Green Martians and Blue Martians have one thing in common: They both derive a tremendous amount of utility from tickling humans behind the ears, using their soft, feathery tentacles. In fact, the utility that they derive from this is so intense that most scientists believe at some time in the recent evolutionary past, there must have been a large selection pressure directed at ensuring that Martians were motivated to tickle humans.
There are numerous differences between Green and Blue Martians. One of those differences is that whereas the feathery tentacles of Green Martians contain stinging hairs similar to nettles, the analogous anatomic part of the Blue Martian contains a safe drug with an euphoric effect. Therefore, humans who are tickled by green martians experience a moderate stinging pain, whereas those who are tickled by blue martians experience mild to moderate pleasure.
Human ethicists have long struggled to come up with a coherent ethical theory that determines whether tickling humans is morally acceptable. Some have suggested that tickling humans behind the ear is ethically permissible if and only if you are a blue martian. However, many other thinkers are worried that this line of thinking results in an unjust world, where the ethics of an act is determined by characteristics of the Martian that they cannot be held responsible for.
However, human ethicists are not very familiar with Martian physiology, and the situation is actually even more complicated than they suspect. In fact, all Martians are born Green. They can shed their green shell and become blue Martians only after they have perfected the art of tickling humans with their feathery tentacles. All Martians aspire to one day become blue, but the amount of practicing it takes to reach perfection is highly variable - some martians reach perfection at their first attempt, whereas others keep trying their whole life without making any discernible progress. Therefore, if the ethical code says that green martians are prohibited from tickling humans, ethical Martians will be unable to reach their full potential in life, and will be stuck as Green Martians forever. Under this ethical code, only unethical Martians will be able to metamorphose.
Making the situation even more complicated, is the fact that a group of recently metamorphosed Blue Martians are vocally spreading information on the internet about tickling techniques. These techniques are sometimes effective, but if used imperfectly they increase the sting of the stinging hairs fourfold. Importantly, it seems that part of the reason some young Green Martians are naturally better ticklers and therefore metamorphose earlier, is that they intuitively understand these techniques, and are able to apply them without increasing the sting of their tentacles. Moreover, while the tickling technique has empirical support, the theory behind it relies heavily on speculation about human evolutionary history that may not be true, and which is offensive to humans.
This raises a number of additional ethical questions: Is it unethical for a Green Martian to attempt to metamorphose? Does this depend on whether they believe themselves to be fast or slow learners? Should only the small subset of Martians who intuitively understand the tickling techniques be allowed to use them? Is spreading explicit information about the techniques unethical?
(Note : This parable is obviously an allegory for something. Discussing whether the allegory is valid is interesting, but will lead to mindkill. I would prefer if the discussion could stay focused on the Martians, so that we can discuss the ethics of a hypothetical scenario that may not be relevant in real life. I am genuinely confused about the ethics of this, and I think this can lead to an interesting question regardless of whether it is applicable to humans)
Not owed any of the paths? No, I didn't say that, and I wouldn't go that far. I sensed aggrieved entitlement because of historical realities: because, yes, men have been the oppressors of women for thousands of years, and we've only recently started to abandon a paradigm where women's availability for men was taken for granted and adopt a paradigm where women's autonomy as agents with their own preferences and desires is acknowledged. Of course it's going to be difficult for heterosexual men to control the Neolithic patriarch that still lives inside them, and one of the great mistakes of PUA ideology is that it draws from our ancestral past to foster outdated male behaviors of dominance and competition that do not fit anymore in modern society. That those behaviors do get some men laid is not evidence that they are acceptable behaviors; it's evidence that not all women are the same. Gender equality is an embarrasingly late advance in human history, too recent to be part of our innate assumptions, and for the moment we have to patiently teach it to each generation. It's going to take time for it to sink in and become another of our gut-level impulses. Until then, some men are still going to be clumsy, and of course that's sad, because many of those socially inexpert men could make excellent partners, but when we speak of the suffering of lonely men, we need to remember that precisely the old male structures of dominance and competition are to blame for that. Sexism has hurt ethical men, but damaged all women: we can't pretend they haven't been owned, ignored, silenced, taken for granted, trespassed on, dehumanized, and neglected, both historically and still today, both openly and insidiously. With that in mind, you can't seriously tell me that lonely men are the disadvantaged party here. Women already have enough on their plates trying to simply get an education, and go through their daily lives without being assaulted, and build professional careers where they'll be paid fairly and taken seriously, and push governments everywhere to earn the basic right of controlling their own reproduction, and a myriad other things that need to be corrected in this society; and the last thing they need on top of all of that is being told that they're being mean for having a set of preferences. Helping lonely men achieve emotional and sexual satisfaction is going to take much more than socialization workshops; we need to dismantle the entire alpha-male paradigm and make all forms of masculinity visible and acceptable, and we also need to acknowledge that even socially inexpert men enjoy the privilege of being expected to initiate and set the course of romantic interaction. The entire PUA ideology is built on that flawed expectation. That is the opposite of helping.
BOTH ARE TRUE. Let me explain what intersectionalism looks from my end:
Patriarchy has given 90% of men and 100% of women a raw deal. Look at Dr. Robert Sapolski's work with baboon troops for an excellent model of this. The bullshit dominance hierarchy that is ingrained in our ancestry leaves all women and most men physically sick and emotionally damaged, all for the sake of putting a few violently aggressive jerks on top.
The women's movement made a fatal mistake, of identifying the enemy with 'maleness' instead of 'violent dominance'. It tore down structur... (read more)