This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I did consider your point. My point is indepent of that.
In that, it doesn't really matter who started all this. The only ones who can fix it are women. Because they are the choosers and trend setters.
For some reason, they don't choose in the interest of their better judgements as you claim, AND they don't set the trend otherwise. What does this tell us? That they want it to be this way. And if they don't any individual woman can "defect" not at great cost but great gain. Do you think if A INDIVIDUAL woman actually approached men [1] and wasn't maximally hostile to mens existence in matters of transmitting and receiving, she would have a bad time? Do you really think most men are asking for blowjobs the first time they meet a woman? This is a non issue for the individual woman. And things that can be fixed individually are not cause for me to lose sleep. It's like yeah obesity is a societal problem, but it probably isn't for you, you can just go to the gym.
On the male end, there is little any individual man can do. I do lose sleep over those with cancer.
So yes obesity and cancer both kill a lot of people and sucks for both of them. But talking about obesity is a bit of a waste of time.
Once again, I'm not reading past any of the things that you said, I just don't think men have nearly enough control over this as you think they do.
[1] Yeah I know RADICAL IDEA. But nothing but society is actually preventing any woman from doing it. Also at the same time men get shat on more and more as they do it.
They don't need to do this, but most of the behavioral changes that will have to fall on the shoulders of women.
And yet men have bad experiences while approaching women all the time & have to learn how to not be perceived as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. Frankly, I think that the attitude that most women seem to have where they only want to do the things that are fairly easy and that feel good, at the expense of men who then have to pick up that slack, is exactly the kind of attitude that needs to change to fix things without having to curtail women.
I agree with you that there are women who would have a bad time, just like there are men for whom having to approach women means having a bad time. On the other hand, there is also the outside view, from which you can also judge how much nastiness happens to a person by standards that are independent of personal traits/feelings. For example, I think that it is reasonable to say that a WW I soldier in the trenches has a harder time than someone born into wealth and safety, like Richard Corey. Yet as the poem describes, the person of privilege can nevertheless be extremely unhappy. But that doesn't mean that they had to deal with tough circumstances.
It seems that the extent to which people are content depends heavily on what they expect of life or what people get who they consider to be peers. Yet when those expectations aren't met, it doesn't mean that they are truly hard done by. And the big issue that we are dealing with is that many people nowadays seem to have expectations that are unrealistic (in the sense of what behavior/effort on their part will have what result), with unmet expectations. And especially for women, some expectations get cut off due to age, due to infertility and a greater decline in attractiveness due to aging. And it seems that women often only seem to realize that their approach is bad once they get close to 'the cliff' and it is hard to salvage things this late in the game.
Anyway, I have noticed that women who complain about the result of approaching men pretty much always throw up red flags that suggest to me that they don't recognize that it is far harder to learn how to do this than how to wear makeup or dress up nice; and expect a level of success and a lack of bad experiences that is utterly unrealistic. Your story does indicate that you at least tried multiple times, but it is a red flag that you seem to attribute being "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate" to being a woman who approaches men, rather than a lack of skill (and yes, the cold call is way harder than a warm call, so approaching people is way harder than reacting to an approach). It's another red flag that you even consider it worth mentioning as a bad outcome that one(!) man expected sex right away.
If a man would argue that approaching women doesn't work because he was "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate," or would complain that he can't deal with having a single women get the wrong idea and want his baby right away, he would get raked over coals.
Now, an argument can be made that it's not realistic or fair to expect women to take on this task, for biological or cultural reasons. Perhaps women would even become less attractive to men if we increase their stoicism by the same methods that we use on men, so they can deal with even a fraction of the rejection rate that men commonly experience. It's quite likely that we can't even do that, as people appear to have an inbuilt biological drive to treat male children differently, since we apparently don't need a cultural mechanism for much of it. For example, research shows that parents ignore crying male babies much more, but I can't see a cultural mechanism that teaches parents this.
So perhaps only less liberalism would help, although the incredible stupidity of the people that currently are in a position to steer our culture doesn't exactly make it likely that they'll analyse the problem correctly, let alone come up with a working solution that is spread through the propaganda system.
Perhaps you should reread my comment with a more charitable mindset, because you seem to be missing the points I make by a mile. For example, I didn't at all say that it's a red flag that you didn't like an interaction with a man who assumed that you were open to have sex right away. What I did say that it is a red flag that you considered such a single incident, that to me seems a fairly minor inconvenience, to be a strong argument to not want to approach men as a woman. If it were to happen all the time, it would be different, but that was not what you claimed.
Note that I did agree with you that what the other person said was wrong and that there are women for whom approaching men will be very unpleasant (just like it is for some men). So I'm not sure why you are acting like I was saying any different. I have my own beliefs and don't feel obligated to accept the narrative of the other person you were arguing with or your narrative. I can disagree with both of you; and do.
No, my claim is that you, and every women I've ever seen complain about their experience while approaching men, seem to expect a level of guaranteed ease and lack of bad experiences that seems very unrealistic. It's like having men complain that approaching women doesn't work because they fail when they put in as little effort as Brad Pitt or George Clooney presumably need to do. It's my belief that a man who would complain like you, would at best be kindly told that he's having completely unrealistic expectations and at worst would be called an entitled creep who deserves jail time.
I do believe that women are often under-appreciating men, for example, by being very unfair to men who have difficulty with the dating process, but this is not actually part of my argument, as it's beside the point (except for the effect it has on their own perception of how easy it is to be the one approaching). I believe that women have it way easier when approaching men. For example, women are considered creepy far less quickly and even if they are, they are far, far, far less likely to get beaten up over it or excommunicated due to it. I do get that men are often not used to getting approached and may thus react relatively poorly compared to situations where people have a pro-social script ready, as many people operate based on scripts and are not very good at freestyling. But everything I've seen, from my own personal experiences to video's with a hidden camera where women approach men with weird requests, tells me that men almost always act way nicer to women than how men act to men or women to men. So a woman approaching men seems to be playing the game on easy mode. Of course, you can still lose on easy.
Men who approach women with the goal of a long term relationship actually also have to overcome an assumption that they may just want sex and/or are desperate. It's a hard challenge in general to shift the person you approach to a sexual mindset where they start to evaluate you as a potential partner, but without them getting upset because they feel forced into a sexual dance that they don't want, or having the wrong idea about what kind of relationship you are aiming for, or considering you the lesser person just for being the one who is making the offer.
An issue is also that women are actually already approaching men. These are often called 'groupies' and they do typically seem to want casual sex or at least, use sex to get a shot at seducing a top tier man. If anything, this willingness by women to approach a small subset of men, and the ease with which they have sex with these men, but very rarely approach those who are not very attractive, makes the problem worse.
I don't know what kind of men you were approaching, but I have heard a decent number of stories where introverted men found a relationship by being approached. It seems likely to me that the paucity of women who approach men who are not rock stars, also enables approaches that are much harder for men to use, like corny pick-up lines or extreme bluntless, like telling introverted men that you approach them because the introverted men that you are attracted to don't dare to approach women and that he better not get the wrong idea and that you still expect him to impress you to have a shot. By using such an approach, you shift the frame from you wanting something from him, to you being so kind to give him a chance. Of course, it needs to be sufficiently true for it to work and it shouldn't be too aggressive or not aggressive enough.
As always the approach needs to be tailored to those you want to seduce, though, and I don't know who you tried to seduce. If you try to approach men who are very successful by approaching women, it's probably a lot harder of a sell.
Anyway, my point was primarily that I'm unconvinced by your arguments for your claim that approaching men isn't viable for you. I think that getting upset over a single person getting the wrong idea strongly suggests that you expect a level of success that is unreasonably for the vast majority of men and women. Attributing being perceived as desperate or such to being a woman who approaches men, rather than even entertaining the possibility that it is the way you do go about it, is also very unconvincing to me.
Of course, it is possible that you cannot achieve a decent success rate (by male standards, which you may consider absurdly low), but I am simply unconvinced by the evidence you present.
But that is a false dichotomy, because almost all flirtation happens when people are talking already, so that's when the approach has already happened. Of course, it is possible to signal interest (or flirt) from afar, but I believe that only a relatively small majority of approaches by men happen only after the woman has specifically signaled her interest in that man and he actually noticed.
In many cases, the man responds to a more general indication that the woman is open to being approached (like wearing revealing clothing) or simply makes the attempt without indications.
I think that the current situation where men don't have clear rules of what is allowed, don't get taught as much what to do and there is less room for making mistakes, leads to fewer and fewer men approaching women without any indications of her interest and putting less trust in ambiguous signals that do signal interest. So women's flirtation game is also not working as well.
The result is then that women who depend on men approaching them are effectively all fighting over a decreasing percentage of men, which automatically means that women are increasingly going to miss out, because the numbers don't match. But the consequences are actually more complex than just women missing out, because the increased bargaining power of those men means that men who do have the natural and or learned ability to deal with the new reality, or the lack of self-preservation instincts, can now 'pump and dump' women or otherwise treat women in ways that are ultimately bad for women.
So superficially it may seem like your approach is working quite well, because unlike men who complain about them failing, women do typically end up having casual sex and/or end up in a relationship with a guy who never gets serious and whom she leaves after a few years to try again, only to be alone for some years, only to get into a relationship with another non-serious person, until she gets close to infertility and either she never ends up with the family she wants or goes for one of the desperation moves (single motherhood, picking some shitty man who does want children, but is a bad parent and partner, etc).
But are those really successes for most women? And at the same time, we have perfectly fine men who end up alone and men who had potential, but were left to whither on the vine.
I believe that unless you change our culture (for which you supplied no plan at all), women in general and at least a solid subset of women, would be better off in the long term if they would adapt to the current situation and would approach shy men and diamonds in the rough. However, what probably won't work that well, is if you start to approach the subset of men that do well with women in the current culture. It's actually in their interest to discourage you from approaching men, because that would give their shy competitors a chance.
You are actually the person who came up with the "$20 bill on the ground," not the other commenter. He said that women who approach men would gain rather than lose. He never said that it was trivially easy for women to do this, which your "$20 bill" comment implies.
You also very single-mindedly interpreted that 'gain' as what makes you more comfortable during the initial dating process, which is certainly not the only way to look at it. By that standard, having children is never a 'gain' over remaining childless, as children cause plenty of discomfort, certainly initially. Yet a large majority of people do believe that the benefits are worth it overall.
You may of course believe that the costs of having to approach men are too great (for you), but I don't think you've been charitable to the opinions of f3zinker or myself, when you apparently refuse to even entertain the idea that the downsides you experienced are perhaps solvable (for most women) or are fairly minor inconveniences that you only get so upset about because you've got a bad mindset; and bring upsides that may be larger than the downsides, especially in the long term (by having a substantially higher chance to end up with a better man).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link