To people who are trying to do armchair cultural analysis, or trying to comment on The Discourse, or trying to make big sweeping insight-porn-y claims about what The Problem is, I exhort you with all my might:
get out of your bubble get out of your bubble get out of your bubble
(Or, at least, acknowledge that you’re talking mostly about the stuff inside your bubble, and that it is your intention to keep on doing so. Which is fine, so long as everyone is clear on it, and no one is trying to apply your insights to Society-at-large.)
So often, of late, I’ve found myself asking: “why is this person issuing assertions that make no fucking sense?” And in so many cases, the answer seems to boil down to “he is trying to wrestle with something that is happening right in front of his eyes, something that really matters to him, and the fact that things look super different in most of the world doesn’t much enter into his calculations.”
A couple of unnecessarily touchy examples:
* I was recently rereading a couple of @slatestarscratchpad‘s old nerds-versus-feminists pieces (because he linked to them), and sharing in his bafflement that so many feminists seemed to be so angry at nerds-as-a-class, given that nerds are actually a very feminist and feminist-friendly group of people and that so many obvious subcategories of men seem so much worse on that front. But most of those men genuinely do not matter to your average feminist participating in the discourse, except maybe in some very abstract sense. If “Henry” is out there continually beating his wife, cheating on her with his previously-beaten ex-wives, exploiting her economic contribution to his household, and generally being a monster in every sense by feminist standards…well, unless you’re in a very unusual position (like a doctor in a hospital that provides services to the poor), you’ll never interact with him, or with anyone who knows him, or with anyone like him. Your world consists of the sort of overeducated young people who live in coastal cities and participate in middle-to-high-culture activities, plus the sort of people who engage in Serious Conversations on the Internet, which is mostly a subset of the above. So: women who are mostly feminists, the sort of socially adroit men who are very vocal about being good feminist allies (because they don’t want to be pilloried and/or because they want to get in your pants), and…nerds. Nerds are the closest thing to a local visible enemy. Nerds are the people who argue with you when you make assertions, who exist within your field of view while maintaining institutions that are weirdly alien to your sensibilities. Saying “they should have less of the good stuff and people like me should have more” is a social maneuver that makes sense, in context. And, more charitably, it makes sense that nerd opinions/habits/customs seem salient enough to be worth critique, whereas Henry’s straightforwardly-worse predilections are pretty much out of sight and out of mind.
And, on the flip side,
* If you read the writings of certain kinds of thinkers on the far-right fringes, there is a certain kind of essay you’ll come across sooner rather than later: “the Why Women Are All Like That” essay. Usually it’s got a lot of evo-psych in it of one stripe or another, usually it ends up concluding that women have to be absolutely mastered and controlled by men for their own good and the good of society. (Also, usually, concluding that this is secretly what they all want.) And, completely leaving to one side the quality of the argumentation, there’s a certain element of…why did you think this was a good hypothesis in the first place? Have you met any women, literally ever, or are you just trying to imagine what they’d be like based on your favorite novels? Because, I assure you, they are most definitely not All Like That. Except I’m starting to believe that, in the unhelpfully limited experience of these men, women actually kind of are All Like That. Humans self-segregate in a wide variety of important ways. In particular, the nerdy abstract-minded women – the ones who seem like they ought to be most personally relevant to these guys, who are obviously abstract-minded nerds themselves – are mostly segregated into enclaves that are heavily urban, liberal, etc. If those traits don’t appeal, you’re going to be stuck hanging around places where the women are overall a lot more alien, and that will take its toll. In particular in particular, if you’re starting off from a half-formed assumption that Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus and mostly you’re trying to find a reproductive partner rather than a friend…and you’re also trying to be Sexually Successful with Objectively Attractive Women according to some preformed criterion…you’re going to center in on the kinds of places where women act the very most, uh, Like That.
Additionally, the guy writing that essay, who wants Men to be in Charge of Women - well the men he’s thinking of - they’re the men he knows. His friends and colleagues, who obviously also shouldn’t be in charge of women, but who probably aren’t monsters.
Somebody should remind that guy that Henry exists, and should be in charge of exactly nothing.
…for better or worse, the guy writing that essay is assuredly very aware that Henry exists. Kind of obsessed with it, in fact. Inclined to see the project of “saving society” as being largely “saving society from the fast-breeding hordes of Henry and his ilk,” a plan that at the very least involves throwing all the female members of Henry’s social groups under the bus (and probably writing them off as unsalvageable from the get-go).