Why Are Privileged Women The Most Pessimistic?
In a Nutshell
Privileged young women exhibit high financial cynicism and pessimism—despite advantages like lower unemployment and the "women are wonderful effect"—due to leveling strategies (per Joyce Benenson), inward rumination amplified by higher education and social media, and unacknowledged pretty privilege that clashes with motherhood's beauty toll. Cognitive biases favor seeing women as victims (not agents), repackage protectiveness as oppression, and reward introspection over action, while social media turns women into self-optimizing "products" prioritizing mate attraction over reproduction. This creates a mismatch: evolutionary drives for high mate value now fuel reluctance to have kids, with relationships as online accessories rather than paths to family.
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Young men are now more likely to be unemployed than young women. Yet, young women are far more financially cynical, 21 points less likely than young men to believe they will ever out-earn their parents. White women are more likely to feel the country is racist than their non-white middle-class partners.
You white women are awful.
Wonder if this relates to finding where the only way women could be agentic was on behalf of someone else. More successful you are or more you have going in your favor, the only way to be agentic is to be deeply caring. Ethnographies on adolescent girls show only ones allowed to be popular were super nice, overd delivering on kindness to be allowed to be popular. Same pattern: women do this so envy or resentment of other women won't bring them down.
Joyce Benenson has paper on leveling showing women more likely to use leveling strategy where they say we should all be equal when someone is surpassing them. Once you have all these things operating in your favor, you have to be like a martyr to continue on. Otherwise, people might resent you.
Where do you get your victimhood points from?
Someone replied to Rob Henderson: middle class hay fever, Rob. When no high load of parasites, people’s immune system gets bored and starts looking for things to react to, get allergies to dust and pollen. When middle class has no threats, their threat system gets bored and starts looking for trivial things to blow out of proportion. White privilege, gender identity, ultra-processed foods—it’s all pollen. You don’t have oat milk, you’re traumatizing me. No explicit segregation and blatant racism, sensitivity to microaggressions increases.
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