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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   33473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Are Republicans shamelessly sexually-humiliating their opponents enough to win this election?

I’ve long held the belief that the opposite of slut-shaming is incel-shaming. A woman's reputation is damaged if she sleeps around, but a man's reputation is damaged if he is deemed a weird incel who can’t get laid. Recently, the Democrats launched a “weird incel" attacking strategy against JD Vance. Tim Walz alluded to a fabricated story about JD Vance fucking a couch in his first speech as VP. This is wholly fabricated: the origin is a twitter user who made up a paragraph from Vance's book, something easily checked. But the meme was astroturfed regardless, and Walz shamelessly referenced it in his first speech. Last night, 5 of the top 10 default posts on Reddit’s /r/All were references to Waltz’s remark.

The strategy is in line with the Democrat push to label Trump “weird”. But it actually seems to cross a line. It is bullying in an especially purified form. It’s the sort of thing you would hear in a middle school, where a bully ostracizes a student by making up a story wholecloth and having his friends repeat it. The bully knows the accusation is false, but the point is to say it confidently and shamelessly where others can hear it and join the ostracizion to protect their reputation. There’s talk about Trump being a “bully”, but nothing he has said has come close to the shameless slander against Vance. Calling Hillary “crooked” is par for the course of political messaging and doesn’t actually impact her reputation. Making fun of McCain for being captured as a PoW also doesn’t really affect McCain’s reputation, and if anything harms Trump’s. Trump usually exaggerates something true, but the attack against Vance is wholly false in origin.

I checked in on the incels over at 4chan to see what were saying about this. And I actually found an insightful analysis:

You can make up literally any random accusation and if enough people in the group either don't like you or just don't want to be left out, they will join in the accusation/mockery no matter how baseless the claim. It only serves to benefit them by being part of the in-group, and obviously feels good to mock someone you dislike or don't care about. You can see this in the democrat "weird" campaign or the "JD Vance fucked a couch" meme. It doesn't matter how juvenile or immaterial the accusation is. It degrades and humiliates the enemy. This effect is particularly common among women and feminine men where it pertains to humiliating enemy men sexually. This wouldn't really matter if it didn't have realized consequences in how people vote or otherwise express their desires and opinions. There are people out there that will actually change their vote or their speech because they don't want to be perceived as "weird' or "creepy", which is the whole point of this type of warfare.

It can also be noted that the attack against Vance has an element of sexual harassment. What would our “cultural elites” (D) say if Republicans went all-in on a story about Kamala Harris violating the intern’s Oval Office laundry machine? Or that she used a priceless piece of White House memorabilia as a dildo without cleaning it off after? This would just be shameless sexual harassment, right? But so is the official DNC strategy against Vance. It’s harassment for the purpose of humiliating someone sexually to change voter perception via shame response.

Are Republicans shamelessly sexually-humiliating their opponents enough to win this election?

Yes.

  1. I continue to favor Trump in the election at this point, because I believe that things will keep happening, and that there are many things that can harm Harris and few things that can harm Trump. Any economic downturn, any personal scandal, any international crimes by armies equipped by the Biden Administration. [Oh look, Netanyahu just bombed a hospital and even Reuters is inching towards the active voice. Oh look, Ukraine just invaded Russian territory, hope they behave themselves (and Putin isn't ballsy enough to pretend that they didn't even if they do). And stocks closed down again. A lot of people, myself included, emotionally thought the race was over after the shooting. Now people suddenly think Kamala is inevitable. I maintain the opinion that Kamala is shithousing, playing dirty for a draw. She's trying to win one news cycle at a time, keep her base invested in the process, and at least keep the national popular vote and the House in the D column. She's not trying to forward an overall plan, or make advances on policy, because that's not her goal. As long as Trump doesn't somehow manage to implode, he's still got this.

  2. Reading the replies, I'm realizing anew that so much of the online right consists of right wingers stranded in left wing professions and social circles. To wit: I see tons of content sexually shaming Kamala, from online to T shirts and signs walking around to bumper stickers in traffic. The attacks have been constant, including the sexual shaming of men who would vote for Kamala or of Walz for working with her, all previously discussed on this forum. I've encountered way more "Kamala is a whore" memes than I have "JD Vance fucked a couch" memes in real life. They haven't carried much weight outside of a slur for people who already hate her, because despite the obvious advantage of actually happening, they haven't been that effectively spread outside of existing right wing spaces because they aren't all that interesting, but they're all over the place.

  3. The couch jokes have spread so effectively precisely because they are so low stakes. Virtually every guy has a weird masturbation story, and they're a staple of the "coming of age memoir" genre, from Tim Allen to Angela's Ashes to Lena Dunham to David Sedaris. Interrogated Socratically, nobody would really say it mattered. It's not that damaging, the couch jokes are just an expression of dislike in a generalized sort of way. The only way the story can become serious is if Vance replies in a self-serious way. Here Vance replies to a question about what makes him happy by venting his rage about being asked stupid questions. I continue to rate Vance higher than the crowd, but if he fumbles the couch question similarly, it will be ten times as effective as it is now. The worst thing you can do is show that they're getting under your skin.

  4. The "Weird" attack is similarly effective because of the responses produced. The bizarre disconnect between the political elites and the average voter is one of those ongoing crises, like illegal immigration or gun crime, that can have attention drawn to them by the media at any time and made into a Big Deal. Your average American doesn't have well thought out consistent philosophical opinions, and the simple fact of having them on a large range of topics makes one weird. The attack can equally be turned on lefties, with similar results. Righties on Twitter have replied to accusations of weirdness by: calling it "feminine behavior," going off about trans people, talking about how they watch a lot of police bodycam footage and actually that's a new usage of "weird" among black youths, this is exactly how all the popular kids bullied me in school. In other words, in weird ways. Please, I'm begging everyone here, don't respond to this idea outside of the motte by talking about how masculine sexuality is shamed. It's not a good look.

  5. The only Republican that can effectively respond is Usha Vance, joking in an interview that "I might be the first political wife to have to sit her husband down and ask him, 'did you really make love to a couch?' Because I don't want to end up like Hillary Clinton, or Huma Abedin, or John Edwards' wife, where I'm denying it and then it turns out to be true!"

I'm not as convinced as you about Trump's chances, but I needed to read something positive today and your post definitely hits the spot. Thanks!

Re: 2, I think there’s a difference between the official DNC strategy of using pure fiction for the purpose of shaming, and a random Republican or Motte-commentator saying something. These seem vastly different to me. Vance, in his VP candidacy speeches (let alone inaugural candidacy speech), did not attempt to slut-shame Kamala. Kamala exchanging sexual favor for political appointment is at least rooted in a real, admitted event in her past involving a 30-year age gap and cushy appointments. Vance’s story is genuine fiction.

Re: 3, I don’t think it is lowstakes at all. A good way to gauge the effectiveness of a political story is whether the story would damage the reputation of someone in a high school. If you had the reputation of “guy who fucked a couch”, would your reputation be damaged? Absolutely. Humans respond very primitively to sexually-shameful stories. The Reddit propaganda machine found this story to be the most important thing to astroturf to the top of the website, and I think this is strong evidence of its persuasive potency. Or consider, if you are a woman at work and your reputation is ”doll dildo Kamala”, because you wrote about using a doll as a dildo and this was a top story when searching your name, would you be hired at a corporate job and respected by peers? Certainly less so, even though it is just an innocuous moment from your youth.

This is a good response from Reductress: https://reductress.com/post/guy-who-says-slurs-draws-the-line-at-weird/

This sort of sexual shaming tactic seems to be the standard now whenever there's a group of majority men. And that's what the Republican party is now- the "daddy party" vs the "mommy party" of the Democrats. It seems odd to "incel shame" a guy who's married and has kids, but I guess it can still work on undecided voters who look like him. It doesn't work on Trump who openly bragged about all the crazy affairs he had over the years. And I don't think it works in reverse- slut shaming is just a bad luck for anyone now. It's like chemical warfare- even if it "works," it hurts your own reputation so much that it's just not worth it.

The better attack line against Democrats now is that they're just kind of stupid. We see a lot of voters marching in mobs, chanting slogans, and Kamala Harris fits right into that "passionate suburban mom" crowd. But absolutely nothing of substance from them on any real issue. I guess the plan is for her to just be a figurehead and let the bureaucrats do their thing. You know, the grown ups in the room, not the people elected by those stupid "voters" with their crazy democracy system.

The better attack line against Democrats now is that they're just kind of stupid.

I also prefer this line. It's also impossible not to reflect on the state of rhetoric;

ur weird

ur stupid tho

if it wasn't for that darn age-35 law, we could run 10 yr olds for president and have the ultimate candidate!

Weird is a miliquetoast epithet, and not even the worst w-word one can imagine.

I think most everyone knows that Trump can escalate to Defcon 1 and call Kamala Harris a whore for sleeping with Willie Brown in exchange for political influence in California. If Trump was truly shameless, he'd have already done it. Asking whether or not she's ever given him a blowjob would destroy political discourse forever.

(The dems could call Trump a whoremonger, on the other hand, but typically procurers are less stigmatized than procurees.)

Yeah, weird is nowhere near as bad a slur as w*man

Yeah, weird is nowhere near as bad a slur as w*man

It's not entirely clear to me what you mean by this; in the future, please put more effort toward speaking plainly.

Just an edgy joke insinuating that women are so vile that calling someone a w*man is tantamount to a slur. Similar to Fr*nch being a slur.

Edit: Formatting

Don't forget to escape your asterisks. w\*man Fr\*nch yields "w*man Fr*nch" instead of "wman Frnch".

Thanks for that

“Weird” is a word that can completely alienate you from polite social company in one’s youth, and youth was formative for every living adult. When you are considering inviting someone to a party, you would rather pick the whore than the weirdo.

Yeah but that’s exactly why the best move was to go ultra hard on calling the weird trans stuff “weird”, showing footage of men in dresses with stubble who want access to girls’ bathrooms etc, and not this weird combination of seethe and double-down that the GOP seems to be pursuing now.

If all the GOP / Trumpist super PACs did was push ‘best of Libs of TikTok’ compilations onto swing state TV, the race wouldn’t be anywhere near as close as it is now.

You may be right, but who cares? There’s no invisible umpire. No-one is going to think “Gosh, maybe I am being a little unfair on my political opponents by mocking them untruthfully.” The Republican right needs to find something meaner and funnier or accept Kamala as the new Regina George.

"Escalate or die" ?

What would our “cultural elites” (D) say if Republicans went all-in on a story about Kamala Harris violating the intern’s Oval Office laundry machine? Or that she used a priceless piece of White House memorabilia as a dildo without cleaning it off after?

What is the point of your little embellishments here? Is it part of the Vance couch story that it was an intern's couch? Or that he didn't clean up the couch afterwards?

The original assertion specified he had intercourse with “an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions”. Extraneous details that we consider difficult to imagine someone making up work to make a story more believable. If Republicans want to humiliate as well as Democrats, the story must contain all necessary elements of a believable, mnemonically sticky story.

I was unaware of that. Thanks.

It’s also a believable story for a coming of age story. My wife and I both read his book, and had to ask ourselves if that story was really in it or not.

There’s talk about Trump being a “bully”, but nothing he has said has come close to the shameless slander against Vance.

There was the time Trump accused Ted Cruz’s dad of being an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Wait, was he? The story just attacked Trump for saying it instead of issuing a denial, which sets off my "the media never lies" alarm.

It was never specifically confirmed, but there is a photo of Oswald handing out pro-Cuban fliers with a guy who looks a lot like Ted Cruz's father.

I meannnnn trump has a $83mm defamation judgement against him and he’s currently claiming that Harris isn’t actually black.

Politics is dirty and Trump loves it in the mud.

It does help that harris is only half black and there is enough media around to point to where her "indian heritage" is used in a creepy DEI sort of way.

1/4 black actually.

I think there is a legit question of whether she is black. She is just as much black as she is white. If someone described Kamala as white, I think people would say you are crazy.

What does it mean to be black? Is it ethnicity and if so how much? Is it experience? Is it “she looks black”

For the sake of the dominant American culture, "black" means whatever they want it to mean as long as they get to call people that don't agree racist. It's how you get affirmative action policies that benefit literal foreign political royalty in the US.

America is race-obsessed, likely because their founding document and national spirit cannot come to grips with the fact that unequal outcomes exist. They have spent ages wrestling with the question of why success and wealth is not equally distributed among individuals in a land of supposed equal opportunity. This is why they're so desperate for a black female president. Not because it'd make a better president, but because it'd be evidence that the universalism they believe in isn't broken.

The point is that while Kamala really SHOULD be vulnerable on that front, it's Just Not Done to question the blackness of a claimed-black politician, particularly if you're not black yourself.

Trump, characteristically, does not care what is Just Not Done. I doubt the pearl-clutching about it is going to hurt him, even if questioning her blackness isn't a winner either; by now that Trump does not obey (often progressive-defined) social conventions is pretty well baked in.

Harris has a greater claim to being black than Obama, since Obama grew up with his white mom and grandparents. That Harris is not acculturated to Black struggles because her Jamaican father was an academic who mixed with polite company instead of living the black experience is only mildly inconvenient for Harris.

Harris does not LOOK black. Her hair is flowing, she is so pale she doesn't even count as high yellow, and she talks like AOC instead of Cori Bush. Harris has little claim to the black experience even in California, and to her credit she is not running on her blackness the same way Obama did (maybe because Obama is a deft operator whose political presentation is unmatched since Bill Clinton).

Besides and lets be real here, is running on blackness a win condition? Harris is aware that the balancing game of democratic turnout and normie turnoff does not favor evoking MLK tier struggles, much less the poisoned Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan style polemics that Blacks actually paid attention to. Ibrahm Kendi has thankfully been relegated to the dirt where he belongs, so the dems at least do not need to listen to him as much as they had to during 2018-2021.

She grew up in Berkeley and Canada.

Harris has a greater claim to being black than Obama, since Obama grew up with his white mom and grandparents. That Harris is not acculturated to Black struggles because her Jamaican father was an academic who mixed with polite company instead of living the black experience is only mildly inconvenient for Harris

Didn't her parents split up when she was young and she grew up with her indian mother?

Shit, really? I keep seeing paeans to Donald Harris plastered across Reddit, especially that black and white photo of him carrying Kamala as a baby. Guess I fell victim to the narrative shaping.

In which case then Kamala has the same case to black identity as Obama. Mother raising a child in the mothers culture with no input from the sperm donor. Any 'blackness' these miscegenated monocultures pretend at is a construction formed in university for social purposes.

Obama at least sported a fro and played basketball. Does Harris make a single pretense at black presentation?

this is from a bit over a year ago, kind of a weird thing where she went and bought some records. to me this comes across badly because why are you buying these basic albums only now?

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/vice-president-kamala-harris-vinyl-records-haul-1235325660/

She went to high school at Westmount in Montreal -- I guess she might count as relatively 'black' (maybe even 'poor'!) in that crowd, but 'rootless intellectual' is probably a better description.

I think she's somewhat estranged with her dad actually? He issued her a public spanking for leaning into the stereotype of Jamaicans being heavy pot smokers, anyways.

I meannnnn trump has a $83mm defamation judgement against him

Oh, the one where he "slandered" a woman by claiming that he didn't rape her? Yeah, I'm going to have to discount that one to zero.

he’s currently claiming that Harris isn’t actually black.

As @Mottizen said, it's not actually what he said.

he’s currently claiming that Harris isn’t actually black.

If you actually watch the interview Trump's claim was 'Harris chooses whether to emphasize her Indian heritage or African heritage depending on however the IdPol winds are blowing' not that she's literally not Black.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

That’s the quote, questioning if a mixed race person is black. OP claiming Trump Is somehow above the mud of dirty politics is laughable.

Less we forget Trump was a huge pusher of the birth certificate claim against Obama. He’s been this way all along.

I think there's a difference of presenting something untrue as fact and questioning someone's willingness to rebrand themselves the instant the winds change. If you interpret "Is she black" as a racial statement rather one of cultural alignment than that's your movie screen. "Is she black" is a relevant question to Black America - is she truly someone who aligns herself to the plights of impoverished Black Americans, or is she conveniently emphasizing her Blackness as a way to procure votes? It's mudslinging, sure, but also has an element of truth asking people to analyze her character beyond simple racial solidarity.

It is the Democrats who dragged Trump through the mud with legitimately false claims such as the Steele Dossier. I find Trump's 'lies', 'hyperbole', or 'political mudslinging' positively refreshing compared to the gaslighting Democrats have shown themselves willing to do on an international level for the past 8 years.

If you're going to imbue 'Black Identity' with cultural cachet, a shared experience, and promote it above others, it is absolutely correct to question whether celebrity politicians honestly reflect it or are grifting.

Is English your first language?

That very clearly reads as him attacking her for choosing what group to identify with based on convenience.

Is English your first language?

Don't do that, please. Even if you think someone is being obtuse.

Is there a way to ask this legitimately though?

I’m actually just curious if the undertone isn’t coming through in translation. It seems totally reasonable that a non native English speaker would interpret what Trump is saying here literally and not understand the implied meaning.

I’d consider attacking a mixed race person based on their identity well beyond the pale. However this is a forum that vigorously defended a child rapist last week so unsurprised the reaction to Trump’s racism. Lot of weird people here.

  • -27

  1. He is attacking her for being a phony (Indian when it helps, black when it helps).

  2. She is 1/4 black. Is that really black? She is more non black than black. One drop rule?

He’s claiming she’s not really African American and as far as I can tell that’s just literally true- she’s not.

child rapist

Who?

I presume he's referring to Stephen van de Welde.

Link to discussion

I’d consider attacking a mixed race person based on their identity well beyond the pale.

For a moment, I thought describing his comment like this was weird, but then it occurred to me that using particular blunt and non-descriptive categories to describe a specific event in a way that attaches negative affect is a common enough occurrence that one of Scott Alexander's more famous essays on SlateStarCodex back in the day, titled The Worst Argument in the World IIRC, was based around it. Of course, this is my subjective take, but Trump's line, on its merits, seems far more similar to his attacks on another mixed race person based on their identity, Elizabeth Warren, whom he called "Pocahontas," presumably as a way to insultingly accuse her of opportunistically abusing her claimed heritage for career advancement. Except without the schoolyard name-calling, but rather making a pretty meaningful - though unfalsifiably vague - claim, that Harris is selectively emphasizing aspects of her racial identity opportunistically to garner points depending on the context.

Honestly, pointing out Harris's or Warren's alleged cynical racial maneuvering seems rather trite considering that's pretty much expected of someone ambitious and arrogant enough to try to be the next POTUS, and Trump of all people should probably know that, but I've never clocked him as the self aware type. Still, politicians at least like to roleplay being respectable, and they do it well enough to convince a lot of people, and certainly on its merits, the kind of behavior being alleged is not respectable, so I don't find the accusation beyond the pale. Rather well within the pale, in fact, to the extent that it's actually pretty damning to US journalism that in a country whose political discourse explicitly talks so much about how race should inform how we treat individuals and enforcing that with policy, the industry doesn't spend more time questioning politicians on how they might have cynically maneuvered the racialist landscape to consolidate their power. I don't know who'd be the ones to damn, though, because the journalists are ultimately serving an audience that just doesn't care about that.

He's not attacking her identity wantonly, he's attacking the way she uses it.

Speak about individuals, don't make (inaccurate) generalizations like this. If you want to accuse the person you're talking to of defending child rapists, fine, accuse him of saying that (and be prepared to defend it), but "this forum" did not "vigorously defend a child rapist." This is the sort of straw man that gets people bounced, and then they whine that we're banning people for going against "forum culture."

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few days. The short answer is, no, Republicans are not shamelessly sexually humiliating their opponents enough to win the election. The long answer is, it’s not enough simply to sexually humiliate one’s opponents, one must imply that one’s opponents have something to gain from giving up or switching sides. The subtext of the “these guys are just weird” campaign is that if you young man simply stop trying to police women’s sexual behavior, you too can get laid. Consider the following:

“Since #TamponTim is trending I'll point out that in high school, any boy who casually was like "Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it" -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites.”

This woman is a “gender and society” columnist at the Washington Post. The message is clear; submit to power [ours] and you will get pussy. What is the Republican message to young women? Become based or you will grow into a childless cat lady? That could work, but it is inherently a multi-step argument. Frankly, conservative media just isn’t good enough to get across a message that complex.

The hilarious thing is that I've literally done this, but only by saying "are you feeling ok? If your stomach hurts, we have a bunch of stuff for that in our team's medical bag, help yourself."

There's this weird leftist thing originating in 2nd(?) wave feminism where they feel compelled to destroy taboos and conventions made to keep people comfortable, because they're "tools of the patriarchy". Burning bras, painting your walls with bloody tampons, having the cafeteria serve vagina cupcakes leavened with yeast infection pus, all to shock people, make them uncomfortable, and claim the space for leftists.

It's bled into mainstream prog culture now, where talking loudly about shitting and queefing is peak praxis. And they encourage men to join in only to get the ick when they actually do.
Once you learn about shit tests you start seeing them everywhere.

Apparently, the Lieutenant Governor of Vermont actually implemented this advice in his office, and was censured for it by the state's Speaker of the House after legislators "reported feeling uncomfortable".

“Offering feminine hygiene products in an office and seeking out women to let them know about the availability is not acceptable,” [Speaker] Krowinski wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 2, 2023. “While you may have good intentions, it has left women feeling very uncomfortable and unsure why they were chosen or why it became a topic of conversation with you.”

Consider the following:

“Since #TamponTim is trending I'll point out that in high school, any boy who casually was like "Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it" -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites.”

This is like the "hello, human resources??" comic, except she's reporting the guy in both panels. How would he even know about the period?

This is like the "hello, human resources??" comic, except she's reporting the guy in both panels.

Lol

Talk about bad advise lmao, a teenage boy will never be caught dead with a tampon stash in their backpack.

It’s: submit to us our your opponents will mutilate and sexually abuse your children.

For parents, this is an extremely compelling argument.

Then why aren't parents switching to voting Republican in droves? As far as I can tell from a quick search, the correlation is very small (and probably easily explained by other factors like occupation, sexual orientation etc.). The degree to which the premise is believed puts an upper bound on how compelling this argument can be, and the Red Tribe has not been doing a good job of raising belief in the premise. (In fact they have probably been doing the opposite: exaggeration and dramaturgy feel good to the choir but only raise the burden of proof to the unconverted when they don't come from the top of the status hierarchy)

I think you answered your own question.

The republicans don’t do a good job of communicating this.

Look at people like Elon Musk, though. You can see about the time he started believing this (about when his son was victimized by it), and the effect it had on him. I choose him because he is very public, but I think every parent has friends who have gone through the same transition.

It’s the conservative version of getting “woke” (the original meaning before it became an insult - basically becoming aware of something which radically shifted your perception in one direction)

I think it's more just that it's not a conceivable possibility—surely my kid won't be the one thinking they're the other gender? Right? They're reasonable enough?

I was the sort of guy who believed advice that got you friend-zoned in high school, and even I wouldn't have fallen for advice like that, and from the responses to her tweet, I don't think anyone is buying it now. She might want to convince people that if you take her bad advice you will get laid, but you have to actually have a convincing message.

That said, I think some of you are dramatically overestimating how much impact "Sexually humiliating the other side" or "Jokes about couch-fucking" actually swing voters. Most people see this as the shit-posting it is. What people are actually going to vote on are not which candidate gives better psychosexual "vibes," but which candidate makes them believe they'll make things better, or at least not make things worse. I wouldn't say most voters really have a great handle on the issues, but the issues (economy, housing, global conflicts, and yes, culture war stuff) are what actually drive votes and turnout.

That said, I think some of you are dramatically overestimating how much impact "Sexually humiliating the other side" or "Jokes about couch-fucking" actually swing voters.

The problem here is that, at best, you're going to fall to an argument that all these awful and disruptive and slanderous behaviors... didn't help with swing voters.

Not hurt. That's not an argument to skip this.

Sorry if that's a rant, but the pro-bullying side of the LGBT politics can quite credibly argue that everything (from bashing homophobia to Santorum's Google Problem to the literal leader of an anti-bullying movement targeting teenagers for public mockery) was a large or the determining factor in a massive swing in political alignment, the anti-bullying side can at best argue that it wasn't necessary, and the moderates can't do anything but flinch from the question. And once you see the pattern there, you start seeing it a lot of places.

I think a lot of "weird/creepy nerd" types who roleplay as Democratically influential are just in denial about where this is all going.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of anything (though I have to admit I am more inclined towards Trace's way of thinking). I just don't think it actually works (other than, I guess, giving you the satisfaction of hurting your enemies). People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter. They'll say "Eew, Republicans are so weird!" Or "Eww, Democrats are such pussies!" and this will be reflected in the polls. I think most people here are way too online (myself included) and most voters are not.

People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter.

Oh, I'm being far more dire than that. That the normies don't care is a selling point to the extremist argument, here. The pro-bashing perspective -- whether pro- or anti-gay, smear-the-queer or beat-the-nazi, so on -- never was to persuade the average normie voter: it was to motivate and activate your side, and demobilize and delegitimize the opposition.

I'd like to argue that they are wrong, but on some topics it's at least coincided with pretty significant success.

People are treating this like a serious political strategy, as if you find the best burn, the sickest memes, you will move the needle in the mind of the average normie voter.

My impression is that this is less about burns and memes, and more about getting people fired and ostracized from friend groups. I suppose it's not clear that the effect of the tactic was reflected in the polls, but that doesn't mean much, because "what party is in power" is a very poor barometer of social change by itself.

"Strategy" is saying too much. The people doing it aren't in control, and won't be able to stop it when kids start giving other kids beatings because of what they said. But it absolutely does nudge culture (and future actions) one way or another.

Most people on both sides definitely enjoy hurting people, also.

I think it will have an impact in the sense that I think it will eventually backfire once the conventions are over and the median American starts paying attention.

First off all because this is a very basic question of junior high level bullying behavior. They’re calling Vance names on the basis of an obviously false accusation that is supposed to be in his book but isn’t. This isn’t going to endear the Harris ticket to outsiders.

Second, and I’m amazed at the sheer incompetence of the strategic leadership that haven’t screamed about the possibility, is that it opens the door to the GOP pointing out all the progressive weirdness. And to the eyes of normal average Americans, progressives are a lot weirder than conservatives. The party that wants to normalize drag queen story hour for preschoolers is simply not going to win the battle to convince the average 50 year old guy who’s not into politics that the GOP is weirder than they are. Weird is actually the progressive Achilles heel— pointing out deviants just means people realizing just how weird liberals are. If I were running a GOP campaign, I’d lean into it. Yes, we’re “weird. So weird that we don’t want to trans your kid without your permission. So weird that we believe in marriage and family. So weird that we’d rather wave the American flag than the Palestinian flag.

Third, and you point out, it’s a huge distraction from real problems real people are facing. Inflation is lowering the standard of living. There’s one war ongoing in Ukraine and another brewing in the Middle East. We have a housing crisis. Our schools don’t do a good job educating kids and teachers are quitting in droves. Abortion is a big issue. The border. But they aren’t talking about those things, instead, they’re talking about the GOP being weird.

They’re calling Vance names on the basis of an obviously false accusation that is supposed to be in his book but isn’t. This isn’t going to endear the Harris ticket to outsiders.

Oh no, I think you'll find THEY didn't call Vance names (Walz mentioned a couch, just coincidentally I'm sure, but didn't repeat the story.). That (so the story will go) was Internet trolls, probably MAGA people who were upset that Vance beat our their favorite Herr Hitler for the spot.

As far as I know, the story that Lyndon Johnson spread the rumor that his opponent fucked a pig not because he thought people would believe it, but in order to get his opponent to deny it, isn't true. But someone on Kamala's team clearly remembered it.

Hilariously, I did pretty much exactly what she suggests in college (kept tampons in my dorm room, so if a female friend needed one, I'm at the ready!) The one time the opportunity came up, it played out exactly as you'd expect, weirding out not just her but everyone in the room.

There really are guys who buy advice like that. Usually someone a bit on the spectrum who listens to what people say they want and takes it literally. All the "friend-zoning" advice is right up that alley. I don't know why "get fit, put on muscle, and exhibit extroversion and dominance in social situations" is so hated as advice, even though it provides about 200% of the value of the aggregate dating advice given and would solve 99% of guys' issues.

Eh, you should add in ‘make the first move, but not too much of one’.

I mean, do you think a young man would fall for something that friend zoned him?

Kind of off-topic, but what the hell is that columnist smoking!? No, a boy who goes "don't worry, I have pads just in case my friends need one" would not be drowning in prom invites. He would be relentlessly mocked and ostracized for that behavior. The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway. Just an absolutely bizarre take that makes me wonder what the heck the writer is even thinking.

It's not supposed to be actual good advice. It's supposed to make it look like she cares and is trying to help young men, but actually just helping her core audience of women feel smug and superior to those stupid males who tried to hit on them but were afraid of feminine hygiene products. You know, like those guys you see in TV sitcoms. Not so much in real life, but whatever.

The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway.

I found friendzone advice is often better reframed as 'Things I would like a man I already find attractive to do'.

Feminists give horrible advice like this all the time. I’m not sure why they do this; most seem to think there’s a noble lie involved.

I 100% guarantee you this woman would find an offer of menstrual products creepy and off putting, and that she will not talk about her period IRL any more than she would talk about shitting or blowing her nose.

Right; if the boy wants to get friend-zoned, he can offer to go into the boy's bathroom and get them. Happening to have one is going to get him creep-zoned, unless he's a member of Junior Seal Team Six and explains he needs them to stop the bleeding from the frequent bullet wounds he treats.

Totally tangential: Tampons absorb blood but don't assist in clotting. They're more like a sponge, which will soak up and expand but not staunch the flow. Whenever I read about this strategy of using tampons in trauma situations I wonder if it's really done regularly and if so, why. Pressure from wrapping with a towel or something seems like it would be far more effective in preventing blood loss. Unless the idea is-- as in when a tampon is used for its designed purpose--just to prevent a sanguineous mess.

Menstrual discharge, absent menorrhagia or some other issue, is typically of a predictably finite amount, whereas an open wound will keep bleeding until hemostasis.

Sorry for the derail. Anybody who knows about this plz feel free to enlighten me.

Edit: paging @JTarrou and/or @self_made_human

Indeed, during the beginning of the Ukraine war, families of Russian soldiers were sending them tampons when bandages were both not provided by the military and also running out of stock. Terrible idea, it's the opposite of what you want for staunching a bleed.

I usually think a lot of the red pill rhetoric about social shit tests is nonsense, but stuff like this makes me think they might have a genuine point. "Give out really bad advice that someone with zero social skills might take seriously, and then you increase the chances that they'll take it and reveal their lack of social skills in a way that makes women more able to avoid them."

For what it's worth I think I can prove you correct. Here's a recent state level story from Vermont:

https://vtdigger.org/2024/08/06/lt-gov-david-zuckermans-offers-of-menstrual-products-to-lawmakers-prompted-reprimand-from-house-speaker/

Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman’s offers of menstrual products to lawmakers prompted reprimand from House speaker

Speaker Jill Krowinski instructed Zuckerman [D] to remove the products from his office in early 2023 and “consider meeting with House members in the company of others.” In early 2023, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, issued verbal and written warnings to Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman after state legislators reported feeling uncomfortable when Zuckerman offered them access to a supply of menstrual products located in a drawer in his chief of staff’s office.

“Offering feminine hygiene products in an office and seeking out women to let them know about the availability is not acceptable,” Krowinski wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 2, 2023. “While you may have good intentions, it has left women feeling very uncomfortable and unsure why they were chosen or why it became a topic of conversation with you.”

This quote seems especially germane to the Waltz menstrual products in all bathrooms position, as well as similar debates like free condoms in schools:

“That we need the lieutenant governor to somehow get these poor women menstrual products is pathetic,” [Rep. Heather Chase, D-Chester] said. “We all were voted in by our constituents. We figure out how to drive here. We park our cars. We get a place to live. We organize our homes so we can be away. We do this. We juggle everything.”

I suspect there probably isn't any real principle at play beyond in the moment gut level emotions and 'us versus them' thinking. Which has the tendency to create confusing zones with a lot of invisible electrified rails. Something which is probably massively exacerbated by Culture War 'us versus them' dynamics.

Women mostly have no clue what sexually interests them and don't have the language to describe it other than vibes ("I just didn't feel a spark, you know?") and so you should assume that any time they give romantic advice to men they're just saying something they'd find useful or pro-social without being able to consider whether that's something that would really interest them in a man. I'm rarely one to make sweeping generalizations about the dating world, but even women I really like and respect for their thoughtfulness and honesty in other areas of their life seem totally incapable of describing their real romantic interests. It's the closest thing to a universal I've found.

Interestingly, I've found that some women are very good at describing what they like and don't like, so my assumption is that the rest are just dissimulating. I can see why the instinct would be to obscure what you like. If you say it explicitly, then men might try and fake it, which would make it harder to choose the man she wants.

Women are typically pretty good at giving negative advice (i.e. what not to do). Even on that tweet, there are far more women saying "no, don't do this" than there are saying "yeah I'd definitely find this attractive!"

It's not that they don't have a clue, it's just not in their interest for men to know it, because the moment the info goes public, min/maxing autists they've been avoiding are going to min/max the shit out of it.

This is why there was so much hatred for the PUAs back in the day.

Then I would expect women to say different things to other women, vs. what they say to men. However I think they generally say the same thing in female-only company. Sometimes if they're a bit drunk, they might blurt out something "crass" which might be different from the sober, hand-wavy descriptions. (And probably more accurate of a specific part of their preferences).

But I think that the true answer is that it drastically depends on the time of month (due to hormone changes), on the stage of life a woman is in, and it's also a multi-variable optimization problem, with shifting weights. So I think it's either that they don't know or can't describe, not that they're intentionally withholding to stop min/maxxers from exploiting.

I've searched for it dozens of times, including opening up old laptops and pouring over their browser histories, but I can't find it.

"It" was a blog that a FtM (that's chick-to-dude) transitioner was keeping about their ... transition. It was well written, deeply personal, and absolutely without trans ideology talking points or vibes. It was a wonderful example of an honest seeming person without any sort of ideology-induced hangups. It was incredibly and (unfortunately) uniquely informative.

The author shares one story about either beginning or hitting a major increase in the hormone replacement process. He's excited that he's going to start feeling testosterone-y like all other dudes. The week this starts, he's driving to work in traffic and someone cuts him off. He reports that, all of a sudden, he has a full blown panic attack and has to pull over to try to calm down. Perhaps the hormone replacement process has a high variance early period? Maybe he jacked up the dosage? Hmm, concerning.

I should note here that the author writes about going to a trans support group in his city. They help each other with the process as the different members are at different stages.

The author relates how he shares this panic attack incident to his group. There's an odd silence and some chuckling from some of the FtM's further along. People share knowing looks. Finally, one of them pipes up and says, "Dude .... you got "guy angry" for the first time." In a wonderful moment of self-awareness, the author writes about how he (when he was a she) never came close to appreciating what true male rage felt like. Even when "she" was 10/10 steamin' mad for some reason, it never came close to .... How a dude feels in Tuesday morning traffic when some asshole cuts him off.

I hope this jogs the memory of someone else who can point to that blog. There was a lot of good knowledge in there.

Anyway - I apply a similar view on male versus female sexual drive. It's definitely a difference in kind. It's been highlighted hundreds of times that men watch porn and women read trashy novels that end up at a sexual encounter but with a lot of very cringey situational foreplay. The male fantasy is the act itself, the female fantasy is the journey to the act. It is, however, also a difference in degree. I believe women when they say they get "super duper horny." I believe that, in their own framework of horny intensity judgement, they are at 10/10 Would Fck Again. But how does this compare to a male arousal rubric? I submit that female "10/10 Would Fck Again" is near equivalent to "Popped a bone watching that new Shakira music video on mute while at the airport bar." I'm having a little bit of fun here, so please don't try to nuke me on the rough comparison.

None of this should be taken as a judgement in validity, value, or worthiness of either male/female anger/arousal. Any moron who tells a woman, "oh, you're just girl angry, it's not that big of a deal" deserves whatever kitchen implement is launched at his head. And any idiot who tells his date, "No, but, like, I really want to fuck" deserves his future session of sullen, very alone rage masturbation.

I've never read the blog you're referring to, but the story reminds me of a different story I heard in, IIRC, This American Life (possibly Radiolab instead) about a FTM transitioner talking about the effects experienced from HRT, which included having a surprisingly overwhelmingly strong sex drive compared to before and also becoming literally better at math. Of course, instead of the host exploring the implications of this in wider society with respect to trans-ness and males and females, he quickly shut that down with a joke about how the person had "set back feminism by 20 years" or something.

I'm also reminded of that one woman who committed suicide a few years ago IIRC, who had written a book about her experience dressing up as a man (no transition, just roleplaying for the book), where she seemed to come to some revelations about the difficulties of men's lives that were completely invisible to her before the experience.

What I find interesting is that, as best as I can tell, MTF trans people are more prominent than FTM ones, though I've heard that FTM is more common, driven primarily by young women and teenage girls (though I've also heard that accurate stats around this are very difficult to come by). And this kind of narrative about how transitioning from man to woman made them realize the unique difficulties that women go through that were invisible to them when they were a man seem much rarer. It's almost always the unique difficulties of being a trans woman that's emphasized, rather than having some epiphany about how the natal other half of the human population experience reality that got awakened to them.

There are multiple explanations for this, and I'd guess they all have some truth. The default, most likely explanation, is that I'm just seeing patterns where there is none. But that's no fun, so if we want to speculate, one reason is that FTM tend to get the more genuine male experience than MTF, because FTM can pass much more consistently than MTF. Another is that the troubles that women face in society as women are so emphasized that it's just common knowledge among men, while the mirror image isn't true. Yet another is that the types of people who transition MTF are very different types of people personality-wise than FTM, which leads to some asymmetry in what they notice about their new experience in their new gender identity. Another similar reason would be that the effectiveness of HRT to go from MTF is different and meaningfully less than the effectiveness to go from FTM, which results in the asymmetry.

I'm also reminded of that one woman who committed suicide a few years ago IIRC, who had written a book about her experience dressing up as a man (no transition, just roleplaying for the book), where she seemed to come to some revelations about the difficulties of men's lives that were completely invisible to her before the experience.

Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man

What I find interesting is that, as best as I can tell, MTF trans people are more prominent than FTM ones, though I've heard that FTM is more common,

I haven't actually seen stats I trust, but the brief amount of looking I've done seems to suggest that there used to be more MTF, but that might not be true anymore, or is at least less true.

"It" was a blog that a FtM (that's chick-to-dude) transitioner was keeping about their ... transition. It was well written, deeply personal, and absolutely without trans ideology talking points or vibes. It was a wonderful example of an honest seeming person without any sort of ideology-induced hangups. It was incredibly and (unfortunately) uniquely informative.

Many years ago I read something fitting this description, but the entry that I read was explicitly discussing testosterone-fueled sex drive rather than anger, and the view being expressed was exactly as you've put it here. I'm pretty sure it was a blogspot thing, but whether or not it was the same author you were reading, I'm afraid I'm no help in pinning down the source.

Still appreciate the collective memory-jog.

The anger story brought to mind a conversation I had with my partner.

Like apparently all women nowadays, my girlfriend is fascinated by true crime. She studied biochemistry and works in a lab, so she's especially interested in the forensic side of criminal investigation, particularly genetic genaeology which has certain similarities to the genetics work she does. I'm always hearing about the new cases Othram solved that week. Her parents think she should go into forensic science and they're dead right.

I've actually come to enjoy watching true crime documentaries with her, though I prefer ones that focus on the process of investigation (mystery plots are the most universally popular type of story).

But I have to confess I find them hard to watch sometimes. Not because I find the crimes too gruesome, but because inevitably hearing about the depravity and cruelty of some of the most evil criminals -- brutal rapists, killers of elderly people, child murderers, torturers, serial killers -- fills me with intense and uncontrollable rage and a desire to get medieval on some asses.

I wonder sometimes if the reason women are so interested in true crime, and men aren't as much, isn't something to do with women, but something to do with men. Perhaps for one segment of men, true crime is simply too real, too close to their own lives of organized crime or petty violence, to be an enjoyable escape. And then, for another group -- and I include myself in this one -- it is so morally outrageous to consider the gravity of the kind of lurid crimes that get discussed in the true crime community that they're filled not with curiosity but with rage. Women get to see crime as something foreign, not something they'd ever get involved in, and perhaps are spared the sort of great vengeance and furious anger that characterizes the male response to horrific acts. Perhaps this also goes to explain the gender difference in support for the death penalty.

It happened that we finished watching one of these documentaries, and I found it particularly enraging (a man abducted a woman at gunpoint and forced her to pretend to enjoy being raped by him on camera) and we were discussing the particulars of the case and how the police investigated the abduction. I mentioned that one of the big differences between feminists and conservatives on the issue of rape doesn't concern whether it's wrong or not (they both condemn it) but what society should do about it. Feminists are often focused on the needs of the victim -- believe all women, we need more social support, we need to reduce stigma, we need police to be more receptive to rape victims -- while conservatives who comment on the issue of rape often discuss it in terms of what needs to be done to punish the perpetrators: death penalty for forcible rape, longer prison sentences, harsher punishments.

And we realized at that moment why there was such a big disagreement between men and women about criminal justice. Women are concerned about victims, men about perpetrators. It's not that men lack compassion for victims of horrific crimes or that women lack a desire for penal justice, but rather that the emotional reactions of men and women and their subsequent actions reflect different priorities. And both, you might note, reflect the traditional social roles of men and women: men protecting the tribe from physical violence, women ensuring that all members of the tribe have their needs met.

Adding your thoughts about male anger into the mix offers a compelling explanation of how that process works, and perhaps why men experience such a strong emotional desire to exact punishment that women often don't seem to understand.

Perhaps for one segment of men, true crime is simply too real, too close to their own lives of organized crime or petty violence, to be an enjoyable escape.

I'm pretty sure only a small fraction of true crime fandom is focused on organized crime. In fact, it's the one category of true crime that can probably count on more male than female interest, due to the recurring themes of honor, revenge, masculinity, the handing down of power from father to son etc.

With respect to petty violence, it's probably true that it isn't too close to the lives of many women, not even those in the underclass. Petty crime in general, on the other hand, surely is.

Great post. A few underformed thoughts;

I think there's a direct line of similarity between your Victim/Perpetrator dichotomy and the oft lampooned "Men want to offer solutions to your problems / women just want to be heard and listened too about their problems."

I don't know if your Self-Awarewolf second paragraph was intentional. You recognize that your disgust with the brutality of some of these crimes triggers in you a desire to ... commit brutal crimes. The feeling isn't wrong. I'd say most emotionally healthy men who read about Dahmer, Bundy etc. probably have some similar thoughts. It's just an interesting pot-calling-the-kettle-black-while-looking-in-the-mirror situation.

I think there's also a difference in intuitive understanding of subjects here. Women emote so heavily with the True Crime victims because women intuitively understand sexualization. Most women can tell very specific stories about hitting puberty and then starting to get leering stares, "friendly" attention from male strangers etc. On the other hand, I believe men have an intuition in understanding physical violence. Let me reiterate I said understanding not desire for. A common ritual for adolescent boys is their first fight. From 16-24, a lot of a guy's free time is taken up with physical violence related subjects - being on a sports team, going to the gym, perhaps joining the military etc.

It would make sense, then, that the respective sexes 'default' to their intuition when faced with True Crime like scenarios. Women relate and emote to the other woman in the story and their sexualized victimization. Men tap into their male rage and physical violence reserves in a (vain) effort to go out and do something about it.

the oft lampooned "Men want to offer solutions to your problems / women just want to be heard and listened too about their problems."

"It's not about the nail."

A lot of women’s interest in True Crime is just good old fashioned female hybristophilia.

Reading or watching a show about men killing people is titillating for women like watching the aforementioned Shakira thot around in a music video is titillating for men. See, for example, women finding themselves attracted to Bill Hader after watching his eponymous character killing people in Barry, when they weren’t before.

It's not that men lack compassion for victims of horrific crimes or that women lack a desire for penal justice, but rather that the emotional reactions of men and women and their subsequent actions reflect different priorities.

Or rather, different moral hazards.

Assuming a zero-sum competition for resources in a given tribe, men benefit when there is less competition for resources (and one less man will help with that), and women benefit when there is more competition (since that means they are themselves more in demand and can demand a larger share of the pie they didn't have to work for).

So we should expect swift and harsh punishment for ever more minor crimes from societies more dominated by men (which has lessened over the last 20,000+ years mainly because of revolutionary and consequential industry), and pathological bear-choosing (or at least publicly bear-curious) behavior from societies more dominated by women.

The wildcard in this is that competition for resources can be disrupted for myriad reasons, and is why boom times tend to have expansions in civil rights (there are so few men that broadening the definition of "them wronging you" and softer approaches to justice can't meaningfully be resisted by the average man, and things like white-knighting become rare because every man can get a woman provided they're useful), and why bust times see contractions (there are so many men that tightening the definition of "them wronging you" can't meaningfully be resisted by the average man, and things like white-knighting become common because not every man can get a woman and must appeal to them in other ways).

Feminists are often focused on the needs of the victim -- believe all women, we need more social support, we need to reduce stigma, we need police to be more receptive to rape victims

And as we proceed further into bust times men will increasingly adopt these stances, which are... mostly just a way to punish men ex post facto and remove them from the competition (and conservatives, in full agreement with the feminists because inside they are exactly the same, with personalities built to succeed in scarcity conditions, relish carrying that removal out for the above reasons). Boom times/man-shortages by contrast are marked by "obviously you have to compromise if you want to land a man", "a woman's duty", etc.

+1 on the "Good post." It also brought to mind another video I watched recently. A woman who's a prison abolitionist, addressing critics who ask the "So what do you want to do about rapists and child molesters, then, just let them go free?" question.

She spoke at great length about her own horrific abuse, being raped by her best friend's stepfather, who also molested her best friend, and her experience of having to go through the court process, being torn apart by the defense attorney, being sneered at by the police, only to discover that her rapist's supposed 10-year-sentence was reduced to 5 without her being notified or consulted. And how the prison system would abuse him and make him worse, and how she was also revictimized and abused by the process, and never asked what she thought justice should look like, because it was all about "punishing" her abuser and not actually addressing the needs of the victim. What she wanted, she said, was for her abuser to acknowledge what he did and apologize, which he obviously would not do when it would amount to a confession and be used against him.

It was a very passionate and emotional argument. I could see her point of view.

And yet... the holes in her thinking were glaringly apparent. Did she really think that, absent the threat of punishment, the right sort of mediator would get her rapist to give her an apology sincere enough to make her feel better? And what if his other victims did want to see him behind bars? For all her cataloging of the horrors of the "carceral system," she never really did get around to answering the key question: what do we do with very bad people who will hurt other people again if not imprisoned? I imagine it's somethingsomethingmumblerestorativejustice, because they really do believe that rapists and child molesters are produced by "the system" and if the system weren't so terrible, we wouldn't have rapists and child molesters.

So, yeah - this was an extreme case, but very much "woman wanting the system to focus more on victims, less on perpetrators." Of course I know there are men in the prison abolition movement too, but I notice they tend to stress the racism angle more. (This woman did of course hit the "Prison especially victimizes marginalized communities" talking points.)

Damn this was a good post. I like your thesis a lot, it makes sense but I had never considered it before. I almost hope you're wrong, because if you're right it is another sad testament to the dangers of ignoring Chesterton's Fence. It seems like a real sad statement about Western society if we took the social roles developed around the strong (though not inexorable) innate drives of the sexes, and then tore those social roles down without ever bothering to understand why they worked.

My theory is that women in general have a significantly lower sex drive, and that it might be a completely different kind of mechanism compared to the male one.

I've known plenty of women who've gone without sex for years and basically didn't really find any need to fix it. And the ones who have a lot of it often use it as a way to obtain in-group status, not for the physical act itself.

As an 16-25 year old man, all you need to connect the dots is to realize none of your female friends masturbate on a daily basis or have frequent sexual thoughts about their friends or classmates. Then it becomes completely obvious that something quite different is going on in their heads.

Bonus: women are almost universally unaware that any such difference exists. A real, visceral difference. Imagine a race of people who never went hungry, but still consumed food out of social pressure. They wouldn't be aware that others have different motivations for eating, and would think they're also just "doing it for vibes"

This is directionally true but a bit of an overgeneralisation given that eg dildos exist - there are genuinely horny women out there

there are genuinely horny women out there

But this, evolutionarily speaking, has been selected against for in women for all of history except for 20 of the last 70 years. Before that, the Pill and condoms didn't exist; after that, a still-uncured, incredibly destructive STD (among other things).

This is probably why the number of genuinely horny women is in deficit compared to its supply, at least, from the version of "horny" men understand. I'm pretty sure the analog to superstimulus titty anime is K-dramas.

A while back I made a controversial comment that was along the lines of "When women dress sexy, they don't really understand what it's signaling to a guy. They want to be beautiful, like a sunset, and these are the clothes society is telling them makes them beautiful." A lot of men have a hard time believing it, but it really does tie in to a completely different understanding of sex between the sexes.

Women know the difference between dressing sexy and dressing beautiful and they very deftly choose which kind of signal they want to send all the time. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to accuse other women of dressing like whores or realize when their daughters need to change their clothes before going out.

Only very stupid or very young women wouldn't be able to figure it out. The reactions of other women help them learn even more so then the male reactions.

I did say it was a controversial comment. I am a woman and I can tell you that dressing "sexy" versus dressing "beautiful" is like trying to look pretty like a sunset or look pretty like a flower.

I can tell my six year old not to wear tights and a t-shirt because I understand that this is inappropriate with the rules of fashion, not because I understand what it is to look at a six year old with sexual lust. But as the rules of fashion change so goes clothes, and my kids have "jeggings" they can wear under both dresses and shirts, which makes it easier to let them pick their own clothes for now.

Yes, women understand that they are sending different signals when they dress. They understand that this cardigan makes them look smart and serious, this skirt makes them look fun, etc.

But they don't understand sexual hunger and how they dress impacts it. We witness patterns and try to act accordingly, but we don't grok the underlying mechanism, so sometimes we think we understand a pattern but a man behaves differently than we expected. This explains a lot of the disconnect between women thinking men act creepy, and men thinking a woman wearing only half an outfit must be down for a good time, and if she rejects the man it's because he's not hot enough.

But they don't understand sexual hunger and how they dress impacts it.

I don't agree women are so blind, even if you are a woman yourself.

The girls showing off their assets to simps online know perfectly well what sexual hunger is and how to stoke it. They didn't learn it from some secret e-thot grimoire. There's tons of male gaze materials online to learn from.

Maybe they don't understand that intuitively, but it is certainly an attainable skill.

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I was reading your comment while taking the subway today. And there was this woman, wearing super professional attire (white blouse with no cleavage, light makeup, sensable hairdo). Except that she was also wearing a super short skirt with a slit up the middle, almost as if she was trying to show off her crotch.

It was... confusing. This was a weekday morning, so I assume she was going to work? I doubt she was going clubbing or anything at that time. But it really just made it awkward for me as a man to even look in her general direction. So I appreciate your comment, because I was genuinely wondering "is she doing that on purpose, or is she just clueless about how she looks?"

It also made me think of this star trek TNG episode where Picard is carrying a sexuality symbol without understanding what it means, and the local women keep approaching him, and he's like "dammit just leave me alone I just want to read my book in peace!!!" Quite the communication error.

I think Trump’s smart enough to hold off on that one til he has an opportune moment to say ‘Kamabla Kamabla what did you do for willie brown to get your appointments hmm?’

Are Republicans shamelessly sexually-humiliating their opponents enough to win this election?

I assume this is supposed to say "Democrats" rather than Republicans, since the comment is about Democrats sexually humiliating Republicans?

No, it won't be enough but that's fine. It will accomplish its purpose of making Vance even less likeable and instigating Republicans into even more deranged attacks. See the Tim-Walz-horse-semen thing, or your own discussion about Kamala using some piece of White House memorabilia as a dildo. Whatever the Republican response to "Vance fucked a couch" is it will be approximately 1 million percent more deranged and offputting to the normie voter than the couch thing.

There's now a counter-attack to the couch meme forming on X with a false rumor that Waltz has admitted to drinking horse semen. This kind of low-blow falsehood becoming a tit-for-tat escalation is both not good and easily foreseeable.

The strategy is in line with the Democrat push to label Trump “weird”. But it actually seems to cross a line. It is bullying in an especially purified form. It’s the sort of thing you would hear in a middle school, where a bully ostracizes a student by making up a story wholecloth and having his friends repeat it. The bully knows the accusation is false, but the point is to say it confidently and shamelessly where others can hear it and join the ostracizion to protect their reputation.

I've been finding this phenomenon fascinating, though I'd say I find it more depressing than fascinating. But fascinating nonetheless. I'm reminded of the early 2010s when it first became apparent that the identity politics/social justice/progressive crowd ("woke," "CRT," and "DEI" are more common terms to refer to that crowd now) that I was a part of was focused primarily on using schoolyard bullying tactics to use coerce people into believing the correct ideological beliefs, with an open and severe disdain for convincing people via argumentation (it was around this time that I learned of Ben Shapiro, who was introduced to me essentially as the punchline to a joke about how close-minded and backwards those rightists were with their "facts don't care about your feelings" slogan). This was a surprise to me at the time, given that I'd always been raised believing that the left/liberal/progressive side was the side of science and intellectualism, and there's basically nothing more hostile to science and intellectualism than using coercion to convince people of something.

Of course, I've changed my mind since then. I think what helped to awaken me was the realization that my own honest, genuine belief in the correctness of my ideology was in itself the result of the type of coercion that I observed being done; when you see someone else being suckered into the same belief that you have, you start to wonder if you were the sucker in the past (this is also why, for completely selfish and cynical reasons, I am against using dishonesty or coercion to push forward any ideology I genuinely believe in). And I've observed the schoolyard bullying tactics only get worse in that time and gain greater prominence at tables with higher stakes.

And there really aren't any higher stakes than the POTUS election, at least in the realm of US politics, which is where it has reached now, with this new "weird" forced meme and the implausibly deniable reference to a lie about the VP candidate. Now, Trump probably deserves blame credit for bringing it that high, but Trump was one unique character that forcibly dragged his party to follow his lead by sheer popularity, while this new narrative seems to be something many Democratic operators are voluntarily coalescing around (whether it's coordinated or not doesn't matter). But more to the point, the entire point of voting for someone is that they're preferable to the other guy; if my side decides to bully people into being convinced to our side, then I can no longer trust my judgment that my side is better, because that judgment might have been coerced out of me rather than being the conclusion I reached through reasoning through my beliefs, wants, needs, etc. It's not that name-calling in itself makes the policies that my side wants just as bad as the policies that the other side wants, it's that the name-calling reveals to me that my preference for my side's policies are suspect.

There's basically nothing that will stop me from voting for Kamala in November; my vote never counts in these elections anyway, and doubly so in Massachusetts, and if Kamala does win, I'll be able to honestly say that I cast a vote for the first black woman president - which in itself doesn't matter to me, but it certainly might matter to the bullies who would have good reason to be emboldened in that scenario. But I must admit, watching this campaign makes me feel worse and worse about doing this.

my vote never counts in these elections anyway, and doubly so in Massachusetts

If you are in a solidly Blue/Red state and not excited for either of the major party candidate, you can make your vote count by voting for a third party candidate. It gives that party greater clout to influence the platforms of the major parties. Plus, if their candidate gets more than 5% of the national vote, that party gets access to some federal funds for the next election.

As best as I can tell, voting for a third party candidate is about as worthless as any other vote in this context. The odds that my one vote is what takes some third party candidate up from 4.99% to 5.00% or whatever the threshold is is astronomically low. The odds that my one vote takes the candidate's vote count across some threshold such that it allows the party to garner greater clout in some meaningful, true way is much higher, since there are many many such thresholds, but it's still astronomically small.

Still, I think it is a more valuable signal than abstaining. I constantly see people who just assume non-voters would break heavily Dem if forced to choose a side, but it is really hard to say for sure what would happen. But votes for 3rd party show up in a countable way, and reduce the total votes of the winner. Reducing them to below 50% even in victory is a good way to send a signal that they didn't win, the other guy just lost.

It's odd to me because it seems like such a bad attack. The idea of a young man fucking anything and everything inanimate is not weird. I've heard many comedians or just "funny guys" on podcasts/standup talk about this all the time and they always get laughs. Hell, American Pie's main character fucked a pie and it was simply a joke and I don't recall any big hubub about Jim's character being too weird because he fucked a pie. Though that was a long time ago, I don't remember American Pie showing up as one of those movies that you "forgot" was bad because it fell outside the overton window now. When I saw that Walz used it as an insult I honestly just felt secondhand embarrassment.

The whole "weird" angle of attack seems really bad in general because it doesn't say what they want it to say. If they want to tar Vance for something made up just say he molested someone. If they want to tar republicans for being gross then call them gross, as an insult for anything against the left-leaning the word is already used that way anyway. Weird just doesn't work in my opinion. Comes out somewhere along the lines of calling an old man lame. Yeah, maybe the old man is lame, so what? The word is not insulting enough. Most people probably identify as weird in some way when they're probably not weird at all but since it's not really a pejorative and was in fact celebratory in most cases before this sudden shift. Hell, most of these people probably worship Weird Al and their favorite Radiohead song is Creep, hey there's another better word than weird.

But I feel like the way that the astroturfing is turned up to 11 right now there's a feedback loop going on where it's nearly impossible to tell if a strategy is working or if everyone's just nodding and agreeing with the strategy because, to me, the crux of it all working is getting the majority of people to say that it's working.

Hell, American Pie's main character fucked a pie and it was simply a joke and I don't recall any big hubub about Jim's character being too weird because he fucked a pie.

That's because the whole cast were losers that we were expected to laugh at.

Okay, the whole cast were not losers. It was an extremely unlikely kaleidoscope of friends that were and I can't believe I actually seemed to remember this offhand: band geek, jock, freak/stoner/beat?, and dudebro. But none of them were the lowest totem pole of their respective tribes and the audience was routinely shown characters more desperate, more sexually obsessed, and pathetic. You were supposed to laugh at Jim when he fucked the pie, but it all came back to understanding the power and desperation of puberty and sexual conquest. That most notable scene is followed by Eugene Levy talking to his son about like he's a human being that's done something that shouldn't be done but not something that he himself doesn't understand the desire to do especially at that age.

In the same vein as every other time I've heard of people making macguyver'd sex toys and, yes, other time's I've heard people talk about fucking couches, it's ridiculous and desperate and they know they're being laughed at by sharing it but at no point have I heard someone say it isn't true to the human experience. It's intrinsic weirdness relies on relating to others about your masturbation habits.

Look at it this way, is a foot fetish weird? I expect everyone has a fetish of some sort but having that isn't the weird part. Telling other people about it notably weird. Making said fetish your only avenue for sexual gratification is weird. Someone being super excited by feet and like licking them or whatever before sex is kinda like "Ah, okay, I see you, now. I know what you like." And not, oh my god this person is a pervert beyond the pale. Whereas if that same person goes onto some onlyfans model's insta feed and posts "show feet." that's really weird, even in the sphere of already being fallen into sexual deviance because of how it reflects other issues that are far weirder than the foot fetish and that is a lack of shame, and a lack of boundaries or to a lesser extent compartmentalization.

In the context of an autobiographical book fucking a couch is on the same level as discussing masturbation candidly but the abstraction of it being "for" something matters. Context always matters and affects what makes something weird or not. Almost all the stories I heard about men fucking inanimate objects were from people who had moved past that stage in their life and were relating how utterly impactful and intractable their libidos were as young men. If they were talking about it while they were still doing it that's an entirely different ball of wax but again I think context matters. In the context of an autobiographical book that I assume includes the pain and awkwardness of growing up it seems perfectly in keeping of something I'd expect of a teenager in the 1990s-2000s based on what I've heard from other people about the same thing.

Do you actually believe that? It's such a weird thing to say. Doing that for real absolutely has big incel energy. And the movie's pretty neckbeardy even as a movie.

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It's such a weird thing to say. Doing that for real absolutely has big incel energy. And the movie's pretty neckbeardy even as a movie.

Trolling is bad enough, but this one isn't even an artful troll. If you're going to spend time contributing nothing of value to the conversation, you could at least aim for a little originality.

Banned for a week.

Believe? I guess. I've heard from many men talking about experiences like this that it seems very normal to do from like 12-16 but not normal to talk about. I suppose it becomes less normal the older you get but I don't know how old Vance is supposed to have been in the fake excerpt. And I suppose it is "incel energy" but I don't think that that is altogether weird. Most men when they're younger are incels. It's really only weird to be an incel if you're like mid 20s and above. I can't really speak to how "neckbeardy" American Pie is but I really think that's a reach, unless we're just calling anything that's lowbrow neckbeardy, now.

(Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what neckbeardy means but to me that codes as autistic and much more concerned with fantasy/sci-fi and in-universe lore being consistent with source material. Though, like incel, neckbeard has never been clear as an insult for anything other than this person believes differently than me and this makes them bad human beings. incel being you are like this but can't have sex and neckbeard basically being you are like this but also ugly and being ugly is a bridge too far. Similar to cuck in that it feels like more of an insult that's trying to make friends with other insulters rather than actually make an accurate insult. Which, I guess, weird falls into now.)

I wonder about your background. Where have you "heard from many men" about having sex with random objects?

(Nah, autistic people aren't neckbeards. Autistic people are precious innocents. Neckbeards are creepy. Vile, dangerous, pathetic, gross, freaks...)

I've heard this from the radio, comedy specials, podcasts, youtube videos, and men posting about it on forums. I used to listen to Loveline every night and it seems to me it's as common or less common than a woman using a vegetable as a makeshift dildo, certainly not beyond the pale.

To this day, humping my bed remains my preferred masturbation method. But, I already know that I'm an extremely weird individual. Always have been, always will be.

We've ended up in an unusual situation where disaffected libertarians and social conservatives have both been grouped under the same heading of "rightist", simply because that's how the left has chosen to label them, despite the internal divisions between those two camps. It's not a particularly stable coalition. But either way, if the Republican party gets reshaped into the Party of Weird, then I'm more than happy to embrace it.

Where have you "heard from many men" about having sex with random objects?

Some people on Mongolian basket weaving forums definitely engineer all sorts of, ahem, devices to this end, I've seen literal manuals involving IIRC gloves and water beads? (for better or worse I don't have the exact link on hand) There's a "community" for everything, the old wisdom seems relevant.

Also, this is the second instance of weird breathless, gushing hatred of the outgroup I've seen here in 24 hours (the first one above my comment got deleted?), which reaffirms my belief that the "weird" attacks are indeed landing spectacularly - and not just on the target demographic. The media sure know how to pick 'em, gotta hand it to them.

I find the song and dance where anytime someone criticizes the "weird" meme they themselves get called weird to be very tiresome and toxic.

The "weird" attack angle works so well precisely because it is something Republicans think of as an attack but that lots of people wouldn't. Lots of leftists, democrats, and others would, as you note, be happy to describe themselves as weird. Not Republicans though. They are the party of The Adults In The Room. The party of Serious People. The Normals. If Republicans had enough self reflection to acknowledge or joke about their own weirdness the attack would lose all of its power. Same thing for the couch meme about Vance.

Lots of leftists, democrats, and others would, as you note, be happy to describe themselves as weird.

...would they? Still, in 2024? Rebellion used to be a cardinal virtue of the American left in decades past, but not so much anymore. They've rebranded as the faction of moral propriety. Less free love, more #MeToo.

Is it really "weird" to be gay or trans now? Is that how the left wants to frame it?

At the very least, calling yourself "weird" while also calling your political archenemies "weird" has to incur some serious cognitive dissonance.

Is it really "weird" to be gay or trans now? Is that how the left wants to frame it?

Hae you heard of the word "queer"?

But thats a totally different word! At least it is now.

Besides, does anyone self describe as "queer" these days? It seems like an old fashioned word now, that only makes sense as an umbrella term for all non-straight sexualities.

Those are the pastel people who police transgression, yes?

They are the party of The Adults In The Room. The party of Serious People.

This is the Democrats. Or at least their publicly presented image.

It's both, depending on context. Republicans consider themselves the adults in the room in the sense that they think they are the ones willing to do the messy business of doing what needs to be done to keep this country going strong, and being true to traditional morals rather than what they consider to be frivolous and immature lifestyles on the left. Democrats consider themselves the adults in the room because they think Trump is utterly insane, and they think they are the only ones willing to stand up to his brand of insanity and act like grown-ups.

From my point of view neither is really the adults in the room, but that's what they seem to think of themselves at any rate.

But I'm not sure whose vote your getting with the attack though. Is the game making republicans mad so they lash out? In my mind the undecideds are more likely to be offended by the trend than to internalize that republicans are weird and thus not worth voting for because I don't think weird works as an insult for the outsider looking in. It's just too tepid.

I think a big part of it is provoking a Republican reaction. Since weird is such a low-valence insult, if it even is one, it's unlikely to influence people either way. I think partly it's also cathartic for a lot of Democrats who have thought Republicans are weird for a long time but have felt forced into this framing where they have to treat Republicans like they're normal.

insult, if it even is one

Your alternative theory is that Walz is praising what a maverick and iconoclast Trump is?

"Weird" used to be something we could rely on the (American, at least) left defending, sure. All hail the outlaws, Spielbergs and Kubricks! Keep Austin Weird! We just commemorated the 25th anniversary of "The Weird Al Show" with the release of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"! "Queer" has been reclaimed as a term of pride!

Seeing how many people are eager to throw that attitude away now that the left is on top is a gross, Orwellian, "Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others" betrayal. It's throwing every actually-weird kid out there under the bus just to score a few political points. I used to think that seeing Animal Farm as a universal story made me a big cynical skeptic, unsurprised at how movements will throw away their support for the little people after they get solidly entrenched in power, but I'm still dumbfounded at watching people throw away principles as a way to push their polling lead above 2%.

I hope it's a flash-in-the-pan meme, not true newly-bipartisan support for anti-weirdness. Imagine how much harder it's going to be to dissuade bullying in the future if it becomes clear that so many victims weren't upset because they were righteous, they were just upset because they were envious.

I haven't been this disappointed since I discovered how many fellows on the anti-censoring-Communists left weren't strongly anti-censorship but rather just pro-censorship and pro-Communism.

I've seen this perspective a few times in other places and I'm skeptical. To my perception none of the people needling Republicans by calling them weird are using it in a derogatory way towards other groups often labeled weird (LGBT people, leftists, etc). To me the attack seems tactically deployed at Republicans due to their susceptibility to it as I articulated above. "Weird" is not itself bad, but calling Republicans weird is funny due to their insistence that they aren't. The reaction they have is the point. Not being derogatory to people who are weird in a general way.

Reddit atheists ended up being weirdos par excellence. (Even the Latinx ones.) I hear plenty about "cis gays" too.

Somebody'll manage if it's convenient.

“They don’t mean it that way they mean it some other way” seems like just another rationalization to me.

Whether it’s something about “historical context” or “power dynamics” or “punching up” seems there’s always a reason X thing that was bad is now ok, actually, once it’s useful.

The same cohort that opposes “fat shaming” will mock Chris Christie. The same cohort that opposes “kink shaming” will mock even a fake story about a horny teenager and a couch. One minute we’re holding hands praising diversity and other life experiences the next we’re mocking the illiterate southern red necks.

It’s too many epicycles for me to follow—isn’t “they don’t mean what they say and will say anything to score a point” much simpler?

It doesn't work that way. You cannot have your VP candidate call his opponents weird and creepy and engage in a coordinated campaign to label the opponent as weird and expect that to have zero effect on the valence of that word, especially on normies who don't get that you mean "people I don't like are weird which is gross, but actually weird people who are fine," a statement which doesn't even make sense on the face of it. And it definitely lights the entire concept of trying to fight bullying against weird kids on fire because impressionable youth won't hear anything except "weird is bad, the Vice President told me so."

I think you are just an asshole who is willing to burn the commons if it means you get to piss off your outgroup. As they say, the cruelty is point.

I can see that. I keep thinking about undecideds and middle America I completely forgot that most people simply don't vote and democrats have a bigger base.

The whole "weird" angle of attack seems really bad in general because it doesn't say what they want it to say. If they want to tar Vance for something made up just say he molested someone. If they want to tar republicans for being gross then call them gross, as an insult for anything against the left-leaning the word is already used that way anyway. Weird just doesn't work in my opinion. Comes out somewhere along the lines of calling an old man lame.

I'm not actually sure this is a strategy that anyone sat down and thought up in the sense that it's something that was determined with a rational calculation, it's just the Id of the American left expressing its deepest-held views against the American right. Tim Walz used the fucking-a-couch meme in his speech because he honestly believes it. He doesn't believe Vance molested someone.

But I shouldn't be throwing stones in glass houses, portions of the right have gone completely bonkers too, the memes are flying faster than I've ever seen before and people I know in real life are getting radicalized in all sorts of wild directions, even people I've long associated with stability and aversion to politics. I saw this phrase on here -- we live in a post-post-Truth world. And this election, wow, that makes it so fanatically clear. Part of me wants to suspect state-sponsored memers, but honestly I think Americans are just crazy enough to delude themselves without anyone else goading them on.

I find it extremely unlikely Walz honestly believes the couch thing. It’s well known that it’s fake, it’s just become a meme.

it's just the Id of the American left expressing its deepest-held views against the American right. Tim Walz used the fucking-a-couch meme in his speech because he honestly believes it. He doesn't believe Vance molested someone.

I think this is it. The left finds genuine social conservatism weird and concerning in a way they have trouble quite pointing out without sounding like a conspiracy theory(‘handmaid’s tale’ ‘dominionism’). They really do think Mike Pence is creepy for setting strict limits on socializing with women other than his wife. They also know, deep down, that they’d be perfectly comfortable with him giving their teenaged daughter a ride home. The expression thereof is going to be something vague, maybe with some nonsensical and probably made-up ideas. Making up creepy and embarrassing shit is probably a natural human way to express that tension.

Remember, progressives fail the ideological Turing test. They don’t know what social conservatives believe, just that it upsets them on a visceral level.

It's not just social conservatism. Trump is weird, and so is the online right which Vance feels tied to. Hanania is weird, Moldbug is weird, people on this website are weird.

Most people probably identify as weird in some way when they're probably not weird at all but since it's not really a pejorative and was in fact celebratory in most cases before this sudden shift. Hell, most of these people probably worship Weird Al and their favorite Radiohead song is Creep, hey there's another better word than weird.

This is partly its virtue, it's quite dismissive in how non-extreme it is. Up until now Trump and Vance has seemed to many Democrats a terrifying spectre – there'll be mass deportations, women will have their freedoms taken away, people without children will be paraded naked down main street and pelted with diapers. It's felt pretty nasty. By merely calling it weird, they have found a way of sublimating their fear. They are giving 'bemused', and happy to just ignore Trump and Vance.

OP also says the couch fucking thing is particularly humiliating but I don't know if it is. It's pretty tame because it's acknowledged to be factually false (it would be much much harsher tactic if they were actually spreading falsehoods, like birther rhetoric for instance). It's being mean but in a knowingly silly schoolyard kind of way that helps Dems finally start to conquer their fear of Trump.

Me, I don't find it funny at all, but I can see it has a certain power.

That's all correct apart from the bit where Trump's insults pale in comparison. This would never have happened and wouldn't be tolerated if it wasn't for Trump being one of the most shamelessly aggressive verbal bullies ever.

Yeah. There's no point in overthinking this. Democrats (and plenty of Republicans) feel bullied by Trump, who has said awful things (DEI Candidate, Willie Brown, not really black) just this cycle. Absurd to say that his attacks don't hurt reputations.

They feel delivered by Biden leaving and are engaging in some exuberant bullying themselves. Which is just one part of literally throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

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