The height of MeToo being in the rearview has not erased a reflexive need to blame men for individual problems which is psychologically harmful for everyone.
I worked as an engineer, Engineering Manager and now as a Pastor of a small church in a rural community. I discovered that women in the workplace often preferred the company of men due to the more factually based work environment than the emotionally charged environment that women created. A woman who was a good leader, treated people fairly and had a good sense of humor and self did well. Women who were in competition for emotional validation were universally disliked by the men and women who had to suffer under them. Logical reasoning and decision making versus emotional reasoning and demanding adherence are truly the endpoints of a spectrum of how workplaces function.
This is absolutely my experience with women outside the technical functions (I'm a solution architect). They don't support meritocracy and can't handle a woman beating them. What sucks is most men don't notice this so good for you for seeing it.
Your to men section has the best advice for men I have ever heard from a woman. Have you by any chance ever read anything by Rollo Tomassi? You say a lot of similar things.
I really enjoyed this, until the "masculine inclinations" BS. There are no masculine and feminine ways of communicating or traits. That is all imagined and pointless. "Emotional" communicating is almost always manipulation. Men and women engage in such foul behavior. Rational communication is simply behaving like a human being and trying to be decent. This is not masculine. It is just good practice.
There have been no more destructive ideas than this gendered nonsense. It does not exist. I do not want to be mistaken into thinking this has anything to do with trans rights. I support full trans rights. I simply hate this pointless assigning of genders where they simply do not exist. It is mental masturbation, and not even the good kind.
Gender studies is useless. Anything with the word "queer" in it is useless. I am so happy I managed to avoid all of this stupidity. It has done nothing but cause suffering. It pains me to see how many young people have been warped by this poison. Fascism and racism are bad, but this is worse. It is easier to point out the stupidity of the others.
I so desperately wish that we could focus on productive activity instead of "activism" or other forms of thuggish behavior. The Queer attacks on LGBT rights and parenthood were the wakeup call for me. What has saddened me the most are the little boys raised by women who shout this poison to their sons "you are a worthless man" and similar mantra's are stated repeatedly to toddlers who grow up to be broken men afraid to exit their mothers' homes. Others follow Tate and his male version of radical feminism. Both are toxic and immoral.
We have so much to do, so much to build. We keep wasting time and energy on foolish self-created crises that do not actually exist. Perhaps instead of defund the police, we can defund grievance studies at public universities. I would love to see those angry professors get real jobs. It would do them so much good. Most of all, it would stop them from causing any more harm.
Listen, I get it. I’m not saying it SHOULD be this way. I’m saying that certain personality traits and communication styles are coded by people as masculine, like my own. Rationalist inclinations are coded as masculine, while emotion is coded as feminine. It shouldn’t be thus, but because it is, I’m arguing that it shouldn’t be. No one should be coding me as somehow different because I communicate like this, and yet they do.
I just found your article and have subscribed to your blog. I like what I read. I am an astrologer who has seen many men in my practice in the process of recovery from their marriages to liberal feminists. I will only say that I have seen them bleed, pain and rage. Personally, I, a unlucky never-married woman, consider myself (fiercely?) pro-patriarchy, and that stems in large part from the fact that I grew up in matriarchies. And that is all I want to say for now.
That is fascinating. I, too, grew up in a matriarchy despite being from a patriarchal culture. That culture showed me two sides of the coin - one overly aggressive and the other ineffective (my father). I'm sad to know about your clients but I suppose that shouldn't surprise. It's validating of my argument that it's possible that marriages to liberal women are miserable because of said anti-masculine strain in liberalism today.
The recent Harris ad encouraging women to secretly vote for her without their Trump-voting husband’s awareness is a gross example. Apparently being a two-faced liar and coward is an act of female empowerment. Encouraging marital discord too.
The subject gives a lot to talk about. Like you, I grew up in a country considered macho, but if there is only one machismo left, it is mine. For real. I grew up among catholic matriarchs, and I witnessed from a very young age the humiliations and predicaments of men, literally subjected to the will of their wives, always victims -of nothing-. The term "ineffective" is more than adequate in this sense. Add to that is the deep disgust of feminist radicalism in full swing in the last 12 years. The continent is mired in a generalised dissociation that cannot be specified. And I can't stop thinking about my father, my uncles, my friends, my clients, my own Animus. I am a Leo, I am ruled by the Sun, and for me authority is Solar, poeriod. I will never support violence and abuse, but I know my place next to a male partner, and I value his. We cannot raise balanced generations where the male does not know does not can how to be one.
Thanks for the advice; I've (almost) always avoided being vocal about this stuff beside knowing I'm as removed from any form of sexism as a man can be. I'll be working toward less restraint from now on
Women have certainly weaponized their emotions against me. But only men have used physical violence against me. I certainly don’t think men are trash, but they are not innocent victims of emotional harpies either. I worked as a stripper on and off for 16 years (while simultaneously an academic, but that’s another story), and operating in that environment placed me in the line of fire of men’s worst behaviors. I’ve been prey to a number of scheming bitches in my day, but I’ve never been raped by one, ya know? I agree with you on the excesses of intersectional feminism as deployed by a general public who doesn’t actually understand the implications of what originated as fairly-high academic theory, but this piece seems to verge on misogyny. I’m not sure. You seem to have gone from man-hating to…maybe the other side? Much respect and no shade.
I respect that your experience has led you to negative experiences with men. That colors your own opinion and my opposite experience has colored my opinion. We are both allowed to have them and live in peace. While there is plenty of content that criticizes all the things men do, there is almost none criticizing the way women destroy each other and have helped destroy the meaning of many words as well well as art; men aren't the ones leading the charge, for example, on gender ideology, nor are they the ones hurling insults at women who dare to disagree. You are welcome to consider me a misogynist; I'm not losing sleep over it.
"I think third-wave feminism, out of which every other intersectional paradigm grew, encourages a set of cognitive distortions that ought to be questioned and debated loudly and often.5 Blaming problems on capitalism, sexism, racism, and even colonialism do you no favors and puts you off from taking a hard look at changes that are begging to be made inside you as an individual."
YES!!!!! Thank you for writing this. Thank you for your bravery.
I also think it's funny that no one wants to talk about female evil, meanwhile people can't fucking wait to talk about male evil.
Just goes to show the deep misandry. People wake up giddy to talk about rape culture and yet we are supposed to approach female evil sheepishly and ashamedly.
Women have more worth. They birth armies. You do not need many sperm donors. Men are disposable. They always have been. That is why men work so hard to obtain status. Women simply do not need to.
Women do not have more worth. This is some gyno fem nonsense.
All of civilization is man made because women can't cooperate and problem solve on a large enough scale to make civilizations.
It isn't the case that men are "disposable".
I understand the meme "eggs are expensive but sperm is cheap", but let's look for flaws in this reasoning.
Why do we protect old ladies so much? They can't give birth. Why are young men treated worse than post menopausal women if it's about fertility?
Not to mention that, although one man can have 100s of children, one man can't provide for that many children. Male provisioning of females often involves teams of males doing things like hunting.
How do you explain the sacrifice of virgins in the Aztecs? Or sati in India? Infanticide of female infants because of the superior provisioning to parents by sons?
The simple truth is, no, women are not worth more.
It's just gyno propaganda. The normalization of pathological forms of thinking happens all the time. Like with the aforementioned Aztecs and Indians, and with today.
Yes, but the essay doesn't tall about the implications of this on the male side.
What does it mean that, although people feel they can't speak about female faults, they jump giddily at the opportunity to talk about male faults, and exaggerate them to absurd degrees?
It shows that we love in a misandric society.
Yes it's true that people are sheepish about female faults.
But the fact that they aren't sheepish about men's faults shows they hate men quite ardently.
This implication is not explored in the essay.
The bigger problem than that we can't talk about female faults, is the problem of WHY we can't talk about female faults.
It's because people simply believe in female supremacism. Most passively and subconsciously.
Dude, she did cover so much of this in the essay, and she did it without sounding like a whiny little bitch. You really need to grow a pair. I feel the urge to bully you, and I am an old man.
Well, maybe if men were more willing to be whiny little bitches, neurotic women wouldn't run roughshod over them and oppress them culturally and under the law.
Women haven't been historically held back in their careers by men. The simple truth is, if men and women are treated genuinely equally, women perceive that they are unfairly held back.
You say that it may have been correct that some men held you back in your career. I simply don't agree.
Women seem to not understand that being held to meritocratic standards, and losing out by those standards, isn't being "unfairly held back". I don't think you've completely shelved that neuroticism you deem so in the past.
I'll pose this question to you. Why didn't women ever create their own businesses throughout history, independent of men?
They were perfectly able to under the law. The simple truth is that women have inferior cooperation skills due to their neuroticism, and any time they lose out on something, they deem it unjust.
Little girls and little boys play differently. Whe little boys have a disagreement, they seek to resolve it some way and then keep playing. If little girls have a disagreement, they actually just stop playing, because the point is to just be happy, and disagreeing makes them unhappy.
This dynamic continues throughout the lives of boys and girls into adulthood, and explains girls inferior ability to cooperate.
It simply isn't the case that women were held back by men. Even when male only businesses used to exist, women could create female only businesses. They simply never did for the aforementioned inferior cooperative ability they display.
Another thing that women aren't capable of doing is showing appropriate levels of aggression. Men, even when aggressive, are always fown to earth, and don't go on about it for too long.
Women, when aggressive, just can't seem to get a hold of themselves. And they just go on.
It seems you're still a feminist, and still implicitly blaming men for women's inability to create large scale cooperative endeavors throughout history.
If women could actually fully disple of their neurotic nature, they would be able to do what men do all on their own, with no men around.
The fact that you think women need to be let in to men's businesses, rather than creating their own, is proof of this, even if you haven't analyzed it in that way.
As someone quite a bit older (61) who grew up with a very different understanding of feminism, I really appreciate you sharing your experience of what feminism has been like for you. I definitely believe your experience is indicative of a general trend (and not "just you"). Which is sad because I honestly feel like the main values I picked up from the feminist cultural waters I swam in back in the 1970s-90s were independence and confidence. I thought feminism meant holding the assumption that girls and boys, and men and women should be seen as different in some ways, but presumptively equal in all truly important ones nonetheless.
So, for example, women need more time off work for childbirth for obvious reasons. But with the right sort of supports, women could be just as valuable employees as men - and, should have that opportunity. And have it without needing to sacrifice having a family if that's what they wanted to do.
Therefore, I assumed that the next step in the feminist project would be building new practices, institutions, and norms with regard to things like parental leave, flex time, PT work, child care, etc. etc. so that women could maximize their potential both in education, work, family, and their personal lives more generally. And for awhile, that seemed to be the trajectory - I remember when the Clinton Admin passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. That was seen as a big deal at the time, and I think properly so (if still not sufficient, as the time off was unpaid).
But then the very reasonable assumption that many women might want to cut down to part-time work when they had young children and ramp up again later got denigrated as the "Mommy Track." And then we steamrolled into the era of #GirlBoss and "Lean In" feminism. And then we went from there into the Tumblr-incubated gender identity woke feminism you experienced.
I think that's what happened, at least? Maybe? I am just trying to reconstruct some sort of timeline off the cuff based on my own recollections. I'd like to understand the history in more detail; perhaps you've written about it elsewhere or know of good sources?
At any rate, it's all very depressing. I truly thought we were headed in a much better direction for many years. But now I realize that the sort of feminist project I used to have in my head was not in fact what was playing out in the real world.
On a more personal note, I found it sad that you have had such a hard time making good female friends. This has never been my experience. And I'd say that all my women friends have the same sort of taken-for-granted old-school feminist identity that I do. None would see themselves as anything but progressive . . . but the progressivism we grew up with has very little in common with what that culture is about now.
That said, since the former laid the groundwork for the latter, obviously there were a lot of problems there that we didn't see at the time. This is something I've been reflecting on for years now: How did the progressive liberalism that I used to love turn into the woke progressivism that I now hate? I agree with you that feminism played a big role in that shift. While I don't understand it as well as I'd like, I'm convinced it was a big (although not singular) factor.
I mean ideas of rape culture began in the 1970s, with the supposed "benign feminism".
Feminism has always been a manifestation of female neuroticism to an obscene degree.
I mean you list all of these things that women deserve. All of thede entitlements that the world is expected to give to women, instead of just creating it themselves.
Women aren't owed having companies support them through childbirth. Women will never be as valuable as employees as men, because they simply don't work as hard and aren't as cooperative.
If women wanted to, they could create their own businesses and do all of that, but forcing small businesses out of business by placing absurd burdens of maternity leave on them is delusional, only serves corporate interests to capture more of the market, and isn't fair to small business owners.
It's ridiculous to be perfectly honest. Especially since women theoretically could take like a week off for birth and go back to work immediately.
I mean feminism is just female grievance after female grievance, let's be honest.
And not mention the horrific misandry present throughout its history. Look up the white feather brigade.
Women can never just look their demons in the mirror seemingly.
These are just uncalled for incel talking points. I cannot believe you seriously said "Especially since women theoretically could take like a week off for birth and go back to work immediately." - childbirth fucking destroys your body. I don't use the word incel lightly here; I would have taken the rest of it in good faith but you undermined your own argument with that bullshit.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and friendship! If I think back to the waters of the 90s, I, too, got the message to be confident and that I can do anything. But then the whole question of having it all came up, and instead of the feminist project pivoting to fighting for specific policies like maternal discrimination and leave, but we instead became obsessed about abortion and sexuality, which I find to be rather hedonistic anti-social concerns, in that they are about the individual while appearing to be about the group. Maximum sexual liberation seems like it became the goal, especially in the mass rejection of religion by millennials.
I think today women of my age also think that becoming a stay at home mom is the wrong thing to do, and coded conservative, as throwing your life away. I think that this lifestyle is no longer allowed partially because of what came out of academia, and there's this aversion to being dependent on men, which you'd have to be as a full time mother. A friend recently said that money = independence and so women shouldn't want this, but you simply cannot have that while raising children if you want to do it full time. Agency is related to money, which I think isn't accurate.
You do have the timeline correct, in that the millennial feminist project became about sexual liberation and Tumblr seeped into the rest of the internet at the same time. I deeply appreciate that I could meet women like you on the internet too who validate that I'm not insane. I think the only thing we can do as 'heterodox' women is to push back against the extremists. Where I struggle is how to talk to my actual friends about this - those are the hardest conversations. No one wants to consider that they may be wrong, and I think women also need to be told they're wrong more often by other women. The problem is that the price of doing that is defenestration and loss of friendship. If you can't get off the phone, there will be no reconsideration of opinions. The only path that I have seen is to get off the phone and read books, but people don't want to do that either.
You called me an incel earlier, but I have to be honest that it makes me roll my eyes considering that passive agreement and soft tone which women take with feminism.
I mean let's not kid around,.we are dealing with an absolutely horrific Hate movement.
I expected you to be more aware of this considering you commented on the fiamengo file, but you tall about feminism with the same tip toe passivity that too many women talk about it with.
Here are some thought leaders of feminism and academia. These are quotes from well before the 90s.
I mean this isn't some benign little hiccup a couple of naive girls made because they wanted to be empowered.
And the gaslighting still continues, with discussion around anti feminism still being gynocentric in a Phyllis schlaffly fashion, as if women haven't engaged in horrific misandry for decades.
No discussion on how feminism has made young men despondent and isolated and discriminated against under the law. We're still talking about if it's feasible for women to "have it all".
It strikes me as pretty deranged tbh.
It would be one thing if you thought feminism one thing, and then discovered it was a hate movement. But you still see it as mostly benign, citing the main issues with it are that wen don't get to stay at home anymore, or abortion is too accepted.
You only passively pay homage to the fact that men aren't trash, but no apology is given for ever thinking they were. We know men aren't trash, the problem is the women who think they are, and they have to be answerable.
Feminism isn't bad because of womens issues squaring their baby fever with the rest of their lives, to put it in rude terms. I find I get to be rude, because talking about how feminism has hurt women, is just peak ridiculousness.
And of course, all.my previous points are still valid. Women, under the law, could freely associated to create their own business infrastructure to do as they please, and they simply did not do that. This is not men's fault, it is womens. Even so, women still often worked alongside men in many workspaces.
I'd like to challenge your presumption that men had it easier throughout history.
What about hard physical labour, natural dangers, forced military conscription, lower life expectancy sounds easy to you?
I hope you can look past your Apex fallacy; the vast majority of men weren't rich nobility and even they were usually subject to military work. Democratic nations are young and universal male suffrage was followed immediately by universal female suffrage soon after
Anyone who has lived a decent life knows that men and women have challenges. The silly comparisons of which kind of rape is worse or who gets beaten into the ground harder are not particularly enlightening conversations. Life is suffering. Good people make their communities better while they breathe. Christianity has been demonized, and I assume Buddhism is next, but we can learn a lot from the faiths our ancestors poured their souls into.
To make it more like a country song, life sucks, so do not make it any worse than your must.
Ok this is a very fair criticism, and I didn’t realize I had engaged in that fallacy. In fact, I have something have written about this because I just finished reading Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men, in which he makes this exact point as a departure for why we should care about the rest of men who don’t control all the wealth. In fact, the fallacy I engaged in obfuscates that the major conflict has always been along class lines than anything else. Also I will admit, I couched my argument with that admission because I was trying to grant the opposing argument some legitimacy, and because when I wrote this one I hadn’t yet read that book. You are correct.
Okay, I appreciate the focus on holding ourselves accountable. But as a guy trying to do the right thing, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I mean, one day holding the door open is chivalrous; the next day, it's undermining feminism. Is there, like, an updated handbook for this stuff?
Seriously, it's a minefield! Can I pay a woman a genuine compliment without getting the side-eye? Is it okay to offer a hand with something heavy, or is assuming she needs help offensive? When's initiating a conversation friendly, and when is it creepy? Seems like every time I think I've got the hang of being a decent, respectful guy, someone moves the goalposts.
I want to be an ally, but it'd be great if there were some clear guidelines. Are there support groups for bewildered men or something? Maybe a hotline I can call? "Hello, 911? I accidentally committed a microaggression, and I need to turn myself in."
Let's be real, sometimes I just want to curl up on the couch with a pizza and not worry if my very existence is perpetuating systemic inequality.
I hear you, trust me. I’ve been having the same conversation with man friends for the last four years. Your existence is not doing so, and your asking these questions proves it. Imo, if a woman gets offended at these very reasonable acts of kindness, she isn’t worth your time. It’s her, not you. I used to be like that, and it was silly. Though, you’ve now given me the idea to write such a set of guidelines. Do you think that would be remotely helpful? I’m seeing that my audience is starting to skew male, which was unintentional, but makes sense.
The questions you raise is why dating is so difficult, if I had to guess based on zero data. The secondary problem is that there are plenty of women out there who think like me and are reasonable but aren’t the vocal majority. IMO, things like asking for permission for flirting undermines it, which is how we decide if we want to proceed. And another thing I suggest is to not stand for it when the goal posts are moved. The next time you get accused of something, try pushing back against the illlogic of it all and asking these very questions.
Thanks so much, I genuinely appreciate the support and validation. Sorry for being an uninvited guest to the party. It certainly feels like a confusing maze for everyone involved! I'd be really interested in seeing those guidelines you mentioned – it could definitely spark a much-needed, broader discussion.
While finding frustrating situations easier to deal with is great, I'm cautious about completely dismissing a woman's reaction to even well-intentioned actions. Sometimes deeper insecurities might be at play, and understanding those reactions could be a learning experience for everyone.
Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the balance between asking for permission before flirting and maintaining a sense of playful spontaneity. That's honestly a big part of why dating feels so tricky.
You're not an uninvited guest, first of all. Please feel like you can comment because I'm fairly certain that the people who should read this wouldn't want to because it goes against orthodoxy. I write, in part, because I want men to have some ammunition from a person who's lived it, even though I am persona non grata.
" Sometimes deeper insecurities might be at play, and understanding those reactions could be a learning experience for everyone."
I think here you are onto a lot. Maybe an approach might be to just ask the question if it's someone you can converse with versus a person who was offended that you held the door for her. One of the many problems with feminism is that it makes us think we want something when we don't actually want that thing, as I learned. In fact, I had to deprogram from it to understand what I wanted in a partner, and he helped me see some things about aggregate feminine behavior that I hadn't seen.
I have a feeling the dating issue you mention about flirting is a big reason women can't actually find the kind of man they'd be attracted to, because we are attracted to confidence perhaps more than we realize, and the feminist concept of consent has affected men's ability to perhaps confidently flirt. Many women who adhere to this still want the man to make the first move, which makes no sense to me (as did I, btw). Spontaneity is crucial for building the attraction in the first place; I find the whole asking permission to kiss me thing to be contrived, and it almost entirely erases the heat of the moment. But, "affirmative consent" (a redundant term) would have you believe otherwise. I will take this as an assignment, and I appreciate your thoughtful comment and engagement, as well as the idea. Please keep doing what you're doing in questioning it. The vast majority of us don't think this way, either, but in the urban areas, highly feminist women are overrepresented.
This is less about who is trash and more about the need to stop blaming other people for your own behavior. I also think that critiquing a generalization is a straw man argument - that is how we make sense of the world, and the scientific method tests hypotheses and draws conclusions off a population, but it is still a tested generalization because it is a conclusion extrapolated to a population. Humans can't test their hypotheses constantly. We should be on guard for dismissing people and treating them badly according to stereotypes, but at the same time I will stand by my assertion that on average, I meet women like I've described in the professional managerial class.
"Haidt and others also argued that more liberal girls and women are depressed or have a mental illness than conservative women. I surmise this is because political conservatism correlates with values coded as personally conservative: hard work, discipline, community, and family. "
--- Maybe it has something to do with culture/country because here in the States conservative politics does not automatically translate into these values. Conversely I see the oppoiste. Progressive politics type people seem to hold these values more. Something you mention just a few sentences later; "Ironically, liberal elites can only get to an elite rung of society through discipline, hard work, and delaying gratification, which denotes an internal locus of control. College-educated women are also far likelier than those without degrees to be married and raise children with their fathers despite valorizing single motherhood as a feminist choice." So that means this; "But because the values themselves are politicized as patriarchal and oppressive, liberals abandoned them entirely as part of their moral frame." .... doesn't actually happen. And I don't think it's a socio-economic phenomena either, as you imply.
I don't mean to sound racist and please forgive me if I'm overstepping boundaries, but how much of your ages 13-30 "men are trash" phase is perhaps related to Desi men? Conversely, how much of your men-seem-to-be-better-than-women phase is perhaps related to Desi men? How much of your previous unhinged drama queen antics in relationship could be related to DAP/Desi American Princess syndrome?
I can’t say you’re wrong. The princess syndrome is real but I don’t want to comment publicly on the other thing. You can speculate and will probably land on something mostly correct.
Couldn’t care less about those people, but this topic invites ire from the left. Fundamentally I think people raised in the diaspora should marry out because the blueprint of a relationship between a Hindu woman and man is unequal. I have gotten more respect from non Indians romantically and it has been noticed anecdotally that Hindu men respect non Indian women more. There’s a lot of cultural baggage. Not to say that people marrying in can’t be happy; I just never would have been because I’m too western.
I've seen to second gen desis marry and get along because they are both raised here and "westernized". I do agree that desi men from India respect non-desi women more and that has to do with the perceived financial and opportunity "upgrade" that marrying her represents (even though she won't be giving dowry to her Indian groom and his parents), as well as the fact that non-desi women just aren't going to put up with what desi women will. Indian men see non-desi women tourists or some culturaly appropriating yoga girl on Youtube, wearing Indian clothes, bindi, etc and doing some cultural things and they will say, "Thanks maam, you are more Indian than our own Indian women." But these same women would majorly clash with these men and their mothers (ha!) if they had to live in an Indian home for more than a few weeks.
"Couldn’t care less about those people, but this topic invites ire from the left."
Who cares? The lid blew off the pot almost 20 years ago with the "gori blogs". Did you ever read those? Hilarious accounts of goris dating or married to desi guys. No Himalayan stone was left unturned.
I’ve never seen a gori blog but I will; sounds “enlightening”. You are correct that desi women are not treated well by desi men in my experience. Men outside the community have always respected me more. It’s pretty verboten to say though. Western values make a difference in how people relate to each other. Everyone puts Indians in the one box, but those of us raised here versus those who emigrated are fundamentally different in our personalities and approach to everything.
"Everyone puts Indians in the one box, but those of us raised here versus those who emigrated are fundamentally different in our personalities and approach to everything."
What about the current view that Indians in the diaspora tend to be "behind" Indians in India? They say a 50 year diasporic desi is more old-school and traditional or "backwards" than a desi in India because the former's concept of "Indian culture" is based on 30 years ago, the way India was just before they left. In the meantime "Indian culture" in India has evolved.
And now ultra-right wing Islam is "having a moment" amongst Manosphere and "red pill" men. They think as soon as they convert to Islam some imam somewhere will hand them 4 wives.
I worked as an engineer, Engineering Manager and now as a Pastor of a small church in a rural community. I discovered that women in the workplace often preferred the company of men due to the more factually based work environment than the emotionally charged environment that women created. A woman who was a good leader, treated people fairly and had a good sense of humor and self did well. Women who were in competition for emotional validation were universally disliked by the men and women who had to suffer under them. Logical reasoning and decision making versus emotional reasoning and demanding adherence are truly the endpoints of a spectrum of how workplaces function.
This is absolutely my experience with women outside the technical functions (I'm a solution architect). They don't support meritocracy and can't handle a woman beating them. What sucks is most men don't notice this so good for you for seeing it.
Your to men section has the best advice for men I have ever heard from a woman. Have you by any chance ever read anything by Rollo Tomassi? You say a lot of similar things.
I haven’t actually, thanks for the rec!
I really enjoyed this, until the "masculine inclinations" BS. There are no masculine and feminine ways of communicating or traits. That is all imagined and pointless. "Emotional" communicating is almost always manipulation. Men and women engage in such foul behavior. Rational communication is simply behaving like a human being and trying to be decent. This is not masculine. It is just good practice.
There have been no more destructive ideas than this gendered nonsense. It does not exist. I do not want to be mistaken into thinking this has anything to do with trans rights. I support full trans rights. I simply hate this pointless assigning of genders where they simply do not exist. It is mental masturbation, and not even the good kind.
Gender studies is useless. Anything with the word "queer" in it is useless. I am so happy I managed to avoid all of this stupidity. It has done nothing but cause suffering. It pains me to see how many young people have been warped by this poison. Fascism and racism are bad, but this is worse. It is easier to point out the stupidity of the others.
I so desperately wish that we could focus on productive activity instead of "activism" or other forms of thuggish behavior. The Queer attacks on LGBT rights and parenthood were the wakeup call for me. What has saddened me the most are the little boys raised by women who shout this poison to their sons "you are a worthless man" and similar mantra's are stated repeatedly to toddlers who grow up to be broken men afraid to exit their mothers' homes. Others follow Tate and his male version of radical feminism. Both are toxic and immoral.
We have so much to do, so much to build. We keep wasting time and energy on foolish self-created crises that do not actually exist. Perhaps instead of defund the police, we can defund grievance studies at public universities. I would love to see those angry professors get real jobs. It would do them so much good. Most of all, it would stop them from causing any more harm.
Give 'em hell Radha!
Listen, I get it. I’m not saying it SHOULD be this way. I’m saying that certain personality traits and communication styles are coded by people as masculine, like my own. Rationalist inclinations are coded as masculine, while emotion is coded as feminine. It shouldn’t be thus, but because it is, I’m arguing that it shouldn’t be. No one should be coding me as somehow different because I communicate like this, and yet they do.
I hear you. I am at work and probably angrier than I should be. My apologies for growling a bit.
I just found your article and have subscribed to your blog. I like what I read. I am an astrologer who has seen many men in my practice in the process of recovery from their marriages to liberal feminists. I will only say that I have seen them bleed, pain and rage. Personally, I, a unlucky never-married woman, consider myself (fiercely?) pro-patriarchy, and that stems in large part from the fact that I grew up in matriarchies. And that is all I want to say for now.
That is fascinating. I, too, grew up in a matriarchy despite being from a patriarchal culture. That culture showed me two sides of the coin - one overly aggressive and the other ineffective (my father). I'm sad to know about your clients but I suppose that shouldn't surprise. It's validating of my argument that it's possible that marriages to liberal women are miserable because of said anti-masculine strain in liberalism today.
The recent Harris ad encouraging women to secretly vote for her without their Trump-voting husband’s awareness is a gross example. Apparently being a two-faced liar and coward is an act of female empowerment. Encouraging marital discord too.
The subject gives a lot to talk about. Like you, I grew up in a country considered macho, but if there is only one machismo left, it is mine. For real. I grew up among catholic matriarchs, and I witnessed from a very young age the humiliations and predicaments of men, literally subjected to the will of their wives, always victims -of nothing-. The term "ineffective" is more than adequate in this sense. Add to that is the deep disgust of feminist radicalism in full swing in the last 12 years. The continent is mired in a generalised dissociation that cannot be specified. And I can't stop thinking about my father, my uncles, my friends, my clients, my own Animus. I am a Leo, I am ruled by the Sun, and for me authority is Solar, poeriod. I will never support violence and abuse, but I know my place next to a male partner, and I value his. We cannot raise balanced generations where the male does not know does not can how to be one.
Thank you for responding to me.
Thanks for the advice; I've (almost) always avoided being vocal about this stuff beside knowing I'm as removed from any form of sexism as a man can be. I'll be working toward less restraint from now on
Don't avoid it, be vocal. More men need to push back.
Women have certainly weaponized their emotions against me. But only men have used physical violence against me. I certainly don’t think men are trash, but they are not innocent victims of emotional harpies either. I worked as a stripper on and off for 16 years (while simultaneously an academic, but that’s another story), and operating in that environment placed me in the line of fire of men’s worst behaviors. I’ve been prey to a number of scheming bitches in my day, but I’ve never been raped by one, ya know? I agree with you on the excesses of intersectional feminism as deployed by a general public who doesn’t actually understand the implications of what originated as fairly-high academic theory, but this piece seems to verge on misogyny. I’m not sure. You seem to have gone from man-hating to…maybe the other side? Much respect and no shade.
I respect that your experience has led you to negative experiences with men. That colors your own opinion and my opposite experience has colored my opinion. We are both allowed to have them and live in peace. While there is plenty of content that criticizes all the things men do, there is almost none criticizing the way women destroy each other and have helped destroy the meaning of many words as well well as art; men aren't the ones leading the charge, for example, on gender ideology, nor are they the ones hurling insults at women who dare to disagree. You are welcome to consider me a misogynist; I'm not losing sleep over it.
"I think third-wave feminism, out of which every other intersectional paradigm grew, encourages a set of cognitive distortions that ought to be questioned and debated loudly and often.5 Blaming problems on capitalism, sexism, racism, and even colonialism do you no favors and puts you off from taking a hard look at changes that are begging to be made inside you as an individual."
YES!!!!! Thank you for writing this. Thank you for your bravery.
It seems that for everyone person I made angry with this, I validated another :)
I also think it's funny that no one wants to talk about female evil, meanwhile people can't fucking wait to talk about male evil.
Just goes to show the deep misandry. People wake up giddy to talk about rape culture and yet we are supposed to approach female evil sheepishly and ashamedly.
Goofy.
Did you read the essay? The entire thing is about how no one can talk about women’s faults.
People are quick to lynch a man, which they would ask for gentleness and understanding if a woman did the same thing.
People value women more than men as human beings, is the issue.
Women have more worth. They birth armies. You do not need many sperm donors. Men are disposable. They always have been. That is why men work so hard to obtain status. Women simply do not need to.
Women do not have more worth. This is some gyno fem nonsense.
All of civilization is man made because women can't cooperate and problem solve on a large enough scale to make civilizations.
It isn't the case that men are "disposable".
I understand the meme "eggs are expensive but sperm is cheap", but let's look for flaws in this reasoning.
Why do we protect old ladies so much? They can't give birth. Why are young men treated worse than post menopausal women if it's about fertility?
Not to mention that, although one man can have 100s of children, one man can't provide for that many children. Male provisioning of females often involves teams of males doing things like hunting.
How do you explain the sacrifice of virgins in the Aztecs? Or sati in India? Infanticide of female infants because of the superior provisioning to parents by sons?
The simple truth is, no, women are not worth more.
It's just gyno propaganda. The normalization of pathological forms of thinking happens all the time. Like with the aforementioned Aztecs and Indians, and with today.
Yes, but the essay doesn't tall about the implications of this on the male side.
What does it mean that, although people feel they can't speak about female faults, they jump giddily at the opportunity to talk about male faults, and exaggerate them to absurd degrees?
It shows that we love in a misandric society.
Yes it's true that people are sheepish about female faults.
But the fact that they aren't sheepish about men's faults shows they hate men quite ardently.
This implication is not explored in the essay.
The bigger problem than that we can't talk about female faults, is the problem of WHY we can't talk about female faults.
It's because people simply believe in female supremacism. Most passively and subconsciously.
Dude, she did cover so much of this in the essay, and she did it without sounding like a whiny little bitch. You really need to grow a pair. I feel the urge to bully you, and I am an old man.
Well, maybe if men were more willing to be whiny little bitches, neurotic women wouldn't run roughshod over them and oppress them culturally and under the law.
And regardless, women have been able to work in many male workspaces throughout history.
Marie curie won two nobel prizes in her lifetime, and she won the first 8 yrs after the founding of the prize.
If women were discriminated against, you would expect that she would have been awarded it posthumously in like 1970.
It seems that women interpret having to prove themselves as being discriminated against.
It seems you don't understand feminism very well.
Women haven't been historically held back in their careers by men. The simple truth is, if men and women are treated genuinely equally, women perceive that they are unfairly held back.
You say that it may have been correct that some men held you back in your career. I simply don't agree.
Women seem to not understand that being held to meritocratic standards, and losing out by those standards, isn't being "unfairly held back". I don't think you've completely shelved that neuroticism you deem so in the past.
I'll pose this question to you. Why didn't women ever create their own businesses throughout history, independent of men?
They were perfectly able to under the law. The simple truth is that women have inferior cooperation skills due to their neuroticism, and any time they lose out on something, they deem it unjust.
Little girls and little boys play differently. Whe little boys have a disagreement, they seek to resolve it some way and then keep playing. If little girls have a disagreement, they actually just stop playing, because the point is to just be happy, and disagreeing makes them unhappy.
This dynamic continues throughout the lives of boys and girls into adulthood, and explains girls inferior ability to cooperate.
It simply isn't the case that women were held back by men. Even when male only businesses used to exist, women could create female only businesses. They simply never did for the aforementioned inferior cooperative ability they display.
Another thing that women aren't capable of doing is showing appropriate levels of aggression. Men, even when aggressive, are always fown to earth, and don't go on about it for too long.
Women, when aggressive, just can't seem to get a hold of themselves. And they just go on.
It seems you're still a feminist, and still implicitly blaming men for women's inability to create large scale cooperative endeavors throughout history.
If women could actually fully disple of their neurotic nature, they would be able to do what men do all on their own, with no men around.
The fact that you think women need to be let in to men's businesses, rather than creating their own, is proof of this, even if you haven't analyzed it in that way.
As someone quite a bit older (61) who grew up with a very different understanding of feminism, I really appreciate you sharing your experience of what feminism has been like for you. I definitely believe your experience is indicative of a general trend (and not "just you"). Which is sad because I honestly feel like the main values I picked up from the feminist cultural waters I swam in back in the 1970s-90s were independence and confidence. I thought feminism meant holding the assumption that girls and boys, and men and women should be seen as different in some ways, but presumptively equal in all truly important ones nonetheless.
So, for example, women need more time off work for childbirth for obvious reasons. But with the right sort of supports, women could be just as valuable employees as men - and, should have that opportunity. And have it without needing to sacrifice having a family if that's what they wanted to do.
Therefore, I assumed that the next step in the feminist project would be building new practices, institutions, and norms with regard to things like parental leave, flex time, PT work, child care, etc. etc. so that women could maximize their potential both in education, work, family, and their personal lives more generally. And for awhile, that seemed to be the trajectory - I remember when the Clinton Admin passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. That was seen as a big deal at the time, and I think properly so (if still not sufficient, as the time off was unpaid).
But then the very reasonable assumption that many women might want to cut down to part-time work when they had young children and ramp up again later got denigrated as the "Mommy Track." And then we steamrolled into the era of #GirlBoss and "Lean In" feminism. And then we went from there into the Tumblr-incubated gender identity woke feminism you experienced.
I think that's what happened, at least? Maybe? I am just trying to reconstruct some sort of timeline off the cuff based on my own recollections. I'd like to understand the history in more detail; perhaps you've written about it elsewhere or know of good sources?
At any rate, it's all very depressing. I truly thought we were headed in a much better direction for many years. But now I realize that the sort of feminist project I used to have in my head was not in fact what was playing out in the real world.
On a more personal note, I found it sad that you have had such a hard time making good female friends. This has never been my experience. And I'd say that all my women friends have the same sort of taken-for-granted old-school feminist identity that I do. None would see themselves as anything but progressive . . . but the progressivism we grew up with has very little in common with what that culture is about now.
That said, since the former laid the groundwork for the latter, obviously there were a lot of problems there that we didn't see at the time. This is something I've been reflecting on for years now: How did the progressive liberalism that I used to love turn into the woke progressivism that I now hate? I agree with you that feminism played a big role in that shift. While I don't understand it as well as I'd like, I'm convinced it was a big (although not singular) factor.
You just don't actually understand feminism.
Feminism was always this way.
I mean ideas of rape culture began in the 1970s, with the supposed "benign feminism".
Feminism has always been a manifestation of female neuroticism to an obscene degree.
I mean you list all of these things that women deserve. All of thede entitlements that the world is expected to give to women, instead of just creating it themselves.
Women aren't owed having companies support them through childbirth. Women will never be as valuable as employees as men, because they simply don't work as hard and aren't as cooperative.
If women wanted to, they could create their own businesses and do all of that, but forcing small businesses out of business by placing absurd burdens of maternity leave on them is delusional, only serves corporate interests to capture more of the market, and isn't fair to small business owners.
It's ridiculous to be perfectly honest. Especially since women theoretically could take like a week off for birth and go back to work immediately.
I mean feminism is just female grievance after female grievance, let's be honest.
And not mention the horrific misandry present throughout its history. Look up the white feather brigade.
Women can never just look their demons in the mirror seemingly.
These are just uncalled for incel talking points. I cannot believe you seriously said "Especially since women theoretically could take like a week off for birth and go back to work immediately." - childbirth fucking destroys your body. I don't use the word incel lightly here; I would have taken the rest of it in good faith but you undermined your own argument with that bullshit.
I think this is a Russian troll.
That may be so, but it doesn't invalidate any of my other points, which are very good.
I mean don't go and throw the baby out with the one drop of bath water.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and friendship! If I think back to the waters of the 90s, I, too, got the message to be confident and that I can do anything. But then the whole question of having it all came up, and instead of the feminist project pivoting to fighting for specific policies like maternal discrimination and leave, but we instead became obsessed about abortion and sexuality, which I find to be rather hedonistic anti-social concerns, in that they are about the individual while appearing to be about the group. Maximum sexual liberation seems like it became the goal, especially in the mass rejection of religion by millennials.
I think today women of my age also think that becoming a stay at home mom is the wrong thing to do, and coded conservative, as throwing your life away. I think that this lifestyle is no longer allowed partially because of what came out of academia, and there's this aversion to being dependent on men, which you'd have to be as a full time mother. A friend recently said that money = independence and so women shouldn't want this, but you simply cannot have that while raising children if you want to do it full time. Agency is related to money, which I think isn't accurate.
You do have the timeline correct, in that the millennial feminist project became about sexual liberation and Tumblr seeped into the rest of the internet at the same time. I deeply appreciate that I could meet women like you on the internet too who validate that I'm not insane. I think the only thing we can do as 'heterodox' women is to push back against the extremists. Where I struggle is how to talk to my actual friends about this - those are the hardest conversations. No one wants to consider that they may be wrong, and I think women also need to be told they're wrong more often by other women. The problem is that the price of doing that is defenestration and loss of friendship. If you can't get off the phone, there will be no reconsideration of opinions. The only path that I have seen is to get off the phone and read books, but people don't want to do that either.
You called me an incel earlier, but I have to be honest that it makes me roll my eyes considering that passive agreement and soft tone which women take with feminism.
I mean let's not kid around,.we are dealing with an absolutely horrific Hate movement.
I expected you to be more aware of this considering you commented on the fiamengo file, but you tall about feminism with the same tip toe passivity that too many women talk about it with.
Here are some thought leaders of feminism and academia. These are quotes from well before the 90s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/12qphgq/a_catalog_of_misandric_quotes_by_well_known/
I mean this isn't some benign little hiccup a couple of naive girls made because they wanted to be empowered.
And the gaslighting still continues, with discussion around anti feminism still being gynocentric in a Phyllis schlaffly fashion, as if women haven't engaged in horrific misandry for decades.
No discussion on how feminism has made young men despondent and isolated and discriminated against under the law. We're still talking about if it's feasible for women to "have it all".
It strikes me as pretty deranged tbh.
It would be one thing if you thought feminism one thing, and then discovered it was a hate movement. But you still see it as mostly benign, citing the main issues with it are that wen don't get to stay at home anymore, or abortion is too accepted.
You only passively pay homage to the fact that men aren't trash, but no apology is given for ever thinking they were. We know men aren't trash, the problem is the women who think they are, and they have to be answerable.
Feminism isn't bad because of womens issues squaring their baby fever with the rest of their lives, to put it in rude terms. I find I get to be rude, because talking about how feminism has hurt women, is just peak ridiculousness.
And of course, all.my previous points are still valid. Women, under the law, could freely associated to create their own business infrastructure to do as they please, and they simply did not do that. This is not men's fault, it is womens. Even so, women still often worked alongside men in many workspaces.
We are all very sorry your life sucks Vladimir. At least you have not been sent to the front yet.
I'd like to challenge your presumption that men had it easier throughout history.
What about hard physical labour, natural dangers, forced military conscription, lower life expectancy sounds easy to you?
I hope you can look past your Apex fallacy; the vast majority of men weren't rich nobility and even they were usually subject to military work. Democratic nations are young and universal male suffrage was followed immediately by universal female suffrage soon after
Anyone who has lived a decent life knows that men and women have challenges. The silly comparisons of which kind of rape is worse or who gets beaten into the ground harder are not particularly enlightening conversations. Life is suffering. Good people make their communities better while they breathe. Christianity has been demonized, and I assume Buddhism is next, but we can learn a lot from the faiths our ancestors poured their souls into.
To make it more like a country song, life sucks, so do not make it any worse than your must.
Ok this is a very fair criticism, and I didn’t realize I had engaged in that fallacy. In fact, I have something have written about this because I just finished reading Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men, in which he makes this exact point as a departure for why we should care about the rest of men who don’t control all the wealth. In fact, the fallacy I engaged in obfuscates that the major conflict has always been along class lines than anything else. Also I will admit, I couched my argument with that admission because I was trying to grant the opposing argument some legitimacy, and because when I wrote this one I hadn’t yet read that book. You are correct.
Okay, I appreciate the focus on holding ourselves accountable. But as a guy trying to do the right thing, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I mean, one day holding the door open is chivalrous; the next day, it's undermining feminism. Is there, like, an updated handbook for this stuff?
Seriously, it's a minefield! Can I pay a woman a genuine compliment without getting the side-eye? Is it okay to offer a hand with something heavy, or is assuming she needs help offensive? When's initiating a conversation friendly, and when is it creepy? Seems like every time I think I've got the hang of being a decent, respectful guy, someone moves the goalposts.
I want to be an ally, but it'd be great if there were some clear guidelines. Are there support groups for bewildered men or something? Maybe a hotline I can call? "Hello, 911? I accidentally committed a microaggression, and I need to turn myself in."
Let's be real, sometimes I just want to curl up on the couch with a pizza and not worry if my very existence is perpetuating systemic inequality.
I hear you, trust me. I’ve been having the same conversation with man friends for the last four years. Your existence is not doing so, and your asking these questions proves it. Imo, if a woman gets offended at these very reasonable acts of kindness, she isn’t worth your time. It’s her, not you. I used to be like that, and it was silly. Though, you’ve now given me the idea to write such a set of guidelines. Do you think that would be remotely helpful? I’m seeing that my audience is starting to skew male, which was unintentional, but makes sense.
The questions you raise is why dating is so difficult, if I had to guess based on zero data. The secondary problem is that there are plenty of women out there who think like me and are reasonable but aren’t the vocal majority. IMO, things like asking for permission for flirting undermines it, which is how we decide if we want to proceed. And another thing I suggest is to not stand for it when the goal posts are moved. The next time you get accused of something, try pushing back against the illlogic of it all and asking these very questions.
Thanks so much, I genuinely appreciate the support and validation. Sorry for being an uninvited guest to the party. It certainly feels like a confusing maze for everyone involved! I'd be really interested in seeing those guidelines you mentioned – it could definitely spark a much-needed, broader discussion.
While finding frustrating situations easier to deal with is great, I'm cautious about completely dismissing a woman's reaction to even well-intentioned actions. Sometimes deeper insecurities might be at play, and understanding those reactions could be a learning experience for everyone.
Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the balance between asking for permission before flirting and maintaining a sense of playful spontaneity. That's honestly a big part of why dating feels so tricky.
You're not an uninvited guest, first of all. Please feel like you can comment because I'm fairly certain that the people who should read this wouldn't want to because it goes against orthodoxy. I write, in part, because I want men to have some ammunition from a person who's lived it, even though I am persona non grata.
" Sometimes deeper insecurities might be at play, and understanding those reactions could be a learning experience for everyone."
I think here you are onto a lot. Maybe an approach might be to just ask the question if it's someone you can converse with versus a person who was offended that you held the door for her. One of the many problems with feminism is that it makes us think we want something when we don't actually want that thing, as I learned. In fact, I had to deprogram from it to understand what I wanted in a partner, and he helped me see some things about aggregate feminine behavior that I hadn't seen.
I have a feeling the dating issue you mention about flirting is a big reason women can't actually find the kind of man they'd be attracted to, because we are attracted to confidence perhaps more than we realize, and the feminist concept of consent has affected men's ability to perhaps confidently flirt. Many women who adhere to this still want the man to make the first move, which makes no sense to me (as did I, btw). Spontaneity is crucial for building the attraction in the first place; I find the whole asking permission to kiss me thing to be contrived, and it almost entirely erases the heat of the moment. But, "affirmative consent" (a redundant term) would have you believe otherwise. I will take this as an assignment, and I appreciate your thoughtful comment and engagement, as well as the idea. Please keep doing what you're doing in questioning it. The vast majority of us don't think this way, either, but in the urban areas, highly feminist women are overrepresented.
But men Are trash. Women too.
This is less about who is trash and more about the need to stop blaming other people for your own behavior. I also think that critiquing a generalization is a straw man argument - that is how we make sense of the world, and the scientific method tests hypotheses and draws conclusions off a population, but it is still a tested generalization because it is a conclusion extrapolated to a population. Humans can't test their hypotheses constantly. We should be on guard for dismissing people and treating them badly according to stereotypes, but at the same time I will stand by my assertion that on average, I meet women like I've described in the professional managerial class.
I love that we live in a world in which “men aren’t trash” is considered a radical viewpoint lol. Carnage.
I am starting to see my audience skew male, is all I can say on that subject. Unintentional, but I suppose unsurprising.
"Haidt and others also argued that more liberal girls and women are depressed or have a mental illness than conservative women. I surmise this is because political conservatism correlates with values coded as personally conservative: hard work, discipline, community, and family. "
--- Maybe it has something to do with culture/country because here in the States conservative politics does not automatically translate into these values. Conversely I see the oppoiste. Progressive politics type people seem to hold these values more. Something you mention just a few sentences later; "Ironically, liberal elites can only get to an elite rung of society through discipline, hard work, and delaying gratification, which denotes an internal locus of control. College-educated women are also far likelier than those without degrees to be married and raise children with their fathers despite valorizing single motherhood as a feminist choice." So that means this; "But because the values themselves are politicized as patriarchal and oppressive, liberals abandoned them entirely as part of their moral frame." .... doesn't actually happen. And I don't think it's a socio-economic phenomena either, as you imply.
I don't mean to sound racist and please forgive me if I'm overstepping boundaries, but how much of your ages 13-30 "men are trash" phase is perhaps related to Desi men? Conversely, how much of your men-seem-to-be-better-than-women phase is perhaps related to Desi men? How much of your previous unhinged drama queen antics in relationship could be related to DAP/Desi American Princess syndrome?
Just asking.
I can’t say you’re wrong. The princess syndrome is real but I don’t want to comment publicly on the other thing. You can speculate and will probably land on something mostly correct.
I respect if you don't want to publicly comment on the other thing but just curious - why?
Is it because you don't want to "out" your own in-group and provide fodder for racists and xenophobes?
Couldn’t care less about those people, but this topic invites ire from the left. Fundamentally I think people raised in the diaspora should marry out because the blueprint of a relationship between a Hindu woman and man is unequal. I have gotten more respect from non Indians romantically and it has been noticed anecdotally that Hindu men respect non Indian women more. There’s a lot of cultural baggage. Not to say that people marrying in can’t be happy; I just never would have been because I’m too western.
I've seen to second gen desis marry and get along because they are both raised here and "westernized". I do agree that desi men from India respect non-desi women more and that has to do with the perceived financial and opportunity "upgrade" that marrying her represents (even though she won't be giving dowry to her Indian groom and his parents), as well as the fact that non-desi women just aren't going to put up with what desi women will. Indian men see non-desi women tourists or some culturaly appropriating yoga girl on Youtube, wearing Indian clothes, bindi, etc and doing some cultural things and they will say, "Thanks maam, you are more Indian than our own Indian women." But these same women would majorly clash with these men and their mothers (ha!) if they had to live in an Indian home for more than a few weeks.
"Couldn’t care less about those people, but this topic invites ire from the left."
Who cares? The lid blew off the pot almost 20 years ago with the "gori blogs". Did you ever read those? Hilarious accounts of goris dating or married to desi guys. No Himalayan stone was left unturned.
I’ve never seen a gori blog but I will; sounds “enlightening”. You are correct that desi women are not treated well by desi men in my experience. Men outside the community have always respected me more. It’s pretty verboten to say though. Western values make a difference in how people relate to each other. Everyone puts Indians in the one box, but those of us raised here versus those who emigrated are fundamentally different in our personalities and approach to everything.
"Everyone puts Indians in the one box, but those of us raised here versus those who emigrated are fundamentally different in our personalities and approach to everything."
What about the current view that Indians in the diaspora tend to be "behind" Indians in India? They say a 50 year diasporic desi is more old-school and traditional or "backwards" than a desi in India because the former's concept of "Indian culture" is based on 30 years ago, the way India was just before they left. In the meantime "Indian culture" in India has evolved.
And now ultra-right wing Islam is "having a moment" amongst Manosphere and "red pill" men. They think as soon as they convert to Islam some imam somewhere will hand them 4 wives.