In ~2020 we witnessed the Men’s/Women’s World Cup Scandal. The US Men’s Soccer team had failed to qualify for the previous World Cup, whereas the US Women’s Soccer team had won theirs! And yet the women were paid less that season after winning than the men were paid after failing to qualify. There was Discourse.
I was in the car listening to NPR, pulling out of the parking lot of a glass supplier when my world shattered again.3 One of the NPR leftist commenters said roughly ~‘One can propose that the mens team and womens team play against each other to sort this out—’
At which point I mentally pumped my fist in the air and cheered. I had been thinking exactly this for WEEKS. I couldn’t quite understand why no one had said it! As we all know, men and women are largely undifferentiated. Soccer is a perfect example of this, because the sport doesn’t allow men to use their upper-body strength advantage at all. The one thing that makes men stand out is neutralized here, and a direct competition would put this thing to rest and humiliate all the sexists. I smiled and waited to see how the right-wing asshat would squirm out of having to endorse a match that we all knew would shut him up.
The left-wing commentator continued ’—is what one would say if one is a right-wing deplorable that just wants to laugh while humiliating those that are already oppressed. Naturally none of us would ever propose such a thing, we aren’t horrible people. Here’s what they get wrong…”
I didn’t hear any more after that, because my world had shattered again. A proponent of my side was not only admitting that the women’s team would lose badly, but that everyone knew and had always known that the women’s team would lose badly, so the only reason one would even suggest such a thing was to humiliate them.
Here I was, in my late 30s, still believing that men and women are basically the same, like a fucking chump. Do these people realize how much of my life, my personal and public decisions, my views of my fellow man and my plans for the future, were predicated on this being actually true? Not a single person had ever once bothered to take me aside and whisper “Hey, we know this isn’t actually true, we’re just acting this way because it leads to better outcomes for society, on net, if we do. Obviously we make exceptions for the places where the literal truth is important. Welcome to the secret club, don’t tell the kids.”
These were the people who always had told me men and women are equal in all things, explicitly saying that anyone who actually really believed this was a deplorable right-wing troll. I could taste the betrayal in my mouth. It tasted of bile. How had this happened to me again?
A couple years prior I had lost a woman I dearly loved, as well as the associated friend group, when I had Not Gotten The Joke about a different belief and accidentally acted as if I believed something that everyone agreed to say was true was Actually True4. I didn’t understand what had happened back then. Now it was starting to make sense. I was too damn trusting and autistic to make a reliable ally in a world bereft of truth.
The link in the OP explains it: