I was in a 7-year relationship to a woke woman, until about two years ago. One dynamic I have noticed is, such woke come to act like I represent all the awful things every man has ever done to them, and the awfulness of men generally, even as I had to emasculate myself and accept certain woke tenants just to be in the relationship. I finally realized, there is no hope if I have to answer for the ills of other men. I am done emasculating myself.
I had been living in a very liberal city. I am living in conservative country now. Even here, most women are unapproachable, the women I have met online have all ghosted me, the only ones who have seem interested are married or are carrying 50lbs of HFCS. I have been contemplating a kind of monasticism.
One of my readers in our private Slack channel posted this, after I posted the first draft of this article internally yesterday:
*************
"I've been on the "don't date woke women" train since way back when "woke" was just called "feminism", before the racial grievance movement decided to appropriate the rhetoric and methods perfected by the gender grievance movement
I have a speech teed up for if someone reveals themselves to be a feminist in a dating context:
"The primary thing I am looking for in a relationship is a life partnership. You seem to subscribe to a world view which sees men as a group, and by extension me as a member of that group, as having a fundamentally adversarial relationship with women as a group, and by extension yourself. This is fundamentally incompatible with what I am looking for in a relationship, you cannot form a partnership with someone you view as a potential antagonist. I'm sure that your mindset is the result of legitimate life experiences, and I am not here to downplay whatever experiences you have had, but I am here to tell you that although we live in a culture that had largely legitimized the act of projecting your negative experiences with men onto every man you interact with, I personally consider this behavior in the context of a relationship to be emotionally abusive, and I am not willing to tolerate it. This is a boundary I have set for myself, you should either respect that boundary or find someone else to date who is more willing to tolerate this behavior."
It was emotionally abusive. When she accused me of gaslighting her when I tried to defend myself after a 20 minute harangue, I knew I was done. I've been working on those boundaries. Thanks for the info.
I've been half entertaining the idea of finding a conservative girl with a passion for herbalism, to make a bunch of babies with. But I might be too old for that now.
Men are almost never too old to have kids, although finding the energy to properly raise them can be a challenge. The chief problem—again—is finding a suitable woman. Age becomes crucial, as fertility falls off a cliff after 40. IVF is mostly useless unless you’re using donor eggs.
The biggest shock for me as an elderly father has been the constant sickness from bugs picked up by my kids at playgrounds and preschools. Even my wife who is twenty years younger finds it debilitating. Everyone tells me it gets much better once their personal hygiene leaps around age 5 or 6. But our youngest is still bringing it home.
Children are nonetheless the most incredibly rewarding experience. Coming to grips with never having any has got to be contributing some of the craziness to the 40-something dating pool.
This is interesting. Because replace the genders, and you have *exactly* what this article is doing. You (and most of the commentators) rely on an equivalence whereby liberal = woke = man-hating = false rape accusing, all the while explicitly prescreening women through political litmus tests and other "thought crime" detectors (what else could you call that text exchange?). If a woman asked such T/F questions, received such a thoughtful and nuanced answer as the one above, and rejected the guy purely based on a crude binary political stance, that would be bad. How is this not simply "woke for the right?"?
What's also interesting is that your argument rests on the fear of being falsely accused of rape and the resulting social consequences (using the bizarre example of Kavanaugh, who was not accused a court of law, and who got the job anyway), and yet most of the comments are centered around finding "traditional" women who fulfill certain social norms. It's fine to prefer traditional women, but it is glaringly obvious that the real problem here is not the risk of being falsely accused; it's having a wife who is sufficiently submissive.
Like most of the male grievance industry, this piece does precisely what it complains about: victim climbing, thought crimes, stereotyping. Ultimately, like the woke woman you prescreen and reject, it's probably good that you make your worldview clear for potential partners so they can quickly move along.
If a culture existed somewhere on earth that granted social virtue to rapists, a woman should absolutely prescreen men to determine whether they are in that culture or not. I think all men and all women would agree on that point, and I believe that point was made explicitly clear in the article.
Are you implying that such a culture exists in the United States?
Thanks for your engagement. Your question (argument) rests on three premises:
1. There's exists a culture ("wokeness" or whatever), powerful enough to be a systemic problem, that grants social virtue to victims of "forcible rape." (what an odd phrase... what exactly is "un-forcible rape"?). We're not super clear on what "social virtue" means precisely,
2. By granting social virtue to victims, this culture provides tangible incentives to women to make false accusations of rape, so much that these incentives outweigh any social costs derived in making the false accusation itself. Again, it's not clear whether we're talking about false accusations of "forcible rape" or genuine accusations of less severe sexual crimes like harassment.
3. There exists no analogous culture that grants social virtue to men who rape. Again, we're not clear about other behavior like workplace harassment, etc. And you don't make it clear whether these social virtues must accumulate because of the raping or in spite of it.
If you buy a particular version of all three claims, then sure, your argument makes sense. But I would dispute all of them. At the very least, they are unsubstantiated, and just vague enough to be unfalsifiable. The problem with making claims like "the culture does X" is that one can always find anecdata drawn from extreme cases to support it. Are there some bad women out there who make false accusations in order to get attention? Sure. Are there systemic incentives that lead rational women to make totally false accusations for shits and giggles? No.
On point 3, with a certain interpretation, there absolutely exists such a culture that grants social virtue to rapists. Look at your two examples. Weinstein was able to stay super rich and famous for decades even though he was a known rapist. Kavanaugh because a supreme court judge after the whole debacle. That was kind of the whole point of #MeToo -- that rapists were protected.
And, if we consider point 3 to include, "a culture that makes it super hard on women to come forward with real cases of assault and harassment" then I would say we still live in such a culture. Again this post is illustrative: while you admirably admit there is value to destigmatizing sexual trauma, you managed to degrade and demean the only two examples of victims. Perusing your comments, it seems quite clear to me this would not be a super supportive crowd towards a woman with a genuine issue. Then again, it's an unrepresentative sample -- thus making it difficult to make any broad generalizations about "the culture of conservative men" or whatever.
Again, I'm not saying I dispositive proof rejecting those three claims. But they are just vague enough to tap into any prior beliefs and seem simultaneously obvious and ridiculous.
"If you buy a particular version of all three claims, then sure, your argument makes sense."
Thank you. Your characterization of my claims is largely correct, and any qualms I have with your characterization are minor quibbles and not worth pursuing. Also, thank you for engaging in this dialogue in good faith! That's not very common.
"Are there some bad women out there who make false accusations in order to get attention? Sure. Are there systemic incentives that lead rational women to make totally false accusations for shits and giggles? No."
I have known several men to which this has happened, and the trend is not only noticed by me. Some cases are highly public, most aren't. Here are a few examples.
In each of these and many similar instances, the blue social media organism nationally rewarded the false rape accuser with fame and virtue, just like it did with Jussie Smollet, as characterized so deftly by Dave Chapelle.
I understand that in modern times, there's a new kind of intersectionality that's not about race, class, or gender, but rather about which intersectional media bubbles everyone crafts their view of the world. I am subject to this, as are you, and I would bet that these instances didn't feature broadly in your media bubble at their resolution, but I know they featured broadly at their inception because the virtue granted to the false accuser was granted by the echo chamber. I'm sure you saw it transpire.
"On point 3, with a certain interpretation, there absolutely exists such a culture that grants social virtue to rapists. Look at your two examples. Weinstein was able to stay super rich and famous for decades even though he was a known rapist. Kavanaugh because a supreme court judge after the whole debacle. That was kind of the whole point of #MeToo -- that rapists were protected."
I don't believe Kavanaugh did anything, but I definitely believe Weinstein did. Whether Hollywood chooses to grant virtue to rapists is questionable, but I would be willing to entertain that case. In fact, I think I might support it, and come to an agreement with you. And after we agreed on that point, I think it is absolutely reasonable for a woman to decide to never date a man from Hollywood, or any actor or director in general. Not because all directors are rapists, but because the odds aren't worth the risk given how rapey Hollywood is.
"And, if we consider point 3 to include, "a culture that makes it super hard on women to come forward with real cases of assault and harassment" then I would say we still live in such a culture. "
I personally think this was certainly true in generations past, but #MeToo successfully flipped that around. I believe I was very positive about MeToo in the article on this point. I think the main flaw in this new system is not with what MeToo did, it's what happens when the "woke" (I get that many don't like this term and I'm happy to use your choice of words btw) morality system comes into play and virtue climbing behavior creates bad incentives. That's the real flaw in the thing, the virtue climbing incentive, and it appears across the entire "woke" space not just with rape. Rachel Dolezal style behavior is rampant within that social group.
I'll concede on this point as well - the comments on this particular article kited some, shall we say, less than nuanced thinkers because of the places the article got some bounce-back traffic from.
Aug 17, 2023·edited Aug 17, 2023Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
Thanks as well for your good-faith engagement. It sounds to me like we agree on some things:
1) There are cases of, for lack of a better term, "bad women" out there that victimize men in very troubling ways. To do so, they exploit and feed off a broader culture that provides them with such opportunities. You named prominent examples that, FWIW, I was also quite aware of in my 'echo chamber.' There are also many historical examples, like the lynching of Black men for false accusations of harassing white women, etc.
2. There does seem to be something like a "virtue climbing" culture that rewards marginalization and victimization. On the left we use to call it oppression olympics. (You might be interested to know that there are MANY leftists who despise this kind of thing.) This leads to some weird incentives, like in college essays that are basically enumerations of traumatic life events. It also creates a mob mentality that pressures individuals to "take sides" immediately on cases of alleged sexual misconduct, lumps very different misdeeds together (harassment vs. rape), and forecloses opportunities for redemption and second chances.
3. I think I can sympathize with the psychological/emotional plight that is latent in this article. You don't want to avoid woke women because you rationally fear rape allegations. You don't want to date woke women because you're scared they're going to dehumanize you. You're scared they're going to pigeonhole you, see you as innately violent, stereotype you, see you as an enemy or antagonist, not empathize with your struggles as a human being. I think these are very understandable and legitimate concerns!
4. Generally speaking, it sucks to be falsely accused of rape. It also sucks to be sexually abused. I don't see the need to compare the two, and I think any effort to do so is needlessly contrarian and profoundly unhelpful.
Now where we might diverge: One is on the frequency or extent of false allegations, and just how strong these incentives really are. You mention some pretty spectacular cases. You might know of others privately (as I do I). But ultimately it's an empirical question for which neither of us know the truth, and both can probably cull anecdotes or partial data that suggests one way or the other. Anecdotally, I have someone close to me who was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, and someone else who was the victim of sexual harassment (two separate instances.) Both suffered tremendously. The women who was victimized had it objectively worse (lost her job, got ran out of the field, etc.) But my point is, these are just anecdotes! And I am SUPER skeptical that, for the modal person, the incentives rewarding victimization outweigh the very real psychological and material costs that come with making a false accusation.
Another disagreement is whether there is still a 'rape culture' (crude term I know) that protects sexual abusers. Again, you have one impression and I have another (I'm thinking of the football team in high school... gah!). It's an empirical question, and we don't know the answer. We have to be very cautious against extrapolating from our immediate environment.
Finally, I agree there is something like a virtue climbing culture. But I also think there is something like an "anti-virtue" culture that features direct defiance of "woke" norms, and involves the same mechanisms of signaling, social rewards, peer pressure, in-group/out-group dynamics, stereotyping, etc. For example, I would gently ask you to reflect on why you felt it necessary to bring up Asia Argento and her misdeeds, especially since she was such an outlier compared to the many equally prominent Weinstein accusers. Perhaps it was to signal to your audience that you're not a complete MeToo cuck?
The last point is what motivated my initial comment. We agree on some of the social pathologies found in the excesses of 'woke' culture. Unfortunately it is all too easy to replicate those very dynamics, as I believe this piece does.
PS I don't know if Kavanaugh did anything, and neither do you. I don't believe he should have been charged with any crime, but I do believe we had a credible accuser here, and considering the context -- a confirmation, not a court of law -- it was worth a serious investigation, which did not happen. But the virtue/anti-virtue culture wants us to take a side immediately in order to prove loyalty to our 'group.' Don't get sucked into that trap.
PPS On dating, please don't cut yourself off from real connection out of fears that may or may not be realistic. And I'm very sorry to hear about your wife -- may her memory be a blessing.
Hm. My social circles are full of "woke" feminists and they don't seem adversarial at all. They simply have a list of problems and want us to listen. So basically normal politics as usual. Perhaps it is helpful that they are not academics.
My wife passed in 2019 and I dated around in our prior blue/purple location in 2020. I moved my family into a red area at the end of 2020. My experiences have been extremely different after I did one important thing with my dating profile. I stuck up a picture of me running an AR-15 in my profile. This is the photo:
This acts as a way to prescreen the wokes out of my connections list and saves me a tremendous amount of time. Sometimes with dating it's about the proper signaling.
It sounds like your world collapsed, just before the whole world collapsed with covid. I hope you and your kids are in a good place. Thank you for sharing.
Well, I confess, I’ve never been on any such site. Married a trad wife in 1989 and haven’t looked back since. Six kids, 23 grandkids all the kids married.
Can you do a meme? Can you put the words right on top of the picture?
"Picture of me on a sailboat" > I am adventurous and like to explore and like the water.
"Picture of me at the gym" > I am healthy and work out.
"Picture of me with AR-15" > I shoot guns and align at least partially with the tribe that likes guns
You tell a story with the shit in the background of the photos, basically, since everyone on those things is trying to sort through hundreds or thousands of people with ten seconds tops per profile. It's just how those things work. You also start to pick up on cues with the women.
"Picture of her leaning against a sports car" > She's looking for someone rich
"Picture of her at that same spot at Machu Picchu that all the other girls have the photo at" > Basic White Girl Tribe
I don't think you are particularly in the wrong to be somewhat embittered by someone you were in a notionally loving relationship treating you like crap, and for sins you didn't commit, at that.
I had a 20 year relationship with a group of people end for similar reasons. And yes, they were in a very lefty environment while I live outside it. It's not quite the same thing to lose a pile of friends as a lover, but it still sucked. Sympathy.
You forgot the sequel: the accusations of sexual misconduct vs. candidate Biden. "Believe women" went right out the window, even though the accusations were far more substantial than anything leveled at Kavanaugh. There was corroborating evidence against Biden, and innumerable instances of creepy behavior that anyone can go confirm on YouTube. Didn't matter, suddenly due process was sacred again, suddenly women weren't always to be believed anymore, and no one showed up to support Tara Reid LARPing as a Handmaid.
Also worth mentioning might have been the Depp/Heard trial that riveted the planet, wherein the accuser who'd been believed was exposed as guilty of exactly the abuse she'd supposedly suffered.
For the record, I don't pretend to know for certain if Biden is guilty or Depp innocent, only that that's what the preponderance of available evidence suggests. What is clear is that "the woke" don't care about evidence, only identity.
It's gotten to the point where a lot of men, particularly young men, aren't all that interested in dating, full stop. They might be, if they didn't think the risk level was similar to pogo-sticking through a minefield.
A nonzero part of this is the testosterone apocalypse, porn addiction, and the fact that video games nowadays are really freaking awesome. This is a vastly multivariate problem.
Video games are somehow less fun but also more pleasurable than they've ever been. I think that's a distinction that needs to be made. You're kinda both right. Game developers have perfected the art of making their games addictive. Every game now has the capacity swallow your entire life - every single second of your free time - but actually *playing* them isn't even particularly fun.
The recent Diablo 4 is a great example of this phenomenon, imo. Games have become second jobs - you pay $100 for a piece of software that entitles you to a period of stable employment as the pigeon in a perfectly crafted live service skinner box. Are the pigeons having *fun*? No, probably not. Pressing a button to get some seeds or whatever isn't particularly thrilling. But the pigeons are getting what they want, from their perspective probably closer to what they *need*, and yet they're getting it in what might be the least enjoyable way possible - the completion of a joyless, monotonous, repetitive task.
1) I *always* find your comments enlightening and I'm glad you read this publication,
2) This particular article is getting shared in some deeply conservative zones so there may be some less intellectual riffraff that show up in the comments section this time around, please be prepared, :)
3) The dating snapshot I put into the end of the article was of me doing exactly what you recommend. Exploring the territory.
I happen to personally know a couple of woke women, whom I have grown to know over a long period of time, who I can absolutely have wonderful and stable conversations with. The problem is this. Were they and I to establish a long term relationship, either they would be driven to cognitive dissonance by their exposure to my views, or they would bend towards my views and then be excommunicated from their own tribe - their friends and such. Neither of those is a good result for them, so I haven't pursued relationships with them.
The overton window for the right has always drug behind the left, that's the nature of the overall spectrum of traditional vs progressive thought. And historically these overton windows could only slide as fast as communication would allow them. What's happening now is the left has adopted the virtual world much more quickly than the right as, and their overton window is sliding far too quickly for people outside of their bubble to keep up.
I really don't see that at all. I live in an area with a lot of Leftists. I see absolutely NO, and I mean NONE, critical thinking about any issues at all. I just see them automatically accepting whatever they're told by the Govt-Media establishment and everything else is a "conspiracy theory" they don't even think about. I rarely see this on the right. I think that's a false equivalency. You'd have to give me examples of this from the right....and don't cite loyalty to Trump. People like me support Trump not because we think he's the only great thing out there....but because he's the ONLY one out there with the courage to stand up for what he believes even though we recognize he makes a ton of mistakes. Other than that, the Right is far more analytical and far more willing to consider both other points of views in general and to try to seek out specific facts in any case. I just don't see this in the Left, which is a Hive Mind.
Interestingly, that's what I observe in my conservative friends. People are people. TBH, I see it in both sides, it's just more striking on the conservative side because it all sounds so bizarre if you mostly read or see things from the liberal point of view. Probably seems the same to you in reverse. I really appreciate these discussions of culture, though.
It all was predicted by Scott a decade ago. I have one friend of mine with whom I agree almost universally on every topic, and he cannot stand the reds while most of my stuff is highly questionable about the blues. The reason we both have our perceptions is because he's much more heavily exposed to the reds, while I'm much more heavily exposed to the blues.
It's an important thing to identify and acknowledge.
Aug 11, 2023·edited Aug 12, 2023Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
Thanks for the link to the Scott Alexander piece. Read the entire thing, right down to the Implicit Racial Attitudes Test. (My result was "strongly negative," an outcome I assume would correlate pretty highly with "exposure to unsavory Black people." But talk about things you don't want to say in front of your tribe! I do, however, derive a certain charge from quoting the statistics from your piece about homicide and single-parent/Black homes.)
The whole article made me think of the visceral hatred my tribe has of Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, and, in the past, John McCain. I mean sure, they have a strong aversion to Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Mitch McConnell, but that's more like a given, due to their highly alien beliefs. People who occasionally, but not consistently, come down on our side are endlessly vilified. This also applies to the New York Times, Maggie Haberman in particular.
I hope you keep us posted on your dating adventures. Interested to see what responses the gun picture elicits.
The gun picture works because it's flattering and it bypasses a lot of hard cultural conversations. The milkshake that brings the girls to the yard, however, is always the shirtless bathroom selfie, no matter how much women protest those things in concept. 😉
There is objective reality. The Left is almost always wrong in its beliefs and what it tries to create - we see this in the explosion of crime, drug use, financial instability, of ridiculous energy policies that have led to massive inflation, etc. I cannot see any area currently where the Left has been objectively correct in any of its assertions or policies. Everything it has done for the past 30 years has been DISASTROUS for this country and society. I believe that's because the desired outcomes....ie, the destruction of Western civilization particularly the US....is not the stated outcomes which are always hidden by baloney like climate change which is frequently a cover for Leftist financial grift and tyranny. Again, there is no equivalency here with the Left and the Right. The Left has been objectively wrong and destructive for decades in virtually everything it pushes and the Right merely tries to defend itself and the broader society from this insanity and tyranny.
I’ll take a crack at making it less bizarre, using climate change as an example. 20 years ago the IPCC modeled 4 scenarios for future warming. The most extreme one was RCP 8.5, which assumed the world made no concerted effort to reduce carbon emissions.
Federal and state governments wrote green energy targets, EV requirements, and a whole bunch of other laws based on this “scientific” prediction of the worst case scenario. Private equity markets started funding green energy projects, subsidies flowed for residential solar, wind projects were steered towards Democrat-friendly unions to build and install wind projects. It’s been a bonanza for politically-connected special interests feeding at the public trough.
US carbon emissions are now lower than they were in 2005 (mostly thanks to swapping coal for natural gas). Many other developed countries have also significantly reduced carbon emissions. Within the past couple of years, the IPCC announced we have definitely avoided RCP 8.5 and are likely looking at the much less scary RCP 2.5 or 4.5 scenario.
Despite this massive win, the media has refused to acknowledge it and only increased the scaremongering, Gen Z is afraid to have children due to “climate anxiety”, and governments are actively refusing to rewrite laws and emissions targets reflecting the new scientific consensus.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel it’s important to illustrate the whole chain of logic that eventually has a lot of conservatives conclude there has to be a bizarre-sounding conspiracy at play. I personally think economic incentives and a manufactured elite consensus are enough of an explanation, but I have empathy for people who take mental shortcuts and end up spinning out on conspiracies. And this is just one issue. There’s a similar story behind many other issues. It’s crazy-making for anyone who tries to take a rational, reality-based approach.
I absolutely have no idea what I would do if my wife passed away and I found myself in the dating pool again. If I found I could get over the loss and look for companionship. Im afraid I would end up finding myself a very lonely person. When my wife and I met we considered ourselves liberals. Back when that ment legalize weed, leave gay people alone to do their thing,union jobs with good pay and benefits. Stuff like that. Well the world changed around us. We’ve lost most of our friends because we don’t agree with everything they stand for. It really got bad during COVID when we refused the vax and pulled our last kid out of school because we wouldn’t let them mask him. This woke mindset tends to excommunicate people instead of politely agreeing to disagree. Hence I wouldn’t date a woke woman if I was single weather I wanted to or not. Five minutes of conversation with me and she wouldn’t have a chance to yell rape. I would just be ghosted!🤣
I dated for about 5 years between 2017 (divorce) and 2022 (remarriage), and my take is that virtually all woke women are personality disordered, otherwise suffering serious mental issues, or just have shitty character. At least the ones on dating apps.
Of course my sample size was not large and not random.
There is some social science research that shows right leaning people tend to be more attractive, physically stronger, and mentally healthier. The choice is clear.
But even the non-woke on Tinder have problems, too, it seems.
The dating apps themselves cause psychological damage to the people using them. They are a blend of media clickbait psychology and slot machine psychology without any sort of social credit system to tamp down bad behavior. They are awful, and they damage the brains of people who spend too much time on them.
What I find interesting is that women are also unwilling to date woke men:
"Being a feminist is more of a liability than a benefit. Forty-two percent of Americans say they would be less likely to date someone who is a feminist compared with 15% who say they would be more likely to date a feminist.
Interestingly, both women and men view dating a feminist more negatively than positively. 39% of women say they would be less likely to date a feminist, compared with 21% who say they would be more likely to date a feminist (the rest said it made no difference). If you’re a single man who wants to attract a female partner, you’re better off not being a feminist."
Since that's a poll of the general pool, it includes independents which aren't shown in the graphs in the article. The mathematics in the article indicate that somewhere around 21% of the total female pool are feminists who want to date feminists, and that is fine and also fits with the numbers you've posted.
The fact that independents (per that analysis) seem to want to avoid feminists probably helps feminist women find feminist men because it gives feminist men fewer options in the independent market.
It's interesting you bring this up. I talked with my fiancée about this a year or is ago. If something happened between us, there is no way I'm getting back into this "dating pool" without explicitly knowing the person very well going into the relationship. I don't even care so much about the political side and I'm not even a conservative, (or liberal), this is just self preservation.
Which brings up a slightly related topic, if not due to polarization, could slavery have been ended in the US without the civil war? It seems like many of the same dynamics are at play. Just in different ways.
I have read some interesting things that contend slavery was doomed anyway because of the eventual invention of mechanized agriculture. The catch is that nobody *knew* that at the time. Slavery did peter out in other places without wars, but the south was supplying the textile material for the entire European economy using slave labor, and the market demanded cotton somehow or another.
I'm not sure I understand the parallel between that and this red/blue dating dynamic.
Interestingly enough, I've read things that contend that the Founders thought that slavery was unprofitable and would have eventually died out, but mechanized agriculture (specifically, the cotton gin) made slavery profitable again.
The parallels are, to me, that the abolitionist (the woke) had to force their virtue on everyone without finding common ground to peacefully end things without bloodshed. I am equating the woke to the abolitionist due to the fact that they (from my understanding) treated slavery as a something that needed to be exterminated instead of worked toward being resolved. Similar to how the wokes today acting like anyone who doesn't believe like them should be muzzled, censored, and shunned from society. It was then, similar in ways, to today due to virtue climbing. That's what I mean. This doesn't mean to view slavery as good or noble, just that there was more than one way to skin the cat and it didn't require a war to do so. (IMO) There is also the possibility I'm full of shit, and it was inevitable regardless.
I think that's too black-and-white of an analysis of the civil war to be honest. Some part of the drive for the civil war was that due to the lack of income taxes, all federal funding came from taxing southern exports, and they were taking that money and buying railroads and other northern improvements with it. In a strange way, the south were economic slaves to the north.
Lots of weird things go into the civil war, and it's hard to wrap your head around all of them, and it was and continues to be very politicized.
A better parallel would probably be alcohol prohibition. Not only was that one group forcing their views on another group, it was literally the origins of the progressive movement, and their protests looked exactly like the progressive protests today. Rows of white women chanting catch phrases being followed by simps.
Aug 8, 2023·edited Aug 8, 2023Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
That's fair. I wasn't meaning it as a 1:1 comparison, just reading some stuff about the militancy of some of the abolitionist. It seemed (to me) when the mob starts doing things for the sake of virtue, bad things happen. Nor does this say that slavery was moral or correct, etc. It just seemed (as you touched on) other places got rid of slavery without a war, and it seems like it could have been done here. I didn't mean to implicate that it was that simple of an analysis, just something that has seemed to be a recurring theme that has come up.
EDIT: Sorry, you can disregard my rambling. It was just some random thoughts from this weekend while visiting some area's still living in that time period.
I think fair to consider various facets about slavery and the civil war. Obviously not all slave owners were Simon Legree types. I discovered my GG had 5 slaves in his household per the 1860 census. Oddly they were still there in 1870 and onward. Perhaps they were part of the family and just stayed on. His house still stands and is rather large with no outbuildings. Apparently he was quite wealthy and had roles in the local politics. His sons had no slaves and were not quite as wealthy.
Slavery itself was doomed as the maintenance costs were becoming less favorable particularly in terms of the less than inspired labor. The North had gone to a pay for services system which was much less costly. Workers were paid near starvation wages with managers not responsible for clothing, food and housing. Note that abusing slaves popular in abolitionist circles was not routine; slaves were capital assets to owners and there well-being somewhat necessary. But as capital assets, emancipation represented a capital loss. As a system slavery doesn't really work economically particularly if you can hire labor cheaply.
Sorry if this post angers anybody. Not defending the system at all. Human bondage isn't a good thing. Nor is providing a poor education creating modern day minimum wage workers.
Thats a fair (imo) assessment. It doesn't seem discussed that some slaves did stay with their former masters as hired help. I think most rational people can agree (especially now) that human bondage is a terrible thing and should be eradicated. However, the ends, IMO, didn't justify the means (through my limited knowledge). I was just noticing some of the similarities between the moral arguments made then through now. It just seemed like a vaguely parallel topic of discussion. Then again, I'm also an idiot, so most of what I say can be ignored.
I have read arguments that the polarization in the US between abolitionists and slavery supporters is one reason we couldn't reach a compromise like the British, i.e. just paying off the slave owners. Now, partly it has to be because it would have been super expensive, but also abolitionists were adverse to paying people to stop doing something they saw as entirely unacceptable, instead of seeing as something that was legal and now wouldn't be, effectively a government taking.
A similar model would be modern gun control. If the lefties stopped trying to just seize guns and instead said "We are going to ban producing or owning type X, and for every type X you bring in over the next year we will give you $5000" they'd probably get a lot more support, and a lot of quiet indifference. Not exactly 1:1 situations, but the lack of progressives' ability to even see that the other side has a point and valid arguments prevents them from making these deals. I rather suspect the abolitionists faced similar problems, being a very morally driven group.
Yeah, that was largely where I was headed in that comment. Although, I also didn't realize the economic implications that HWFO posted. As I haven't researched that side extensively. It just seemed much of the same "moral arguments" were made with no regard for the actual way of life at the current time. Now, I do not now think that the "woke group" are on the correct side of history this time. However, the moral arguments seem similar.
Of course it could have. Slavery was on it's way out in the world. Britain did it. The US could have also if some folks were willing to be a little more patient.
Good analysis. Dating a woke female is a very bad idea - don't stick your thing in crazy.
'Crazy' however, is another elephant in the room here. At the same time that hardcore liberalism has spiked in popularity with young women, so have their rates of mental illness. Specifically in the liberal subset. Date one, and not only do you have a higher probability of a false rape accusation destroying your life, but that probability is even higher than it might otherwise be due to the likelihood that she is not only politically, but mentally deranged. To say nothing of the heartache that comes from dealing with an emotionally damaged woman, even if she doesn't accuse you of rape.
Falling rates of sex, marriage, and fertility are an obvious consequence, and bleak enough on their own. While much harder to think about in quantitative terms, the cultural impact of men and women cohering around mutually exclusive ideologies may prove to be the bigger story. What does society look like when the sexes have become armed camps, full of miserable, lonely people who remain trapped in their loneliness because the only romantic options are intolerable? Do men just retreat into porn and vidya, as they are now? Or do they start organizing? Or do we see a cultural reversal - women realizing that their misery is their fault, and abandoning wokeness as a result?
I'll say this about the 40s dating pool: Almost everyone of both genders is crazy in one way or another. That goes to another dating concept I've fallen on - the four quadrant analysis of crazy creates selection bias. It goes like this: (I may put this into article form at some point)
Define "good" as "good at relationships" and "bad" as "bad at relationships." This may be due to poor health, bad life choices, insanity, whatever. Men or women can be good or bad.
The 40s dating pool is comprised of either divorced people or people who never got married. The Never Got Marrieds never got married *for a reason*, and that reason is likely that they're bad. The Divorced pool could be good or bad, but marriages come in four forms:
good man good woman (these never get divorced)
good man bad woman (divorced)
bad man good woman (divorced)
bad man bad woman (divorced)
You don't date anyone in the first category, only the final three. Which means that two thirds of the people you are going to meet are bad people, regardless of your gender, purely due to selection bias. And even the one third that are "Good" are probably damaged from a relationship with a bad partner.
This dynamic has played out in every relationship I've attempted. Understanding the landscape is important when dating at my age.
Solid analysis that matches my experience. I think dating in one's 40s has always been a shitshow, the political culture war nonsense is just an extra layer of fecal icing.
It's the kids in their 20s that I really worry about, though.
Decent analysis, however, there are a non-zero number of people like yourself that are back on the "market", so to speak, due to not being divorced and just getting a raw deal on the whole "shit luck spectrum". Is it common, clearly not. But they do exist. Maybe I'm just more of an optimist. (then again, none of this affects me)
In a recent conversation the abysmal birth rates of Korea came up. A friend remarked that "things are that bad and they're nerfing women". I didn't say it out loud, but "well, what have the 'buffs' achieved thus far?" was definitely on my mind. Because that track record ain't good except in 'amount of changes achieved'.
I think he was referring to them electing a more rightwing head of state and that the people concerned over birthrates tend to be more rightwing and not pro-liberationism. His basic logic likely is if you want women to do good things, you should give them more rights and support and freedom and...
Restricting their choices is the opposite of that, so in his mind it should lead to worse results. But we can all clearly see that feminism's forward march has collapsed birth rates and women's mental health. It is of course a huge surprise when ~all our ancestors lived in a patriarchal setup and were definitely selected with modern feminism that judges women by how good they are at being men in mind.
I don't think it requires this level of intellectualization. Woke women are strident, frequently hysterical, vicious and generally mentally ill (as are Woke men) and completely unconcerned with actual fairness and justice, as opposed to social justice. They believe social justice goals are more important than actual justice. They are also personally and frequently physically, unattractive. Some of them seem to work to achieve a certain "horribleness" factor. As a conservative, Independent, woman, I don't know how men can stand them at all. I can't.
While your characterization of woke women meets some of my priors, those are all easily avoided qualities because they're easy to pick out. The sort of analysis I lay out here is more categorical, because it also applies to demure, non-hysterical, kind, and mentally stable woke women. You can assess those qualities in advance, you can't assess whether you're going to get rung up on a false rape accusation until it happens.
Yes, they're easy to pick out....the problem is that they are so COMMON. It's the sheer volume of female woke insanity out there that makes it difficult to navigate. The natural female tendency to seek security and protection over freedom has been amped up to 11 on the 10 point scale.
There have been and always will be horrible, hysterical, vicious, selfish people. This appears to be an epidemic of such, and in that sense is probably worth exploring intellectually to figure out, at the least, how not to catch the disease. Maybe there are some inherent qualities that predispose people, but I doubt it's 100% nature and 0% nurture.
There are plenty of people who convert from 'woke' to something else. There are also trads who go woke. Wokeness is a set of ideologies installed into the white space of people's brains, just like religion or nationalism is. Whether we consider ideologies to be 'mind viruses' or not is a broader question. Sam Harris was made famous by his statement "religion is a mind virus," but he failed to make the next logical step, which is that literally everything is a mind virus, and our modern culture wars are expressions of the viruses waging war with each other using humans as their tools, instead of the other way around.
I had a former bartender coworker who got on the woke train early and went full bore (against cash bail before 2016, neo pronouns, she got a tramp stamp with Soviet stars surrounding a hammer and sickle... except the hammer was replaced with a Hitachi magic wand, and captioned with "Hoetariat"). I'm not a Trump supporter but I do lean right overall, enjoy hunting, own some ARs, etc.
She's conventionally attractive if you don't mind female body hair, but her personality is the libido equivalent of good deepfakes of Hillary nude, so it was never going to happen. Anyways, she progressed from mild flirting --> hitting on me heavily (and being told a flat "no" several times) --> sexual assault. At that point I slapped her hand away, said "no", and hoped she'd stop. Nope, snuck up behind me ~5 minutes later and tried to stick a finger up my ass again.
Thankfully that was caught on camera, because she was complaining about her wrist getting bent so hard that she went to the GM. Despite oil-checking a coworker on video she wasn't immediately fired but was told to start looking for a new job.
So of course she went on Facebook that night and claimed *I* assaulted her. I posted the video and she deleted it/blocked me but apparently she did get dragged by her friends who saw it.
Anyways, some woke women do prefer guys who look and act traditionally masculine. But I advise staying away and try to have video if possible, because a large portion of her friend group would absolutely have believed her without that video.
>> she got a tramp stamp with Soviet stars surrounding a hammer and sickle... except the hammer was replaced with a Hitachi magic wand, and captioned with "Hoetariat").
OH MY GOD WOW I want to meet this lady and see if she can out drink me.
She's tall & thin and a relative lightweight, at least with ethanol. A quarter of her nightly ketamine habit would probably scare most people off it for life, though.
But if you're ever in NE Ohio and you want to meet her, I'm fairly sure I know someone who has up to date contact info.
The incident of woke women falsely claiming sexual assault is astounding and I believe, as a woman myself, VERY HIGH, because they know they can make these claims with NO ACCOUNTABILITY AND NO PROOF. Look at all Trump and his associates have been through, especially the ludicrous Kavanaugh (and I don't LIKE Kavanaugh) claims by Ford, and the absolutely insane claims of Jean Carroll against Trump which cannot POSSIBLY be true in the real world. But it's all done for politics or for personal advantage and intelligent men should absolutely avoid Woke Women because they are DANGEROUS.
She wears her bipolar diagnosis around like a badge of honor, but I think she's got the other "BPD".
Chances of her being "fixed" are roughly 0%. Last I talked to her she was still defending Stalin and Mao.
I do miss poking at her during her anti Trump rants. She's ethnically Jewish but an atheist, so imagine the explosion when I pointed out that Trump has more Jewish grandchildren than her parents do or will 😂
That probably hurt her more than the wrist lock, TBH.
It's brainwashing they get in school, especially in college. It's very hard to break the brainwashing once it takes hold. The mental gymnastics these women will go through to avoid actual physical reality in the real world, are stunning and from my experience, usually involve screeching their beliefs as loud as they can rather than backing them up with anything as old fashioned as "facts".
Hmmm. No. #MeToo was necessary. The dating norm was for men to be pushy to get sex. I know because I was a young woman in the 2000s/2010s. Women were discussing this amongst themselves well before #MeToo. I remember an article in Cosmo Girl during that time about “grey rape”. And that shit happened to me. More than once. And years before #MeToo I was out at a college bar with friends and acquaintances discussing this issue with other ladies - and you know what one of them said? “Me too” - and this was years before the hashtag movement. My point is, #MeToo was a long time brewing, and it was because of the way young men were behaving. It’s really simple - ask a girl if she wants to have sex. Do not use pushy tactics because you’re afraid a direct question will lead to a no. Oh and maybe try to make the girl feel good - don’t know how many times a dude got handsy or tried to kiss me even though our date or hangout wasn’t going well and there was no flirting. There was often no lead up at all. Ugh.
Hi Chartreuse! I agree with most of what you put here, and I think I was relatively positive about MeToo in the article. The main problem is not the awareness that comes along with MeToo, it's the virtue climbing incentive that flows specifically from the "woke" (or whatever we'd like to call it) piece of the puzzle.
I was wondering if you'd entertain a good faith thought experiment with me, about the nature of rape and sexual misconduct. I'd like to pose two scenarios to you and get your opinions on them. There are no right or wrong answers, just be honest.
1)
A college girl is playing a drinking game with friends at her large, shared house. She gets far too drunk, and retires to her bedroom to lay down and put her head over a trash can in case she throws up. A guy who is attracted to her goes up to “check on her,” rubs her shoulders, which she’s fine with. Then he starts sucking on her fingers, an obvious sexual advance. She says “I think you’re trying to take advantage of me because I’m drunk.” He stops, leaves, and goes downstairs, whereupon he does his best to do preemptive damage control by claiming to the group playing drinking games that she was all over him sexually and trying to have sex with him but he turned her down.
Is this:
A) Rape
B) Sexual assault
C) Sexual Misconduct
D) No Big Deal
2)
An adult lady has been dating an adult man for about six months. They both have kids, and are doing their best to make the relationship work. They get into fights when he’s drunk, and she has drawn a line in the sand over these fights, saying they will break up if another one happens, but they have a blended family vacation planned to a remote beach, and decide to go on with it. She wants to take two cars in case something bad happens but he insists they take one car to have the full “family vacation experience.”
She cooks breakfast and dinner for the group Thursday, Friday, and Saturday day. Saturday night is supposed to be ‘taco night,’ and they share cooking responsibilities. She peels off and eats with her kids early, and he (they’ve both been drinking most of the day) takes umbrage with the fact that everyone else ate before he did, and begins to make a scene. She tries to disassociate herself from him, even walking out to the cottage’s dock on the bay. He follows her, berates her. They eventually make it back to the shared bedroom where she says she can’t take any more of the abuse, and he states that if she breaks up with him he won’t be able to bear the six hour ride home in the same car with her. She says “we shared a car” and he yells “I’ll buy you an Uber!” knowing full well they’re a two hour drive from the nearest rental car place. She clarifies that he’s stating he will abandon her family at the remote beach if she breaks up with him, he affirms her clarification, and she then settles him down, lies saying she won’t break up with him, and has sex with him.
The following day she tries to pull the “headache” card but he won’t be turned away and wants sex twice more, which she gives him because she doesn’t want him to catch on that the relationship is over and she needs to get her family home safely before moving to end the relationship. When they finally arrive home two days after the fight she breaks up with him.
Is this:
A) Rape
B) Sexual assault
C) Sexual Misconduct
D) No Big Deal
No wrong answers, I'm just curious about your perspectives.
Generally speaking, I think multiple choice, legalistic-style questions like this are rarely helpful or illuminating in this context. They kind of make my BS detector start to go BEEPBEEPBEEP. Like, why do I have to select from these four? What about E) Asshole behavior that falls short of violating legal or professional codes?
You need to be more precise. You seem to be implying there's some objective normative criteria out there for what makes something deserving of society's concern. Or maybe normative criteria for what qualifies as a punishable act, and what that punishment that should be? Instead of contrived hypotheticals, it'd help if you clarified the specific question or problem you're interested in.
I sense what you're really interested in is: how should such situations be understood? How bad are they *really*? What is society's responsibility for them? What punishment or restitution, if any, should be offered? Most importantly perhaps, are there clear guidelines or rules or laws we can turn to in order to answer these questions? And who gets to decide them?
No, what I really want to know is whether either of those two examples rise to the level where a woman would say #MeToo! on Facebook regarding them. This is fundamentally a MeToo Threshold discussion.
Again, you're question presumes there is some objective #MeToo "threshold" out there -- perhaps decided by the #MeToo Central Planning Committee for Official Policy. There is no such thing. It's a social movement. Individuals decide for themselves what past experience fits into the MeToo label. Some claims are reasonable, some are not. Some experiences are objectively fucked up but may not fit into particular vision of MeToo's broader aims. It's highly decentralized and contested.
For example -- taking your examples at purely face value, I would say that they at least rise to the level of First Degree Assholery and probably sexual misconduct (although that's more a term used in offices and professional codes and stuff like, not personal relationships). Now let's say the genders of your characters are reversed. Does my judgment still hold? Of course -- and I would expect the great majority of feminists would agree.
This says nothing, however, about their broader social significance or relation to MeToo. Both likely involve harmful social problems -- for example, if the victims were men, they might have felt a lot of shame around being sexually assaulted, or felt they couldn't get support because people would laugh at them or insult their masculinity or whatever. These are real social problems. Whether or how they fit into MeToo is a complicated question, and different people might have different opinions on that -- *even if* they agree that both involved sexual abuse and social stigmas.
1) It's not rape but it is certainly inappropriate and a major violation of the girl's personal boundaries.
If you're trying to say the movement went too far, then I agree. Some things are inappropriate or a bit out-of-line but not worthy of a criminal conviction or for someone to get their reputation ruined permanently.
2) Um... why isn't there an option between serious accusations (sexual assault, misconduct, rape) and No Big Deal? Is that the point you are trying to make?
I read the article. Thank you. So I have gathered that my wife and I are both Nasi’s that are watching a large percentage of the country go bat shit crazy around us. The keep your head down advice seems like good advice to me. Thanks HWFO.🤣🤣
Learn to analyze cultures, move somewhere safe, own rifles, keep your head down. That's the HWFO recommendation. Any time culture wars go hot people get killed, and the smart people are the quietest ones.
Just wondering HWF. If you think writing an article about how to determine how one figures out weather or not their conservative or liberal. My wife and myself don’t know for sure. Sometimes we think we’re one. Sometimes the other. One thing we know for sure is that we are definitely not woke. We both feel completely politically homeless. Thanks.
Thanks! I have certainly learned some interesting and useful things from reading your stuff. I think the most likely outcome of a woke/non-woke pairing would be futile arguments in the beginning, followed by an agreement not to discuss politics at all. That would probably not be acceptable to someone to whom politics are important!
There are definitely people I've known who became post-woke, and bailed on the ideology. I had some success in converting a prior nanny of mine away from wokeness in 2020, but the only way I could possibly do it was by first learning all of the woke language and dogma so I could speak in woke dialect to her. One of the interesting conversational walls that wokeness erects is it redefines a lot of terms and substitutes a lot of other ones (equality/equity, different definitions of racism, etc) which prevent anyone outside the woke bubble from carrying on a meaningful or convincing conversation with anyone inside it.
My last date quite some time ago. I was on a blind date because all my married friends think I need to be as miserable as they are. Anyway, I was to meet this woman at a local restaurant. I showed up at the appointed time and she is standing out front. As I walk up I'm hoping this is her, she is very good looking. I interduce myself and sure enough it is her. This is starting off well! We head for the front door and I pick up my pace a little so I can get the door for her. She looks at me like I had just grabbed her behind and said, "I can open my own doors!" I was a little shocked at her reaction. I thought about it for a second and replied, "I'm sure you can. I am also sure you can feed yourself and find your way home". I then turned around and left her standing there. My married friends almost got me on that one.
I was in a 7-year relationship to a woke woman, until about two years ago. One dynamic I have noticed is, such woke come to act like I represent all the awful things every man has ever done to them, and the awfulness of men generally, even as I had to emasculate myself and accept certain woke tenants just to be in the relationship. I finally realized, there is no hope if I have to answer for the ills of other men. I am done emasculating myself.
I had been living in a very liberal city. I am living in conservative country now. Even here, most women are unapproachable, the women I have met online have all ghosted me, the only ones who have seem interested are married or are carrying 50lbs of HFCS. I have been contemplating a kind of monasticism.
Geez, writing it out I sound bitter.
One of my readers in our private Slack channel posted this, after I posted the first draft of this article internally yesterday:
*************
"I've been on the "don't date woke women" train since way back when "woke" was just called "feminism", before the racial grievance movement decided to appropriate the rhetoric and methods perfected by the gender grievance movement
I have a speech teed up for if someone reveals themselves to be a feminist in a dating context:
"The primary thing I am looking for in a relationship is a life partnership. You seem to subscribe to a world view which sees men as a group, and by extension me as a member of that group, as having a fundamentally adversarial relationship with women as a group, and by extension yourself. This is fundamentally incompatible with what I am looking for in a relationship, you cannot form a partnership with someone you view as a potential antagonist. I'm sure that your mindset is the result of legitimate life experiences, and I am not here to downplay whatever experiences you have had, but I am here to tell you that although we live in a culture that had largely legitimized the act of projecting your negative experiences with men onto every man you interact with, I personally consider this behavior in the context of a relationship to be emotionally abusive, and I am not willing to tolerate it. This is a boundary I have set for myself, you should either respect that boundary or find someone else to date who is more willing to tolerate this behavior."
It was emotionally abusive. When she accused me of gaslighting her when I tried to defend myself after a 20 minute harangue, I knew I was done. I've been working on those boundaries. Thanks for the info.
I've been half entertaining the idea of finding a conservative girl with a passion for herbalism, to make a bunch of babies with. But I might be too old for that now.
These definitely exist. As I already have kids and can't make more, I'm not in this pool.
Men are almost never too old to have kids, although finding the energy to properly raise them can be a challenge. The chief problem—again—is finding a suitable woman. Age becomes crucial, as fertility falls off a cliff after 40. IVF is mostly useless unless you’re using donor eggs.
The biggest shock for me as an elderly father has been the constant sickness from bugs picked up by my kids at playgrounds and preschools. Even my wife who is twenty years younger finds it debilitating. Everyone tells me it gets much better once their personal hygiene leaps around age 5 or 6. But our youngest is still bringing it home.
Children are nonetheless the most incredibly rewarding experience. Coming to grips with never having any has got to be contributing some of the craziness to the 40-something dating pool.
This is interesting. Because replace the genders, and you have *exactly* what this article is doing. You (and most of the commentators) rely on an equivalence whereby liberal = woke = man-hating = false rape accusing, all the while explicitly prescreening women through political litmus tests and other "thought crime" detectors (what else could you call that text exchange?). If a woman asked such T/F questions, received such a thoughtful and nuanced answer as the one above, and rejected the guy purely based on a crude binary political stance, that would be bad. How is this not simply "woke for the right?"?
What's also interesting is that your argument rests on the fear of being falsely accused of rape and the resulting social consequences (using the bizarre example of Kavanaugh, who was not accused a court of law, and who got the job anyway), and yet most of the comments are centered around finding "traditional" women who fulfill certain social norms. It's fine to prefer traditional women, but it is glaringly obvious that the real problem here is not the risk of being falsely accused; it's having a wife who is sufficiently submissive.
Like most of the male grievance industry, this piece does precisely what it complains about: victim climbing, thought crimes, stereotyping. Ultimately, like the woke woman you prescreen and reject, it's probably good that you make your worldview clear for potential partners so they can quickly move along.
If a culture existed somewhere on earth that granted social virtue to rapists, a woman should absolutely prescreen men to determine whether they are in that culture or not. I think all men and all women would agree on that point, and I believe that point was made explicitly clear in the article.
Are you implying that such a culture exists in the United States?
Thanks for your engagement. Your question (argument) rests on three premises:
1. There's exists a culture ("wokeness" or whatever), powerful enough to be a systemic problem, that grants social virtue to victims of "forcible rape." (what an odd phrase... what exactly is "un-forcible rape"?). We're not super clear on what "social virtue" means precisely,
2. By granting social virtue to victims, this culture provides tangible incentives to women to make false accusations of rape, so much that these incentives outweigh any social costs derived in making the false accusation itself. Again, it's not clear whether we're talking about false accusations of "forcible rape" or genuine accusations of less severe sexual crimes like harassment.
3. There exists no analogous culture that grants social virtue to men who rape. Again, we're not clear about other behavior like workplace harassment, etc. And you don't make it clear whether these social virtues must accumulate because of the raping or in spite of it.
If you buy a particular version of all three claims, then sure, your argument makes sense. But I would dispute all of them. At the very least, they are unsubstantiated, and just vague enough to be unfalsifiable. The problem with making claims like "the culture does X" is that one can always find anecdata drawn from extreme cases to support it. Are there some bad women out there who make false accusations in order to get attention? Sure. Are there systemic incentives that lead rational women to make totally false accusations for shits and giggles? No.
On point 3, with a certain interpretation, there absolutely exists such a culture that grants social virtue to rapists. Look at your two examples. Weinstein was able to stay super rich and famous for decades even though he was a known rapist. Kavanaugh because a supreme court judge after the whole debacle. That was kind of the whole point of #MeToo -- that rapists were protected.
And, if we consider point 3 to include, "a culture that makes it super hard on women to come forward with real cases of assault and harassment" then I would say we still live in such a culture. Again this post is illustrative: while you admirably admit there is value to destigmatizing sexual trauma, you managed to degrade and demean the only two examples of victims. Perusing your comments, it seems quite clear to me this would not be a super supportive crowd towards a woman with a genuine issue. Then again, it's an unrepresentative sample -- thus making it difficult to make any broad generalizations about "the culture of conservative men" or whatever.
Again, I'm not saying I dispositive proof rejecting those three claims. But they are just vague enough to tap into any prior beliefs and seem simultaneously obvious and ridiculous.
"If you buy a particular version of all three claims, then sure, your argument makes sense."
Thank you. Your characterization of my claims is largely correct, and any qualms I have with your characterization are minor quibbles and not worth pursuing. Also, thank you for engaging in this dialogue in good faith! That's not very common.
"Are there some bad women out there who make false accusations in order to get attention? Sure. Are there systemic incentives that lead rational women to make totally false accusations for shits and giggles? No."
I have known several men to which this has happened, and the trend is not only noticed by me. Some cases are highly public, most aren't. Here are a few examples.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-is-too-easy-to-abuse/561650/
https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/03/a-new-espn-film-exposes-the-real-villains-in-the-duke-lacrosse-case.html
In each of these and many similar instances, the blue social media organism nationally rewarded the false rape accuser with fame and virtue, just like it did with Jussie Smollet, as characterized so deftly by Dave Chapelle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZXoErL2124
I understand that in modern times, there's a new kind of intersectionality that's not about race, class, or gender, but rather about which intersectional media bubbles everyone crafts their view of the world. I am subject to this, as are you, and I would bet that these instances didn't feature broadly in your media bubble at their resolution, but I know they featured broadly at their inception because the virtue granted to the false accuser was granted by the echo chamber. I'm sure you saw it transpire.
"On point 3, with a certain interpretation, there absolutely exists such a culture that grants social virtue to rapists. Look at your two examples. Weinstein was able to stay super rich and famous for decades even though he was a known rapist. Kavanaugh because a supreme court judge after the whole debacle. That was kind of the whole point of #MeToo -- that rapists were protected."
I don't believe Kavanaugh did anything, but I definitely believe Weinstein did. Whether Hollywood chooses to grant virtue to rapists is questionable, but I would be willing to entertain that case. In fact, I think I might support it, and come to an agreement with you. And after we agreed on that point, I think it is absolutely reasonable for a woman to decide to never date a man from Hollywood, or any actor or director in general. Not because all directors are rapists, but because the odds aren't worth the risk given how rapey Hollywood is.
"And, if we consider point 3 to include, "a culture that makes it super hard on women to come forward with real cases of assault and harassment" then I would say we still live in such a culture. "
I personally think this was certainly true in generations past, but #MeToo successfully flipped that around. I believe I was very positive about MeToo in the article on this point. I think the main flaw in this new system is not with what MeToo did, it's what happens when the "woke" (I get that many don't like this term and I'm happy to use your choice of words btw) morality system comes into play and virtue climbing behavior creates bad incentives. That's the real flaw in the thing, the virtue climbing incentive, and it appears across the entire "woke" space not just with rape. Rachel Dolezal style behavior is rampant within that social group.
I'll concede on this point as well - the comments on this particular article kited some, shall we say, less than nuanced thinkers because of the places the article got some bounce-back traffic from.
Thank you for the calm, good faith response!
Thanks as well for your good-faith engagement. It sounds to me like we agree on some things:
1) There are cases of, for lack of a better term, "bad women" out there that victimize men in very troubling ways. To do so, they exploit and feed off a broader culture that provides them with such opportunities. You named prominent examples that, FWIW, I was also quite aware of in my 'echo chamber.' There are also many historical examples, like the lynching of Black men for false accusations of harassing white women, etc.
2. There does seem to be something like a "virtue climbing" culture that rewards marginalization and victimization. On the left we use to call it oppression olympics. (You might be interested to know that there are MANY leftists who despise this kind of thing.) This leads to some weird incentives, like in college essays that are basically enumerations of traumatic life events. It also creates a mob mentality that pressures individuals to "take sides" immediately on cases of alleged sexual misconduct, lumps very different misdeeds together (harassment vs. rape), and forecloses opportunities for redemption and second chances.
3. I think I can sympathize with the psychological/emotional plight that is latent in this article. You don't want to avoid woke women because you rationally fear rape allegations. You don't want to date woke women because you're scared they're going to dehumanize you. You're scared they're going to pigeonhole you, see you as innately violent, stereotype you, see you as an enemy or antagonist, not empathize with your struggles as a human being. I think these are very understandable and legitimate concerns!
4. Generally speaking, it sucks to be falsely accused of rape. It also sucks to be sexually abused. I don't see the need to compare the two, and I think any effort to do so is needlessly contrarian and profoundly unhelpful.
Now where we might diverge: One is on the frequency or extent of false allegations, and just how strong these incentives really are. You mention some pretty spectacular cases. You might know of others privately (as I do I). But ultimately it's an empirical question for which neither of us know the truth, and both can probably cull anecdotes or partial data that suggests one way or the other. Anecdotally, I have someone close to me who was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, and someone else who was the victim of sexual harassment (two separate instances.) Both suffered tremendously. The women who was victimized had it objectively worse (lost her job, got ran out of the field, etc.) But my point is, these are just anecdotes! And I am SUPER skeptical that, for the modal person, the incentives rewarding victimization outweigh the very real psychological and material costs that come with making a false accusation.
Another disagreement is whether there is still a 'rape culture' (crude term I know) that protects sexual abusers. Again, you have one impression and I have another (I'm thinking of the football team in high school... gah!). It's an empirical question, and we don't know the answer. We have to be very cautious against extrapolating from our immediate environment.
Finally, I agree there is something like a virtue climbing culture. But I also think there is something like an "anti-virtue" culture that features direct defiance of "woke" norms, and involves the same mechanisms of signaling, social rewards, peer pressure, in-group/out-group dynamics, stereotyping, etc. For example, I would gently ask you to reflect on why you felt it necessary to bring up Asia Argento and her misdeeds, especially since she was such an outlier compared to the many equally prominent Weinstein accusers. Perhaps it was to signal to your audience that you're not a complete MeToo cuck?
The last point is what motivated my initial comment. We agree on some of the social pathologies found in the excesses of 'woke' culture. Unfortunately it is all too easy to replicate those very dynamics, as I believe this piece does.
PS I don't know if Kavanaugh did anything, and neither do you. I don't believe he should have been charged with any crime, but I do believe we had a credible accuser here, and considering the context -- a confirmation, not a court of law -- it was worth a serious investigation, which did not happen. But the virtue/anti-virtue culture wants us to take a side immediately in order to prove loyalty to our 'group.' Don't get sucked into that trap.
PPS On dating, please don't cut yourself off from real connection out of fears that may or may not be realistic. And I'm very sorry to hear about your wife -- may her memory be a blessing.
Hm. My social circles are full of "woke" feminists and they don't seem adversarial at all. They simply have a list of problems and want us to listen. So basically normal politics as usual. Perhaps it is helpful that they are not academics.
My wife passed in 2019 and I dated around in our prior blue/purple location in 2020. I moved my family into a red area at the end of 2020. My experiences have been extremely different after I did one important thing with my dating profile. I stuck up a picture of me running an AR-15 in my profile. This is the photo:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CU7N7frLsBu/
This acts as a way to prescreen the wokes out of my connections list and saves me a tremendous amount of time. Sometimes with dating it's about the proper signaling.
Awesome! I want one.
Lately I have been posting my substack. That is a no woke zone, no mistake.
I definitely do not do that, but it certainly comes up in conversation after a few dates.
Also, I cannot fathom losing a partner like that.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/she-did-not-go-gently
It sounds like your world collapsed, just before the whole world collapsed with covid. I hope you and your kids are in a good place. Thank you for sharing.
Yeah it was quite the shitshow.
Thanks for being strong and a voice of reason here on substack.
I wonder what the results would’ve been had you posted that you were looking for a trad wife.
Nobody reads the captions on those things, you pretty much have to convey all the things you intend to convey in three to four photos.
Well, I confess, I’ve never been on any such site. Married a trad wife in 1989 and haven’t looked back since. Six kids, 23 grandkids all the kids married.
Can you do a meme? Can you put the words right on top of the picture?
It's like this.
"Picture of me on a sailboat" > I am adventurous and like to explore and like the water.
"Picture of me at the gym" > I am healthy and work out.
"Picture of me with AR-15" > I shoot guns and align at least partially with the tribe that likes guns
You tell a story with the shit in the background of the photos, basically, since everyone on those things is trying to sort through hundreds or thousands of people with ten seconds tops per profile. It's just how those things work. You also start to pick up on cues with the women.
"Picture of her leaning against a sports car" > She's looking for someone rich
"Picture of her at that same spot at Machu Picchu that all the other girls have the photo at" > Basic White Girl Tribe
etc
So I would need to look for a picture of a woman, that’s barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen?
I can relate to this. God how I can relate to this.
I don't think you are particularly in the wrong to be somewhat embittered by someone you were in a notionally loving relationship treating you like crap, and for sins you didn't commit, at that.
I had a 20 year relationship with a group of people end for similar reasons. And yes, they were in a very lefty environment while I live outside it. It's not quite the same thing to lose a pile of friends as a lover, but it still sucked. Sympathy.
Thank you.
I refuse to succumb to bitterness. The world is too beautiful and life too precious to be bitter about it.
Well, that's certainly a healthier attitude than I can usually manage to muster. 😁👍
Don't let em drag you down!
You forgot the sequel: the accusations of sexual misconduct vs. candidate Biden. "Believe women" went right out the window, even though the accusations were far more substantial than anything leveled at Kavanaugh. There was corroborating evidence against Biden, and innumerable instances of creepy behavior that anyone can go confirm on YouTube. Didn't matter, suddenly due process was sacred again, suddenly women weren't always to be believed anymore, and no one showed up to support Tara Reid LARPing as a Handmaid.
Also worth mentioning might have been the Depp/Heard trial that riveted the planet, wherein the accuser who'd been believed was exposed as guilty of exactly the abuse she'd supposedly suffered.
For the record, I don't pretend to know for certain if Biden is guilty or Depp innocent, only that that's what the preponderance of available evidence suggests. What is clear is that "the woke" don't care about evidence, only identity.
It's gotten to the point where a lot of men, particularly young men, aren't all that interested in dating, full stop. They might be, if they didn't think the risk level was similar to pogo-sticking through a minefield.
A nonzero part of this is the testosterone apocalypse, porn addiction, and the fact that video games nowadays are really freaking awesome. This is a vastly multivariate problem.
Eeeeh, video games are less awesome than they used to be. Or at least less fun than they used to be.
Hard disagree, although I don't play many. I've crimped off that addiction by limiting myself to Nintendo.
Video games are somehow less fun but also more pleasurable than they've ever been. I think that's a distinction that needs to be made. You're kinda both right. Game developers have perfected the art of making their games addictive. Every game now has the capacity swallow your entire life - every single second of your free time - but actually *playing* them isn't even particularly fun.
The recent Diablo 4 is a great example of this phenomenon, imo. Games have become second jobs - you pay $100 for a piece of software that entitles you to a period of stable employment as the pigeon in a perfectly crafted live service skinner box. Are the pigeons having *fun*? No, probably not. Pressing a button to get some seeds or whatever isn't particularly thrilling. But the pigeons are getting what they want, from their perspective probably closer to what they *need*, and yet they're getting it in what might be the least enjoyable way possible - the completion of a joyless, monotonous, repetitive task.
Maybe try finding someone who's intellectually curious. I say that as one of the few liberals who regularly read this substack and comment.
May I say the following:
1) I *always* find your comments enlightening and I'm glad you read this publication,
2) This particular article is getting shared in some deeply conservative zones so there may be some less intellectual riffraff that show up in the comments section this time around, please be prepared, :)
3) The dating snapshot I put into the end of the article was of me doing exactly what you recommend. Exploring the territory.
I happen to personally know a couple of woke women, whom I have grown to know over a long period of time, who I can absolutely have wonderful and stable conversations with. The problem is this. Were they and I to establish a long term relationship, either they would be driven to cognitive dissonance by their exposure to my views, or they would bend towards my views and then be excommunicated from their own tribe - their friends and such. Neither of those is a good result for them, so I haven't pursued relationships with them.
You will almost never find this on the Left. The Left is almost completely programmed and conditioned.
Huge amounts of the right are too, critical thinking being replaced by unquestioned dogma is a huge issue on both sides
I don't disagree with that.
The overton window for the right has always drug behind the left, that's the nature of the overall spectrum of traditional vs progressive thought. And historically these overton windows could only slide as fast as communication would allow them. What's happening now is the left has adopted the virtual world much more quickly than the right as, and their overton window is sliding far too quickly for people outside of their bubble to keep up.
Couldn’t agree more
I really don't see that at all. I live in an area with a lot of Leftists. I see absolutely NO, and I mean NONE, critical thinking about any issues at all. I just see them automatically accepting whatever they're told by the Govt-Media establishment and everything else is a "conspiracy theory" they don't even think about. I rarely see this on the right. I think that's a false equivalency. You'd have to give me examples of this from the right....and don't cite loyalty to Trump. People like me support Trump not because we think he's the only great thing out there....but because he's the ONLY one out there with the courage to stand up for what he believes even though we recognize he makes a ton of mistakes. Other than that, the Right is far more analytical and far more willing to consider both other points of views in general and to try to seek out specific facts in any case. I just don't see this in the Left, which is a Hive Mind.
Interestingly, that's what I observe in my conservative friends. People are people. TBH, I see it in both sides, it's just more striking on the conservative side because it all sounds so bizarre if you mostly read or see things from the liberal point of view. Probably seems the same to you in reverse. I really appreciate these discussions of culture, though.
This is incredibly important reading from 2014:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
It all was predicted by Scott a decade ago. I have one friend of mine with whom I agree almost universally on every topic, and he cannot stand the reds while most of my stuff is highly questionable about the blues. The reason we both have our perceptions is because he's much more heavily exposed to the reds, while I'm much more heavily exposed to the blues.
It's an important thing to identify and acknowledge.
Thanks for the link to the Scott Alexander piece. Read the entire thing, right down to the Implicit Racial Attitudes Test. (My result was "strongly negative," an outcome I assume would correlate pretty highly with "exposure to unsavory Black people." But talk about things you don't want to say in front of your tribe! I do, however, derive a certain charge from quoting the statistics from your piece about homicide and single-parent/Black homes.)
The whole article made me think of the visceral hatred my tribe has of Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, and, in the past, John McCain. I mean sure, they have a strong aversion to Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Mitch McConnell, but that's more like a given, due to their highly alien beliefs. People who occasionally, but not consistently, come down on our side are endlessly vilified. This also applies to the New York Times, Maggie Haberman in particular.
I hope you keep us posted on your dating adventures. Interested to see what responses the gun picture elicits.
The gun picture works because it's flattering and it bypasses a lot of hard cultural conversations. The milkshake that brings the girls to the yard, however, is always the shirtless bathroom selfie, no matter how much women protest those things in concept. 😉
There is objective reality. The Left is almost always wrong in its beliefs and what it tries to create - we see this in the explosion of crime, drug use, financial instability, of ridiculous energy policies that have led to massive inflation, etc. I cannot see any area currently where the Left has been objectively correct in any of its assertions or policies. Everything it has done for the past 30 years has been DISASTROUS for this country and society. I believe that's because the desired outcomes....ie, the destruction of Western civilization particularly the US....is not the stated outcomes which are always hidden by baloney like climate change which is frequently a cover for Leftist financial grift and tyranny. Again, there is no equivalency here with the Left and the Right. The Left has been objectively wrong and destructive for decades in virtually everything it pushes and the Right merely tries to defend itself and the broader society from this insanity and tyranny.
That's bizarre (to me.)
I’ll take a crack at making it less bizarre, using climate change as an example. 20 years ago the IPCC modeled 4 scenarios for future warming. The most extreme one was RCP 8.5, which assumed the world made no concerted effort to reduce carbon emissions.
Federal and state governments wrote green energy targets, EV requirements, and a whole bunch of other laws based on this “scientific” prediction of the worst case scenario. Private equity markets started funding green energy projects, subsidies flowed for residential solar, wind projects were steered towards Democrat-friendly unions to build and install wind projects. It’s been a bonanza for politically-connected special interests feeding at the public trough.
US carbon emissions are now lower than they were in 2005 (mostly thanks to swapping coal for natural gas). Many other developed countries have also significantly reduced carbon emissions. Within the past couple of years, the IPCC announced we have definitely avoided RCP 8.5 and are likely looking at the much less scary RCP 2.5 or 4.5 scenario.
Despite this massive win, the media has refused to acknowledge it and only increased the scaremongering, Gen Z is afraid to have children due to “climate anxiety”, and governments are actively refusing to rewrite laws and emissions targets reflecting the new scientific consensus.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel it’s important to illustrate the whole chain of logic that eventually has a lot of conservatives conclude there has to be a bizarre-sounding conspiracy at play. I personally think economic incentives and a manufactured elite consensus are enough of an explanation, but I have empathy for people who take mental shortcuts and end up spinning out on conspiracies. And this is just one issue. There’s a similar story behind many other issues. It’s crazy-making for anyone who tries to take a rational, reality-based approach.
I absolutely have no idea what I would do if my wife passed away and I found myself in the dating pool again. If I found I could get over the loss and look for companionship. Im afraid I would end up finding myself a very lonely person. When my wife and I met we considered ourselves liberals. Back when that ment legalize weed, leave gay people alone to do their thing,union jobs with good pay and benefits. Stuff like that. Well the world changed around us. We’ve lost most of our friends because we don’t agree with everything they stand for. It really got bad during COVID when we refused the vax and pulled our last kid out of school because we wouldn’t let them mask him. This woke mindset tends to excommunicate people instead of politely agreeing to disagree. Hence I wouldn’t date a woke woman if I was single weather I wanted to or not. Five minutes of conversation with me and she wouldn’t have a chance to yell rape. I would just be ghosted!🤣
Great analysis.
I dated for about 5 years between 2017 (divorce) and 2022 (remarriage), and my take is that virtually all woke women are personality disordered, otherwise suffering serious mental issues, or just have shitty character. At least the ones on dating apps.
Of course my sample size was not large and not random.
There is some social science research that shows right leaning people tend to be more attractive, physically stronger, and mentally healthier. The choice is clear.
But even the non-woke on Tinder have problems, too, it seems.
The dating apps themselves cause psychological damage to the people using them. They are a blend of media clickbait psychology and slot machine psychology without any sort of social credit system to tamp down bad behavior. They are awful, and they damage the brains of people who spend too much time on them.
What I find interesting is that women are also unwilling to date woke men:
"Being a feminist is more of a liability than a benefit. Forty-two percent of Americans say they would be less likely to date someone who is a feminist compared with 15% who say they would be more likely to date a feminist.
Interestingly, both women and men view dating a feminist more negatively than positively. 39% of women say they would be less likely to date a feminist, compared with 21% who say they would be more likely to date a feminist (the rest said it made no difference). If you’re a single man who wants to attract a female partner, you’re better off not being a feminist."
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/swiping-and-dating-preferences
Since that's a poll of the general pool, it includes independents which aren't shown in the graphs in the article. The mathematics in the article indicate that somewhere around 21% of the total female pool are feminists who want to date feminists, and that is fine and also fits with the numbers you've posted.
The fact that independents (per that analysis) seem to want to avoid feminists probably helps feminist women find feminist men because it gives feminist men fewer options in the independent market.
It's interesting you bring this up. I talked with my fiancée about this a year or is ago. If something happened between us, there is no way I'm getting back into this "dating pool" without explicitly knowing the person very well going into the relationship. I don't even care so much about the political side and I'm not even a conservative, (or liberal), this is just self preservation.
Which brings up a slightly related topic, if not due to polarization, could slavery have been ended in the US without the civil war? It seems like many of the same dynamics are at play. Just in different ways.
I have read some interesting things that contend slavery was doomed anyway because of the eventual invention of mechanized agriculture. The catch is that nobody *knew* that at the time. Slavery did peter out in other places without wars, but the south was supplying the textile material for the entire European economy using slave labor, and the market demanded cotton somehow or another.
I'm not sure I understand the parallel between that and this red/blue dating dynamic.
Interestingly enough, I've read things that contend that the Founders thought that slavery was unprofitable and would have eventually died out, but mechanized agriculture (specifically, the cotton gin) made slavery profitable again.
The parallels are, to me, that the abolitionist (the woke) had to force their virtue on everyone without finding common ground to peacefully end things without bloodshed. I am equating the woke to the abolitionist due to the fact that they (from my understanding) treated slavery as a something that needed to be exterminated instead of worked toward being resolved. Similar to how the wokes today acting like anyone who doesn't believe like them should be muzzled, censored, and shunned from society. It was then, similar in ways, to today due to virtue climbing. That's what I mean. This doesn't mean to view slavery as good or noble, just that there was more than one way to skin the cat and it didn't require a war to do so. (IMO) There is also the possibility I'm full of shit, and it was inevitable regardless.
I think that's too black-and-white of an analysis of the civil war to be honest. Some part of the drive for the civil war was that due to the lack of income taxes, all federal funding came from taxing southern exports, and they were taking that money and buying railroads and other northern improvements with it. In a strange way, the south were economic slaves to the north.
Lots of weird things go into the civil war, and it's hard to wrap your head around all of them, and it was and continues to be very politicized.
A better parallel would probably be alcohol prohibition. Not only was that one group forcing their views on another group, it was literally the origins of the progressive movement, and their protests looked exactly like the progressive protests today. Rows of white women chanting catch phrases being followed by simps.
That's fair. I wasn't meaning it as a 1:1 comparison, just reading some stuff about the militancy of some of the abolitionist. It seemed (to me) when the mob starts doing things for the sake of virtue, bad things happen. Nor does this say that slavery was moral or correct, etc. It just seemed (as you touched on) other places got rid of slavery without a war, and it seems like it could have been done here. I didn't mean to implicate that it was that simple of an analysis, just something that has seemed to be a recurring theme that has come up.
EDIT: Sorry, you can disregard my rambling. It was just some random thoughts from this weekend while visiting some area's still living in that time period.
I think fair to consider various facets about slavery and the civil war. Obviously not all slave owners were Simon Legree types. I discovered my GG had 5 slaves in his household per the 1860 census. Oddly they were still there in 1870 and onward. Perhaps they were part of the family and just stayed on. His house still stands and is rather large with no outbuildings. Apparently he was quite wealthy and had roles in the local politics. His sons had no slaves and were not quite as wealthy.
Slavery itself was doomed as the maintenance costs were becoming less favorable particularly in terms of the less than inspired labor. The North had gone to a pay for services system which was much less costly. Workers were paid near starvation wages with managers not responsible for clothing, food and housing. Note that abusing slaves popular in abolitionist circles was not routine; slaves were capital assets to owners and there well-being somewhat necessary. But as capital assets, emancipation represented a capital loss. As a system slavery doesn't really work economically particularly if you can hire labor cheaply.
Sorry if this post angers anybody. Not defending the system at all. Human bondage isn't a good thing. Nor is providing a poor education creating modern day minimum wage workers.
Thats a fair (imo) assessment. It doesn't seem discussed that some slaves did stay with their former masters as hired help. I think most rational people can agree (especially now) that human bondage is a terrible thing and should be eradicated. However, the ends, IMO, didn't justify the means (through my limited knowledge). I was just noticing some of the similarities between the moral arguments made then through now. It just seemed like a vaguely parallel topic of discussion. Then again, I'm also an idiot, so most of what I say can be ignored.
I have read arguments that the polarization in the US between abolitionists and slavery supporters is one reason we couldn't reach a compromise like the British, i.e. just paying off the slave owners. Now, partly it has to be because it would have been super expensive, but also abolitionists were adverse to paying people to stop doing something they saw as entirely unacceptable, instead of seeing as something that was legal and now wouldn't be, effectively a government taking.
A similar model would be modern gun control. If the lefties stopped trying to just seize guns and instead said "We are going to ban producing or owning type X, and for every type X you bring in over the next year we will give you $5000" they'd probably get a lot more support, and a lot of quiet indifference. Not exactly 1:1 situations, but the lack of progressives' ability to even see that the other side has a point and valid arguments prevents them from making these deals. I rather suspect the abolitionists faced similar problems, being a very morally driven group.
Yeah, that was largely where I was headed in that comment. Although, I also didn't realize the economic implications that HWFO posted. As I haven't researched that side extensively. It just seemed much of the same "moral arguments" were made with no regard for the actual way of life at the current time. Now, I do not now think that the "woke group" are on the correct side of history this time. However, the moral arguments seem similar.
Of course it could have. Slavery was on it's way out in the world. Britain did it. The US could have also if some folks were willing to be a little more patient.
I agree, but how long and how patient are both contentious questions. Also, there were multiple causes for the war that should be considered.
Good analysis. Dating a woke female is a very bad idea - don't stick your thing in crazy.
'Crazy' however, is another elephant in the room here. At the same time that hardcore liberalism has spiked in popularity with young women, so have their rates of mental illness. Specifically in the liberal subset. Date one, and not only do you have a higher probability of a false rape accusation destroying your life, but that probability is even higher than it might otherwise be due to the likelihood that she is not only politically, but mentally deranged. To say nothing of the heartache that comes from dealing with an emotionally damaged woman, even if she doesn't accuse you of rape.
Falling rates of sex, marriage, and fertility are an obvious consequence, and bleak enough on their own. While much harder to think about in quantitative terms, the cultural impact of men and women cohering around mutually exclusive ideologies may prove to be the bigger story. What does society look like when the sexes have become armed camps, full of miserable, lonely people who remain trapped in their loneliness because the only romantic options are intolerable? Do men just retreat into porn and vidya, as they are now? Or do they start organizing? Or do we see a cultural reversal - women realizing that their misery is their fault, and abandoning wokeness as a result?
I'll say this about the 40s dating pool: Almost everyone of both genders is crazy in one way or another. That goes to another dating concept I've fallen on - the four quadrant analysis of crazy creates selection bias. It goes like this: (I may put this into article form at some point)
Define "good" as "good at relationships" and "bad" as "bad at relationships." This may be due to poor health, bad life choices, insanity, whatever. Men or women can be good or bad.
The 40s dating pool is comprised of either divorced people or people who never got married. The Never Got Marrieds never got married *for a reason*, and that reason is likely that they're bad. The Divorced pool could be good or bad, but marriages come in four forms:
good man good woman (these never get divorced)
good man bad woman (divorced)
bad man good woman (divorced)
bad man bad woman (divorced)
You don't date anyone in the first category, only the final three. Which means that two thirds of the people you are going to meet are bad people, regardless of your gender, purely due to selection bias. And even the one third that are "Good" are probably damaged from a relationship with a bad partner.
This dynamic has played out in every relationship I've attempted. Understanding the landscape is important when dating at my age.
Solid analysis that matches my experience. I think dating in one's 40s has always been a shitshow, the political culture war nonsense is just an extra layer of fecal icing.
It's the kids in their 20s that I really worry about, though.
There's a reason that I read the entire billionaire psycho piece in one sitting, on the edge of my seat the entire time 😵💫
Um, the what?
I'm ready to learn something new today.
This made the rounds recently- https://billionairepsycho.substack.com/p/pygmalion-and-the-anime-girl
Same. It cut to the quick.
Decent analysis, however, there are a non-zero number of people like yourself that are back on the "market", so to speak, due to not being divorced and just getting a raw deal on the whole "shit luck spectrum". Is it common, clearly not. But they do exist. Maybe I'm just more of an optimist. (then again, none of this affects me)
Analysis says about a third aren't awful, but still probably carry damage from the prior relationship.
I like to think I'm in the shit luck group, but if I'm being brutally honest there's no question I'm also carrying a lot of emotional scar tissue.
In a recent conversation the abysmal birth rates of Korea came up. A friend remarked that "things are that bad and they're nerfing women". I didn't say it out loud, but "well, what have the 'buffs' achieved thus far?" was definitely on my mind. Because that track record ain't good except in 'amount of changes achieved'.
What did your friend mean by that?
I think he was referring to them electing a more rightwing head of state and that the people concerned over birthrates tend to be more rightwing and not pro-liberationism. His basic logic likely is if you want women to do good things, you should give them more rights and support and freedom and...
Restricting their choices is the opposite of that, so in his mind it should lead to worse results. But we can all clearly see that feminism's forward march has collapsed birth rates and women's mental health. It is of course a huge surprise when ~all our ancestors lived in a patriarchal setup and were definitely selected with modern feminism that judges women by how good they are at being men in mind.
I don't think it requires this level of intellectualization. Woke women are strident, frequently hysterical, vicious and generally mentally ill (as are Woke men) and completely unconcerned with actual fairness and justice, as opposed to social justice. They believe social justice goals are more important than actual justice. They are also personally and frequently physically, unattractive. Some of them seem to work to achieve a certain "horribleness" factor. As a conservative, Independent, woman, I don't know how men can stand them at all. I can't.
While your characterization of woke women meets some of my priors, those are all easily avoided qualities because they're easy to pick out. The sort of analysis I lay out here is more categorical, because it also applies to demure, non-hysterical, kind, and mentally stable woke women. You can assess those qualities in advance, you can't assess whether you're going to get rung up on a false rape accusation until it happens.
Yes, they're easy to pick out....the problem is that they are so COMMON. It's the sheer volume of female woke insanity out there that makes it difficult to navigate. The natural female tendency to seek security and protection over freedom has been amped up to 11 on the 10 point scale.
There have been and always will be horrible, hysterical, vicious, selfish people. This appears to be an epidemic of such, and in that sense is probably worth exploring intellectually to figure out, at the least, how not to catch the disease. Maybe there are some inherent qualities that predispose people, but I doubt it's 100% nature and 0% nurture.
A few questions:
- Is it idiotic to assume that Wokeness is a mind virus that can eventually be cured without permanent psychological damage? Maybe in some cases?
- Or are the pool of women taken over by it irredeemably incompatible for all time?
- Are there alternative sources of status or virtue that can compete with the Woke ideology? If not at the social level, at the individual?
I understand there is a meme going around about liberal women being secretly attracted to conservative men— maybe all hope is not lost?
There are plenty of people who convert from 'woke' to something else. There are also trads who go woke. Wokeness is a set of ideologies installed into the white space of people's brains, just like religion or nationalism is. Whether we consider ideologies to be 'mind viruses' or not is a broader question. Sam Harris was made famous by his statement "religion is a mind virus," but he failed to make the next logical step, which is that literally everything is a mind virus, and our modern culture wars are expressions of the viruses waging war with each other using humans as their tools, instead of the other way around.
More on that here:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-human-tool
and here:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-many-flavors-of-wokeness
I had a former bartender coworker who got on the woke train early and went full bore (against cash bail before 2016, neo pronouns, she got a tramp stamp with Soviet stars surrounding a hammer and sickle... except the hammer was replaced with a Hitachi magic wand, and captioned with "Hoetariat"). I'm not a Trump supporter but I do lean right overall, enjoy hunting, own some ARs, etc.
She's conventionally attractive if you don't mind female body hair, but her personality is the libido equivalent of good deepfakes of Hillary nude, so it was never going to happen. Anyways, she progressed from mild flirting --> hitting on me heavily (and being told a flat "no" several times) --> sexual assault. At that point I slapped her hand away, said "no", and hoped she'd stop. Nope, snuck up behind me ~5 minutes later and tried to stick a finger up my ass again.
Thankfully that was caught on camera, because she was complaining about her wrist getting bent so hard that she went to the GM. Despite oil-checking a coworker on video she wasn't immediately fired but was told to start looking for a new job.
So of course she went on Facebook that night and claimed *I* assaulted her. I posted the video and she deleted it/blocked me but apparently she did get dragged by her friends who saw it.
Anyways, some woke women do prefer guys who look and act traditionally masculine. But I advise staying away and try to have video if possible, because a large portion of her friend group would absolutely have believed her without that video.
>> she got a tramp stamp with Soviet stars surrounding a hammer and sickle... except the hammer was replaced with a Hitachi magic wand, and captioned with "Hoetariat").
OH MY GOD WOW I want to meet this lady and see if she can out drink me.
She's tall & thin and a relative lightweight, at least with ethanol. A quarter of her nightly ketamine habit would probably scare most people off it for life, though.
But if you're ever in NE Ohio and you want to meet her, I'm fairly sure I know someone who has up to date contact info.
Ohio doesn't exist.
I found the photo if you want it, BTW.
Sure! Why not? Ping me on twitter if you can't find a better contact route, I can't remember whether substack has a direct email pipe.
Not "holetariat"? I guess referring to yourself as a "hole" would be a bit much, but damn I mean... why break the pun if the shoe fits.
She spelled it "Hoeletariat"
I thought I still had a photo of her tattoo on my phone but I didn't see it yesterday so I couldn't spell check myself 🤷🏻
If I happen to come across it I'll drop a link in this thread.
The incident of woke women falsely claiming sexual assault is astounding and I believe, as a woman myself, VERY HIGH, because they know they can make these claims with NO ACCOUNTABILITY AND NO PROOF. Look at all Trump and his associates have been through, especially the ludicrous Kavanaugh (and I don't LIKE Kavanaugh) claims by Ford, and the absolutely insane claims of Jean Carroll against Trump which cannot POSSIBLY be true in the real world. But it's all done for politics or for personal advantage and intelligent men should absolutely avoid Woke Women because they are DANGEROUS.
Hahaha, this so messed up. I'll go ahead and assume your hopes for redemption are low.
She wears her bipolar diagnosis around like a badge of honor, but I think she's got the other "BPD".
Chances of her being "fixed" are roughly 0%. Last I talked to her she was still defending Stalin and Mao.
I do miss poking at her during her anti Trump rants. She's ethnically Jewish but an atheist, so imagine the explosion when I pointed out that Trump has more Jewish grandchildren than her parents do or will 😂
That probably hurt her more than the wrist lock, TBH.
It's brainwashing they get in school, especially in college. It's very hard to break the brainwashing once it takes hold. The mental gymnastics these women will go through to avoid actual physical reality in the real world, are stunning and from my experience, usually involve screeching their beliefs as loud as they can rather than backing them up with anything as old fashioned as "facts".
I should clarify, I don't want to date woke women, but the stats seem to show that options are quickly evaporating.
Hmmm. No. #MeToo was necessary. The dating norm was for men to be pushy to get sex. I know because I was a young woman in the 2000s/2010s. Women were discussing this amongst themselves well before #MeToo. I remember an article in Cosmo Girl during that time about “grey rape”. And that shit happened to me. More than once. And years before #MeToo I was out at a college bar with friends and acquaintances discussing this issue with other ladies - and you know what one of them said? “Me too” - and this was years before the hashtag movement. My point is, #MeToo was a long time brewing, and it was because of the way young men were behaving. It’s really simple - ask a girl if she wants to have sex. Do not use pushy tactics because you’re afraid a direct question will lead to a no. Oh and maybe try to make the girl feel good - don’t know how many times a dude got handsy or tried to kiss me even though our date or hangout wasn’t going well and there was no flirting. There was often no lead up at all. Ugh.
Hi Chartreuse! I agree with most of what you put here, and I think I was relatively positive about MeToo in the article. The main problem is not the awareness that comes along with MeToo, it's the virtue climbing incentive that flows specifically from the "woke" (or whatever we'd like to call it) piece of the puzzle.
I was wondering if you'd entertain a good faith thought experiment with me, about the nature of rape and sexual misconduct. I'd like to pose two scenarios to you and get your opinions on them. There are no right or wrong answers, just be honest.
1)
A college girl is playing a drinking game with friends at her large, shared house. She gets far too drunk, and retires to her bedroom to lay down and put her head over a trash can in case she throws up. A guy who is attracted to her goes up to “check on her,” rubs her shoulders, which she’s fine with. Then he starts sucking on her fingers, an obvious sexual advance. She says “I think you’re trying to take advantage of me because I’m drunk.” He stops, leaves, and goes downstairs, whereupon he does his best to do preemptive damage control by claiming to the group playing drinking games that she was all over him sexually and trying to have sex with him but he turned her down.
Is this:
A) Rape
B) Sexual assault
C) Sexual Misconduct
D) No Big Deal
2)
An adult lady has been dating an adult man for about six months. They both have kids, and are doing their best to make the relationship work. They get into fights when he’s drunk, and she has drawn a line in the sand over these fights, saying they will break up if another one happens, but they have a blended family vacation planned to a remote beach, and decide to go on with it. She wants to take two cars in case something bad happens but he insists they take one car to have the full “family vacation experience.”
She cooks breakfast and dinner for the group Thursday, Friday, and Saturday day. Saturday night is supposed to be ‘taco night,’ and they share cooking responsibilities. She peels off and eats with her kids early, and he (they’ve both been drinking most of the day) takes umbrage with the fact that everyone else ate before he did, and begins to make a scene. She tries to disassociate herself from him, even walking out to the cottage’s dock on the bay. He follows her, berates her. They eventually make it back to the shared bedroom where she says she can’t take any more of the abuse, and he states that if she breaks up with him he won’t be able to bear the six hour ride home in the same car with her. She says “we shared a car” and he yells “I’ll buy you an Uber!” knowing full well they’re a two hour drive from the nearest rental car place. She clarifies that he’s stating he will abandon her family at the remote beach if she breaks up with him, he affirms her clarification, and she then settles him down, lies saying she won’t break up with him, and has sex with him.
The following day she tries to pull the “headache” card but he won’t be turned away and wants sex twice more, which she gives him because she doesn’t want him to catch on that the relationship is over and she needs to get her family home safely before moving to end the relationship. When they finally arrive home two days after the fight she breaks up with him.
Is this:
A) Rape
B) Sexual assault
C) Sexual Misconduct
D) No Big Deal
No wrong answers, I'm just curious about your perspectives.
What's your definition of "sexual misconduct"?
Generally speaking, I think multiple choice, legalistic-style questions like this are rarely helpful or illuminating in this context. They kind of make my BS detector start to go BEEPBEEPBEEP. Like, why do I have to select from these four? What about E) Asshole behavior that falls short of violating legal or professional codes?
Does E) in your book rise to the level of a #metoo claim or not?
You need to be more precise. You seem to be implying there's some objective normative criteria out there for what makes something deserving of society's concern. Or maybe normative criteria for what qualifies as a punishable act, and what that punishment that should be? Instead of contrived hypotheticals, it'd help if you clarified the specific question or problem you're interested in.
I sense what you're really interested in is: how should such situations be understood? How bad are they *really*? What is society's responsibility for them? What punishment or restitution, if any, should be offered? Most importantly perhaps, are there clear guidelines or rules or laws we can turn to in order to answer these questions? And who gets to decide them?
Am I close?
No, what I really want to know is whether either of those two examples rise to the level where a woman would say #MeToo! on Facebook regarding them. This is fundamentally a MeToo Threshold discussion.
Again, you're question presumes there is some objective #MeToo "threshold" out there -- perhaps decided by the #MeToo Central Planning Committee for Official Policy. There is no such thing. It's a social movement. Individuals decide for themselves what past experience fits into the MeToo label. Some claims are reasonable, some are not. Some experiences are objectively fucked up but may not fit into particular vision of MeToo's broader aims. It's highly decentralized and contested.
For example -- taking your examples at purely face value, I would say that they at least rise to the level of First Degree Assholery and probably sexual misconduct (although that's more a term used in offices and professional codes and stuff like, not personal relationships). Now let's say the genders of your characters are reversed. Does my judgment still hold? Of course -- and I would expect the great majority of feminists would agree.
This says nothing, however, about their broader social significance or relation to MeToo. Both likely involve harmful social problems -- for example, if the victims were men, they might have felt a lot of shame around being sexually assaulted, or felt they couldn't get support because people would laugh at them or insult their masculinity or whatever. These are real social problems. Whether or how they fit into MeToo is a complicated question, and different people might have different opinions on that -- *even if* they agree that both involved sexual abuse and social stigmas.
Edit: grammar
1) It's not rape but it is certainly inappropriate and a major violation of the girl's personal boundaries.
If you're trying to say the movement went too far, then I agree. Some things are inappropriate or a bit out-of-line but not worthy of a criminal conviction or for someone to get their reputation ruined permanently.
2) Um... why isn't there an option between serious accusations (sexual assault, misconduct, rape) and No Big Deal? Is that the point you are trying to make?
I read the article. Thank you. So I have gathered that my wife and I are both Nasi’s that are watching a large percentage of the country go bat shit crazy around us. The keep your head down advice seems like good advice to me. Thanks HWFO.🤣🤣
Learn to analyze cultures, move somewhere safe, own rifles, keep your head down. That's the HWFO recommendation. Any time culture wars go hot people get killed, and the smart people are the quietest ones.
Pretty much have all those boxes checked.
Just wondering HWF. If you think writing an article about how to determine how one figures out weather or not their conservative or liberal. My wife and myself don’t know for sure. Sometimes we think we’re one. Sometimes the other. One thing we know for sure is that we are definitely not woke. We both feel completely politically homeless. Thanks.
A funnier version of this answer is this:
Liberals hate anything to do with a free market and individual choice.
Conservatives just hate liberals.
This might be worth reading:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/science-says-sam-harris-is-alt-right
The general axis is abandoning left and right all together, and coalescing around woke and unwoke.
Thanks! I have certainly learned some interesting and useful things from reading your stuff. I think the most likely outcome of a woke/non-woke pairing would be futile arguments in the beginning, followed by an agreement not to discuss politics at all. That would probably not be acceptable to someone to whom politics are important!
Yep.
There are definitely people I've known who became post-woke, and bailed on the ideology. I had some success in converting a prior nanny of mine away from wokeness in 2020, but the only way I could possibly do it was by first learning all of the woke language and dogma so I could speak in woke dialect to her. One of the interesting conversational walls that wokeness erects is it redefines a lot of terms and substitutes a lot of other ones (equality/equity, different definitions of racism, etc) which prevent anyone outside the woke bubble from carrying on a meaningful or convincing conversation with anyone inside it.
My last date quite some time ago. I was on a blind date because all my married friends think I need to be as miserable as they are. Anyway, I was to meet this woman at a local restaurant. I showed up at the appointed time and she is standing out front. As I walk up I'm hoping this is her, she is very good looking. I interduce myself and sure enough it is her. This is starting off well! We head for the front door and I pick up my pace a little so I can get the door for her. She looks at me like I had just grabbed her behind and said, "I can open my own doors!" I was a little shocked at her reaction. I thought about it for a second and replied, "I'm sure you can. I am also sure you can feed yourself and find your way home". I then turned around and left her standing there. My married friends almost got me on that one.