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Notes -
Can men respect women as agents?
For all its hypocrisies, there is one aspect of girlboss feminism that continues to seem valid to me, and which makes me frustrated on behalf of women. I am talking about whether men (and women?) can respect or admire or empathize with a woman on the basis of her actions in the world or the way she wields power.
I was recently tickled but these posts on twitter/reddit:
and
In response to a man's story about "the haunting feeling of fumbling a 10/10":
I bring these examples up not to harangue men but to explicitly set aside the discourse about romantic relationships, in which most men and women seem happy to accept a certain asymmetry. A male friend recently gave me the dating advice that what's important in a partner is that they are "naturally happy", which struck me as a hilariously insufficient and condescending criterion, better suited to choosing a puppy. As a spergy gay man, I don't have a dog in this fight, if it is a fight, but I do find explicit commentary on the expectations of gendered social interaction helpful (and entertaining).
But outside the romantic context, is there not still a weird asymmetry in attitudes? For instance, women seem more able to put themselves in the shoes of male protagonists in fiction, while men generally seem uninterested in female protagonists. I am not here to say that you are sexist if you did not enjoy Captain Marvel. I hate being lectured to in my entertainment as much as anyone and find woke fiction repulsive. But it's generally hard to think of good examples of female characters occupying much mindshare among men. (Skyler White?) Who are the female counterparts to Harry Potter or Sherlock Holmes, popular among both boys and girls (and whose roles and stories do not particularly depend on their masculinity)? And of all feminist talking points, the Bechdel test stands out as one that I actually find revealing.
I am happy to grant or even defend all the usual replies, such as that women are in fact less likely to be out in the world doing extreme, daring, exciting, risky things that make for good stories. Maybe when women attempt to fill traditionally masculine roles, they will be less effective, less capable. Never mind that few women want to be mob bosses or whatever in the first place. But none of that entails that when women are competent actors in the world, men should be uninterested or even annoyed.
On the flip side, one could argue that women actually deserve no "empathy credit" for their interest in male protagonists, or at least no more credit than men deserve for their interest in Princess Leia, if women are only interested in stories about men taking action in the world when that is precisely what makes them eligible mates. But I'm not entirely convinced here.
Of course I don't think it's a moral failing if, say, by some effect of psychology, a man is incapable of admiring a woman for her achievements in the same way he might admire a man. Maybe nothing can be done to change such feelings. But if this is generally true of men, more than the reverse is true of women, then when I see rallying cries of the "nevertheless she persisted" variety, after the cringe has subsided, I must still have some lingering sympathy.
I think that a lot of this comes down to the fact that modern men living in many European/Anglosphere countries have lived for a decade+ under a system in which women wield a massive amount of power over citizens’ lives, and men can see very clearly the failure modes inherent in the way that women’s psychology interacts with access to power. (A recent and revealing example of which is this brief clip of an interview with Biden’s new pick for Director of the CDC, a textbook demonstration of the catty and supercilious nature of a woman given far more power than she should ever have tasted.)
It may at some point have been possible to believe that women given power under the right circumstances, if thrust into power and forced to perform, might do as well as men. Certainly history contains salient examples of exceptional women - Elizabeth I of England, Boudica, etc. - ably wielding power even under extraordinary pressure. (For a fictional example, many would point to Ellen Ripley from the Alien film series.) However, now that so many men are living under the direct consequences of a feminized power structure - in which even most male officials have to cater to and navigate around female preferences and sensibilities - it’s extremely natural for men to bristle against a regime that is always going to feel on some level like an unnatural imposition.
I will say that young boys, for whom sexual ideation has not yet come to totally dominate their interactions with females, might have an easier time connecting with fictional female characters. I might be shredding some of my already-scarce Dissident Right credibility by admitting that I was a massive Harry Potter fan up into adulthood, and I always found Hermione Granger extremely relatable. She’s exactly the sort of spergy, fastidious, precocious pedant that so many of the commenters on this forum almost certainly were as kids. Of course, now we are confronted with the consequences of living under a political regime controlled by Hermione Grangers - the great majority of whom don’t even have the courtesy to look like Emma Watson while crushing us under the might of the longhouse - and reading the series over again with that life experience makes it far more difficult in hindsight to feel any warmth or empathy toward the character.
A world in which a precocious and hyper-intelligent girl could have her energies directed in a positive direction is certainly desirable; I don’t want Hermione forced to be a housewife, her prodigious mental faculties dulled by menial drudgery. Female scholars and researchers have done wonderful work in the past - see Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin - as have great female artists and writers. What I don’t want is a world where those same women’s political sensibilities come to dominate the cultural production, and consequently the political priorities, of our society. (This is leaving aside discussions of hypergamy, and whether or not by opening up more avenues for women to accrue significant power, resources, and status, we throw reproductive/romantic relations between the sexes into chaos.)
There seems to be a distinction here between individual women and feminine structures. Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, etc were all women, but they operated in structures organized along masculine norms. As such, I don’t think it’s necessary to exclude the Hermione’s from the levers of power, but to require masculine norms in their operation.
I may be naive in thinking the maintenance of such a precarious balance is possible. The referenced women existed in environments where they were a fraction of a percent of the total population. Effective Altruism, despite selecting for women with the most masculine of norms, is succumbing to feminization with only a quarter of survey-takers being women. LessWrong and ACX survey-takers are about 12% female.
Of course, very little of this is actionable, but it’d be interesting to identify the threshold at which it snowballs. As a side note, I agree with Helen Andrews that feminization will be disastrous for the rule of law, so we have that to look forward to. While the influence is already clear, it will do nothing but strengthen.
To save you all the read, there is exactly one example of support this claim: Open Philanthropy publicly expressing concern about sexual harassment after a bad PR incident.
This is both false and uncharitable. The linked article references:
The widespread admonishment of Nick Bostrom among EAs after his comment on factual group differences was leaked
TIME article from disillusioned women in EA making questionable claims of sexual assault (to which the CEO of Open Phil replied, not the organization itself, as you suggest)
Open Phil making donations towards criminal justice causes without any evidential basis for their effectiveness
A highly upvoted post on the EA forum titled “I’m a 22-year-old woman involved in Effective Altruism. I’m sad, disappointed, and scared.” This post then goes on to critique EA for placing too much emphasis on rationality and not enough on emotion.
Highlights two cause areas (global dysgenic trends and the power laws of crime) that are ignored by EA as taboo.
There are more instances outside the article’s scope that I could list, but figured that captured the main body of issues, and further examples would just be further evidence of these specific trends.
I didn't really see much of a difference, but I guess I can see how some people could.
A social taboo against talking about HBD is not feminization. It was the de facto state of society well before the rise of modern feminism and woke culture. Take a random sample of men at the gym or in an MMO and start talking about how Black people are genetically inferior and let me know how it goes. HBD is not something all men secretly believe and want to talk about (if not for those pesky women!).
Though while we're on the topic, imo the general state of HBD has been the same since at least 2013 (when I started reading about it) -- basically: "Some of EAs believe in HBD and some EAs are uncomfortable with talking about it, and some EAs support strong social norms against talking about it", which should already seem strikingly different from how its talked about in the normal population.
Open Philanthropy's funding for criminal justice reform has been significant since at least 2016, went down in 2020 (when George Floyd died), and then separated from OpenPhil in 2021 because they weren't as effective as global health.
Those don't seem like the actions of an ideologically compromised organization.
I'll admit I missed this (my mistake for posting while at the gym). While I don't think "highly upvoted post on a forum" is great evidence (or I'd prove that EA is okay with Bostrom), it should certainly qualify to be included in a "summary of evidence".
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