Scott Alexander keeps writing intellectually powerful critiques of radical feminism’s War on Shy Male Nerds (SMNs). His latest:
When feminists say that the market failure for young women is caused by slut-shaming, I stop slut-shaming, and so do most other decent people.
When men say that the market failure for young men is caused by nerd-shaming, feminists write dozens of very popular articles called things like “On Nerd Entitlement”.
The reason that my better nature thinks that it’s irrelevant whether or not Penny’s experience growing up was better or worse than Aaronson’s: when someone tells you that something you are doing is making their life miserable, you don’t lecture them about how your life is worse, even if it’s true. You STOP DOING IT.
[Quick aside: In high school, I definitely fit the SMN profile. I played Dungeons and Dragons with my male friends every Saturday night, and did not go to prom. By my second year of college, however, the problem ceased to be personally relevant. I met my wife when I was 19, married at 23, and we just celebrated our 20th anniversary. My experience may color my advice, but I leave readers to decide if that’s a bug or a feature.]
My main question when reading Scott’s defense of SMNs: Is this really the best way to help them out? Sure, some SMNs may feel better after reading Scott. But Scott’s main intended audience seems to be the feminists who mistreat SMNs. And frankly, I can’t imagine even Scott’s earnest voice changing their minds. In fact, even Scott seems extremely pessimistic. He even ends his conclusion with a disclamer:
I already know that there are people reading this planning to write responses with titles like “Entitled Blogger Says All Women Exist For His Personal Sexual Pleasure, Also Men Are More Oppressed Than Women, Also Nerds Are More Oppressed Than WWII Era Jews”.
If helping SMNs is the goal, I think I know a better way. As usual, I recommend self-help. Specifically: SMNs should exclude hostile feminists from their Bubble. (Further background). Stop arguing with hostile feminists. Stop reading them. If you know any in real life, stop associating with them. Even if they have halfway decent reasons for berating you, you’re clearly not right for each other. The best response is to amicably go your separate ways.
I realize that this approach does not solve the deeper problem of SMN loneliness. But that’s no reason to amplify your unhappiness with unpleasant, fruitless social interaction with people who emotionally abuse you.
READER COMMENTS
HH
Jan 2 2015 at 9:45am
Privileged White Male Nerd Wants To Exclude Women From Academia, Silicon Valley: “This Is Mine And I Don’t Want Them Here,” Troglodyte Says
Gwen S.
Jan 2 2015 at 10:27am
In the femosphere, “radical feminism” is taken to mean “feminist theories that call for very deep or extreme change”. Think “adopting Laadan as the national language” or “raising children communally”. You can favor extreme political change while being a friendly and charitable debator; Mr. Caplan is a good example.
I’d prefer to say “cruel” “abusive” or “dishonest” feminists, and use “radical” to describe feminists who self-identify with the word.
Wallace Forman
Jan 2 2015 at 10:44am
There is an ex ante, ex post issue.
Sure feminists cause nerds mental distress ex post. But ex ante, mocking nerds for their nerdiness encourages them to discard the nerdy habits that make them unattractive to women. Even nerds benefit from this, to an extent.
If you bubble, you are cutting off a stream of important feedback.
Graham Peterson
Jan 2 2015 at 11:27am
A significant proportion of modern feminism is about good ol’ fashioned retribution, where social justice and equality implore the ethical to abuse men in order to even the score. I don’t think Scott is wrong to point out what a farce that is considering how popular the abuse is.
James Miller
Jan 2 2015 at 1:22pm
What if, like the SMN Scott was talking about, the hostile feminists force you to attend sexual harassment seminars?
MikeDC
Jan 2 2015 at 1:40pm
The problem I see is that our ability to “bubble up” clearly creates a long-term negative externality.
For any given individual, it’s probably a productive step to bubble up.
Talking to only pleasant folks that agree with you is certainly more fun than talking to shrieking feminists (or cluelessly-entitled men, if you, yourself, are a shrieking feminist).
But there are social costs. Confirmatory echo chambers of the like-minded are rarely productive scientific laboratories. Your theories will suck. And your beliefs about those outside your bubble with necessarily suffer.
And… the greater the proportion of society that retreats into its bubbles, the greater the externality. If most of society is already bubbles, talking with them is that much more painful, and talking with your in-group is that much easier.
It’s a race to the bottom.
Jeff
Jan 2 2015 at 3:32pm
I sympathize with his views, being a bit of a nerd myself, but at the same time, this strikes me as an awful long essay for what is most definitely a First World Problem. Feminists on the internet are mocking your lack of romantic success? Well, I’ll be cow-kicked. Someone get the UN Security Council on the phone!
I think the real lesson here is it would be best to not treat a blog like a published diary because there are people who will mock and shame you for what you reveal, or distort it for their own ends. The internet is like one giant Milgram experiment: the fact that we can’t physically see the people we’re interacting with allows us to deny their humanity. Sorry that Aaronson guy had to find that out the hard way.
Kaiser Schmarn
Jan 2 2015 at 3:37pm
Can’t escape feminism forever though.. so this will just keep you out of the crosshairs for a while until they start taking over your new social circle. It’s a parasite
Christopher Chang
Jan 2 2015 at 4:49pm
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Nerds naturally care more about scientific and mathematical truths which don’t depend much on social context, so mutual ostracism naturally favors them. There is no tragedy of the commons of the sort you describe when the nerd “bubble” only excludes people like Marcotte who genuinely have next to nothing positive to contribute to the lives of those within it. There is only a problem when nerds severely underestimate the collective technical ability of the billions who don’t identify strongly with either side, and shun the entire rest of the world (“Galt’s Gulch”) instead of just the aggressors.
Worst case, you can probably immigrate to a nerd-friendly country like Japan or Taiwan. You’ll find feminists there too, but they are not running amok, and immigration and similar restrictions are strong enough to maintain the low parasite load. (For this type of parasite, anyway.)
GU
Jan 2 2015 at 8:19pm
Some advice/hope for the shy male nerds:
If some dumb jock failed algebra, and you asked “How many hours a week did you study” and he said “zero,” you’d rightly think “serves him right.” Well, the same applies to sex and love. You have to try—really try—otherwise a SMN like you has no shot. Most women want to feel like the men they sleep with are trying really hard to impress them, it makes women feel good. You gotta try. If you’re still having problems, then I feel bad for you. If you’re not expending effort, I don’t know what to tell you. The radical feminists are terrible, but there’s a hint of truth to their nastiness.
Kevin D.
Jan 2 2015 at 8:59pm
Bryan, thank you so much for pointing to Scott’s posts. I hadn’t heard of them before and I absolutely love them. I think it bolsters Scott’s point that I experienced basically the same pattern of ridicule and resulting feelings from an entirely non-feminist angle.
As a SMN (currently in a committed relationship, thank you very much!), I empathized quite a bit with his feeling, and I don’t doubt his experience that shaming by feminists exacerbated his problems. In my case, feminism had basically nothing to do with it. I was taught that my pre-marital attraction was wrong by religious officials and conservative adults around me. Simultaneously, I was bullied by men and women for being a nerd.
During high school, I took precisely your advice, bubbled out those people who were causing that pain, and I agree that it’s the best thing to do. I also agree, though, with what some others have said that lifelong bubbling would be a bad plan. I’ve found that years later I can engage with these people on my own terms and disengage without any negativity.
My guess is that Bryan’s answer is weakly dominant for most SMNs. I think Scott in particular, though, places a high premium on scoring intellectual points in this fight and being a voice representative of SMNs.
Urstoff
Jan 2 2015 at 11:47pm
Contra other comments here, bubbles aren’t necessarily echo chambers. Indeed, that would be pretty boring. But excluding people that can’t disagree with you and discuss things respectfully seems like a really good strategy to me. Not listening to Sean Hannity’s show is a positive aspect of my bubble; as is never watching a Michael Moore documentary.
Urstoff
Jan 3 2015 at 12:04am
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Kevin
Jan 3 2015 at 2:28am
The term that seems to be getting traction in such discussion is ‘carceral feminism’, and I’m not sure that the Bubble Solution (of which I am personally fond) will sound sufficient to many SMNs. Carceral feminism is distinguished from run-of-the-mill feminism by its tendency to not let you live in a bubble.
Scott Alexander
Jan 3 2015 at 3:22am
Even on the purely academic/intellectual level, this is difficult. I have got a bunch of programs that filter the input I get from social media and the news, I’ve blocked all of my friends who reblog the worst stuff, and I still can’t really get away from it. My choices are either to abandon my entire friend group, live in a cave, or accept a leaky bubble.
But the purely academic/intellectual side of things isn’t really the issue here. My complaint is that feminist shaming traumatizes shy male adolescent nerds. They’re too young to have built a bubble or even realized it’s an option, and part of the way the malice works is by convincing them that doing this makes them evil people and they’re morally obligated to take all the abuse (this strategy is very successful if they get to people early). Other people are going to be exposed to them whether or not I am, and I don’t feel like throwing them under the bus is the right thing to do.
Finally, insofar as I have non-optional interactions with people outside my bubble – anything relating to employment, housing, or even friends and romance when I don’t have 100% ability to customize my friends and romantic partners – the zeitgeist is going to determine whether they treat me well or poorly. If all the non-feminists retreat into bubbles and leave the field to the worst feminists, then their voices will be heard unchallenged, and then as soon as people notice I’m a nerd they’ll ignore me or hate me. And again, even if I miraculously manage to optimize every single life interaction to be 100% free of people outside my bubble, other nerds are going to run into this same problem.
(And this is the purely social failure mode. Even worse is if the bad people can get their hands on the levers of government, or affect the people who do)
What Trotsky said of war – you may not be interested in it, but it’s interested in you – seems true of politics as well, especially identity politics.
Someone from the other side
Jan 3 2015 at 9:12am
As much as I like the bubble concept, here it does nothing whatsoever to address the root of the pain. The way I read Aaronson is that he has somehow internalized the expectation that society would mock/ridicule/shame/insertsomethingbad him if he does as much as approach a girl.
All this can possibly be against better knowledge on a rational level (as is the case for me, empirically not much bad happened – at least not in adult times). And this is why GU’s help fails most of the people Aaronson is speaking up for. Even money (unless it is I made millions in my IPO type money) won’t really help (I should know, I made comfortably an age adjusted 1% income right from graduation).
The resulting loneliness is the wound. It will hardly heal by going into a bubble. All that could possibly help with is preventing evil feminists from pouring salt into the wound.
Unlike others here, I don’t much care about the macro implications of living in a bubble but even on a micro level, it hardly seems to help – unless of course you can make peace with being alone. Which is presumably much easier after having experienced an LTR all that that means at least once – at least that’s very much the case for me.
Christophe Biocca
Jan 3 2015 at 9:51am
One-sided externality analysis. You start by assuming that the time people spend on arguing with others actually changes people’s minds to a noticeable extent.
You follow that with the idea that such argument is what allows to converge to the truth.
But one could just as easily make the case that the kind of argumentation that occurs in the broader society:
1. Is mostly signalling.
2. Is often divorced from factual information, due to (1) and the relatively low cost of being wrong.
3. Drowns out more interesting/productive types of disagreements.
4. Is a large net drain on human productivity.
In which case, people disappearing into their bubbles are not only helping themselves, but helping everyone by allowing the dominant social positions to believe all opposition is gone, and decrease their spending on expensive arguing/proselytizing.
sam
Jan 3 2015 at 12:03pm
What must be understood here is that young female campus feminism is a social climbing strategy – it is a way for women who from middle-class backgrounds with low future income potential to pose as upper-middle class.
Thus, attacking of the SMN is merely bullying to increase social status.
Ask yourself, why is it the SMN that is attacked, and not black men, Texas ranchers, rich white men, etc who are attacked?
The reason the SMN is attacked is because:
1: The SMN is S, and thus weak and socially isolated.
2: The SMN is M, and thus a socially-approved target
3: The SMN is N, and thus gravitates towards academia and blue states, and thus cannot escape.
Further, just as in any case of bullying, every time the SMN shows weakness or acquiescence, the bullying is going to get worse.
Massimo
Jan 3 2015 at 2:28pm
– Breaking bubbles aka segregation is the heart of the civil rights movement. Western K-12 education is heavily steeped in the lore of the evils of ethnically white or rich people attempting to form bubbles. The great political powers of the world have flipped entire societies inside out in the name of breaking bubbles and deeply shamed those that wanted to bubble and didn’t welcome their bubble’s destruction. I realize that many people, like Caplan, have still been successful at forming politically viable bubbles. I’m not going to bash Caplan for his privileged academic tenure, but simultaneously, it’s unrealistic to hold that up as this model of idealized, politically supported bubbling, that the masses should emulate.
– People should debate their ideas with others in a civil fashion in addition to some level of bubbling/segregation in their personal lives. Some hostile extreme feminist ideology has had real power and damaging effects. This should be vocally challenged by public intellectuals. (Caveat: I know there is reasonable feminism and most normal women do not support the more radical feminist types, etc)
MikeDC
Jan 3 2015 at 11:16pm
@Christophe,
No. Not directly at least. I assume that people in bubbles develop and operate under increasingly implausible assumptions about the behaviors of the out group.
When it comes to stereotypical SMNs, who cares, because at worst they hurt themselves.
When it comes to stereotypical SJWs, it’s an issue because a key tenet of being an SJW is to impose their implausible in-group assumptions on the outgroup.
That’s a huge difference. Although… it’s worth pointing out that the SMN bubble has their violent extremes as well. All those shy, quiet young men who decide the world hates them and vice versa, and then decide to go kill a bunch of random innocent people over it.
Basically, SMNs and the radical young feminists who become SJWs are very similar.
Bryan, for example, misses the point with his bubble. His bubble brings him comfort and makes him deal better with “outsiders”, but he’s fundamentally a very kind and reasonable person.
But, lots of people aren’t so kind and unreasonable, and I think it’s quite obvious that many people who are hateful and unreasonable take that hatred into their bubbles and nurse it into grievances they unleash upon the world.
Sparkry
Jan 4 2015 at 1:58pm
As a reformed SMN who actually played D&D with Gary Gygax at Origins in 1977, man up and do what I did and go to boot camp.
No too many shy NCOs (E6) out there.
I started college as a 25 year old freshman. Coeds were attracted to my confidence. Found a cute California blonde grad student who married me despite my backstabbing her in a game of Diplomacy. 😉
Married 28 years now.
Chris
Jan 4 2015 at 2:22pm
The advice to simply ignore mean feminists is something like the advice I used to get in high school about dealing with bullies, that they are emotionally insecure.And somehow that was supposed to empower me. Dumb advice. Better to mock the feminists, or that’s what they deserve. And there’s plenty of material they can be mocked for. Anyone remember Revenge of the Nerds?
Zippy
Jan 4 2015 at 2:25pm
The problem is that while you might not be interested in radical feminists, they are definitely interested in you. They have fully infiltrated academia, the media, and HR departments. What do you think all this nonsense about women in tech is about? It’s about infiltrating the technology sector and taking the work of those white (and Asian) male nerds whom they despise. These people cannot build institutions; they can only take over existing ones.
Much of feminist dogma is swallowed whole, even taken for granted in many contexts. Look at Scott Alexander — he repudiates potential allies and buys into the nonsense about “slut shaming” and the like.
I agree with everything about the paleo diet, muscling up, getting more confidence. But hit these vicious harridans as hard as you can. If they are sexually promiscuous, slut-shame them. If they are fat, fat-shame them. If they have a man-jaw, point it out. When they lie, call them liars and never let it be forgotten.
This is war. Act like it.
Francis W. Porretto
Jan 4 2015 at 2:27pm
Why? To employ the example Alexander uses, if I disapprove of slutty behavior, and a young woman who practices that pattern of behavior tells me it’s making her miserable, am I morally obligated to restore her comfort level? Why isn’t she expected to examine her conduct and perhaps modify it, if she wants my good opinion…or at any rate, wants me to stop “slut-shaming” her?
No one is entitled to others’ respect, or to a life free from criticism.
Brad R
Jan 4 2015 at 3:48pm
Bryan, I had a background similar to yours, except in high school we didn’t have D&D — I played alone in the basement with my ham radio. I started dating in grad school and am now happily married over 25 years.
Looking back, I would say that I arrived at college in a bubble. College was my opportunity to open my bubble for the first time, and meet new and different people, learn new things, and enjoy new experiences. Fortunately for me college wasn’t the minefield then that it seems to be today.
I suspect that many SMNs arriving at college are likewise living in their own bubbles, formed during their high-school years. Telling them that the bubble is the solution to their problem, when their problem is social isolation, seems to me to be counterproductive.
Scott, if you’re still reading this comment thread, thank you very much for what you wrote.
Dave
Jan 4 2015 at 3:56pm
Jeff is right about this being a first world problem. As soon as a SMN steps off the plane in a non-first-world country, there will be plenty of nice women eager to meet him.
Of course if you give an emaciated starving man a one-month ticket to an all-you-can-eat buffet, he’s likely to gorge himself sick, but that’s a different problem.
Joseph Hertzlinger
Jan 4 2015 at 3:59pm
SMNs might be attracted to radical feminists based on the following reasoning: “They’re weird. I’m weird. We belong together.”
The same reasoning might apply in other contexts.
Frogwatch
Jan 4 2015 at 4:36pm
Being a Successful SMN
I am an older SMN who might be able to offer some useful perspective to younger SMNs. You cannot change your SMNness, it is a gift from God and you should make maximum use of it. SMNs tend to be logical but their logic is modulated by biological desire and by the desire to fit in. As I see it, you can either “fit in” and be a miserable worm lowest status male or you can decide to never fit in and embrace your SMNness. By embracing SMN, you use logic to be successful on your own terms.
Humans, like most social mammals, form groups in which a small number of alpha males control most of the desirable females. Lower level males try to be allied to these alpha males to maximize their access to females on down to the lowest status males of the group who have almost no access to females. Females are programmed by evolution to mate with alpha males to maximize the success of their offspring. Consequently, the most desirable females are inaccessible to lower level males. Recognize these basic facts of human groups and take advantage of them.
You may think that what I tell you is immoral but Alpha male access to females is no less immoral even though evolution produced it. As a successful SMN, you should remove yourself from the spectrum of male success and go rogue. In social mammal groups, there are always outliers and rogues who have far more access to desirable females than most members of the group do. The odd mating success of rogues is probably due to evolution programming females to increase the genetic diversity of the group.
As a rogue, going to prostitutes is completely acceptable and might even give you some good stories that members of the group will envy. It will certainly help keep you sane. You want to gather “odd experiences” that members of the group will envy and you can allude to in conversations to emphasize your separateness.
I cannot tell you what to do in college because it has been so long since I have been in college. However, in the work place, you need to make the members of the group need you to such an extent that you actually control them. You are trying to distance yourself from the “success spectrum”. Do all you can to get out from under control of the successful males. Emphasize your separateness by some quirk of dress or mannerisms. Teamwork is for higher members of the group and does not benefit the lower levels much at all except to allow them to live. It does nothing to allow them to mate. Teamwork should not be part of your persona unless you invoke it to shame someone in the group to do what you want. You want to eventually become your own boss.
While you are doing this, practice doing things that make you memorable. Learn to look people in the eye a bit longer than others do even if you see nothing in their eyes. People say that “eyes are the window to the soul” but even after years of looking into people’s eyes I see nothing but it sure makes an impression. Do not slouch, stand straight and tall. Make sure your handshake is authoritative toward men and practice a deep slightly louder voice when introducing yourself. When meeting a woman, try somehow to hold her hand just a tiny bit longer while looking into her eyes and try to touch her arm with your other hand. Practice having a “knowing half-smile” when meeting a woman. Your goal is to emphasize your rogue-ishness toward her. Turn your shyness into “mysteriousness”. I strongly recommend reading “How to Work a Room” especially where the author says to “have a “hook”” when being introduced to someone.
Evolution has doomed SMNs to be either status-less or rogue so the normal rules of social behavior do not apply to you except for how you use them. This means that cuckolding an alpha male is acceptable to you but not for a member of the group. Why would a desirable female be interested in you now? When they get married to that successful guy, they get bored as he works too hard to keep his status. On the other hand, you imply toward her how interesting your rogue life is even if it is dull.
Even just being “in the friend zone” with a desirable female can be a good thing if you use it right. At worst, you can take up a lot of her time which might make her alpha mate jealous, remember, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”. You can also use your time with her to make yourself more acceptable to another desirable female.
God has given you the gift of being more intelligent than the average male, use it.
Michael Gersh
Jan 4 2015 at 4:40pm
[Comment for multiple policy violations, including crude language and name-calling. –Econlib Ed.]
NikFromNYC
Jan 4 2015 at 5:04pm
“Don’t kiss the beast
Be superior at least”
– Prince (lyrics to Positivity)
richard40
Jan 5 2015 at 11:17am
The advice in this article is certainly better than the craven apeasement strategy, where you beg the feminists to stop persecuting you by reminding them what a good feminist and leftist you really are. Of course that wont stop them, radical feminists, like leftists generally, crave power over others, and apeasement only encourages them to up their control and demands.
My problem with this bubble strategy though is it sounds a lot like the old recommendation for dealing with playground bullies, just ignore them, and they will get tired of their bullying. It is certainly better than cravenly begging them to stop, but it still does not stop the bully, it just reduces their impact on your life. The traditional aproach that actually works, and really stops the bully, is to find a way to fight back, by pitting your strength, intelligence, against the bullies weakness, and possibly be getting together with other victims of bullying. Once the bully relaizes that his/her bullying is making his/her life more miserable than any pleasure he/she derives from the bullying, they might actually stop.
The model the nerds should be using is the one used in the movie Revenge Of The Nerds. At first they to join the bully fraternity, but were persecuted and rejected when they tried (the I am a feminist too appeasement strategy). Then they formed their own nerd frat and just tried to live there, ignoring the bullies (the ignore them and keep them from your bubble strategy), but the bullies then physically threatened them. Finally they started actually fighting back, with pranks that made life miserable for the bullying frat and sororiety. At that point, the head of the frat the nerds joined complimented them by saying “I am glad to see you nerds finally fighting back”. But that did nto stop the harassment, it escalated it. The only thing that finally stopped it was when the nerds took over the local power structure, and got the dean to back them. That is what the nerds should be doing today, fighting back. They should be constantly attacking the leftist feminists and making their life miserable, and protesting nerd oppression, the same thing the left aloways does, because it works. Make the issue of nerd oppression such a hot potato on campus that the campus power structure finally caves and starts enforcing consequences for the oppressors (in this case radical feminist anti nerd bullies). The nerds actually did fight back in gamergate, and it worked, they drove the SJW radical feminists out. The nerds should also look for allies, in this case the best would be the libertarians, who have little sympathy for radical leftist feminist bullies, do have sympathy for rebellious but socialized marginalized intellectuals who dont want to harm others but just want to be left alone, and do have a pretty large presense on campus.
Rix
Jan 5 2015 at 7:41pm
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NateWhilk
Jan 5 2015 at 11:04pm
sam wrote January 3, 2015 12:03 PM:
If I may state my own take of sam’s post, it would be this: SNMs are the new n-word. As for the bullying, resisting can get you a modern lynching – you could lose your livelihood JUST FOR RESISTING.
It’s interesting to note that around 1950 the Communist Party of the USA went through a spasm of fighting “white chauvinism” in their ranks. One’s denial of “white chauvinism” was instant proof of guilt. One could be expelled for such blatant racism as serving a black person coffee in a chipped cup. I am not joking. See Healey, and Red Star Over Hollywood by Ron Radosh
To hell with feminism. And I mean feminism in practice, the things feminism really does, not the dictionary definition read by Emma Watson to the UN. Actions speak louder than words.
lemmy caution
Jan 7 2015 at 11:28am
“The model the nerds should be using is the one used in the movie Revenge Of The Nerds.”
Maybe pick a movie where a shy nerd doesn’t rape someone?
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