The Divergence

When you talk to women from other countries, non-American women that is, you realize how different from a lot of the rest of the world American women are. By comparison American women are very cloistered, wound extremely tight, on their guard and absurdly paranoid in ways that women from much more patriarchal societies even just are not.

Why is that, I wonder? What causes this huge divergence? The reason I’m asking is that I’ve been talking for a while now with a woman from Turkey and she is really different (like other such women I’ve met in the past) than most American women in really refreshing ways.

My point is not to criticize how American women are so much as to understand the vast difference and how it developed because I have to admit I can’t make sense of it.

Male Posturing

That last point is true. I wasn’t in a unit of elite commandoes but rather of paratroopers and while there was a lot of masculinity there, it mattered a lot less. I mean that there were far fewer displays of overt and insecure masculinity than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

Why? We didn’t have anything to prove. We were in a combat unit, had jumped out of planes together, done difficult missions without complaining. We knew were were tough. Hell, we knew the women in the unit were tough, too. What’s left to show anyone? We’d moved past all that. The only men who go around posturing and posting up aggressively are those who are very insecure and haven’t usually achieved anything of note.

I was friends with a few actual elite commandos when I was in the army (Special Forces, Delta Force) and those guys were the most laid back, calm, and the least interested in masculine posturing of any men I’ve ever been around — far less than even the fellow paratroopers I spent most my time around. I almost wanted to change my MOS (job) so I’d have a chance at even joining a unit like that because of how un-masculine (compared to normal male spaces) that sort of unit tends to be.

Most male spaces where the males haven’t achieved much are the most toxic of all.

Apple Back

I’m back to being ok buying Apple now that I realize their moronic “elimination” of subpixel anti-aliasing is easily reversed and they basically cannot eliminate it from the operating system — at least for those who know how to turn it back on.

They might be able to do so in 10 years, but no time soon.

Date Down

I think a lot of this comes from the much higher college attendance and graduation rates of women. This makes it very hard for them to find “appropriate” partners as they mostly refuse to date down (for some understandable reasons).

Since women are competing for a small and ever-decreasing pool of males, they are now more stringently policing this dating market. Thus the expansion of #metoo beyond all reason. This also partially explains the rise of prudishness.

Punishing other women while pretending to punish men is an excellent way to “clear” the dating market and reduce competition. This explains a lot of what you’re seeing with all this.