Hmm. Okay. I am less confused by your rant now, though still somewhat confused. Does a female attending a LW meetup or being a LW regular also screen off those things? And if not, what is the difference?
I suppose it would help that you are hundreds of miles away from where I am, too.
As a female nerd, I’ve more or less resigned myself to the problem of sexual tension in my social circle. The vast majority of my friends are male, and of those, I have asked out or been asked out by just about every one (with the exception of guys who have been in relationships the whole time I’ve known them, or who are clearly outside my age group). Most of the time this has worked out okay in the end. Not always. So… Be glad you can still be friends with guys without having this problem, I guess?
It’s interesting: I seem to have the rare case of the opposite problem. I’m male, pretty nerdy—though probably a standard deviation less than the LW median—but I have no close nerdy male friends. Nearly all my friends are women who are nerdy but not nearly nerdy enough to fit in at a Less Wrong meet up. I’ve been romantically or sexually entangled with a little over half of them at various times. I have the flirty friends-but-maybe-more thing down pretty good and have several very deep, very close friendships with women. But find it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to connect deeply and maintain a friendship over time with someone of my own gender. I’d really like to change that. But women seem to be both a) more likely to want to make new friends and b) interested in meeting me and talking with me under a framework of maybe-we-can-date that can turn into a friendship. People are often trying very hard to meet new people for dating, so it isn’t that hard for me to meet people that way. But men don’t seem to try hard at all to make new male friends, so I have no idea how to go about it.
I was about to reply “So does having no close X friends; I don’t think that’s such a big deal either” for a few other values of X (e.g. “foreign” or “non-nerdy”), but if I get what your point is correctly it only applies if you’re an X yourself, so never mind.
Look on the bright side, you could be bisexual. (I’ve caught myself flirting with a dozen people simultaneously in the same thread of conversation without having realized I had started doing it.)
Perhaps you can elaborate on what that bright side is?
(personally, being bisexual myself, I can agree that it has good points and bad points. In this conversation however what comes up is mostly the bad—experiencing that sexual tension distorting my behaviour with both sexes, pushes me towards the belief that there’s no escape—that sane behaviour and interesting relationships are mutually exclusive. Maybe sane behaviour is just a myth :P.)
[ I did upvote your post because I do feel it adds something to the discussion.]
The bright side is that Nyan (AFAIK) isn’t bisexual, and only has to deal with this problem with half the population, so pretty much what you seem to be anticipating here.
(On the other hand, bisexuality means you have a lot more practice dealing with sexual tension. Good or bad out of that depends on whether or not the extra practice helps you solve the problem rather than just exaggerating it.)
Ah, it’s another victim of the absence of tone in text, then.
(That’s also a good point. Certainly I don’t suffer from the more facepalm-worthy expressions of sexual tension, and I can make fun of it instead of taking it seriously.)
Likewise. You being a lw meetup organizer pretty much screens off everything I said above.
Hmm. Okay. I am less confused by your rant now, though still somewhat confused. Does a female attending a LW meetup or being a LW regular also screen off those things? And if not, what is the difference?
(Also, yay possible friendship.)
Specifically the interestingness prior; LW is selected for intellectual interestingness.
The inane sexual dance is still a problem.
I suppose it would help that you are hundreds of miles away from where I am, too.
As a female nerd, I’ve more or less resigned myself to the problem of sexual tension in my social circle. The vast majority of my friends are male, and of those, I have asked out or been asked out by just about every one (with the exception of guys who have been in relationships the whole time I’ve known them, or who are clearly outside my age group). Most of the time this has worked out okay in the end. Not always. So… Be glad you can still be friends with guys without having this problem, I guess?
It’s interesting: I seem to have the rare case of the opposite problem. I’m male, pretty nerdy—though probably a standard deviation less than the LW median—but I have no close nerdy male friends. Nearly all my friends are women who are nerdy but not nearly nerdy enough to fit in at a Less Wrong meet up. I’ve been romantically or sexually entangled with a little over half of them at various times. I have the flirty friends-but-maybe-more thing down pretty good and have several very deep, very close friendships with women. But find it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to connect deeply and maintain a friendship over time with someone of my own gender. I’d really like to change that. But women seem to be both a) more likely to want to make new friends and b) interested in meeting me and talking with me under a framework of maybe-we-can-date that can turn into a friendship. People are often trying very hard to meet new people for dating, so it isn’t that hard for me to meet people that way. But men don’t seem to try hard at all to make new male friends, so I have no idea how to go about it.
Consider coming to LessWrong meetups! We’ll, uh, we’ll increase your male-to-female ratio?
Sigh...
http://lesswrong.com/lw/haz/meetup_washington_dc_books_meetup/8v1h?context=1#8v1h
Yay!
Why is the fact that most of your friends lack a penis a problem? I had that for years, but I newer saw anything wrong about that.
“Most” would be fine. But having no close male friends means I lose out on certain conversations, perspectives and experiences.
I was about to reply “So does having no close X friends; I don’t think that’s such a big deal either” for a few other values of X (e.g. “foreign” or “non-nerdy”), but if I get what your point is correctly it only applies if you’re an X yourself, so never mind.
Boardgames? If you live in a metropolitan area, there’s probably an active scene.
Look on the bright side, you could be bisexual. (I’ve caught myself flirting with a dozen people simultaneously in the same thread of conversation without having realized I had started doing it.)
Perhaps you can elaborate on what that bright side is?
(personally, being bisexual myself, I can agree that it has good points and bad points. In this conversation however what comes up is mostly the bad—experiencing that sexual tension distorting my behaviour with both sexes, pushes me towards the belief that there’s no escape—that sane behaviour and interesting relationships are mutually exclusive. Maybe sane behaviour is just a myth :P.)
[ I did upvote your post because I do feel it adds something to the discussion.]
The bright side is that Nyan (AFAIK) isn’t bisexual, and only has to deal with this problem with half the population, so pretty much what you seem to be anticipating here.
(On the other hand, bisexuality means you have a lot more practice dealing with sexual tension. Good or bad out of that depends on whether or not the extra practice helps you solve the problem rather than just exaggerating it.)
Ah, it’s another victim of the absence of tone in text, then.
(That’s also a good point. Certainly I don’t suffer from the more facepalm-worthy expressions of sexual tension, and I can make fun of it instead of taking it seriously.)
Fantastic point.