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1. It’s the (way people feel about) the economy, stupid

The economy is the key electoral factor. But what is the economy?

When economists talk about the economy they don’t just mean GDP. But GDP is a big chunk of what economists do mean.

And, so far as virtually all economists are concerned, Biden managed the US economy — the GDP parts and the not-GDP parts — well.¹

Most people, however, don't know what GDP stands for, much less what it is. For most people the economy is their personal and particular experience.

What most people mean by the economy is

• Can I afford to do more than I did before?

• Am I cutting back or can I afford more things or nicer things?

• Does my standard of living match what I think my standard of living should be?

And it doesn’t matter if these standard of living perceptions are accurate or not.

People thought life was better under Trump than Biden. Because they are really remembering life before Covid. And they are comparing that imperfect, and rose-tinted, memory with life since Covid.

During PMQs a few days ago, UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said his government is putting the economy at the centre of everything they are doing and that this will be measured in how people feel the benefits in their pockets.

That last point is key.

UK Labour seeks to undo 14 years of Tory damage. But they will (especially publicly) focus on things that make people both better off and feeling better off. And that latter effort — getting people to feel better off — is the most important thing electorally.

Biden is one of the most economically and socially progressive US Presidents in decades. But his government’s work laid groundwork for things that people won’t feel and experience immediately. Yes, some of the benefits are already being felt. But most aren’t going to be felt for years.

The Democrats’ failure was not because they weren’t paying attention to the [White] working class.

It was because they acted to make things actually and measurably better for the people in the bottom two-thirds of the US economic hierarchy in the medium- and long-term. Important work.

Just nowhere near as important, electorally, as making people in the bottom two-thirds feel better about their lot right now.

And this is a tragedy, because the consequence is almost certainly going to be mass murder.

Because all this constructive and worthwhile work was done without paying due regard to my second point.

2. Humans are indifferent, at best, to people who are not like them

When given a choice between

1. working to make things better for everyone and, consequently, making themselves feel better; or

2. harming someone else to maintain the illusion that they are better by default

a plurality of humans (at least: it might be a small majority) prefer the delusion of innate superiority, and the requirement and opportunity to harm others that comes with it.

Hunter-gatherer cultures are, however imperfectly, our best guide to understanding how humans behave in the wild (ie, subject to the circumstances that gave rise to anatomically and behaviourally modern humans in the first place).

And hunter-gather cultures are famous for their egalitarianism. And for violently enforcing that egalitarianism.

A big chunk of the humans are selected for pro-social co-operation, not ruthless competition argument is based on the social, cultural, and legal norms of hunter-gatherer (and, to a lesser extent, herder-gatherer) cultures. And it’s a well-attested argument with decent evidence behind it.

But hunter-gather cultures also reveal the limits of this co-operative impulse. In-group bias and out-group indifference or even out-group hostility is as common in hunter- and herder-gatherer cultures as are the more lauded, pro-social, co-operative and egalatarian norms.

Hitler had thousands of willing executioners, thousands of willing rapists², and millions of willing bystanders, in every country he ruled, starting with Germany.

The 1994 Rwanda genocide was both horrific and horrificly low tech. 800,000 people killed and 500,000 people raped in 100 days, mostly by people using un-powered, hand-held weapons. Almost all the murderers killed multiple people — including children and infants — close-up and face-to-face.

And almost all these murderers — like almost all of Hitler’s willing executioners and willing bystanders — are now living (or did live) everyday lives, entirely free of consequence.

Millions of people participated in, or stood by, mass murder. And virtually all of them got away with it.

Because it is frighteningly easy to get millions of people to willingly (indeed, enthusiastically) treat humans in an out-group (however defined) as sub-human, only fit for extermination.

It takes time and effort, but the work of convincing people to think like this about fellow humans is not difficult or complicated. It’s just storytelling

The specifics of the story change. But the core, 6-part, structure does not.

1. The in-group is innately better.

2. The out-group is innately lesser.

3. Consequently, the out-group does not deserve what the in-group has.

4. If the out-group has something the in-group should have, the out-group must have stolen it from the in-group.

5. If the in-group doesn’t have all that they should have, the out-group must have stolen it from the in-group.

6. And the solution is to take everything from the out-group and then make the out-group disappear.

Tell a particular version of this story structure for long enough, and to receptive-enough an audience, and genocidal violence is almost guaranteed.

Hitler’s genocide was made easier because Xtianity has Jew-hatred as a core and compulsory requirement. So he could build on a 2,000-years-old-and-still-thriving, cultural norm.

But he still took a solid decade of populist proselytising to turn that core norm into a mass killing system.

The Rwandan genocide’s local foundations are, arguably, older, emerging out of the Bantu colonisation of Twa lands, beginning 2,700 years ago.

But the modern version — and the genocidal divide between Hutu and Tutsi, both of which groups are Bantu-speaking — has its immediate roots in the post-WWII Hutu emancipation movement, which became the Rwandan independence movement.

The Tutsi had been set-up as the local power elite, convenient proxies for Belgian colonial rulers. So independence from Belgian colonial rule and anti-Tutsi prejudice went hand-in-hand.³

And the slow-burn effort to dehumanise the Tutsi (and the mostly unmentioned but ever-present and ancient dehumanising of the Twa) was a huge factor in the Rwandan Revolution and the 1962 independence from Belgium. And the Hutu-lead power structure that ruled post-Independence whipped out anti-Tutsi feeling whenever it was politically useful.⁴

So, the calls to genocidal, anti-Tutsi violence in the months prior to the assassinations of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on 1994-04-06, were being heard by people long-primed to believe the dehumanising lies.

Meanwhile, in the US, the Republicans have, like the Nazis, been putting in their dehumanising work for years and building on a thriving and long-standing cultural in-group superiority norm to do so. Indeed, the Republicans use the same in-group superiority norm as the Nazis: Xtian White Supremacism.

And, going back to my first point, the success of this work — and the relative ease with which the out-group can be scapegoated — builds on the way people feel about the economy.

Germany just before Hitler was not the economic basket-case of popular myth. It was a growing economy, recovering from the Depression. But the benefits were not being felt by everyone. And, and most importantly, many people felt things were not as good for them as they should be.

And, relatively speaking, Rwanda was a similar story. Much poorer, and much more chaotic and dangerous. But a growing economy, nonetheless. Just not an economy that was making enough people feel good, right then and there.

So, the US has ceded power to fascists in remarkably similar circumstances to Germany and Rwanda (and other places).

It is, therefore, almost inevitable that the Republicans’ planned mass deportations — which will absolutely require concentration camps on US soil, because you can’t physically deport people to countries that won’t physically accept them — will result in state-run and state-sanctioned mass murder.

Because the thousands of willing executioners are ready and waiting to be called on. And the millions of willing bystanders will stand-by, as they always do.

1. The focus on the GDP is based on this assumption: if a country’s GDP is doing well, the people in the country are doing well. How useful this assumption is is open to serious question, but out of scope here.

2. Sexual violence against Jewish women during the Shoa is not much talked about. But it was endemic. Estimates are difficult, because a very large majority of the survivors preferred not to discuss this violence even as they talked about other violence meted out. But estimates of more than a million Jewish women (and thousands of Jewish men) raped and sexually assaulted are not considered over-reach by scholars.

3. An entire other essay encapsulated: the Left’s abandoning anti-imperialism for anti-colonialism meant the Left embraced murderous dictatorships so long as they presented as anti-Western imperialism.

4. This elides over a lot of political instability, dictatorial rule and the Rwandan Civil War, which was the immediate precursor to the genocide. But power being in the hands of anti-Tutsi, Hutu-centric groups, any and all of which used anti-Tutsi prejudice as a political tool is true no matter how detailed the discussion.

Edits: copy-edits and typo corrections.

I (21F) just lost my virginity three days ago, and it was terrible. The sex was so bad I had to hold myself back from laughing in his face. The whole meet up was just supposed to be oral, and to be honest it was just about everything except that. I hadn’t even kissed anyone before and the kissing was terrible too. I will say that it might just be cuz I had no idea how, but the whole experience was offensively bad and I am kind of upset that for years and years I wondered how it would go and it was horrendous. I didn’t expect to feel immense pleasure but I at least thought I would be turned on. This whole experience makes me never want to have sex or kiss someone again. Can anybody relate? Does it actually get better and is it worth it to do it again?

The broad observation

When given a choice between

1. working to make things better and, consequently, making themselves feel better; and

2. harming someone else to maintain the illusion that they are better by default

it appears a (small) majority of humans, throughout all of human existence, prefer the delusion of innate superiority and the requirement and opportunity to harm others that comes with it.

A reason, perhaps, for the 9th, and final, step in the Great Filter hypothesis being the one humans can’t get past.

the somewhat specific notes on escape

Fascist regimes do fail. The cronyism that always trumps competence and expertise, plus the never-ending need for new enemies which lead fascist regimes to Ouroboros-like dysfunction, inevitably lead them to failure and collapse.

But fascist regimes almost never fail without mind-numbing levels of deadly violence.

And, contrary to what I fear is the perception of too many people in the US, American exceptionalism is not a saving grace. Rather it is a key reason the US’s fall into fascism and that fascism’s eventual failure and collapse, will be just as bloody and just as violent as every other regime’s equivalent path.

Given this, I’m expecting many Americans to look to escape.

And, unfortunately, for Americans considering their prospects for escaping the incoming fascist regime, your prospects are not good.

1. Given Project 2025’s policy goals, millions of American citizens will, in the coming years, absolutely have asylum claims that meet the current requirements for a country to be legally required to provide asylum.

This won’t make much, if any, difference.

Countries with the civil infrastructure needed to effectively deal with refugees seeking asylum are already doing everything possible — legally and even extra-legally — to subvert and avoid their asylum obligations.

Even for the US citizens suddenly seeking asylum who are White, or White-presenting, these efforts at subversion are not going to stop.

And countries without the necessary civil infrastructure are also looking to make refugees someone else’s problem. Sometimes by flat-out refusing entry. Sometimes by forcing refugees out and on to a third jurisdiction. Sometimes by gathering refugees up into concentration camps. And sometimes by just killing refugees outright.

2. America’s military is, by orders of magnitude, the largest and most dangerous military on earth.

And oaths to an abandoned constitution notwithstanding, fascist regimes do not hesitate to use their militaries to kill, both their own citizens, and the citizens of countries that anger the fascists in charge.

If the fascists soon to be in charge of the United States and its military make it clear they are unhappy at the idea of US subjects escaping their regime, countries will tug the metaphorical forelock and push American refugees back into American jurisdiction.

3. Don’t look for external intervention either.

America’s enormous military completely aside, the core principal of national sovereignty is, for practical purposes, license for a country’s rulers to kill whomever of their country-folk they please.

Killing people who aren’t subject to a ruler’s jurisdiction is riskier. Another country might actually do something to stop you.

But using your own military to kill your own citizens is fine. You might get disapproving noises, but no-one will do anything physical to stop you.

And, if America’s fascists start getting overtly genocidal, with round-ups and concentration camps (and they’ll have to get overtly genocidal to meet their mass deportation goals), that enormous military will keep even those governments and countries with the moral impulse to do something physical from doing anything.

I’ve been in my career for a while now and have worked my way up through hard work and dedication. I recently received a promotion, which I’m really proud of, but my boss gave me some constructive feedback that got me thinking. She mentioned that to be seen as the confident, capable leader I know I am, I need to work on how I come across to others; especially now that I’m stepping into a more senior role.

I appreciate her honesty, and I completely agree. My challenge is that I’ve often been described as having a light-hearted and bubbly personality, which is something I value. However, I’m aware that it might sometimes be perceived as lacking authority or seriousness, especially in leadership positions.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has successfully navigated this balance. How can I maintain my authentic self while also presenting a more commanding and focused presence in the workplace? Any personal experiences, strategies, or book recommendations would be much appreciated

Tried it twice, I have zero clue what I'm doing, I'm a latebloomer in that regard and I'm embarrassed to ask at this point. But I didn't like it. The taste, the texture... no.

What's your experience with it? Do you like it?

Governments, schools, parents, priests, religious leaders, companies, UN, human rights organisations all do not care about women. They failed YOU.

Societies and cultures across the world pride themselves in caring for what's right and creating a good efficient society. However, despite all of that, and all the humans who came before you, no one was concerned with how a young girl would react or think if she ever came across pornography and saw how her fellow women were being treated and depicted. Even when discussing the negative effects of porn, they're worried about teenage boys not about you or your dignity.

Where there are no boundaries, no limits, no respect, no consequences to what you do to whatever looks like a woman. Porn is built on destroying women. The watchers thrives on humiliating and breaking women... You can go so far and break every human right and every social rule against women but nobody will try to stop it. Remember this every time you look at leaders of the world, whether it be a church, school, organisations, filmmakers, governments... all of it.

Because you aren't intimidating enough as a being, you've been too nice, you've said yes to too many things you didn't want, you've defended your oppressors, you prioritised men and their attention, you didn't respect other women, you were okay having low self esteem, you had to compromise on ur dignity, you've smiled as you were getting fucked and spit on by men, other women failed you and you have failed yourself. You don't know your real value or power, you're too easy to take advantage of. You have internal shame but not when it comes to men degrading you because you believe u deserve it. You believe u have no power.

Does it ever make you stop and think? Your soul is screaming at you.

You've been betrayed and you too have betrayed yourself. Because you see how womanhood is treated and you know you're a part of said womanhood.

To be a feminist requires too much wisdom and to be a feminist is to take action and to make sure every action has an impact and the lack of that negates your "feminist" values.

At family/family friend events, I like to play with and watch the kids. For one, these are kids I've known since they were babies and love as my family. For another, it's only a few kids at a time. Not 20 at once.

Now I'm not saying teaching isn't a challenging and stimulating career. I'm established in wanting to go into marine conservation. I'm passionate about it, I like to learn new things about this field daily. I want to do work pertaining to that.

But every time someone sees me, as a woman, be good with kids, they dismissively ask if I'm sure I don't want to be a teacher. I am in a highly esteemed graduate program for marine sciences. I am proud of my choice, I already started it, I like it, it's new and challenges me. Teaching also requires a lot of intelligence, but I feel that I am being limited as a woman when people suggest this. Not intellectually, but into a career that's female dominated and more "comfortable" for people to picture a woman doing.

I say "no, I am happy with my choice" and I hear a plethora of excuses like "you would have time off to be with your own kids", (also, in my opinion, sexist to assume I want kids AND that I will be the caretaker parent). My partner is going to be a teacher, we already have a caretaker parent to be off and watch the kids during break! I've also never heard someone say this to a man in a professional career path. It's just "he'd be a great dad!".

It makes me feel like just because I'm a woman who's GOOD at caretaking, people feel that should be my life's purpose. I don't feel like I owe anyone any explanation about it, or that I need to please them with a career they see for me. However, it is so hurtful as a woman to excitedly talk about my studies, and the amazing work I'm doing/learning, and be dismissed about my passions. I don't need their validation, but I feel I am justified in just wishing they would show the same polite respect they would show a woman who's announcing an engagement or baby.

I'm a girl and I'm curious about experiencing sex for the first time, but I'm also scared about how it could affect my life. I'm quite happy sexually just by masturbation and I'm afraid that once I will experience sex I will become addicted to it and doing by myself won't satisfy me anymore. I 've heard many people say that sex is like air and once you try it you will always want more and i' m afraid it could become a problem to me and lead me to be frustrated. Do you this is overthinking and such an experience won't change things so much or is it a real risk I could get into?

Hi, I went on a date this week, I met him on a dating app. It wasn't a formal date, we just walked around the neighbourhood (we are both from the same neighbourhood) for about an hour. I was wearing jeans and a loose shirt (linen blend, collar, short-sleeves), leather shoes, I wore a little makeup and everything and he came in loose grey t-shirt and black sweatpants. He looked like he was heading to the gym. I was a little taken aback. Felt like in the Chappell Roan song "There I was in my heels with my hair straight [...] and he was wearing these fugly jeans".

I don't feel like I'm being nice judging him by his clothing (he could've worn jeans at least). I didn't like some other stuff about him too (mentioned how he got really angry playing league of legends, hitting the table & was a little too sexual over text, said he wanted us 'as close as possible' which I didn't like).

I wanted to give this guy a shot, to be open-minded but now idk how to feel

I came across a poll on hunch app, asking "if Feminism is outdated?" and saw that 43% of the votes were on "yes". What’s the most effective way to counter this argument?

If you’ve noticed the alarming increase in toxic comments on IG in the past year or so, this post is for you. The comment algorithm, especially on reels, consistently pushes the most controversial and negative comments to the top. These comments often contain extreme violent, misogynistic, or racist comments. I’ve often come across reels of children with the top comments having explicit pedophilic intent. I’ve come across many reels where the top comments talk about intending s*xual assault. These comments are rarely ever deleted or moderated even after many reports.

This is harmful for the creators of these reels and everyone seeing these comments. Letting these type of comments go unchecked normalizes this harmful rhetoric. It socializes young people on the app to think these alarming ideologies are okay or even good since they are consistently on top of other comments.

These comments being placed at the top drive engagement by people arguing against them in the replies and so IG continues to let this go on. Instagram has shown they value profit over the severe negative impact this issue can have on the users’ wellbeing. There hasn’t been an organized group of users that have come together to call Instagram out on this. I’ve created a petition to urge Instagram to change their comment moderation policies. If you feel similarly, please sign! We can come together to make a change. ❤️

https://www.change.org/CreateASaferInstagram

I am in a federal job placement program for people with (new) disabilities. I'm on my second "job coach" assigned through the program. (The first one was a man who consistently disrespected my time - missed meetings, giving me the runaround over documents, then said I was "stressing out" when I asked to be reassigned.)

I met the second coach in person yesterday to sign paperwork. He went through the required list of questions about goals, challenges, etc. I could tell he wasn't "getting" anything I was saying. He kept giving very generic responses, didn't show any emotion/response to anything I said. Maybe he deals with clients all day and sees them as numbers?

I told him I was trying to ask interview questions to weed out bad employers, after a series of bad jobs over the last few years. Without asking for any further details, this was his response:

"Maybe you need to make some sacrifices given the urgency of your job search."

I said we'd butt heads over that, because if he knew what had happened, he wouldn't be saying that. Only THEN did he ask for any details/clarity. I gave him a rough sketch of the jobs & workplace bullying & reiterated the necessity of weeding that stuff out. He seemed a touch sheepish. For the rest of the meeting, I made sure to stay short and to-the-point with him. I thought about it for the rest of the day and decided to ask for a female coach to eliminate the inherent gender dynamic.

I emailed him this morning asking for a female replacement. (My email is pasted below.) I wanted to ping him directly, instead of sideways through the program, and not mince words to prevent misinterpretation.

Here's my email:

"Thanks for your time yesterday.  Based on our conversation,  I felt a significant disconnect. I'm particularly concerned about the fact that, when I mentioned 4 toxic jobs and a desire to weed out future ones, your initial knee-jerk response was to say I needed to make sacrifices and essentially be less picky, given the urgency of my job search.  It was only after I put my foot down & indicated we'd butt heads over this, that you asked for clarity. This is concerning because 1) toxic jobs shouldn't be a surprise,  2) you jumped to conclusions about me (being picky) instead of the jobs, 3) you explained my own joblessness to me, and 4) I didn't ask your advice on what to prioritize in my own life and job outcomes. Do you have a female colleague who would be able to do any interview prep with me so you could just focus on applications/resume review (since you said my resume needed attention). I'm not comfortable having vulnerable conversations with someone so presumptuous, frankly, and I suspect a change in gender would nix the problem.  Looking forward to your response. "

*****

He responded like I expected: dismissing & deflecting everything I said. He said he was "taken aback" and gave his version of our conversation (a shined-up recap of his backpedaling), and did not acknowledge the unsolicited advice. He said he thought changing the coach's gender would not solve this, ie completely missed the point. He also cc'ed the program person who assigns my coaches.

I responded reiterating that he did in fact say what he said, it was in fact presumptuous and disrespectful, and suggested he research the documented gender dynamic that typically looks like THIS. I said this is patterned behavior that can be changed, but the person has to be willing to acknowledge the other person's experience, which I'm not seeing here.

THEN, my program person wanted a phone call. This devolved rapidly. I thought she was onboard with why I wanted to change at least the first vendor (edited: we hadn't touched on the second one yet), & thought she understood the program had been rocky for me. I thought it was pretty obvious why someone would want to be reassigned after these experiences. However she started changing the subject, deflecting, pretending not to know or remember significant events/conversations, despite them being documented in my emails. Ie. she knows what happened and just does not want to acknowledge any of this. She even had the nerve to suggest my mental health was causing my frustration & said she didn't understand (edited) where else my frustration was coming from! (This agency requires participants to get comprehensive medical care, so she felt entitled to say that????) When she said that, I'd already told her I was tempted to drop out of the program because of all the drama, so I told her she had a lot of nerve and I'd be following up in writing. I did, and said if I couldn't be reassigned, it's better for me to exit the program. I'll check for her response tomorrow.

I guess I'm looking for someone to talk to about all this.

I came across a poll on hunch app, asking if there are lots of misconceptions around feminism, and 63% of the votes were on "yes" and I wonder what are they. I've noticed a lot of misunderstandings about what feminism truly stands for. What do you think are the most common misconceptions, and how can we address them?

TW: Discussion of scenes from movies involving sexual assault or rape.

I like the original Evil Dead movies, but the rapey scenes in the 2013 adaptation still make me uncomfortable to think about even though I watched it years ago. If you've seen it, you know what I mean, but it's just gross. (Clarification in comments.)

I absolutely love Alien and was glad they seemed to be going back to their roots with this new movie. There were a couple of red flags in the trailers, but I thought those might be one-offs. The face hugger little.... thing very graphically inserting itself into one male character's mouth, then obscenely removing a disgustingly long version of that thing from a woman's mouth towards the end.

Ridley Scott made the xenomorphs a rape metaphor without making it so graphic and obvious. Now I really don't want to see it without scouring DoestheDogDie.com or CommonSenseMedia reviews. Why can't we have nice Alien movies anymore?? Maybe I'm way out of pocket with this, but I've been let down too many times. :(

So, I found this article and I knew I had to share it. This is infuriating. This is modern rendition of society of East India company army wives. This is all outdated. Please read the article. This goes completely unnoticed in india for most parts. These women just stay silent and bare it.

"How “Army Wives” Are Seen As Free Labour. – The Pamphleteer" https://thepamphleteer.in/2022/01/10/how-army-wives-are-seen-as-free-labour

Please upvote so it can get some attention.

This has really been bothering me; happened last week. I tried posting on the Feminism sub but got banned. What really bothers me, in addition to feeling preyed upon, is that I overrode my gut and let this guy lead the conversation when he was clearly using my car problems to hit on me. I have always wished there wasn't a male-female dynamic, because it's insulting to my intelligence that men interact with me based on their physiological response to my anatomy instead of my intelligence. As a cis straight female, there have been so many men ask (yes ask) if I'm a lesbian or asexual because I don't appreciate this dynamic and am offended by male comments about my appearance (evaluations of my body).

Why, then, do I balk in the moment and let them say these things, put on the spot, in an effort to avoid unnecessary confrontation with a stranger I'll never see again, but it leaves me feeling gross, used, weak, gullible, and diminutive?

Edited to add: In that moment, my instinct was to not engage. Not acknowledge, ignore, pretend we're in a normal, non-sexualized conversation we're SUPPOSED TO BE IN! My parents have personality disorders, both of them. Standing up for myself has always been a topic fraught with bravery and hesitation.......

Here's what happened:

I had parked on the street overnight because the van started having issues. In the a.m., the neighborhood watch knocked on my door and wanted to see if there was anyone in the van. I got out to show I wasn't a crackhead and told him about the transmission. Here's where he subtly turned this into a trap. Him: "This muffler shop does transmissions and they're great. Here, I'll show you where to go when they open." Me: hesitated (I don't need help finding the door!) but overrode myself like I usually do when I'm put on the spot, and followed him. Him: asked about my transmission. me: embarrassed; said my dad didn't tell me some pretty basic things bc he wanted to do everything himself, ie bc I'm female. Him: "And you probably didn't have a boyfriend to tell you -- I don't know what way you swing," making it sound like he didn't want to"make assumptions " that I'm straight.... I can't believe he had the nerve to ask about my sexual preference, cloaked like that. I couldn't find my phone, so he offered to call it and said, "if you don't mind some guy calling you." I hesitated again, not actually needing him to call it, but overrode that too bc of the plausible deniability. Goddamnit. Him: "For safety, are there any big dogs or big guys in the van?" plausibly deniable goddamnit. Got the van going, made it to the gym nearby. He called and asked if I wanted to get a beer and "talk about something else" besides the van. I told him I was not picking anyone up, not looking for romance at ALL, didn't want to talk about anything but the van. He said he respected that (which is bullshit I now realize), and I *actually agreed to a beer under those conditions". I can't believe I actually fell for it. I ignored his text the next day and have been kicking myself ever since. This is the LAST TIME I ever engage with a man in public under any circumstance. It'll be less stressful to have a blanket policy than to judge each man individually and risk THIS embarrassment.

RIP “muchbooty”, no one understood you

The trailer for Nicole Newnham’s 2023 documentary, The disappearance of Shere Hite has been rotating upwards on social media of late.

At a semi-educated guess, I’d say it’s not long before this excellent film appears on a streaming service or two or three.

I’ve already watched and enjoyed the film, so was diving into a few reviews to get a sense of other people’s takes. In particular I was watching Mark Kermode’s review.

Towards the end of said review, Kermode and his broadcast partner, Simon Mayo, have the following exchange:

Kermode: somebody said to me that they were talking to one of their younger colleagues or a student or something and they mentioned The Hite Report and the guy said ‘what’s that?’, and she went ‘I can’t believe that we’ve got to the point that people are going “what’s The Hite Report?”.’ I mean, if you were our age^1 there were copies of it everywhere.

Mayo: I’ve never seen it.

Kermode: You’ve never seen The Hite Report?

Mayo: No.

Kermode: Well, OK. All right. Well that maybe says something about me.^2

I was as taken aback as Kermode that Mayo had never seen this book. And I was as appalled as Kermode’s somebody that we’ve gotten to the point that people don’t know what The Hite Report is.

Because Shere Hite was a pioneering sexologist who’s two major research works are still important reading today, 48 years and 43 years after the first and second were published respectively.

Her first major work, The Hite report: a nationwide study of female sexuality, was, as others have noted a sexual revolution in six hundred pages.

Hite surveyed 100,000+ American women, ranging in age from 14 to 78, and asked, for pretty much the first time, what they did and did not like about sex; what orgasms felt like to them; what their sexual pleasures and frustrations were; and so much more.

The book exploded across America, becoming the 30th bestselling US book of all time.

Millions of women had their own experiences publicly validated — in print, and on TV, and on the radio — for the first time.

It is not underselling it to say Hite’s book changed the sexual and intimate lives of millions.

Hite’s second major work was The Hite report on male sexuality. Published in 1981, it did not get nearly as much attention at the time.

Which is a deadly pity, because all of the signs and symptoms of Straight Male despair and loneliness, mostly (indeed, almost exclusively) expressed as anger, are set out in Hite’s book.

Hite did not set out to predict the creation and rise of Incels. But it’s all there in the data and in the survey responses.

This said, it is also not underselling things to say the backlash against Hite and her work was fierce and horrendous.

So horrific were the constant attacks on her and her work that, only a few years after publishing, Hite left the United States and never came back. She eventually renounced her American citizenship, took German citizenship, and after living in both France and Germany for many years, settled, in her later years, with her second husband, in Tottenham, England.

And, contrary to the plain meaning of the documentary’s title, Hite did not disappear. She continued to work and publish, including a novel, Fliegen mit Jupiter, published in 1991 (the English translation, Flying with Jupiter was published in 1993).

But, as the documentary makes clear, Hite was disappeared. She was removed from the default narrative of things that happened in the 1970 and 1980s in the United States.

And even the women who’d learned from her work mostly forgot where they’d learned these things from. Which damaged their ability to pass on the lessons to those coming after them.

Virtually everything women, today, are talking about with regards sex and sexual pleasure, is clearly and explicitly talked about in Hite’s first book, from 48 years ago.

One of the more insidious ways the marginalised are held in their marginalised place is by having their own past erased, generation after generation.

Because women — even women advocating for sexual and social liberation — routinely don’t know who Shere Hite was, and don’t know her work, they end up spending enormous amounts of time and energy, in effect, re-creating said work.

And, and even worse, the disappearance of Hite and her reports from the general record means even if these advocates do know about her and her work, they can’t just build on it, because the people they are arguing with and the people they are arguing for don’t recognise the shoulders on which they stand.

1. Mark Kermode was born 1963-07-02. He is closing in on 61 years old as I write and post this.

2. To quote from the Wikipedia article linked to above:

In the mid-1980s, Kermode was an "affiliate" of the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and was involved in the Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign, against the deportation of one of the group's members to Sri Lanka. This developed into a high-profile national campaign involving people from left-wing groups such as the RCG, local residents of Manchester and extending to church leaders and Labour Party Members of Parliament. Kermode describes himself in this period as “a red-flag waving bolshie bore with a subscription to Fight Racism Fight Imperialism and no sense of humour.”

Her name will just be V for now. I've been friends with her for almost my entire life. I can barely remember a time where we weren't friends. I would do anything for her. Now I'm not amazing at showing gratitude and care, so I wrote a note and made a bracelet based off the song "Home". The actual bracelet says "Home is wherever I'm with you" because it reminded me of her, but I felt the note was a little corny because it said things like "There isn't much I wouldn't do for you" and quotes from the song like "Hot and heavy pumpkin pie, chocolate candy Jesus Christ, ain't nothing pleases me more than you" and "Man oh man you're my best friend, I scream it to the nothingness" and when I showed the note to one of my friends they said that it was bassicaly a love note. And I started thinking and realized I loved her, a lot. Though I know she likely doesn't return feelings. Recently I've been thinking about her a lot and I just don't know what to do.

I guess this was also kind of a vent

I’m a 25f and I’ve had a crush on my 25f bff basically since childhood. We both came out around the same time but she was a bit more comfortable with her sexuality before me. I’m fairly timid and don’t date around too much. But I also think it’s partially because I feel like I’ve found my person in my best friend and lowkey/highkey want to see how it would go between us. I’m very bad at flirting and we always joke about how hard it is to tell when another woman is flirting with us. (Sometimes feels friendly with notes of a lil something else). We occasionally say (what I think are) flirtatious jokes/comments to eachother but never done anything physical. On one hand I’m afraid of making it known that I’m sexually and romantically attracted to her because we have been best friends since middle school and o don’t want to ruin the relationship but on the other hand I feel like I just want to go for it because it’s hard for me to date anyone else while she’s on my mind. I was thinking of trying to kiss her on New Year’s and phrase it as “just for practice 😏😉” since we haven’t been with anyone in a while. This could be a bad idea and trigger my fear of rejection tenfold or she will kiss me back and we just go back to normal orrrr she’ll kiss me back and her facial/body language/etc will show she’s into me as well? Idk I’m scaredddddd lol.

I really want to be a feminine, girly person with that pretty gentle aura. But specifically, every time I wear something girly, It feels wrong. I'm a person who's quite grungy, and always opts for dark colours. I also don't act very girly, I'm a pretty low tone chill 'buddy' person, or in my energetic moments it's a weirdo energy (which I love.) I've also got numerous issues and am quite a competitive person, which doesn't help (I know this is an issue for self-development) Do you have any advice on how I can feel more girly? Or should I just accept myself/improve mental health?

It's been 4 months coming out of a 3.5 year relationship. I've been working on myself, lots of progress made, but the feelings are still there. It's exhausting, tiring, and feels cringe.

My partner and I both work. They work out of the home, and always have.

Over the years I’ve worked both from my home office and outside the home. Recently, I’m back to working entirely from my home office, albeit with a touch more real-time interaction with colleagues than was previously common in my field. And most of these colleagues are half-a-dozen and more time-zones away.

As a consequence of this and other aspects of our household logistics, our shared food-preparing has changed.

What was, for a long time, a set of real-time shared tasks has become a still-shared but now bifurcated set of tasks.

For more than a year now, I’ve made our breakfast and prepared my lunch and their lunch each morning, and they have done almost all the dinner-making. (I do fill the plongeur’s and/or commise’s role, depending on the meal. Sometimes, however and thanks to my occasionally funtastic schedule, I do the plongeur’s jobs after the meal is done.)

Also, and separately from this, we eat out once a week, and we are both all-in on Friday afternoon Shabbat prep.

Several months into this new, and emergent, pattern, I started worrying that this was an inequitable division of labour.

I mentioned this and my partner shrugged their shoulders and noted that:

1. it was a simple and practical division given our schedules; and consequently

2. they were OK with it.

And I should have been fine with that. We’ve been together for decades; bought property; raised kids; nursed agéd family; managed serious illnesses and injuries, and more. If my partner says they are OK with something, I believe them.

But it was still bothering me. So, recently, I brought it up again. This time noting that my problem was that they were now spending more time on food prep than I was. Which didn’t seem fair.

And they looked at me sideways and said ‘huh’.

Because — as they then explained — when I’d first brought it up, they’d also had a worry about the new pattern, but it was essentially the opposite of mine.

Their concern was that our new, bifurcated, approach, meant I was doing two-thirds of the food prep and they were only doing one-third. And not even all of one-third at that, since I was both my own plongeur and their plongeur.

Which made me smile for two, and then three, reasons.

First, that we were both worried on the other’s behalf, even if we’d not managed to get that point across the first time the issue had been raised.

And second, that we were measuring the task sharing on completely different but entirely explicable scales (me: time-taken; they: % of meals prepared) and had both made the standard error of assuming our particular scale was so self-evident, it didn’t need explicit mention. Our cognitive biases are always there, even — indeed, especially — when we don’t think they are.

A few hours later, I smiled for the third reason. Because, belatedly, it occurred to me that, while we both measured the tasks differently, neither of us gendered the tasks. Tasks that are, still, strongly gendered in the wider world.

Because, one advantage of queering the intimate relationship script, is the way it requires you to unpack and abandon the gendered defaults.

And, if you do that for long enough, you have a mundane domestic discussion one day and, a few hours later, realise you’ve not thought about the logistics of your day-to-day life in gendered terms for decades, and perhaps ever.

And, moreover, that thinking about this stuff in un-gendered terms is, without question and absolutely, better.