I am female, and (to a large extent) my experience agrees with Submitter E's. I'm glad to see this posted here, because after reading the other LW and Women posts, I had begun to suspect that I was a complete outlier, and that I couldn't use my own experiences as a reference point for other women's at all.

I found the anonymity-inducing paragraph interesting for a number of reasons. The submitter asserts that she's not like most girls, but then goes on to list a bunch of things, half of which, in my experience, most girls, including most self-described feminists, would also say about themselves. She likes looking pretty, and getting better at sex -- shocking! Within the bedroom, I also suspect a plurality of women are at least somewhat submissive.

Regarding "get in the kitchen!" -- submitter seems to be making an implicit connotative jump, because she likes cooking, to take it as if the sentence were simply equivalent to "Go do your favorite thing!" But that's not the connotation that is usually there. The people saying something like that usually mean it more like "Go do this thing whether or not you like doing it all, because it's too low status for males to bother themselves with it." That may not be the intended connotation of everyone who says it, but it doesn't take that many bad apples in the barrel to get people pattern-matching, so this is what more feminism-inclined people hear when they hear "Get in the kitchen," and that's w... (read more)

I don't think it's a very disputed fact that women, in general, tend to be more emotional than men.

I thought the present-day standard position among people who have actually thought about the issue rather than just repeating stereotypes is that men don't actually feel less emotions than women -- they just show less emotions, for fear of being seen as feminine.

This, right here, is my problem with feminism. This person isn't allowed to exist.

I don't think women should be required to be like this. Actually, given that I'm a switch, and tend to be unhappy in one-sided power relationships, I strongly prefer that not all women be like this.

But I also despise the position that women aren't -allowed- to be like this. Look at the response from some of the commenters - this person must obviously be a troll, because nobody is actually like this. Actually, yes, some of them are. Indeed, many, and possibly most. The average woman, in my experience, prefers a submissive role in a relationship.

The author of this comment is -most women I have encountered-. (From here on out, when I say "most", that is what I refer to, so I don't have to keep repeating myself.) Most women enjoy magazines like Cosmo. Most women enjoy dressing up, and are hurt when you would rather they wear sensible shoes than high heels. Most women want to be pretty, want male attention, want to be feminine.

Feminism doesn't stand up for these women. As a movement, taken as a whole, it actively attacks, harasses, and rejects them. There are a few who stand up for ch... (read more)

I want to be able to have sex like a porn star.

Porn stars optimize for "sex" that looks interesting to a watcher, rather than sex that feels good to the participants. I suspect that's not what the anonymous author actually wants.

I sometimes suspect that my own life would be easier in a number of ways if I were female, but I'll note that when I and other people I've known to discuss the question consider the pros and cons, we usually seem to consider by default what it would be like to be an attractive woman. A lot of the ways in which "women have it better" really seem to apply only to women who're particularly good looking.

(Of course, I like to think I would be a good looking woman, but I'm a bit vain as it is.)

I'm complicated. I don't think my INTJ friends are this complicated

I'm more complicated than I (think I) show to people, and I kind of assume that most people are the same, so I wonder how you'd determine this.

This is the first of the LW women posts which seemed promising to me after the first paragraph. However why use the myers-briggs? Sure, it is not total bollocks but come on, this is LessWrong.

The most blatantly racist/sexist/whatever people tend not to be the truly powerful; they tend to be marginal members of privileged groups, seeking scapegoats and any distraction from their marginal status. But everybody is biased in favor of those who they can get along with, those who think similarly, who they can understand and who can understand them. The truly powerful all have that bias, like everyone else. And so people with the same backgrounds as the powerful are more likely to fit in, to benefit from this bias. But some people are just good at fitting in, even without the similarity of background. Such people are likely to underestimate the general influence of privilege. And their existence also makes it easier for members of privileged groups to underestimate their own privilege; they have examples of people from marginal groups who they get along with perfectly well and who seem to do fine to show that they or the system couldn't really be all that biased against such groups.

And, of course, there are people who are no good at fitting in regardless of similarity of background, who aggravate everyone because of poor social skills or whatever. They also don't benefit from the bias in favor of those who fit in, so if they're members of privileged groups they become convinced that privilege is a myth (since it doesn't seem to be helping them) and they become MRAs or white supremicists or whatever.

I've read all the "LW Women" posts now, and I still don't see that anything useful has come from them. The submissions never really add up to more than a series of often contradictory anecdotes. Due to the small number of submissions overall and the obvious selection effects, there is little reason to think of generalizing any kind of lesson from them. Since the posts are anonymous, they aren't even useful for generalizing to one person.

So do these female submissions get some sort of prompt to respond to? Or are they just "Hey, you're a girl! Write whatever!" I'm trying to understand how to read some of these details.

Understanding other girls is hard.

Understanding people is hard.

generally girl-game my way into getting what I want. (Charming guys is fun!)

I'm trying to unpack this sentence, I think it means something like this: "I signal sexual availability so that males will offer me favours in exchange, but I have enough plausible deniability so that I don't have to follow through" plus "whenever a male accepts such an exchange, I get a self-esteem boost". I don't know if such an interpretation is generally what other people have in their minds.

my attractiveness to men depends largely on my looks but the i

Apropos of everything else, I would just remark that Submitter E should've taken way more care of staying pseudonymous. [Details redacted]

Also, it's a bit disturbing and creepy to see a woman conflating her private sexual and lifestyle preferences with internet quasi-ev-psych and PUA jargon. I've read quite a few good blog posts by women who talk of combining feminist views on society and gender roles with a personal desire for performing traditional femininity and a submissive role in a relationship/BDSM.

This whole matter is hardly a paradox at all; pers... (read more)

This was all so reasonable and positively feminine, I repeatedly got the feeling she's yanking our chains (or something else) with a wish fulfillment female.