This blog entry comes about because I wanted to say so much in the comments for http://www.videosift.com/video/ART-OF-SEDUCTION-Not-Pretty-Really, and the comments were veering way off topic. So this isn't really completely germane--just started by that video. I'm hoping some of the nice women will read and understand and murmur reassuringly.
Long ago, when I was 16, I went to a small scientific school that had only 20 women in the entering class of 220. The percentage of females in the classes ahead of me was even lower. I lived in a house (dorm) of about 70 people, of whom 6 were women. By the local standards, I was very beautiful, but so were just about all the other females. It was horrible. Most men have trouble believing me when I say it was horrible, often making comments like some of those in the video with the link above. I wish to try to explain some of the bad parts of it, only some of which have anything to do with that video.
* Some men were very, very bitter and thus unfriendly. I could get laid; they could not, ergo, I was evil. They assumed I was sexual power-mad and only believed anything else after a ton of evidence.
* The nice men knew the women were overloaded and tended to not hit on them or "bother" them much. This means that for a single woman at a party to claw her way out of the clueless and find a nice person to talk to was very unlikely.
*A lot of men were just plain terrified of the women, or how they felt around them, or something, and as such either wouldn't talk to us at all, or if they did, would only look at their feet or their books, or do some other strange displacement behavior. Convincing a man to calm down and just talk to you like you were a person was hard work. This was even worse, of course, if you were single. Not having a boyfriend was social suicide, and I always begged mine to not tell anyone we had broken up until long after the fact.
* A lot of men really did assume that attractive women couldn't possibly be smart. My freshman year, I heard several men starting a pool for how long it would take me to flunk out. This was before I had taken a single miderm: that is, they had no possible data that I wasn't smart. Actually, I was way too specific there, even the other women would sometimes act like attractive women couldn't possibly be smart. I had another woman tell me, "I don't get it. Why are you here? I mean what is your game? Who are you trying to marry?"
* To continue on with things related to the end of the last point, having female friends was somehow very tough, and I'm not quite sure why. Part of it was that just having XX chromosomes isn't enough in common to build a friendship on. Part of it was that it was a very intense environment scholastically, and social time seemed to be spent on intense stunts, away from campus entirely, or romantically. Part of it was that somehow there was a strange undercurrent that it was part of the duty of the women to "socialize" the more clueless men. Uncommitted social time was somehow to be spent teaching the some of the poor scared bunnies that they needn't drip sweat or flee at the prospect of speaking to a female. I know this sounds like a lot of direction, and that the women must have been pretty wimpy to put up with it, but it was subtle and pervasive and we were young.
* Somewhat related to the previous point, the local standards of good and evil said that any sort of "cock teasing" was the worst possible sin. That is, any sort of sexy dress, sexy acting, or sexy aura was the act of a an evil whore and shunnable harridan. Now realize, by local standards, failing to walk around with mud smeared on your face or perhaps showering more often than weekly were sexy, sexy acts. I was young, and I hadn't dated much when I got there. Any budding skill at flirting completely fled me, and I began to reflexively insert "I'm taken! I'm not an option!" into every possible conversation and try very, very hard to be that stereotype: one of the guys. Most of the women tried to be one of the guys. This led to it being even harder to be friends with women (I'm sure the woman who asked "why are you here" was just being one of the guys). It also led to some other stuff I remember with cringing: I wanted to be one of the guys so badly that I happily participated in ridiculing women in general or women in particular. I wasn't really aware of sexism at the time, and I really had no clue what I was doing.
* It was impossible to ever be inconspicuous. No matter how the big the class, the teacher would always know if I didn't show up, or I nodded off, or whatever. Dealing with TAs was sometimes hell. I once tried to get math help from a guy in his office while he had my head cut out and pasted to the naked body of a playboy centerfold on display within my sight. He started to give me the help I wanted--at least considering the actual words that came out of his mouth--but believe me, anyone who could have stayed and listened to tutoring delivered with that look and smirk would have to be way tougher than I was. I can easily imagine how much he enjoyed relating the joke to his friends later. Every time I failed at something, it was somehow taken as evidence that women couldn't do that. Every time I succeeded, I must have gotten help--possibly I slept with the teacher or the TA.
*I spent a ton of time downplaying my looks. I used to like clothes and makeup and such, but somehow using it was evil. It never really occurred to me that intelligence was just as much of a Gaussian distribution as beauty, and there was really no good reason to be proud of one and ashamed of the other. Yeah, I know I sound weak-willed. I probably was.
I could say more. I could go on way too long. This has been a vent, I know. And it's ancient history. But reading about how little sympathy is inspired by people complaining of their good fortune...it hit a nerve.
