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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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There are more issues with the constant sexualization of women. One is that it fucks up your ability to trust people. How can you know when someone is genuinely interested in you, or is faking it?

If sex exists, at all, then this will be a problem for women (and rich/attractive men, and in business, and many other places). It has nothing to do with some idea of 'sexualization'. E.g. - does the hijab desexualize women?

Two, there will absolutely be people that will ignore your other qualities in favor of sex

How is this even a problem? If you're emmy noether, people won't ignore your genius in favor of sex. If they're ignoring said qualities - it's usually because they would anyway.

Additionally, I don't think most women really understand just how invisible you can feel being a man - on almost every level. Personally, I think this affects us in a really deep, underlying way

This is a common sentiment - but, what? I'm male, have friends, do a variety of things at work and outside of work, am never invisible, nobody I interact with IRL is really invisible in any sense. Yeah, I'd be invisible if I was unskilled, uninteresting, unfunny, etc - but that's good, and an interaction or conversation without any of the former would be empty and worthless anyway.

I can say for myself at least (and I think a decent number of other men) that being horny can feel like you're being 'tricked' by your own body

I mean, if sex was worthless, you would be tricked, but it's just a selectively advantageous, mostly fair evaluation of the usefulness of having children.

There's a power that you feel a woman can unilaterally hold over you in a way you can't hold them, which can lead you to doing foolish things

Women also often do ""irrational"" (making a sex/sexual desire-related mistake isn't any more or less irrational than making a normal "intellectual" mistake) things over men, and also very strongly desire men in certain contexts, so there isn't really a stark difference here

I think every woman understands that they intrinsically have value.

Well, every man also just-as-intrinsically has value, in the sense of labor. Almost any man, or woman, can get a job and be paid. There's value! And society and the state respects this in all sorts of ways. Or just being buds with other men of equivalent value / status / whatever. There's also welfare! There are multiple senses of 'value', indeed a sense for every possible activity, desire, and these aren't directly comparable. Just saying 'men have value, women don't' is, at best, an imprecise metaphor, and at worst just wrong. Also, people treat women better because of a combination of the biological role of women and universalism - if we go back to Rome, is it really fair to say that "women intrinsically have value, whereas if you're a man nobody cares", given the severe difference in legal status between the two?

the flip-side, as a man, you are essentially worthless until proven otherwise. Nobody cares

Yeah, but almost all men can prove otherwise in plenty of contexts, so this doesn't really matter.

Well, then let's ask it outright:

How do we (as a society) socialize women to pursue nonsexual value? How do we create opportunities for this to occur?

Personally I think it has to look like absolutely bringing a hammer down on workplace relations, while also pursuing sex-blinded hiring/promotion policies. But that only addresses (if at all) the workplace situation, it does nothing for early socialization, social groups, etc. I have no idea how you'd do it for non-workplace groups.

Personally I think it has to look like absolutely bringing a hammer down on workplace relations, while also pursuing sex-blinded hiring/promotion policies.

We did that, and it had absolutely the opposite effect, so you might want to re-examine your reasoning.

I'm not sure if the current approaches result in better outcomes? My proposed approach is only half the puzzle; it can remove hindrances but can't solve lack of availability or interest.

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