blunting a scissor: notes on part 1

part 1 discussed the controversy surrounding a reddit post about a guy who stopped walking his female friend home from parties after she rejected him romantically. my first post on the topic received some good critique, and realized i hadn’t put enough time into steelmanning the (for lack of a better description) pro-dude position. why? it could be any number of odd little biases i’ve been trying to work out, but i think it’s because the pro-dude position seems fairly obvious, like… the pro-dude position is easy to explain, women generally grasp it easily and simply disagree. the pro-chick position seems surprisingly angry and like it’s missing a logical step or three which, if explained, might leave guys a little less confused (if not actually in agreement).

something else that influences my pro-chick bent here: i’ve exclusively dated straight guys in the girl role, but i've been on both sides of something very like this situation. being in the guy’s position is much more painful, yes, but he has a lot more information and a lot more agency in the situation, and i think this is a big part of why i’m not so sympathetic towards him. i’ve always aspired to be a gentleman, so i’m always kind of shocked when i find that many actual men don’t base their decisions on questions like “is this gentlemanly behavior?” (probably the topic of “Why Be A Gentleman?” deserves its own post. i’ve noodled on this a bit here.)

anyway, part 1 was (and part 2 will largely be) mainly trying to explain why so many women were so mad over this pretty milquetoast story.

part 1 went over the idea that women get really upset about their time being wasted and being jerked around by guys, probably bc so many want kids and have to be more nervous than men about their biological clocks ticking down. i think i should also have mentioned: women are keenly aware that men of any age are more than happy to date younger, so roughly, the older you get, as a straight woman, the more competition you’re likely to have.1 even if you aren’t aiming to have babies, you’re going to hear a lot from all quarters about how you’re under time constraints if you want to find a decent guy.

ok, but as some of you pointed out: what does this have to do with a story where the guy was interested in the girl and wasn’t jerking her around?

this is fair! i do think it’s probably irrational to apply this fear i’ve described to a situation that’s closer to its opposite. and yet… when i search internally for the reasons behind my own feelings on the matter, it feels incredibly relevant.

if you can imagine yourself in this woman’s shoes, you’re likely to notice yourself questioning your own judgment. this is a scary feeling when your judgment is the only thing you can rely on to prevent yourself from being used for sex2 or strung along until your eggs have dried up. sure, in this particular story, they didn’t date or fuck… but she could easily have said “yes” on the basis that he’s the type of guy who walks women home, even if he’s not interested in them romantically, when new evidence suggests he’s really not that type of guy.3 it’s pretty uncomfortable to notice how easy it is to goodhart the sorts of cues that suggest reliability.

the only surefire way i can think of to judge a guy’s character is to see how he treats women who he doesn’t want to sleep with. but this only works if you can tell who he does and doesn’t want to sleep with. if a guy wanted to sleep with you and you didn’t realize this, either there’s something wrong with your ability to read men or men are actually capable of being pretty sneaky about their motives. it doesn’t much matter if those motives are pure; it’s scary to realize you can’t rely on your judgment about something this important.

is this an overreaction? maybe! but it’s hard to overstate how critical effective filtering is for women trying to find a long-term partner. in (very) broad strokes: single men struggle with getting any woman at all to sleep with them; single women struggle with making sure only the right guy sleeps with them.

if you’re a straight man, it’s really upsetting to think that no woman in the world would ever touch you. if you’re a straight woman, it’s just as upsetting to think that your judgment isn’t enough to prevent the wrong man from touching you.

so, yeah, the woman in this story probably wasn’t in any danger of this guy using her for sex and then leaving. but all of us reading this from her perspective are aware of the gap between her expectations of her friend and reality, and aware of how big a threat a gap like this is to long-term happiness, if you’re a woman who’s single and looking.

alright, so you may have noticed i never actually got around to steelmanning the dudes’ side of things here. in the interest of ever actually finishing this now-multi-part post, i’m just going to carry on. but i expect to do more scissor-blunting posts in future, and when i do i’ll try a clearer format: lay out each “side,” list its points (maybe from worst to best) and offer counter-arguments, even if i think a point is really obvious and not worth explaining. maybe once i try this i’ll realize it’s not workable. like: if you’re offering counter-arguments to a position and then the opposing position, won’t that be redundant? but maybe it’s fine to be redundant, especially if it makes it easier for someone to skip to the bit they’re interested in. very open to opinions on this.

on the other hand, maybe i shouldn’t try to bill myself as being even-handed here bc i’m even more biased than i realize! i guess we’ll see. but given that i’m in this deep, i don’t want to abandon the previous post unfinished, so instead… keep an eye out for part 3

didn’t run this by anyone, as i noticed trying to polish these too much is slowing down my output by a lot; let’s hope the quality hasn’t suffered too much :) i swear i’ll be less apologetic once i’m more confident in the format

check out my website if u’d like to book a matchmaking or dating troubleshooting meeting