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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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How does this square with the other online sexual politics assertion that ‘looks are everything’, though?

I don't know, but I think that that assertion is generally wrong, especially if we're talking about women's evaluations of men, where "chemistry" and "personality" are if anything more important than looks.

For example, I could just as easily say that an attractive man who makes close friends with a single woman before hitting on her probably will be able to successfully seduce her with this method. And that’s not even wrong! Pretty much all my relationships have started like this, so have those of many of the people I know well.

So your argument is "In my experience, when A is true, B is always true, therefore, generally, if B is true, then A is true"? Or do you have other evidence to think that this is a highly successful ("probably"!!!) method for seducing women?

A lot of men who advocate this ‘don’t get into the friend zone’ approach have a strangely esoteric view of female sexuality. It’s not that they’re wrong, it’s more efficient to make your intentions clear by all means. But if you’re close friends with a straight, single woman and hit on her and she says no, it’s not because you somehow got ‘too close’ to her and she just ‘doesn’t see you as a sexual being’ or you’re ‘like a brother’ to her, it’s because she doesn’t find you attractive and probably never did.

I agree that there's no guaranteed way to avoid the friendzone. I do think there are reliable paths to the friendzone, or at least behaviours that increase that chance.

Note that the friendzone is different from not being seen as a sexual being or seen like a brother. I have women whom I regard as purely friends, but also as hot, and definitely not as "like a sister" (ew).

I’ve literally never heard of a woman becoming close friends with a very attractive man and deciding not to date him because they were friends.

Right, but that's very far from what I'm talking about. After all, nothing I have said rules out the existence of women who only date men who are already close friends; I've dated a few, and I know even more.

In general, your comment doesn't conflict with what I said, so I would have liked it if it was either been more interrogative (if you wanted to criticise what I said) or made it clearer that you weren't disagreeing with me (if you were just following up with further related thoughts).