Audrey Pollnow

@GovKathyHochul please veto S-138, which would enable the laxest MAiD program in the US: No wait period. No psych screening. Incredibly lax oversight. the American Medical Association has condemned MAiD the bill is ableist & bad for the vulnerable. And it legalizes su***de. 1/2

If you're in NYC this looks amazing

@agostino_harry Hope to, but TBD!

@AudreyPollnow Wish I could make it, but will you be at Encounter again this year?

If you're in NYC, come hear me talk tonight! 7pm at the KGB bar tickets below

So in your view: each woman has a subconscious view of which status hierarchy is the *real* one and then she's typically attracted to the highest status man w / in this hierarchy? The thing I find odd about this is that it's unfalsifiable If one woman prefers moody musicians and another prefers cheerful normies, on your view we have to say that this is just about one woman perceiving the moody byronic status hierarchy as being the *real* one. But it would be just as coherent (& I think more parsimonious) to go the other way: to say that some women find things *particularly attractive* (I mean, I don't disagree with you that status is a real thing and that it makes people salient; it just seems odd to frame it as the only thing or even the main thing.)

@AudreyPollnow There is no figuring it out - it's just attraction. There's a reason you're attracted to Person X and not Person Y, but how often do you sit down and think about why?

A happy & egalitarian marriage involves *both people* marrying up — just along different axes. There are *many axes* but gestation & income are both v salient ones. Since 100% of ppl who can gestate are women, if we want more egalitarian marriages, men need something too. 1/n

But how can a woman figure out which of the guys she has access to are highest status, when these guys belong to overlapping status hierarchies? In marrying one of them she will very likely come to belong to a social world in which he is higher status than the others she was considering. But that would have happened with the other ones, if she'd married them instead! I agree that within a given space high-status guys typically get more attention (both from women and from men) and that low status guys seem invisible. But even within a *given group of people* there are often lots of overlapping status hierarchies. Status is not zero sum. daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/10/econom…

@AudreyPollnow Overlapping status hierarchies (or "local status") don't refute my idea - I included "access" for a reason! When I was a hotshot grad student I got a LOT of interest from classmates. Simultaneously in other contexts, where I had no status, I didn't get much attention at all.

@uncatherio I would agree with this. the central puzzle is basically that if we treat gestation as being a valuable contribution, is it more important that we achieve net equal contribution in every field or that we achieve net equal contribution overall (or maybe neither is important!)

@AudreyPollnow noting character limits, imo in 2, "are" is doing too much work: people are not necessarily valued according to the value of their contributions. "on net, the contributions of each sex are of equal value" would scan better for me

The following things cannot all be true: 1. gestation is a valuable contribution to socciety 2. the sexes are equally valuable 3. women achieve parity w men in every important field So: which one are you willing to give up?

I think it's more complicated than this. Most men aren't trying to marry the most beautiful woman they can *at all costs*. If they are trying to "optimize for beauty" it's usually within a subset of the women who'd be willing to marry them. (Eg most men want to avoid marrying women who are really messed up in certain ways, or who have radically different goals for their life, or who don't speak the same language as them — even if those women are very beautiful.) I also think the thing about status is a lot more complicated than this. For one thing, there are just lots of different overlapping status hierarchies. If a woman is deciding whether to date a cowboy who rides bulls in the rodeo, or a really brilliant grad student, or a successful finance bro... each of these guys is high status in a different way. In the circles they run in, they will probably be more respected than their rivals, but there isn't some meta status hierarchy that allows us to assess their "real" status. I agree that all-else-being-equal women are often attracted to high status guys. But it's also really hard to tease out correlation / causation here: — AFAICT men are more obsessed with male status than women are. This means that men who feel "low-status" are often—*as a result of this feeling*—not doing as well, whereas *feeling high status* makes it more likely that a given man will be confident, cheerful, energetic, etc. To what extent are women responding to status, vs responding to male flourishing that is downstream of male status? (There's no way to know.) —It seems to me that women care a lot about sincerity-of-interest. Most women do not like to feel like their husband was settling when he chose to marry them (just as men don't like to feel like their wives were settling). Everyone likes to feel that they're the one their spouse would choose *out of every possible person.* Being "high status" (ie desirably by lots of ppl) gives extra credibility to this. Bc a "high status" guy usually could date other people. To what extent are women attracted to "high status" vs attracted to a marriage where they can trust that their spouse is really attracted to them?

@AudreyPollnow I don't understand this argument from either side. Women aren't "hypergamous" - they're attracted to status. They're trying to marry the highest status guy they can access just like guys are trying to marry the most beautiful woman they can access.

So I think talk of M-F exchange rate is only fruitful negatively. That is, it can show us that something has gone wrong. Specifically, if one sex can provide something that is incommensurable+valuable the other sex should be able to do at least one of: 1. provide more value along some axis (eg most men can be breadwinners) 2. provide something incommensurable (eg most men can physically protect home from invaders) If this doesn't happen, it becomes really hard for people to marry

@AudreyPollnow Maybe you answer in the piece (it's paywalled), but it's unclear to me what work is done by insisting on equality rather than incommensurability. Main difference I can see is that "equality" suggests an M-F exchange rate, which doesn't strike me as a fruitful line of inquiry.

Yes, these all look like patriarchy — and yes, there are ways this can go badly wrong But this stuff is not all zero sum We need to develop ways to appreciate men-qua-men (from which women will be excluded) & vice versa 4/n

It could be more income (eg a setup where men on average significantly outearn women) It could also be an unpaid but distinctively masculine contribution, eg hard physical labor Or it could be some kind of distintivelyl masculine prestige 3/n

This is a q everyone should be willing to answer

Women make 100% of the gestational contribution to society. If men are equal to women they should also be allowed to contribute in a distinctive way.

“Another solution would be to change anti-discrimination law to allow sex-segregated spaces.” Read Audrey Pollnow's @AudreyPollnow piece in COMPACT: compactmag.com/article/the-ne…

I'll be on this panel on Saturday. Please come, if you're in NYC!

@GovKathyHochul, please veto MAiD today

Offering MAiD devalues the lives of the terminally ill. And it pressures them to die. Ppl usually don't request MAiD for pain. Instead, they want to avoid disability & being a "burden." But the terminally ill are not a "burden"; their lives are incredibly valuable.

“Gov. Hochul, please tell terminally ill New Yorkers the truth: Their lives are incredibly valuable. And to do this, you’ll need to veto MAiD in New York.” @AudreyPollnow firstthings.com/governor-hochu…