Of course (well, in the sense that anyone who knows me here would know) I agree with you on all matters of substance here, but with no familiarity at all with this Villines lady, and going straight to the post after reading this, I see that her answer begins, "Oh, honey. Friend. Questions are anonymous, but I am of course able to see who asks them. You are a beautiful, impressive, brilliant, highly accomplished woman. Seeing you contort yourself into pretzels, willing to give up your whole self only to get nothing in return, left me weeping."
So I can only really take it that this Substack is about cheerleading and validating a woman who feels emotionally distressed rather than giving truly fair-minded and practically valuable advice. And sometimes there is a need for a friend to hype you up and all. But I don't think this should be some talking head on the internet who will try to make inroads in a gender war in the process of doing so.
This is an absolute banger. It combines together many important threads and gives people a practicable way forward (should they choose to accept it).
Much of the problem with wokeness is exactly this: the frame of analysis takes a problem between two individuals and hitches it to a problem between two classes, ensuring that the former can never be solved without "solving" the latter.
And because "solving" the latter is outside the scope of the two people involved, every small interpersonal problem now becomes entrenched, and can never be resolved.
This is successful at diverting energy from daily life into radical politics (i.e., "politicizing the personal"), but it basically guarantees that interpersonal conflicts spiral out of control.
Great gods, Pluckrose. Every other post you make me bless the day that I found the trail of your thoughts.
So many thing resonate for me here. Birds of the same feather, like they say. But personal details aside, for while yours are illustrative, mine would be redundant.
People will resort to psychics when flailing about, so why not to agony aunts. But agony aunts with a political agenda? That's bad.
A lot of people are silly about romantic relationships. Seas of ink have been spent about the subject since Ovid at least, and very few seem to have learned anything.
We keep not knowing ourselves: neither our wants, nor our needs. We keep falling in love on projections and refuse to see the real person behind the smoke screen we set up, even after that notorious "nascent state" of delirium has passed. Then we blame ourselves or them or both and seek the aid of some magic (therapy, counselling, even agony aunts) to be told that in some way all is well and just changing this bit or that will restore our castle in the clouds.
Anything but resorting to reason and the terse conclusions that reason offers.
I know nothing about the poor lady or her poor romantic interest. But like most, in my experience of nearly 4 score years, she would need to be advised to think hard about what she wants and who she has chosen to give her what she wants; whether she actually knows this man; whether she knows what he can and cannot or is not willing to give her; whether she knows if she is willing to have the man without what she wants from him (appears not). And draw from it logical conclusions based on feasibility.
Anybody who gives advice in situations like this based on ideology is, I am sorry, a bad actor. This Villines lady is an exploiter of other people's weaknesses to enhance her own reputation in her own circle (I will give her the benefit of doubt that it may not come from cynical calculus but from a sincere misguided belief in misandry -- after all, most of those people who burned heretics at the stake did sincerely believe that they were saving the wretcheds' souls -- and again, it does not make it better).
May we be spared the agony aunts of all stripes and their bad, insensitive advice -- which is so much worse every time it sounds like empowerment and validation, because it is neither.
Sometimes I wonder if people write these sorts of things half-jokingly ("I felt almost violated, haha") and then , when pressed, take some weird pride in refusing to back down. Because, to conflate a guy deciding to break up with you over a lack of sex, with sexual assault, is bonkers.
It's a power play. They know we want sex more, and if you need consent the most you can do is leave. So they redefine that as assault to keep us from doing that.
As one of the few men who generally wanted sex less than my partner, it was quite funny to watch.
While I basically agree, I think the thing is there's enough bad blood on both sides everyone's just going to pick the interpretation that favors their side. But I'm American.
I laughed at the bit about dating men and women--I had a number of spergy girlfriends tell me something similar. Someone should come up with a whole theory for bisexuals about whether dating men or women is better in each individual case.
I have to admit I used to read Zawn Villines as a way to talk myself out of trying to have relationships.
The essay is a critique of this pattern which the writer believes they're seeing:
This behavior is probably best described in blunt terms: (mostly) cis guys are fucking around with (mostly) femmes, and disconnecting from them the moment there’s any mention of romantic feelings, hopes for a more entangled future, expressions of obligations or deepening responsibilities. These people are, basically, having sex with people for as long as it takes for their partner to develop an attachment, and then leaving them with no guilt or consideration because they’re a self-proclaimed relationship anarchist, which means they’re “not responsible for anyone else’s feelings” and/or they “had already agreed on the level of connection that was going to happen”
(endquote)
My beef with this is the same you're expressing here. By the description here we're talking about someone who has a sexual relationship and that has "already agreed on the level of connection that was going to happen" -- that is, they've already talked about it and he's made it clear that while he's happy to have a sexual relationship with someone, he's not likely to want a deeper emotional or romantic connection with her. They've presumably both opted to continue with the sexual relationship after knowing this.
And then later she starts wishing for exactly that: "romantic feelings, hopes for a more entangled future, expressions of obligations or deepening responsibilities" -- and to be a bit blunt myself, he's an asshole because he's still not offering what he said from the start that he's not planning to offer.
The way it reads to me is as a close parallell to what you talk about here. Imagine turning the situation upside down. Imagine they had talked aobut it and agreed that they DO want an emotionally close relationship, but *not* sex -- and then after a while he starts wanting sex to also be part of it.
Would the response be the same? Would the writer argue that now that she's had an emotionally close relationship with him "until lust developed" she's an asshole if she doesn't start offering sex?
If not -- is it really reasonable to claim that emotional intimacy does NOT entitle people to physical intimacy; but physical intimacy DOES entitle people to emotional intimacy?
I wonder if some of this is a bug in the rights based paradigm that we inhabit. We can all claim individual rights to autonomy, and assert that those should be respected by others. Trouble is that the claiming of a right does absolutely nothing to mediate what happens when 2 people who can both claim individual rights set out to live a life together. A partnership of any significance, romantic or otherwise, has to be based on collaboration, meaning that each party treats the needs and interests of the other as being equally important as their own. Anything short of that quickly become competition, with the result that power play, rather than mutual concern becomes the mediator. This is just a fact about human relationships, irrespective of any other factors, including the presence of even the deepest love. The implication is that if we take the requiting of love to mean that we receive love in the same way that we give it, then almost all love is unrequited save for the rarest of situations that certainly cannot extend to the duration of a long term relationship. You mention stoicism briefly. A genuinely stoic view on relationships would assume what I have stated above, and assess the quality of the relationship from a virtue standpoint rather than a rights standpoint. Bottom line is that we all have to judge the quality of our relationships by referring to the evidence that our partners go out of their way to understand our needs and adapt to any degree at all to meet them. That's not remotely a requirement to put up with abuse, or to give ground that we don't want to give, but it is an inescapable fact and a failure to appreciate is likely to result in pure misery.
No, I don’t think so. What liberalism does is ensure that people are free to choose their own partners and free to leave broken relationships. People then compromise within relationships because they want to make them work and to make the other person happy. The alternative is removing the right to find someone who is compatible with you and being unable to leave them if the relationship breaks down. Neither having the right or not having the right to choose or leave a relationship has anything to say about whether the couple will collaborate and cooperate and try to meet each others needs. That’s a matter of temperament and genuine love.
You are not entitled to someone else’s mind. Exactly right. Now explain that concept to the socialists who believe they have a right to the products of someone else’s mind.
You are like a clarity megaphone. Thank you!
Of course (well, in the sense that anyone who knows me here would know) I agree with you on all matters of substance here, but with no familiarity at all with this Villines lady, and going straight to the post after reading this, I see that her answer begins, "Oh, honey. Friend. Questions are anonymous, but I am of course able to see who asks them. You are a beautiful, impressive, brilliant, highly accomplished woman. Seeing you contort yourself into pretzels, willing to give up your whole self only to get nothing in return, left me weeping."
So I can only really take it that this Substack is about cheerleading and validating a woman who feels emotionally distressed rather than giving truly fair-minded and practically valuable advice. And sometimes there is a need for a friend to hype you up and all. But I don't think this should be some talking head on the internet who will try to make inroads in a gender war in the process of doing so.
This is an absolute banger. It combines together many important threads and gives people a practicable way forward (should they choose to accept it).
Much of the problem with wokeness is exactly this: the frame of analysis takes a problem between two individuals and hitches it to a problem between two classes, ensuring that the former can never be solved without "solving" the latter.
And because "solving" the latter is outside the scope of the two people involved, every small interpersonal problem now becomes entrenched, and can never be resolved.
This is successful at diverting energy from daily life into radical politics (i.e., "politicizing the personal"), but it basically guarantees that interpersonal conflicts spiral out of control.
Great gods, Pluckrose. Every other post you make me bless the day that I found the trail of your thoughts.
So many thing resonate for me here. Birds of the same feather, like they say. But personal details aside, for while yours are illustrative, mine would be redundant.
People will resort to psychics when flailing about, so why not to agony aunts. But agony aunts with a political agenda? That's bad.
A lot of people are silly about romantic relationships. Seas of ink have been spent about the subject since Ovid at least, and very few seem to have learned anything.
We keep not knowing ourselves: neither our wants, nor our needs. We keep falling in love on projections and refuse to see the real person behind the smoke screen we set up, even after that notorious "nascent state" of delirium has passed. Then we blame ourselves or them or both and seek the aid of some magic (therapy, counselling, even agony aunts) to be told that in some way all is well and just changing this bit or that will restore our castle in the clouds.
Anything but resorting to reason and the terse conclusions that reason offers.
I know nothing about the poor lady or her poor romantic interest. But like most, in my experience of nearly 4 score years, she would need to be advised to think hard about what she wants and who she has chosen to give her what she wants; whether she actually knows this man; whether she knows what he can and cannot or is not willing to give her; whether she knows if she is willing to have the man without what she wants from him (appears not). And draw from it logical conclusions based on feasibility.
Anybody who gives advice in situations like this based on ideology is, I am sorry, a bad actor. This Villines lady is an exploiter of other people's weaknesses to enhance her own reputation in her own circle (I will give her the benefit of doubt that it may not come from cynical calculus but from a sincere misguided belief in misandry -- after all, most of those people who burned heretics at the stake did sincerely believe that they were saving the wretcheds' souls -- and again, it does not make it better).
May we be spared the agony aunts of all stripes and their bad, insensitive advice -- which is so much worse every time it sounds like empowerment and validation, because it is neither.
👏👏👏
i dig your stuff.
Sometimes I wonder if people write these sorts of things half-jokingly ("I felt almost violated, haha") and then , when pressed, take some weird pride in refusing to back down. Because, to conflate a guy deciding to break up with you over a lack of sex, with sexual assault, is bonkers.
It's a power play. They know we want sex more, and if you need consent the most you can do is leave. So they redefine that as assault to keep us from doing that.
As one of the few men who generally wanted sex less than my partner, it was quite funny to watch.
While I basically agree, I think the thing is there's enough bad blood on both sides everyone's just going to pick the interpretation that favors their side. But I'm American.
I laughed at the bit about dating men and women--I had a number of spergy girlfriends tell me something similar. Someone should come up with a whole theory for bisexuals about whether dating men or women is better in each individual case.
I have to admit I used to read Zawn Villines as a way to talk myself out of trying to have relationships.
This is an excellent and important point and one I've made before in a different context. Consider this essay (linking to archive.org because the original blog has since been taken private) https://web.archive.org/web/20210227102104/https://kalasutra.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/relationship-libertarianism/
The essay is a critique of this pattern which the writer believes they're seeing:
This behavior is probably best described in blunt terms: (mostly) cis guys are fucking around with (mostly) femmes, and disconnecting from them the moment there’s any mention of romantic feelings, hopes for a more entangled future, expressions of obligations or deepening responsibilities. These people are, basically, having sex with people for as long as it takes for their partner to develop an attachment, and then leaving them with no guilt or consideration because they’re a self-proclaimed relationship anarchist, which means they’re “not responsible for anyone else’s feelings” and/or they “had already agreed on the level of connection that was going to happen”
(endquote)
My beef with this is the same you're expressing here. By the description here we're talking about someone who has a sexual relationship and that has "already agreed on the level of connection that was going to happen" -- that is, they've already talked about it and he's made it clear that while he's happy to have a sexual relationship with someone, he's not likely to want a deeper emotional or romantic connection with her. They've presumably both opted to continue with the sexual relationship after knowing this.
And then later she starts wishing for exactly that: "romantic feelings, hopes for a more entangled future, expressions of obligations or deepening responsibilities" -- and to be a bit blunt myself, he's an asshole because he's still not offering what he said from the start that he's not planning to offer.
The way it reads to me is as a close parallell to what you talk about here. Imagine turning the situation upside down. Imagine they had talked aobut it and agreed that they DO want an emotionally close relationship, but *not* sex -- and then after a while he starts wanting sex to also be part of it.
Would the response be the same? Would the writer argue that now that she's had an emotionally close relationship with him "until lust developed" she's an asshole if she doesn't start offering sex?
If not -- is it really reasonable to claim that emotional intimacy does NOT entitle people to physical intimacy; but physical intimacy DOES entitle people to emotional intimacy?
It looks like a clear double standard to me.
I wonder if some of this is a bug in the rights based paradigm that we inhabit. We can all claim individual rights to autonomy, and assert that those should be respected by others. Trouble is that the claiming of a right does absolutely nothing to mediate what happens when 2 people who can both claim individual rights set out to live a life together. A partnership of any significance, romantic or otherwise, has to be based on collaboration, meaning that each party treats the needs and interests of the other as being equally important as their own. Anything short of that quickly become competition, with the result that power play, rather than mutual concern becomes the mediator. This is just a fact about human relationships, irrespective of any other factors, including the presence of even the deepest love. The implication is that if we take the requiting of love to mean that we receive love in the same way that we give it, then almost all love is unrequited save for the rarest of situations that certainly cannot extend to the duration of a long term relationship. You mention stoicism briefly. A genuinely stoic view on relationships would assume what I have stated above, and assess the quality of the relationship from a virtue standpoint rather than a rights standpoint. Bottom line is that we all have to judge the quality of our relationships by referring to the evidence that our partners go out of their way to understand our needs and adapt to any degree at all to meet them. That's not remotely a requirement to put up with abuse, or to give ground that we don't want to give, but it is an inescapable fact and a failure to appreciate is likely to result in pure misery.
No, I don’t think so. What liberalism does is ensure that people are free to choose their own partners and free to leave broken relationships. People then compromise within relationships because they want to make them work and to make the other person happy. The alternative is removing the right to find someone who is compatible with you and being unable to leave them if the relationship breaks down. Neither having the right or not having the right to choose or leave a relationship has anything to say about whether the couple will collaborate and cooperate and try to meet each others needs. That’s a matter of temperament and genuine love.
You are not entitled to someone else’s mind. Exactly right. Now explain that concept to the socialists who believe they have a right to the products of someone else’s mind.