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Got an interesting article to share, with a goofy-ass twist.
https://farhakhalidi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-male-centered-women?triedRedirect=true
So, my first thought is that it is rare to see a writer lay out so explicitly their hang-ups with sex positivity. She makes the case that heterosexual men exploit the “unwritten rules” of the dating game to string along women for sex, and in doing so, traumatize them through sheer carelessness.
I don’t completely disagree with her assessment of the situation, although I’m confused as to what her policy prescriptions are, and I think she’s in a “Be Careful What You Wish For” scenario.
If you’ll indulge me as I put on my over-analysis hat, the heterosexual dating marketplace can be viewed through an economic lens, with men and women modeled as agents within the marketplace.
The author is making the case that the current status quo privileges men’s interests at the expense of women’s. Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.
The optimal behavior for women, operating collectively as a self-interested guild within the heterosexual marketplace is to coordinate to demand maximal investment from men in exchange for romantic/sexual relationships. In other words, to collude, act as a monopolistic cartel and engage in price-fixing schemes.
Like every cartel ever, this is hard to enforce because every individual member’s incentive is to undercut the group-set price. It becomes especially hard to enforce in cases of romantic relationships, where people are not fungible economic actors with identical goals of maximizing profits, but flesh-and-blood human beings with radically different goals, desires, and libidos.
The solution that allows women to set a “price floor” for relationships, in spite of both those factors, is to use social technology to align their interests. In this case, that technology would be “slut-shaming”. Any woman who engages in behavior that undermines the interests of Women as a Collective (like being willing to be Chad’s booty call) is declared persona non grata at Mimosa Mondays and banished from the bookclub.
None of this will be new to the average Mottizen, although God knows we never get tired of re-hashing the gender wars. What I find especially interesting in this salvo is the delivery source. In another essay, the author explicitly rejects the patriarchal norms of the conservative community that she grew up in. Despite that, she still converges on advocating for basically traditional conservative sexual morality in women’s dating life.
My concern is that I’ve never really heard of a secular society with those kinds of restrictions on sexuality; the only places that successfully curtail premarital sex do so explicitly through a religious point of view. The Taliban has successfully prevented Afghan women from traumatizing themselves from Hookup Culture, but whether this is better for Women As A Class is left as an exercise for the reader.
The punch line to all this? The author, Farha Khalidi, is an Onlyfans star! She is the bête noire of conservative patriarchs across the globe, and every social system (that I’ve ever heard of) that frowns on premarital sex would consider what she does to be much worse.
So it begs the question: what, exactly, is she advocating for? Quite frankly, I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I think she wants a secular, sexually conservative sororiarchy, where women watch out for their gender’s collective interests and stop each other from undercutting their bids. Either way, an interesting point of view.
This, I don't think is confusing at all. Shes advocating for feminism with only the benefits. It is a common occurrence. Its not outside the realm of fantasy. Imagine a world where men could just point at a woman and say "I want" and she has to have sex with him 7 days a week and bear him 15 children. That is the reality that many think used to exist. It never did, of course, which is why the counter to it is so deranged, but here we are.
One of the greatest mistakes many progressives such as feminists make is using what they want as a starting point instead of thinking what incentive structures they are creating. The thinking easily becomes I want x while completely ignoring what incentive structures they are creating.
The reasoning becomes "I want to wear whatever I want". There is not enough thought put into that women are competitive and that the end result is going to be thongs becoming standard swimwear for women and that the hyper sexualization caused by a race to the bottom of who can get the most attention will be harmful.
I think that this generalizes to many progressive causes. For example, minimum wages are great until you solve for equilibrium. Or take affirmative action: in a world of strict meritocracy, I would be indifferent between going to a Black or Non-Black physician. In a world where it is public knowledge that the standard for enrolling in medicine depends on your race, I suddenly have to update on the race of the doctor.
For a non-progressive example, consider Israel-Hamas hostage swaps. They create terrible incentives, but why should you care about the hundreds of citizens which might get killed in the future due to your actions when you can score a political victory by bringing home a soldier right now?
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Not to personally attack you for this line, but every time I see this type of reasoning or worldview hypothesized I always think to my work partner who wore clothes she was 60 pounds and 30 years over to wear. People free to wear whatever they want face social sanction for visual pollution as much as for social defection, and visual pollution is often worse because it has concrete quality of life (and often hygiene) disadvantages. If what trannies wanted to wear was just normal dresses or blouses no one would give a shit, but they insist on wearing garish crap like its a deliberate exercise in hostile signalling.
I also agree about the incentive structures, and it is telling that the incentive structures for progressives brute-force the outcomes to fit the mechanism they create rather than adjusting to realities feedback. Body positivity was shoved down all our throats for 6 years, and while men are irrelevant to the Victorias Secret Fashion Show, women are the net buyers of that stuff and shoving trannies and fatties hardly brought in new customers. Women ultimately have working eyes and brains as well and they can tell that the products being pushed aren't actually going to make them happier. Whether its a function of the socialization matrix forcing bad behaviors onto society (the famous internalized misogyny) is a different issue, but women can tell that trigglypuff wasn't something they themselves wanted to be associated with, much less men.
Honestly though it could be a better society if people were socially incentivized to develop the beach body or an approximation therein. Being unashamed of your bikini bod (man or woman) is great, better if it came as a result of hard work put into achieving some level of healthiness. 8% body fat dehydrated veinpops are bad, but not worse than lard monsters rolling through the sands.
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Bastiat is cursed to be forever relevant.
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