by neutronicus | 2025-11-13 18:42:55+00:00
"Grow up", no. In college 2006-2010 none of this was in the zeitgeist. In middle school in the 90s and aughts we (I included) casually used slurs that would get your business boycotted if you used them today.

I first became of it online (through ShitRedditSays, for anyone who remembers that) ~2011. Studying Physics in graduate school 2012-2018 my female contemporaries used basically the same lexicon I'd become familiar with through lurking online gender wars ("patriarchy", "male privilege", "rape culture").

In parallel to this I was involved with a competitive card game community that was initially composed of standard gamer dude types unfamiliar with the above lexicon but that eventually became very proud (in online spaces) of adopting it. This transition was sort of messy - old-guard gamer-dude types were often uncomfortable with their freshly-politicized gaming community and left for other communities. There was more ... jejune drama where guys liked their semi-horny anime-girl card-game accoutrements (playmats, card sleeves) and there was much bickering over the decision to ban this type of thing. And then, in-my-view more-serious drama over whether to ban MAGA attire from tournaments. Pre-Trump-victory people thought it was funny to do it ironically, afterwards there was again all kinds of bickering of how much MAGA stuff needed to be banned in order for the community to be sufficiently LGBT/minority-inclusive. "All of it" was the viewpoint that eventually won out. A lot of this was online but everybody had thoughts on it and talked about it at in-person tournaments, of which I attended a lot.

In general there was an implicit invitation for young men like myself to learn this lexicon and accompanying intellectual framework and distinguish ourselves from "incels" (this term was sort of late in the game, I guess its predecessor was "neckbeard"? who remembers) by using it frequently and taking the opportunity to declaim its importance to other young men who weren't yet on board. Public and vitriolic denunciation of the gaming community was expected. You can probably tell from my above recap that I engaged with all this enough to understand the main perspectives being voiced and restate them in a way that made me seem at least open-minded and thoughtful, if not fully convinced. I also believed at every point that this was pretty much necessary in order to be in good standing socially speaking.

This was pretty much orthogonal to getting laid, which occurred through other channels and with women who didn't seem particularly aware of any of this (or, in the case of my now-wife, just not all that bought-in).

I am 37 and now married with kids and the vibe has changed a lot. Women of my acquaintance use these terms a lot less but when they are used they are completely uncontroversial. Husbands now have more right to kind of push back on the whole intellectual superstructure in spots without being slapped down. Having young sons changes the texture of things, as does living in a city (Baltimore) where young (black) men are mistreated in ways that privileged women feel duty-bound to confront and discuss.

So. w/r/t your question.

That specific framing is hyperbolic.

But I do think that I viewed as necessary for me to publicly affirm my unconscious participation in Patriarchy and Rape Culture, and the importance of educating other young men on these topics, and the importance of participating in the ostracism of young men who didn't display openness to making the same kinds of affirmations, for a good decade or so of my life. I also think that the necessity I describe was something that came primarily from online spaces and bled over to interactions with hyper-online people (Physics grad students and competitive card game players). Make of that what you will.