First up, a guy does a “social experiment” where he goes to a public place and just sticks out his hand to see who will shake it. The video is obviously edited, and the audio is replaced with a rather irritating song, so a lot of the context is lost. But what appears to happen is that men will shake his hand, and women won’t. What the *actual* ratios are is of course unknowable without the full video, but undoubtedly there is a distinct difference.

@thenotoriousalvin

Man vs woman

♬ Ke$ha – Die Young – 辰歌

Had my first experience of this particular video been the video itself, my reaction would have been a kinda bland “huh,” then I would have gone back to CAD drafting and forgotten it. But I first learned of it after having been randomly directed to this “think piece” reacting to the video:

What Men Don’t Get About Street Harassment

Where we learned that it is good and proper for all women to fear and distrust all men, and it is stupid of men to not automatically agree with the rightness of that position. But more telling – or at least more directly to the point – was one of the comments on the original TikTok video:

Women know that a handshake is never just a handshake when it comes to strange men. Don’t give ‘em anything. Don’t engage.

Don’t engage with men you do not know. Greeeeeaaaat. That will do wonders for the future of the species. But what do you want to bet that that same person might well be all about hookup culture, and is seriously upset that overturning Roe might cause her to have to change her behavioral plans?

Nobody is obligated to shake hands with anybody, certainly not strangers. It’s just a little odd that men are more trusting than women, and that this difference in trust is used as an excuse to cut off the possibility of human interaction. Far more often than seems good for the species I’ve heard or read someone tell a man who has asked about how to approach a woman he finds interesting: “leave her alone.”

And thus we end up with this…

… and wonder why some guys go buggo and shoot up schools.

Who benefits from a culture where women are told to distrust and fear men, and men are conditioned to avoid interacting with women? The makers of video games, I suppose. Whoever ends up creating the first truly successful fembot will make a mint. The leaders of nations, cultures or subcultures that see the West as an impediment or an enemy and who don’t engage in this sort of thing will see this as an absolute win.

Another point: does this finally, at long last, provide an objective, scientific definition of “what is a woman?” “A woman is someone who will avoid a handshake with a stranger.” Unless we find that a woman will shake hands with a woman. Then we’re sucked back into the philosophical quandary. What if the original creator of the video goes and does it again, but this time identifies as a woman?