on anti-intellectualism in female-dominated corners of the internet, our tendency towards dumbing ourselves down, and the rightward leaning consequences of bashing your humanities degree online
This was powerful, thank you for writing! I for one am so glad I am privileged to have gotten an education and to be able to read all the books I could possibly want and to be able to support myself as a woman - I wouldn’t give that up for anything.
“How privileged I am to have wanted all of these things, and to have been taught to believe that I could have them, so why would I go and pretend like I have ever been anything other than blissfully ambitious?”
Yes! Every time I see a woman claim "ugh I'm such a bad driver because I'm just a girl, of course I'll crash my car it's only natural :(" I want to scream. We have been fighting the "biological sex somehow makes you a bad driver" stereotype since cars were invented and now we're EMBRACING IT??
A lot of these are interesting things that should be explored and not things that should just be dismissed as stereotypes that are the weapons of broader forces intent on keeping you down.
For instance, what does it mean to be a bad driver?
If it means you are less confident and more cautious, then yes women are worse drivers because they are more risk averse than men overall.
But if being a bad driver means you get into more wrecks, than no women are actually better drivers than men beause men get in far more wrecks.
Whether this is what the author meant or not, I would describe this as an example of anti-intellectualism. The goal should be to pursue truth, not to reorganize the world into the form that feels the best. Intellectualism is about exploration and inquiry, whether it is to your advantage or not. And if your inquiry always reveals you as the victim it is not real inquiry.
Absolutely loved this! 🔥 A bold, brilliant takedown of digital-era anti-intellectualism. Ambition never stopped being cool—we just forgot how loud, smart, and revolutionary women can be.
I think it's just a natural counterreaction to the shift in focus towards degrees and making money as the main goals for women in recent decades. Of course, this lifestyle doesn’t appeal to everyone. Now, people are starting to remember that ambition can be directed toward things outside of college and jobs. I don’t think this is a bad thing.
hmm yes I agree that goals centered around things other than a college education and making money are definitely not a bad thing, yet I don't think the (largely online but nonetheless telling) trend of dumbing ourselves down and minimizing agency needs to be a side effect of that tbh
Yeah, on the internet, things are always hyperbolic to a ridiculous degree. I don't think this will manifest in such a deranged way in reality, it's not that easy to knock down the status quo. Just like you said, in real life, women are not acting like trads, even though this view is being pushed online. Girlboss is pretty solid and will be for a long time, its how the market operates now
all of this was a breath of fresh air! listening to my girl friends call themselves "females" or say that their adult lives don't feel complete without a boyfriend (although they have such amazing professional roles that required years of education and ambition to get), a little part of my soul dies. it's clear they don't mean it in a subjugating way but i just want to shake them by the shoulders and read them this piece verbatim. these jokes and slight of comments aren't just comments thrown to the wind, they do have an impact whether we like to acknowledge it or not
yesss exactly!! I struggled to put it into words for awhile because it's not a matter of individual blame but a symptom of something way bigger and kinda scarier. I'm so glad it resonated <3
Fantastic Essay! I have noticed that in lots of male internet spaces things can be viewed as “locking in” or going on a “winter arc” and become the subject of overly-‘serious’(air quotes) edits while on female internet spaces things end up being infantilized by process of trend-ified. Algorithms push young boys into Andrew Tate and right-wing content while it pushes young girls into trad wife spaces.
"Despite all of our progress (and there clearly has been insurmountable progress), we still don’t know how to collectively take ownership of our own lives and, most pressingly, our own intelligence, on the internet. We don’t know how to collectively abandon the tendency towards infantilization... I’ve noticed that we haven’t seemed to figure out how to acknowledge that women still face disproportionate discrimination... while acknowledging that we do in fact now have agency."
I actually posted a piece last week that talked about this more specifically. I think the issue arises because women interpret the world as being primarily a byproduct of the actions of others, as opposed to themselves. And I get it; for most of history that was true, but I think it is a holdover from the past that is holding women back.
That means, yes, that women are less inclined to believe they can actually change something, but it also means they are predisposed to regard some malicious and societal force as being what holds them back, refusing to consider that they have agency. It results in a belief that you are a perennial victim. And parallel to that, if you do not believe you have any agency, what is the point in spending time to understand yourself better, or scrutinizing your own actions to determine what causes your misery?
I also think it needs to be noted that what you see on your feed is not indicative of what thought in society looks like overall, but what you are engaging with, or are most likely to engage with, most. So I don't know that that's a good basis for a critique of how women relate with society.
This was powerful, thank you for writing! I for one am so glad I am privileged to have gotten an education and to be able to read all the books I could possibly want and to be able to support myself as a woman - I wouldn’t give that up for anything.
“How privileged I am to have wanted all of these things, and to have been taught to believe that I could have them, so why would I go and pretend like I have ever been anything other than blissfully ambitious?”
Yes! Every time I see a woman claim "ugh I'm such a bad driver because I'm just a girl, of course I'll crash my car it's only natural :(" I want to scream. We have been fighting the "biological sex somehow makes you a bad driver" stereotype since cars were invented and now we're EMBRACING IT??
A lot of these are interesting things that should be explored and not things that should just be dismissed as stereotypes that are the weapons of broader forces intent on keeping you down.
For instance, what does it mean to be a bad driver?
If it means you are less confident and more cautious, then yes women are worse drivers because they are more risk averse than men overall.
But if being a bad driver means you get into more wrecks, than no women are actually better drivers than men beause men get in far more wrecks.
Whether this is what the author meant or not, I would describe this as an example of anti-intellectualism. The goal should be to pursue truth, not to reorganize the world into the form that feels the best. Intellectualism is about exploration and inquiry, whether it is to your advantage or not. And if your inquiry always reveals you as the victim it is not real inquiry.
Absolutely loved this! 🔥 A bold, brilliant takedown of digital-era anti-intellectualism. Ambition never stopped being cool—we just forgot how loud, smart, and revolutionary women can be.
Do read my Newsletter "Dark Wisdom" too... 👍❤️
I think it's just a natural counterreaction to the shift in focus towards degrees and making money as the main goals for women in recent decades. Of course, this lifestyle doesn’t appeal to everyone. Now, people are starting to remember that ambition can be directed toward things outside of college and jobs. I don’t think this is a bad thing.
hmm yes I agree that goals centered around things other than a college education and making money are definitely not a bad thing, yet I don't think the (largely online but nonetheless telling) trend of dumbing ourselves down and minimizing agency needs to be a side effect of that tbh
Yeah, on the internet, things are always hyperbolic to a ridiculous degree. I don't think this will manifest in such a deranged way in reality, it's not that easy to knock down the status quo. Just like you said, in real life, women are not acting like trads, even though this view is being pushed online. Girlboss is pretty solid and will be for a long time, its how the market operates now
all of this was a breath of fresh air! listening to my girl friends call themselves "females" or say that their adult lives don't feel complete without a boyfriend (although they have such amazing professional roles that required years of education and ambition to get), a little part of my soul dies. it's clear they don't mean it in a subjugating way but i just want to shake them by the shoulders and read them this piece verbatim. these jokes and slight of comments aren't just comments thrown to the wind, they do have an impact whether we like to acknowledge it or not
yesss exactly!! I struggled to put it into words for awhile because it's not a matter of individual blame but a symptom of something way bigger and kinda scarier. I'm so glad it resonated <3
I loveeeedddd reading this
Fantastic Essay! I have noticed that in lots of male internet spaces things can be viewed as “locking in” or going on a “winter arc” and become the subject of overly-‘serious’(air quotes) edits while on female internet spaces things end up being infantilized by process of trend-ified. Algorithms push young boys into Andrew Tate and right-wing content while it pushes young girls into trad wife spaces.
"Despite all of our progress (and there clearly has been insurmountable progress), we still don’t know how to collectively take ownership of our own lives and, most pressingly, our own intelligence, on the internet. We don’t know how to collectively abandon the tendency towards infantilization... I’ve noticed that we haven’t seemed to figure out how to acknowledge that women still face disproportionate discrimination... while acknowledging that we do in fact now have agency."
I actually posted a piece last week that talked about this more specifically. I think the issue arises because women interpret the world as being primarily a byproduct of the actions of others, as opposed to themselves. And I get it; for most of history that was true, but I think it is a holdover from the past that is holding women back.
That means, yes, that women are less inclined to believe they can actually change something, but it also means they are predisposed to regard some malicious and societal force as being what holds them back, refusing to consider that they have agency. It results in a belief that you are a perennial victim. And parallel to that, if you do not believe you have any agency, what is the point in spending time to understand yourself better, or scrutinizing your own actions to determine what causes your misery?
I also think it needs to be noted that what you see on your feed is not indicative of what thought in society looks like overall, but what you are engaging with, or are most likely to engage with, most. So I don't know that that's a good basis for a critique of how women relate with society.
Thank you for sharing this