Kat Spartz ⏸️

New here? Here's a thread of some of my favorite tweets

A puzzle: leftists are against white people but pro-immigrant. So what happens when your immigrants are white people?

This is a genuine problem for Puerto Rican leftists.

I’ll give you one guess as to whether they decided to hate or not.

Except it’s not as simple as that. Here’s my experience of prejudice from living in Puerto Rico three months a year. (see comment)

Yes, the far left here is anti-immigrant. My husband made the mistake of joining all the local subreddits (see comment), and they’re filled with vitriol towards us.

This made my husband feel awful. Were all the Puerto Ricans who always seemed so friendly just pretending, and secretly hating him?

That was until he was chatting with his barber and the topic of the “Gringo go home” graffiti around town came up.

The barber waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s just the young fringe. On the mainland, they’d be spray-painting anarchist symbols. Nobody else thinks that.”

My husband immediately realized what had happened. It’s a general pattern on the internet.

There’s a theory that polarization isn’t caused by echo chambers. Rather, the opposite. The curse of the internet is that it exposes you to the worst of the other side, even if it’s a tiny minority. Instead of seeing average people, who are almost all moderates who don’t pay much attention to politics, you see the extremists. You see the most attention-grabbing content, which is moral outrage.

This applies to all sorts of other prejudices. I read a memoir by an ex-Islamist in Britain. He explained that his path to extremism began with being persecuted by a gang of skinheads. He generalized to thinking all Brits hated him. But of course, most Brits hated the gang of skinheads and everything they stood for too.

The left in America feels like there are neo-Nazis everywhere, even though they’re a vanishingly small part of the population.

But it’s so easy to “catch” the idea that people secretly dislike you. It’s so easy to focus on the group that genuinely does have prejudice against you. The internet will never stop supplying you with examples of it: a genuine problem, but a tiny one.

It’s important not to think that just because it’s easy to catch, it’s inevitable or impossible to reverse. That ex-Islamist realized he’d been trained to see threats everywhere. My husband and I realized the same. And then we overcame it.

We can remind ourselves that this is a minority. We can go outside, talk to people beyond the fever dream of the internet, and remember that almost everybody is kind and normal. Even those who cultivate hate towards a group usually just have armchair bigotry, where the prejudice is theoretical, and every member of the group they actually meet is “one of the good ones” whom they treat normally.

The world has darkness and horrors. But it’s not 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 with them. That’s just your feed.

“Neocolonialism.” “White savior complex.”

That’s why a big chunk of attendees at a 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺 conference were against helping the global poor.

Multi-culturalism doesn't work.

That's why Canada and Singapore are such famously dysfunctional countries

Sexism is everywhere. Apparently. Yet I was 18 the first time I experienced sexism towards women.

I was in chemistry class and there was this strange poster. “Women Can Be Chemists Too,” it said proudly, showing a woman with beakers.

What a weird poster. Did people think women 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 be chemists?

I shrugged it off and went on with my day.

I literally never experienced sexism towards me again until I started posting criticisms of the left in my thirties, which exposed me to more far right people than I would ever usually meet.

I 𝘥𝘪𝘥 see sexism all the time, but it was towards 𝘮𝘦𝘯. Misandry on the Left Coast is so pervasive that many of the independent bookstores prominently display the book 𝘐 𝘏𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘯. But that’s for another article. This article is about my experience with sexism growing up on the Left Coast as a woman.

I forgot. I did experience 𝘰𝘯𝘦 other instance of sexism before my centrist days. From leftists themselves. Still very rare, but surprising.

One time, I was at a polyamorous meetup and said something along the lines of, “I think this traditional policy is good, actually.”

The anarchist man with a dreadlock mohawk said, “That’s just because you’re a woman who’s been socialized to not speak up.”

Excuse me? Did he just dismiss my opinion because I was a woman? I bristled and spoke up, despite “being socialized to not speak up.” He backed down.

But that was it.

If you’re a man or you live in another part of the world where the patriarchy is actually still alive and well (e.g. Saudi Arabia, fundamentalist Christian communities, etc.), you might be surprised. But there are whole societies where if there is a patriarchy (which I doubt), it’s so tiny it can only be detected with giant sample sizes, and even then, it’s questionable whether it exists.

To the point where a woman can live 36 years and only encounter it twice, both times from well-meaning feminists. The only time she experienced it regularly was when she spent too much time on the internet and had the typical experience of being exposed to the worst of the other side.

In fact, I grew up with the opposite. I was steeped in female supremacy, sex positivity, and a rejection of all traditional roles.

My mom was the head of the family. All of the authority figures in my life were women. All of my teachers except for two were women until I went to uni. And the two male teachers were by far the worst and most inept.

The top students in all the STEM classes were me and three other girls. I was constantly told that I was strong and independent. I was encouraged to speak up and debate. I was told I would grow up to be a great leader.

The fantasy novels I inhaled were filled with women becoming knights and saving the prince. The first Disney movies I watched were Pocahontas and Mulan, where the protagonists were badass women who saved the men from their own barbarism. The smartest, most altruistic, and most competent character in the most famous fiction of the time, Harry Potter, was Hermione Granger. Likewise with Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons.

Sex positivity was everywhere. I’ve never heard somebody slut-shamed (except on the internet, with the usual nutpicking selection effect). If anything, being a monogamist who didn’t have sex until marriage would make you the weirdo people looked down on. The coolest thing was to be a polyamorist. I always felt vaguely ashamed that I liked vanilla sex.

Traditional roles were alien to me. The only one of my friends’ moms who was a “stay-at-home mom” only kind of counted, because she didn’t have a job per se. She was getting her second PhD in political science.

How does this square with the # MeToo movement and some on the far left claiming the patriarchy is everywhere, with misogyny around every corner?

Well, there are four things:

• Societies are actually very segregated, and a genuine patriarchal society can live right next to an egalitarian one and they will almost never interact.

• Selective and misleading statistics

• Overrepresentation of misogyny on the internet and in Hollywood

• Treating sexual assault as misogyny, when it isn’t men having prejudice or hatred towards women, but rather, being sexually attracted to women. Also expanding the definition of sexual assault to include dick pics and the like.

———

𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱

I haven’t experienced sexism except via nutpicking on the right. Do you know what else I’ve never seen in real life? A Trump supporter.

I know hundreds of people in person and not a single one of them is a Trump supporter. Or maybe some of them are, but they’d never tell me.

How can this be, when a large majority of the people I know are American, and about half of American voters have supported Trump in the last 10 years?

It’s because as a society, we voluntarily segregate ourselves. I once read a memoir by a member of a fundamentalist Christian cult just 50 km away from my home in Vancouver. There, women were not allowed to work outside the home and were expected to be virgins until marriage, cook, clean, and have oodles of children. What was mind-blowing to me was that this was 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 to my home. And yet I was surrounded by child-free atheist polyamorous BDSM sex-positive tattooed dual-income progressives. I wasn’t even sure I knew any Christians in the city, let alone a fundamentalist.

The reason is that if we ever even met each other, we’d bounce off right away. I remember OkCupid, a dating site, had a match percentage, and you could actually search for your lowest match. Mine was a Christian military man with a buzz cut who wanted five children and loved hunting.

And sure enough, we self-sort at all levels of society. If you’re right leaning, you’re less likely to become a professor at left-leaning universities. Maybe you’ll become a teacher at a religious school. If you’re an atheist, you’re never going to teach at a religious school. If you believe in traditional gender roles, you’re probably not going to show up for a puppy play pen at a BDSM party. Likewise, somebody who roleplays a sexy puppy is much less likely to attend a fundamentalist church.

———

𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀

A general pattern is to show the worst possible statistic about women and never show the ones where they’re doing better than men.

Women:

• Live longer than men

• Report greater happiness than men

• Are disproportionately represented in higher education

• Are disproportionately represented in many high status careers including veterinarians, pharmacists, medical managers, genetic counselors, physiotherapists, medical scientists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, and authors

• Are less likely to be victims of homicide

• Get 39% shorter sentences than men for the same offense (men get 63% longer sentences) and are twice as likely to avoid prison if convicted

• Are 4 times more likely to get custody of children than the man, even in cases where neither parent has any abuse or other risk factors

• Die by suicide at nearly 4 times lower rates than men

And yet you’d never guess this from what feminist statistics tell you. Their whole thing is to fight the instances where women are worse off. If it were about equality, they’d be fighting for women to get the same sentences as men for the same crimes. They’d be fighting for proportionate representation of men among speech-language pathologists, a field that’s 97.3% women.

But if you only show the negative statistics, you are going to get a heavily skewed view of things.

Not to mention, many of the statistics they do share are deeply misleading. For example, one of the most common stats they’ll share is the gender pay gap. The usual 82 cents on the dollar. But that’s not controlling for years of experience or job. If more women go into lower-paying jobs and more men go into higher-paying industries, that doesn’t mean women are getting paid less due to sexism.

It could be that women prefer to prioritize happiness and family over money (a good decision if you ask me!). It could be that more women prefer to go into the caring professions because they tend to have more compassionate personalities (again - a positive quality!). It could be that men feel, rightly or wrongly, that they’ll be able to attract a better woman if they make more money, whereas women, rightly or wrongly, think that men won’t care how much money they make. Who knows.

But if you control for the actual job and experience, the pay gap shrinks to 99 cents on the dollar, to the point where it really isn’t the thing to focus on when fighting for women’s rights. It might be better to fight for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or in fundamentalist communities. But most rich Western countries are doing fine, actually.

———

𝗦𝗲𝘅𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗮𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝗺

Gay men sexually assault men because they’re misandrists.

See how silly this sounds? It’s the same for straight men sexually assaulting women. They don’t force women into sex because they 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 women. They’re turned on by women and want to have sex with them. And some are evil about it and will try to get it by force.

Yet people will parade statistics about lifetime rape rates and the like to show that the patriarchy exists. Instead of saying that yes, there is a small minority of evil men who won’t let silly things like ethics get between them and sex.

———

𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗴𝘆𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗱

Every simple movie needs a villain, and the misogynist is a favorite of Hollywood, especially since the # MeToo movement. And to be fair, it’s an easy villain to hate.

Here’s a list of big movies in the last 10 years that Claude compiled for me where one or more of the main villains are misogynists (I haven’t watched most of them, so please correct me if any of these are wrong): Companion, The Substance, Furiosa, Blink Twice, Barbie, Don’t Worry Darling, The Last Duel, Black Widow, Promising Young Woman, The Invisible Man.

Then there’s the internet. Oh, the internet. There’s a theory that polarization isn’t caused by echo chambers. Rather, the opposite. The curse of the internet is that it exposes you to the worst of the other side, even if it’s a tiny minority. Instead of seeing average people, who are almost all moderates who don’t pay much attention to politics, you see the extremists. You see the most attention-grabbing content, which is moral outrage.

That’s exactly what happened to me. I criticize the left, but not because I’m on the right. I’m an accidental moderate, which means I evaluate each policy and argument on its own merits, rather than agreeing with the left or the right. Nevertheless, a lot of right-wingers enjoy my critiques of the left, so I get a lot of them as readers. Fair enough. And most of them are pretty reasonable, or have the usual takes I 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦 with but don’t see as 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 (e.g. abortion is murder, it’s good to protect traditions, etc.). But I do get some pretty extreme views, like women shouldn’t be allowed to vote or female leaders are the source of most societal ills.

I have never heard anybody express these views in person. And I probably never would have heard them if the internet didn’t exist.

So both Hollywood and the internet make these views seem far more common than they are.

This is good news, though. It means there are large pockets of the world where misogyny has been more or less vanquished. You can live in societies where a woman can live 36 years and only experience sexism in person twice in her life, both from well-meaning leftists.