Disclaimer: If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.
For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says
As far as I can tell, I am the most active female poster on Less Wrong. (AnnaSalamon has higher karma than I, but she hasn't commented on anything for two months now.) There are not many of us. This is usually immaterial. Heck, sometimes people don't even notice in spite of my girly username, my self-introduction, and the fact that I'm now apparently the feminism police of Less Wrong.
My life is not about being a girl. In fact, I'm less preoccupied with feminism and women's special interest issues than most of the women I know, and some of the men. It's not my pet topic. I do not focus on feminist philosophy in school. I took an "Early Modern Women Philosophers" course because I needed the history credit, had room for a suitable class in a semester when one was offered, and heard the teacher was nice, and I was pretty bored. I wound up doing my midterm paper on Malebranche in that class because we'd covered him to give context to Mary Astell, and he was more interesting than she was. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary. Given the choice, I have lots of things I'd rather be doing than ferreting out hidden or less-than-hidden sexism on one of my favorite websites.
Unfortunately, nobody else seems to want to do it either, and I'm not content to leave it undone. I suppose I could abandon the site and leave it even more masculine so the guys could all talk in their own language, unimpeded by stupid chicks being stupidly offended by completely unproblematic things like objectification and just plain jerkitude. I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended. (In general, I'm very hard to offend. The fact that people here have succeeded in doing so anyway without even, apparently, going out of their way to do it should be a great big red flag that something's up.) If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.
So can I get some help? Some lovely people have thrown in their support, but usually after I or, more rarely, someone else sounds the alarm, and usually without much persistence or apparent investment. There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments that perpetuate the problems, which does nothing to disincentivize being piggish around here - some people seem to earnestly care about the problem, but this isn't enforced by the community at large, it's just a preexisting disposition (near as I can tell).
I would like help reducing the incidence of:
- Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being. (Non-women can also be objectified, and that too should be stopped.)
- Casual use of masculine and/or heteronormative examples in posts and comments that aren't explicitly about gender. It's just not that hard to come up with an unsexed example. Be especially careful when using the second person. If you need to use an example with a gender, there's no reason to consider male the default - consider choosing randomly, or you could use a real person as an example (who isn't presumed to archetypically represent anyone in the audience) instead of a hypothetical one (who might be).
- Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data (responsibly gathered and interpreted). The cost of being wrong about this sort of thing is high, even if the culprits don't bear it themselves, and extreme care should be taken.
- Fawning admiration of pickup artists who attain their fame by the systematic manipulation of women. If it is necessary to refer admiringly to a pickup artist or pickup strategy (I'm not sure why it would be, but if), care should be taken to choose one whose methods are explicitly non-depersonalizing, and disclaim that specifically in the comment.
We could use more of the following:
- Thoughtful use of qualifiers and disclaimers in talk about sex and gender. Robin is not right.
- Attention to the privileges of masculinity and attempts to reduce that disparity. (Note that of course there are also female privileges, but until Less Wrong hosts custody battles or we start suspecting that some of us might be violent criminals, they are unlikely to come into play nearly so much in this location.)
Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.
Great point. Since women have an easier time finding partners than men due to greater female selectiveness (at least when perceived choice is high, which is the norm for typical dating), women may more easily reach a basic level of satisfaction with their abilities to attract and relate to the opposite sex. Or conversely, women may be less likely to reach a level of dissatisfaction that they are motivated to engage in systematic programs to improve their attractiveness and relational abilities, other than in societally typical ways such as improving physical attractiveness.
Yet I do think women would benefit from improving their ability to attract and relate to men, analogous to what pickup artists are doing. Pickup artists often study men who are "naturals" with women. Likewise, I think there are female "naturals." I've known some women who do very well with men, both in the sense of attracting men, and in fulfilling their goals (typically, long-term romantic relationships). These women take care of themselves physically without being incredibly high maintenance, they are intelligent and accomplished, they are a joy to be around, they like men and understand them relatively well, a large percentage of males who come in contact with them get crushes on them. They don't have the common complaint of trying to date guys who only want their bodies, and they are in multi-year relationships.
Clearly, there is something that these women are doing right, or something about their attitudes, personalities, and/or upbringings which is leading to across the board positive results with men, while other women of equal or greater physical attractiveness constantly experience difficulties with men. Whatever it is, it can be broken down empirically and other women can learn from it, similar to how pickup artists are breaking down the behavior and mindsets of men who are successful with women.
In fact, I would argue that a lot of the difficulties some women may experience in their interactions with any attractive men with options (including many pickup artists) is due to their lack of corresponding sexual and relational skills. To explain why this is, I'll back up and use an analogy.
Many men who aren't very good at interacting with women complain of various difficulties around women. A particular complaint is only being seen as a friend, rather than as a romantic prospective, and may feel that females "lead them on" and then only want friendship. Yet for men who have significant skill at attracting and relating to women, these kinds of problems simply go away, or reduce in frequency. I'm less likely to receive this response nowadays. Often I will see the "let's just be friends" situation coming from a mile away, in which case I keep her as a friend and pursue other women. If I don't see it coming, my understanding of female sexual psychology will offer me explanations other than the woman trying to "lead me on." I have enough perspective to realize that she may have given me a chance to attract her, and I simply failed to convey my attractive qualities to her, or she didn't find me attractive. Yet I'm not crushed, because I know that I will be meeting new women next weekend, and I am free to maintain a friendship with her if I so choose.
Similarly, many women complain of a situation where they have become sexual with a guy who is "just not that into her." In fact, this seems to be a fear of some women who hear about pickup artists: they think pickup artists are going to go around seducing them and then moving on. Yet whether a man will move on from a woman after having sex depends on his perception of her appeal for a relationship. This variable is partly under the woman's control. If she can display qualities that make her appeal to him as a relationship partner, and differentiate herself from other women of equal or greater attractiveness, then he is less likely to move on. Furthermore, with a better knowledge of male sexual psychology, she can more easily guess in the first place whether he would be plausibly romantically interested in her, and move on if not.
There are genuine cases of women taking advantage of men non-sexually, and of men taking advantage of women sexually, by lying about their intentions. There are other cases in which people are ambiguous about what they are looking for, and negligently lead another party who wants something more with them into false beliefs about their availability. Yet in my view, the problems underlying "let's just be friends" and "pump and dump" scenarios that are equally as common really lie at the feet of the "friend," or the "dumped." And those problems include the following:
People tend to use their sexual and relational skills to seek what kind of arrangement they want with members of the opposite sex. Yet if members of sex A want arrangement X with members of sex B, while members of sex A are lacking qualities, skills, and understanding necessary for members of sex B to want that kind of relationship with members of sex A, then we have a curious zero-sum situation: a member of sex B's goals will be different from a member of sex A's goals with each other. Since members of sex B finding members of sex A underwhelming in a certain way, their preferred arrangement will be to have a narrow interaction in which they get what they want, while members of sex A do not get what they want (and perhaps feel "used"). However, if members of sex A had more "game" (or whatever you want to call it), then they would be less likely to encounter the situation of members of sex A only wanting them in such a narrow way, in which case members of sex B would use their own "game" in order to seek arrangements that are desired more mutually.
Either men or women are A or B depending on the context. Imagine a matrix of group A's level of game crossed with group B's level of game (where I define "game" as ability, conscious or otherwise, to understand the psychology of the opposite sex, and to attract and induce members of the opposite sex to be more likely to want the kind of sexual/romantic situation that you desire with them; I have reservations about the word "game", but it's late and I need to save typing):
Neither A nor B have game: mutual blundering
A has more game than B: A "uses" B because A only wants a narrow kind of interaction with B
B has more game than A: B "uses" A, reverse of above
A and B both have considerable game: both groups are more likely to want non-zero-sum interactions with each other because they both desire each other in the ways that the other desires them, and members of both groups can more easily identify and avoid potentially zero-sum situations where an asymmetricality of desires occurs
In short, a woman with relational game should be less likely to fear men with seduction ability, because men will be more likely to fall for her.
Assuming that individuals cannot systematically change the preferences of the opposite sex, the best way for both men and women to get want they want sexually and romantically is by members of both sexes:
a) maximally understanding the preferences the of the opposite sex, and b) maximally learning to fulfill the preferences of the opposite sex, subject to certain basic constraints of authenticity, ethics, and one's own preferences
Rational and empirical investigation would be helpful in pursuing these goals. For now, people will have to do this on their own, or with like minded people. Yet in the future, rather than make everyone reinvent the real, these abilities should be instilled by general socialization. To some extent, they already are (at least if you were popular when growing up). But the average quality of advice about the opposite sex is laughably bad for both sexes (especially for men) in society, and dominated by oversimplified stereotypes (e.g. "men only want one thing") and true-but-useless platitudes ("just be yourself," "every woman wants something different").
Downvote explanation requested. I am already considering moving this post somewhere else; it is on-topic for the comment it is responding to, but it may drift from the topic of the thread. Objections to the argument of this comment, or of the language and framings it contains, is also invited.