Stop The Gender War

More about Stop The Gender War

Let me explain why, on one hand, so many good men no longer approach you, and on the other, why the only approaches you get are from the desperate and the clueless. There is a behavior and an economic mechanism behind it, and I ask you to follow the reasoning to the end before getting angry.

Let's start with the behavior. A fringe of fourth-wave feminism, the one that hangs on every word of the worst that Dumbasfuckistan (a.k.a. the USA) has produced in recent years and copies its every craze, has built and spread a narrative according to which almost any approach by a man toward a woman is inappropriate. There is no need to assume bad faith on anyone's part: just look at the incentives. On social media, outrage pays. It generates visibility, followers, sponsorship deals, and the lower the threshold of offense drops, the more material there is to monetize. The result is that almost everything becomes creepy, catcalling, or even outright aggression, and the message that gets through is simple: women don't want to be approached by men. Not all of them think so, of course, but it is the message that circulates, and it is the one men receive.

Now the mechanism. In 1970, the economist George Akerlof described the market for used cars. The seller knows whether the car is good or a dud (the "lemon"); the buyer can't know in advance, so he is only willing to pay an average price. At that price, owners of good cars lose out and withdraw. Lemons remain, average quality drops, the price falls again, more honest sellers leave, and the cycle continues until almost nothing but junk is left on the market. This is called adverse selection, and it applies whenever one party can't verify the other's quality before acting, and the best participants find that staying costs more than it's worth.

Now replace the car with the man who walks up to you. A woman can't know in advance whether the person approaching her is a decent guy or a jerk. But the cost of approaching is not the same for everyone. For the respectful man it has gone up: if he gets the tone wrong, makes a gaffe, or takes a rejection without a smile, he risks a screenshot, a video, a label. For the chronically rude, the cost is still zero, because he doesn't care what anyone thinks. Those with something to lose withdraw; those with nothing to lose stay. So the average quality of approaches gets worse, which feeds even more distrust, which pushes out more decent men. It's not a conspiracy, it's a vicious circle that feeds itself, and it works even if nobody wants it to.

The result is that a share of the men, the good ones, who value women's opinions and listen to them, the truly respectful ones who, gaffes aside, would never knowingly do anything offensive, have stopped approaching. Not out of fear of rejection, which on the male side has always been part of the game, but because they don't want to be attacked personally when they've done nothing wrong. Declining an invitation is one thing; screenshotting or filming conversations to spread them online, mocking the other person and slapping labels on them that have little to do with reality is another.

And do you know who doesn't give a damn about your opinion? All those men who aren't decent: the ones who couldn't care less about women, the ones who, for no reason other than their deep rudeness and a heavy dose of social dysfunction, send you a message with a picture of their dick, as if it were a trophy or meant anything beyond proving they are garbage people. You've skimmed off the best of the men, told them to stay quiet and out of the way, and now you're left with what remains: the scum.

So here is my ask. Just as you want men to speak out publicly against the inappropriate behavior of other men, do the same yourselves: speak out publicly against the toxic and inappropriate behavior of other women. For respect to work, it has to flow in both directions.

This war between the genders, waged by warlords who, instead of selling bullets and weapons, sell slogans and propaganda, is good for no one. Please, let's all take a deep breath, a step back, and try to care for each other again, because we need one another, women and men alike.

Love each other, sleep together, flirt, go to the pub to have fun, go dancing, do whatever the hell makes you feel good, because you only live once. A society with nothing behind it but years of anger, loneliness and war is, I strongly doubt, a future anyone would want, male or female.