Comments on The Boyfriend's Introduction to Feminism

Elliot Temple
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145

Well you are assuming symmetry is appropriate and you are not considering age difference. So my criterion would be more generous than hers if the criteria were verbatim identical. It also isn’t a sensible policy for someone with a very low number of partners. And you didn’t stop to ask what ‘around’ meant (was it ±1 or ±5?)

So, no, you are completely unconvincing.

Insofar as it says something about someone (particularly women), body count matters more the younger someone is. If someone is 20 years old and has 20 bodies, that is significant. It doesn’t mean she’s a “used up whore” (not my words) but there are many questions: why does she prioritize sleeping with different people so much? Why is that so important to her? Why would she suddenly stop doing that for the sake of a relationship? Does she have a history of maintaining relationships? What does it mean for her ability to create and maintain interpersonal bonds? Does it relate to impulse control, long term thinking, good judgement, etc. Does she also abuse alcohol regularly?

All those questions are good to ask about someone before committing to a long term relationship, too.

The reason that body count matters more for women than men is that women control access to sex. A high body count for men mean being chosen by a lot of women. A high body count for women means choosing a lot of different men. There is no symmetry, not in biology, not in social dynamics, not in implications.

There seems to be this idea in bluepill / mainstream feminist culture that body count doesn’t matter. This seems utterly delusional to me, and makes about as much sense as saying a history of cheating or assault doesn’t matter for men.

As far as I am concerned, all choices people make matter if you’re evaluating them as a long term partner, including choices like being cagey or dishonest about one’s sexual history. What it means is context dependent, but ignoring it is just throwing away information. (It is ofc fine for one to be cautious about how to use that info.)

I didn’t define anything. You should probably read the excepts again. I also also had like 2 qualifiers introducing it, I’m not really interested in debating you about the nature of definitions if you’re not interested in it. If you want the definition of emotional contagion:

Discrete emotions like anger, sadness, and joy can leak from one person to another, a process which has been called “emotional contagion” in psychological literature (Doherty 1998); but so too can broader emotional or psychological states, such as depression or life unsatisfaction, which psychologists call “emotional crossover” (Härtel and Page 2009).

Because you never criticize them or acknowledge any issues (except insofar as acknowledging that you don’t think they’re perfect and some behavior can be problematic, but you don’t say which or why).

The only evidence atm that you don’t think women are perfect is that you say you don’t think women are perfect.

Well thanks for your concern. But it’s annoying, condescending, and anti-truth seeking for you to do that. Please stop, I’m not interested in what you think I need to hear. I am interested in actually understanding the world.

Even now, you are evasive about your biases. You have been every time I’ve brought it up.

I feel like we’re getting to an impasse.

146

I don’t think so, at least in a broader sense. I was thinking about modelling how a woman might act given different (dating app) contexts. I think, in general, order of operations will matter for how people act because they want to do things like time management. This can result in changing how they apply filters, or the magnitude of filters that don’t have good breakpoints.

Maybe it was ad-hoc as applied to that situation, like I had the idea close by and reached for it. (So improper generalization)

147

Some more thoughts about this:

There’s a problem of normalization, at what point is it just acceptable for men to enter women’s bathrooms? If there are no limits on tolerance, then this seems inevitable.

Also, fear of being called transphobic will stop people reporting such things in cases where SA could be prevented. I’d guess that to be worse in places like the UK with bad speech laws (where cops show up to one’s house late at night to arrest one for tweets).

This depends on someone looking to do SA (a small % of men) being there at the same time as both a cis woman and a trans women (a small % of people who use women’s bathrooms), and being physically imposing enough (a minority), and being aggressive enough, and being willing to help, and being able to intervene. So the extent to which this actually helps seems vanishingly small.

And ofc assaulters can just opportunistically stake out the situation first and not do SA when there are multiple people around.

I can easily see the bad side of normalization outweighing any good aspect.

I’m not entirely convinced that you’re wrong, but I’m definitely not convinced you’re right.

148

Here, you’re dismissing my experience even though you expect me not to do the same to yours (and I’m not). But if I actually walked you through examples, I think it would be hard for you to not classify things like attempting to OD on prescription drugs and similar emotional manipulation as ‘volatile’. Or, in a different case, deciding that we should break up and changing her mind less than 24 hours later (this happened more than once). Or, in a non-romantic case, being completely overwhelmed by stressful situations and falling apart emotionally, repeatedly (everyone has their breaking point but it just seems like women are more volatile in this regard).

All of the women I described in those 3 examples had more than a bachelors degree btw. One has a PhD now, one has a masters in statistics, and one was a practicing lawyer. So it’s not like they weren’t intelligent or capable of high level thinking.

Anyway, the point is that these aren’t little things. They’re big volatile episodes.

149

Intimate partner violence is comparable or higher in gay and lesbian relationships (compared to heterosexual):

150

Not necessarily saying this is wrong, however, these studies have some flaws worth commenting on. At least the ones I have looked at — seems you linked a meta analysis with a lot of studies. Most are paywalled and I’m not familiar with all of them, so maybe some of them escape these criticisms.

But some common issues:

Many questions are about intimate partner violence within some timeframe, common timeframes being lifetime, past 12 months, and probably more. These questions are asked of LGBT people but in the studies I’ve looked at they did not ask if the relationship where the abuse occurred was an LGBT relationship. So e.g. a woman who experienced an abusive relationship with a man and then entered a relationship with a woman would count as an LGBT person who has experienced IPV.

This makes sense in the context of the studies, since most of these studies were doing something more like gathering life data and less like trying to prove that queer people are dysfunctional.

Another possible issue is that life experience studies are self reported data, so it matters how the self-reporters perceive their own life. IPV includes non-physical violence. So e.g. someone who is more sensitive to abuse, and recognizes abusive language more reliably, might report high rates of abuse in their past than someone who is less aware and has experienced a similar amount of abuse.

151

I don’t pay, but I do use a somewhat niche app that is specifically oriented around some kinds of non-heteronormative relationships. It is easy for me to believe this has made my experience more positive than average, sure. My guess would be that fact is more relevant than your other guesses about age or account longevity.

I do want to point out that up until now you haven’t really acknowledged the existence of “middle-ground” experiences. My interpretation of your framing has been that there is a top 5% that gets almost everything, and an unfortunate 95% that gets the scraps. You didn’t say this explicitly, but you implied it and you seem to take a lot of your ideas from redpill influences who do explicitly say that. So I assumed.

Was my assumption mistaken? Do you think there’s a top 5%, a big middle ground that gets enough likes that they could have a new matched person to talk to at some reasonable intervals, and then an unfortunate bottom percentage that gets very few matches? FYI, I would find that claim way less objectionable. IMO it does conflict significantly with typical redpill depiction of dating, however.

152

The evaluations are clearer in context but I still think there’s significant ambiguity and scope for explaining how you think about those traits. I don’t think I could guess what you’ll say really accurately and anon45 less so.

153

I was thinking this over more and came up with another reason men do it.

Instead of ending the relationship, you can put lower effort into a relationship and demand more from your partner. Then either the relationship will end or you’ll get away with it. If you get away with it, you’re getting a better deal and more appealing relationship in some (potentially unfair) sense, so I can see why people would try this. If you get away with it, it could work for weeks, months, years, or life. It can stop working at some point.

It’s a little like quiet quitting a relationship instead of quitting.

I’ll stop there and leave it open to further analysis if anyone is interested. There are issues like describing what goes on in these relationships (after trying less, demanding more) and giving examples. And do men do it more (or more successfully) than women and if so why? Is it sometimes good or reasonable and if so how can you evaluate when it’s OK or not?

154

Just to clarify, I don’t want to misunderstand you and put words in your mouth: Are you saying that part of the reason you want a woman who has had fewer sexual partners is because you are specifically seeking a woman who is a significant amount younger than you? So like, roughly equivalent number of partners relative to age, but fewer in absolute terms? Or am I misunderstanding this part?

Why not?

Sure… I think my logic applies fine if you expand it slightly out from “exactly equal” though.

(I am not going to address age in my analysis below, since I agree that could change things and my question there is pending. Just assume preference is for same age.)

But looking at what you said.. firstly, it wouldn’t be plus or minus, I think you explicitly rejected that. It was only plus. So let’s say you want someone whose partner count is less than or equal to [your partners+5] — and that is a reasonable and fair and rational metric — then presumably your partner should have a similar metric. Which means actually, your range should not be less than or equal to [your partners+5], it should be [your partners±5] instead. Which is specifically not what you stated and was the criticism I was trying to make.

Your original statement seemed to imply you did not want them to go much above your own partner count. Whether that wiggle room is 0 or 1 or 5 is kind of irrelevant… my point is that a rational criteria applied to both parties would imply that your desired partner count is ± whatever your upper limit might be. Whether that is ±0, ±1, or any other value doesn’t matter too much for my point, I think.

Again, genuinely not trying to put words in your mouth. If I misunderstood you, no problem, my mistake.

Sure it might be. Any sexual history outside of the average could be significant. But my view is that whether or not that significance is actually relevant to a potential relationship depends entirely on the explanations involved. So a guideline of how many partners is acceptable would be, in my view, irrational.

She might not. Maybe she spent a month going to orgies to see how they were and decided they weren’t for her. Or a million other possible explanations. Past priorities are no particular guarantee of current ones.

Isn’t this the entire premise of monogamy? Why would anyone do that? Whatever your answer… apply that answer to her I guess?

I am not sure that 20 year-olds even can have a meaningful history of maintaining serious romantic relationships.

It could mean a lot of things. Maybe she has twenty really good friends who she had sex with at some point during the friendship. That would be an unusually high number of strong interpersonal bonds, pretty impressive.

Or it could mean less good things. Unclear.

This is a good question. Do you think that sexual partner history is a good proxy for this? Why not just figure out the answer to this question directly?

If men are being chosen by a lot of women that they aren’t also choosing, that would be a form of sexual assault or rape. I’m guessing you don’t mean that.

Each man actually does control access to sex with him. If a woman wants to have sex, but a man declines, then consensual sex cannot occur.

Disregarding rape, there is actually symmetry there. Men and women both choose each other when they have sex.

Note that I don’t even need to argue about whether or not women have an easier time finding men who will choose them for sex. That is what you’re driving at, and it could be true. I think it generally is true. But even if that’s true, all of the stuff I said above remains true as well.

To be clear, you think that having lots of consensual sexual partners is similar to a history of cheating or assault?

But only for a woman. A man who has a history of many sexual partners is less concerning.

I think women are generally better at relationships than men. There are lots of exceptions, specific women might be super terrible, but we are speaking mostly in generalities here.

Most of the common flaws women bring to relationships are either symmetrical non-gendered flaws (lots of those), or self-destructive flaws like taking on too much emotional burden and trying too hard to make things work with a guy who isn’t worth it.

However, there’s more to life than relationships. I am not going to go out of my way to list criticisms of women for you, but I will say this: I mentioned a list of masculine traits that are bad for relationships to Elliot. I think many of those traits can be positive attributes in many contexts of life. So that is a sense in which the average woman might be lacking in positive traits.

156

This is formatted incorrectly. Put a full blank link between your paragraphs (hit return twice assuming you’re using the markdown text entry mode). You’ve done this a lot, not just in the quoted example. Also you spelled LASIK incorrectly.

157

Alright, I’ll give a few details to illustrate what I mean.

Argumentative, disagreeable

These often go together. Being disagreeable and starting arguments over any disagreement can potentially be a mixed trait with some positives in some contexts, e.g. academia or some work offices. But in a long term romantic relationship, the primary goal should always be collaboration and mutual respect. Empathy and being able to understand your partner’s perspective even if you have some reservations is pretty important. Maybe you are missing something, and forcing an argument when someone else is not ready for it isn’t a good way to find out the truth.

You have to spend a lot of time together. Is every single disagreement worth hashing out to a conclusion every time? In a healthy relationship of mutual respect you might have long term pending disagreements for years that you return to and discuss many times before fully resolving them.

Also, being argumentative and disagreeable often goes hand-in-hand with…

competitive,

I think this one barely needs explanation. A romantic partnership should be a team effort. If you are competing, that implies you are trying to win at the others expense.

Some friendly competition might be fine, like when playing board games or seeing who can do more household chores… but even these could backfire if the winner gloats and/or the loser is resentful, or other issues.

angry,

Getting angry isn’t generally good. It’s one of the worse, more destructive of emotional outbursts. Ironic that it is also one that is commonly not even viewed as “being emotional.”

Even if you get angry at stuff that isn’t your partner, it’s unpleasant to be around. Especially if you are in close proximity with the angry person.

judgmental,

Kinda similar to argumentative and competitive. This implies a more adversarial arrangement, less collaborative/team-building.

Most people don’t like to feel like their partner is constantly judging them and finding them unworthy.

stoic,

Relationships involve emotions. Being closed off and refusing to share your emotions can cause problems. You may take on too much burden until you finally snap. Your partner may feel cut out, left out of your life, or otherwise distanced.

Stoicism has lots of connotations and some of them might even be good in a relationship (I do not entirely disagree w/ study @anonymous45 posted). But these are some examples of bad ways it could go.

risk-taking, individualistic

Part of being in a long term partnership, especially a family with kids, is being able to prioritize other people sometimes. This does not have to involve self-sacrifice, but it should involve recognizing that you value your partner and the relationship between you as something that is worth investing effort in and not always getting perfectly commensurate payoff.

What will you do if your partner gets sick, or injured, or has other problems?

Relationships and families are at least a little bit of a collective. You pool resources and effort and help each other. Sometimes one of you may shoulder more burden than the other. Being able to do that without being resentful is important. Also, when you take risks, that could impact more than just yourself. If you financially ruin yourself, that could also ruin your partner/family.

–

Hope this brings some clarity. I don’t think this is a complete list.

158

Yeah, it’s deliberate. I can avoid it.

The reasoning is grouping and list-like structuring. Usually there’s some change in subject that’s subtler than the change between paragraphs. Feels kind of natural.

159

One reason for this you haven’t mentioned is to avoid a messy breakup and/or a crazy ex. Whether the underlying phenomena is true or not is besides the point, I’ve heard people advocate it seriously.

If your gf really likes you then breaking up with her has a lot of tears and anger and whatever. There’s a good chance she’ll resist or end up making your life hard in some way. In the worst case you get a crazy stalker who really interferes with your life.

Alternatively, if she breaks up with you, then it’s her decision and that way you get none of the bad bits.

Just acting badly in general isn’t the best strategy here. Much better is to figure out what her icks are and trigger those.

160

Please stop. It doesn’t read well. It makes big walls of text that are hard to skim or find your place in. And depending on screen width, people may not see where your line breaks are.

In general, there are two writing styles. You put full blank lines between paragraphs or you tab indent the start of paragraphs. Other markers like bullet points at the start of paragraphs are also readable. Without full lines between paragraphs and also nothing to mark the start of paragraphs, you run into the problem where a sentence ends at the end of a line, which is also visually near the right margin, and then people have no reasonable way to tell if the next line starts a new paragraph or not. (On computers you can often figure it out anyway with effort but people usually won’t. In print you can’t.)

It looks like you’ve made up then used an ad hoc writing style without thinking through the consequences of violating established norms/traditions or empathizing with readers.

161

To clarify, are you impartially saying this is the strategy some men employ? Or do you think there is some logic to this strategy? My guess is the latter since you advocate specifically intentionally triggering icks.

I think it’s fantastical to think you’ll get “none of the bad bits” if you make your girlfriend so miserable that she hates you and breaks up with you. Lots of people would have a ton of resentment for a partner in that situation.

I also think this is a good example of how some masculine traits — such as liking stoicism and wanting to invest a lot of time and energy in avoiding any chance that you might have to deal with emotions — can result in terrible dating strategies. This might be a better example for stoicism than the one I put on my list above.

162

Are you claiming that non-reporting of murders is a crime in the US?

163

Yes and yes, but I don’t think it’s a good or nice strategy.

Sure, tho I don’t think telling her is part of the plan. That’s why the ick thing is a smarter strategy. You just nudge her towards not being attracted to you anymore.

164

I am going to try to summarize. This is a sincere attempt, let me know if I misunderstood.

You believe that breaking up with a woman while she still likes you so much that she would prefer to stay in a relationship is worse than creating a situation where a woman dislikes you/is disgusted by you/hates you and chooses to end the relationship on her own?

(Let’s say “worse” above is defined as one or more of: more dangerous, more difficult, more unpleasant, more likely to result in bad reactions & behaviors)

165

I wasn’t thinking about the US particularly, but it appears to be the case in some states. e.g., Texas

(quote has modified formatting)

Sec. 38.171. FAILURE TO REPORT FELONY.
(a) A person commits an offense if the person:

  • (1) observes the commission of a felony under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that an offense had been committed in which serious bodily injury or death may have resulted; and
  • (2) fails to immediately report the commission of the offense to a peace officer or law enforcement agency under circumstances in which:
    • (A) a reasonable person would believe that the commission of the offense had not been reported; and
    • (B) the person could immediately report the commission of the offense without placing himself or herself in danger of suffering serious bodily injury or death.

(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

This is a bit more specific than what I claimed in that you must have observed the crime.

More generally I was thinking about all the associated crimes, like depending on context you might get charged with concealing a death, or aiding and abetting.

Also I think in some places it’s a crime not to report a death.