Published on January 8, 2025 6:54 PM GMT
Disclaimer: I don't think people who post here generally exclude women on purpose. I think that to whatever degree women are less represented, this is unintentional.
This post combines thoughts I had while reading Is Being Sexy For Your Homies by Valentine with intuitions developed from reading posts on the site across several years.
Although I point out aspects of Is Being Sexy For Your Homies I believe contribute to the male-centric atmosphere of this site, I enjoyed reading the post, and don't mean to suggest Valentine has done anything bad or wrong. In fact, Valentine acknowledges within the post that he uses highly simplified assumptions.
Nonetheless, I think it is worth pointing out that certain ways of writing make women less likely to want to read on.
--
Because mostly men write posts here, posts tend to be written in a way that appeals to men. This sometimes unintentionally drives away women.
The post Is Being Sexy For Your Homies is written from a clearly male perspective, and prioritizes the concerns of straight men.
I think Is Being Sexy For Your Homies is a good example to illustrate the type of male-centric writing I mean to describe, although of course not a median example.
For example, at one point the post says:
And if maybe this is the key to why mate-finding and child-rearing and even just feeling sexually safe at a job has been such a royal pain these last many years.
(I believe "this" refers to the historical social importance of separation between sexes)
For women, feeling sexually safe at a job has only improved since the #metoo movement. This is despite an increase in mixing of gender roles. In fact, separation of gender roles was in many cases a contributor to harassment: for example, if men are managers and women are secretaries, it's easier to normalize sexually harassing secretaries.
I think this quote would seem off-putting to most women.
There are other aspects of the post that women might find off-putting.
At one point, the post suggests that separating men and women in the workplace might have historically been helpful for preventing romantic relations from disrupting productivity.
Although this may be true, to most women it might sound like suggesting that hanging by a rope over an active volcano would help you warm up: there's an accompanying thought missing. Most women are viscerally aware of the dangers that result when certain professions or opportunities are harder to access due to their gender.
The rest of the post is also worded from the perspective of a straight man describing his experiences, and occasionally speculating on women's experiences or the experiences of gay people. The post tends to generalize the experiences of the author to the experiences of others.
Although there's nothing wrong with writing from one's own perspective as a man, it does incrementally move the needle of the website towards seeming like a "dudebro" space for men to discuss common experiences. This makes women less likely to visit.
There is an aura of "maleness" to a lot of posts on this website, to varying degrees. I think that some women who are otherwise interested in the site are likely to be turned away by it. It was a contributing factor to my lack of posts until now.
What can be done to prevent turning women away? I really don't know. Maybe it is an inevitable product of the relative number of men on the site.
I don't think it makes sense to ask people to stop writing about their experiences as men. Despite the "maleness" of Is Being Sexy For Your Homies, I don't wish it wasn't written.
Maybe it would help to have more women reviewing people's posts, so that they could comment on parts of the posts which seemed likely to turn women away.
Maybe it would help to have some more posts emphasized which are clearly written from the perspective of someone other than a man. These might help counterbalance the posts which are written from a man's perspective.
I do see a few posts per year which seem to be primarily and obviously not from a man's perspective, but not many.
Discuss
