By David Futrelle
A polar vortex has descended across much of North America, meaning that many of the readers of this blog — and also me — have been feeling pretty chilly lately. So I thought I would brighten your day, and mine, by sharing some reflections on cross-gender friendships.
Oh sorry, I should add that these reflections all come from Reddit’s main incel subreddit, r/Braincels, so they may not actually brighten anyone’s day at all.
Here’s a dude who thinks all guys with female friends have some sort of cuckold fetish.
Here’s a guy who can’t tell the difference between a (cis) woman and a hole in the ground. (Well, a woman and a hole in a woman, anyway.)
No one tell this dude that men have holes, too.
Here’s a guy who says he doesn’t want any female friends because … Chad allegedly has sex with every woman he ever says “hi” to?
This guy reworks the famous line from “When Harry Met Sally” and manages to invent a brand new word in the process:
This dude, meanwhile, eschews female friends to protect himself from hearing endless talk about Chad’s sex life, somehow not realizing that anyone who hangs out on an incel forum hears more discussion of Chad’s (alleged) sex life than the friends of a woman simultaneously dating three guys literally named Chad.
And finally, there’s this guy, who warns his fellow incels that friendship with a woman is the equivalent of having a diet consisting of nothing but soy lattes:
Once again, I am stunned that these guys have trouble finding girlfriends.
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@jone (social justice cleric)
I actually had that exact talk with the guys from my RPG-group recently. Basically, “Guys, we don’t have to start instantly and just hang and talk for a bit.”. And luckily those guys are the kind to be up for that.
But honestly, it is sad that I have to push that when it happens naturally with all my female friends.
It never ceases to amaze me how these people view sex and friendship as two ends of a binary, rather than two things that can absolutely co-exist.
And not only that, but act as though they’re worth being friends with in the first place with these rotten attitudes. Maybe women don’t want to talk to you because you make your hatred that obvious, Craigory.
(No one tell them about FWB, their heads might explode.)
Right? I’ve had sex with people that are just friends with no interest in anything romantic. we still have a deep relationship and have fun together. thinking that kind of interaction can’t possibly exist is just ignorant.
Troubelle says:
Well, I sure like to think so.
The posts upthread about matter transporters and copies of people reminded me of Sean Williams’ three novels, Jump, Crash, and Fall (known as the Twinmaker series in the US, I think).
They’re set in a not-too-distant future where d-mat (a sophisticated teleportation system) is how people travel, so getting from home to school halfway across the world takes seconds. Additional technology known as “fabbers” allows people to instantly create almost anything (food, clothing, etc.), so the concept of wealth and even work is very different.
Of course something goes wrong and d-mat can be manipulated to make ‘dupes’ of people, and there’s a lot more that I won’t go into.
But this allows for some really fascinating explorations of “the self” – e.g. if a person is technically re-created every time they use d-mat, what does it mean to say I’m still me?
It’s kind of like a much faster version of the Ship of Theseus paradox!
Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams explores some .ofnthe ramifications of brain uploading/duplication/ mechanical resurrection. Including the possibility that someone might screw with the progamming and the person who comes out is, say, a fanatical devotee of a fascist personality cult. Things get ugly.
CW: Suicide
I read Kathleen Forth’s suicide note, linked in the thread, with a great sense of sadness. To feel so utterly abandoned that the only option conceivable is a sort of martyrdom is a tragedy. That said, I cannot help but feel that her description of what she calls the “safety pragma” skirts too close to complementarianism for me. And I disagree completely with her implication that a “social justice warrior” is diametrically opposed to rational thought. I have to wonder if the moral philosophy she chose to adopt was a contributor to her pain and feelings of helplessness.
In this respect it’s not much different to Pascal’s wager, in that the possible motivations for a malevolent future super-AI are practically infinite, and there is no reason for choosing one over the other.
(As an aside, I happen to believe in God, but Pascal’s wager is still full of shit.)
@Ariblester:
I wonder that too. I mean, the Basilisk has become a punchline outside of LessWrong but it’s evidence that, for all their high-minded claims of putting themselves on a firmer cognitive footing, for a lot of people in that group, all it’s done is painted them into a very dark existential corner (and that’s before we even talk about the predatory arseholes who are actively exploiting the people in that corner). The reason Roko’s Basilisk became a cause célèbre outside the group in the first place was because of the Streisand Effect, after Eliezer Yudkowsky banned discussion of it at LessWrong when people started freaking out about it. That people started freaking out about it suggests to me that their mindset had already started taking them to very bad places.
@Citerior Motive:
As an atheist, I’m with you on that one. I’ve often wondered whether Pascal, urbane Frenchman that he was, wasn’t trolling when he came up with it. The whole thing is predicated on the notion that any god would be well-disposed towards smart-arses. Which, given how smite-y gods are generally portrayed in holy literature, is not a bet I’m willing to take. I’ll take my chances as an honest atheist over a disingenuous theist any day of the week, thank you.
Isn’t that called Friends With Benefits? I never said nor implied that you can’t be friends with people you also shag. Sometimes this is the case, and sometimes it isn’t.
There are a lot of selfish people out there of ever possible gender or sexuality that use and discard people. Not just for sex. But sometimes for attention/emotional support.
But like I said: when you’re BFF with someone you also have sex with, that’s called (romantic)love.
What does that have to do with any of this discussion?
No, that’s called friends with benefits.
Also, are you going to answer why women, specifically, aren’t allowed to talk to their hetero guy friends about their relationships?
I’m a Christian, and I find Pascal’s Wager to be absurdly simplistic. It only makes sense if the only two possibilities are “There is a God who will reward those who believe” or “There is no God.” Really? That’s it? Those are the only two possibilities you can think of? It falls apart the moment you apply some though to it.
It’s like how Maxwell’s Demon purports to change energy levels without doing work.
Observer: Doesn’t the demon assessing molecules and opening and closing its little door constitute work?
Maxwell: No, because shut up that’s why.
Or the so-called Epiminides Paradox, which is only any kind of paradox if you assume that someone must either always tell the truth or always lie. If someone is capable of doing both (like, you know, ACTUAL PEOPLE), then there is no contradiction.
wait wait what?
So you can have sex with a friend and that’s just friends-with-benefits and it isn’t romantic. But friendship plus sex equals romantic love?
It’s the “BFF” thing now that you mean instead of friendship, I assume? I just want to make sure I’m hearing you right on this. Instead of “friendship plus sex equals romance”, it’s “best friendship plus sex equals romance”? (It’s okay for your ideas to shift over time – that’s a good thing. This is how we approach truth.)
So best-friends-forever plus sex-having equals romantic love?
So what about people who feel strong romantic attraction but also are asexual? Is that not romance? Because I know people like that. They love the idea of romance but hate the idea of sex. They want the flowers and boxes of chocolate but aren’t interested in anything more than a chaste kiss.
How do they fit into your concept?
Heh, I’d somehow guessed BFF must stand for “best fucking friend” (not fucking in literal sense).
BFF is Best Friend Forever, far as I know. It just means “best friend, but like, i mean it, pinkie swear best friend.”
@jone (social justice cleric)
And this is absolutely why the study of gender and the study of military history are so important to each other, and have gotten a lot of traction (at least in the academic world and within U.S. armed forces professional education).
The mixing up of masculinity (especially the toxic elements) with the the values of soldiering is long-standing in the West and very recent talk about the idea of uncoupling that is waaaay complicated. (The preferred solution is just, well, *not to have wars* but, uh, apparently we’re not *there* yet…)
The profession of arms certainly does try to inculcate into its members a notion of the supreme importance of being task-focused, whether from the very immediate matters of “this is how you clear a jam on an M-60” all the way up to very abstract of Books One and Two of Clausewitz. Yet we are supposed to (and do) bond with each other.
Like, one time when as cis-het men trying to “perform” traditional masculinity, we’re “allowed” do to things like cry, hug and say “I love you” openly to other men is when they’re our comrades-in-arms. Very telling. We’re “allowed” to be and do those things in this one very limited little societal context that just happens to be the one associated with going to our slaughter.
If not, then neither myself nor either of the Sisters Pavlov got the memo. 🙂
Either that, or (which I fear is the case) once again I’m cis-het manning wrong.
@ Pavlovs House
Another O/T military thing; but I found out the other day the Ukraine government have just opened up all their Soviet era archives. I got all excited because I’m hoping there’s something about “Seven days to the River Rhine” in there; but then I remembered its unlikely to be in English.
Might be something you can use though.
@Alan
Thanks, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I don’t read Russian but, never fear, scholars will likely be making use of that stuff for a long time.
As for the “Seven Days to the River Rhine” operational plan, I haven’t really looked closely enough to know what’s really been done on that and other Soviet war plans of that era. William Odom in the Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) probably has some footnotes to follow that would yield something; I just haven’t looked I admit. Great book, though — the intro. chapters on the background are useful for understanding the 1980s Soviet military machine.
(in which a young future Ms. Pavlov’s House was a nurse. We just barely missed each other though, as she was out right before I was in the U.S. Army during the last little snippet of the Cold War. Whew! Younger Sister Pavlov was in though!)
@Alan
Say, did you ever look at Macksey on invasion-of-Britain alternate history?
[forgive off-topic]
@ pavlovs house
I’m saving all your excellent recommends for later in the year when hopefully I’ll have time to read something that doesn’t end with “Defendant to pay Claimant’s costs…” 🙂