@Cathy
Writer: Sex and the State Thinkie, funny, curious
cathyreisenwitz.substack.comAnd for you anti-porn feminists, Log Cabin Republicans, and modesty/purity culture Christians, let me assure you. No amount of compliance will keep you safe from the kind of person who is willing to shame or force you into sexual compliance.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Today I want to talk about the claim that more pregnant women die by homicide than by any other means.
Homicide is not the leading cause of death for pregnant women
On occasion, I hear something from someone I agree with that’s so disconnected from my understanding of consensus reality that I’m immediately skeptical.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
There are a lot of morally dubious ways to earn money. Blaming bad marriages entirely on the woman is a unique level of stupid, boring, and evil.
The Happy Wife School
The last thing most women need is to be told to take responsibility for more of men’s shit.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I don’t remember when I first heard that we punish men more for acting like women than we punish women for acting like men. Did I balk back then?
Yes, we punish men more for doing gender wrong
When I tell people that it’s harder to be gender non-conforming as a man, they often don’t believe me.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Even that, however, isn’t my main objection. My main objection to that advice is that I think it’s most likely — as has been the case with regard to DEI, environmentalism, and most other corporate efforts to do anything other than maximize returns to shareholders — to accomplish neither.
There’s actually a good reason work is so family unfriendly
Narcissism gets a bad rap.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I enjoyed the recent Bloomberg analysis of nine podcasters who are “mobilizing America’s men to lean right.” I also think it misses a point that is at least as important as the one it makes.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
When voters are wrong, parties have three moves with any real likelihood of success:
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
while bottom-half men beat each other up for acting like pussies, for top-half men, it’s a flex.
Femininity is a flex for top-half men
When I write that society punishes men far more for performing femininity than women for performing masculinity, I often get a “huh?” response.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
It is true that women killed marriage. I wrote about it. But “female affluence” as Winship writes, can’t be the main culprit. We know this because the richest women are most likely to get, and stay, married. It’s poor women who end up single. Single mothers are overwhelmingly poor.
Yes, male wages explain marriage declines
Back in my day, conservative think tanks would publish content that amounted to “We should shame and/or criminalize poor women into getting married before having kids because they are too stupid to realize that’s what they should do.”
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I don’t expect many bottom-half men are reading me. Imagine a guy saying “Gotta go [insert slur here], there’s a new Sex and the State” as he puts down his Xbox controller. If I were smart, I’d try harder to build and monetize an audience of bottom-half men.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
The “intellectual” backbone of “blackpill” ideology is that this fact, combined with women’s super high looks requirements, means ugly men will never receive the sex, love, and connection they crave, no matter what they do.
No, incels, women are not “too shallow”
When we were in high school, one of my friends got a lot of male attention.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
women are also big enforcers of the “must want sex all the time” masculinity norm.
Why women enforce the “must want sex all the time” masculinity norm
New Year’s Eve was amazing.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
We’ve known for decades that poverty is an adverse childhood experience, as is growing up in a low-opportunity neighborhood and being raised by a single parent. The fact that these disadvantages impact boys more than girls is a more recent finding.
Boys are more delicate than girls
January is Poverty Awareness Month.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I’m not going to stand idly by while you try to co-opt and rebrand “women’s sex appeal.” I’ll be damned if I let the idea that “hot women are right-coded” stand. Hot women are left-coded, damn it. Who’s with me?
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Maybe my whole project of trying to understand and empathize with authoritarians is really, or at least equally, me trying to understand and empathize with that part of my younger self, and with the parts of myself that arose to keep her alive and don’t always know whether they’re still needed.
My cognitive dissonance got louder than my survival instinct
By the time I’m done writing about The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church I’ll have accidentally written my own disjointed, ADHD-as-hell book on the topic. Today, I want to talk about one line: “We’re not hurting because we didn’t follow the rules. We’re hurting because we did follow the rules.”
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
The only place these men feel like they can safely show vulnerability is an incel forum. Other self-described incels are the only people with whom these men feel safe discussing their feelings. They have no one else in their lives with whom they feel like they can talk about their uncomfortable, un-masculine feelings.
Western masculinity as Chinese foot binding
I wanted to double-check my understanding of the origins of calling therapists and psychiatrists “shrinks” or “head shrinkers.” Quora says it refers to the tribal custom, which required opening up the heads and scooping out the insides for shrinking.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
More often than not, I find that once I understand another person’s context, their “bad decisions” start to look a lot more like a person doing the best they can under constraints I couldn’t necessarily see or appreciate from the outside.
Self-serving bias, ingroup bias, and what the left forgets about bottom-half men
I just heard a fact I can’t stop thinking about.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
“So tell me why Men would want to get married again?” The average married man lives longer, is healthier, is less lonely, earns more money, and has more sex than the average single man. When the average man marries, his income increases.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I’m about to write a whole-ass post about some chat room drama. Am I embarrassed about this? Not as much as I should be.
Abolishing gender is not transphobic!
I’m about to write a whole-ass post about some chat room drama.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Rather than make marriage more appealing or find another institution to support, conservatives want women to just go back to when we had less say in the matter. To understand how equality killed marriage, it’s important to know that declining marriage is a primarily bottom-half phenomenon.
Us feminists really did kill marriage
Marriage rates are declining in the US (and other developed economies).
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
My high school interest in feminism mostly consisted of reading BUST and Bitch magazines along with my mom’s copies of Backlash and Reviving Ophelia. Reading feminists circa 2011/2012 led me to believe that a lot of women (or at least a lot of feminists) seemed to care a great deal about the gender pay gap.
How the gender pay gap gave me empathy for men
A lot of people, especially women and leftists, are very unsympathetic about the epidemic of male loneliness.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I recently realized that if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a feminist and an internet public intellectual it’s that other feminists and internet public intellectuals are definitely to blame.
Why “the media” misleads everyone about feminism
I used to wonder why (depending on the poll), most Americans refuse to self-identify as a feminist.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Today I know better and I do better (I only spend time with men who love and value intelligence on everyone regardless of gender).
I am the solution to polarization
Too many of us, metaphorically or literally, refuse to share a cabin with the “other side.”
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
You know how people who need more to do are constantly defining and redefining “white,” “straight,” and even “queer?” In the same way, radfems love to fight about the definition of “a woman.” Many, if not most, radfems reject people for femaledom based on the genitals they were born with and what they choose to do with their genitals in adulthood.
Radical feminism is not the most feminist kind of feminism
Before I go any further, I want to make a case for why I think any of what follows matters.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Let’s get one thing out of the way, right at the top. I am a gender traitor. I’m an NLOG if ever there were one.
Why I buy the male victimhood narrative
Let’s get one thing out of the way, right at the top.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Instead of helping to build a world in which a person’s character is more important than their genitals and every person has value and is safe even when what they have to offer the market economy isn’t as valuable as it once was, the right is telling these men that they only way they can hope to have decent lives is to be able to say “Your body, my choice” to the women around them.
Too many of you care too much about sex
I’ve been writing a blog since 2012 called Sex and the State and I think a lot of you need to calm down about sex.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
You can tell it’s mostly men talking, because they’re not really talking about how much ass pregnancy, childbirth, and taking care of babies fucking sucks. And unlike microchips or televisions, there’s no clear path whereby technological innovation vastly streamlines the making-more-humans process. Romanian orphanages tried to improve productivity. The results were pretty fucking bad. We would need a Westworld level of robotics and AI for that to have any possibility of working.
What I learned from being a nanny for a week
Even as I told people my plans, to a person, they were like, “Really?
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
The problem with positive masculinity is that it can’t solve the underlying problem that Whippman kept seeing in her interviews with boys for her book. Men and boys are under constant, severe pressure to consistently, flawlessly perform their gender. To solve that problem, we’re going to need to abolish masculinity.
The New York Times is lowkey anti-gender
In an October 2024 essay, Ruth Whippman took aim at “positive masculinity.” Traits we tend to associate with traditional masculinity are fine, according to Whippman.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
It’s come to my attention that some of you bitches somehow believe that, without feminism, you’d be married to an aristocratic landowner and not a subsistence farmer like 99.999% of people before the Industrial Revolution set in motion a chain of events that led to your email job. Listen, sis. No ones likes meetings. But being an exhausted weaver of mediocre talent with nine surviving children out of 15 births is not an upgrade. As Freddie de Boer recently put it, “We live in a country with boz
A shockingly ignorant timeline
I don’t want to look at or think about Russia any more than you do.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
according to datepsych, the fact that average family size is shrinking worldwide explains more of the TFR declines than childlessness. (I’d actually already read that somewhere else and apparently forgotten it.) Which means non-breeders (whether male or female, bottom- or top-half) can’t be the main culprits behind the baby bust.
I was wrong about bottom-half men causing low fertility
The philosopher known as @datepsych just, for the approximately millionth time, once again blew my fukin mind.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since I published Men need women more than women need men. Since then, many more prominent thinkers have begun talking about the facts, causes, and consequences of male malaise.
Most women don't realize how much dating sucks for men
I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since I published Men need women more than women need men. Since then, many more prominent thinkers have begun talking about the facts, causes, and consequences of male malaise.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Until someone makes a good argument otherwise, I’m personally over gender as a concept. I don’t understand what the ROI is on assigning a genital configuration to bathing, dressing nice, and going to therapy. It seems, to me, like everyone could benefit from doing these things on a pretty regular basis. But if you do support the concept of gender and the institution of marriage, this is a problem you would probably do well to solve. Good luck.
Why real men look like trash
When I shared Most women don't realize how much dating sucks for men on Twitter my friend Nia responded thoughtfully.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
No amount of gay-bashing will get us back to a post-war economy. You would need to bash the entire developing world’s manufacturing capacity to do that. And not with tariffs. With bombs.
Demand for male breadwinners exceeds supply
There’s a ton of interesting data in Pew’s recent report: How Americans See Men and Masculinity (via a recent post by Dr.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I’ve heard it said that the past is foreign country. The thought occurred to me a little while watching the Ryan Murphy version of the Mendendez brothers case, and then screamed at me while watching the Netflix documentary afterward.
Conservatives are doomed to long for what they think is history
I’ve heard it said that the past is foreign country.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Since intelligence is linked to innovation and innovation creates wealth, you could reasonably predict that a majority-female society would be poorer. Then again, maybe the quality of the soil is more important than the quality of the seed.
What is the point of men?
I recently asked y’all whether masculinity has any purpose that doesn’t ultimately rest on reifying a gender hierarchy.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
I agree with Douthat that gender matters for this election.
What's the point of masculinity?
Why is the right’s version of masculinity so bad?
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
And I fundamentally disagree with the notion that if people don’t live in mortal fear of missing one paycheck they simply won’t work. People want to work. People want to be productive and make money and contribute to society and have a sense of purpose for their lives. They do not want to have to work alongside their rapists.
The trouble with free tampons
I am upset that anti-trans legislation is imperiling bills that put tampons and pads in school bathrooms for two reasons.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Over the past 15 years, parental estrangement has rapidly become a focus for research. In most cases, adult children distance themselves from their parents.
The asshole theory of fertility
I have a theory about declining fertility.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
And yet at the same time I would like to, shall we say, problematize the narrative that the important dichotomy is centrists/moderates/corporatists versus anarchists/radicals/progressives.
I'm a radical firebrand for basic economic literacy
Inside me, my babies, are, as always, two wolves.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
What I missed in terms of parties I made up for in terms of dinners with the CNL and PPI folks.
DNC thots
Yesterday I wrote my political analysis of the DNC. Today’s my diary entry.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
So, how did the Democratic Party do overall with this convention? Logistically, bad.
Top-level thoughts on the 2024 DNC
What do I want to say about the Democratic National Convention?
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Read
Watch men lose status to women in five charts
In our quest to figure out why the GOP is going so hard on violent, overt misogyny, we’ve established a few things.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Fear-based messaging is very popular in public health, despite the paucity of compelling evidence that it works (like many aspects of US healthcare). While this isn’t great for public health, it does mean that we have reams of data on it.
The One-Hour Nurse Visits That Let Insurers Collect $15 Billion From Medicare
Information gathered from Medicare Advantage patients in their homes triggered extra payments; ‘It made me cringe’
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Kamala Harris is just a Bay Area moderate. Which, in national politics, makes her a normal, non-MAGA Republican.
Kamala Harris is a normal Republican
In 2019, I wrote my first guest post for Maggie McNeill’s excellent blog, The Honest Courtesan. I was ready to come out publicly as a former (at the time, and now again) sex worker. I couldn’t think of a better venue, helmed by such a formidable writer, mentor, and friend. I also announced my move to Substack in that post.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Recently, my very own father put forth a super interesting hypothesis. Maybe parental age is playing a part in men’s poorer performance.
Parental age might explain why boys and men are failing
Men, on average, aren’t doing too hot. Their economic prospects are looking particularly bad. Recently, my very own father put forth a super interesting hypothesis. Maybe parental age is playing a part in men’s poorer performance. Here’s what the evidence indicates:
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
And then, it hit me (unlike a certain someone). I’m writing what is, at least to some extent, a national politics blog while at the same time genuinely believing, and mostly living, the idea that I and the vast majority of everyone else should spend 99% of the time, energy, and money we’re currently putting toward following national politics toward either actually participating in local politics or some other more fun, less harmful hobby.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
But what if women are starting to act more like men, on average? Won’t that eliminate our advantage? It would. But I don’t see good evidence to indicate that’s the case. I did find a 2019 study showing that, if anything, women’s social advantage over men is actually growing.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
A 2010 study showed that adding more intelligent people to a group doesn’t measurably change the group’s collective intelligence. But groups with more women had higher collective intelligence.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
Married women, as I’ve written, go to tremendous lengths to support the gender status hierarchy.
Lessons in gender discrimination: The Apple lawsuit
Two women are suing Apple for alleged gender pay discrimination. Their lawyers claim that Apple pays women less than men for similar work and that Apple performance reviews consistently rate men higher in leadership and teamwork. This, my babies, is as good a time as any for Mother (me) to climb back up on her (my) well-worn “abolish gender” soapbox.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
To put it bluntly, the privileged value purity. The put-upon realize that progress requires power.
Lefties and Democrats: It's time to embrace power
I’m currently reading The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Book 4. The Center for New Liberalism steering committee also just elected me Chair. Most importantly, my dad recently called me a leader. Thus, I’m thinking about leadership even more than usual lately.
cathyreisenwitz.substack.com
