Have some genderslop

Six thoughts about the sexes

You know what really does numbers on here? Genderslop. The way I count it, four of my top five posts are genderslop.¹

And you know what I still don’t have these days? Time to write. And yet I must post. So here are some morsels of genderslop I didn’t have the time to develop into full posts:

1. I kind of feel like evolution did a better job with the girls. It feels like we generalize more robustly? I am quickly bored by activities other than cementing my social position in the tribe and playing with kids. Meanwhile, my husband has blocked off 100 hours in Q4 to push around blocks on a computer screen.

2. Like any good edgy rat girl, I have long batted around the idea of testosterone supplementation. This year, I finally decided I would go for it. I told myself it would work miracles and three months in I would write a blog post titled “Testosterone is a hell of a drug” that would probably do great numbers.² But I procrastinated doing my consultation call for ages, then I procrastinated getting my blood tests done for ages, and I’m currently procrastinating on making my appointment to actually go in for the pellet as I write. I’ve now gotten desperate enough to burn that title idea for this listicle instead.

3. One of my guilty pleasures is Corporette, a fashion website for women in biglaw and stuffy finance jobs. I secretly wish my workplace made me dress like that everyday (check out those drool-worthy suits).³ I really like that even in such austere settings, women have more flexibility to express an artistic vision with our clothing.

4. When I first started dating my husband, he told me that he was uncomfortable giving compliments because of the negative externalities: the more that one person compliments you, the more it would seem like everyone else appreciated you less. I told him that was a clever first-order analysis of the signaling dynamics, and also I needed him to compliment me.⁴ For a while we did some deliberate practice — I wrote up a bunch of specific compliment prompts⁵ and he would pull one from a jar and answer it. Eight years later, he is very good at making me feel appreciated.

5. Men and women are far from ideal complements; evolution did not optimize us very much to fulfill one another’s needs. After the Singularity, we would be able to create genuine complements — beings with that feminine charm who are happier and less difficult and have higher sex drives than real women, or beings with that perfectly titrated mixture of stoic roughness and emotional sensitivity that is rare outside of romance novels. It’s a little creepy and sad to imagine this, but also fascinating. Those new beings could have their own rich inner lives; they wouldn’t need to be automata or house elves.

6. I have given some pretty aspie marriage advice on this blog, which I stand by. Marriage is a serious commitment and I think you owe it to yourself and your partner to think through that decision carefully. But by the time you’ve worked through all the exercises and decided you want to marry her, you might find that she has pulled away. In that situation, make a grand gesture. If your indecision was painful for her before, show her how good it can be now that you are all in. Fight for her.

1. The stable marriage problem is half genderslop / half math and Tempering hardcoreness is half genderslop / half EA; together they make one genderslop post.

2. This was of course somewhat epistemically vicious of me, because it would have been harder to write a popular blog post with that title if testosterone actually didn’t work that well for me.

3. One thing Corporette taught me is that apparently women can just wear a white t-shirt with our suits. Female privilege.

4. He asked me to note that he now understands the more complex higher-order signaling dynamics at play and no longer endorses this analysis of compliments.

5. For example, “Describe something specific that I did which you appreciate.”, “Describe a way in which you feel seen or understood in our relationship.”, “Describe a time I said something which struck you as a good point or made you update a view or attitude.”