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Notes -
Celebs, boundaries and emotional abuse
So two stories have popped up around the same topic recently: how much men have the right to complain about or police their women's public behavior.
First off: recent mother Keke Palmer finally got to go out and enjoy herself, and her outing involved being serenaded by R&B star and notorious hound Usher Raymond. Her "baby daddy" decided to come out and complain that: "A man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others".
Well, that didn't go well. The feminist-aligned internet tore into him and he appeared to have been promptly dumped and, insult to injury, merch clowning him is now being sold
At the same time, "toxic masculinity" has a white representative to balance it out: Jonah Hill is now being attacked for being a misogynistic narcissist. Soon after the birth of his child, his ex decided to post texts showing his demand that she stops sexy photo shoots or overly close relationships with men or hanging out with women from her "wild past"
Hill is also facing a backlash from the DM women for "emotionally abusing" his ex via his boundaries and non-negotiables and his exploiting of "therapyspeak" to sanctify controlling behavior.
In both stories both men are excoriated for hypocrisy because these women behaved this way when they met, and expecting them to change (including after childbirth) is inconsistency.
So, what culture war implications to take from this?
Keke Palmer's boyfriend had a very standard male reaction, regardless of charges of hypocrisy. Making it public that way was unwise, especially since he was the comparative minnow in the status competition. Times have changed. Maybe men like that should reconcile themselves to playing the role of the honorable wife who conveniently never sees any of these shenanigans, for everyone's sake. Of course, that would suggest some more restraint on Palmer's part...
The situation is reversed with Hill. He has the status. Which I suspect is a significant part of the motive to release it now and draw in Deuxmoi-reading women to help win a battle that she couldn't have won in the relationship. As many people asked: why did she put up with his absurd demands (asking her to not post risque surfing photos when he met her through them) for any time whatsoever? Well, because he was Jonah Hill, presumably.
No pretense to even wrestle with why men don't want the mother of their kids publicly on display. Just near-total lack of care.
Obviously the concept creep on abuse continues.
Is the celebrity (and wannabe celebrity) class just going to litigate every relationship online now for fans and political affinity group points...forever? The Hill thing happened a while ago and now it's supposed to be a thing? I suspect part of the push to call some of this "abuse" is precisely that there's a realization that no one should care about messy personal business. I assume the word game is retarding us coming to the conclusion one should in a panopticon: to stop caring. I wonder how long it'll hold.
Eye-opening event. Seeing some mantras being repeated that I simply can't believe:
You're not allowed to set boundaries regarding other's behavior in a relationship (excuse me, what the fuck?)
You can't expect her to stop being a bachelorette simply because you married her.
It's "controlling behavior" to have standards in a relationship.
It's insecurity, and you can't expect your partner to accomodate that even a little. (women do not have insecurities)
Anyways, shoutouts to this whole debacle for rekindling my fear of women, and quenching my fear of missing out.
This kind of stuff is only really a major problem with a very specific western, educated, secular, metropolitan, young, trendy demographic. Unfortunately, most people here fall into many of those same baskets. However, there’s no reason not to branch out. I’ve been urging people here for years to broaden their dating horizons. Dating across class and education boundaries never worked for me, but I’ve had great romantic relationships with women from Russia, Japan, and Pakistan, and my wife is Filipina.
It's always hilarious when the topic of Western men geographically broadening their dating horizons comes up in mixed company online. The normally extremely anti-racist "western, educated, secular, metropolitan, young, trendy" women become the most virulent racists and reach for the most offensive stereotypes in their seething. Gross, if you stupid incels find better success and happiness with foreign women like Russians or Filipinas, it's only because Russian women are soulless sex-doll gold-diggers and Filipinas are just midgets desperate to escape their boondock huts. Have fun exploiting your mail-order brides, you losers.
Sailer's Law of Female Journalism also applies to women more generally. Women are gripped by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be more attractive than they are.
Even liberal and progressive people will agree with this when it applies only to teenage girls. So, we get all these articles about how instagram needs to be banned; because, otherwise, teenage girls will inevitably fall into a deep depression from the mere fact they see more attractive and popular girls on their screens. That this fragility only applies to girls and boys are immune to this effect is unnoticed and uninteresting to them.
Funnily enough, I also thought of Sailer's Law of Female Journalism while I was writing the above comment, as I had a permutation in mind. Mainstream lipstick feminism: The haunting fear that somewhere, a Western man might be happy without it benefitting Western women.
Indeed, the socially progressive left often horseshoes with the socially conservative right when it comes to the agency of young women. Hence the "Fight for 25" meme, the semi-ironic notion that if young women can't consent to relationships with older men, nor do they have the agency and accountability to participate in other aspects of adult society.
Of course, older women have ample motivation for applying shaming tactics and maintaining barriers to entry when it comes to men dating younger women. Eighteen or 20-year-old women destroy 28-year-old women on the dating markets, much less 38-year-old women (see, for example, Dataclysm or Bruch and Newman [2018]).
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