Sex and Gender – Knowingless

Blame-Game Theory

Growing up, my world was complementarian, which is a fancy way of saying everyone was waaaaay too into gender roles.

We viewed men as stronger, braver, and less prone to irrational emotions. They were the federal head; the point of representation for their families. I remember asking my mom why we were moving states if she didn’t want to move; she said she must submit to the decisions of her husband, and her husband’s decision was to move.
I remember our pastor’s daughter sleeping in a bunkbed at home at the age of 22 because she was required to always have male headship, and thus couldn’t leave her father’s house or go to college until she had a husband to take on that role.
These are two easy-to-convey examples, but there’s a thousand more that manifested in tiny, insidious ways, that I can’t do justice to in this short an essay.
Men could be pastors and elders in the church, but not women. Men were the gender that God had created to symbolize His relationship with His bride, the church; in this symbolic sense, men were to women as God was to mankind.

From the outside view into my old culture, the patriarchy ends there. Men, in charge, oppressing women.

But this view of male rulership also put a lot of pressure on men, and so the standards and punishments for them were higher. My father was an ordained minister and served as an elder in a church; he taught that eldership was contingent on having believing children. If someone under his headship screwed up, like hypothetically renounced her faith and did sex work, the formal consequences went to him, and he’s now no longer allowed to be an elder.
The financial success of the family lay entirely on the man – he was expected to work however much it took to support his family (and stay-at-home-wife), which often could grow quite large. Any decisions for his family were his, and if anything bad happened, it was entirely on him.
Social consequences for cheating were also incredibly harsh. Whenever we had our Biannual Adulter Reveal, the offender was stripped of any church leadership or removed from church entirely, and his offense was quietly made known.

The story of Adam and Eve reflects this – Eve fucked up first, and spread the fucking-up to Adam, but as Romans 5:12 says, “just as through one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” This is what men were taught – that they lived in the symbolic role of Adam, and that when shit hit the fan, they were the ones responsible.

I suspect this is how most traditional gender role systems work. I once spent a long layover in Saudi Arabia and had a discussion with a man about their gender roles. I told him that in the US, people feel bad about the way women are treated. He seemed taken aback – women are queens, he said. Men’s role is a burden; all the pressure is on them. Women’s domestic lives are lighter – they are protected from external threats, and get to live in a softer internal bubble. He viewed the pressure on men as a huge, forgotten element, so important that all the restrictions women suffered were worth a release from that pressure.

In ye olden times, everything was scarier. People starved, killed each other, and died from teensy adorable infected scratches way more than today. When people are competing for resources, threats to the family increase drastically, and the role of men becomes way more apparent. The “male strength and responsibility” extends an expectation that they die for their country and family – or at least use their bodies at higher levels of risk. I mean, we still have a compulsory draft for men and not women. I’m dangerously getting close to spouting random theories about evolution here, but I suspect that men are physically stronger than women for a very good reason – males were subject to literally stronger physical pressure than women throughout our evolutionary history. Male strength is a living example of the weight their male ancestors had to bear in order to keep surviving.

I suspect that most people were more chill with the patriarchy in the past because the whole “men go to war” and “men have to earn enough for their family or else” thing made being a man way less exciting, and the benefit of safety for a woman, as touted by the Saudi Arabian man, was actually a way more important thing to have.

But the world got way safer – and when men stopped dying, maybe their advantages started looking way juicier. If you and your friend have had a delicate responsibility equilibrium that allows you to fight unique types of foes, and then your friend’s foe disappears, you might look over your shoulder and go hey, wait a second, why do you get to vote and I can’t?

Responsibility is weird. Ultimately there’s no free will and agency is a trick of the light, but we seem to have particular rules for when and where we throw responsibility at something. Sometimes we throw responsibility at the environment, and sometimes at the person. This seems to be mostly based on whether or not throwing responsibility at a person is effective. If someone is depressed, shouting at them to get less depressed isn’t going to work. Eventually our culture seemed to figure that out and now considers the individual mostly blameless. It does seem to work in other cases, though – if someone is very lazy, shouting at them to be less lazy can sometimes work. This also appears very clearly in moral shaming – if you go out and murder someone we consider it your fault, and you are bad, and we take the magic ball of responsibility and put it directly into your dirty, depraved arms.

Responsibility placement seems to occur along political divides, too. Conservatives tend to see everyone holding their own glowing ball of responsibility, while liberals see the responsibility in the environment and the cruel, unchangeable past.

We also seem to have different standards per person or role. We put the glowing ball of responsibility way more into the arms of people in power – people like to say Trump is an asshole more than they say Trump probably has dementia. Cops are held deeply responsible for every mistake they make, while the people they pursue are often far worse than the cops themselves. Basically nobody puts the glowing ball into the arms of kids – in the world of children, it’s their environment that’s aglow with fault, despite their brains being equally responsible for their movements and words as any adult. The placement of responsibility corresponds strongly to power in the environment, but gets a bit messed up with moral violations; we’re ok with the environment being responsible when an impoverished man steals a loaf of bread, but less ok with it being responsible when he steals an old woman’s medicine to sell for heroin.

Responsibility is not uniformly a good thing. It tends to occur with power, but increases pressure and consequences for failure. Having responsibility placed in the environment can be an incredible relief – to have a doctor say we know what’s been causing your mood swings, to marrying a very wealthy person, to being taken care of, to your suffering not being your fault, to don’t worry Eve, sin didn’t enter the world through you.

In my old society, men were formally and strongly given the glowing ball of responsibility. This was great, and it also really sucked. It sucked bad enough that I’m not totally sure being a woman was worse than being a man.

I talked a bit about the ‘men being expected to go die’ thing, but there’s another aspect here too.
The nature of holding the glowing ball of responsibility means that if things are hard, it’s your fault, and you’re less likely to complain or try to institute systemic change. It means that your pains are more invisible, because it starts and ends inside of you. When you hold the glowing ball of responsibility, it doesn’t even cross your mind that you try to make the world change – no, what’s happening is yours. Yes, Eve gave you the apple, but the world entered sin through you. There is no room to blame others. You need to be stronger. You need to handle this. Your weakness is yours.

When the glowing ball of responsibility is outside of you, you search for change through others. You don’t consider this a weakness, and thus there’s nothing to be ashamed about. How can society change? You are fine with taking those antidepressants. When things are hard, the world could be better. You shouldn’t have to live like this. Your pains are visible, because making progress requires noise. You need to have higher standards. Your boyfriend shouldn’t be abusive, so you’re going to break up with him, and then speak loudly about signs of abuse and things you shouldn’t put up with and then join facebook groups where you affirm each other and list things you love about yourself.

These two modes have drastically unequal visibility from the outside, which means if you had an equal amount of suffering between men and women in a society of traditional gender roles, this would look like a society in which women suffer more.

The fundamental divide in my culture of traditional gender roles was the allocation of responsibility,and I see no evidence that our current culture is doing much different. Everywhere I look, in our advertisements, in conversations at parties, in our movies, I see men held self-responsible and women as environment-changers.

This is a bit of a meta-problem. Both roles create issues; men tend to be stoic/emotionally repressed (it’s my fault), in greater positions of power (i need to work harder/provide for my family), generally over women. Women tend to view themselves as more helpless than they really are (society is the problem).

But society’s answer to this isn’t to lower the amount of responsibility we give men and raise the responsibility we give women, or even to just acknowledge the responsibility gap at all, it’s to blame the issues that arise from the responsibility gap, on the side of the gap that is built to accept responsibility – men.

Patriarchy? Men’s fault. When women support it, we say they’ve simply internalized the messages of men, and then pluck that glowing ball of responsibility right out of their dainty little hands.
Victim blaming? When we decry suggestions that women alter their behavior to reduce risk of assault (though appearance influences catcalling), we’re shoving responsibility straight into the environment.

There’s almost no body acceptance movement for men. Advertisements portray men as either the butt of jokes or muscular and handsome. Why? The attractiveness of a man is their responsibility. Contrast this to one out of a billion ads for women where their feelings about their attractiveness are taken out of their arms and placed directly into the environment. It’s also easy to find articles that place responsibility in the environment by listing ways workplaces can be more woman-friendly. If women aren’t in enough powerful roles, society’s reaction is to place the fault outside of the woman. Reversely, I tried to find articles on how to make women-dominated workplaces or housekeeping advertisements/communities more male-friendly, but I couldn’t find any.

I want to be clear: I don’t view either of these modes as inherently worse than the other. Both I need to work harder and The world should be better to me have benefits and drawbacks that fluctuate according to a thousand tiny variables in a highly complex system. I’m glad women are speaking out about the difficulties in their life. I’m glad men are conditioned to take responsibility. I’m not glad that these modes seem to be so consistently gendered.

Changing responsibility lines can feel really wrong. Right now we have the narrative that men have wronged and oppressed women. Men are the responsible party, and women are the victims. To change this narrative can feel both like absolving the guilty party of blame (maybe what’s going on isn’t totally your fault, men) and placing blame on the side of the victim (maybe you should push harder for raises and report rapes more often, women). This can feel really horrible.

So my suggestion isn’t to do this, exactly, but rather start expanding the options we give people. Maybe we can consider men fully responsible, but also stop shaming them, and say it’s okay if they want to blame the environment, or be weak – we can talk about how men need to protect women from other men, and also that it’s okay if they don’t want to do that. Maybe we can allow women to feel blameless if they want to, but also say it’s okay to suggest steps women can take to increase agency in their own lives, or take on responsibility themselves. We can simultaneously allow articles on “how to make the workplace kinder to women” and also “how wearing a longer skirt at night might reduce your risk of sexual harassment.”

And to be clear again – I don’t mean to minimize what women have gone through. I remember with great pain what it was like to be a woman in a complementarian household. I watched my mother unable to separate from her abusive husband because the pastor told her she needed to submit and pray more. I remember my parents’ horror when I suggested that I didn’t understand why I should go to college if I was only meant to be a housewife, and that maybe I didn’t want to have children. I remember crying myself to sleep when I was ten, asking God why He’d made me a girl and not a boy, because I had so many dreams I would never be able to fulfill, because I was ashamed at being so emotional. I remember refusing to cry for years, because I wanted to be respected like boys were. I hold visceral empathy for every woman who’s had to wear her gender like chains.

What I do want to do is also evoke empathy for the countless men who marched off to war, often barely more than children, dying in bloody fields far away from home. Or the emotional stifling that readied men for their role as protectors – don’t express your emotions. Do your duty. If you can’t earn enough to feed your family, you’re not worthy of a family. Or the homeless men nobody helped because men should be able to care for themselves. The lack of sympathy or emotional assistance men find in their social lives. Just because my role as a traditional woman sucked balls doesn’t mean roles as traditional men don’t also suck balls. After all – through Adam, sin entered into the world.

I also don’t view the role of women in my old upbringing as ‘victims’ of men. Women reinforced gender roles just as much, if not more, than the men did. They were just as complicit, and absolving them of blame here is doing exactly the same thing that gave my culture justification for putting them in that role.

Lastly, I don’t mean to imply that history has always been fair. There’ve been wide fluctuations in both safety and women’s rights in cultures throughout history, and it seems silly to assume they’ve always evened out into a fair trade. I do think that the gender divide in history was probably fairer than popular narrative implies it is, and there’s plenty of times in history I’d much rather have spawned as a woman than a man.

Dating: Accordions Vs. Sitars

The accordion is much easier than it looks.

Each left handed button is an entire chord, and it’s arranged in an easy-to-memorize pattern. You pick it up, press down, and it booms with harmony. The instrument is constructed that you only need to engage with it minimally to get the song you want out of it.

Similarly, ‘accordion style’ partners are easy to play – engaging in a relationship with them is simple, and you need to engage with them minimally to get the ‘song’ of a good relationship out of them.

Accordion relationships don’t cost you a lot of energy. I don’t mean energy as in ‘they don’t talk a lot,’ I mean energy as in ‘they perform actions that make relationship-specific aspects with them very easy’ – such as excellent communication or being self-motivated about exercise or whatever it is that’s necessary for your relationship to function.

Aspects that might bump someone towards the ‘accordion’ side of the spectrum are things like equal status to you, physical and emotional stability, identity independence (separating their self worth from their relationship with you), independent wealth, or their own social network.

The Sitar

Have you ever played a sitar? It’s leagues more difficult than an accordion. Not only do you play one note at a time – no easily organized chords – there are dozens of strings, and just holding the instrument properly is a lesson in itself. The process of using the sitar requires understanding the instrument well, and engaging with it closely is an integral part of making it sing. The accordion may feel like ‘playing a song,’ but a sitar feels like ‘playing the instrument.’

Sitar partners are high cost – in that functioning in the relationship takes a lot of energy. Mental or physical disabilities, unresolved childhood trauma, poverty, significant introversion, jealousy, or practical dependence can all contribute to being a sitar partner, as maintenance of the person themselves must be done before maintenance of the relationship.

Of course internal factors can contribute too, such as having very specific needs in order to feel satisfied in a relationship, requiring high amounts of actions in order to feel safe in the relationship, and sometimes general stuff like insecurity, perfectionism, or neuroticism.

The accordion/sitar spectrum is also not the same thing as casual vs. committed relationships, or compatible vs. incompatible preferences. Casual relationships can still require a lot of energy, and incompatible preferences can take very little energy to handle, if lubricated with good communication and self awareness.

Now, this might start to sound like I’m calling Accordions ‘desirable and good’ and Sitars ‘undesirable and bad’,

but I want to steer away from that sharply. Inheriting a lot of money from a relative might push someone towards the ‘Accordion’ side of the spectrum, and getting into a car accident might push them towards the ‘Sitar’ side – frequently a partner’s cost is affected by things entirely outside of their control, and having these things happen to a partner probably doesn’t affect how much the relationship is ‘worth it’ or how much you love them.

The benefits of Accordion partners might sound ideal, almost romantic, but I think a lot of people find relationships to be like the Sitar – it’s only fun when it’s hard.

Sitar partners have the ability to provide an intense sense of specialness – if they require a lot of energy to date, then you are set apart from others more distinctly by being the one to spend that energy. Not just anybody could/would spend all this energy! They also lure in people who feel they need to feel like they must work hard to feel like they deserve love from the other person.

There may also be a greater sense of satisfaction and meaningfulness when progression is made in the relationship. And often, the sense of ‘suffering with someone’ is tragically romantic and incredibly bonding – often we feel sharing our pain is a core component of achieving intimacy, and comforting a suffering partner – and being comforted by them in turn – can make you feel fused to each other so completely that it soothes that gnawing itch of constant aloneness. Such is the appeal of unhealed wounds.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone explicitly verbalize that they are looking for a partner who will cost them a lot of energy, but it seems very obvious from observation. For example, a few years ago I watched the dating life of one of my old roommates – she shifted through a lot of attractive, easy-to-date men, only to end up disappearing to love/take care of someone who was extremely high cost – aggressive and neurotic, with a few mental disorders. It took me a while to realize that she hadn’t been duped – she was doing this deliberately, and this is what she wanted. She didn’t date him in spite of the fact he was a Sitar, she dated him because of it.

I don’t think that any pairing of Sitar/Accordion Sitar/Sitar Accordion/Accordion is bad at all, but it does seem difficult for people who’ve ended up in the relationship rather accidentally, and not because they were actively seeking it like my old roommate actively sought it.

I’ve seen a few people who prefer Sitar partners date an Accordion partner and end up a bit unsatisfied. Usually their complaint (not explicitly verbalized!) is that of lack of passion – their Accordion partner is a little boring, or just friendly, or cold. And the other way around is just as bad – people who prefer Accordion partners are unhappy when they date Sitar partners, and the experience for them is exhausting and often feels like an unnecessary distraction, or a chore.

I think that often, in both of these scenarios, the people would still say their relationship is ‘worth it.’ Once you cross the familiarity threshhold, there’s no going back really until other factors break the relationship down from the inside, or they deal with it and grow old and die. The best cure is prevention.

This is why I think learning to explicitly identify the kind of labor you want to put into a relationship –

without judging that desire at all – would be very useful, because then you can avoid getting into a mismatched relationship in the first place. This may be difficult, as I suspect most people would tell themselves they want an Accordion one, because that seems like the ‘right’ answer.

I think the reason for this is that Sitar relationships tend to feature more intense points of unhappiness, and there’s a big “unhappiness is bad” narrative going on, and it’s nearly taboo to say “unhappiness can be fulfilling and meaningful.” Go watch a tragic movie goddamnit.

And sometimes people who want a Accordion relationship end up dating a Sitar partner – often because they feel that they would be a bad person if they let the difficulties affect their love for someone, or out of a sense of duty, or an unawareness that Accordion partners are an available option, or because they failed to recognize early enough that their partner was a Sitar. I usually see this in people who are so passively nice it ends up being a defensive maneuver. I belong in this category.

Basically, my point is make sure you research the instruments you buy beforehand, so you can learn to recognize signs of whether it will easily make you a beautiful song or if it will make you bleed as it slowly absorbs into your flesh and you don’t know anymore whether it is you or the instrument who is shedding those tears.
But hey, I respect the intensity.

“Me Too”: on Sexual Assault

I want to preface this by emphasizing that I in no way want to trivialize experiences people have had as victims of sexual assault. All feelings are valid, and it’s ok to feel hurt even at something that might seem trivial to others.

People on my Facebook and Twitter are posting “me too,” which is meant to indicate that they’ve been victims of sexual assault. The comments talk about how rampant abuse is, and I’ve read many anecdotes over the last few days of experiences that have left people living in a state of fear. “The world is not safe for us,” seems to be the message.

I felt weird and confused, because I have never felt this, despite having been a sex worker and living in a lot of different cities. I’ve generally felt quite safe my entire life, and never really witnessed this systemic harassment that I see people talk about. I don’t know what’s going on – how is it that everyone’s getting abused around me and I’m left untouched and ignorant to this? I started to write a post about this.

But then I remembered – I actually was a victim of sexual assault. There were many instances in my life that might qualify – I was molested as a child, stalked and chased in deserted streets, groped at a party, forced into a handjob despite clearly and repeatedly saying no, kissed without consent, and I once had to physically chest-kick a man out my front door who’d followed me home after I drunkenly flirted with him. Also let’s not forget catcalling whenever I go outside alone wearing anything form-fitting.

So, I could also post “me too,” if I wanted! But posting it still didn’t feel right. Remembering these things didn’t make me feel less safe – in fact I had actually completely forgot about a few of the events up until this point. I never really considered them an issue.

I think this is because very few of the events made me feel afraid for my life or well being. The forced sexual contact was really annoying and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t afraid they would hurt me, and I think on a gut level I don’t view ‘having my hand shoved onto a dick’ as much different than ‘having my hand shoved onto a forearm.’ It was mostly uncomfortable because of social anxiety – I wasn’t sure how to effectively communicate without ruining my social ties later on.

The only thing that left lasting impact was being chased through Istanbul’s deserted streets by a hooded man – to this day I have trouble walking alone at night, even in safe areas. But I never really considered this part of a systemic problem – I don’t know if he wanted to rape or mug me, but both of those things seemed equally physically threatening, and I know several other people who’ve been mugged, most of them men, and I sort of classed it as just an unfortunate thing that happens sometimes. I never once thought of this as having to do with rape (or mugging) culture, and more thought of it as “sometimes psychopaths get born, and sometimes I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I don’t feel like a victim.

I have a weirdly high resilience to these experiences, but I don’t want to insinuate that those who don’t are weak. I did not choose to be unaffected, and it’s likely that the reasons for this are random factors in my childhood, or a genetic balance of brain chemicals, or something different and unknowable. I am not stronger, I take absolutely no credit, I just happened to find myself in this position.

But with the “Me Too” campaign, I felt a pressure to view the things that had happened to me as part of this ‘systemic abuse’ narrative, as important somehow, as something I should be more upset about. Was there something wrong with me for being so unaffected by sexual assault? Should I get more angry? The idea of offering up my experiences as part of the cause felt sort of appealing, like it granted me special status within this storylline.

And the problem here is that if I did choose to label my experiences as something important and troubling, that I would become unhappier and more fearful. People who view their experiences as important and troubling seem to also have a lot of distress associated with it, and it seems like it would be an improvement if they could reach a mental state where they no longer saw them as important and troubling.

I’m not at all saying they are failing by “Me Too”ing their experience, only that the state of “Me Too”ing is more unpleasant than a state without labels – and more importantly, that the “Me Too” program might actually increase the amount people feel their experience has been traumatic for them. I’m reminded of my experience leaving home. I was raised a homeschooler in an incredibly sheltered environment by an abusive father. The experience itself really sucked, and was very uncomfortable, but I did not assign it a special label. I didn’t know that my experience was special or important – until I left home and started talking to people from the outside world.

People reacted in horror when I mentioned things from my childhood that I thought were normal and common. They said things like, “are you okay? How are you coping?”. As I integrated with my new culture, I took on the horror they felt about my childhood. I started to feel angry at what I had gone through, and this caused me pain at least as great as the experience had been itself. I felt like I was living with a gaping wound in my chest. I felt injustice and crippling rage and suffered through nightmares for years. I defined myself as a victim, and thus I felt like a victim.

I would not have been able to heal without shedding my label and the narrative about what I had gone through. The label and the narrative helped me adjust to my new culture, but it also locked me into suffering. I no longer consider myself a victim, and as a result I no longer suffer like a victim.

Now, I’m not necessarily arguing that people shouldn’t have reacted in horror. I think probably rejecting my upbringing as ‘deeply not right’ was super important for integrating into a healthier perspective, and I think to some extent suffering from an updated narrative was inevitable – but I do wish deeply, at some point, that someone would have told me to not make it special. I wish someone would have told me that I should feel and process whatever pain I need to feel, but to refuse to give it an identity, to refuse to make it part of me. I wish at least one person would not have reacted with horror. I wish someone had told me this didn’t need to be a story about the poor abused Christian girl who must feel the way a poor abused Christian girl should feel.

And in the same way, I sort of want to reach out to the people saying Me Too and I want to tell them that it’s okay to hurt, but this doesn’t have to be anything special. It can just be pain, and then healing. I’m afraid that the cultural attitude that sparks Me Too will lock people into the pain.

Please realize I’m not necessarily making an argument against the “Me Too” campaign. It’s very possible that the benefits are greater than this cost, especially in a world where sexual assault is a hidden harm – but I wanted to introduce the concept that going about it this way might also have a cost. I don’t know if Me Too is a net benefit or not, but I see nobody discussing the potential downsides, and I feel a cultural pressure not to. There’s a reason I’m posting this here on my blog and not on my social media.

It’s just, despite having a list of ways in which people have sexually abused or harassed me, I am happy. I don’t feel any urge to label those experiences. I don’t feel afraid, and I feel completely free. I want others to know that this is possible, and that maybe one path is by rejecting the urge to put those experiences into a storyline that designates them as special.

How Taboo Are These Sexual Fetishes?

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The correlation between tabooness and sexual interest was statistically significant at p < 0.01.

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Fuckers Vs. Raisers

Disclaimer: Pure conjecture, riddled with a ton of what-ifs – probably none of which are original.

One day in a stereotypical medieval town, a bard comes through.

This is a very sexy bard, violet-eyed, good with a lute, and experienced in the ways of women. During his short stay he sleeps with four of the village wenches, and then bounces off to a new village, to seduce more wenches.

The men in the town don’t know about this, of course, and when one of the wenches gets pregnant, everyone assumes her husband did it. Years later, a new child with violet eyes is running around. Life goes on.

There are two sexual strategies for men – Fucking and Raising. Fuckers, like our friend the Bard, do the ol’ fuck-and-run. Move frequently, shoot seed everywhere, and hope that this results in violet-eyed toddlers getting raised by other men. Raisers, by contrast, shoot seed into comparatively few women and end up raising the children they produce.

A society probably can only tolerate so many Fuckers, because Raisers are doing all of the work. If too many men are Fuckers, the kids will stop getting raised, and then the Fucking sexual strategy loses effectiveness.

Kind of like charity/hospitality/welfare. A society only has so much excess to give to people who take advantage of it.

—

My question then is why are women attracted to Fuckers? Is there any female advantage to this?

Women are attracted to men who indicate they would help their child survive – and to a woman, only Raisers will help her child survive. Having a child by a Fucker is dangerous – if she doesn’t have a Raiser lined up, then she’s on her own, and historically this is Very Bad News. If she does have a Raiser and he finds out the child isn’t his, again – Very Bad News.

So when the Bard fingers his lute, why do all the women around him sigh?

I think their sighs don’t have anything to do with the fact he’s a Fucker – I think it’s because his traits, if they were present in a Raiser, would be ideal. He’s presenting confidence, skill, and high social standing. If a Raiser like that moved into town, all of the women would be trying to wife themselves at him like crazy. The Bard also is a potential Raiser in the women’s eyes, and he probably has to emphasize that idea in order to get her to sleep with him.

This is maybe where the trope of “guy tells girl he loves her in order to sleep with her” comes from. Women don’t want to fuck Fuckers, but they will fuck Fuckers disguised as Raisers. And when they find out, they usually describe the feeling of “being used.”

This makes me think that women’s sexual strategy involves defending against Fuckers at all costs, and that there are minimal or no evolutionary benefits for women to be charmed by the Bard (beyond maybe getting some fresh gene material into the town?). Fuckers only succeed by disguising themselves as Raisers.

This frames things a lot more in terms of ‘battle’ between the genders. I have held the idea until now that human sexual strategy is a lot more of a complimentary competition, but this seems like it has really disproportionate benefits.

Of course this is very general, and cultural norms are changing. Birth control means that women aren’t threatened by Fuckers, and so Fuckers don’t have to pretend (as much) to be Raisers to get laid anymore. Sleeping with a Fucker who isn’t pretending to be a Raiser has given rise to the new fun sort of relationship called Casual Sex.

Okay I am done writing now but I don’t know how to do a closing paragraph. I don’t really want to learn.

The Amory Spectrum

In discussions about monogamy and polyamory, I find I’ve recategorized the two ideas into something that feels more functional for me, and I accidentally try to use them synonymously with the original words. This ends up getting pretty messy, so I’m going to do the obvious thing: invent more words and then explain them!

(there’s a good chance someone has already written about this somewhere.)

Presenting: The Uniamory/Multiamory Spectrum

Your position on the Uniamory/Multiamory spectrum depends entirely on how many restrictions you place on your partner’s romantic/sexual behavior. It doesn’t matter what restrictions are placed on you, or what your partner actually does, or what you actually do, or the functional habits in your relationship.

You are uniamorous if you have rules, expectations, or agreements placed on your partner that state they cannot engage in relationships besides you.

You are multiamorous if you have no rules, expectations, or agreements about your partner’s romantic/sexual behavior with people besides yourself.

Remember this is a spectrum, going from lots of rules (no flirting) to medium rules (you can kiss but no sex) to no rules (you can do literally anything you want). For fun I’m going to provide the Amory Spectrum:

0. Exclusively uniamorous; all extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are disallowed; no flirting, sexting, nude photos; can include forbidding being alone for too long with other people or ‘leading them on’; usually uncomfortable with watching porn or expressing attraction to others
1. Predominantly uniamorous, only incidentally multiamorous; all obvious extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are disallowed, but leniency for flirting or engaging in light touch. Acceptance of expressing attraction to others and porn use.
2. Predominantly uniamorous, but more than incidentally multiamorous. Most extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are disallowed, but with strong leniency; can include approval of nude photos, kissing and light petting, or attending sex/nude/kink parties (as a couple, without interacting with others). Most camgirl’s partners fall within this category.
3. Equally multiamorous and uniamorous: Includes swinging, having threesomes, and occasionally allowance of very casual/occasional extrarelationship interactions, but with disallowance of any serious or regular extrarelationship interactions.
4. Predominantly multiamorous, but more than incidentally uniamorous: general extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are allowed with several rules, such as strongly enforced relationship hierarchy, and can include regulations of number of partners allowed, the frequency of their interactions, or moderate restrictions on their sexual activities
5. Predominantly multiamorous, only incidentally uniamorous: the majority of extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are allowed with few rules; can include light prescriptive hierarchy or minimal regulation of sexual behavior.
6. Exclusively multiamorous: all extrarelationship romantic/sexual expressions are allowed; no rules or requirements are instituted, and no prescriptive hierarchy is instated

Also: rules for the purpose of sexual safety, such as getting tested regularly or using condoms, do not count towards the multiamory spectrum.

If you date someone for twenty years with no rules about what they can or can’t do, but they never actually get involved with anybody else, then you are multiamorous but functionally monogamous.

If you prefer relationships that tend to be functionally monogamous, you can actively search for monogamous partners while both of you remain multiamorous.

If you insist that you and your partner will only love each other forever, that neither of you even experience the desire for others, and you also have rules that your partner can’t act upon desires even if they do have them, then you are both uniamorous and monogamous.

If you have no rules about your partner’s behavior but they have rules about your behavior, then you are multiamorous dating a uniamorous person, in a monogamous relationship.

Uniamory instituted out of fairness does not count; if you are level 6 multiamorous but dating someone who is level 2 uniamorous, and your partner agrees to not take advantage of your level 6 leniency because it wouldn’t be ‘fair,’ and instead acts as though you are level 2 uniamorous too, then this does not make you uniamorous.

Polyamory and uniamory aren’t really compatible, but sometimes you see poly relationships that rank low on the amory spectrum. If you consider yourself poly but are a 3 on the amory scale, then you might be on the uniamorous side of polyamory.

Basically, I think putting “restrictions placed on partner” into a highly defined, separate role to be a strongly illuminating way of looking at relationship structures. Frequently I find people citing monogamous motivations to explain their uniamory implementations (e.g., “We’re level 1 monogamous because neither of us find anybody else to be attractive!”)

Filling the Dating Role

A: “You’re looking for someone to fill the position of head software engineer for your company.”

B: “That’s right.”

A: “What sort of things are you looking for? Good work history? Proficiency in programming languages? Ability to manage?”

B: “What kind of employer do you think I am? I mean I’m not against those things, but really, I’m just a simple worker at a simple company. The most important attributes in an employee are kindness, a sense of humor, loyalty, and intelligence.”

A: “What?”

B: “I mean, would you hire anyone who was mean, or an idiot, or boring?”

A: “I’d prefer not to, but that’s not the point. You’re hiring them to perform a specific duty.”

B: “And that specific duty will be done poorly if they aren’t funny, intelligent, or kind.”

A: “Yes, those things are important – but they’re base things we want for any human we have to interact with regularly, ever – for any job, for a roommate, for a friend. And yes, those traits can offset a little bit qualification – you’d probably prefer a very emotionally mature but slightly less qualified worker over an emotionally immature but overly qualified worker – but it still gives us no information about how well they’ll perform specifically to the role itself! The base traits of funny-intelligence-kindness are like a platform upon which you build the rest of the structure of qualifications, and when I ask about the role, I am asking about that structure, not the platform.”

—

This is how I feel when I ask people what they look for in a romantic partner and they reply with “funny-intelligent-kind”. (For the purposes of this post, the generic positive personality trait cluster will be known as FIK.)

I think it’s particularly important because we frequently say being FIK is what’s the most attractive, but then we go on to avoid dating most of the super-FIK people. It’s sort of like if, in a job application, the requirements said they were looking for FIK applicants, but then went on to completely ignore the ones highest on the FIK spectrum.

If you point out that they’re not selecting for FIK, usually the response is something like “but I would never be attracted to someone who wasn’t FIK!” This is true, but not illuminating. The question about selection comes from the aspects that fit the specific role, not the basic FIKness required for form the platform base for that role.

FIKness is something we want for all people in our life, not just dating, so saying you want a FIK person to date reveals nothing about your actual dating requirements.

—

So to learn about aspects unique to the “dating role,” we have to disregard all qualities that are equally desirable for other roles, friendship included. Anything FIK-related, throw out.

For men dating women, the answer is kinda obvious – physical beauty. For women dating men, power.

This last part is worth its own set of discussion, but I’ll save that for another time – this post was mostly just a response to a few discussions I’ve had with people who claimed FIKness for their romantic selection and were resistant to pointing out role-specific requirements.

The Enticing Moral Claim

There is a tribe called Jhurk where all sorts of lies are told. Easy ones – “no you don’t look fat in that,” malicious ones – “no I didn’t steal your sheep, a wolf ate it,” and even beneficial ones – “no, invading war chief, I have no one else for you to capture in my home.”

One day a man named Goolag, who recently caught his wife with the local voodoo master when she’d sworn she was only going out to pick berries, comes up with a rule.

“Lying is bad!” he proclaims. “I hate liars!”

Nobody likes being lied to. Everyone agrees with Goolag, and they start putting up anti-lying flags. Soon their religions pick up moral tales about how their deities refused to lie. Young Jhurkian men signal how moral and hip they are to Jhurkian women by saying “I don’t date liars.”

Demonstrating how much you are against Lying becomes a quick and easy way to get moral points with the group. Everyone cheers with Goolag when he screams FUCK LYING.

Because everyone generally agrees that “being a liar” is a terrible thing, accusations of lying become especially powerful. Because accusations of lying are so powerful, they become broader – and the people of Jhurk are either “Liars” or “Not-Liars.”

Once someone in Jhurk receives the ‘Liar’ label, nobody cares to investigate further. The lie might have been harmless, horrible, or even occasionally beneficial – but under all the excitement about decrying lying, it’s packaged into one single, binary switch – Liar or Not-Liar. This isn’t a deliberate decision on the part of the Jhurkians, but more a result from a learned sense of outrage.

One woman, Zokk (whose husband was recently shunned for lying about a surprise party) tries to defend Liars. But all of Jhurk knows that Liars Are Bad – and they bring up Goolag’s wife, that dirty whore, and Gneb, who lied about the money in the tribe treasury, and Ved the traitor, who lied about being allied with Jhurk when really he was just selling tribe secrets to the rival tribe across the river.

“Why would you defend Lying when Liars do all these things?” they say. “You are a Liar-apologist!” and thus both Zokk and her husband are shunned.

—

“Lying is bad” was turned into a moral law in exactly the same way moral laws in religion operate. In religion, a set of “correct behaviors” are agreed upon, and adherents are ‘good’ and the rebellious are ‘bad.’ This can feel very deep and true, like how religion decries homosexuality so hard that people start to genuinely feel disgust and horror reactions about it.

Identifying a general sin is a very efficient way of dealing with social problems, but also very mindless and inaccurate. Jhurk’s lying problem was certainly eradicated, but eradicated religiously – in a strong, oversimplified, and demonizing sense.

New moral laws are usually the most exciting to signal (No dating site profile is cool for saying “I only date people who are against slavery”). And because they’re so exciting, they’re also the most virulent and religious.

I was reading about this commune back in the 1970s where they operated by the new and exciting moral law of Tolerate Everyone (as in allow anybody to live on this commune). This was a revolutionary concept to them and they took it very seriously. There was a strong social pressure to Tolerate Everyone, and anyone who did did not Tolerate Everyone was shunned by the group.

And over time the excitement wore off and they realized this wasn’t sustainable. The commune became a magnet for the drug addicted, the severely mentally ill, people who wouldn’t work, and dangerous criminals. Maybe something like Tolerate Everyone Except Those Who Are A Detriment To Your Community would have been better.

Of course Tolerating Everyone is a good idea and they were right to identify it as desirable – but it’s not desirable not as a law. The world is complex and nuanced and every situation has to be taken individually. This takes much more gentle thought and mental effort, but it might have saved that commune, and Zokk’s husband.

—

I think the terms “racism” and “sexism” are being used almost exclusively as religious law today.

Ideas having to do with race and sex are vast and complicated. Some come out of fear of culture, others out of mindless fear, others out of statistics. Some are more extreme than others. Some are justified, others entirely invalid. All of them have personal causes.

And in using the easy, simplistic, blanket term of ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’ to address any issue that even smells a bit like race or gender hostility, we are guilty of exactly the same trap that the religious fall into – except they’ve usually had a couple centuries to chill the fuck out while we’re still excited about it.

We say “if you’re racist don’t message me” on our dating profiles because it’s an easy and safe and exciting thing to signal. We use “sexist” as an immediate weapon word against situations that are in the line of fire but they might not be that terrible, we don’t know, we don’t have all the facts yet.

I’m not saying that discrimination against people based on race or gender isn’t terrible. It is – sort of like how maliciously lying to your neighbors is also terrible.

But I distrust the transformation of bad things into a label that can be used as a wide, inaccurate scythe that mows down the worst offenders, the mild offenders, and anybody innocently standing at the edges of the problem, all in the same sweep. It stifles discourse, it reduces empathy, it turns neighbors into opponents, and it mirrors the thinking of the mindless, traditionally religious.

The religious aren’t religious because they’re stupid, they’re religious because it’s enticing. Beware the enticing moral claim!

Are there other genders?

Bob: Gender is real – man and woman. There are two genders. People claiming that there are multiple genders, being third-gender or bigender or whatever – are usually just trying to feel special.

Alice: Wait hold on – but gender is a cultural construction in the first place. We associate things like ‘wearing dresses’ with ‘woman,’ but that’s not absolute. Why can’t we say it’s manly to wear dresses? It’s all in our heads and the narrative society feeds us.

Bob: Well to clarify before I continue – we’re not talking about sex. People can have different genitals, sometimes both genitals at once. There are medical differences. Obviously claiming your physical sex as the ultimate say in your gender is a bit of a silly idea.

Alice: Well we agree there. I’m talking about the mental conception around the way we should behave, which is frequently but not always associated with our genitals.

Bob: Yes. Gender is a cluster. “Maleness” does communicate something – it’s associated with things like sports, being unemotional, aggression, sex drive, bravery. It’s also associated with physical things like beards, large muscles, and penises.

And these things are associated with each other. People who have penises tend to be aggressive. People who like sports tend to grow facial hair. Because we see these things appear together all the time, we give it a name – Male. And even if a male doesn’t watch sports, or if he doesn’t have muscles, he still usually has enough of the cluster so that he is way closer to the “male” pattern than the “female” one.

This is why our culture has an idea of “x is not manly.” What they mean is that x is not typically found in the “male” cluster. A man wearing a dress isn’t manly because “dress wearing” isn’t commonly found in people who are similar to him.

Alice: I feel like you’re making my point for me – that of social construct. We’ve identified this pattern, sure, but it’s only just because it’s common. There is a ton of different possible patterns that aren’t the male or female pattern! Everyone is different and varied. Why do I have to be “manly” or “unmanly”? Why is it that belching isn’t feminine, and why is it that when I do present as feminine, people assume that I’m feminine in other ways as well, like being terrified of mice or some shit? I fucking love mice. This is the entire point – that we break down our conceptions about previous pattern. By identifying as something other than male or female, I am declaring to the world that I am my own unique pattern, with its own unique name. I will not be defined in comparison to preexisting norms.

Bob: I partially agree with you. It’s true that the patterns of male and female aren’t absolute in any way, that it’s an idea that society has.

But the point I’m trying to make isn’t that the male-female patterns are fundamentally arbitrary and culture-bound, but rather that they carry meaning in a way that things like “third-gender” doesn’t, and so to equate them is a bit silly.

For example: we’ve had the word “cunt” in our vocabulary for a long time. It is a very loaded word. It’s banned on television, you can’t say it around your grandma, and if a young child says “cunt” a lot, we get worried.

Is it fundamentally arbitrary? Yes. Is it a social construct? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that you can come along and introduce a new word – “bogus” – and expect it to carry the same weight. You can’t cry “bogus is a bad word!” and expect people to have the same reaction to ‘bogus’ as they do to ‘cunt.’ And that is essentailly what you’re doing. Male and female are concepts that are extremely ingrained in our awareness, and you can’t make a new gender equivalent just by proclaiming it aloud.

Alice: But how else do you start? There are people out there who genuinely don’t adhere to either gender role. Male and female feel intuitive because they are predictable. We generally know what women are like and how to talk to them, what their bodies look like, that they get pregnant – and same for men. This is why we identify those clusters so strongly, because of the strong and well-known association.

But if we start using bogus like a bad word, maybe eventually it will become a bad word. If we want to make other genders a recognizeable pattern, we have to start actively treating them as such.

Bob: I’m not against that in principle, but I think that’s much harder than it sounds. The traditional gender pattern clusters have one huge advantage – that part of their pattern is their physical bodies. If you’re talking about pattern being valuable due to prediction, then you’re not going to be able to beat the powerful predictive ability of visual input.

It’s like – if every time you said the word “cunt,” grandma passed out. And every time you said the word “fuck,” Jesus shed a tear. The words are associated with something measurable and obvious.

And then if someone comes along and says “let’s make bogus a bad word,” you might agree – but if isn’t associated with either your grandma fainting or Jesus crying, then somewhere deep down, you’re not going to feel like it’s a bad word. You’re going to feel like it belongs to a different category entirely, despite people keep claiming it has bad-word properties.

Maybe if every time you said “bogus”, hell got a little hotter, then you would feel like “bogus” was associated with something, and thus a real word. And maybe if we had a physically distinct third gender with a unique role to play in the reproduction process, then “third gender” would carry more meaning.

But it just doesn’t. Patterns are powerful, and they exist because they correspond to something that we “discover,” not something that we invent.

But I am not against shirking your traditional gender role. I think anyone can be anything they want, behave however they want (as long as they don’t hurt anyone). There is no reason for a male-bodied man to be obligated to adhere to the male-cluster. I just think that the words are useful. If you’re a man who wears dresses, you’re less manly. And that’s completely okay.

Power Imbalances and Sex

I saw a gif of a woman talking about how women make less than men in the film industry, ending with ‘the only industry where women make more than men is porn!’ Her point was about the objectification and sexualization of women, and that women are only valued as sex objects.

And this is true. Women are featured half dressed to sell alcohol or to spice up music videos. Porn is a huge industry. Discussions on cat calling, sexist remarks during the Olympics, skimpy impractical women’s clothes, etc. are dominating the internet right now and probably forever.

Why? Because people want to have sex with women. A lot.

And let’s not blame them. We are designed, not just culturally, to have a sexual response to the sight of a woman indicating sexual availability. This is how we’ve continued the human race for thousands of years, and we shouldn’t shame anybody for it.

I think the sense of unease among women from this “sexual gaze” comes from something a bit deeper. Men want sex from women, really, really badly. Women have the power, particularly in today’s society, to give it to them, or withhold. When women have this Thing that men want, and men have to submit/earn/beg/work/steal to get it, then this creates a fundamental inequality in interactions. The problem is a power imbalance.

A woman thinks – is this man interacting with me for me, or is he after the Thing I have that he wants?

A woman has to make sure she’s not accidentally using the Thing men want in order to manipulate men.

A woman has to be wary of men upset about her having the Thing, and lashing out or taking it by force.

A woman has to deal with men focusing on the Thing she has rather than all of her other accomplishments.

A woman has to deal with the feeling that her worth to society depends on how much of the Thing she has, that society only really values the Thing, that the rest of her doesn’t really matter to society.

———————

Imagine you have someone who is very rich, with a bunch of poor friends. If everybody is sensible, the rich person can hang out with the poor friends, and the poor will be careful to pay for their own meals and not ask for anything, because they don’t want the rich person to feel like the friendship is about money. Even this can be a bit tiring, as all the poor people are constantly trying to ignore the fact that this rich person could fulfill all their needs with just a bit of generosity, and the rich person knows that the poor people, no matter how polite they are, are always going to have that desire.

And if everybody is a bit less sensible, then rich person would probably have to learn to always be on guard for friendly people who just want money. Maybe they learn to start suspecting all nice interactions. Maybe they start lying about their wealth. Maybe they start immediately ignoring anybody who asks for money. Maybe all they want to do is dress like they’re not rich and hope nobody notices that they have money.

And of course there are benefits to this. If you have a Thing everyone wants, you can use this to your advantage. You can make a lot of money in an industry where you sell the Thing. People will be nice to you if they see you have the Thing. People will give you gifts in hope that maybe you will share your Thing. It’s easier to feel intimacy and love from people if you have the Thing, because the Thing draws them in and gives them the motivation to see you for who you really are. You probably won’t have to do nearly as much as people who don’t have the Thing, and the standards for you will be set lower.

I think this leads to a sort of internal dissonance, because on one hand, there are benefits to having the Thing, and it’s nice to have a good standing in society, for people to treat you well, for images of your Thing displayed on billboards as objects of worship, to be powerful just by existing. But on the other hand, having the Thing means that everybody is constantly pawing at you for it, and that your life centers around protecting the Thing and trying to navigate dispersing the Thing, and suddenly your identity becomes confused and commodified, you lose sight of who you are without the Thing, and finding honest and vulnerable relationships becomes much harder.

————————————–

I think this also explains the differing views towards women’s sexuality. Some men see primarily the “unfair power” side of women’s Thing and feel resentment about it, much like someone might feel resentment towards a rich friend who got all their money through an inheritance and is being so uptight they can’t even share a little bit. This is where you get things like The Red Pill, where the focus is entirely about fixing the unequal power distribution. “They have the Thing, but it’s no big deal, it’s easy to get.” If you read TRP posts it’s obvious how much of it is about trying ‘take the power back’.

And some women feel very resentment about this whole setup, too. They feel upset at the world constantly trying to pry the Thing out of their hands. They feel as though their worth is reduced to the Thing and the Thing only, because that’s what everyone seems to pay attention to. A catcall isn’t just a catcall, it’s a symbol for the entire social structure around the power exchange of sex. It is no longer a compliment – an acknowledgement of the desirability of their Thing – but rather an insult, a claim that they are only desirable for their Thing.

And of course, some people love both sides of this. Some women revel in the power game, in withholding and dispensing their Thing, and some men love the hard journey (and reward) of getting to the Thing.

——————– ————————————–

My first thought about what differentiates “men who hate the game” and “men who love the game” was whether or not they are winning. Maybe men who don’t get laid are ones that hate the game? But this didn’t make sense – a lot of men who get laid frequently still hate the game and hate women. You probably know some of these people.

So my second thought was a loss of control thing. To be a man in the sex game is a very weak and vulnerable position, because you are at the mercy of unknown feminine forces you frequently don’t understand. You are the one asking people out, you are the one trying to be nice and getting nowhere, you are the one sending all the messages on dating sites, waiting for replies that never come, feeling unwanted and unattractive. It’s not a huge leap to imagine that some people feel humiliated by this. It’s frustrating, despairing, and helpless. They probably really hate the game.

And what differentiates “women who hate the game” from “women who love the game”? I think this is a bit more complicated. If I had to reduce it, I would guess a deep caring about the way strangers and society perceives them. Women who hate the game hate that society perceives them as sex objects. Why do they care that they are reduced to sex in the eyes of society?
Some people might think this question is silly – obviously you don’t want to be seen as sex in the eyes of society! – but a lot of women don’t mind, or even enjoy it. The women I know who love the game don’t seem to care about what society thinks. Catcalls on the street are fine, because they are 100% okay with being a one dimensional sex object to strangers.

Sometimes I feel like women who are trying to end the game don’t realize that the game exists because women have the Thing, and people want the Thing and aren’t getting it. The only real way to end the game would be to equally dispense the Thing so that there is no more imbalance. This could be done in probably two ways – either we all start giving away the Thing until it’s no longer a rare commodity, or we invent amazing sex robots with good mobile joint movements and realistic audio sounds.

The first seems to be present in more liberal, hippie-esque communities I’ve been in. In some circles, all the men seem to be satisfied, and all the women seem to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. I’m extremely curious about what are the causal factors of these types of groups. They seem to have solved the problem.

In conclusion, I don’t really feel that any of these views are right or wrong, because they all seem understandable. Everyone can relate to a fear of loss of control, everyone can relate to a desire to be viewed more than one-dimensionally in the eyes of society.

I feel like I fluctuate between all these views. Sometimes I am enraged for men at the helplessness, sometimes I am infuriated for women at the objectification. And sometimes I just gyrate on camera to hundreds of masturbating men, cause fuckit.