Can We Avoid a Terminally Awkward Future?
Neil Sinhababu’s post here — and, even more so, the four-year-old post he links to — seems to have a lot in common with that greatly maligned Kay Hymowitz piece from last month. Which means the latter might be worth revisiting — or at least recasting in a light that doesn’t put quite so much emphasis on blaming women for “making life harder” for guys.
I think Hymowitz touched on a couple of important truths: It is manifestly true that feminism tore down a lot of the (antiquated) rules of everyday etiquette regarding romantic interaction, and failed or refused to build new ones in their place. And it is experientially true (at least as illustrated in the xkcd comic, Neil’s posts and Hymowitz’ article) that the guys this hurts are the guys who are insufficiently full of themselves to blunder on without knowing what constitutes appropriate behavior.
The question, of course, is where we go from here. I’m with Hymowitz’ critics in recognizing that there was a reason we threw out the chivalric code, and if that were our only alternative, awkwardness would be a small price to pay. But I don’t think it is the only alternative. Creating a new code of etiquette would eliminate the guessing game for nice guys and allow for the punishment of the pseudo-nice-guy brutes who emulate pickup-artist behavior because they claim it’s the only way they can get women’s attention.
A lot of liberals seem to view any social code as intentional or unintentional discrimination in disguise, which is an attitude I don’t necessarily share. But given just how lost the “nice boys” seem to be, I wish people would give just a little more consideration to creating a new, egalitarian social code, instead of assuming that awkwardness is a necessary consequence of equality. The alternative is watching variations on this xkcd strip get reused year after year, each time provoking a wistful sigh from thousands of nerds who think they’re unlucky in love but are actually just timid.
“The question, of course, is where we go from here.”
Funny, just the other day I was asking Jim Manzi the exact same question.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 02:52 PM · #
Right. I don’t share Jim’s spiderwebby pessimism, as it happens, but I’m thinking less about recreating vanished social norms than slowly building new ones.
I think it’s actually quite easy to create negative norms on the ground level if you have the confidence/conviction to express your disapproval by putting social force behind it. (Heck, the ultimate fear in the xkcd comic isn’t just individual rejection, but that the girl will be able to enlist the other subway passengers to punish him for his transgression.) Positive norms are a bit trickier, but people seem to be acutely aware that there’s a vacuum there, so a well-placed bit of “advice” could acquire normative force as it spreads and more and more people rely on it as a guideline.
Obviously both of these will be most effective coming from people who have some authority (men to men, friends to friends, etc.), and directed toward people who are inclined to trust that authority. Luckily, the nice guys seem to fit the latter pretty squarely, given how nakedly they’re asking for help.
— Dara Lind · Sep 28, 03:04 PM · #
“I think it’s actually quite easy to create negative norms on the ground level if you have the confidence/conviction to express your disapproval by putting social force behind it. (Heck, the ultimate fear in the xkcd comic isn’t just individual rejection, but that the girl will be able to enlist the other subway passengers to punish him for his transgression.) Positive norms are a bit trickier, but people seem to be acutely aware that there’s a vacuum there, so a well-placed bit of “advice” could acquire normative force as it spreads and more and more people rely on it as a guideline.”
I can’t help reading this through the prism of my own experience trying to create “positive norms”:
“People know in their gut something’s not right. People know there’s a disconnect. People know that what they want to see isn’t some specialized niche, it’s a basic human desire. Yet it goes unserved.”
Context here.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 03:38 PM · #
Social norms are extremely hard to consciously create. Good luck.
— Adam Greenwood · Sep 28, 03:41 PM · #
“Social norms are extremely hard to consciously create. Good luck.”
This is exactly why the NEA should not be in the business of funding Important Art.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 03:43 PM · #
This is exactly why the NEA should not be in the business of funding Important Art.
You mean politicized, by important, I take it?
— Freddie · Sep 28, 03:50 PM · #
But struggling through a life filled with small tragedies of missed opportunity is also extremely hard. It’s just more entropy-friendly. Difficulty doesn’t strike me as sufficient reason not to try, or not to persuade other people to try along with you. It’s like legislators who use “this bill doesn’t have the votes to pass” as code for “I don’t support this bill and therefore won’t vote for it.”
— Dara Lind · Sep 28, 03:51 PM · #
I dunno, I think new norms of social interaction are already developing. That your typical “nice guy” is largely unaware of this isn’t really that surprising – you have to actually engage with the fairer sex to figure out social conventions.
— Will · Sep 28, 04:19 PM · #
I think the likeliest outcome is that there will be no new norms, positively or negatively defined, only asymptotically increasing uncertainty among the Sinhababu-style nice guys who understand why coercion is immoral and what it looks like. A kind of William Gibson version of the dating world.
I make it much harder for myself in many ways (not watching TV, not consuming the same media as others do in my area, thinking critically about far too many things, not being laid-back-and-spontaneous simultaneously etc) and I never blame anybody other than myself for the creation and evolution of my own personal predicament. What would help greatly is a more honest and lively exchange of preferences between men and women—something which the happily degrading social norms of yesteryear precluded but also which the increasing uncertainty does not apparently enable.
I would love to wear a shirt which had a rolling display of whatever autobiographical details I thought pertinent such that my habit of looking everyone in the eye during conversation would be taken as the decidedly uncertain attempt to show I am not only open but also thrilled at the prospect of female aggression, initiative and ole-fashioned, ‘gimme!’
I am terminally unsure of how to interpret eye-contact, even the recurring variety I encounter at the gym (with swarthiness and at 17% bodyfat and about 20 pounds over fast-bowling weight, I don’t see why). I would think that jumping off the machine and walking over to the starer in question would be interpreted as unwelcome aggression in an inappropriate context—not following protocol etc.
It is these kinds of concrete everyday experiences to which answers will likely never be available. We take for granted that things can get better for all, with no coercion realized, but I am pessimistic.
— Nayagan · Sep 28, 04:28 PM · #
Is this really a new problem that has resulted from the tearing down of previously clear dating norms? Didn’t nice guy Levin have it much tougher than bad boy Vronsky?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 04:36 PM · #
I find these conversations consistently exaggerate how hard it is to both not be some pickup artist choch and still meet interesting, attractive women. Yeah, I guess it’s a little harder, but the fundamental insight that always seems to help men meet women is to remember that women like conversation, cool people and sex too.
— Freddie · Sep 28, 04:42 PM · #
Will, as a member of the so-called “fairer sex,” I haven’t noticed any norms spontaneously developing that people are actually satisfied with. Sure, there are common practices. Most of them, in my experience (which admittedly doesn’t extend too far beyond college yet), involve alcohol. But I can’t count the number of times I’ve had conversations — with men and women alike — that have boiled down to “How do I meet people sober?” or “How do I know what he/she wants out of this?”
I’m perfectly willing to admit that my friends and acquaintances skew to the awkward side of the bell curve, but that doesn’t make them oblivious to norms that are developing. It just makes them more likely to be dependent on the existence of norms, rather than less awkward people who are either more creative/bolder or more aggressive/selfish, depending on your perspective.
So what are these norms you’re seeing? And do you feel they’re a) more or less egalitarian, b) easy to understand as guides to acceptable behavior and c) enforced as guides against unacceptable behavior?
— Dara Lind · Sep 28, 04:49 PM · #
Conor,
Levin’s an extreme case — remember, he’s semi-suicidal even after he’s married — but imagine how much worse off he would have been if he hadn’t had the basic conventions of social life to guide him through his interactions with Kitty and her family.
— william randolph · Sep 28, 04:53 PM · #
Dara, I think you’re going to wish you hadn’t used the “nice guy” construction above. The problem with “nice guys” isn’t timidity, it’s that they’re looking for assurance before they’re willing to have any kind of serious, risky, personal interaction with a woman. And the only way to provide that assurance, really, is via social norms that coerce women.
Ultimately the “nice guy” is looking for some kind of “ollie-ollie-oxen-free, now you have to date me” magic word or mating dance that will compel the object of his desire to permit sexual access. (Too often this results in “nice guy syndrome”, where nice guys become whining sexists complaining that they put their right foot in, put their right foot out, shook it all about, and fixed the lady’s laptop, but she still didn’t give it up. Stage two of the disorder is pick-up artistry.) Ultimately the fair and non-sexist way to approach dating is the one Freddie outlined above – an honest and open meeting of minds and selves.
It’s a lot more risky than doing the passive-aggressive “nice guy” kabuki dance, but dating isn’t for the risk-adverse.
— Chet · Sep 28, 05:04 PM · #
Chet, I have a feeling that Dara’s version of a nice guy is someone who is neither passive aggressive nor inclined to kabuki, but I could be wrong. Dara, define nice guy.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 05:12 PM · #
William randolph,
You’re right, Levin would’ve been worse off without the guidance social norms provided.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 05:13 PM · #
Chet’s right: the phrase “nice guy” does have a lot of baggage I didn’t mean to pick up. I think either of Neil’s posts get at the phenomenon pretty well.
But I don’t think clearing that up puts us on common ground, Chet. You seem to be more allergic to social convention than I am; I wouldn’t use the term “kabuki,” for example (though I’m sorry to harp on another term!) because I think indirect signaling goes a long way toward helping people express what they want and think without risking total vulnerability. And I think that it is unnecessary to have to risk vulnerability every time you want to interact with someone else.
I don’t understand why dating shouldn’t be for the risk-averse. The conflation of risk aversion with weakness and lack of desert reminds me uncomfortably of the finance sector.
— Dara Lind · Sep 28, 05:24 PM · #
I don’t really understand how one would create a new code of etiquette. I guess it would be kind of like when they invented Esperanto?
And more important, as (I think) a pretty typical “nice guy” — a reasonably good-looking, intelligent, thoughtful-ish Y-chromosome-having person who has often been shy and even scared about approaching women — I don’t really see the need. My experience and education suggest that women tend to like it when men are courageous enough to talk to them. Maybe that’s a function of anachronistic biology or maybe it’s the result of long-standing cultural mores, but either way, it’s a general reality that men who want to meet women need to deal with.
And I don’t see what’s so tough about that. I mean, no, it’s not <em>easy</em> — but neither is asking for a promotion, or getting an apology or compensation from someone who’s hurt you, or finding new clients at a networking event, or coming out of the closet to your parents. It’s healthy for men to approach women, just as it often is for people in general to go out on a limb for something they want. And I think most of the time, just saying hi or saying something clever but genuine or whatever, and then being polite and confident (even if you don’t feel confident) and recognizing that some women won’t be interested no matter what you say or do, is sufficient. And when it gets beyond a first encounter, then I think you need to use the time-honored techniques of listening and being honest. And I don’t see how much more egalitarian it can get. Am I missing something?
— Josh · Sep 28, 05:42 PM · #
Obviously, my experience isn’t dispositive, but I think that you meet people nowadays by initiating conversation at a social function. People are pretty frank about signaling their interest (or lack thereof), which is definitely disconcerting at first. But if you’re willing to take the plunge, I think this approach is easier than going through some elaborate courtship ritual.
A couple of other thoughts:
1) Meeting people is always going to be fraught with uncertainty and social awkwardness. It seems to me that the acid test of a courtship ritual is whether is works at getting interested people together.
2) I think the specter of the drunken hook-up is overplayed. Some of this is a result of college, where everyone is super-awkward and immature and dependent on liquid courage. Some of it stems from the fact that most younger people hang out in bars. But if you want to meet somebody sober, your best bet is to stop complaining and go over and introduce yourself.
3) Characterizing people who don’t want to initiate conversation with someone they’re interested in as “risk-averse” does a disservice to people who take real risks. I mean, it’s difficult to go up to someone at a bar. But getting shot down (politely, in most cases) really isn’t that bad. It’s just something you have to get used to (Even our dating terminology absurdly dramatizes a failure to get someone to reciprocate interest;“shot down” implies that something totally awful just happened).
— Will · Sep 28, 05:47 PM · #
I suspect more and more people are using internet dating sites to provide a structure for finding dates. Personally, I have the same neuroses as the figure in the xkcd strip, but I don’t feel awkward chatting up and then asking out on a date a girl on an internet dating site. My roommate is a library science major and her and most of her library science friends (I assume this is a pretty shy and awkward demographic) are also on OkCupid.
— Bryan · Sep 28, 05:55 PM · #
“I don’t understand why dating shouldn’t be for the risk-averse. The conflation of risk aversion with weakness and lack of desert reminds me uncomfortably of the finance sector.”
I think it’s inherent in the human condition that if you really want something, you need to be willing to put yourself out there for it. (And I think there’s a difference between that and the irresponsible gambler’s mentality we often associate with the financial industry.) It’s in large part how people grow psychologically. And I think the actual level of risk “nice guys” afraid to approach women open themselves up to is generally low enough that it’s not really an aspect of life we especially need to Nerf-coat.
— Josh · Sep 28, 05:56 PM · #
Okay, I think this thread is beginning to slide into a kind of defensive presentism. Sure, for a lot of people the way it works now isn’t that bad, and it’s not the worst thing on earth to make yourself a little vulnerable sometimes, etc. But I’m very wary of phrases like “It’s just something you have to get used to.” Sure, that’s true of the current situation; but is it something you ought to have to get used to? Is it better than the alternative? Are you sure? (I’m wary of “inherent in the human condition” for similar reasons — are you sure it’s everyone’s human condition, not just yours or the one you wish existed?)
I also think the phrase “elaborate courtship rituals,” like “kabuki” above, is either straw-manning or an indication of a larger allergy to any sort of social code. Simple rules like “no, it’s not creepy to strike up a conversation with the girl next to you on the subway, but yes, it is creepy to wolf-whistle at her before doing so” are hardly elaborate courtship rituals.
(To preempt anyone who says “Well, that’s just common sense”: when was the last time you let someone who was acting inappropriately toward a woman in public know that he was acting inappropriately? We won’t have men paralyzed by fear of being creepy unless the line between creepy and not-creepy gets publicly drawn and policed. Just knowing it exists in your mind is not good enough — good for you, but other people will still exhibit inappropriate behavior, and you aren’t doing anything to help their targets.)
On the other hand, some of the unsatisfying common practices that have arisen organically do strike me as arbitrary and ritualized. If you’re supposed to wait 4 days to call a girl to signify that you’re interested but not clingy, but she knows you’re supposed to wait 4 days to call her, what purpose is that serving other than a ritual one?
Finally, yes, “time-honored techniques of listening and being honest” are a decent solution, if you’re the sort of person for whom constant dialogue and self-expression and “status conversations” are enjoyable and create intimacy. I find that not having a more convenient way to signal what you want than hashing it out over and over again lends itself to a two-headed Hamletism.
(And yeah, Bryan, a lot of my friends are on OKCupid too — but forgive me if I suspect there’s a better solution out there.)
— Dara Lind · Sep 28, 06:08 PM · #
I don’t mean to suggest any kind of defensiveness. I do think that yeah, it’s true for more or less all humans that if you want something, you have to put yourself out there. I mean, as far as I know, it’s a concept fundamental to even the most primitive stories from all cultures, and again, I’m not sure how one grows psychologically if one never subjects oneself to possible pain. And I don’t think “listening and being honest” have to mean constant dialogue. Finally, I suspect that even before feminism tore down much of the old apparatus, there was plenty of awkwardness involved in courtship.
But anyway, if you suspect there’s a better solution, I’d be interested in hearing your ideas.
— Josh · Sep 28, 06:39 PM · #
Wait, wait, I think the system’s pretty good.
Minor quibble first: as far as I can tell — and I’ve never been in anyone’s head but my own — the “shy nerd” type really sort of don’t want it as much. I mean, I know lots of guys who never seemed to be able to drop in a `hi’ (at the right time) let alone escalate (ditto). OK, it’s not for me. But it’s not like they were leading lives of quiet desperation. They had other interests. Do I think guys who are more aggressive, more motivated, should be stopping the train to help out guys who might in theory be competition but don’t even seem, well, as motivated? Hell, no, and that’s what you seem to need as a solution.
But my stronger objection is that the whole underlying premise seems more rigid and unpleasant than the system about which it is bitching. People’s [sexual and] social natures are in my experience pretty plastic. You go through times when you’re dating a bunch of people with nothing steady, longer stretches with unpredictable things or foraging, short intense relationships with one person (and all of those are quite different and some are pretty public and some not), maybe long ones, whatever. Maybe you go “nice guy” and settle down too.
A lot of the ambiguity and uncertainty in the current “system” (ugh) facilitates that freedom. It enables the helpless nerd to transition smoothly to the promiscuous socialite and sometimes, remarkably, the other way round. Sometimes one is as you say very vulnerable, other times it’s all BS, and I found (when single) both enjoyable all around (I hope), and (married) both have a role in a (blissfully happy) long-term relationship.
I mean, geez. Sex is kind of mean sometimes. It’s supposed to be that way. It buys us a lot of freedom to do things as suits who we are, now, and what we want, now. Leave it alone!
— Sanjay · Sep 28, 06:42 PM · #
You are a very interesting person, Dara.
— mike farmer · Sep 28, 06:46 PM · #
Eh, “I only like girls who don’t like nice guys!” has been a complaint of nice guys since before Paris got the apple. And, looky there, as soon as he got some influence of his own, Paris turned out to be a bit of a jerk himself.
It’s difficult to meet people, true. I sympathize with that.
But “nice” ain’t the fundamental problem here.
— Jaybird · Sep 28, 07:02 PM · #
I’d like to add Wesley Yang’s essay the face of Seung-Hui Cho into this conversation for a more unpleasant but very real kind of lack of sexual privilege.
People’s [sexual and] social natures are in my experience pretty plastic.
This is true and important.
— Freddie · Sep 28, 07:07 PM · #
Status quo norms already distinguish between “wolf-whistles” and striking up polite conversation. I think you’re less interested in declaring certain behaviors outside the pale than making the entire process easier on both parties. Maybe this is a worthy goal, but should romance be easy?
In the spirit of updating our courtship rituals, however, I will make on suggestion: It should be more acceptable for women to approach men.
— Will · Sep 28, 07:10 PM · #
I thought the point of Hymowitz’s article was that the absence of former norms made young women unhappy: not that we should feel sorry for shy, geeky boys who can’t get a date, or for the pickup artists forced to degrade themselves morally in order to fulfill their primal biological needs, but that we should feel sorry for girls whose only available interaction with the male sex (given the absence of dance cards) is with Roissy-style pickup artists in bars. Maybe others read it differently.
— y81 · Sep 28, 07:11 PM · #
Looking back on my college years, there are several times when I could have made an advance and had a reasonable chance of success, but I just didn’t read the signs. In hindsight, there were also some romantic partners who would have gone for much kinkier stuff than I was into at the time, but cae sera . . .
IMHO, part of the issue is that I just don’t like selling things. You have to get a lot of “nos” to get one “yes,” and that’s probably true even for Pickup Artists.
— J Mann · Sep 28, 08:22 PM · #
Do they really need “dance cards” or some other artifice? Can’t they just, you know, talk to the people they think they want to talk to?
I don’t see what’s so mysterious about that. I’ve never heard any guy say “boy, I really thought she was cute, but she totally turned me off when she came up to me and said ‘hello.’” Exactly what opprobrium are women being subjected to, when they take responsibility as an active participant in romantic contact?
“Supposed to”, what? “Supposed to” by who, exactly? If a guy is clingy, don’t you think she’ll notice when he, you know, clings?
We’ve identified the “nice guy”‘s unreasonable expectations from romance. Can we have a word, please, for the kind of woman with the unreasonable expectation that all she needs to do for dating success is tell the guys where to line up? People want dating to be effortless. Since no amount of “etiquette” is going to make this possible, this needs to be understood as an unreasonable expectation now that the days of simply purchasing women from their fathers are long over.
— Chet · Sep 28, 08:49 PM · #
I had a similar experience – I was getting the signs, and much later, her friend confirmed that, at that time, the woman in question was trying to send me signs – but the reason that it never went anywhere, and I never made the overtures, was because our first dinner together, all she did was talk about her boyfriend at Notre Dame.
The stereotype that women are the masters of non-verbal communication needs to be revised, I think; women are just as capable of sending incredibly bone-headed signals as men are. The egalitarian model provides the same answer for men as for women – don’t rely on signals. Honestly communicate your desires. Not all of them at once – “hi, do you want to raise children with me? What was your name again?” – of course, but if you want to get to know someone better, why not, you know, tell them you want to do that?
I met my wife in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. I’m no dating expert. (I am, in fact, a recovering Nice Guy.) But the realization that there wasn’t an etiquette, that my lack of romantic success wasn’t because I didn’t know the steps to a kabuki dance, but because I just never talked about romantic stuff with the women I was interested in, was incredibly freeing. It didn’t make it any easier, but the strategy became much less opaque – because now I needed absolutely no strategy whatsoever. I just had to be honest, and appropriately open, about my desires, and receptive to hers.
— Chet · Sep 28, 08:56 PM · #
I know two women named Cindy. Both are blonde haired, and have gorgeous figures and get a lot of attention from men.
The first Cindy is a dedicated swinger. She’s not interested in that weekend lesbian stuff, she likes men. So she and her husband have men over and they all have sex.
The second Cindy is an ex girlfriend of mine. She’s very conservative. She doesn’t date a lot and doesn’t have casual sex.
Like I said, both Cindy’s are knockouts, both get A LOT of attention from men, and both are sweet as pie. But the thing that I notice both is how generous they are with how they respond to men’s attention, whether that attention is suave, clumsy, or boorish.
Both Cindy’s are adept at making it clear that even if fellow’s advance aren’t going to get him anywhere, that the advance itself is not regarded as an assault; and even that it’s appreciated as a compliment, if not as an invitation.
My wife is also blonde with a knockout figure, a real head-turner. No one ever hits on her. Something about the way she carries herself says “Keep your distance.” I was/am too self-absorbed to notice.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 09:17 PM · #
Are we sure that the destruction of the One-True-Romantic-Script is what’s causing the awkwardness epidemic? It seems to me that it is only an epiphenomenon of the true cause: the shift toward a far more permissive standard about potential partners. Previously, social judgment about who was an “acceptable” romantic partner was highly class, race, locational, cultural, etc. etc.-bound. For most folks, the pool of datable members of the opposite gender was pretty damn tiny. Since dating, fucking, marriage, and reproduction got along pretty well even with these small pools, that meant that someone looking for a mate could be reasonably sure that a given prospect within the group of mutually-acceptable partners would respond positively to an overture.
With the elimination of this vigorous presorting of potential mates, selection becomes a infinitely more intricate process(see, e.g., the sort options available on dating websites). This process has immense benefits in terms of people not being forced into horrifically unsuitable partnerships, but it’s not particularly surprising that it imposes costs on those inapt at navigating complex social environments. However, this doesn’t mean that life would be easier for those folks if we reimposed a highly structured romantic script. If the new norms didn’t artificially limit a persons pool of potential dates, it would still be necessary to select down from the enormous group of prospectives. The highly structured process would have to be just as complicated to accomplish this delicate selection, and consequently just as likely to favor those skilled at presenting an attractive face to the world. Instead of nice guys not being bold enough to approach a girl in a bar, we would have guys not savvy enough to tie their cravat correctly.
— salacious · Sep 28, 09:33 PM · #
Salacious, I think perhaps you’re conflating norms with rituals.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 09:56 PM · #
One aspect of this phenomenon that goes unremarked: In lots of areas of life we have role models after whom we can pattern our conduct. Romantic life is not one of them. You can’t look to historical figures — indeed, you can hardly look to your own parents — because they lived in times governed by very different social and sexual mores. (Even if you could look to historical figures, the stuff you’d really want to know is ephemera that is not preserved and available to biographers.) Hollywood tends to disappoint on this score as well — rarely do you see a plausible first kiss in TV or in the movies. For the most part, each of us makes it up as we go along.
— alkali · Sep 28, 10:02 PM · #
My problem has always been that women have been too aggressive toward me. I would like to simply go and have a nice quiet evening at the bar talking sports with my pals without a different woman coming up every 15 minutes saying “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” or “Sorry for interrupting, but has anyone told you that you look just like Brad Pitt?”
It’s getting old.
— mike farmer · Sep 28, 10:10 PM · #
“Hollywood tends to disappoint on this score as well — rarely do you see a plausible first kiss in TV or in the movies. For the most part, each of us makes it up as we go along.”
If some people aren’t willing to be seen, how do we learn? How do we get comfortable with who we are as sexual creatures and beings?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 10:11 PM · #
Also, IIRC, Brendan I. Koerner’s wife told me they met on the subway. Seeing as Brendon’s a thought leader and all that, maybe things are changing!
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 10:33 PM · #
“I’ve never heard any guy say “boy, I really thought she was cute, but she totally turned me off when she came up to me and said ‘hello.’”
I’m sure that’s true, but plenty of girls have been rejected (with varying degrees of tact and subtlety) when they made overtures. And another large number have learned that even if a boy will have sex with you, it doesn’t mean that he will have what you wanted, a relationship. These experiences make women unhappy.
As I understood Kay Hymowitz, her argument was that current norms of female behavior are pushing the sexes toward an equilibrium that will not make most women happy. Telling women that the solution is for them to be more aggressive in making romantic overtures, which so often lead to either humiliating rejection or sexual encounters different from what they wanted, doesn’t seem like much of a solution.
— y81 · Sep 29, 12:06 AM · #
These experiences make men unhappy, too. I’m not sure what your point is; no one is entitled to effortless dating.
Why? Again, why are women entitled to effortless dating? Why isn’t it “much of a solution” to tell women that no one has a responsibility to work towards their romantic goals but themselves?
— Chet · Sep 29, 12:45 AM · #
My point is twofold. First, heading toward an equilibrium that makes both sexes unhappy, on the grounds that it is more morally satisfactory than some alternative equilibrium, seems very silly to me.
Second, study after study shows that women are more risk-averse than men. A proposed solution that requires that women dramatically increase their risky behavior simply isn’t going to happen. Most women’s revealed preferences indicate that they would rather be preyed upon by pickup artists than initiate romantic overtures to men they don’t know.
— y81 · Sep 29, 10:41 AM · #
But it “doesn’t make both sexes unhappy.” At worst it makes a small number of women who want to rest on their laurels and be passive actors in dating unhappy.
This makes no sense. By this logic no woman would ever get pregnant.
— Chet · Sep 29, 03:49 PM · #
Mmmmmmm….. chai.
— cw · Sep 29, 10:15 PM · #
Just reading this thread now… thanks to everyone for their comments, and for Dara for making exactly the points I’d like to see made. Especially on the importance of creating a new egalitarian social code, and on how such things get created.
— Neil the Ethical Werewolf · Sep 30, 12:06 PM · #