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Richard Hanania is a man whom I do not always agree with but do appreciate for successfully pissing off people both on the left and the right. The ability to piss off people from both of those groups is, in my opinion, generally correlated with being right about things.
Well, Hanania has allegedly been linked to a pseudonym. The allegation is that about 10 years ago, he was routinely saying taboo things about race and gender issues under the name "Richard Hoste".
Some quotes:
It's nothing very shocking for those of us who read dissident right stuff, and it's not even really that far away from Hanania's typical under-his-birth-name writing. But it may be a bridge too far for much of the more mainstream audience.
What I wonder is, which way shall Hanania go?
Own it, say "yes I am Richard Hoste and I did write those things"? He would gain praise from some people for honesty, but he would also stand probably a pretty good chance of losing book deals, interviews with some mainstream figures, and so on.
Deny deny deny?
Ignore it?
I think that it is an interesting case study, the attempted take down of one of the more famous examples of what is now a pretty common sort of political writer: the Substacker whose views are just controversial and taboo enough to have a lot of appeal for non-mainstream audiences but are not so far into tabooness, in content and/or tone, to get the author branded a full-on thought-criminal.
He wrote about it.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-used-to-suck-and-hopefully
Hard to overstate how intellectually unappealing this is. I actually empathize with it on some level, but it's sure not an argument that LoserCuckHanania was wrong and WinnerCareerHanania is right. I like Hanania in general, but it really is striking how much the change seems to be about having something to lose. I surely won't be part of any cancellation project against him, but it probably does diminish my view of him as an honest actor.
Why is it stated as self-evident even by supposed ideological dissidents like Hanania that romantically unsuccessful men are the only men holding so-called misogynistic views? I've never seen any evidence of this anywhere, and there are very obvious examples to the contrary.
Because at least some scholars who study such men seem to think (e.g. William Costello) that they do tend to be more misogynistic (which, as pointed out, is different from them being the only misogynists)?
The linked study is based on scoring higher on scales for "Hostility Towards Women", "Rape Myth Acceptance", and "Sexual Objectification". Reading the appendix, these scales are sufficiently low-quality that it is difficult to conclude much from them, at least not without the data for how people responded to individual questions.
Some of the 10 items on the "hostility towards women" scale include "I feel that many times women flirt with men just to tease them or hurt them.", "I am sure I get a raw deal from the women in my life. ", and "I usually find myself agreeing with women. (Reverse coded)". It doesn't really provide novel information to learn that someone romantically unsuccessful has worse experiences with women and is less likely to have someone like a wife in his life that he is more likely to agree with than if the women he interacts with are strangers. (It's also a bit funny to imagine someone making a "hostility towards men" scale and making one of the items "I usually find myself agreeing with men. (Reverse coded).")
Meanwhile large sections of "Rape Myths" and "Sexual Objectification" are things the now-successful Hanania would presumably agree with. Questions like that are going to pick up on very broad demographic correlations with ideology. The ideological bias on display also makes me more skeptical about the people conducting these studies. Examples of the 11 "Rape Myths" include "To get custody for their children, women often falsely accuse their ex-husband of a tendency toward sexual violence.", "Many women tend to exaggerate the problem of male violence." and "It is a biological necessity for men to release sexual pressure from time to time.". (The last would naturally correlate with high sex drive and thus sexual dissatisfaction.) Examples of the 10 "Sex Objectification" items include "Being with an attractive woman gives a man prestige.", "Using her body and looks is the best way for a woman to attract a man.", and "Sexually active girls are more attractive partners.".
Also some of these seem sufficiently unarguable that it seems like it might be heavily influenced by the respondents' social desirability bias. For instance, if many of the men disagreeing that "Being with an attractive woman gives a man prestige." or "Sexually active girls are more attractive partners." believe otherwise but are the type to answer surveys with what they perceive as the most socially desirable answers, are they also more likely to misrepresent how sexually satisfied they are? And the second one would also measure sex drive.
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