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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few days. The short answer is, no, Republicans are not shamelessly sexually humiliating their opponents enough to win the election. The long answer is, it’s not enough simply to sexually humiliate one’s opponents, one must imply that one’s opponents have something to gain from giving up or switching sides. The subtext of the “these guys are just weird” campaign is that if you young man simply stop trying to police women’s sexual behavior, you too can get laid. Consider the following:

“Since #TamponTim is trending I'll point out that in high school, any boy who casually was like "Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it" -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites.”

This woman is a “gender and society” columnist at the Washington Post. The message is clear; submit to power [ours] and you will get pussy. What is the Republican message to young women? Become based or you will grow into a childless cat lady? That could work, but it is inherently a multi-step argument. Frankly, conservative media just isn’t good enough to get across a message that complex.

The hilarious thing is that I've literally done this, but only by saying "are you feeling ok? If your stomach hurts, we have a bunch of stuff for that in our team's medical bag, help yourself."

There's this weird leftist thing originating in 2nd(?) wave feminism where they feel compelled to destroy taboos and conventions made to keep people comfortable, because they're "tools of the patriarchy". Burning bras, painting your walls with bloody tampons, having the cafeteria serve vagina cupcakes leavened with yeast infection pus, all to shock people, make them uncomfortable, and claim the space for leftists.

It's bled into mainstream prog culture now, where talking loudly about shitting and queefing is peak praxis. And they encourage men to join in only to get the ick when they actually do.
Once you learn about shit tests you start seeing them everywhere.

Apparently, the Lieutenant Governor of Vermont actually implemented this advice in his office, and was censured for it by the state's Speaker of the House after legislators "reported feeling uncomfortable".

“Offering feminine hygiene products in an office and seeking out women to let them know about the availability is not acceptable,” [Speaker] Krowinski wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 2, 2023. “While you may have good intentions, it has left women feeling very uncomfortable and unsure why they were chosen or why it became a topic of conversation with you.”

Consider the following:

“Since #TamponTim is trending I'll point out that in high school, any boy who casually was like "Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it" -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites.”

This is like the "hello, human resources??" comic, except she's reporting the guy in both panels. How would he even know about the period?

That boy would be drowning in prom invites.

In most cases, a boy asks a girl to be _his_date, not the other way around. If this hypothetical guy is "drowning in prom invites" from girls, they want him around to hold their purses and, of course, have pads available in his pockets.

This is like the "hello, human resources??" comic, except she's reporting the guy in both panels.

Lol

Talk about bad advise lmao, a teenage boy will never be caught dead with a tampon stash in their backpack.

It’s: submit to us our your opponents will mutilate and sexually abuse your children.

For parents, this is an extremely compelling argument.

Then why aren't parents switching to voting Republican in droves? As far as I can tell from a quick search, the correlation is very small (and probably easily explained by other factors like occupation, sexual orientation etc.). The degree to which the premise is believed puts an upper bound on how compelling this argument can be, and the Red Tribe has not been doing a good job of raising belief in the premise. (In fact they have probably been doing the opposite: exaggeration and dramaturgy feel good to the choir but only raise the burden of proof to the unconverted when they don't come from the top of the status hierarchy)

I think you answered your own question.

The republicans don’t do a good job of communicating this.

Look at people like Elon Musk, though. You can see about the time he started believing this (about when his son was victimized by it), and the effect it had on him. I choose him because he is very public, but I think every parent has friends who have gone through the same transition.

It’s the conservative version of getting “woke” (the original meaning before it became an insult - basically becoming aware of something which radically shifted your perception in one direction)

I think it's more just that it's not a conceivable possibility—surely my kid won't be the one thinking they're the other gender? Right? They're reasonable enough?

I was the sort of guy who believed advice that got you friend-zoned in high school, and even I wouldn't have fallen for advice like that, and from the responses to her tweet, I don't think anyone is buying it now. She might want to convince people that if you take her bad advice you will get laid, but you have to actually have a convincing message.

That said, I think some of you are dramatically overestimating how much impact "Sexually humiliating the other side" or "Jokes about couch-fucking" actually swing voters. Most people see this as the shit-posting it is. What people are actually going to vote on are not which candidate gives better psychosexual "vibes," but which candidate makes them believe they'll make things better, or at least not make things worse. I wouldn't say most voters really have a great handle on the issues, but the issues (economy, housing, global conflicts, and yes, culture war stuff) are what actually drive votes and turnout.

That said, I think some of you are dramatically overestimating how much impact "Sexually humiliating the other side" or "Jokes about couch-fucking" actually swing voters.

The problem here is that, at best, you're going to fall to an argument that all these awful and disruptive and slanderous behaviors... didn't help with swing voters.

Not hurt. That's not an argument to skip this.

Sorry if that's a rant, but the pro-bullying side of the LGBT politics can quite credibly argue that everything (from bashing homophobia to Santorum's Google Problem to the literal leader of an anti-bullying movement targeting teenagers for public mockery) was a large or the determining factor in a massive swing in political alignment, the anti-bullying side can at best argue that it wasn't necessary, and the moderates can't do anything but flinch from the question. And once you see the pattern there, you start seeing it a lot of places.

I think a lot of "weird/creepy nerd" types who roleplay as Democratically influential are just in denial about where this is all going.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of anything (though I have to admit I am more inclined towards Trace's way of thinking). I just don't think it actually works (other than, I guess, giving you the satisfaction of hurting your enemies). People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter. They'll say "Eew, Republicans are so weird!" Or "Eww, Democrats are such pussies!" and this will be reflected in the polls. I think most people here are way too online (myself included) and most voters are not.

People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter.

Oh, I'm being far more dire than that. That the normies don't care is a selling point to the extremist argument, here. The pro-bashing perspective -- whether pro- or anti-gay, smear-the-queer or beat-the-nazi, so on -- never was to persuade the average normie voter: it was to motivate and activate your side, and demobilize and delegitimize the opposition.

I'd like to argue that they are wrong, but on some topics it's at least coincided with pretty significant success.

People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter.

My impression is that this is less about burns and memes, and more about getting people fired and ostracized from friend groups. I suppose it's not clear that the effect of the tactic was reflected in the polls, but that doesn't mean much, because "what party is in power" is a very poor barometer of social change by itself.

"Strategy" is saying too much. The people doing it aren't in control, and won't be able to stop it when kids start giving other kids beatings because of what they said. But it absolutely does nudge culture (and future actions) one way or another.

Most people on both sides definitely enjoy hurting people, also.

I think it will have an impact in the sense that I think it will eventually backfire once the conventions are over and the median American starts paying attention.

First off all because this is a very basic question of junior high level bullying behavior. They’re calling Vance names on the basis of an obviously false accusation that is supposed to be in his book but isn’t. This isn’t going to endear the Harris ticket to outsiders.

Second, and I’m amazed at the sheer incompetence of the strategic leadership that haven’t screamed about the possibility, is that it opens the door to the GOP pointing out all the progressive weirdness. And to the eyes of normal average Americans, progressives are a lot weirder than conservatives. The party that wants to normalize drag queen story hour for preschoolers is simply not going to win the battle to convince the average 50 year old guy who’s not into politics that the GOP is weirder than they are. Weird is actually the progressive Achilles heel— pointing out deviants just means people realizing just how weird liberals are. If I were running a GOP campaign, I’d lean into it. Yes, we’re “weird. So weird that we don’t want to trans your kid without your permission. So weird that we believe in marriage and family. So weird that we’d rather wave the American flag than the Palestinian flag.

Third, and you point out, it’s a huge distraction from real problems real people are facing. Inflation is lowering the standard of living. There’s one war ongoing in Ukraine and another brewing in the Middle East. We have a housing crisis. Our schools don’t do a good job educating kids and teachers are quitting in droves. Abortion is a big issue. The border. But they aren’t talking about those things, instead, they’re talking about the GOP being weird.

They’re calling Vance names on the basis of an obviously false accusation that is supposed to be in his book but isn’t. This isn’t going to endear the Harris ticket to outsiders.

Oh no, I think you'll find THEY didn't call Vance names (Walz mentioned a couch, just coincidentally I'm sure, but didn't repeat the story.). That (so the story will go) was Internet trolls, probably MAGA people who were upset that Vance beat our their favorite Herr Hitler for the spot.

As far as I know, the story that Lyndon Johnson spread the rumor that his opponent fucked a pig not because he thought people would believe it, but in order to get his opponent to deny it, isn't true. But someone on Kamala's team clearly remembered it.

Hilariously, I did pretty much exactly what she suggests in college (kept tampons in my dorm room, so if a female friend needed one, I'm at the ready!) The one time the opportunity came up, it played out exactly as you'd expect, weirding out not just her but everyone in the room.

There really are guys who buy advice like that. Usually someone a bit on the spectrum who listens to what people say they want and takes it literally. All the "friend-zoning" advice is right up that alley. I don't know why "get fit, put on muscle, and exhibit extroversion and dominance in social situations" is so hated as advice, even though it provides about 200% of the value of the aggregate dating advice given and would solve 99% of guys' issues.

Eh, you should add in ‘make the first move, but not too much of one’.

I mean, do you think a young man would fall for something that friend zoned him?

Kind of off-topic, but what the hell is that columnist smoking!? No, a boy who goes "don't worry, I have pads just in case my friends need one" would not be drowning in prom invites. He would be relentlessly mocked and ostracized for that behavior. The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway. Just an absolutely bizarre take that makes me wonder what the heck the writer is even thinking.

It's not supposed to be actual good advice. It's supposed to make it look like she cares and is trying to help young men, but actually just helping her core audience of women feel smug and superior to those stupid males who tried to hit on them but were afraid of feminine hygiene products. You know, like those guys you see in TV sitcoms. Not so much in real life, but whatever.

The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway.

I found friendzone advice is often better reframed as 'Things I would like a man I already find attractive to do'.

Feminists give horrible advice like this all the time. I’m not sure why they do this; most seem to think there’s a noble lie involved.

I 100% guarantee you this woman would find an offer of menstrual products creepy and off putting, and that she will not talk about her period IRL any more than she would talk about shitting or blowing her nose.

Right; if the boy wants to get friend-zoned, he can offer to go into the boy's bathroom and get them. Happening to have one is going to get him creep-zoned, unless he's a member of Junior Seal Team Six and explains he needs them to stop the bleeding from the frequent bullet wounds he treats.

Totally tangential: Tampons absorb blood but don't assist in clotting. They're more like a sponge, which will soak up and expand but not staunch the flow. Whenever I read about this strategy of using tampons in trauma situations I wonder if it's really done regularly and if so, why. Pressure from wrapping with a towel or something seems like it would be far more effective in preventing blood loss. Unless the idea is-- as in when a tampon is used for its designed purpose--just to prevent a sanguineous mess.

Menstrual discharge, absent menorrhagia or some other issue, is typically of a predictably finite amount, whereas an open wound will keep bleeding until hemostasis.

Sorry for the derail. Anybody who knows about this plz feel free to enlighten me.

Edit: paging @JTarrou and/or @self_made_human

Indeed, during the beginning of the Ukraine war, families of Russian soldiers were sending them tampons when bandages were both not provided by the military and also running out of stock. Terrible idea, it's the opposite of what you want for staunching a bleed.

I usually think a lot of the red pill rhetoric about social shit tests is nonsense, but stuff like this makes me think they might have a genuine point. "Give out really bad advice that someone with zero social skills might take seriously, and then you increase the chances that they'll take it and reveal their lack of social skills in a way that makes women more able to avoid them."

For what it's worth I think I can prove you correct. Here's a recent state level story from Vermont:

https://vtdigger.org/2024/08/06/lt-gov-david-zuckermans-offers-of-menstrual-products-to-lawmakers-prompted-reprimand-from-house-speaker/

Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman’s offers of menstrual products to lawmakers prompted reprimand from House speaker

Speaker Jill Krowinski instructed Zuckerman [D] to remove the products from his office in early 2023 and “consider meeting with House members in the company of others.” In early 2023, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, issued verbal and written warnings to Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman after state legislators reported feeling uncomfortable when Zuckerman offered them access to a supply of menstrual products located in a drawer in his chief of staff’s office.

“Offering feminine hygiene products in an office and seeking out women to let them know about the availability is not acceptable,” Krowinski wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 2, 2023. “While you may have good intentions, it has left women feeling very uncomfortable and unsure why they were chosen or why it became a topic of conversation with you.”

This quote seems especially germane to the Waltz menstrual products in all bathrooms position, as well as similar debates like free condoms in schools:

“That we need the lieutenant governor to somehow get these poor women menstrual products is pathetic,” [Rep. Heather Chase, D-Chester] said. “We all were voted in by our constituents. We figure out how to drive here. We park our cars. We get a place to live. We organize our homes so we can be away. We do this. We juggle everything.”

I suspect there probably isn't any real principle at play beyond in the moment gut level emotions and 'us versus them' thinking. Which has the tendency to create confusing zones with a lot of invisible electrified rails. Something which is probably massively exacerbated by Culture War 'us versus them' dynamics.

Women mostly have no clue what sexually interests them and don't have the language to describe it other than vibes ("I just didn't feel a spark, you know?") and so you should assume that any time they give romantic advice to men they're just saying something they'd find useful or pro-social without being able to consider whether that's something that would really interest them in a man. I'm rarely one to make sweeping generalizations about the dating world, but even women I really like and respect for their thoughtfulness and honesty in other areas of their life seem totally incapable of describing their real romantic interests. It's the closest thing to a universal I've found.

Interestingly, I've found that some women are very good at describing what they like and don't like, so my assumption is that the rest are just dissimulating. I can see why the instinct would be to obscure what you like. If you say it explicitly, then men might try and fake it, which would make it harder to choose the man she wants.

Women are typically pretty good at giving negative advice (i.e. what not to do). Even on that tweet, there are far more women saying "no, don't do this" than there are saying "yeah I'd definitely find this attractive!"

It's not that they don't have a clue, it's just not in their interest for men to know it, because the moment the info goes public, min/maxing autists they've been avoiding are going to min/max the shit out of it.

This is why there was so much hatred for the PUAs back in the day.

Then I would expect women to say different things to other women, vs. what they say to men. However I think they generally say the same thing in female-only company. Sometimes if they're a bit drunk, they might blurt out something "crass" which might be different from the sober, hand-wavy descriptions. (And probably more accurate of a specific part of their preferences).

But I think that the true answer is that it drastically depends on the time of month (due to hormone changes), on the stage of life a woman is in, and it's also a multi-variable optimization problem, with shifting weights. So I think it's either that they don't know or can't describe, not that they're intentionally withholding to stop min/maxxers from exploiting.

I've searched for it dozens of times, including opening up old laptops and pouring over their browser histories, but I can't find it.

"It" was a blog that a FtM (that's chick-to-dude) transitioner was keeping about their ... transition. It was well written, deeply personal, and absolutely without trans ideology talking points or vibes. It was a wonderful example of an honest seeming person without any sort of ideology-induced hangups. It was incredibly and (unfortunately) uniquely informative.

The author shares one story about either beginning or hitting a major increase in the hormone replacement process. He's excited that he's going to start feeling testosterone-y like all other dudes. The week this starts, he's driving to work in traffic and someone cuts him off. He reports that, all of a sudden, he has a full blown panic attack and has to pull over to try to calm down. Perhaps the hormone replacement process has a high variance early period? Maybe he jacked up the dosage? Hmm, concerning.

I should note here that the author writes about going to a trans support group in his city. They help each other with the process as the different members are at different stages.

The author relates how he shares this panic attack incident to his group. There's an odd silence and some chuckling from some of the FtM's further along. People share knowing looks. Finally, one of them pipes up and says, "Dude .... you got "guy angry" for the first time." In a wonderful moment of self-awareness, the author writes about how he (when he was a she) never came close to appreciating what true male rage felt like. Even when "she" was 10/10 steamin' mad for some reason, it never came close to .... How a dude feels in Tuesday morning traffic when some asshole cuts him off.

I hope this jogs the memory of someone else who can point to that blog. There was a lot of good knowledge in there.

Anyway - I apply a similar view on male versus female sexual drive. It's definitely a difference in kind. It's been highlighted hundreds of times that men watch porn and women read trashy novels that end up at a sexual encounter but with a lot of very cringey situational foreplay. The male fantasy is the act itself, the female fantasy is the journey to the act. It is, however, also a difference in degree. I believe women when they say they get "super duper horny." I believe that, in their own framework of horny intensity judgement, they are at 10/10 Would Fck Again. But how does this compare to a male arousal rubric? I submit that female "10/10 Would Fck Again" is near equivalent to "Popped a bone watching that new Shakira music video on mute while at the airport bar." I'm having a little bit of fun here, so please don't try to nuke me on the rough comparison.

None of this should be taken as a judgement in validity, value, or worthiness of either male/female anger/arousal. Any moron who tells a woman, "oh, you're just girl angry, it's not that big of a deal" deserves whatever kitchen implement is launched at his head. And any idiot who tells his date, "No, but, like, I really want to fuck" deserves his future session of sullen, very alone rage masturbation.

I've never read the blog you're referring to, but the story reminds me of a different story I heard in, IIRC, This American Life (possibly Radiolab instead) about a FTM transitioner talking about the effects experienced from HRT, which included having a surprisingly overwhelmingly strong sex drive compared to before and also becoming literally better at math. Of course, instead of the host exploring the implications of this in wider society with respect to trans-ness and males and females, he quickly shut that down with a joke about how the person had "set back feminism by 20 years" or something.

I'm also reminded of that one woman who committed suicide a few years ago IIRC, who had written a book about her experience dressing up as a man (no transition, just roleplaying for the book), where she seemed to come to some revelations about the difficulties of men's lives that were completely invisible to her before the experience.

What I find interesting is that, as best as I can tell, MTF trans people are more prominent than FTM ones, though I've heard that FTM is more common, driven primarily by young women and teenage girls (though I've also heard that accurate stats around this are very difficult to come by). And this kind of narrative about how transitioning from man to woman made them realize the unique difficulties that women go through that were invisible to them when they were a man seem much rarer. It's almost always the unique difficulties of being a trans woman that's emphasized, rather than having some epiphany about how the natal other half of the human population experience reality that got awakened to them.

There are multiple explanations for this, and I'd guess they all have some truth. The default, most likely explanation, is that I'm just seeing patterns where there is none. But that's no fun, so if we want to speculate, one reason is that FTM tend to get the more genuine male experience than MTF, because FTM can pass much more consistently than MTF. Another is that the troubles that women face in society as women are so emphasized that it's just common knowledge among men, while the mirror image isn't true. Yet another is that the types of people who transition MTF are very different types of people personality-wise than FTM, which leads to some asymmetry in what they notice about their new experience in their new gender identity. Another similar reason would be that the effectiveness of HRT to go from MTF is different and meaningfully less than the effectiveness to go from FTM, which results in the asymmetry.

I'm also reminded of that one woman who committed suicide a few years ago IIRC, who had written a book about her experience dressing up as a man (no transition, just roleplaying for the book), where she seemed to come to some revelations about the difficulties of men's lives that were completely invisible to her before the experience.

Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man

What I find interesting is that, as best as I can tell, MTF trans people are more prominent than FTM ones, though I've heard that FTM is more common,

I haven't actually seen stats I trust, but the brief amount of looking I've done seems to suggest that there used to be more MTF, but that might not be true anymore, or is at least less true.

"It" was a blog that a FtM (that's chick-to-dude) transitioner was keeping about their ... transition. It was well written, deeply personal, and absolutely without trans ideology talking points or vibes. It was a wonderful example of an honest seeming person without any sort of ideology-induced hangups. It was incredibly and (unfortunately) uniquely informative.

Many years ago I read something fitting this description, but the entry that I read was explicitly discussing testosterone-fueled sex drive rather than anger, and the view being expressed was exactly as you've put it here. I'm pretty sure it was a blogspot thing, but whether or not it was the same author you were reading, I'm afraid I'm no help in pinning down the source.

Still appreciate the collective memory-jog.

The anger story brought to mind a conversation I had with my partner.

Like apparently all women nowadays, my girlfriend is fascinated by true crime. She studied biochemistry and works in a lab, so she's especially interested in the forensic side of criminal investigation, particularly genetic genaeology which has certain similarities to the genetics work she does. I'm always hearing about the new cases Othram solved that week. Her parents think she should go into forensic science and they're dead right.

I've actually come to enjoy watching true crime documentaries with her, though I prefer ones that focus on the process of investigation (mystery plots are the most universally popular type of story).

But I have to confess I find them hard to watch sometimes. Not because I find the crimes too gruesome, but because inevitably hearing about the depravity and cruelty of some of the most evil criminals -- brutal rapists, killers of elderly people, child murderers, torturers, serial killers -- fills me with intense and uncontrollable rage and a desire to get medieval on some asses.

I wonder sometimes if the reason women are so interested in true crime, and men aren't as much, isn't something to do with women, but something to do with men. Perhaps for one segment of men, true crime is simply too real, too close to their own lives of organized crime or petty violence, to be an enjoyable escape. And then, for another group -- and I include myself in this one -- it is so morally outrageous to consider the gravity of the kind of lurid crimes that get discussed in the true crime community that they're filled not with curiosity but with rage. Women get to see crime as something foreign, not something they'd ever get involved in, and perhaps are spared the sort of great vengeance and furious anger that characterizes the male response to horrific acts. Perhaps this also goes to explain the gender difference in support for the death penalty.

It happened that we finished watching one of these documentaries, and I found it particularly enraging (a man abducted a woman at gunpoint and forced her to pretend to enjoy being raped by him on camera) and we were discussing the particulars of the case and how the police investigated the abduction. I mentioned that one of the big differences between feminists and conservatives on the issue of rape doesn't concern whether it's wrong or not (they both condemn it) but what society should do about it. Feminists are often focused on the needs of the victim -- believe all women, we need more social support, we need to reduce stigma, we need police to be more receptive to rape victims -- while conservatives who comment on the issue of rape often discuss it in terms of what needs to be done to punish the perpetrators: death penalty for forcible rape, longer prison sentences, harsher punishments.

And we realized at that moment why there was such a big disagreement between men and women about criminal justice. Women are concerned about victims, men about perpetrators. It's not that men lack compassion for victims of horrific crimes or that women lack a desire for penal justice, but rather that the emotional reactions of men and women and their subsequent actions reflect different priorities. And both, you might note, reflect the traditional social roles of men and women: men protecting the tribe from physical violence, women ensuring that all members of the tribe have their needs met.

Adding your thoughts about male anger into the mix offers a compelling explanation of how that process works, and perhaps why men experience such a strong emotional desire to exact punishment that women often don't seem to understand.

Perhaps for one segment of men, true crime is simply too real, too close to their own lives of organized crime or petty violence, to be an enjoyable escape.

I'm pretty sure only a small fraction of true crime fandom is focused on organized crime. In fact, it's the one category of true crime that can probably count on more male than female interest, due to the recurring themes of honor, revenge, masculinity, the handing down of power from father to son etc.

With respect to petty violence, it's probably true that it isn't too close to the lives of many women, not even those in the underclass. Petty crime in general, on the other hand, surely is.

Great post. A few underformed thoughts;

I think there's a direct line of similarity between your Victim/Perpetrator dichotomy and the oft lampooned "Men want to offer solutions to your problems / women just want to be heard and listened too about their problems."

I don't know if your Self-Awarewolf second paragraph was intentional. You recognize that your disgust with the brutality of some of these crimes triggers in you a desire to ... commit brutal crimes. The feeling isn't wrong. I'd say most emotionally healthy men who read about Dahmer, Bundy etc. probably have some similar thoughts. It's just an interesting pot-calling-the-kettle-black-while-looking-in-the-mirror situation.

I think there's also a difference in intuitive understanding of subjects here. Women emote so heavily with the True Crime victims because women intuitively understand sexualization. Most women can tell very specific stories about hitting puberty and then starting to get leering stares, "friendly" attention from male strangers etc. On the other hand, I believe men have an intuition in understanding physical violence. Let me reiterate I said understanding not desire for. A common ritual for adolescent boys is their first fight. From 16-24, a lot of a guy's free time is taken up with physical violence related subjects - being on a sports team, going to the gym, perhaps joining the military etc.

It would make sense, then, that the respective sexes 'default' to their intuition when faced with True Crime like scenarios. Women relate and emote to the other woman in the story and their sexualized victimization. Men tap into their male rage and physical violence reserves in a (vain) effort to go out and do something about it.

the oft lampooned "Men want to offer solutions to your problems / women just want to be heard and listened too about their problems."

"It's not about the nail."

A lot of women’s interest in True Crime is just good old fashioned female hybristophilia.

Reading or watching a show about men killing people is titillating for women like watching the aforementioned Shakira thot around in a music video is titillating for men. See, for example, women finding themselves attracted to Bill Hader after watching his eponymous character killing people in Barry, when they weren’t before.

It's not that men lack compassion for victims of horrific crimes or that women lack a desire for penal justice, but rather that the emotional reactions of men and women and their subsequent actions reflect different priorities.

Or rather, different moral hazards.

Assuming a zero-sum competition for resources in a given tribe, men benefit when there is less competition for resources (and one less man will help with that), and women benefit when there is more competition (since that means they are themselves more in demand and can demand a larger share of the pie they didn't have to work for).

So we should expect swift and harsh punishment for ever more minor crimes from societies more dominated by men (which has lessened over the last 20,000+ years mainly because of revolutionary and consequential industry), and pathological bear-choosing (or at least publicly bear-curious) behavior from societies more dominated by women.

The wildcard in this is that competition for resources can be disrupted for myriad reasons, and is why boom times tend to have expansions in civil rights (there are so few men that broadening the definition of "them wronging you" and softer approaches to justice can't meaningfully be resisted by the average man, and things like white-knighting become rare because every man can get a woman provided they're useful), and why bust times see contractions (there are so many men that tightening the definition of "them wronging you" can't meaningfully be resisted by the average man, and things like white-knighting become common because not every man can get a woman and must appeal to them in other ways).

Feminists are often focused on the needs of the victim -- believe all women, we need more social support, we need to reduce stigma, we need police to be more receptive to rape victims

And as we proceed further into bust times men will increasingly adopt these stances, which are... mostly just a way to punish men ex post facto and remove them from the competition (and conservatives, in full agreement with the feminists because inside they are exactly the same, with personalities built to succeed in scarcity conditions, relish carrying that removal out for the above reasons). Boom times/man-shortages by contrast are marked by "obviously you have to compromise if you want to land a man", "a woman's duty", etc.

+1 on the "Good post." It also brought to mind another video I watched recently. A woman who's a prison abolitionist, addressing critics who ask the "So what do you want to do about rapists and child molesters, then, just let them go free?" question.

She spoke at great length about her own horrific abuse, being raped by her best friend's stepfather, who also molested her best friend, and her experience of having to go through the court process, being torn apart by the defense attorney, being sneered at by the police, only to discover that her rapist's supposed 10-year-sentence was reduced to 5 without her being notified or consulted. And how the prison system would abuse him and make him worse, and how she was also revictimized and abused by the process, and never asked what she thought justice should look like, because it was all about "punishing" her abuser and not actually addressing the needs of the victim. What she wanted, she said, was for her abuser to acknowledge what he did and apologize, which he obviously would not do when it would amount to a confession and be used against him.

It was a very passionate and emotional argument. I could see her point of view.

And yet... the holes in her thinking were glaringly apparent. Did she really think that, absent the threat of punishment, the right sort of mediator would get her rapist to give her an apology sincere enough to make her feel better? And what if his other victims did want to see him behind bars? For all her cataloging of the horrors of the "carceral system," she never really did get around to answering the key question: what do we do with very bad people who will hurt other people again if not imprisoned? I imagine it's somethingsomethingmumblerestorativejustice, because they really do believe that rapists and child molesters are produced by "the system" and if the system weren't so terrible, we wouldn't have rapists and child molesters.

So, yeah - this was an extreme case, but very much "woman wanting the system to focus more on victims, less on perpetrators." Of course I know there are men in the prison abolition movement too, but I notice they tend to stress the racism angle more. (This woman did of course hit the "Prison especially victimizes marginalized communities" talking points.)

Damn this was a good post. I like your thesis a lot, it makes sense but I had never considered it before. I almost hope you're wrong, because if you're right it is another sad testament to the dangers of ignoring Chesterton's Fence. It seems like a real sad statement about Western society if we took the social roles developed around the strong (though not inexorable) innate drives of the sexes, and then tore those social roles down without ever bothering to understand why they worked.

My theory is that women in general have a significantly lower sex drive, and that it might be a completely different kind of mechanism compared to the male one.

I've known plenty of women who've gone without sex for years and basically didn't really find any need to fix it. And the ones who have a lot of it often use it as a way to obtain in-group status, not for the physical act itself.

As an 16-25 year old man, all you need to connect the dots is to realize none of your female friends masturbate on a daily basis or have frequent sexual thoughts about their friends or classmates. Then it becomes completely obvious that something quite different is going on in their heads.

Bonus: women are almost universally unaware that any such difference exists. A real, visceral difference. Imagine a race of people who never went hungry, but still consumed food out of social pressure. They wouldn't be aware that others have different motivations for eating, and would think they're also just "doing it for vibes"

This is directionally true but a bit of an overgeneralisation given that eg dildos exist - there are genuinely horny women out there

there are genuinely horny women out there

But this, evolutionarily speaking, has been selected against for in women for all of history except for 20 of the last 70 years. Before that, the Pill and condoms didn't exist; after that, a still-uncured, incredibly destructive STD (among other things).

This is probably why the number of genuinely horny women is in deficit compared to its supply, at least, from the version of "horny" men understand. I'm pretty sure the analog to superstimulus titty anime is K-dramas.

A while back I made a controversial comment that was along the lines of "When women dress sexy, they don't really understand what it's signaling to a guy. They want to be beautiful, like a sunset, and these are the clothes society is telling them makes them beautiful." A lot of men have a hard time believing it, but it really does tie in to a completely different understanding of sex between the sexes.

Women know the difference between dressing sexy and dressing beautiful and they very deftly choose which kind of signal they want to send all the time. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to accuse other women of dressing like whores or realize when their daughters need to change their clothes before going out.

Only very stupid or very young women wouldn't be able to figure it out. The reactions of other women help them learn even more so then the male reactions.

I did say it was a controversial comment. I am a woman and I can tell you that dressing "sexy" versus dressing "beautiful" is like trying to look pretty like a sunset or look pretty like a flower.

I can tell my six year old not to wear tights and a t-shirt because I understand that this is inappropriate with the rules of fashion, not because I understand what it is to look at a six year old with sexual lust. But as the rules of fashion change so goes clothes, and my kids have "jeggings" they can wear under both dresses and shirts, which makes it easier to let them pick their own clothes for now.

Yes, women understand that they are sending different signals when they dress. They understand that this cardigan makes them look smart and serious, this skirt makes them look fun, etc.

But they don't understand sexual hunger and how they dress impacts it. We witness patterns and try to act accordingly, but we don't grok the underlying mechanism, so sometimes we think we understand a pattern but a man behaves differently than we expected. This explains a lot of the disconnect between women thinking men act creepy, and men thinking a woman wearing only half an outfit must be down for a good time, and if she rejects the man it's because he's not hot enough.

But they don't understand sexual hunger and how they dress impacts it.

I don't agree women are so blind, even if you are a woman yourself.

The girls showing off their assets to simps online know perfectly well what sexual hunger is and how to stoke it. They didn't learn it from some secret e-thot grimoire. There's tons of male gaze materials online to learn from.

Maybe they don't understand that intuitively, but it is certainly an attainable skill.

https://www.themotte.org/post/1121/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/241478?context=8#context is a recent example of what I mean. A woman assumed bras make breasts more sexy, and the only benefit to modesty was they reduced the visibility of hard nipples. She made these deductions through observation, and thought she understood the rule. But now a bunch of men are telling her that bras actually make breasts less sexy.

Sure, a woman can learn to be a stripper. But my point is that most women you meet are not intentionally sending Fuck Me signals through their dress, and would be alarmed to realize the intensity that Fuck Me signals can cause in a man.

More comments

I was reading your comment while taking the subway today. And there was this woman, wearing super professional attire (white blouse with no cleavage, light makeup, sensable hairdo). Except that she was also wearing a super short skirt with a slit up the middle, almost as if she was trying to show off her crotch.

It was... confusing. This was a weekday morning, so I assume she was going to work? I doubt she was going clubbing or anything at that time. But it really just made it awkward for me as a man to even look in her general direction. So I appreciate your comment, because I was genuinely wondering "is she doing that on purpose, or is she just clueless about how she looks?"

It also made me think of this star trek TNG episode where Picard is carrying a sexuality symbol without understanding what it means, and the local women keep approaching him, and he's like "dammit just leave me alone I just want to read my book in peace!!!" Quite the communication error.

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