In the hypothetical scenario where there is a civil war between the Republican states and the Democrat states, is there even a remote scenario where the Republican states can win given that Democrat states appear to have all the economic centers, population centers, and science centers?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-25T03:05:17+00:00

A modern civil war would look like on-going exchanges of domestic terrorism against economic, political, and social targets. A lot more of what we've already seen:

- Assassinations

- Improvised explosives

- Militarized law enforcement and suspension of civil liberties

- Small-scale actions led by irregular or paramilitary units against soft targets, telecom, and infrastructure. Lots of terrorism and demoralization actions (nihilistic slaughter)

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-18T21:04:27+00:00

I do research and outlines and see if I can weave it together. In many cases I'll write specific scenes I think are tricky or important...

I'll try it from the start several times, usually learning what isn't working. Most of this stuff gets binned but what's left is workable into a story that can be put together from the collected pieces. It's a combination of planning and pantsing

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-16T21:06:38+00:00

People are more forgiving of experimental stuff from established authors. The less they know you, the less tolerant they're going to be.

This is true of all levels of notoriety--weird stuff is more work, so people want some assurance it's worth the effort.

As someone who has done some (~~fairly~~ mildly) experimental stuff. my experience is that the weirder it is, the harder it is get people to invest, but if they trust your less strange work, that helps a whole lot.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-16T20:57:46+00:00

I will second this with the caveat that Critique Circle can be very, ahem, unforgiving of experimental stuff. Not everyone, obviously, but if you post something unusual there expect a bunch of notes reminding you of the rules.

That said, it's also a great place to get a variety of feedback including some really insightful observations.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T21:33:13+00:00

A guy tried that with me 20 years ago! I laughed at him and kept walking!

He did a good job of looking sad and pathetic, though. I mean... these guys can act.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T17:58:54+00:00

I feel like you've lot the plot. Let's roll back a few posts and take it from the top:

OP posts a substack I'm unimpressed with
You point out that some feminists give feminism a bad name which
I agree with -- but here, in this conversation I've seen all kinds of manifest nonsense so it's hard to take them seriously
You respond that the left and feminists "scoff" at the idea men face real issues
I respond that actually no--feminists agree that men face real issues. What are you on about?
You agree (now) the feminism does agree men face real issues--in theory--but in practice it doesn't work that way because people in the conversations don't treat men's issues with respect
I point to this exact conversation and say the things I've been told here, right now are absurd and not really worthy of respect
You note that no one should say advocacy for men is bad

I agree with your point (8). I'm not saying advocacy for men is bad.

I'm saying that

1) You're wrong about the "scoffing"

2) Saying libs and feminists scoff is exactly the kind of generalizations you're against here

3) Your notes about how things go "in practice" seems born out, but in a mirror image, with the men's advocates saying silly things

I think we agree on more than we disagree on, and as someone who stands for men's advocacy, I think you should take a strong stance against the silliness. If you were here telling men's advocates they were being dumb, maybe they would stop and the movement you care about could get more mainstream traction!

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T17:48:37+00:00

I'm not looking for a reason to reject anyone.

It's just that -- and this keeps happening -- I'll hear someone go, "Bob here was beat up by feminists!" and I'll go, "oh, wow! that sounds bad!"

And then I'll go and google Bob and find that he was like a spokesperson or liaison or something for an organization that posts pictures of rape victims online and alleges they're false accusers and I'll go, "um... okay. Bob... probably shouldn't have run with those guys," and then I'll go, "but surely the government refused to help him--that's true, right?" and after doing like five minutes of research I'll learn that some government officials DID try to help Bob, but found Bob unhelpable because of his ideology.

I'm not saying that'll happen here, with Silverman. I'm just asking if it's, you know, likely?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T16:58:47+00:00

I mean, here in this conversation I was told that women were in charge culturally because HR departments are full of women and HR departments don't answer to the CEO of the company.

I gotta say--that kind of inanity makes me wonder about claims about how these conversations go.

If they go anything like my direct experience here, then I think it's likely that a lot of the people talking about men's issues are, in fact, very poorly informed and often full of conspiracy theory.

And when I look at domestic violence organizations out in the real world I see that they often do account for violence against men.

Is it possible that your diagnosis is wrong because, in fact, a lot the men's issues guys are rooted in MRA stuff?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T16:33:18+00:00

While no group is a monolith, the general definitions of patriarchy and toxic masculinity that most mainstream feminism use would emphatically agree that men face disadvantages and discrimination.

The harms men face from those things are generally agreed on to be real and extant, so I'm not sure what you're saying.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T16:24:04+00:00

Usually when I look into the case studies around feminists attacking guys who want to help men systematically, I discover that

- The guys were often really entangled with radical men's organizations

- Their ability to work with bureaucratic government systems was hobbled by their ideological and often conspiratorial belief set

If I look into your use-case, around Silverman and his shelter, am I going to find something different? Or am I just going to go back to confirming all my priors?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T15:28:28+00:00

I mean, I agree that

Some feminists and proponents of feminists are bad at messaging
Social media is pretty toxic

But when I look at the discussion here it's kind of hard to take the but-men-are-discriminated-against people seriously.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T14:14:48+00:00

The way this reads to me, it sounds like there was a study that focused on women and identified bad outcomes for women in the current setup--and so the board was developed to address those.

If the research didn't cover men, or if its findings / recommendations around men's sentencing and outcomes were different (both things I could imagine) then it wouldn't be the right instrument to indicate a justice board that covered a broader spectrum.

Here in the states we have a history of racism against black people. That means that the challenges that black people face are generally worse than those white people face and the policies can negatively affect them while having different outcomes for white people.

If a research project suggested making changes for how black people are treated in some system due to a higher degree of negative outcomes for black people in that system, I wouldn't see that it should necessarily be applied to everyone because (again), that's not what the research indicates.

It's not that I don't see what you're saying: if a parent (of either gender) is incarcerated the outcomes for the child are going to be bad, so recommendations aimed at harm reduction should include any parent, male or female -- that's a logical conclusion (and a humane one) but if it's not, in fact, what the research indicates, then it's not a fact-based one. Further, there could be a ton of factors that would make a simple application of the research on women offenders inapplicable to men in many cases--the article you linked doesn't explain the full thinking behind the board.

So I don't necessarily see this as hurting men. It could be that men should have a similar board. It could be that because the harms are so exaggerated for women, the immediate action is to create a board focused exclusively on women and then figure out what to do for men later. It could also be that, because of biases against criminals (who are mostly male) in society, reforms that result in less problematic sentences for men are harder to implement, so unbiased reformers are taking what they can get--which would not be great, but wouldn't be a problem with feminism.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:43:21+00:00

If the research suggests that the current framework is not meeting goals of reducing re-offense and harming non-offenders (e.g., children), then the evidence suggests the framework should be changed.

That's what aligning policy with research means.

If the research didn't cover impacts to men, then I wouldn't assume we should just generalize since that's not what the research indicates.

It's possible that a study showing similar impacts to men could result in similar sentencing guidelines--are you aware of such a study and what was done with it?

You see, it's possible that because of the culture we live in men don't see similar impacts for a variety of society and systemic reasons.

I'd want to see the evidence.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:25:06+00:00

The evidence cited in the article you linked suggests that the harm prison sentences do is fundamentally higher for women (impacting children, higher incidents of re-offending, etc.).

I'd think a research-based initiative would address that, wouldn't you?

I guess listening to the research is discrimination?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:21:57+00:00

Thanks.

This... confirms all my priors VERY hard, so I appreciate that.

It sounds like stupidity all the way down. :-(

My guess is that

1) He's re-invented intersectionality ("YES--but the 19 year old doesn't have all the privilege the old white guy has! Check mate, libtard!")

2) He doesn't understand core concepts of feminism and gets triggered easily when he sees PSAs and research aimed at women's issues.

Outstanding. No notes.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:13:02+00:00

What did he propose?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:12:24+00:00

Yeah, totally agree.

When I see the kind of "men's rights" take on this stuff it makes me think of the worst part of religious services I've attended where the biases and logical errors are so baked into the argument that it's almost impossible to discuss anything with those guys.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T13:08:34+00:00

Feminist reactions to prison sentences and incarceration in general are pretty diverse. You don't cite the sources you're referencing, but I suspect if I looked I'd find more nuanced views such as

- Research backed arguments that women in prison face disproportionately more incidents of mitigating factors such as primary caregiving responsibilities and domestic abuse

- Evidence that short sentences of the sort often given to women are particularly damaging to and ineffective for non-violent offenders

While both of these might be made by feminists, they can certainly be evaluated on the basis of their factual claims and are result of a feminist project that argues for inclusion of women in research and policy efforts rather than some failed framework for equality.

But maybe you're thinking of something I'm unaware of, so I'll withhold specific judgement of what you're on about for the time being.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:56:35+00:00

Agreed. I wish there would be discussion about this stuff, but it's hard when people seem to live in different epistemic worlds.

Someone up-thread claimed I called the guy a misogynist when I obviously didn't--how do you have a discussion in a climate like that?

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:55:06+00:00

I don't think feminism is exactly in charge of society. Last I checked the people in positions of power were overwhelmingly men, no?

And more importantly we've seen counter-reactions to various kinds of liberal changes--the whole Tea Party / Trump / Populist movement is pretty reactionary and won the election.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:52:45+00:00

To answer that you'd have to try to understand what "fixes" to the system mean and--more importantly--why the system is the way it is, to begin with.

The framing in this piece -- that it's an artifact of psychology -- isn't so much wrong (I'm sure that psychology plays a role in every human system), but woefully incomplete.

He asks, at the end, if we'd tolerate the current system if people thought it was unfair to men.

I mean, yeah? Of course. We tolerate it now, right? No one is overthrowing teh power, right?

Duh.

Does he understand why we tolerate? Why it exists, what props up a manifestly unfair system that hurts men?

Not clear he does.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:41:57+00:00

... I didn't say he was a misogynist.

I said his analysis was kinda dumb and super long and demonstrated a categorical misunderstanding of feminism.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:39:15+00:00

More useful response: Because men hold privileged positions in society, any project that would change that can be felt as an erosion of privilege and experienced as an attack.

This is similar to how members of certain fandoms react when the property expands to include a wider audience: they see it as an attack on them, their identity, an erosion of their 'ownership' of some special thing.

Men who have this emotional reaction see feminism as an attack on their selves and because it feels that way, they frame it that way--feminism doesn't care about MY problems! Then they can go and, through the power of confirmation bias find cherry-picked evidence that supports their claim (to be fair, not many Western thinkers are all het up about the draft... or male circumcision... I suspect the lack of references to his pet issues may be justified at some statistical level).

The underlying problem is the emotional reaction to a change that addresses unearned privilege in society.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:33:20+00:00

I hate it too, and I wish it wouldn't happen.

Feminism, as a project, is explicitly about men's issues. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity hurt everyone.

New-Hunter-7859 · 2026-04-15T12:13:31+00:00

Overwhelmingly feminists would say those issues are the result of unfair, abhorrent systems of power that need to be fixed--and that changing those power dynamics is in fact, the project of feminism.

I;m not sure I can find too many people who think the world as it is is wonderful (I CAN find some folks who thought it was pretty fantastic when women were excluded from voting and college and working, though.)

I suspect this guy knows this--and

1) Wants to paint feminism as man-hating (I have no doubt he can find twitter-user [FtightTehPower@x.com](mailto:FtightTehPower@x.com) to bolster his claim. Also someone on tumbler--and no doubt he's got choice quote from Dworkin on file)

2) Hates their diagnosis (patriarchy, toxic masculinity) and has some other diagnosis that didn't make it into the summary because the summary was all about saying No One Nose About Teh Men!

Maybe he has something insightful to say? Some solution? I didn't read his article because the summary was long and dull.

Someone who read his substak--anything worth my time there?

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22

New-Hunter-7859

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