On many an occasion I’ve been confronted with what I’ve observed to be the most common retort / rebuttal / “oh no you di’ int!” response to anything I propose about the nature of women. Oh, what the hell I’ll just let female commenter LivingTree illustrate it for you. From my Shallow post:
RM, did you actually mean what you said, “The single most common shaming tactic that women use against men is “shallow””? And you are upset about that? Thank god for that! What I wouldn’t do to be in mens’ shoes if that is the case.
The list of shaming tactics men use against women is so incredibly hostile and hurtful that I can hardly even repeat them, and it embarrasses me you’re even complaining about being called shallow. What I wouldn’t do to be called shallow instead of an fat ugly angry bitch gold-digging selfish feminist whore whenever I speak my mind about something controversial.
You guys have no idea how good you have it, if being chastized for being shallow is the biggest of your problems.
I’ve illustrated examples of feminine solipsism in many a post, but to really understand it, you have to read the responsive comments of women when they are presented with an objective observation, critical of women in General, how they solipsistically interpret that “attack”, personally reinterpret it in their personal experience, and then re-offer their interpretation as a generalized (i.e. universal) truth. I’ll let LivingTree continue to spell this out a bit more succinctly for you:
Oh, and incidentally, as a woman, I make my selection of relationship companions not based on looks, or money, or ambition, or how much they want me.
All those things are nice, and sometimes its enough to get a first date, but I my decision to continue dating someone based on one factor alone: does he have class?
Sadly, this means I don’t find I date much. They get weeded out really quickly. I suggest you guys do the same. There really isn’t much out there to choose from, among men or women I’m afraid, but if we are all making our mating decisions based on…looks, or money, or ambition, or how much they want us… well, then we are fostering bad character in each other.
Well, you get the picture. If you haven’t read Shallow yet, the real objective of that essay can be found in the first paragraph:
[ ]terms like “shallow” and “superficial” are contextually defined from a feminine perspective and, through shaming, serve to enforce feminine primacy.
Of course, nowhere in this article do I personalize my take on this particular shame; I’m only outlining a process and observing a feminine social convention. Obviously I don’t have to defend the observation, but LivingTree’s response highlights the typical female reaction to, an ego-invested, gender-specific offense. Process the objective in a personalized context, reinterpret the intent of that objectivity (imply bias), defend the feminine, defend the ego and then re-generalize the corrected universal interpretation in as feminine-positive a way as possible.
Oh, and if you can add a bit of masculine shame into that re-generalization (for daring to have been critically objective about the feminine in the first place), all the better.
Anyone who’s spent more than a month reading comment threads on manosphere blogs understand the reason NAWALT has become a trope worthy of its own acronym. “Not all women are like that,..” is the most common, default, go-to response for feminine personal offenses. You’ll have to forgive the $10 words I used in the previous paragraph, but they were necessary to describe a process that leads to NAWALT. Obviously women’s minds (or humans in general) don’t run through a mental algorithm step by step like this until they repurpose objectivity into a subjective universal truth they find more palatable. They don’t need to when the work is already done for them with the NAWALT response.
Just as with other feminine social convention like JBY (“Just be yourself”) or the classic LJBF (“Let’s just be friends“), NAWALT is a mental process that’s already been socialized by the feminine imperative for ease-of-use for women. Even when women are forced by incontrovertible evidence to concede an objective observation that is damaging to the feminine, NAWALT is useful.
It’s usually at this point of concession that the “ooh, ooh, men do it too!” reaction is enacted. If at some point during the process of personal reinterpretation a woman has the spark of real introspection, or is forced to acknowledge a not-so-flattering aspect of female nature men make in the objective, the next natural default is to compare that aspect to another male aspect – much as LivingTree attempts in her Shallow responses.
The rationale is one of “well, we women are bad, but you men are worse”, and simply sidesteps the original, objective point being made. Distracting the issue is just Bad Debate 101, but it’s interesting to see the natural fluidity (sans a real awareness of debate) with which feminized minds will resort to it. The issue isn’t the issue, the issue is that men do something similar so the offensive point is invalidated. Needless to say this does nothing to address the original point.
Not All Women Aren’t Like That
The usefulness of NAWALT really extends beyond just a defensive measure though. NAWALT is used and personalized in the hopes that women will generate sympathetic opinions of themselves (through personal anecdotes), and by extension women on whole, in defense of feminine perspectives. However, not all women are like that,..until all women are like that.
If I were to debate the uniquely feminine merits of feminine social conventions that cast women in a positive light (i.e. one that compliments the feminine imperative) then, all women are like that, and what’s better is that no man is ever like that. For example, if I were to bolster the myth of the feminine mystique on a forum or blog praising the aspects of women you would never read “yeah, but not all women are like that” nor would you read “yeah, but men do this too.” If I find something laudable about the feminine then no woman has an objective problem with “all women are like that” and there will never be a sympathetic counter-element that finds a corollary with anything men do. In other words, NAWALT (until they are), but men are always like that.