed woman?
I don’t think people should build self-identities as men or women. I think they’re stifling. The notion that because I was born with a penis I should want to cultivate A traits and not B traits is silly to me. Let boys play with dolls if they want and let girls play with trucks if they want. Let men be tender, let women be slobs. None of this should mean they’re not doing a good job at being a complete person.
These conversations always get so abstract so tell me what you think masculinity and femininity are and I’ll explain what I dislike.
Masculinity and Femininity are a partially socially-constructed, partially biological phenomenon.
Essentially, gendered trait distribution resembles two overlapping bell curves, controlled by hormonal levels at key points in development, along with genes, epigenetics, and environmental factors.
Pre-natal testosterone levels - in females, not just males - track with later toy preferences for mechanical/systems toys vs social ones. While the effects of sex hormones are not simple, they are very much not a placebo.
Society then layers its gender roles on top of this, driven in part by previous economies and incentives that may no longer exist. Often it exaggerates, or essentializes, and so for this reason people go “well dresses are obviously not biological and not all people like the assigned roles, therefore male and female are exactly the same and all apparent differences are caused by societal brainwashing.”
So we might think of masculine/feminine as the axis of opposition for gendered traits. (Intelligence does not appear to be one of these traits, as the center point seems to be the same.) Alternatively, we might think of it as the center points of the respective bell curves.
It’s important to remember, however, that the masculine woman and the feminine man are both legitimate, as well as various other mixes on more than one trait. Humans are complicated and biology is quite noisy and also complicated. But the clustering is still real.
The issue with your plan is that cishets seem to actually want someone who differs on the gender axes from them in that masc/femme way in terms of their attraction (which they don’t consciously control), and the idea that we’ll abolish gender and not have them identify as the labeled gender clumps associated with their respective sexes (cishets in specific) in the name of some modern idea of liberation… well I’m confident that won’t work out very well.
Wonder Woman strikes a blow against the patriarchy by having the male lead be only 4 years older than the female lead instead of 40 years older.
MRAs might see it as a victory against “female hypergamy” when the woman is actually older and slightly wealthier. Not sure how to be woke in that case.
Oh, this one is obvious. By the laws of vague internet liberal feminism, any activity can be transmuted into female empowerment if it’s done by a woman. Easy! Next question, please.
Let’s get down to business
- capitalism stifles human flourishing
to defeat
- war is the problem not the solution
the Huns
- an oppressed group of impoverished herders
Did they send me daughters
- misogyny
when I asked for sons
- male privilege
You’re the saddest bunch I ever met
- trivialising depression
But you can bet before we’re through
- encouraging gambling
Mister I’ll make a man out of you
- sexism, misogyny, transmisogyny, I literally can’t even
MRAs should like Mulan over the other Disney movies, since it depicts masculinity in a more complete and nuanced way. Therefore, Mulan is Problematic.
@digging-holes-in-the-river reminded me of a form of sexism, or at least huge wrongness, that I sometimes suffer from, although I think I’m improving.
Logical belief: as reported by reliable statisticians, women are 52% of the population
Alief: women are a small minority, like 5% or something. They don’t really take part in society.
I think I get this from working in a very male dominated profession, and, to the extent I ever socialise, socialising with people from that profession.
I don’t often seem women complaining about this kind of view, presumably on the view it’s too ludicrous to occur to them, although I think complaints like “why are you treating all women as a uniform special case” are a sort of second-order effect.
I mean you’d feel like that in some industries, business, politics.
On the other hand: primary school teachers, nurses, dental hygienists (apparently 98% female, in Australia at least).
It’s interesting when you see a particular field pass 50% female intake because you know there’s going to be a shake up coming when all the old guys hit retirement age and society recodes whatever it is as a ‘girl thing’.
Victoria Police has got their female representation up from 8% to 26% and I’m really curious to see how people react if it ever gets to 50% or above, that’ll be totes fun.
Some Normie: as reported by reliable statisticians, women are 52% of the population
A Nerd: women are a small minority, like 5% or something. they don’t really take part in society.
Enlightened Discourse Master: there are no women, only men and traps
Against all reason I’m fascinated by the friendzone discourse, seriously.
It’s closely related to something you hear less about: the bonezone, which despite its name is not opposite the friendzone, but rather adjacent to it, not far from relationship town; someone’s really gotta diagram this stuff out.
“I can’t believe they put me in the friendzone!”
This complaint can have layers of meaning, but it starts with disappointment. The speaker was hoping to make it to relationship town, or maybe just a quick visit to the bonezone, but instead ended up in the friendzone, where they’ve already been many times before. It’s identical to a similar complaint that is also very common, although typically not in these words:
“I can’t believe they put me in the bonezone!”
The speaker was dreaming of relationship town, or perhaps a long stay in the friendzone, and had a rude awakening to find themselves here instead. Logic suggests a third complaint which you also may have heard:
“I can’t believe they want to take me to relationship town!”
The implications of this one are obvious.
But why does disappointment over mismatched expectations around friendship, sex, and relationships, attract so much heated debate?
The first wrinkle is that disappointment can turn to angry accusations. They led you on! They were deliberately ambiguous about the destination! They have ulterior motives!
While miscommunication is regrettable and sad, deliberately deceptive conduct can be infuriating; no one wants to have their time wasted and their emotions toyed with by someone who isn’t being honest with them.
But this is self-evident, why would it attract debate? Unless…
Consider: dating and relationships often run on subtext in which actually revealing your hand is a huge turn-off, unless you’re dating some kind of nerd or other unusually direct person.
Women who are egalitarian in the workplace and towards friends might still have very traditional expectations when it comes to sex and dating.
When it comes to actually having sex and relationships that include two people having sex with each other exclusively, sex differences and gender roles are more salient than in any other context.
Women who have traditional expectations from men they’re dating usually don’t communicate these expectations to men they’re not dating.
Is any of this controversial?
Hypothesis: any statement featuring the word “gender” is controversial, including this one.
Counterexample to hypothesis: “’Gender’ is a word in the English language.”
More seriously: What about the lesbians? :D
About the lesbians: I have no clue. I have never been one, or dated one. I’m a man. (full disclosure: Previous blog persona of a male robot was a joke. Am actually flesh and blood guy.)
That said: I have talked to lesbians and bi women about this IRL.
Why, it’s almost enough to make one want someone of a differing neurotype.
the gay marriage will lead to polygamy slippery slope argument makes it sound like homophobes are more worried about a dude marrying two women than another dude.
It isn’t obvious, Argumate, dear old boy? It’s trying to trade against the greater remaining taboo value of the second to stop the first. The ideological tools to pass the first will be used to try to allow the second, even though gay marriage is most likely pro-civic while polygamy is very likely anti-civic. (The civicness is not the argument being used, after all!)
New research, published in October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that despite size discrepancy, there’s no functional difference between men’s and women’s brains. “Male” brains and “female” brains simply don’t exist. In fact, there’s significant overlap.
This study had 1400 people in it… Remember that sample size matters. remember this when someone tries to rebuke this with a study that has 80 participants. Be as scientifically literate as possible so that we can debunk this nonsense one step at a time.
ALSO FOLLOW-UP.
I’m just gonna post the abstract of the paper (link) because there is no way in hell anyone should trust mic.com to get this right:
Whereas a categorical difference in the genitals has always been acknowledged, the question of how far these categories extend into human biology is still not resolved. Documented sex/gender differences in the brain are often taken as support of a sexually dimorphic view of human brains (“female brain” or “male brain”). However, such a distinction would be possible only if sex/gender differences in brain features were highly dimorphic (i.e., little overlap between the forms of these features in males and females) and internally consistent (i.e., a brain has only “male” or only “female” features). Here, analysis of MRIs of more than 1,400 human brains from four datasets reveals extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males for all gray matter, white matter, and connections assessed. Moreover, analyses of internal consistency reveal that brains with features that are consistently at one end of the “maleness-femaleness” continuum are rare. Rather, most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our findings are robust across sample, age, type of MRI, and method of analysis. These findings are corroborated by a similar analysis of personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors of more than 5,500 individuals, which reveals that internal consistency is extremely rare. Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.
Rather, most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males.
Statistical distributions, neither neurological uniformity nor essentialism.
