This is one of those things guys have to intuit, because there isn’t much straightforwardness about it: Most straight women intensely punish displays of femininity in male partners.
They do not always say so, so as to be coherent with their politics. But also because that would defeat the purpose: Ideally one wants a man who is masculine, not merely performing masculinity.
Women aren’t straightforward with their sexual preferences not because they like to mess with men (why would they want fewer options?), but because it is far more devastating for a female to choose the wrong partner than it is for a male.
They want accurate signals.
Nov 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There has always been this unevenness to the Muslim vs. ex-Muslim discourse, and one of the reasons I am so sick of engaging in it.
Most Muslims know 0 ex-Muslims (or at least, think they do). Nearly all ex-Muslims know countless Muslims, often as blood relations.
Guaranteed this young woman has no one in her life who presented any other option to her.
She is totally engrossed in her echo-chamber, and has no access to any other mode of understanding.
Jul 23, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I’m not sure if it’s obvious that “men want to control women’s reproductive functions”.
Men can more easily oppose abortion than women, but if the situation was reversed (ie: if men bore children), I think women would be *even more* against abortion than men are today. 1
In other words: the abortion debate is skewed by sex only because one sex isn’t directly affected, but one could as easily take that to mean that men vote *unencumbered* on behalf of the fetus’ “right to life”, whereas women must choose between that and their own well-being. 2
May 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In my substack a few months ago I argued that we should expect tenure to *increase* the power of social stigma.
The idea that financial security makes people brave is true only when their surroundings are not a monoculture.
In monocultures, financial incentives can be one of the few reasons to veer away from conformity, especially when conformity produces real world harms.
Apr 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
She didn’t say adoptive parents aren’t mothers, Brian Tyler Cohen presumed that to make her seem worse than she is.
Step parenthood is a uniquely noble role, but it is often a different one than bio/adoptive parenthood.
One of the things that I find fairly off-putting about liberal politics is the drive to equalize all roles so that no one feels different, even if they literally are. Whether or not the difference is meaningful is a separate question, even then, MTG is more “mean” than “wrong”.
Mar 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It is so funny how many 1) clearly didn't listen to the podcast 2) are taking the name seriously.
Carl, its not "racial particularism" to recognize that people from shared backgrounds can have a different kind of conversation together.
It is not a claim of exclusive knowledge that others *cannot* have the same ideas or insights, just a fact of life that they likely don't.
Jan 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is mostly what I think, except that I feel I cannot do as I wish. If I sexed accurately, I would find myself blackballed in even more places than am now.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, but corrupting our language is the same as corrupting our minds. I am unwilling to compromise the integrity of my thought for the sake of “feelings”, and I distrust those who have no such hesitations.
Jan 14, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Every time I tweet a lot about gender stuff (of which I am obviously skeptical), I get a surge of radical feminist followers.
Which is fine, you all are welcome! I like many radfems and enjoy their work. But please note you are sure to be disappointed in me. 1/?
My interest in this subject is based on what appears to me to be its extreme irrationality, and the special way it harnesses social dynamics in its favor.
That’s it, though. There is no other group loyalty beyond that. 2
Jan 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hmmm. A few seconds in, you can see like 50 bots just followed me at once.
Another round happening as I type this.
Jan 3, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I know that I should not, and I know that it is always meant with the best of intentions, but can't help but be irked when named among any list of notable women, no matter how illustrious the company.
I want to be notable, or not notable. 1
I can make peace with normalcy, but I can't make peace with the conditional status of being "remarkable among X".
With the former, one can find reconciliation and self-acceptance, as there is a concrete reality to be reconciled to. 2
Jan 2, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In the US, 57% of bachelor's degrees are now awarded to women. Schools are trying to get more males through the gates, any way possible.
I wondered whether this dearth of men is reflected in scholarships. In short, nope. The opposite is true: it still pays to be female. 🧵
I did a rough search of common scholarship aggregators.
As far as I can tell, “Male” is the only noticeably underrepresented demographic in college that is *also* highly underrepresented in the scholarship world.
I genuinely don’t know what to say to comments like this. Do you want to be lied to? To hear that, yes, the problem is other people’s “hateful” preferences?
Asian men should not be “less Asian”, that’s not problem. They should work on signaling masc traits (as should all men).
You can dispel the perception that “X people aren’t Y” by proving the rule wrong often enough. If you yourself are a clear exception, then even if they don’t abandon the general precept, they will abandon it for *you*.
Jet Lee was Asian. Jet Lee was very masc. Jet lee was hot.
Dec 21, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD FOR WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE:
The other day, I wrote about gender, hormones, and the “self” in a part-essay, part-book review of Sarah Hill's This is Your Brain on Birth Control.
It is *WILD* how much hormones make us who we are, and how much the pill changes them.
1/
I've been fascinated by synthetic hormones due to the discussion around medical gender transition--everyone obsesses about the surgeries, because they are the most obvious change a person can experience.
But hormones are no joke either. In fact, they may be a bigger deal.
2/
Dec 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
It is widely claimed that we "already knew" what was in the Twitter Files, and thus, they are worthless.
But did we? And if we did, is it all just a nothingburger? Or is everyone just missing the point? Short thread, below.
First, there is an enormous difference between presuming, vaguely, and knowing, precisely--the difference between "knowing" the government is spying on us and landing on piles of documents which prove that they are. sarahhaider.substack.com/i/90271052/on-…
Nov 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I've been suspecting for some time that tenure doesn't quite create the "open and free" environment it promises. I now think it might be making things worse, contributing to the conformity in academia.
My new piece: open.substack.com/pub/sarahhaide…
The argument for tenure relies on the assumption that a free man will speak more truthfully and openly.
But that is just not true. Fiction is far more appealing than the ugly, unsatisfying truth.
Nov 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Some good points here, and generally speaking, I think I agree.
Although my primary motivation for using Twitter is to broadcast, I've heard many people say it is the *interaction* between public figures and the public that was their motivation for being here.
The negatives of the "blue check" system before-Elon are pretty clear.
There were no clear standards for who was worthy, which led to a lot of unverified notables and many verified nobodies. Meanwhile "checks" can ignore everyone else through their own notifications view.
Nov 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
When Dobbs fell, I argued that it would likely be (in the long run) *good* for pro-choice. Early evidence seems to indicate that I was right.
This is going to sound like a dodge, but truly the specifics vary quite widely from person to person, which to me speaks of a widespread fear of dissent from (what is perceived to be) the "correct" opinion.
Some will say that they disagree with legal collapsing of gender and sex, others will acknowledge "questions" that they have that haven't been sufficiently answered (or are dismissed as bigotry).
A surprising # of these people are self-professed progressives+ gay/lesbian.
Jul 15, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Yeah, there is an *enormous* twitter vs real world divide on gender issues.
I've been predicting that at some point, the preference cascade will begin, and it will be rough.
By rough, I mean potentially bad for all parties. The rage of the mob is never rational, never reasonable. It might not even address the issues that provoked it.
Leaders who are allowing twitter activists to lead on this issue are playing a dangerous game.
Jul 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting how easily the discomfort of women is dismissed in replies. “A man just washed his hands!”. They’ll be dismissing the same behavior in locker rooms, next.
At some point, we’ll begin hearing of women getting hurt—sexually harassed, even assaulted, in our own spaces.
They’ll ignore that too—they will pretend it would have happened anyway, that the norms which prevented men like this from entering women’s spaces do nothing.
At some point, that tune will shift to one of negotiation: how man women hurt vs how many trans people “validated”?
