I’m starting a new essay series called “Last Week’s Discourse Today”. Just kidding. Or am I? Plausible deniability, watch and learn boys, we’re gonna solve gender relations one blogpost at a time. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Gender relations is what this week’s last week’s discourse blog post is about. Or is it? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll stop.
In all seriousness—discourse is fun. But it moves at the speed of light_internet and I only write at the speed of light_synapses. “Wait, but isn’t the speed of light always everywhere the same?” Shh…
The Man
Which looks better? Non-sequitur, you say? Speed of light_internet, remember? That’s how fast it moves past you.
“Which looks better?” was the topic of last week’s discourse, started by taoki. “Last week? That was like 3 weeks ago.” Blame it on speed of light_synapses. Reframing, boys: “I’m not late, I’m moving at brain-speed”.
To bring you up to speed on the discourse: someone posted side-to-side pictures of this man’s before and after. “After” lines up better with men’s ideal. Women say “before” is hotter. The dissonance ensured much discourse, mostly around men calling women liars, deceivers, harpies—all sorts of fun stuff.
The Instigator
I must confess: though I’d never join the chorus of ex-PUAs calling women liars, I had a lot of difficulty taking them at their word. Less accusing—“You’re just confused honey, you see?”—more paternalistic.
Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, I am the one writing this analysis and thus have ensured for the future that I am better than both deceiving women and negging men, for I have transcended both. Victory is written by the winner, surely you’ve heard? Oh, you thought that meant the winners got to write their story? My brother in blog posts, winners win. Writers write and self-insert themselves as winners. We’re not here with them, they’re in here with us.
So, come with me. Hold my hand and, together, let's transcend the charnel ground of discourse samsara all the way to the pure lands of ✨ M E T A ✨.
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”—Latin. Affected. Or is it? Remember, we’re writing history here, what we say goes. It’s pretentious only if we say so and future readers will take us at our word: we are normal and can be trusted.
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”—I first read this sentence as an overly online 15 year-old.
At that age you come into contact with some things that touch you and never leave you. Religion, drugs, latin idioms—”What does this have to do with women?” We’ll get there. Be patient. Jesus. Do you know what escalation is? Stuff like this is why I need to write to heal gender relations in the first place.
As I was saying, religion, drugs; for me, this sentence. It basically says “I am human, nothing human is alien to me”. It probably helped that I was a super-picky eater at the time and Anthony Bourdain‘s (RIP in peace) show was running on the TV at that time. I just kept hitting over and over with the dissonance of seeing this man derive so much undeniable pleasure from foods I couldn’t even do a double-take to (like with girls and you, eh? ayyy) that I realised I must be in the wrong. I must’ve missed something.
And, I’m glad to report, as of today, nearly two decades later, I am not a picky eater no more. Just last year I learned the absolute joy of dates and mangoes. See? Practice what you preach: two decades to eat two new fruits. Escalate slowly.
The point is this: that sentence, lodged in my mind, made me consider that, perhaps, it’s possible, I know it’s crazy—stay with me here, don’t let go of my hand, we’ll get to pure land god damn it—just maybe, women weren’t liars and deceivers and harpies? I know. I know! I’m with you. Grip my hand tight. But… maybe?
Could you feel that microscopic droplet of sweat running down your neck when you first considered that? “What if I’m wrong?” Because I did.
The Dress
Which color is the dress? “Non-sequitur”. Brother, remember: the writer writes, t’is a mere “speed of light_internet”. Keep up.
Maybe you remember the dress. Yes, yes, we’re back to the charnel ground of discourse samsara. Samsara is Nirvana. Now that’s a reframe.
Anyways, a naked man took our Twitter simcluster by storm, but what took over the real world was a dress with no woman.
Thankfully we’re all normal and very trustworthy and read the right blog posts. Can’t say the same for irl. Did you know that the person who originally posted the pic of the dress to Facebook, that she had bought for her daughter's wedding, ended up having a falling out with her over its color? It’s true, look it up.
Now, the reason I bring up the dress is not just goss, it’s because it also generated very BIIIIIG emotions. But they’re explainable. Some people look and see white-and-blue. Some see gold-and-white. Depends on what you’re assuming about the light source.
See where I’m going with this yet?
“Can men get pregnant?” third time’s the charm, eh? Bet you didn't even reel at the encounter with internet speed no more.
That question was what was being debated in this viral video. I’ll cut to the chase: a Berkeley professor says “Obviously men can get pregnant, and it’s transphobic to say they can’t.” The Senator questioning her replies with “You’re a lunatic”.
Some people think men can get pregnant. Some think they can’t. Whatever they think they’re right. And wrong. Remember: we’re going meta here, observing together from the 10,000 feet of our pure sky of writer meta.
In the dress above, it all hinged on what you assume about the light source: assume it’s yellow, and the dress seems black-and-blue. Assume it’s blue and it looks white-and-gold.
Here it hinges on what you assume about the word “men”. Assume it includes trans-men (biological women) and of course men can get pregnant. Assume it includes only biological men (biological men) and of course they can’t.
So here’s a woman who is not lying. Using words in a non-Latin but still affected way, sure. But not lying.
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”—Bourdain saw something in food I didn’t. She saw something in the word “men” the senator didn’t.
(See what I’ve done here? I disarmed you by talking about my experience being softly wrong as a 15-year old boy and growing through it. Then I led you to an innocent matter about a dress where one side is definitely right but where the other side’s mistake is understandable. Finally we got to a closer example where a woman who was seemingly lying ends up just being misunderstood. Slow escalation: the girl I’m seducing is you.)
Which way is this image rotating? If you answered you just lost the Game—wait. Force of habit. If you answered something other than “It depends”... it’s not you, it’s me.
Try to see the dancer dancing the other way around. Really try. Can you? Hopefully you’ll succeed at “flipping” her. And, hopefully, this “flip” is something you already experienced above where you went from either the Senator being unreasonable or the Professor being unreasonable to “Ohhhh, I see”.
Vision is constructed but active inference theory is boring so I won’t bore you with it here. I'll just leave this note so future readers think I was also Very Intelligent, in addition to very normal and trustworthy, remember we’re overwriting history here.
Back to vision being constructed, did you manage to flip it? If so, how many flips have you gotten this essay? The dancer is 1 point, men can(‘t) get pregnant is 1 point, the dress a third. The… just slightly less famous Game.
Yes—even the color of the dress is “flippable” by changing your interpretation. How do I know? Because I’ve done it. (Ahem, future readers)
There is an art to “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”. It consists of two “moves”. The first is assuming that if something seemingly makes sense/seems true/… to someone, but not to you, that they’re being earnest. A Type 1/Type 2 type thing (You know Type 1/Type 2 errors, yes? I’ve written about them in the past? If not I’ll just backfill this). Just assume others are truthful, well-intentioned, and experience what they claim to experience. This is very quokka-coded (oh, there is the Type 1/Type 1 thing) but also… kinda the only way to learn? You either assume others know something you don’t, and maybe you’ll learn something true, or you assume they’re lying, and you certainly won’t.
So that’s the first move. The second move is that you need to find an “entry-point”. Another example: when I was 15 I hit my head and decided all my problems were downstream of not being big and strong (they weren’t). Thinking back to it, the lack of muscle and strength was probably downstream of being a picky eater.
In any case, I took to the gym and was incredibly diligent about it. Observing myself, at that age, going from being super skinny, weak, and frail, to literally being National Weightlifting Junior Champion (future readers!!!!) literally burned something else in my brain: that if something is “a skill”, I can acquire it. So my entry point, for nearly everything, is finding a way to see it as a skill, because then it is unlocked as something I might possibly acquire. Proof-of-possibility style.
Which brings us to this tweet.
This was my unlock. There is a way that when looking at the right picture I was “bringing into the picture”—much like bringing in an assumption about the light source, or an assumption about what the word “men” entails—an ideal of what a man is. I know the right one is what you’re “supposed” to be. That’s what I was aiming for as a 15-year-old in the gym. But this comment did the trick for me. I could see how from a purely aesthetic point-of-view, if you ignore the effort it took to get there, if you treat it as a context-less work of art, how the left one looks way better. And so I flipped. I acquired “woman vision”. Ironically, by objectifying him.
With “Can men get pregnant?”—come on, get used to it by now fr—I distinctly remember going through thinking she was a lunatic, then realising the linguistic confusion, and finally thinking he (my previous position!) was a lunatic. It gave me some empathy for people who “flip-flop” (eyyy) between positions denouncing what they were saying 5 seconds ago.
In the same way, soon enough I started to lose the ability to maintain my original “Man vision” and to find the after picture better looking. I’m happy to say that the same fate befell the og instigator Taoki.
And so, the one missing is you. Which picture originally looked better—before or after? Can you go through the quote-tweets and find an entry point to flip it so you can see the other side? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like and subscribe.
P.S. There is an art to achieving “the flip”, described here, and a separate art to maintain empathy for both sides both after, and before you have. But that’s for a future essay…
When I said I would pay fifty dollars, I was thinking of Canadian dollars so, you see I was using words in an affected way not Lying
One issue with this is I’m really not sure anyone ever thought the second picture looked better. I don’t even think men think that, the second picture just clearly looks like shit.
I think men, being shape rotators, and being more likely to have at lease looked into bodybuilders or whatever, think the man, like the flesh and blood guy, from the second picture would look better than the guy in the first picture in real life.
I also think men are likely to have been friends with really muscular guys or have been alternately skinny, muscular or fat, and noticed some body types get more attention from women than others. That’s my perspective at least