Comments on The Boyfriend's Introduction to Feminism

[anonymous105]

I’m skeptical of your self assessments. A couple of quotes:

@anonymous45

Of my long term relationships, I’d say 60-80% of the women have been more emotionally volatile than me, and the rest about the same.

@anonymous45

WRT women being ‘used up’ yeah I’m not going to commit to it because I don’t think that’s a good way to judge people. There are exceptions maybe (like triple digits seem like a red flag for other reasons) but if I had to have a rule of thumb to go by for body count it’d just be around or less than mine (which is above both median and average) — that seems reasonable.

I think it is conspicuous that your assessment is that women are mostly more volatile than you, and that the correct number of sexual partners is equal to or less than your number of sexual partners.

I think these kinds of judgements are suspicious.

Re: number of sexual partners, if your metric is reasonable, then surely reasonable women would reject you for the same reasons, right? Which means any woman with a lower partner number than yours ought to reject you for having a higher count. If they didn’t, that would make them unreasonable, and you shouldn’t want to date them then. So the correct number of sexual partners for a woman to have isn’t less than or equal to yours, it should just be equal to yours. Any more or less would be unreasonable. Right?

@anonymous45

Because they are less emotionally stable. (Or at least something like emotional instability would be feminine-coded, to use the authors language.)

It seems like you (and this author? I did not read the full paper) are defining emotional stability as synonymous with stoicism. Stoicism is a trait heavily associated with men. Ergo, men are more emotionally stable because they’re more emotionally stable?

@anonymous45

Sure, I was kind of being a bit sarcastic here (sorry, not great for discussion), mostly because your answers seemed heavily biased to pointing out what is bad about men while making no admissions that women are contributing to any of the problems.
I don’t think that’s a good way for us to actually make ground because your biases are getting in the way – or at least that’s how it seems to me.

@anonymous105

Is there a particular bias claim you’d like me to address?

You can pick any one, or the one just above (which is a combination of biases but you could address why you’re so one-sided in what you say if you think plenty of women are problematic too).

I am focusing on men because that seemed relevant to the topic. Why would you assume that means I think women are perfect? I don’t think that logically follows.

Put bluntly, I don’t think you need to hear more criticism of women right now. That doesn’t seem like it would be good for you, and so far it hasn’t seemed relevant to the points I was making.

Why does this betray a bias?

@anonymous45

Proportionally, more of the trans people I know are in relationships than cis-het people, but I definitely do not think that’s because they’re more emotionally stable or have a better understanding of themselves.

Queer people are much more likely to seek mental health services than cis/hetero people. (Example source: Sexual minorities more likely to seek mental health services, study finds | UCLA Health ) Do you think that’s because the majority of non-queer people are extremely stable and mentally sound and don’t have any big emotional problems?

If not, wouldn’t it suggest more queer people are self aware of their need for mental health support? And even if mental health support is imperfect, as long as it helps at least more often than it hurts, wouldn’t that mean queer people are successfully receiving some mental health support?

@anonymous45

Yes I can see how they’re different but I think you’re being a bit pedantic. It doesn’t really matter where the line is drawn, just that it’s significant by some normal standard. Perhaps for income it might be $300K+, or for wealth it’s like $1m+ in your 20s, or for power it’s being the CEO of a company with 50+ employees.

I disagree that it is pedantic.

I think you were conflating two different ideas. One had to do with getting access to super wealthy men, the other had to do with getting access to men that make any significant amount more money than alternative men. These are different situations. Maybe not worth rehashing right now though. We can let this one go for now.

@anonymous45

I wouldn’t mind it so much if you were more open to, or put forward, criticisms of women’s behavior in dating markets and the like. That would go a long way to help alleviate my concerns of bias.

Like I said above, I am not sure this is a good idea. From my perspective this is kind of like me arguing with someone that I find their views racist, and then they ask me to offer up some criticism of black people just to alleviate their concern that I am biased in favor of black people.

I don’t see the point, other than to assuage an emotional discomfort you are experiencing. And I’m not convinced I should do that. Sorry.