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I’ve been posting my book reviews on Goodreads recently instead of here; I’m interested in people’s thoughts about whether I should crosspost or whether you want to just read it here.
Violence
Better Angels of Our Nature misrepresents data.
An in-depth debunking of myths about campus rape statistics. Covers both feminist and anti-feminist myths.
Effective Altruism
A thoughtful critique of several common EA tropes, including some I support. This is the sort of disagreement we should encourage in effective altruism.
Holden Karnofsky’s AMA about working for the Open Philanthropy Project.
Men’s Issues
What happened to the black autistic man whose therapist was shot by police while trying to protect him?
Racial gaps in upward mobility are primarily driven by a gap between the upward mobility of black men and white men; major causes appear to be incarceration and black men growing up in shitty neighborhoods.
Positive portrays of masculinity.
Health
NIH RCT of moderate drinking funded by the alcohol industry.
I used to think only I relived all my most embarrassing memories all the time, but it turns out that’s an everyone thing. The solution is self-compassion. How about something easier like climbing Mount Everest?
Just Plain Neat
Why open plan offices don’t work.
Daniel Mallory Ortberg has a blog! It is as delightful as his many fans have come to expect.
Thing of Things 
I’d rather if you (also?) post your book reviews here. I don’t get around to goodreads much, possibly because I find it overwhelming.
I typically don’t relive my most embarrassing moments– I’ve had occasional fits of it, and I don’t know why that happens.
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+1 that it would be nice to have your book reviews crossposted here. If that’s annoying for you to do, you can instead link directly to your new reviews whenever you do a link post. But if you put the text right here that has the advantage of greater likelihood of fun discourse.
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The study actually focuses on sexual assault, not rape. The equivocation of the two is actually a common complaint by anti-feminists.
At first glance the study seems decent, as it addresses common criticisms.
Hmm, those positive kinds of ‘masculinity’ are mostly how one would typically stereotype femininity (nurturing, polite, diplomatic, approachable). So this just reinforces my perception that many feminists don’t see the positive in masculinity or negative in femininity and seek to feminize the world.
Ultimately, both stereotypical feminine and masculine behavior has upsides and downsides, where the downsides tend to be strongest for more extreme behavior (although the upsides can of course also be great, in the rare situations where extreme behavior is most suited).
Instead of creating merely feminized ideals, why not also have more masculine ideals (like protector, provider, fixer, builder, etc) and push for having these ideals being supported for women as well? Or even better, move away from archetypes altogether and respect traits that are applied well.
Of course, the latter solution does require that we recognize the downsides and limits of all traits. So that would be a far more mature kind of discussion that is typically had, where we recognize the upsides and downsides of violence, being nurturing, providing, etc.
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I think that the review did a good job with the data that was available and addressed some aspects of the issue that are too often neglected. A strong criticism I have of it though is from the four main papers they only noted the response rate from one (around 20% which is both not unexpected and seriously concerning). Analysis of non-responders suggested that their estimate was being biased upwards, but then they didn’t revisit the issue at all.
Responder bias has always been my main issue with the 1 in 5 stat (that and the fact that if you are counting arse grabbing I am profoundly surprised the rate is not near 100% for both men and women), so this hasn’t done much to alter my skepticism.
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+1 For a cross post with full text I’ll usually read the reviews. Cross post with just a link I’m not sure how often I would click. I don’t think I would ever go check goodreads directly. By the way, I just clicked the goodreads link and didn’t see an obvious way to see only reviews (as opposed to books with a rating but no review or books marked as read).
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This happened to come up recently in a Wellness Wednesday thread on the SSC subreddit. Might as well copy-paste my explanation of my own approach to self-compassion from that discussion (YMMV):
I used to have very similar symptoms really badly when I was around your age. After years of such torture, I developed the following coping strategy, which greatly alleviated the problem:
When I notice an embarrassing memory (or hypothetical situation I’m afraid of, or whatever) intruding into my conscious awareness, and I start to have a bad reaction (seizing up, cringing, mentally berating myself, etc.) I …
Take a deep breath and try to relax.
Try to examine the thought with an attitude of curiosity and compassion. Break down why it makes me feel the way it does.
Try to have compassion for myself and anyone else involved. Recognize that my pain is a natural and understandable reaction to the circumstances. Acknowledge that suffering is an inevitable part of the human condition, and try to empathize with my past self and humanity in general.
Try to forgive myself and anyone else for any transgressions I perceive. Recognize that it is relatively unimportant to assign blame (unless the harm was so serious that it would actually make sense to seek or offer redress, but this is hardly ever the case).
Acknowledge and accept that I can’t change the past, however much I might like to, and, while I can form the intention to do better in the future, there’s a limit to what I can do, in the present moment, to bind my future choices or avoid unexpected problems.
Finally, let go of the painful thought. It may linger for a while before something else occupies my attention, but at this point, if my method worked, it will have gone from seeming unacceptable and in need of urgent remedy, like a fire alarm, to seeming like a mild and ephemeral discomfort, which requires no particular action from me.
I started practicing this method maybe seven years ago. I developed it while I was learning about mindfulness meditation, which may be a useful practice for developing the requisite habits of relaxation and metacognition, but I’m not sure whether it would be necessary to undertake a regular meditation practice to benefit from this approach. At any rate, I haven’t been meditating regularly for, probably at least a year now, but the intrusive thoughts haven’t gotten noticeably worse, and on the rare occasions when they do bother me, I don’t even have to go through this method consciously, I just take a deep breath and relax, and the acceptance and relief come almost automatically.
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I’m interested in the question of positive masculinity. These days people seem to define “toxic masculinity” as “masculinity that is damaging to others”. My main preoccupation with toxic masculinity has always been the original definition: “masculinity that is damaging to men themselves“. Bullying of boys, that kind of thing:
I would like masculine people (by which I mean not just men but e.g. butches) to have joy in living masculinity, not feel oppressed by it. But that’s contingent on a non-toxic definition of masculinity, which sounds easy enough until I get to the part where it has to contrast with femininity.
So I think the link article touches on the key question but doesn’t really answer it. The key question is: if masculinity is to mean something, it must be not femininity; but how can you do that without denying femininity positive traits (and vice-versa for the definition of non-oppressive femininity)? For example, imagine that non-toxic masculinity is defined as kind, honourable, driven, and emotionally open. (Think “great dad”.) At first sight, redefining masculinity like this feels like a great idea to me. But is femininity also kind, honourable, driven, and emotionally open? If so, then it makes no sense to define those as “masculine” or “feminine”; we’re just making rules for good behaviour and good living. If not, then are feminine people defined as not kind, not honourable, not driven, and not emotionally open? Is a feminine person who’s kind and driven a tomboy? That feels senseless.
You can say: well he’s a man but he has feminine traits, like gentleness, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if there’s really nothing wrong with that, then why characterize “gentleness” as “feminine”, in the first place?
This is why, intellectually, I sympathize with feminist gender abolitionism. It sounds like it would make everything so much simpler. There are good traits, like compassion and a sense of duty, and we want everyone to have it. But I know that embodying the gender assigned to me brought me a lifetime of depression and misery, and I know that daring to reach for the other gender makes those evaporate in an instant, powerful way that meds and therapy never could. That happens at a deep, subconscious level that seems to be entirely unconcerned about my oh-so-clear philosophical opinions on gender making no sense. I know furthermore that my condition is widespread, cross-culturally and trans-historically, and that the weight of evidence hints at biological foundations. The implication is that gender isn’t going away. And yet gendered traits vary a lot between cultures, so we know things like “boys don’t cry” aren’t written on stone. If we can’t abolish gender, we can certainly tune it. If certain gendered traits consistently brings people misery, it’s our duty to un-gender those traits (that’s the goal of criticizing toxic masculinity, as well as oppressive definitions of femininity). But then what’s left?
When I think of my transgender feelings, the first thing that I care about are the secondary sexual characteristics of my body. The second thing I care about is the arbitrarily defined social performance of “gender”, in the sense of presentation; which clothes to use, which linguistic patterns, which bodily gestures. I think I don’t care very much about those moral or behavioural norms ascribed to gender. Those feel basically genderless to me. Even when I tried to navigate life as a “male”, I hated competition. Even trying to navigate life as “female”, I like to strive towards great, ambitious goals. Transition means having curves and using morphological inflections ending in -a in Portuguese; transition does not involve having more or less competitiveness or ambition; I don’t feel the latter to be gendered. But this is my own experience, and I don’t feel like it’s fair to generalize from it. I’ve seen online trans people who don’t care very much about secondary sexual characteristics, or about social roles.
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Toxic masculinity is a term that should be void for vagueness. I agree that it is a thing in away but it seems really hard to define with precision beyond “I know it when I see it.” I’ve seen the phrase used to cover everything from actively violent men to any cis-gender heterosexual men who feels lonely because he doesn’t have a girlfriend. So if your a bachelor and aren’t really content with the life of a secular monk, your toxically masculine if you don’t deal with your singleness in the ideologically proper way.
What really gets me in all these discussions of toxic masculinity is that non-toxic masculinity seems to defined as your willingness to sacrifice personal happiness for the sake of others. A non-toxic man is one who is engaged in a perpetual act of personal sacrifice. The non-toxic man never, ever complains about any personal pain emotional, physical, or mental he is going through. If you do something that will give you personal pleasure like go to a bar and drink beer or if you moan about your sucky job or not having a girlfriend than by definition your engaging in toxic masculinity.
So we have the weird situation where people trying to create a non-toxic masculinity end up relying on a particular set of Patriarchal norms. These are the norms that emphasize men as the working-soldier ant who goes out to earn a living for his family or defend the nation. They might be nicer Patriarchal norms than man as master of the house entitled to do what he wants but they are still Patriarchal norms.
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Please post (or cross post) your book reviews. They’re great.
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Joining everyone who’d like you to post your book reviews here if it’s not a lot of work for you.
Agreed with Nancy that Goodreads is overwhelming; I don’t get around to it much either.
Plus your layout here is much more pleasant to look at and easier to read, and your book review posts have been comfort food for a long time.
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