Sometimes I encourage female friends to attend rationalist events. Unfortunately, it's been more than once now that these women have had a really jarring experience that made them dislike it in retrospect. I'd really prefer this stop happening, and it seems like it happens to the detriment of all involved, including myself.
Possibly the modal jarring experience is that they're talking alone with a nice man who seems pretty normal (if a little awkward), and that guy will just inject a conspicuously racist comment into their conversation. Not like a casual comment that seems unfortunate in context, or an edgy comment in a discussion that was already dancing around race, but something completely out of the blue.
I know what actual chuds are like. That being the case, when I see this behavior from rationalists firsthand (again, usually in front of a woman), it often strikes me as bizarre and performative. One possibly incorrect suspicion I have is that some of these men are doing it because they've read extremely counterproductive advice on the internet that claims that being openly racist is a good way to signal confidence, or dangerousness. The theory (I guess) is that by being racist, you show you're "based" and not intimidated by the woman's attractiveness. Or maybe it's one way of getting women to argue defensively with you, I don't know.
Assuming this was the strategy, it certainly did not have the intended effect, in the cases I observed or heard about secondhand. Frankly I think the overall technique is exactly as stupid as it sounds. If the way rationalists sometimes do this in group settings strikes me, an aspie nerd, as bizarre, I can only imagine how unattractive these outbursts are to neurotypical women.
The first blocker is that, shockingly, most women, even rationalist-affiliated women, do not like racism, need to suppress a disgust reaction against people that showboat it, and anticipate that other women would react the same way. Being racist in a flamboyant way is not like bringing up that you just got out of prison, it's like bringing up that you don't tip at restaurants. It just reads as a bizarre and classless social mistake.
The second blocker is that the people making these comments are usually not "actually" racist. Almost everybody attending a rationalist event is going to be some brand of cosmopolitan internationalist nerd, whether they accept it or not. And if they're not, they're still not going to be racist in the way that a guy from San Antonio whose relatives used the N word at the dinner table is racist. Their "racism" was internalized as a result of a passive and NPC-like relationship with social media, and is fundamentally uninteresting to outside observers. When someone such as this attempts to manifest it in the land of the real, in addition to being ineffective, they just start looking at the audience like a contestant on The Price is Right because they've never done the thing before (which is probably the most unattractive thing you can do).
So please do not do this. I won't tell you that "just being yourself" is going to get you laid either, but it at least won't ruin your chances completely, and I won't have to have any more awkward conversations with people.
Sometimes I encourage female friends to attend rationalist events. Unfortunately, it's been more than once now that these women have had a really jarring experience that made them dislike it in retrospect. I'd really prefer this stop happening, and it seems like it happens to the detriment of all involved, including myself.
Possibly the modal jarring experience is that they're talking alone with a nice man who seems pretty normal (if a little awkward), and that guy will just inject a conspicuously racist comment into their conversation. Not like a casual comment that seems unfortunate in context, or an edgy comment in a discussion that was already dancing around race, but something completely out of the blue.
I know what actual chuds are like. That being the case, when I see this behavior from rationalists firsthand (again, usually in front of a woman), it often strikes me as bizarre and performative. One possibly incorrect suspicion I have is that some of these men are doing it because they've read extremely counterproductive advice on the internet that claims that being openly racist is a good way to signal confidence, or dangerousness. The theory (I guess) is that by being racist, you show you're "based" and not intimidated by the woman's attractiveness. Or maybe it's one way of getting women to argue defensively with you, I don't know.
Assuming this was the strategy, it certainly did not have the intended effect, in the cases I observed or heard about secondhand. Frankly I think the overall technique is exactly as stupid as it sounds. If the way rationalists sometimes do this in group settings strikes me, an aspie nerd, as bizarre, I can only imagine how unattractive these outbursts are to neurotypical women.
The first blocker is that, shockingly, most women, even rationalist-affiliated women, do not like racism, need to suppress a disgust reaction against people that showboat it, and anticipate that other women would react the same way. Being racist in a flamboyant way is not like bringing up that you just got out of prison, it's like bringing up that you don't tip at restaurants. It just reads as a bizarre and classless social mistake.
The second blocker is that the people making these comments are usually not "actually" racist. Almost everybody attending a rationalist event is going to be some brand of cosmopolitan internationalist nerd, whether they accept it or not. And if they're not, they're still not going to be racist in the way that a guy from San Antonio whose relatives used the N word at the dinner table is racist. Their "racism" was internalized as a result of a passive and NPC-like relationship with social media, and is fundamentally uninteresting to outside observers. When someone such as this attempts to manifest it in the land of the real, in addition to being ineffective, they just start looking at the audience like a contestant on The Price is Right because they've never done the thing before (which is probably the most unattractive thing you can do).
So please do not do this. I won't tell you that "just being yourself" is going to get you laid either, but it at least won't ruin your chances completely, and I won't have to have any more awkward conversations with people.