GreenEggsAndJam
No bio...
User ID: 2256
I'm not TracingWoodgrains but I'm very very sympathetic to his point, and my personal limit would be text describing the product, and images of the product.
You're allowed a professional photoshoot of your product, even though I give this allowance very reluctantly (black and white text, no images would be preferred), because I grudgingly admit people prefer to see the thing they're deciding to buy. Absolutely no videos. I don't see a realistic way to get rid of endorsements, unfortunately, but they should be strictly regulated.
Culture building around a product should be banned — no dove beauty campaigns, no mulvaney beer bottles, none of that. "This skin product will do this for your skin, and you can buy it for this price, here". Information sharing between seller and buyer only. The mind of very basic ads you see in local newsletters.
As a side effect this means corporations will effectively be banned from expressing any political, cultural, or controversial opinions publicly (since that is also an advertising campaign, building tribe loyalty to a product) which is wonderful and should be pursued to the extreme— in my ideal universe corporations are essentially politically gagged. Talk about your product alone, or shut up.
Basically, rewinding back as much as possible to the kinds of ads they had back in the very, very early days of advertising before they realized people buy based on emotions not based on facts, with as many emotional factors removed as possible. There's no sticking the genie all the way back into the bottle but cutting off as much of its limbs as possible is still a worthy goal.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Given the big reveal is that she's married to a man, it seems like the character is never actually a lesbian.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
The feminist solution is obvious.
Women having one night stands and/or affairs are self-harming. The article you quoted acknowledges as much. Statistics on female orgasm in one night stands are consistent on this point, one night stands suck for women.
They are also harming women as a class. Even if you are a rare extreme outlier who regularly has satisfying ONS sex, you are normalizing the cultural pressure on other women to do the same.
As feminism is about improving the condition of women as a class, promiscuity is anti-feminist. Having an affair with a married man is anti-feminist (this should be obvious with even two seconds of thought - it is by definition betraying class solidarity)
Promiscuity is bad for the woman engaging in it, and bad for women as a whole.
But third wave feminism is all about empowering women to make whatever stupid self harming choices they want! Well, that's a very specific sub brand of "feminism" that frankly is not convincingly feminism at all, given it's other attempts to make obvious disempowerment of women "empowering". No, you can't have eyeliner sharp enough to kill the patriarchy, permanently deforming your feet with high heels isn't liberation, and having meaningless, orgasmless sex with men who have no respect for you will never be feminist.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
If anyone has suggestions for other things worth doing or being, or that satisfy that "check my phone while waiting in the line to pickup the kids" nudge that avoids my new no-nos, I'm all ears.
Duolingo is addictive, and while not especially useful (it won't get you to fluency) it seems harmless enough. Memrise is actually better, but less addictive.
For intelligent low-glitter puzzle games, I like (free, no ads, no garbage):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles
Poetry a day style blogs could be nice, I just tend to binge and forget them, but could follow an actively updating one to check it once a day.
Ebooks can also help. Check if your library lets you borrow them via Libby/similar.
Good luck! I've never succeeded at maintaining my own breaks very long. Sticking time limits on the browser never helps. Deleting the browser helps for a week or two, then inevitably I simply need to Google some medical question or whatever and then I'm back at my bullshit.
I am perfectly well aware this is probably my biggest self-development problem and I'd be a much better person if I did break free, but I've gotten so bad at managing boredom without internet it's kind of pathetic, and every so often I encounter something cool and interesting and worthwhile and it's like the damn rat with the intermittent pellets all over again.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I feel like the ideal relationship has both sides suspecting they've gotten the better edge of the deal (found someone superior to themselves). Isn't that where we get referring to spouse as a better half, etc?
In any case, while I don't relate to most of your particulars (the desire for protection, the specific breakdown of talents), I do relate to the desire to admire. I consider my husband to be one of the best human beings I've ever had the luck to meet, and that obviously makes everything about being devoted to him easier. (not sure why devotion would be degrading?)
(.... This sort of relates to the fertility thread. I just think my husband is really fantastic and if the world has more people carrying his genes that's really good, and I always wonder if the reason some people don't have kids is because they love their spouses but wouldn't want to replicate them. However, I assume that's probably not the answer plus tons of people have kids with real dickheads so there's obviously also a more powerful basic drive)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Population bottleneck is not necessarily killer, depends on what bad genes the bottleneck has. There are many cases of bottlenecks ending up fine, it greatly increases but does not 100% guarantee the chance of bad genetic outcomes, and we're already starting with what looks like a very diverse gene pool in the sample. Nonetheless, I agree that basic due diligence would require a genetic screening of anyone being sent to at least avoid the obvious known pitfalls.
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Male accountant. No idea if the substance abuse problem will be specifically relevant once on a different planet. Substance abuse negative sign of self control, holding it together enough to hold down job and family potentially promising if he doesn't keep the problem. Known to not be impotent.
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I agree that the medical student is an obvious choice. Young, decent odds of intelligence and relevant knowledge.
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No relevant skills, short fertility horizon, communication problems, a very middle tier pick, basically just if we need to fill out a spot.
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It's an entire extra person as long as the pregnancy survives! As obvious as the doctor. (also, if we're going for "demonic" it seems fairly obvious we should be asking the remaining women on this trip to also get pregnant, ASAP, from some of the four billion men not being taken who have also passed genefic screening problems)
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Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage of this person of unknown age and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. Cut.
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Agree that this is a great pick. International, so again more genetic diversity, and young and female.
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Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage for this person of unknown Abe and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. cut.
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Unlike you, I don't see any reason to believe she's probably older. Female movie stars skew young, only a handful stay famous once older. She presumably speaks English, has decent odds of being younger than 33 (our standard for filler), almost certainly has good soft skills if she's made it to star level in a cutthroat industry. Keep.
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Racist cop. I am concerned about the low agreeability and the part where he's armed. High risk, if he ends up killing anyone on the trip. On the other hand, if he's not killing anyone else would be a good choice. Personally I suspect a survival situation with only 8 people depending on each other should be enough to trigger a "my tribe" attitude towards them, but I don't know. Tentative keep.
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Professional athlete excellent, rest only helps if he'll compromise as needed (gay is easily solved if he'll donate sperm, he doesn't need to actually have sex with the women and could be a stabilizing factor). Keep.
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Orphaned 12yo boy - I like this for the tiny bit of age diversity (otherwise it's all 20+ and the fetus, this gives us a bit of a bridge). 11 is already old enough to be able to be given responsibility quickly. Inclined to keep.
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If this was a university professor I'd say it could maybe be salvaged depending on the field of knowledge, but it's a university administrator and that's not even close to valuable enough a skillset to justify choosing a 60 year old. Obvious cut.
That gives us 3 people to obviously cut, with our remaining choice of who to cut the accountant, the manager, the cop. We've only got three women so the manager is an obvious keep. Need to figure out odds of cop killing his team members and on that basis make the final cut, but overall, it probably needs to be the accountant unless the cop is judged too high risk.
Final cull: accountant, disabled novelist, homephobic clergyman, 60yo.
The actual question is how the fuck we ended up with such a terrible roster for final 12 humans to begin with. Ending up with 50/50 on gender is bad but there were only 4 likely to be fertile women in the original set! An 8:4 man to woman ratio is insane for this scenario! And the men in question aren't even all physically fit, let alone passing basic screenings for mental health! If these were the last humans left alive and viable after some catastrophe that's one thing, but the question says they're "selected". In which case the person selecting is so incompetent I'm now left to assume my chosen 8 all have something terribly wrong with them because someone is deadset on sabotaging our last chance.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
The quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Part two: what I actually meant to ask, even though that's not where the discussion went
What I can offer:
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I will cheerlead your goals, brainstorm with you how to pursue them, make time and space in the relationship for them to be a priority.
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I will communicate my desires directly, including occasionally saying "I don't know, I just want something I can't articulate" or "I just want you to magically read my mind" if that's what I want. I am pretty in touch with my desires, of which I have many, and I don't like beating around the bush. (if you prefer more indirect, coy communication I am not for you. I don't do indirect flirting, I do "let's have sex")
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I value regular and high quality sex, and will actively pursue it as a goal.
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assuming you are admirable (otherwise why I am in a relationship with you), I will express my admiration frequently, including to our kids. Similarly I will both provide and demand physical affection frequently. (once again, if this isn't for you, it's no longer something being offered but a warning.)
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I am shit at housework and will be hiring cleaning help.
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I will do extensive research on big life decisions and provide summaries as needed for why I think the correct choice is X and what case could be made for alternative Y. I'll handle the load of researching correct child rearing, correct mortgage borrowing, etc.
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I will handle necessary social coordination of who is doing what with whom and why this matters and where we need to respond how.
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I will be a highly involved parent
Etc.
In exchange, what I expect from a partner:
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someone who will make space for me to nurture my social network, i.e. willing to enable me to host social events, carve out time and money to support my friends, etc
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regular orgasms
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large quantities of physical affection
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an intelligent and thoughtful sounding board for thinking out major life decisions
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highly involved parent
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whatever our disagreements, always backs me up in public and does not undermine me in front of other people.
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equal partner around the house (but this can simply be paying for more cleaning help)
There's some asymmetries here, I don't care if my partner is good at communicating their needs, even though that's something I offer on my end.
Also this isn't even close to a complete list, it's just a sample, which makes me realize that the scope of the question was too ambitious. Oh well. I'm too tired to continue writing, but felt like I had promised this second part of the response, so here it is, even if incomplete.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I'm making the (ludicrous*) assumption that all relevant information for the decision is included in the descriptions, so anyone not specified female is male, and if the gay athlete isn't mentioned to have AIDS he doesn't.
Whereas the cop being armed and with an existing history of excessive force is explicitly mentioned. I still think he probably will be okay, but having someone with a gun and already established violence and low agreeableness is definitely a big gamble. The odds of his losing his temper and killing someone may not be high, but the the degree to which we'd be fucked if he does it is high. Now I can't remember if risk is the word I'm looking for or if risk includes probability, but what I meant was the word for "how bad the bad thing is", not "probability of the bad thing happening".
*Ludicrous because this question sucks, but without the assumption there's just no point playing at all.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
As promised, my own answers:
I actually didn't mean the focus to be on traits, so much as on what you're offering in the relationship. So less "smart", more "interesting conversation partner", less "hot", more " regular access to sex with someone hot", if that makes sense as a distinction. Nonetheless I'll answer in both ways.
So, part one:
Traits I found sexually attractive:
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Attractive face, healthy lifestyle, not fat. I didn't care about height unless the guy was not just shorter than me but extremely shorter than me. I didn't care about six-packs beyond "not fat" (tangent: I genuinely do not understand why this is the shorthand for attractive muscle. I am pretty sure I am a typical woman in my attraction to nice biceps and pectorals, based on both accurate internet stereotypes about women's obsession with nice arms and basic sexual dimorphism logic where clearly sexed traits like upper body strength are more attractive. Very defined six packs just look vaguely insectoid, whereas very defined arm muscle ... Drool...). Ugly faces were a total deal breaker, though. For my standards of "not fat", I'd roughly say fat visibly spilling over waistline of pants would be my cutoff for "ew, no".
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Ambition and clear life goals. I actually didn't care about money, I had vaguely assumed I was going to be the primary breadwinner because of my chosen career‡, but I could feel my sexual interest shrivel up and die when guys didn't at all know what they wanted from life, or when all they wanted was to "kind of exist, I guess". I had empathy for them, sure, but it was also a super obvious kill switch for my libido.
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Emotional stability. I am the stereotypical neurotic, anxious, over-reacting woman attracted to calm, grounded, under-reacting men. Neurotic men just fed into my own anxiety, thereby killing my libido, therefore, not hot.
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Very affectionate, especially physically.
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Signaling caretaking and responsibility — this was actually very distinctly separate from caretaking and responsibility towards myself. It was things like someone being an older sibling and talking about ways they cared for their younger siblings, or someone being involved in community service, or someone helping old ladies carry their groceries. All of these things were very hot, and then guys without it just... Were less hot.
There were other traits that weren't really about hotness but about basic compatibility, like I needed a guy smart enough I could respect him, and obviously for marriage I wanted us to be on the same page re values and life goals. The above is just the list of things that made guys more/less hot to me, and then things like "don't hate his family" was just necessary qualification checking before the big leap.
Traits I offer, the package, as limited by my own self awareness:
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Physically hot - obviously there's a limit to how accurately I can gauge my own attractiveness, but still... *
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Playful, sense of humor
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Smart, curious
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Money and good social connections
The rest is harder to identify — from an outside perspective I can say a guy is involved in community giving, from an inside perspective I don't consider myself that way or think of it as a trait I offer even though I do, stepping back to look at myself objectively, get involved in community initiatives, regularly get turned to for help by my friends, etc. I also think some of the things I "offer" are technically more "negative" traits, ie I am relatively happy to be "needy" followed by being abundantly grateful and admiring to the person meeting my needs, which sounds vaguely bad while still being pretty clearly something men I was with enjoyed. I guess the more positive psychology term for this would be "vulnerability" perhaps?
‡ I was right
*(subtract points for being the kind of person who occasionally browses the motte, an unbelievably unhot trait. In total seriousness I think my level of being online is easily the least sexy thing about me and not something I'd ever tolerate in a partner, yet still I return, like a dog to its own vomit ... Sigh)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Continuing my theme in the previous comment of springboarding off the QC thread for discussion topics...
War of the sexes, but specifically regarding long term relationships and marriage.
What, in your opinion, should/does a desirable male partner bring to the table? What should/does a desirable female partner bring to the table?
The goal here is not specifically symmetry, if the desirableness is asymmetrical. For example, if you think a woman should desire a man with a stable job, but a man would be neutral or negative towards a woman with a stable job, then there's no need to include that on both lists.
To make the discussion more specific, less hypothetical: excluding amorphous concepts of "chemistry", what is the concrete package of measurable traits the opposite sex needs to offer for you to want to commit to a relationship with them? What is the package you are offering them in exchange? Do you feel this is a "good deal"?
(I'll answer for myself in a reply rather than answering within the question.)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Getting rid of a dress my husband doesn't like seems obvious to me.
But wearing a dress he got me that I don't like seems a bit much. Why not just... Tell him what style you like instead? Especially because I'd assume that, for example, the concept is "you'd look hot in red lace" and then I could be like "great, gonna get myself something in red lace but {a different shade of red that doesn't clash with my skin tone/a different cut/whatever}". I mean presumably he's buying the dress to make both of us happy so why would I hide not liking it? Anything he wants I can probably find a way of accommodating that I also like.
If he wants something incredibly specific and irredeemable (I don't know, ten inch leopard print diamond studded stilettos?) Then it would need to be an inside the house only deal, I'm not wearing clothing I feel ugly and uncomfortable in outside the house, he can come up with a counteroffer.
As for the rest, he does all the same for me, I'd be a huge hypocrite to not reciprocate.
(And I do buy him clothing I think he'd look hot in, and he does either wear it or tell me it's not his taste, so I guess not being a hypocrite applies there as well. I also 100% expect him to get rid of clothing I find ugly, unless it's something with sentimental value or whatever. But basically we're obviously getting dressed with our number one target audience being each other...)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
...So, does she pick her nose in front of you?
(Fwiw my husband's ability to cry from sheer emotion is something I cherish about him, coming from a family that has all the emotional range of a shriveled peanut. He cries whenever he's feeling really deeply and just thinking about it makes my heart go all melty. He's just so emotionally well adjusted and not fucked up and repressed! I thought that kind of thing was a myth!)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Smart ≠ highly analytical and inclined to in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I actually agree with this, from a somewhat different perspective, which is that I find it so deeply weird how blue Americans react to larger families as an exotic and bizarre species. Meanwhile, at least on Facebook, I see loads of blue tribe women wishing they could have another baby but feeling like it's too socially unacceptable or having no mental model for how it would work logistically. This seems very fixable: Start a concerted propaganda campaign making 3-4 kids the "normal" family size and < 3 kind of sad and pathetic and weird, and given how much human nature seems to anyway want >2 kids I bet you could get somewhere with it.
(No bets for Europe, where having kids at all has tanked. But once you've had one baby they tend to be contagious, and Blue America still really wants babies...)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I'm fine with answering the question in an ungendered way if you think that's the correct answer.
This is kind of orthogonal but I have felt much better in my relationships when I stopped viewing them in this kind of transactional manner, as being about getting something in return for giving something.
First, this can of course work on an individual level, but any discussing of the dynamics of a "sexual marketplace" or what have you is obviously about broader transactional politics.
Second, I guess I do find that a vaguely strange worldview. Sure, after eight years of deep investment in my marriage, I have a lot of reasons, both moral, emotional, and practical, to stay loyal to my spouse if he stopped bringing anything to the table, although even then I'd probably be struggling with whether I should divorce him or not if it was a true total cessation of everything.
But certainly before marrying him I wouldn't have considered it if he wasn't bringing anything worth having. Why marry someone if marriage to them is not better than being single, and also assumed to be better than at least the most easily available other marriage prospects?
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
their urge to put makeup and nail polish on me (!) and do my hair,
I've seen girls do this to brothers, especially younger brothers, but I've never seen or heard of this being done to dads. Also don't get why you'd care, just say no. Get them one of those giant groomable barbie heads if they really want.
Do you have unusually long hair? If not, doing your hair wouldn't be appealing anyway.
Girls get plenty of opportunities to practice grooming activities with friends, and don't seem to see fathers as a particularly relevant vector for it anyway.
Can't argue with the teen drama concerns. The stereotype is that girls are much much easier before puberty, less likely to be hyperactive or violent (...I'm talking normal schoolyard violence), and then after puberty the boys hopefully already have some self control and/or people have given up on hoping for it from them, while the girls go mad on hormones for a few years and have tons of power struggles with their parents.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Right, and viewing crying as a lack of self control and a lack of emotional maturity would be something I'd want to run away from. Someone who lets himself cry is strongly signalling that he does not believe crying is a lack of control and a lack of emotional maturity.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I simply don't feel that "interesting ways to solve energy output problems from solar cells" can be described as "in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing".
If you think that any contemplation of a complex problem is "in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing", then sure, a total lack of desire to interact with complex problems is not well correlated with intelligence.
But if people are inclined to "live life and vibe" outside their professional fields + areas of special interest, that doesn't intrinsically reflect on their intelligence.
(I think this whole comment thread kicked off with someone dropping in to say prioritizing a smart mate is important, which I interpreted as a response to my claim that constant in-depth quality discussion turned out to not be nearly as meaningful to me as I'd imagined when I started dating. Hence my initial response resisting conflating the two. I really believe it has much more to do with personality than intelligence)
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Need more evidence/citations that they are same.
Anecdotally, using proxies for intelligence like vast breadth of knowledge, grasping new material extremely quickly, getting good grades in very challenging programs, and creative problem solving, I can think of a number of very smart people I know who don't do much in the way of in depth discussion, introspection, or navel-gazing. It doesn't interest or excite them the way, say, a cool engineering problem does. Their approach to their inner selves is -shrug-, to interpersonal politics is "well, it all works out in the end", etc. These things simply don't bother or preoccupy them, they find them tedious and a waste of time better spent on cool problems.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Eh, why not try to answer anyway?
What makes you a good partner? What makes someone a good partner to you?
Who needs universal buy in, just describe what you personally think the opposite sex potentially has to offer, and what you personally have available to offer them.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
Ha. I broadly agree in that, like I said, posting on the Motte is a strong signal against what I like in a mate.
I used to value the ability to maintain super intense philosophical discussion more. Certainly it was part of what I enjoyed about dating, probing people's minds in great depth. I find that in the actual day to day nitty gritty of being married it's barely even a half point bonus. I just need a partner who is willing to indulge me occasionally going off at length about a topic— I can find discussion partners with strong opinions online for no cost at all. As long as I feel assured my partner isn't an idiot and his opinions and values come from somewhere sincere and genuine, his being able to obsessively analyze them is, eh. Not very important.
I wouldn't describe "opposites attract" as total baloney, while still basically agreeing with you. I think people are highly attracted to certain very compatible personality opposites that are suited well to complementing their own strengths/weaknesses, and that aside from that they prefer to be as similar as possible. I don't specifically view it as sexed, at least individually, although it's clear that on a statistical level it is. My situation is a slightly weird variation on yours - I consider myself and my husband to be very, very different people, with an excellent match of complementing strengths, but outsiders say we're basically the exact same person, so at least on a superficial external level I guess we are similar. (We're certainly almost the same politically, religiously, intellectually, etc...).
In that connection, I wouldn't hesitate to guess that you are highly conscientious, and a big believer in being organized, dependable, ambitious, careful, and goal-directed. And, in turn, you rather understandably want a partner who shares that disposition.
Hm. I would describe myself as possibly none of those things? I am certainly not organized or particularly ambitious. But I do highly value conscientiousness in other people - I'm the kind of person to immediately offer a 7000 word opinion on anything I'm asked, on the spot, but I've always adored the kind of personality that says "good question, let me think about that" and then comes back two days later with a response. To me that kind of slow, deliberate care IS an area of opposite-attraction-compatibility, a very nice braking mechanism on my own more reactive/impulsive style (which I like plenty in myself, but since I've got it covered I don't need it from someone else).
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
The accountant is assumed to be man because he has a pregnant wife. Unless it's a lesbian whose wife conceived via sperm donor, which is not "assumption of details", it's actively violating Occam's razor.
GreenEggsAndJam
1yr ago
I would have thought so, but I get a lot of side-eye for it.
I believe you, I just also find that very strange (and sad, I guess). And if it was your friend who thought it was ugly, would you also be judged for not keeping it? Or is it only your husband's aesthetic opinions you're supposed to ignore?
To be clear, I don't wear things I actively dislike, just things I wouldn't buy for myself - e.g. I get no thrill out of activewear. I own more yoga pants than I need, purely because he has a thing for them. And hey, they're comfortable and practical, so why not? If you buy more, darling, please avoid black and capri lengths.
Oh okay that makes much more sense. (Although I personally love black and capri length 😅)
The women I know often seem anxious that, by taking on more around the house to support their husband's career, or by making sacrifices or compromises in their own aspirations in order to be with someone, they're doing something terribly retrograde.
I think with my husband and I, we simply accepted that at different points in time one or the other of us would be making the bigger sacrifices, but that overall it would balance out. It doesn't seem to me to be realistic to have a family without ever making any sacrifices. Maybe for DINKs it's possible?
In any case it feels really unhealthy to call compromise and balancing each other's needs "degrading", unless only one side is doing all the compromising. Again, I trust you're describing things accurately, it just sounds incredibly sad :(
To repeat what others have already said.
If this friends of yours is transing their kid, this letter is the worst, most insane way to go about convincing him otherwise and will permanently burn your chances of finding a more sane way
This was way too long even before I hit the "continued in a reply".
You're clearly so culturally different from him you don't even have perspective on how what you're saying would be perceived by someone outside your bubble, like a very poorly trained missionary who didn't get the basic missionary 101 memo about how to do effective missionary work and is instead standing raving on the street corner.
Focus on there being no rush to decide, that it's kind of sexist to assume feeling like a girl is something only girls can do, that a boy can have girly interests. Stick in some testimonies from detransitioners, point out that transitioning to a girl creates much more pressure on him to not detransition than transitioning to "nonbinary" does, that there's no rush for him to commit to anything. If your goal is to save this kid, your goal is anything that keeps them off puberty blockers, off hormones, and away from surgery, and anything that leaves them as much space as possible to safely grow out of the phase without crushing their parents.
I do also think you have a completely delusional view of how women experience the world, but that's not the point here so I'm not even going to bother arguing it, except to say that it's part of the general pattern of this letter being way too long, way too distant from the actual point, and way too online-incel speak to be effective. The point here is helping this kid away from a life path that ends in being Jazz Jennings with all the horror that entails. You exclusively need to focus on the dangers of medicalizing a totally normal appropriate exploratory developmental stage, and how the parents, by rushing to be too supportive, can in fact smother the kid, making it harder for them explore without it being a huge dramatic life-upturning event, thereby trapping them. Tell the dad that labeling Skylar a she is myopic and limiting, not that Skylar is defined by his lack of a pussy pass.
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