BlackOpsIIcel
> > > > FAT GIRLS REJECT ME! < < < <
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- Nov 11, 2017
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Here is the link to her full screeching. I will just post some highlights.
Also, call out to @The End who loves this shit.
Trying to date as a woman interested in Jordan Peterson, an anecdote
TLDR: A recent breakup is bringing to a head my frustrations as a woman who's "got everything going for her" and yet who can't find a successful relationship, with my interest in Jordan Peterson, and by extension, my "harsh" view of myself and the world, cited as a blocker. Generally, I'm struggling to understand how to navigate dating when I don't conform to the Leftist ideology that seems to permeate my city and my line of work, and in a climate where men seem to either parrot the self-shaming view of themselves as inherently flawed perpetrators of the patriarchy, or who have given up on traditional relationships altogether.
Where are you, young Jordan Petersons?
(Edit: HE was the one to break up...many of the comments assume that I was the one who was uncompromising and ditched him because I didn't think he was good enough. Oh contraire - it was I who was pushing for him to see past differences in our viewpoints (ones that seemed like they could even dissipate with further analysis and time), and instead focus on what we DID share...am I a heartless, hypergamous female now?)
(Edit: Also, there were a lot of assumptions about my personality, particularly thinking I'm low in Agreeableness, but I rate as High!)
-- A bit about me: I'm a 28yo white female, raised in a suburb in NY, educated at Harvard (not as a legacy, mind you), (Edit: and currently living in Boston, since people were mentioning NYC, though I guess they're not too different), moderately active and thin, attractive, now with a 6-figure job at a tech company, hobbies like reading and painting, and I can get down with the occasional video game, "guy humor," and am not superficial. I eat healthfully, and am responsible and kind.
Why am I struggling to find a partner?
Now, that's a short bio of me that of course paints my strengths while leaving out character flaws that could impact my relationship success. I'm fully aware of that, and I don't intend to gloat or misrepresent myself.
The point is, on paper, I shouldn't have a problem finding a partner. And yet, I am struggling.
I will summarize a bit of a recent relationship to illustrate some points. Apologies if it also feels like I'm just decompressing from a breakup, I'm sure there's a lot of that as well, but I'm trying to analyze how this all fits in.
Skip if you'd like to ////.
I recently got out of a four-month relationship with a 25yo guy I met at work. We met and spontaneously got to talking about people, society, psychology, meditation...I enjoyed the ability to have an intellectual discourse with him, about topics that usually are more out of bounds at work, or at the very least, not simple "small talk" you encounter at the water cooler. This, and his sincere and respectful manner intrigued me enough to date him despite him being 25 (women usually go for older mates because of the maturity and stability factor, and I am 28...).
However, it quickly became apparent to me the differences in our worldviews. I had studied Human Evolutionary Biology and Psychology in college, and I naturally speak of people as "humans," which bellies how I automatically frame them as biological creatures with inherent drives and patterns of behavior that cross cultures and also mediate within cultures. My ex consciously agreed that this was of course correct, but below the surface, there was obviously a tension in him, one that he tried to repress overtly stating, but which inevitably became the subject of debate and soon a consistent contention between us. This tension was his discomfort with framing people as part animal, and I think by extension, discomfort with more traditional views of masculinity, sexuality, and the inherent struggle and purpose in life.
He seemed very much to adopt the fashionable leftist view that people's identities are completely malleable and derived from their cultural group. (He also seemed intellectually obsessed with proving points about how black people continue to face severe oppression in society today, and frequently would play rap / hip-hop when we were hanging out as if to honor the beauty and artistry of the genre, (he loves music, of many kinds in fact), and illustrate to me something he felt I was not recognizing. This genre has never been to my taste, and while I do recognize a lot of artistry and "truth" in it, I felt that he was trying to over-identify with it as part of a recompense for "white guilt." I explained that I didn't want him to hate himself just because he was white, and we then would talk of things like whether white people have the right to sport dredlocks... I'm sure you can guess our viewpoints.). Point being, he seemed caught up in the standard leftist views on the patriarchy, systemic racism, the gender pay gap and gender fluidity.
Regarding the gender pay gap, I had us both look up the official reports on it, in which we saw that men and women work different numbers of hours and have different hourly pay rates, both of which cause the gender pay gap that is reported, which is then misrepresented as being proof of a persistent oppressive patriarchy. That should have been enough to persuade him to question his views, but at that point he was already tired of questioning everything, and decided to instead disconnect from it since "everything seems to be so polarized." Relatedly, I had been talking of the the natural differences in the motivations and considerations between men and women that impact their decisions regarding career and family, and how this was something I had to consider as a 28yo woman wanting marriage and kids soon. This too wasn't given much analysis on his part. Instead, for some reason, he seemed fine to hold onto his view that there was an oppressive patriarchy that meant women are paid less for the same work and that we are unnecessarily confined to worrying about family life.
It is confusing to me to see a man who is obviously interested in discussing these topics, and sees the arguments laid out before him to counteract his world view, still adopt one in which he, as a white man, is a part of an inherently oppressive group. It's also dismaying, since he's a great guy who I care a lot about.
Through our discussions, in which I reactively took the biological view to counter his predominantly cultural view, he recognized how his view of the world and people were starting to shift because of his knowing me, but that he didn't like how it made him feel. Whereas before he felt happier and more accepting of people and himself, (though strangely more at odds with the world if he truly believed in the patriarchy and systemic racism), he now felt more critical of people, constantly analyzing their motivations... and more demanding of himself. He expressed to me that while he respected me as a person, loved much about me, and recognized my views as valid, that he didn't like the influence I was having on him and how he was now going about life. He thought that I am too critical of myself and others (that I don't let things go with the flow enough, that I have high standards for cleanliness, achievements at work, staying healthy), and that I was confining myself with my views about men and women and about my own timeline and desires regarding marriage and kids and career. However, he also admitted benefitting from his interaction with me in a number of ways: being inspired to eat healthier and less, to bike to work and be more active, to stop smoking weed, to get enough sleep, to work harder at his job, to be more serious about his music playing... I argued for the positives of what we did share, the beauty in being patient enough to listen to each other and intellectually engage on these topics, and my belief that relationships should encourage you to be better, that a little challenge and motivation to work on yourself is good, and that clearly he was benefitting and so was I from the relationship. Despite the benefits, he was stuck on the discord in our self-concepts as being a fundamental blocker for him, one that was causing anxiety to try to ignore and making him dislike aspects of my personality.
Fair enough, relationship over.
//// Ok, now to abstracting some thoughts, some of which are related to the above account, some of them not. Many of these have been expressed by Jordan Peterson. I am just providing a lived, female experience, in support of the troublesome trends he is pointing out.
I am having difficulty finding people with whom I share views regarding gender and relationships. I have and probably still would classify myself as a liberal but am at odds with the views of liberals around me on these topics.
There seems to be this extended adolescence, via which men prolong responsibility. There are other reasons for it, but I think to some degree it's reinforced by the "anything goes, everyone should just love you for you" mentality. I encounter a lot of men who are in their mid- to late-20s who are still trying to figure out their career, still playing video games for hobbies (Edit: so much hate on this - I don't have an issue with the occasional video game, I actually like them too! My problem is when people run away from responsibility and occupy their time with that instead. And yes, little rant about extended adolescence in men is a bit hyperbolic, but you'll find JP saying this similarly), still not knowing how to cook and keep house and still balking at the responsibilities of a mature relationship. Looking at the pool of men on dating apps, I see this pretty frequently. It is extremely frustrating to me as someone trying to date. Should I probably date older? Yes, and that would likely solve the maturity in career and lifestyle habits, though I've still encountered some of those traits, and a lot of the leftist views on relationships and gender in early-30s men on occasion. Again though, it's so frustrating for me to just try to sit back and accept that this is just how a lot of men in my age group are. I feel like I really try not to be too demanding in the moment, letting some things go when I'm establishing a relationship, understanding that none are perfect and that people change with time. But then I think, if this is acceptable for people, why should I bother to be responsible with my food and drink consumption, work hard to be successful in my career, stay thin, keep my house tidy and well decorated, cultivate creative hobbies, especially when I could have it thrown up to me as being just part of me having unreasonably high standards for how to act? Aren't these all things you're taught to do to be an attractive mate and a healthy well-rounded person?
When I speak of the desire in me, and the desire in many women, which I've known since I was a child, to have children of my own, I very often get the following responses: "oh, wanting to have your own children is selfish, you can wait and adopt if you can no longer have ones biologically" or "I'm not sure if I want to bring kids into the world because the world is so fucked up and global warming is going to destroy us all" or "well, you shouldn't worry about when you find a partner and have kids because you can just freeze your eggs and have a lot of medical help to have the pregnancy." For that last response, yeah, I get that there are miracles of modern medicine that make pregnancy possible for women who need help, and that is wonderful, but that is not how I want to have kids if I can manage doing so naturally and spontaneously with a loving partner. I feel ashamed for speaking openly about wanting to have kids and wanting to plan for that soon, as if my desire to do so is merely an injunction, set in me by Disney movies and outdated gender views of an unenlightened and selfish society, to be questioned endlessly, stamped out and replaced by a focus solely on career, since I should be a fully liberated woman, not giving a damn whether I feel my body aging and calling me to have kids soon.
I sometimes question my personality and interests as a woman, how that impacts on my relation to men, and how much of it has been influenced by the feminist ideology, since I don't entirely fit the female gender stereotypes (I recognize I don't need to categorically, this is just a discussion): I am a designer by trade, working a lot with computers (more interested in things and ideas than people), am introverted, and far more reserved in speech and emotional expression than many of my female peers (though I obviously have emotions, love my Jane Austen movies, and am very interested in aesthetics). How much of my choice of work and socialization was determined by innate characteristics vs culture? Who knows. It's something I think about in trying to understand myself and find what will be attractive to men as a potential partner. I just get mixed signals from men - sometimes they are enticed by those differences in me compared to other girls, and at other times, those differences are criticized (Edit: I bring that up because introversion and reserved communication style was also criticized).
The MGTOW movement frustrates me, though I understand why it exists as a reaction to the kind of messaging the Left repeats and that infects women's behavior toward them. Men are tired of having women berate their "toxic masculinity," tired of being told to unconditionally be attracted to women who neglect their bodies, tired of women who swindle them out of their earnings and homes through manipulative court battles, and tired of having innocuous compliments at work spun into claims of sexism and harassment. Men's resentment of women is born out of these unfortunate cases and it's a shame, since they are turning away in frustration from the hope of building a beautiful relationship with another human. But some women, like myself, actually want that!
Simply put: what the hell do men and women want from each other today? How can we bridge the divide that has been caused by the Left and third-wave feminism? How can we inspire men to have healthier views of their masculinity, their sexuality, their roles in life and with partners, and to have wholistic views of themselves as rational but biological creatures?
And if you have seen an error in my logic or have constructive criticism of my views with regard to the recent relationship I rambled on a bit, let me know. (In defense of my ex, he's really a great guy, just immature and confused in my opinion).
Thanks for listening to me ramble!
Also, call out to @The End who loves this shit.
