I’m going to give you some advice as a professional woman. I very deeply resent when male colleagues compete with each other to put on a display for women. This goes for social contexts (rationalists’ meetups) in addition to professional contexts (work meetings). Then women are trying to talk about code or rationality or product design. Rather than thinking about her contributions, the men are preoccupied with “projecting male presence and authority”. What does male presence even mean? Why does authority have anything to do with men, instead of, you know, being the most knowledgeable about the topic?
I’ll tell you how it comes across. It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women’s contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around. Instead of teaching boys to be “sexually attractive”, why don’t you teach them to include women in discussions and listen to them same as anyone else? Because we’re not evaluating your sons for “sexual attractiveness”. We’re just trying to get our ideas heard.
I’ll tell you how it comes across. It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women’s contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around.
Thank you for this. As a younger woman, I became reluctant to join conversations at conferences or other professional meetings because I had noticed that the dynamic of the group sometimes changed for the worse when I entered the discussion. As I get older, I’m no longer as much of a “prize”, so it doesn’t happen to me as often (which is honestly a relief), but I see it happen with other women. You’ve put nicely into words why it sucks so much—for everyone, not just women. I have to belief that it also sucks for the men who are just trying to have a good discussion, but are suddenly thrust into the middle of a sexual competition.
An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.
I find it also annoying when people cannot turn off their sexual behavior and focus on the topic, and instead disrupt the debate for everyone else. Both genders have their version.
The male version is what you described: focusing on status competition at all costs.
The female version is… essentially: “everyone, pay attention to me! I am a young fertile woman! look here! look here!”… giggling in a high-pitched voice at every opportunity, frequently inserting little “jokes” which other women often find annoying, turning attention to their body by exaggerated movements, etc. (Not sure if I described it well; I hope you know what I mean).
Not sure what to do with this. Seems like a multi-player Prisonner’s Dilemma. People who are doing this (if they are well-calibrated) receive some personal benefits at the expense of the group, so it would be hard to convince them to stop. Most likely, they would deny doing this.
But seems like men have an advantage here, because fighting for status in order to seem more attractive is trying to kill two birds with one stone. Even if it doesn’t make the man any more attractive to anyone, he still gets some status (unless he is doing it really wrong). On the other hand, when the woman fails to seem attractive, her behavior will only seem stupid.
giggling in a high-pitched voice at every opportunity, frequently inserting little “jokes” which other women often find annoying, turning attention to their body by exaggerated movements, etc. (Not sure if I described it well; I hope you know what I mean).
To me, that behavior connotes a combination of wanting to project femininity (not so much sexual behavior or attractiveness) and having lower-than-average self esteem (i.e. perceived status). It is mostly the latter that can be slightly annoying in the workplace, since such people are often unwittingly excluded from discussion (wobster109 also raises this point).
The root problem here is not so much the behavior itself, but lack of perceived status that then leads to that behavior as a kind of overcompensation. ISTM that high self esteem often boosts both social attractiveness and effectiveness in the workplace (as long as it doesn’t come with ‘Type-A’ overt aggressiveness, and even then sometimes), and that this broadly applies to both males and females.
Low self-esteem hypothesis is difficult to falsify, because whatever social role given person plays and however they behave, one could still say “but maybe deep inside they feel insecure”. Having said that… yes, this may be an instinctive reaction of a nervous woman, but I believe I have also seen high-status women doing that strategically.
Imagine a club that has informal lectures at its meetings (not LessWrong, but similar), and a 30-something woman, a long-term relatively high-status member of the club, interrupting the lectures every few minutes with some “witty” remark. That was the most annoying example I remember. It seemed to me like she was trying to immitate a behavior of a young girl, in my opinion not very successfully, exactly because some element of shyness was missing; it was only rude. Possibly she was projecting her authority against other present women. I just shrugged this behavior off as rude and forgot it afterwards, but my girlfriend later told me she wanted to kill that person. (Which I take as an evidence that the behavior was a way of intra-gender status fight.)
a 30-something woman, a long-term relatively high-status member of the club, interrupting the lectures every few minutes with some “witty” remark.
Not sure what you mean by “witty remark”, but wit and humor often connote fairly high status, as opposed to, e. g. just giggling at something or other things you mentioned. Could it be that your girlfriend was just annoyed at the sheer amount of interruptions? And yes, there may have been some intra-gender status competition involved, but males often compete in much the same way (Protip: don’t invite sealion specimens at clubs or conferences).
I’m going to give you some advice as a professional woman. I very deeply resent when male colleagues compete with each other to put on a display for women. … It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women’s contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around.
This is not what PUAs advocate as the best way of relating to women, much less in the workplace. The short version is that PUAs are advised to treat women like they would a male friend, and to see only themselves as a possible prize, never the women. While some measure of “projecting male presence and authority” might be involved, it would be a lot subtler than you are implying, and it would never get in the way of actual discussion.
You’re probably modeling your remarks on the common variety of “A-type” personalities, who also like to project dominance. But these folks are not PUAs—many things they do are just wrong and dysfunctional, particularly in a workplace environment. At the same time, we do need to care about these issues. Just focusing on “being the most knowledgeable about the topic” with no attention to social presence is not the answer. It will cause others to regard you as an obnoxious know-it-all, not a valuable asset in your team.
Some people are, sometimes. Most people are more usually either partly or entirely interested in boosting their social status and competing for mates, which are two intertwined activities.
I don’t really feel entitled to have my way in what goals others pursue in a social setting.
I think you’re projecting your feelings here into some sort of feeltopia.
For your first paragraph, can you use consequentalism to describe how well a man who doesn’t chase after the status and the women will do? In the dating market? In the job market? In the social market? Can you give me true data, that that man will have as much oppourtunities, as much chances, and as much friends as the guy that—god have mercy on our souls—does the forbidden and resentable sin of status competing?
Be aware that many men share the opposite view, and as you are A. not a man (and all that it brings with); B. have not admitted to have any insight to how men view the world; C. did not say if your views are based on researched evidence or anecdote evidence, and as such provided no reason as to why any man should review and perhaps even update considering you viewpoint, what merit do you think your view has that men are seemingly missing in the quest for statusdom?
For your second paragraph, it falls apart if you cannot bring ample evidence for the first as it’s a follow-up to it, and it also reads like generalizing from one example. I’m not a fan of superficial intelligence so I’ll explain why instead of linking you to post ZFA#24 and straight-out tell you that you seem to be in bad company if what you say is true, and that you cannot be called professional if that’s the kind of environment you are employed in daily.
I hope this post gets downvoted to oblivi.. ehrm, I mean, linked in order to solve this silly gender war bullcrap once and for all.
You’re presupposing implicit agreement from all men with the notion that women’s ideas have merit, and the agreement from all women with your notion of wanting to be included in the company of men as equals.
There is a more elegant solution that doesn’t involve your desired absurd levels of gender equality—gender self-segregation in situations where the purpose is not interacting with the opposite gender. That way. there is no pressure for competition between men, and no pressure for pretending to be men from women. Because that’s what modern “gender equality” ideology amounts to—pressuring women to act like men, disregarding their actual ideas and aspirations for the goal of eradicating femininity.
I agree with JoshuaZ. I find your solution to be a severe hindrance in real life. I am the SQL expert on my team, and my (male) coworker is the surgeries expert, and my (male) colleague across the hall is the infectious diseases expert. We all work together to make the best product possible. How can we get anything done if we are segregated by gender?
I don’t see why I need “implicit agreement from all men”. My ideas have merit because they reduce medical errors and save lives. Real-life results are the judge of that, not men. I also do not see why I need “agreement from all women”. They are not my coworkers, and they are free to live their lives as they wish. That said, I am a developer in a project meeting at a tech company. Safe to say, I want to be treated as an equal.
Finally, I don’t see what contributing to a great company has to do with “acting like men” or “pretending to be men”. My goal isn’t to “eradicate femininity”; it is to make a great product that will help people. If you think that is inherently masculine, then you’ll have to explain. So why don’t you start by telling me what “masculine” and “feminine” mean to you?
You’re presupposing implicit agreement from all men with the notion that women’s ideas have merit, and the agreement from all women with your notion of wanting to be included in the company of men as equals.
Nothing in wobster109′s comment presumed anything of the sort. Moreover, if there are men who are unable to see ideas coming from women as having merit then the problem seems to be with those men more than anything else.
But we can if you want steelman your statement slightly: If instead of the men having disagreement with the notion that women’s ideas have merit, it is possible that some men have problems at a basic level with accepting ideas from women. In that case, maybe there is an actual problem that needs to get dealt with, but even then, you need a lot more of an argument that the best solution is complete gender segregation and not trying to teach those men to accept ideas from women. And calling a solution “elegant” doesn’t make it so: indeed, this is a “solution” where we can empirically see what happens when countries like Saudi Arabia or places like Kiryas Yoel try to implement variants of it, and it isn’t pretty.
Because that’s what modern “gender equality” ideology amounts to—pressuring women to act like men, disregarding their actual ideas and aspirations for the goal of eradicating femininity
Aside from this being one of the most strawmanned possible notion of what constitutes gender equality, does it strike you at all as odd as that you are replying to an actual woman and telling her that what she wants is due to pressure from some ideology for her not act feminine? Do you see what might be either wrong with that or at least epistemologically unwise?
So, in your world, men reserve the right to define what femininity is, whereas in a gender-equal world, women get to define it. I don’t see why we should prefer your world.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m speaking of femininity as ordained by Gnon, not any human attempts to define or constrain it—in that sense, indoctrinating women into behaving like men and aspiring to masculine achievements does not amount to “gender equality”, but the systematic eradication of femininity.
There are several worrying, unquestioned assumptions in your argument: namely, that authority and competitiveness are exclusively male traits, that competition among men is inevitable in the presence of women, and that women who try to obtain and use power are “pretending to be men”. Actually, by restricting the admissible examples of femininity to those that best suit your ideal society, you are introducing your preferred definition of femininity. Shifting the blame to “Gnon” doesn’t succeed in hiding the fact that you’re the one defining “Gnon”.
But nature (because I refuse to anthropomorphize impersonal forces by giving them silly names) does not ordain a specific way of femininity or masculinity. The seahorse fish are gestated by the male, which during that period is full of prolactin. The jacana birds have a peculiar calendar of reproductive availability that resulted in the bigger and stronger females being selected by fighting over available males. The definitions of male and female aren’t cast in stone.
I’ll grant that those examples have little bearing on human societies, but even appealing to our primate past is no use: are you going with the patriarchal chimpanzee, or the matriarchal bonobo? Better, we could just abandon the naturalistic fallacy and let individual humans decide what patterns of behavior actually make them happiest.
There are several worrying, unquestioned assumptions in your argument: namely, that authority and competitiveness are exclusively male traits
Not exclusively, primarily. There’s certainly been little selection pressure for women to compete or lead as opposed to men, be it in the context of mating rights or broader societal interactions. Men are better adapted for such purposes, therefore, by taking them on, women are, by definition, acting like men.
That’s all I’m talking about—recognising the fact that men and women have certain complementary, non-overlapping aptitudes, are not literally the same, and, are better off apart in certain situations in which modern western societies force them together.
The environment we live in constitutes a new, different set of selection pressures. Features which were adaptive in the past (like dominance or aggressiveness) no longer ensure differential mating success. Willingness to negotiate roles and seek consensus is more incentivized now. Instead of promoting nostalgia for an ancestral environment that is not coming back, you could do what makes the most biological sense—adapt.
We disagree over how much it’s possible to adapt in a single generation then. Anyway, ideologies that force absurd levels of pretence at gender equality at us aren’t about adapting away these differences, they’re about pretending they don’t exist—and if you really wanted to reverse them, there are far more efficient processes to do so than ignoring them, given modern technology—but most would require acknowledging the inherent inequality in the first place. The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that nobody is pushing for this is that the gender equality movements are content to pretend to have accomplished anything by forcing people to pretend that the concept of gender equality corresponds to reality in any way.
Adaptation is actually quite efficient within one single generation: those who don’t mate, don’t mate. If enough women decide that they don’t want cavemen but feminist men, differential reproduction will sort out the results, and the next generation will feel more comfortable with a state of equality.
Edited to add: that is, assuming that opinions are genetic. They’re not. Memetics is even faster than genetics at changing attitudes toward gender roles. The son of a caveman can learn to become a feminist, and vice versa. Change can happen in less than one generation.
There will also be competition among the feminist men. Seems to me that the loudest of them are often… uhm, former cavemen who have “seen the light” and became extremists for the other side. Or guys like this one. If there is a genetic component, these guys would bring it to the future.
More generally, Goodhart’s law also applies to men signalling feminism.
I’m going to give you some advice as a professional woman. I very deeply resent when male colleagues compete with each other to put on a display for women. This goes for social contexts (rationalists’ meetups) in addition to professional contexts (work meetings). Then women are trying to talk about code or rationality or product design. Rather than thinking about her contributions, the men are preoccupied with “projecting male presence and authority”. What does male presence even mean? Why does authority have anything to do with men, instead of, you know, being the most knowledgeable about the topic?
I’ll tell you how it comes across. It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women’s contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around. Instead of teaching boys to be “sexually attractive”, why don’t you teach them to include women in discussions and listen to them same as anyone else? Because we’re not evaluating your sons for “sexual attractiveness”. We’re just trying to get our ideas heard.
Thank you for this. As a younger woman, I became reluctant to join conversations at conferences or other professional meetings because I had noticed that the dynamic of the group sometimes changed for the worse when I entered the discussion. As I get older, I’m no longer as much of a “prize”, so it doesn’t happen to me as often (which is honestly a relief), but I see it happen with other women. You’ve put nicely into words why it sucks so much—for everyone, not just women. I have to belief that it also sucks for the men who are just trying to have a good discussion, but are suddenly thrust into the middle of a sexual competition.
Reminds me of this Aldous Huxley quote:
I find it also annoying when people cannot turn off their sexual behavior and focus on the topic, and instead disrupt the debate for everyone else. Both genders have their version.
The male version is what you described: focusing on status competition at all costs.
The female version is… essentially: “everyone, pay attention to me! I am a young fertile woman! look here! look here!”… giggling in a high-pitched voice at every opportunity, frequently inserting little “jokes” which other women often find annoying, turning attention to their body by exaggerated movements, etc. (Not sure if I described it well; I hope you know what I mean).
Not sure what to do with this. Seems like a multi-player Prisonner’s Dilemma. People who are doing this (if they are well-calibrated) receive some personal benefits at the expense of the group, so it would be hard to convince them to stop. Most likely, they would deny doing this.
But seems like men have an advantage here, because fighting for status in order to seem more attractive is trying to kill two birds with one stone. Even if it doesn’t make the man any more attractive to anyone, he still gets some status (unless he is doing it really wrong). On the other hand, when the woman fails to seem attractive, her behavior will only seem stupid.
To me, that behavior connotes a combination of wanting to project femininity (not so much sexual behavior or attractiveness) and having lower-than-average self esteem (i.e. perceived status). It is mostly the latter that can be slightly annoying in the workplace, since such people are often unwittingly excluded from discussion (wobster109 also raises this point).
The root problem here is not so much the behavior itself, but lack of perceived status that then leads to that behavior as a kind of overcompensation. ISTM that high self esteem often boosts both social attractiveness and effectiveness in the workplace (as long as it doesn’t come with ‘Type-A’ overt aggressiveness, and even then sometimes), and that this broadly applies to both males and females.
Low self-esteem hypothesis is difficult to falsify, because whatever social role given person plays and however they behave, one could still say “but maybe deep inside they feel insecure”. Having said that… yes, this may be an instinctive reaction of a nervous woman, but I believe I have also seen high-status women doing that strategically.
Imagine a club that has informal lectures at its meetings (not LessWrong, but similar), and a 30-something woman, a long-term relatively high-status member of the club, interrupting the lectures every few minutes with some “witty” remark. That was the most annoying example I remember. It seemed to me like she was trying to immitate a behavior of a young girl, in my opinion not very successfully, exactly because some element of shyness was missing; it was only rude. Possibly she was projecting her authority against other present women. I just shrugged this behavior off as rude and forgot it afterwards, but my girlfriend later told me she wanted to kill that person. (Which I take as an evidence that the behavior was a way of intra-gender status fight.)
Not sure what you mean by “witty remark”, but wit and humor often connote fairly high status, as opposed to, e. g. just giggling at something or other things you mentioned. Could it be that your girlfriend was just annoyed at the sheer amount of interruptions? And yes, there may have been some intra-gender status competition involved, but males often compete in much the same way (Protip: don’t invite sealion specimens at clubs or conferences).
This is not what PUAs advocate as the best way of relating to women, much less in the workplace. The short version is that PUAs are advised to treat women like they would a male friend, and to see only themselves as a possible prize, never the women. While some measure of “projecting male presence and authority” might be involved, it would be a lot subtler than you are implying, and it would never get in the way of actual discussion.
You’re probably modeling your remarks on the common variety of “A-type” personalities, who also like to project dominance. But these folks are not PUAs—many things they do are just wrong and dysfunctional, particularly in a workplace environment. At the same time, we do need to care about these issues. Just focusing on “being the most knowledgeable about the topic” with no attention to social presence is not the answer. It will cause others to regard you as an obnoxious know-it-all, not a valuable asset in your team.
Some people are, sometimes. Most people are more usually either partly or entirely interested in boosting their social status and competing for mates, which are two intertwined activities.
I don’t really feel entitled to have my way in what goals others pursue in a social setting.
I think you’re projecting your feelings here into some sort of feeltopia.
For your first paragraph, can you use consequentalism to describe how well a man who doesn’t chase after the status and the women will do? In the dating market? In the job market? In the social market? Can you give me true data, that that man will have as much oppourtunities, as much chances, and as much friends as the guy that—god have mercy on our souls—does the forbidden and resentable sin of status competing? Be aware that many men share the opposite view, and as you are A. not a man (and all that it brings with); B. have not admitted to have any insight to how men view the world; C. did not say if your views are based on researched evidence or anecdote evidence, and as such provided no reason as to why any man should review and perhaps even update considering you viewpoint, what merit do you think your view has that men are seemingly missing in the quest for statusdom?
For your second paragraph, it falls apart if you cannot bring ample evidence for the first as it’s a follow-up to it, and it also reads like generalizing from one example. I’m not a fan of superficial intelligence so I’ll explain why instead of linking you to post ZFA#24 and straight-out tell you that you seem to be in bad company if what you say is true, and that you cannot be called professional if that’s the kind of environment you are employed in daily.
I hope this post gets downvoted to oblivi.. ehrm, I mean, linked in order to solve this silly gender war bullcrap once and for all.
You’re presupposing implicit agreement from all men with the notion that women’s ideas have merit, and the agreement from all women with your notion of wanting to be included in the company of men as equals.
There is a more elegant solution that doesn’t involve your desired absurd levels of gender equality—gender self-segregation in situations where the purpose is not interacting with the opposite gender. That way. there is no pressure for competition between men, and no pressure for pretending to be men from women. Because that’s what modern “gender equality” ideology amounts to—pressuring women to act like men, disregarding their actual ideas and aspirations for the goal of eradicating femininity.
I agree with JoshuaZ. I find your solution to be a severe hindrance in real life. I am the SQL expert on my team, and my (male) coworker is the surgeries expert, and my (male) colleague across the hall is the infectious diseases expert. We all work together to make the best product possible. How can we get anything done if we are segregated by gender?
I don’t see why I need “implicit agreement from all men”. My ideas have merit because they reduce medical errors and save lives. Real-life results are the judge of that, not men. I also do not see why I need “agreement from all women”. They are not my coworkers, and they are free to live their lives as they wish. That said, I am a developer in a project meeting at a tech company. Safe to say, I want to be treated as an equal.
Finally, I don’t see what contributing to a great company has to do with “acting like men” or “pretending to be men”. My goal isn’t to “eradicate femininity”; it is to make a great product that will help people. If you think that is inherently masculine, then you’ll have to explain. So why don’t you start by telling me what “masculine” and “feminine” mean to you?
Nothing in wobster109′s comment presumed anything of the sort. Moreover, if there are men who are unable to see ideas coming from women as having merit then the problem seems to be with those men more than anything else.
But we can if you want steelman your statement slightly: If instead of the men having disagreement with the notion that women’s ideas have merit, it is possible that some men have problems at a basic level with accepting ideas from women. In that case, maybe there is an actual problem that needs to get dealt with, but even then, you need a lot more of an argument that the best solution is complete gender segregation and not trying to teach those men to accept ideas from women. And calling a solution “elegant” doesn’t make it so: indeed, this is a “solution” where we can empirically see what happens when countries like Saudi Arabia or places like Kiryas Yoel try to implement variants of it, and it isn’t pretty.
Aside from this being one of the most strawmanned possible notion of what constitutes gender equality, does it strike you at all as odd as that you are replying to an actual woman and telling her that what she wants is due to pressure from some ideology for her not act feminine? Do you see what might be either wrong with that or at least epistemologically unwise?
So, in your world, men reserve the right to define what femininity is, whereas in a gender-equal world, women get to define it. I don’t see why we should prefer your world.
As bad as that comment was, this isn’t one of its problems.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m speaking of femininity as ordained by Gnon, not any human attempts to define or constrain it—in that sense, indoctrinating women into behaving like men and aspiring to masculine achievements does not amount to “gender equality”, but the systematic eradication of femininity.
There are several worrying, unquestioned assumptions in your argument: namely, that authority and competitiveness are exclusively male traits, that competition among men is inevitable in the presence of women, and that women who try to obtain and use power are “pretending to be men”. Actually, by restricting the admissible examples of femininity to those that best suit your ideal society, you are introducing your preferred definition of femininity. Shifting the blame to “Gnon” doesn’t succeed in hiding the fact that you’re the one defining “Gnon”.
But nature (because I refuse to anthropomorphize impersonal forces by giving them silly names) does not ordain a specific way of femininity or masculinity. The seahorse fish are gestated by the male, which during that period is full of prolactin. The jacana birds have a peculiar calendar of reproductive availability that resulted in the bigger and stronger females being selected by fighting over available males. The definitions of male and female aren’t cast in stone.
I’ll grant that those examples have little bearing on human societies, but even appealing to our primate past is no use: are you going with the patriarchal chimpanzee, or the matriarchal bonobo? Better, we could just abandon the naturalistic fallacy and let individual humans decide what patterns of behavior actually make them happiest.
Not exclusively, primarily. There’s certainly been little selection pressure for women to compete or lead as opposed to men, be it in the context of mating rights or broader societal interactions. Men are better adapted for such purposes, therefore, by taking them on, women are, by definition, acting like men.
That’s all I’m talking about—recognising the fact that men and women have certain complementary, non-overlapping aptitudes, are not literally the same, and, are better off apart in certain situations in which modern western societies force them together.
The environment we live in constitutes a new, different set of selection pressures. Features which were adaptive in the past (like dominance or aggressiveness) no longer ensure differential mating success. Willingness to negotiate roles and seek consensus is more incentivized now. Instead of promoting nostalgia for an ancestral environment that is not coming back, you could do what makes the most biological sense—adapt.
We disagree over how much it’s possible to adapt in a single generation then. Anyway, ideologies that force absurd levels of pretence at gender equality at us aren’t about adapting away these differences, they’re about pretending they don’t exist—and if you really wanted to reverse them, there are far more efficient processes to do so than ignoring them, given modern technology—but most would require acknowledging the inherent inequality in the first place. The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that nobody is pushing for this is that the gender equality movements are content to pretend to have accomplished anything by forcing people to pretend that the concept of gender equality corresponds to reality in any way.
Adaptation is actually quite efficient within one single generation: those who don’t mate, don’t mate. If enough women decide that they don’t want cavemen but feminist men, differential reproduction will sort out the results, and the next generation will feel more comfortable with a state of equality.
Edited to add: that is, assuming that opinions are genetic. They’re not. Memetics is even faster than genetics at changing attitudes toward gender roles. The son of a caveman can learn to become a feminist, and vice versa. Change can happen in less than one generation.
There will also be competition among the feminist men. Seems to me that the loudest of them are often… uhm, former cavemen who have “seen the light” and became extremists for the other side. Or guys like this one. If there is a genetic component, these guys would bring it to the future.
More generally, Goodhart’s law also applies to men signalling feminism.
Wow, the notion that “women’s ideas have merit” is an “absurd level of gender equality”?
Riiiight...