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The power of yin: wielded by women, invisible to men, and everywhere under attack

I want to conclude our interplanetary exploration of sex differences with one that’s of great interest to me personally: there seems to be little explicit advice on dating for women, and almost none of it is written by men. Despite my sincere attempts to write for both sexes, the percent of my own subscribers who are of the female persuasion is lower than when I used to write 4,000-word treatises on sports analytics.

There’s a lot written by and for women about the care and maintenance of existing relationships. But as far as getting into a relationship, almost all advice for them boils down to overcoming insecurity and selecting the right man. Very little is oriented towards changing oneself to become more desirable, even less towards proactively seeking the right man wherever he may be. In my review of How to Not Die Alone, I concluded:

The goal of How to Not Die Alone is not to change the reader, it’s to validate her.

I contrasted H2NDA with Mate: Become the Man Women Want, a self-help classic for men. Like most books in this genre, Mate takes it for granted that the reader of the book is merely the raw material from which a better man may be built. It contains long lists of verbs in the imperative: do this, and for fuck’s sake stop doing that.

When men give women dating advice, it often sounds very similar to what they’d tell a man. I could point to a lot of my own writing through the years, but Wesley Fenza volunteers to make the point explicitly:

The argument goes that as a heterosexual woman, your job is to attract men, and it’s the man’s job to approach you. If you subvert this by asking men out, you’re eliminating a key filter. [...]

This is, of course, ridiculous. First of all, it’s a terrible filter. […] Second of all, if this is a good filter, that means that you, a person who refuses to ask others out, are a low-effort, uninterested coward. Why would any man want to ask you out? […]

If you identify someone you want to date, or sleep with, or just think is cute, then for fuck’s sake, just ask them out.

— Just Ask People Out (for Women)

I’m sympathetic to Wesley and to all the other men who have complained that women are cowards for never making the first explicit move. I’m sympathetic because asking people out is, indeed, scary and hard and it would be much easier if someone else did it for you just this once. Yet I will propose a radical idea: the reason that most women don’t care for this sort of advice is neither that they are stupid nor cowards. It’s just not how women do things. Not only is it silly to resent Venusians for being from Venus, but the Venusian role is a crucial contributor to making relationships work, on par with the more explicitly active role of Martians.

Important caveat: #NotAllWomen. Wesley and I both know disproportionately more women who lean towards classically male approaches to dating, sexuality, self-improvement, and discourse. I have several female friends who have done well with an assertive and masculine approach to romance, though they do all seem to live in the Bay Area. Out of respect for them, instead of calling the different approaches to agency male and female I will use a different symbology.

Women don’t want action plans for self-transformation because that’s a yang thing. Yang decouples and acts. It draws back like a nocked arrow, identifies a target, and flies toward it, piercing the sky. That’s what guys keep asking me: forget where I am right now, tell me where I’ll find the girl and how to get her.

Yin works differently.

The Lunar Arts

Yin influences outcomes through receptivity, response, and subtle shaping. It sets the emotional tone and the context instead of decoupling from these. Yin gives reassurance or discouragement — to men, but also in some sense to the universe as a whole.

To male eyes, this often looks like women are trying to manifest outcomes through magical thinking alone, instead of deliberately pursuing or even asking for the thing they want. Women often complain: why won’t the right guy show up, why won’t the wrong guy leave, why won’t this guy change. A guy sees this and asks: why don’t YOU do something about it?

What men often miss is that magical manifestation is, in fact, extremely powerful. What women sometimes miss is that complaining about something manifests more of it, not less. Magic is powerful, but it’s not as reliable and easily controlled as men’s blunt tools.

Scott Alexander, an astute observer of people, describes the power of yin in Different Worlds:

Sometimes I write about discrimination, and people send me emails about their own experiences. Many sound like this real one from a woman who studied computer science at MIT and now works in the tech industry:

In my life, I have never been catcalled, inappropriately hit on, body-shamed, unwantedly touched in a sexual way, discouraged from a male-dominated field, told I couldn’t do something because it was a boy thing, or suffered from many other experiences that have traditionally served as examples as ways that women are less privileged. I have also never been shamed for not following gender norms (e.g. doing a bunch of math/science/CS stuff); instead I get encouraged and told that I’m a role model. I’ve never had problems going around wearing no make-up, a t-shirt, and cargo pants; but on the rare occasion that I do wear make-up / wear a dress, that’s completely socially acceptable…Hopefully my thoughts/experiences are helpful for your future social justice based discussions.

Other times they sound like the opposite [...] — a litany of constantly being put down, discriminated against, harassed, et cetera, across multiple jobs, at multiple companies, to the point where they complain it’s “endemic” [...]

I hunted down some of these people’s Facebook profiles to see if one group was consistently more attractive than the other. They weren’t. Nor is there any clear pattern in what industries or companies they work at, what position they’re in, or anything else like that. There isn’t even a consistent pattern in their politics. The woman I quote above mentions that she’s a feminist who believes discrimination is a major problem – which has only made it extra confusing to her that she never experiences any of it personally.

This night-and-day difference in outcomes isn’t all luck and circumstance. It’s a result of something the women are doing without directly aiming for it. One woman manifests discrimination and catcalling, another manifests friendly respect. Of course women would want to learn to control this power, not to give it up for yang.

Yin also has to do with the nature of female attraction itself, which is often reactive and unpredictable. A man will find many women physically attractive after a brief glance, which gives him both a clear target for direct action (to find out more and/or seduce her) and the motivation to do so.

In contrast, a female friend of mine says that she finds most men unattractive: either dull or disloyal, emotionally immature, and blind to their own faults. For a man to be seen in a different light requires serendipity: an unusual situation where he can prove himself, or being vouched for by trusted friends. These situations can’t be forced.

Here’s how my friend describes it:

[women] have to resort to more yin approaches because they can't control their attraction

men can play a numbers game and find someone

but women are attracted to the story that a person comes along with

I've had many situations where I wasn't at all attracted to someone for months, but then I saw them in a new situation and suddenly felt something. But that took time and could not have been planned

the nature of female attraction basically makes it so you HAVE to depend on fate

Yang is a rationalist virtue — you can just do things! — but it often runs afoul of the key rationalist injunction: do not write the bottom line first. Men say: I think you’re hot, can you just say “yes” or “no” and make it simple? Women say: we don’t know how we feel about each other yet, leave room for all possibilities and let it play out. One of these possibilities is, of course, that the guy is dangerous. The vulnerable sex can’t afford to be reckless.

Coyness isn’t purely for the woman’s own protection; it fulfills an important function for both sexes. Yin sets the stage so that yang can take credit for acting. Women need to judge men by their actions, and men need to be recognized, admired, and respected for what they do.

The yin master finds out from her friend that a certain guy with potential is coming to dinner. She wears a dress with a subtle neckline and arrives early to secure a seat with an empty chair next to it. When the guy arrives, she holds eye contact a fraction longer than usual and invites him to the empty chair by laughing a fraction louder at his silly joke. She leans away when he starts talking sports, but angles slightly towards him when he’s sharing a story of how he got in trouble that one time abroad. The story is good, so she mentions off-handedly how long its been since she saw a good painting and it’s his cue to ask for her number.

Later, the guy tells his roommate about dinner, puffed with pride: I had to sweat for it but I finally got this girl’s number, gonna ask her out to the art fair Sunday! It’s unfair though that women never have to do anything for dates, it’s all on us guys.

When Yin Fails

There are as many ways to exercise yang unskillfully as there are to fail at yin, but men have the advantage of getting fast and direct feedback. A man gets rejected, left on read, ignored, ghosted, “friendzoned”, or pepper sprayed — he can learn and change his ways. Due to the nature of yin, it’s harder for a woman to tell when she is doing something wrong.

Some yin traps:

• Waiting for a soulmate to appear without having a clear idea of what your soulmate looks like, or what you’re willing to give up to be with them.

• People-pleasing and adapting to others’ energies until you grow to hate them.

• Vacillating between excessive vulnerability and complete closedness.

• Judging and classifying men based on rigid criteria that don’t reflect what the experience of his presence actually feels like.

• Abdicating responsibility while simultaneously criticizing the men who take it on.

• “Why won’t he just…”

• Cassandra syndrome: when a girl is very confident she intuits exactly how a relationship will fail, while simultaneously feeling entirely helpless to change the outcome. This commonly afflicts women who get really deep into classification schemas like Enneagram or astrology.

One can see each of these as a failure to be sufficiently yin. They all involve a craving for perfect knowledge and tight control that is antithetical to open acceptance. This is the theme of Existential Kink, a batshit and wonderful book telling women to accept that they get dark erotic pleasure from all the negative circumstances they find themselves in. It’s full of incredible quotes about trembling and moaning and about quintupling your income after you realize how turned on you were by being broke.

Kinky Jungian pop-Buddhist shadow work is, however, rather niche. When a woman is failed by yin, she will hear different advice being broadcast at her by most men, self-help literature, superhero movies, and corporate feminism: you should be more like a guy. Instead of waiting for soulmate, track your roster in Excel¹. Declare your boundaries like contract terms. Develop a thick skin and boss babe attitude, and don’t give any of yourself unless you’re getting a good deal in return.

It’s not that this advice is wrong or misguided. It serves women well at work, in dealing with impersonal bureaucracies, on the disembodied internet. But herein lies the tragedy. If women are forced to adopt more masculine attributes to succeed elsewhere in life, at least in the realm of romance they should be free to leave these attributes to men. Attraction thrives on polarity, and relationships work when both partners complement each other, not when they’re trying to perform the same role.

I don’t mean to say that any relationship must be maximally polarized on gender, or that this is achieved by obeying “traditional gender roles” whatever those are. But I want both sides to be free to flourish doing what they do best, instead of nudged by HR to give up yin and yang for dull gray.

For yin to flourish, yang must step up. Nicole Ruiz notes that even people who don’t want to attribute it to men notice a lack of masculine virtue in the world:

something I find fascinating is that a lot of people who wouldn’t say that there’s a crisis of masculinity would describe feeling frustrated dating / interacting with men otherwise and the level of agency & character/virtue they have about themselves and being in the world

If I have a goal with respect to my male readers, it’s to inspire them to masculine virtue in their dating lives. To take ownership, set clear intentions, communicate with honesty, and pursue what they value with courage and agency. There’s a bind, however: reading words off a screen is not itself an exercise in virtue or agency. Changing people with words is hard.

But perhaps I can encourage skillful yang by teaching guys some respect for yin. It took long years and very patient friends to get me there myself, but I’ve finally stopped telling women to just tell the guy what you want, how hard is it? What women do, just like what men do, is hard and valuable. I’m grateful to them for it.

1. I attended a talk by a woman who said that since women get attached too quickly and it takes a while to find out if a guy is worth anything, a girl must date exactly three men at a time and replace the lowest-performing one each month with a stronger candidate.