Why the entire country is still talking about a UC Berkeley professor’s toxic dating advice

[Matt5]

Why a UC Berkeley professor’s dating toxic advice is a national story

The crime of this professor: Telling a student to get out of the Bay Area if he wants to find a girlfriend.

"Shewchuk, who later apologized for his comments, didn’t go into detail about what those “differences” might be."

Given the response by women, now there is no doubt about staying away. This is CrazyTown. The reality for most guys - no girlfriend. Well, they can have girlfriends but the whole "girlfriend" thing is going to bring a lot of trouble. Mostly that involves dating and getting their bank accounts drained with little to show for it - still no girlfriend. Or constant drama. Or something happens involving the law or university because she changed her mind after the fact.

Summary by ChatGPT:

- UC Berkeley computer science professor Jonathan Shewchuk's controversial advice to a student to "get out of the Bay Area" if he wanted to find a girlfriend sparked a nationwide debate.
- Shewchuk's comments, made on an official university online discussion forum, were criticized for their apparent dehumanization of women and promotion of male supremacy.
- The remarks were seen as coded language reflecting values that undermine feminism and LGBT rights activism.
- The rise of misogynistic ideologies like those found in the "manosphere" is attributed to factors such as pick-up artist culture, online harassment campaigns, and social media.
- These ideologies prey on vulnerable men seeking explanations for feelings of rejection or loneliness, often blaming feminism and female autonomy.
- Despite the profitability of promoting resentment towards women, it fails to address the root causes of social disconnection and loneliness.
- Men's reluctance to seek mental health treatment due to societal stigmas contributes to their susceptibility to radicalization in online echo chambers.
- The ideology of the "manosphere" has ties to white supremacy, conspiracy theories, and violent incidents, leading authorities to consider it a serious terroristic threat.
- The controversy surrounding Shewchuk's remarks evokes memories of past violence against women, such as the Montreal massacre in 1989, underscoring the importance of addressing toxic beliefs about women in society.

 

[Desk trauma]

TIL: I’m evidently not part of the country.

 

[Matt5]

TIL: I’m evidently not part of the country.

You're just not with it.

 

[essentialsaltes]

TIL: I’m evidently not part of the country.

Spotted recently and seems relevant.

 

[Palmfever]

He's right. The culture and expectations do vary by locale. The dogs can yip their emotional defiance at the wheels of truth, it only solidifies the misconceptions of those who startle at shadows.

I liked 'artillery distance.'

 

[Michie]

Controversies​

In March 2024 Shewchuck came under criticism for making comments in response to a post made by a student on EdStem, an educational communication platform, asking for advice about his struggles dating, that was reported to the University by some who thought the comment was misogynistic[4]. He stated

If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I'm not kidding at all. You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco.
— Jonathan Richard Shewchuk

This statement was met with widespread condemnation by UC Berkeley faculty. Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez stated that comments was threatening and hurtful to students, especially women, and went against UC Berkeley's values. EECS Chair Claire Tomlin issued an apology on behalf of her department. Shewchuck issued an apology on the same platform, stating that he did not intend to disrespect women and only intended to help a student.[5]

Jonathan Shewchuk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[bèlla]

He's probably right and I wouldn't go hunting in those waters for a spouse. They have a different mentality. Exceptions exist of course but proximity takes a toll. I have relatives who lived in San Jose and we were continually baffled by their oddness. They were reared in the midwest and east coast but went amok when they headed west. I've known a few from the Bay Area and they were very liberal in their relations and admitted hedonists.

~bella

 

[The Liturgist]

He's probably right and I wouldn't go hunting in those waters for a spouse. They have a different mentality. Exceptions exist of course but proximity takes a toll. I have relatives who lived in San Jose and we were continually baffled by their oddness. They were reared in the midwest and east coast but went amok when they headed west. I've known a few from the Bay Area and they were very liberal in their relations and admitted hedonists.

~bella

I am inclined to agree, with a few limited exceptions:

There are some traditional Christians in the Bay Area and they tend to associate mainly with other traditional Christians. So someone from Berkeley who was from one of those communities could date within them and not have the problems you are talking about. For example, one of the few remaining semi-livable parts of San Francisco is a neighborhood in the northwest of the city, where there is a large Russo-Ukrainian community centered around the ROCOR Cathedral of the Virgin Mary, which is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and has the relics of St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, and the nearby OCA Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The people there keep to their own community as much as possible and consist only of Russians, Ukrainians and converts to Orthodox Christianity who are members of ROCOR or the OCA, which are the two fully autonomous parts of what was once the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, which became independent of Moscow when the Soviet Union came to power*, with the OCA operating the massive Russian Orthodox church in Alaska, and having since expanded to serve several other ethnicities such as Bulgarians, Romanians and Albanians, while ROCOR remained very liturgically traditional, but both churches have been very active in welcoming American converts, and indeed the noted Orthodox writer and monastic Fr. Seraphim Rose was received at Holy Virgin Mary Cathedral by St. John Maximovitch in the 1950s after discovering Orthodoxy by accident in the course of walking to the area from the North Beach, which is on the other hand very different.

So San Francisco would be a place to look for an Orthodox spouse, but the flip side to that is that there is also a large Russo-Ukrainian community in Sacramento, and there are Orthodox churches throughout the entire state, so it is not the only place; also Orthodox Christians are not required to limit their choice of spouse to their own ethnic group but rather to Orthodox Christians in general (although some families might desire this, but the church is prohibited from caring; it would be a violation of the anathema against the heresy of Ethnophyletism for an Orthodox church to refuse to marry a Bulgarian Orthodox to a Greek Orthodox or a Russian Orthodox to a Georgian Orthodox or an Albanian Orthodox to an American Orthodox).

Likewise there are other Christian denominational enclaves and other ethnoreligious enclaves in the Bay Area and so if a Christian from one of those denominations, or a member of one of the other ethnoreligiious groups, was in search of a spouse, it would be a good place to look. Indeed the only operating Karaite Jewish synagogue in the United States is in Daly City, so if someone is a Karaite Jew living in the United States, and there are a few who live on the East Coast but as far as I am aware they have not yet opened a regular synagogue, the two places to look for a spouse would be Daly City and Israel. And the problem with Israel would be finding someone who wanted to move to the United States, so Daly City would be a logical starting place.

*Only a small number of Russian Orthodox parishes on the East Coast, which number around 25 today, opted to remain under the Moscow Patriarchate, primarily because Patriarch Tikhon, who was bishop of New York and was recalled to Russia to become the first Patriarch since the 17th century when Czar Nicholas abdicated, and was arrested around 1921 by the Communists, and would die in a Soviet prison, in his last communication he was able to get out of the country before his arrest, instructed the Russian Orthodox churches outside of Russia to not follow any further instructions purporting to come from him or his successors. But there was already so much Soviet disinformation that I would imagine the parishes in question suspected that the message was a fake or an attempt to divide or isolate them.

 

[bèlla]

I am inclined to agree, with a few limited exceptions:

I wasn't Christian back then but I had a deep sense of morality and right and wrong. I heard things I wish I could forget. People confided a lot and one of my contacts was a sex therapist who was compromised. Their revelations didn't make me perverted but I don't believe I was unscathed. I'll reveal them in time.

~bella

 

[Ophiolite]

Context is everything and when it is ignored the consequent conclusions are nothing.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Why a UC Berkeley professor’s dating toxic advice is a national story

The crime of this professor: Telling a student to get out of the Bay Area if he wants to find a girlfriend.

"Shewchuk, who later apologized for his comments, didn’t go into detail about what those “differences” might be."

Given the response by women, now there is no doubt about staying away. This is CrazyTown. The reality for most guys - no girlfriend. Well, they can have girlfriends but the whole "girlfriend" thing is going to bring a lot of trouble. Mostly that involves dating and getting their bank accounts drained with little to show for it - still no girlfriend. Or constant drama. Or something happens involving the law or university because she changed her mind after the fact.

Summary by ChatGPT:

- UC Berkeley computer science professor Jonathan Shewchuk's controversial advice to a student to "get out of the Bay Area" if he wanted to find a girlfriend sparked a nationwide debate.
- Shewchuk's comments, made on an official university online discussion forum, were criticized for their apparent dehumanization of women and promotion of male supremacy.
- The remarks were seen as coded language reflecting values that undermine feminism and LGBT rights activism.
- The rise of misogynistic ideologies like those found in the "manosphere" is attributed to factors such as pick-up artist culture, online harassment campaigns, and social media.
- These ideologies prey on vulnerable men seeking explanations for feelings of rejection or loneliness, often blaming feminism and female autonomy.
- Despite the profitability of promoting resentment towards women, it fails to address the root causes of social disconnection and loneliness.
- Men's reluctance to seek mental health treatment due to societal stigmas contributes to their susceptibility to radicalization in online echo chambers.
- The ideology of the "manosphere" has ties to white supremacy, conspiracy theories, and violent incidents, leading authorities to consider it a serious terroristic threat.
- The controversy surrounding Shewchuk's remarks evokes memories of past violence against women, such as the Montreal massacre in 1989, underscoring the importance of addressing toxic beliefs about women in society.

..... THIS was a national story?????? Really???????? ...is it a national story because some opinion-piecer like Soleil Ho says so?

 

[The Liturgist]

I wasn't Christian back then but I had a deep sense of morality and right and wrong. I heard things I wish I could forget. People confided a lot and one of my contacts was a sex therapist who was compromised. Their revelations didn't make me perverted but I don't believe I was unscathed. I'll reveal them in time.

~bella

I am extremely sorry you experienced that. You should not feel obliged to reveal them; I would not myself ask to know what they said even if I were your pastor.

The important thing is you are free from that, you have embraced our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, you are in a relationship which I pray is going well, and these are great blessings worthy of thanksgiving!

What I try to do regarding my secular past is not obsess over what I saw (and avoided, but I was tempted), but rather pray for those who lived in that corruption. Although I am more worried about the youth now, for the circles I moved in industry and before that in college contained merely an excess of heterosexuality, although even then the Bay Area was unpleasant (but San Francisco was a very enjoyable city to visit, as opposed to the increasingly dystopian nightmare it has become).

 

[bèlla]

I am extremely sorry you experienced that. You should not feel obliged to reveal them; I would not myself ask to know what they said even if I were your pastor.

Thank you. My parents weren't perfect but they gave us large stores of the right things. Not a day passed when we weren't reminded we were loved, special etc. We were very naive and frequently attracted broken people. Our parents were believers but we didn't get the negative side of faith. We didn't know about people who lived differently. There were no lectures or slights.

I couldn't tell you what a harlot was. I knew the word but not what it implied. We weren't prepared for the world we encountered. We were too wholesome and it made people trust us with their secrets. We didn't have the finger wagging of faith.

I came on the Internet when I was 20. Things were different back then. I was less trusting than my siblings. But many of the things I heard were wrong. Not pow pow type of confessions but sick stuff. I asked questions and they explained. But I lacked a reference for anger or outrage.

I met the therapist in my twenties and he told me about his clients and some of the things they did he liked. I'm just a girl with a big heart and I think it allowed me to bless people and help the hurting but I can't hear it now. Something changed and it makes me feel heavy and oppressed. I stopped counseling.

I don't know how to explain this but I hope you'll understand. That's how I was able to be in the world and be abstinent. I wanted to be good because I've seen the other side. My friends were very protective because they saw my innocence.

The important thing is you are free from that, you have embraced our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, you are in a relationship which I pray is going well, and these are great blessings worthy of thanksgiving!

The Lord was with me through all of it. I hated to see people hurting. I could feel their pain almost like an empath. I needn't say the kind of men I could attract in light of my nature. But oddly enough they're protective. They don't want me corrupt and like my innocence. Many people see my strength, wisdom and intelligence but rarely what's underneath.

When you lose your wholesomeness it changes you. That's why my belief runs deep. If you look at my posts you'll see it. Share a bad situation and I always see the upside or brighter day. I don't have anything within me that says otherwise. We didn't learn how to fail and we'll always see the opportunities others miss.

I'll never say you can't. I'll say it's your choice. And I've come to realize that's a gift. Too few have heard the same.

What I try to do regarding my secular past is not obsess over what I saw (and avoided, but I was tempted), but rather pray for those who lived in that corruption. Although I am more worried about the youth now, for the circles I moved in industry and before that in college contained merely an excess of heterosexuality, although even then the Bay Area was unpleasant (but San Francisco was a very enjoyable city to visit, as opposed to the increasingly dystopian nightmare it has become).

I don't regret my past nor does my time in the world bring me shame. I did the best I could and touched a lot of lives in the process. I wouldn't take that away from them. I've helped women become better wives and companions and the Lord honored it. The people I knew in Cali were perverted but they were in my corner and one was my ride and die.

When heaven and the devil were fighting over me she stood ten toes down with the rest to protect me. The memory makes me weep. Because I knew what He meant when He said no greater love. They suffered with me and endured the attacks. They were meant to be with me during that period.

That wasn't your normal coming to faith experience or homecoming. Someone set it in motion. Can you imagine that? Someone desiring you so much they'd court the dark one? But I forgave them and labored for their salvation. That's how I learned warfare.

God causes all things to work together for the good. Even for girls with big hearts.

~bella

 

[The Liturgist]

Thank you. My parents weren't perfect but they gave us large stores of the right things. Not a day passed when we weren't reminded we were loved, special etc. We were very naive and frequently attracted broken people. Our parents were believers but we didn't get the negative side of faith. We didn't know about people who lived differently. There were no lectures or slights.

I couldn't tell you what a harlot was. I knew the word but not what it implied. We weren't prepared for the world we encountered. We were too wholesome and it made people trust us with their secrets. We didn't have the finger wagging of faith.

I came on the Internet when I was 20. Things were different back then. I was less trusting than my siblings. But many of the things I heard were wrong. Not pow pow type of confessions but sick stuff. I asked questions and they explained. But I lacked a reference for anger or outrage.

I met the therapist in my twenties and he told me about his clients and some of the things they did he liked. I'm just a girl with a big heart and I think it allowed me to bless people and help the hurting but I can't hear it now. Something changed and it makes me feel heavy and oppressed. I stopped counseling.

I don't know how to explain this but I hope you'll understand. That's how I was able to be in the world and be abstinent. I wanted to be good because I've seen the other side. My friends were very protective because they saw my innocence.



The Lord was with me through all of it. I hated to see people hurting. I could feel their pain almost like an empath. I needn't say the kind of men I could attract in light of my nature. But oddly enough they're protective. They don't want me corrupt and like my innocence. Many people see my strength, wisdom and intelligence but rarely what's underneath.

When you lose your wholesomeness it changes you. That's why my belief runs deep. If you look at my posts you'll see it. Share a bad situation and I always see the upside or brighter day. I don't have anything within me that says otherwise. We didn't learn how to fail and we'll always see the opportunities others miss.

I'll never say you can't. I'll say it's your choice. And I've come to realize that's a gift. Too few have heard the same.



I don't regret my past nor does my time in the world bring me shame. I did the best I could and touched a lot of lives in the process. I wouldn't take that away from them. I've helped women become better wives and companions and the Lord honored it. The people I knew in Cali were perverted but they were in my corner and one was my ride and die.

When heaven and the devil were fighting over me she stood ten toes down with the rest to protect me. The memory makes me weep. Because I knew what He meant when He said no greater love. They suffered with me and endured the attacks. They were meant to be with me during that period.

That wasn't your normal coming to faith experience or homecoming. Someone set it in motion. Can you imagine that? Someone desiring you so much they'd court the dark one? But I forgave them and labored for their salvation. That's how I learned warfare.

God causes all things to work together for the good. Even for girls with big hearts.

~bella

It seems like God did a lot of good work through you!

Your story reminds me of that of a close relative of mine who endured the late 1960s and early 1970s and was not a hippie; she was protected from the counter-culture by her innocence and virtue. And she has since become a fountain of holiness and divine love in our family.

 

[Astrid]

Controversies​

In March 2024 Shewchuck came under criticism for making comments in response to a post made by a student on EdStem, an educational communication platform, asking for advice about his struggles dating, that was reported to the University by some who thought the comment was misogynistic[4]. He stated


This statement was met with widespread condemnation by UC Berkeley faculty. Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez stated that comments was threatening and hurtful to students, especially women, and went against UC Berkeley's values. EECS Chair Claire Tomlin issued an apology on behalf of her department. Shewchuck issued an apology on the same platform, stating that he did not intend to disrespect women and only intended to help a student.[5]

Jonathan Shewchuk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Wasn't Berkeley the " free speech movement"
Campus in the old days?

 

[Michie]

Wasn't Berkeley the " free speech movement"
Campus in the old days?

Yes they had some protests there that was part of the free speech movement.

 

[Astrid]

Yes they had some protests there that was part of the free speech movement.

Now it's only free for one ideology.

Like here.

 

[Michie]

Now it's only free for one ideology.

Like here.

*shrug* Nobody is forced to participate.

 

[Astrid]

*shrug* Nobody is forced to participate.

The topic is force and violence used to
prevent free speech.

It's kind of a topic for me, having been
beaten and jailed for ecercizing my " free!Hong
Kong" views.

We look to the USA with hope and anxiety
as freedom evaporates with so many attacking
what remains.

 

[Michie]

The topic is force and violence used to
prevent free speech.

It's kind of a topic for me, having been
beaten and jailed for ecercizing my " free!Hong
Kong" views.

We look to the USA with hope and anxiety
as freedom evaporates with so many attacking
what remains.

I’m sorry to hear that.