I hear what you're saying about using sex appeal/attractiveness in contexts in which you intellect is the thing you're really selling (such as when in male dominated technical jobs like I am in). However, even if I consciously avoid doing so, I know on some level that being attractive both works against and for me. I don't seek out simps but I do seek out male allies, and white guys and I just happen to get along well. I'm not sure if that's the behavior you're describing, but maybe it is and I'm just being defensive. Regardless, it's a reality when you're in a male dominated industry that male allies are essential, especially because in such contexts women come for you even harder. So you're placed in an impossible situation if you're even remotely attractive in a male dominated context. On the one hand, women come for you hard if you are attractive and your intellectual output is solid, and men also are attracted to you for presumably intellect but also probably because of attractiveness. The latter I can't control, and I need to make allies to make sure the work gets done. So really, attractive women with significant intellectual output are in a bind. Attraction of others can't be controlled, and I don't necessarily think every attractive woman is consciously using that to get ahead, either. It's just a reality of inter-gender collegiality.
Thanks for your comment Anuradha! I am talking about something more explicit - the post was inspired by seeing a young woman writer post a cute photo with a caption calling on men to join her subscriber base of simps. Funny, and probably effective, but not something I would do.
But to your experience, I was previously a young woman in a male dominated industry (analytics roles within asset management companies) but I don't totally relate. I (luckily) didn't deal with negative female-female competition but I've heard this experience from other women as well so certainly don't doubt that it's common. As for attraction of others, you're right that it can't be controlled but I do think you can choose to lean into it or not, and at some point I personally decided not to lean in because I thought it wouldn't serve me in the long run. But that isn't to say it's wrong to do so necessarily, it's just that I think when you lean in to differential treatment on the basis of gender it's always a double edged sword and I prefer to stay as professionally androgynous as I can. I also expressed that in the way I presented at work, but I don't think there's a "right" answer here. Still, as a young woman in a male dominated industry you're probably getting some gendered benefits (and costs!) regardless of whether you "lean in to it", simply because it might be more pleasant to have a woman's energy around in an otherwise mostly male arena. I'm a bubbly person who smiles a lot and I think that is more common among women and in and of itself is likely a small benefit in these industries. Plus, we know that attractive people just do better on average anyways and that is certainly not something you can (or should try to) control.
Re women writers and simps, being a writer in the internet era is being a public persona and looks are legitimately part of that. Even before the internet era male writers used looks as a complement to their work (see Fitzgerald, young Capote, even Hemingway). A female writer foregrounding her looks is actually I think quite different than a corporate employee sleeping her way to the top. Also, you should comfort yourself that you’re better looking than the average writer LOL
The issue of male workplace allies is interesting. What would you think of women who find male allies by leaning into other gender archetypes, like the "nurturer" or the "protective Mama Bear"?
Well, I don’t think those archetypes would lead to them getting male allies in particular over female allies. Everyone wants to be nurtured! lol but really I don’t know, I guess that part of the reason I wouldn’t “lean in” to allying with a male coworker who I could tell liked me because he was attracted to me is because I would worry it would lead to others assuming I’m less competent. That because I’m getting different treatment on the basis of my looks in this situation that maybe my work is lower quality than people represent it as. Might not be a reasonable concern if we’re talking about a male and female of equal status within the workplace though.
I can confirm actually that being protective toward my male allies has helped, and women neither ask for it nor does it help me with them. Most of the time if it’s a technical woman we get along great and neither of us needs the others nurturing but we do advise each other. If it’s a non technical woman with power, all I seem to get is an imposition of power onto myself. However, because I give off masculine woman vibes, it helps me connect with men and puts women on guard because possibly I seem to be projecting threatening/aggressive power and they might not assume my feelings can be hurt. Women respond to me far more suspiciously than men, perhaps because the latter see me as less of a threat and aren’t competing.
I think you've identified that there is a progression of behaviors that leverage male sexual attraction to female the settings such as work. At one end being attractive and smiling soothes men and can de-escalate situations. At the other end of the spectrum, sexual favors to get ahead even when consenting should be illegal. There exists a line where something is socially improper but not worth making illegal. Third parties are most negatively impacted by this behavior.
I think we've replaced slut shaming in the workforce with an aggressive sexual harassment HR culture. If anyone goes to HR with implications of impropriety, it's a giant mess that can be career destroying. The current equilibrium is that most men are extremely conservative with their relationships with women at work. This hilariously reinforces gender segregated culture at work. I am much more judicious about one on one lunches with women relative to men (and considerably more so for dinners and drinks). The more sexually forward a women is at work, the more careful men need to be. Perhaps this is the appropriate tension, but in its own way it constrains female expectations of sexuality and equal treatment.
I agree that the HR culture makes it harder to build productive working relationships - but I don't think it just affects male-female relationships, I actually think it leads to less dinners and drinks and other bonding events overall, even between men, since they don't want to exclude women either.
Do you think the general deterioration of relationships in the workforce is a consequence of how we manage sexual attraction as a culture? Or am I overreaching?
For what it's worth, I'm not going to advertise who I'm drinking with outside of work to those not included, but I intentionally build relationships over whiskey to have deeper conversations and build trust. I do many lunches one on one with the same intent. Building a social network is inherently discriminatory: you have finite time to build relationships and you need to pick diverse (non overlapping), high value connections. Being egalitarian as opposed to strategic in how you network is incredibly suboptimal. (I'm reducing this to graph theory because in a 10,000 person organization you often need to connect with a small subset of people to meet a business objective. How close I am from the right person on a social graph often influences prioritization of my need.)
Well, maybe I just think this because I was excluded from the events and never realized! lol, but actually, I have had several 1 on 1 drinks with male coworkers and expect that I give off the vibe that they wouldn't need to worry about things being potentially misconstrued, especially because I was always in a serious relationship. But no, I don't think the deterioration of workplace relationships is really about how we manage sexual attraction. I think it's related to the broader issues of cancel culture and extreme sensitivity to diverse viewpoints and that the sexual stuff is downstream of that.
Cancel culture and slut shaming are similar responses to considerably different norms. I think the lack of understanding of acceptable norms (or norms that intentionally restrictive) are upstream of cancel culture. Cancel culture is the result of norms violation.
I strongly agree that this is broader then, but includes acceptable "flirtation" norms. The grand result of DEI is that interactions across groups is high risk and we segregated further.
It's possible you were invited to those 1:1 drinks because you were already in a serious relationship, so they expected things were less likely to be misconstrued.
I'd just note that, as you no doubt know better than me, it's well-established by formal studies and informal experience that better-looking and better-presented people of either gender get more job opportunities and advancement than ugly slobs. If Henry Cavill had not been an actor, would we expect his looks to make no difference to his advancement? I'm a straight male, but I'd still rather have Henry Cavill across the desk from me than Piers Ackerman. In all honesty, Ackerman would have to be significantly more qualified for me to choose him - to a level where I thought it'd be the difference between me having a thriving or failed business. Slightly better qualifications or experience wouldn't do it. Cavill would trade on that, and sensibly so.
So I think this is something both genders do, it's just that women are more likely to do it consciously and with an implied promise of sex or sexual attention like the "titty-streamer Twitch girls," as they've sometimes been called.
This is true, both genders can benefit from good looks but the average marginal payoff is larger for women which is why the focus tends to be there. So funny that you chose Henry Cavill, I'm not really one to have famous crushes but Cavill is one of the few lol
I’m sure that it hurt to say that “out loud.” I applaud your willingness to be candid in a public way. Thanks for articulating nascent thoughts I had better than I could. Most people, in my observation, are unwilling to point at a behavior they dislike and at the same time say, “Yeah, I hate it. But that doesn’t make me right.” 👏
"But I think that, for most people, sex work is degrading and dangerous and that you better be getting paid a lot more than the next best alternative to make it worth it. Given that, preventing sex work from becoming de facto required for women to be competitive in the labor market is a worthy and pro-meritocratic goal.
But is that outcome a plausible consequence?"
Sexual availability of female workers has been the historical norm, not the exception. Roman domini routinely sexually exploited their servi. Droit du seigneur is a myth, but its persistence in popular histories points to the very real entitlement exercised by feudal lords. Georgian gentlemen often took advantage of their housemaids; domestic workers are frequently assaulted on the job to this day. A factory manager might take liberties with the pretty girl at the sewing machine. Office workers harassed the secretaries. Etc.
How did Congressman Charlie Wilson put it? "You can teach 'em to type, but you can't teach 'em to grow tits."
The idea that sexual availability is not a perk of female labor? That's the historically recent, unusual thing. It took considerable effort to install norms about this. Women who want to dismantle those norms for their own gain are in fact defecting against other women and making all our lives worse in the long run.
"Some people are smart and ugly and others are beautiful and dumb." Sorry, I remixed the original quote slightly. The smartest people are rarely the most beautiful and the most beautiful rarely the smartest. Very few people got lucky!!! But intellect wouldn't have much value if beauty correlates too strongly with intelligence. And beauty wouldn't have much value if smartness correlates too strongly with beauty. It is precisely because of those women who are tempted and compelled to sleep their way up that women who would think and work their way up are respected. Women like you would cease to be exceptional (at least in the sense of valuing merit and hardwork) if every woman is smart and diligent enough to dazzle their way up.
I have a friend who happily acknowledges she uses flirtation to get work done on time. I don't know how I feel about this. Probably if I were her colleague I would do work a bit faster. But this does seem a defection against people who don't want to offer that. Or maybe I'd just feel very frustrated by the situation.
That said, I know some women who like this dynamic at work. And I guess many men do too. I would be curious how well it polls. I think you're right that it shouldn't be expected within an industry and I guess it has negative impact overall, but if a company wants to say that flirtation is allowed there, I'm not sure I should legislate against it. As you say, for small privately owned companies even more so.
On the intellectual output I think there are far fewer top flight female intellectuals than men so in selecting many new ones, people use other metrics. The most optimistic outcome is that in 10 years there are loads of new female intellectuals competing on content so looks is a less relevant feature.
I wonder to what extent this would disappear as a problem if we simply legalized prostitution completely. And maybe reduced the amount of shaming we do about women pursuing more openly renumerative relationships (I expect him to fly me to X or Y).
I mean which would rich men rather purchase a full GFE or a secretary who wears short skirts?
It would probably need to go along with creating more spaces/times for Americans to meet outside of work.
Well, wouldn't you be inclined to shame someone that used their wealth or connections to secure a coveted position for their child? Even in the cases where it's not technically illegal, we still find condemnation for it. I think women who try and subvert meritocracy should be treated the same way. I don't care if they use their body or something else. It's just not a norm we want to promote.
Yes, I would, but in the case of “intellectual/creative content creator/writer” what defines merit is more ambiguous. And while I might select creators I like with no care for their appearance, if others prefer to follow hot women then that’s part of the merit those women are bringing
There’s no middle man here, so the consumer can directly decide what traits they value in creators. Similar to how men on the dating market can directly decide what they value in women and women can respond to those market incentives. But no one gets to decide for everyone else what are the correct things to value and to incentivize
I hear what you're saying about using sex appeal/attractiveness in contexts in which you intellect is the thing you're really selling (such as when in male dominated technical jobs like I am in). However, even if I consciously avoid doing so, I know on some level that being attractive both works against and for me. I don't seek out simps but I do seek out male allies, and white guys and I just happen to get along well. I'm not sure if that's the behavior you're describing, but maybe it is and I'm just being defensive. Regardless, it's a reality when you're in a male dominated industry that male allies are essential, especially because in such contexts women come for you even harder. So you're placed in an impossible situation if you're even remotely attractive in a male dominated context. On the one hand, women come for you hard if you are attractive and your intellectual output is solid, and men also are attracted to you for presumably intellect but also probably because of attractiveness. The latter I can't control, and I need to make allies to make sure the work gets done. So really, attractive women with significant intellectual output are in a bind. Attraction of others can't be controlled, and I don't necessarily think every attractive woman is consciously using that to get ahead, either. It's just a reality of inter-gender collegiality.
Thanks for your comment Anuradha! I am talking about something more explicit - the post was inspired by seeing a young woman writer post a cute photo with a caption calling on men to join her subscriber base of simps. Funny, and probably effective, but not something I would do.
But to your experience, I was previously a young woman in a male dominated industry (analytics roles within asset management companies) but I don't totally relate. I (luckily) didn't deal with negative female-female competition but I've heard this experience from other women as well so certainly don't doubt that it's common. As for attraction of others, you're right that it can't be controlled but I do think you can choose to lean into it or not, and at some point I personally decided not to lean in because I thought it wouldn't serve me in the long run. But that isn't to say it's wrong to do so necessarily, it's just that I think when you lean in to differential treatment on the basis of gender it's always a double edged sword and I prefer to stay as professionally androgynous as I can. I also expressed that in the way I presented at work, but I don't think there's a "right" answer here. Still, as a young woman in a male dominated industry you're probably getting some gendered benefits (and costs!) regardless of whether you "lean in to it", simply because it might be more pleasant to have a woman's energy around in an otherwise mostly male arena. I'm a bubbly person who smiles a lot and I think that is more common among women and in and of itself is likely a small benefit in these industries. Plus, we know that attractive people just do better on average anyways and that is certainly not something you can (or should try to) control.
Re women writers and simps, being a writer in the internet era is being a public persona and looks are legitimately part of that. Even before the internet era male writers used looks as a complement to their work (see Fitzgerald, young Capote, even Hemingway). A female writer foregrounding her looks is actually I think quite different than a corporate employee sleeping her way to the top. Also, you should comfort yourself that you’re better looking than the average writer LOL
Not gonna lie I’m conscious of this but I’d still hope the quality of writing matters far more.
The issue of male workplace allies is interesting. What would you think of women who find male allies by leaning into other gender archetypes, like the "nurturer" or the "protective Mama Bear"?
Well, I don’t think those archetypes would lead to them getting male allies in particular over female allies. Everyone wants to be nurtured! lol but really I don’t know, I guess that part of the reason I wouldn’t “lean in” to allying with a male coworker who I could tell liked me because he was attracted to me is because I would worry it would lead to others assuming I’m less competent. That because I’m getting different treatment on the basis of my looks in this situation that maybe my work is lower quality than people represent it as. Might not be a reasonable concern if we’re talking about a male and female of equal status within the workplace though.
I can confirm actually that being protective toward my male allies has helped, and women neither ask for it nor does it help me with them. Most of the time if it’s a technical woman we get along great and neither of us needs the others nurturing but we do advise each other. If it’s a non technical woman with power, all I seem to get is an imposition of power onto myself. However, because I give off masculine woman vibes, it helps me connect with men and puts women on guard because possibly I seem to be projecting threatening/aggressive power and they might not assume my feelings can be hurt. Women respond to me far more suspiciously than men, perhaps because the latter see me as less of a threat and aren’t competing.
I think you've identified that there is a progression of behaviors that leverage male sexual attraction to female the settings such as work. At one end being attractive and smiling soothes men and can de-escalate situations. At the other end of the spectrum, sexual favors to get ahead even when consenting should be illegal. There exists a line where something is socially improper but not worth making illegal. Third parties are most negatively impacted by this behavior.
I think we've replaced slut shaming in the workforce with an aggressive sexual harassment HR culture. If anyone goes to HR with implications of impropriety, it's a giant mess that can be career destroying. The current equilibrium is that most men are extremely conservative with their relationships with women at work. This hilariously reinforces gender segregated culture at work. I am much more judicious about one on one lunches with women relative to men (and considerably more so for dinners and drinks). The more sexually forward a women is at work, the more careful men need to be. Perhaps this is the appropriate tension, but in its own way it constrains female expectations of sexuality and equal treatment.
I agree that the HR culture makes it harder to build productive working relationships - but I don't think it just affects male-female relationships, I actually think it leads to less dinners and drinks and other bonding events overall, even between men, since they don't want to exclude women either.
Do you think the general deterioration of relationships in the workforce is a consequence of how we manage sexual attraction as a culture? Or am I overreaching?
For what it's worth, I'm not going to advertise who I'm drinking with outside of work to those not included, but I intentionally build relationships over whiskey to have deeper conversations and build trust. I do many lunches one on one with the same intent. Building a social network is inherently discriminatory: you have finite time to build relationships and you need to pick diverse (non overlapping), high value connections. Being egalitarian as opposed to strategic in how you network is incredibly suboptimal. (I'm reducing this to graph theory because in a 10,000 person organization you often need to connect with a small subset of people to meet a business objective. How close I am from the right person on a social graph often influences prioritization of my need.)
Well, maybe I just think this because I was excluded from the events and never realized! lol, but actually, I have had several 1 on 1 drinks with male coworkers and expect that I give off the vibe that they wouldn't need to worry about things being potentially misconstrued, especially because I was always in a serious relationship. But no, I don't think the deterioration of workplace relationships is really about how we manage sexual attraction. I think it's related to the broader issues of cancel culture and extreme sensitivity to diverse viewpoints and that the sexual stuff is downstream of that.
Cancel culture and slut shaming are similar responses to considerably different norms. I think the lack of understanding of acceptable norms (or norms that intentionally restrictive) are upstream of cancel culture. Cancel culture is the result of norms violation.
I strongly agree that this is broader then, but includes acceptable "flirtation" norms. The grand result of DEI is that interactions across groups is high risk and we segregated further.
It's possible you were invited to those 1:1 drinks because you were already in a serious relationship, so they expected things were less likely to be misconstrued.
Interesting points.
I'd just note that, as you no doubt know better than me, it's well-established by formal studies and informal experience that better-looking and better-presented people of either gender get more job opportunities and advancement than ugly slobs. If Henry Cavill had not been an actor, would we expect his looks to make no difference to his advancement? I'm a straight male, but I'd still rather have Henry Cavill across the desk from me than Piers Ackerman. In all honesty, Ackerman would have to be significantly more qualified for me to choose him - to a level where I thought it'd be the difference between me having a thriving or failed business. Slightly better qualifications or experience wouldn't do it. Cavill would trade on that, and sensibly so.
So I think this is something both genders do, it's just that women are more likely to do it consciously and with an implied promise of sex or sexual attention like the "titty-streamer Twitch girls," as they've sometimes been called.
This is true, both genders can benefit from good looks but the average marginal payoff is larger for women which is why the focus tends to be there. So funny that you chose Henry Cavill, I'm not really one to have famous crushes but Cavill is one of the few lol
I’m sure that it hurt to say that “out loud.” I applaud your willingness to be candid in a public way. Thanks for articulating nascent thoughts I had better than I could. Most people, in my observation, are unwilling to point at a behavior they dislike and at the same time say, “Yeah, I hate it. But that doesn’t make me right.” 👏
Thanks Dave! It was lol. Appreciate the comment :)
"But I think that, for most people, sex work is degrading and dangerous and that you better be getting paid a lot more than the next best alternative to make it worth it. Given that, preventing sex work from becoming de facto required for women to be competitive in the labor market is a worthy and pro-meritocratic goal.
But is that outcome a plausible consequence?"
Sexual availability of female workers has been the historical norm, not the exception. Roman domini routinely sexually exploited their servi. Droit du seigneur is a myth, but its persistence in popular histories points to the very real entitlement exercised by feudal lords. Georgian gentlemen often took advantage of their housemaids; domestic workers are frequently assaulted on the job to this day. A factory manager might take liberties with the pretty girl at the sewing machine. Office workers harassed the secretaries. Etc.
How did Congressman Charlie Wilson put it? "You can teach 'em to type, but you can't teach 'em to grow tits."
The idea that sexual availability is not a perk of female labor? That's the historically recent, unusual thing. It took considerable effort to install norms about this. Women who want to dismantle those norms for their own gain are in fact defecting against other women and making all our lives worse in the long run.
"Some people are smart and ugly and others are beautiful and dumb." Sorry, I remixed the original quote slightly. The smartest people are rarely the most beautiful and the most beautiful rarely the smartest. Very few people got lucky!!! But intellect wouldn't have much value if beauty correlates too strongly with intelligence. And beauty wouldn't have much value if smartness correlates too strongly with beauty. It is precisely because of those women who are tempted and compelled to sleep their way up that women who would think and work their way up are respected. Women like you would cease to be exceptional (at least in the sense of valuing merit and hardwork) if every woman is smart and diligent enough to dazzle their way up.
Yeah this seems right.
I have a friend who happily acknowledges she uses flirtation to get work done on time. I don't know how I feel about this. Probably if I were her colleague I would do work a bit faster. But this does seem a defection against people who don't want to offer that. Or maybe I'd just feel very frustrated by the situation.
That said, I know some women who like this dynamic at work. And I guess many men do too. I would be curious how well it polls. I think you're right that it shouldn't be expected within an industry and I guess it has negative impact overall, but if a company wants to say that flirtation is allowed there, I'm not sure I should legislate against it. As you say, for small privately owned companies even more so.
On the intellectual output I think there are far fewer top flight female intellectuals than men so in selecting many new ones, people use other metrics. The most optimistic outcome is that in 10 years there are loads of new female intellectuals competing on content so looks is a less relevant feature.
I wonder to what extent this would disappear as a problem if we simply legalized prostitution completely. And maybe reduced the amount of shaming we do about women pursuing more openly renumerative relationships (I expect him to fly me to X or Y).
I mean which would rich men rather purchase a full GFE or a secretary who wears short skirts?
It would probably need to go along with creating more spaces/times for Americans to meet outside of work.
.
Your boyfriend is a lucky man!
Whoops sorry didn’t mean to be a crepe, I was drunk when I made that comment. In hindsight it occurs to me I may have been thirst trapped...
Well, wouldn't you be inclined to shame someone that used their wealth or connections to secure a coveted position for their child? Even in the cases where it's not technically illegal, we still find condemnation for it. I think women who try and subvert meritocracy should be treated the same way. I don't care if they use their body or something else. It's just not a norm we want to promote.
Yes, I would, but in the case of “intellectual/creative content creator/writer” what defines merit is more ambiguous. And while I might select creators I like with no care for their appearance, if others prefer to follow hot women then that’s part of the merit those women are bringing
There’s no middle man here, so the consumer can directly decide what traits they value in creators. Similar to how men on the dating market can directly decide what they value in women and women can respond to those market incentives. But no one gets to decide for everyone else what are the correct things to value and to incentivize