{"id":29539,"date":"2015-01-17T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T06:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29539"},"modified":"2015-01-11T16:38:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T21:38:55","slug":"qotd-radicalizing-the-romanceless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/17\/qotd-radicalizing-the-romanceless\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Radicalizing the Romanceless”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barry is using my second-favorite rhetorical device, apophasis<\/a>, the practice of bringing up something by denying that it will be brought up. For example, \u201cI think the American people deserve a clean debate, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m going to stick to the issues, rather than talking about the incident last April when my opponent was caught having sex with a goat. Anyway, let\u2019s start with the tax rate\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He is complaining about being single by saying that you can\u2019t complain about being single \u2013 and, as a bonus, placating feminists by blaming the whole thing on the manosphere as a signal that he\u2019s part of their tribe and so should not be hurt.<\/p>\n

It almost worked. He only got one comment saying he was privileged and entitled (which he dismisses as hopefully a troll). But he did get some other comments that remind me of two of my other least favorite responses to \u201cnice guys\u201d.<\/p>\n

First: \u201cNice guys don\u2019t want love! They just want sex!\u201d<\/p>\n

One line disproof: if they wanted sex, they\u2019d give a prostitute a couple bucks instead of spiralling into a giant depression.<\/p>\n

Second: \u201cYou can\u2019t compare this to, like, poor people who complain about being poor. Food and stuff are basic biological human needs! Sex isn\u2019t essential for life! It\u2019s an extra, like having a yacht, or a pet tiger!\u201d<\/p>\n

I know that feminists are not always the biggest fans of evolutionary psychology. But I feel like it takes a special<\/em> level of unfamiliarity with the discipline to ask \u201cSure, evolution gave us an innate desire for material goods, but why would it give us an deep innate desire for pair-bonding and reproduction<\/em>??!\u201d<\/p>\n

But maybe a less sarcastic response would be to point out Harry Harlow\u2019s monkey studies. These studies \u2013 many of them so spectacularly unethical that they helped kickstart the modern lab-animals\u2019-rights movement \u2013 included one in which monkeys were separated from their real mother and given a choice between two artifical \u201cmothers\u201d \u2013 a monkey-shaped piece of wire that provided milk but was cold and hard to the touch, and a soft cuddly cloth mother that provided no milk. The monkeys ended up \u201cattaching\u201d to the cloth mother and not the milk mother.<\/p>\n

In other words \u2013 words that shouldn\u2019t be surprising to anyone who has spent much time in a human body \u2013 companionship and warmth can be in some situations just as important as food and getting your more basic needs met. Friendship can meet some of that need, but for a lot of people it\u2019s just not enough.<\/p>\n

When your position commits you to saying \u201cLove isn\u2019t important to humans and we should demand people stop caring about whether or not they have it,\u201d you need to take a really careful look in the mirror \u2013 assuming you even show up in one.<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “Radicalizing the Romanceless”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2014-08-31.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry is using my second-favorite rhetorical device, apophasis, the practice of bringing up something by denying that it will be brought up. For example, \u201cI think the American people deserve a clean debate, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m going to stick to the issues, rather than talking about the incident last April when my opponent was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41],"tags":[271,130,987,139,255],"class_list":["post-29539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-ethics","tag-evolution","tag-feminism","tag-psychology","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Gr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29540,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29539\/revisions\/29540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}