Weekly Digest: Indicators of Interest
Welcome to my weekly digest for June 23, 2023, with the best articles from around the web and a roundup of my recent writings and appearances.
Indicators of Interest
My Tuesday post on why there are plenty of good fish in the sea generated a lot of discussion. One observation I made in particular drew a lot of commentary on Twitter and by email. It was my line that, “I have noticed that non-religious women give off indicators of interest to men they’d welcome conversation, etc. with, whereas Christian women don’t seem to do this nearly as much.”
I had men online tell me they’ve seen the same thing, and multiple women chiming in to say that they had been told growing up that it was a sin to flirt with a man. These observations came from Catholics as well as evangelicals. One female reader emailed me with her story on this:
Your 4th bullet point particularly resonated with me. In the Christian circles where I grew up, girls were discouraged from showing interest in men. It might be rooted in ideas about gender roles where men are supposed to be the leader and initiate the relationship. But that is kind of unfair and puts too much of a burden on the man. There's also some shaming of women who do show overt interest in men. I've heard pretty nasty comments.
When I was in my late twenties I read a book called It’s Just a Date by Greg Behrendt. It's a secular book and has lots of bad advice but it did contain one important truth: if you're a woman who is interested in a guy, you need to make that extremely clear to him. Men are insecure and they won't ask you out unless they are 100% sure the answer will be 'yes.' Reading that book blew my mind. It was completely contrary to everything I'd believed about dating. But I started implementing the ideas and suddenly got asked out a lot more than I had been before. I met my husband during that time.
Please Helps Us Take Advantage of an American Reformer Challenge Grant
American Reformer, the Protestant non-profit where I’m a senior fellow, received a special matching grant. This week only, a donor will match any gift made to American Reformer up to a total of $75,000. For those of you who’ve benefited from the American Reformer Journal, or have been encouraged by our reform work at places like Grove City or the SBC, now is an ideal time to give over at our donation page. Thanks for your support.
The Disappearing Gender Gap in Religion
Ryan Burge has a new data driven post out on how the gender gap in religion has disappeared
But then when we start examining the youngest adults (those born in 1990 or later), the lines begin to intersect. That’s especially clear along the bottom row. Among those born around 2000, the gap has essentially disappeared - women are just as likely to be nones as men. This same general trend is evident in the last three election years of data. It’s hard to believe that it’s just noise when it’s so replicable.
One of the main social science surveys, the GSS, actually shows that younger women are less likely to be religious than younger men.
Very interesting stuff as always from Burge.
Best of the Web
This is just one of the many stories we see in the media about adults who enjoy the pastimes of children. WSJ: The New Night Out: Adults-Only Bouncy Houses
Fox News: Top Army official blames anti-woke rhetoric of right for severe recruiting crisis - I had planned to write a post on this topic this week, but seem to have picked up in some of virus. Maybe next week.
Daily Mail: American Medical Association says BMI is 'racist' because measurement was designed based on white bodies in the 19th century - racism is all, all is racism.
NY Post: Number of teens who ‘don’t enjoy life’ has doubled with social media. The article includes this scary chart that went viral on twitter.
New Content and Media Mentions
I got mentions this week in the Federalist and American Reformer.
My podcast this week was about how structural forces actually do affect individual and group outcomes. A lot of conservatives reject the idea of structural factors because it sounds Marxist or because of how the left makes use of them. But the reality is that societal structures play a huge role in how things play out. Jake Meador wrote a nice piece related to that this week talking about gambling.
Paid subscribers can read the transcript.
You can subscribe to my podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
On the idea that rightist objections to Woke are driving the recruiting crisis, I recall that some data-minded individual on the right (Lyman Stone?) presented some pretty persuasive evidence that it's not really true, that a much greater driver is decline of patriotism and trust in the military on the left. I just took a look for that argument, can't seem to find it, but would recommend taking it seriously.
IIRC the idea is that increasing distrust in the military on the right is "very online" and concentrated among the sort of people who are unlikely to join the military or encourage their kids to do so in the first place. Which, to be sure, is a group that includes myself. Meanwhile the decline among Democrat-leaning young people is extremely broad-based.
The collapse of Afghanistan was a disaster that I can't stop thinking about in terms of the corruption and incompetence it revealed about everyone involved in the US nation-building apparatus, including the military's top brass. My already-low opinion of them sunk further than I thought imaginable. But apparently I'm weird, everyone else has moved on, no one cares, no one involved was ever really even rebuked for it, so I don't know that it has damaged recruiting.
Regarding the adult bounce house article. When I was looking for spots to visit on our summer vacation I found a park geared towards preschoolers with nursery rhyme characters, etc. I noticed they were closing early one night during our trip to setup for a "party" night geared towards young adults. The lack of maturity in that generation is something I cannot understand.