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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.
Didn't we have a previous article from this lady? A couple of points-
Serious mohammedanism seems worse for women than serious Christianity at any equivalent point along the fundy vs liberalism spectrum. Of course I would say that, but I suggest this woman talk to some ladies living in conservative Christianity.
It comes as no surprise to me that women are not by and large fans of low commitment sexual activities, nor that many women value the attention they get more than anything.
This is not a new problem. The age old refrain of the cad is 'I swear I'll marry you, I just can't wait'. This is just the modern iteration. Of course, when you reject men having the authority to protect women from this, you also reject them having the responsibility to do so.
There is, in fact, a middle ground between 'women are virgins until their wedding night' and 'sex then have a date if the man liked it'. I reject it entirely but it clearly exists. I don't consider any point on this continuum a stable equilibrium but lots of people wind up there.
As to what this woman's solution is, might I suggest that an onlyfans star writing about this on her substack might have motives other than sincerely seeking a solution to a problem?
So that's now two onlyfans performers who determined that a substack is a good way to advertise to some potential clients. Aella and this one.
I find your ad hominem disgusting. While I do not have a paid subscription for either Aella's substack or OF, I read her free substack articles sometimes, and find them interesting in a way which does not make me want to subscribe to her OF.
If you really think Aella wrote Chattel Childhood because she thought "oh, my onlyfans subscriptions are stagnating, so I will just talk about child torture" then you are out of your fucking mind.
You can pretty much dismiss anything if you can gesture vaguely at a potential conflict of interest. When Scott wrote SSC, he was very much part of the medical establishment, so we can safely disregard all his articles on mental health medication. When NATO suggested that Putin might invade Ukraine, they were clearly in a partisan position, no need to pay attention to them. Whenever Anthropic produces AI alignment research, we should ignore this, because they are also building AI systems. When Ford claims that an engine has a certain displacement volume, they should not be trusted, because they just want to sell you the car.
The farhakhalidi article is not OF bait. If you want to attract men to your OnlyFans, the obvious thing would be to do is to put a hot but SFW picture of yourself into substack and mention that you are on OF. She does none of that.
Or you could say it is all part of a 5d-chess move: dissuade women from dating, so more men will end up not getting laid and going to OF, where they might subscribe to the author. This might make sense if you had a world with 10k people in it. She persuades five women to drop out of dating, which increases the number of sexually frustrated men by two, who will randomly subscribe to one of the two OF accounts which exist in the world, so she gets a new subscription, profit. It does not work in a world where there are millions of OF accounts, and a ton of alternative sources of porn besides. She is literally increase her OF subscriptions more by posting a picture of her elbow there than by trying to dissuade people from hookups.
Ad hominem? You severely misread my comment and are angrily arguing against claims I never made and don't hold.
Okay, you did not say that one can thus safely disregard opinions publicized for ulterior motives. I am sorry for for misrepresenting your views.
You did claim though that Aella decided to blog on substack with the motive to promote her OF.
I am arguing that saying "Aella performs on OF, therefore every decision she makes is with her subscriber number in mind" is overly reductionist. You might as well say "@quiet_NaN is a man (true), so he wants to get laid (probably also true). Him writing this post is obviously an attempt to gain status on The Motte to boost his attractiveness (false as far as I can tell)."
If getting people to subscribe to her on OF (rather than substack) was her motive, then she is not doing a very good job of streamlining the process. In her non-paywalled substack, she does not even mention that she is on OF, per a quick web search. But you can figure it out easily enough:
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