The problem with utopia Specifically with respect to status.

I really try to not care about status, but to not care is not not be human, it seems.

I kept hearing moms were lonely, so why wouldn’t they text me back? Here’s what I learned, trying to make mom friends and (eventually) succeeding.

Two options:

1. don’t be controversial, i.e. assimilate
2. don’t get famous

Not only can misogynistic men still get laid, but the declaration that misogynists and incels are one in the same (or that a man who hates women must only feel that way because he can’t get any ass) reinforces the, dare I say, sexist belief that a man’s ability to obtain sexual partners is indicative of his moral value. It also directly confirms the idea that women are “vending machines who dispense sex for good behavior,” which this exact cohort of feminists have repeatedly countered.

Kinkykikker explores the conversation every long-term couple dreads in this story on the realities of when passions fades while the love endures.

OR: why you should sell onions on the internet

If you want to be dead, that’s your own business. But if you would like to continue to be alive, it’s a bad idea to set goals for yourself that boil down to “try to get as close as possible to being a corpse while continuing to respire and consume nutrients.”

Something I can hopefully internalize.

Not self-applicable, but definitely amusing.

If a straight woman has made a somewhat blatant indication of interest—she’s put her head on your shoulder, or given you her contact information, or asked you to a movie—you might freak the fuck out, because a woman being interested in you is an impossibility, a violation of the previous laws of social interaction and perhaps reality.

Also why universal healthcare matters. Gotta maintain all parts of a system!

via: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/readings/01-wrong.shtml

Technology advances forced the Census Bureau to use sweeping measures to ensure privacy for respondents. The ensuing debate goes to the heart of what a census is.

This is a great article on a big-name application of differential privacy: it even features an interview with Dworkin! This, to me, seems like a pretty necessary change to preserve the privacy of folks.

via: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/tutorials/01-intro.shtml

Apparently a classic in certain circles.

The 2010s messaging that women never wanted men to talk to them was driven by a minority of extreme introverts. Modern-day singles are paying the price.

Or; “Diptych, Panel I: The Mote in His Eye.”

A nice discussion of het dating norms and a useful script for treating people.

But I think there’s a more radical slipperiness in that “our sense of right and wrong” and “the social reaction of others” are not as separable as we like to think. Elsewhere, the article tries to get past the fear of accidental harm by encouraging the reader to make use of the “common-sense understanding of offensiveness that you have developed as a minimally functional adult living in a society.” The issue, I think, is that one’s common-sense understanding of what makes people feel uncomfortable or unsafe is built by receiving or observing social consequences.

I’m still haunted by the sense that my attraction to women is in some way inherently, almost psychically, harmful. I just don’t have the practice in more representative circles to have worked through it on an instinctual level.

Oh my God. Such beautiful application of contemporary philosophy to the pains of social life.

Most social norms just won’t be violated very often. Being the first person to do anything is too risky, even if the only downside is just embarrassment. But generally, all it takes is two people to agree that a social norm is silly, and something amazing can happen.

Strong connections to Wagner, “Bringing Sexy Back.”

Beyond the fact that plenty of OCD manifestations are just too taboo for public consumption, I think one thing that really irks people is when someone has a high degree of insight into their OCD, but still frequently falls victim to it and is unable to be cured. In their minds, mental illness always has an endpoint. It becomes a weird prior chapter of your life, you can turn the page, and look back on it to say, “Ahh, those terrible times, before I discovered therapy.” They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that you will be like this forever.

This is also the conclusion I’ve come to in dealing with my own intrusive thoughts. I shall save it for 1:1s w/ my therapist and share with no one else. Otherwise, it’s ultimately too exhausting for everyone involved.

I think my inability to accept people’s hatred of me before was fundamentally the same inability to accept the social power they were handing me. And this was uncomfortable for me and probably other people too, because turns out I do in fact have social power. It turns out you can’t not be handed social power. I sorta believed that if I just shrugged and said ‘aw shucks’ enough that this would save me from elevation, but it didn’t. I thought it ought to save me from elevation, but that was the very lil nugget of fuckery that the rest of my psyche was tangling around.

Status is scary.

via: https://aella.substack.com/p/pt5-women-are-low-status

If you want to liberate women, don’t major in gender studies. Major in reproductive biology.