‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

No, when I'm not ignoring the fact claim you point to when I say that Dworkin’s fact claims tend to be unsupported Fabrications of whatever is convenient for her ideological agenda.

> The sexual revolution dramatically reduced the reciprocal obligations men used to have in connection with sexual activity: i.e. taking care of the resulting kids.

Except that it, well, didn't do that at all. Except maybe in a transitory way, at the height of the sexual revolution, as far as informal social obligations within the subculture at the center of the sexual revolution, but that subculture had almost entirely collapsed as a coherent group and social force by the time Dworkin wrote Right-Wing Women, and is a distant memory today.

There's actually a not insignificant political movement centered around the fact that the increase in women's acceptable (including legally acceptable) choices in recent decades (in part, but not entirely, stemming from the Sexual Revolution) was not matched by a reduction in men's obligations (which the movement sees now as unilateral rather than reciprocal) but instead increased vigor in social and formal/legal enforcement of those obligations.

It's also hilariously ironic that people are resorting to Right-Wing Women as an authority in support of a reversion to the previous degree of support for traditional gender roles for women, quoting bits where she paints the sexual revolution as a false effort at women's liberation foisted upon women by patriarchal elements on the Left, since the central point of Right-Wing Women was describing how Dworkin saw those values as tools of patriarchal enslavement of women and, more to the point (hence the title of the work) female support for such values as a defensive adaptation to patriarchy that reinforces and normalizes their enslavement by it.

At the end of Chapter 2 of Right-Wing Women, Dworkin writes:

---[begin quote]---

Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on- one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.

---[end quote]---

What's at the top of HN at this very moment? An article on the severity of the replication crisis in psychology. The very area we're talking about here. (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psycholo...)

It's an imperfect heuristic, but I can't accept every claim that's given to me as a "fact" as true; some I have so little respect for due to a long history of falsehood that they go straight to the circular file. Climate change, for instance, I have seen very detailed research on and personally witnessed, and I am satisfied that it is real and meaningful. If my mom sends me an email with "facts" showing it to be false, I no longer pay them attention. There was a time when I considered them and researched the conflicting data, but I've consistently found it to be of such poor quality that it would take exceptional circumstances for me to consider it again.

Credibility is real, in other words. It's not a perfect measure, but I can't thoroughly debunk (or validate) every "fact" that comes into my world.

> My take on your position is that you want everyone to lie about the way the world really works in a misguided attempt to make things better for some.

> This is damaging in the long term, people can only make the best decisions for themselves if they know the relevant facts. Telling young women to ignore the implications of this letter while also telling them a mixture of “it’s not true” and “society is morally bankrupt because it’s true!” does not help them, in fact it actively makes them worse off.

Too many people are taking "the world values attractive people more" to such an extreme that it diminishes their existence. I would say that it applies to men as well; as I've mentioned, incels are in service to that same ideology to their own detriment.

Yes, in most areas, attractive people do better. Yes they have more dating options. I'll even accept that people have a bias towards seeing them as more trustworthy and other positively in other traits that have nothing to do with fertility or partner selection. (Though for women, there's a tradeoff; being perceived as more attractive often means being perceived as less competent)

As a person, you cannot let that fact run your life. You cannot look in the mirror and say you'll never find a boyfriend because you're in your 30s now; no girl will want you with this skull shape; since you had a kid nobody is ever going to want you, etc.

You can find happy relationships in your 30s, you can find them with a less than ideal skull shape, if you're a single parent, if you have a "dad bod". It does happen. It is possible.

Society isn't morally bankrupt. In fact what I'm saying is there's hope and love out there for everyone. If you try, if you compromise, if you open your heart. But age, weight, finances... these are not reasons to give up on life.

Yes, people do need to think about what will make them happy, what they want to do with their lives, and the earlier the better. If you are someone who wants to have children and a family and you know that when you are 25, doing nothing to advance that goal for 10 years will not help you. It will be harder for you.

But that is not the end of the story. If you just figured that out at 35, if it took that long to realize who you are, you have options. Some of us are infertile, for instance, but that doesn't mean we can't have children in our lives.

My perspective is colored by the communities I inhabit and the friends I have, but the number of people I see squandering their youth? Basically 0. The number of people allowing something like age or body shape to convince them they have no options, at times to seriously consider suicide? It's not 0.

After I finish this reply I'm going to message a friend who is deeply depressed and feels they can't live authentically because of their body shape. This person is brilliant, young, amazing, one of the most interesting people I know, but can't see it. Because of how they see their body. They think it's impossible to have the life want.

I see people deciding it's impossible to make changes in their life at 20 because of their age that I know I made in my 30s. People who resign themselves to defeat over things I know can be overcome.

There are a lot of things that make a lot of areas of life harder. Privilege comes in all kinds of forms, not just race and gender - being born attractive, having parents that support you financially, being a US Citizen, being young, it just goes on and on. Not having these things makes life hard.

But hard isn't impossible. I'm telling people out there not to give up. It's a message I wish I could have given myself so many times over, to tell her the person I was who she could be. I was in an abusive relationship for years because I thought it was all I deserved, all I was worth. If I could go back in time, for even for 15 seconds, to show me what future awaited me... I could've saved years of the deepest, most soul rending pain.

The surest way for this woman to never find what she wants in life is to resign herself and stop trying. Resigning yourself to your fate only lets the hole gradually get deeper. You can always fight your way out of it.

The fight might be hard, and choices she has made will make that fight harder. But the past is the past. As the proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Than why are there clear correlations (for women) between # of monogamous relationships and likelihood of divorce? As well as between # of sexual partners and likelihood of divorce?

> So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent?

Of course! More flexibility and dependence up to a point is certainly better.

Of course the idea that this means a woman can’t have her own hobbies seems to be taking things to the extreme.

> Seriously?

Yes and honestly.

I married young and I think the troubles we went through together have deepened our relationship in a way that would never have been possible if we were both “emotionally mature”.

I’d also question whether people really do mature “globally” that much - vs maturing in specific contexts and relationships.

For example if women matured significantly in a “global” sense between mid-20s to mid-30s you would expect a big drop in obesity as women started taking better care of their health. But you don’t. Etc etc.