I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have. To think sex can be replaced with "strong friendships" is laughable to anyone who actually feels a strong desire for sex.
The dead bedroom situations I've seen with my friends (M->F equally as well as F->M) are always the result of one party being incapable of understanding the other's desire for sex. This leads them when pressed to try approaches such as, substituting "being nicer" for sex, trying therapy to reduce their partner's sex drive, or just forgetting about the problem because they are unable to sympathize with it. Ideas such as initiating sex more often or opening up the relationship either don't occur to them, are vehemently opposed, or forgotten about.
No-one is entitled to sex. But individuals in a sexually-exclusive relationship are entitled to sympathy, action, and compromise from their partner to bridge severe differences in sexuality, just the same as any other sticking point in a relationship.
I am frequently surprised by the number of "dead bedrooms" I know about among friends, and I sincerely believe the problem is the western world's secretly coy perception of sex. There is a superficial surface level that is extremely wrong (for example, Successful people have sex, the most successful people have the hottest sex with the hottest partners; Sex isn't about planning it's about letting the desire overcome you; Doing this thing will make you more desirable to your partner... unless you suck; All people are secretly kinky and the happiest people figured out what makes them tick), and then there is a deeper level of taboo that discourages any honest communication about sex.
There is no panacea to this problem because it involves mutual collaboration between both members of the couple. The things that seem to work (couples therapy, self-help books) only actually work because they spark a conversation. Regardless, it always seems to involve rejecting some of those superficial notions I listed above and acknowledging that 90% of the stuff you learned or assumed about sex is wrong.
I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from other cultures.
I just don't think people value sexual compatibility enough.
If you aren't compatible sexually then you are not compatible.
I have been married twice. My first wife was practically my "soul mate", we had the same taste in everything. We were best buds, everything was perfect besides our sex life sucked. It always led to conflict and problems.
My wife now we have almost nothing in common when it comes to taste, art, music, hobbies, nothing. We have an amazing sex life though. I couldn't be happier.
That is not how it works in the movies. I am supposed to meet my first wife and live happily ever after. It is the difference between real life and fiction.
I just don't think people value sexual compatibility enough.
Agreed, but I think it's deeper: when I was in my 20's I didn't even know what sexual compatibility was. Given that, how could I even have made it a criteria for partner selection?
That assumes people figure out their sexuality. I've seen way too many people that didn't figure it out until their 50's. Like, "heterosexual until later in life" figure it out. And, there's an entire spectrum until that.
I agree. I think there's a long tail past a certain point, though. After a certain age, my preferences didn't really evolve much. Before that? Very rapidly, and much of it was just personal discovery.
I had thought similar for some years / decades.. the past few years my views on older people having sex / not / alot etc have changed quite a bit.
Certainly there are some old couples that stay together without good sex for different reasons, religios beliefs and such...
But if you are an intimate couple - that includes sex. If you are not having sex you are just roomates / friends - and there is nothing wrong with that.
I know a few different people in thier 70's right now having really great sex because they have found new partners, and because it's great they are having a lot of it.
So it could be less important if both people's only goals are stability or other goals - however we are seeing from reports in retirement communities and nursing homes that whether it is the loss of partner through death or divorce or just ageing single into a new community of options - that people are indeed searching for sexual compatibility as they age - often times with many more partners later in life than mid-life.
The most parameters are: who you are as a person and all that comes with that.
Saying that this matters less when that, or you'll loose interest in sex as you grow older simply won't fit for a lot of people. But for a lot maybe it will.
But since all of this is such a inherently personal thing, its opinion around the world will be as divided as our own butts.
> I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from other cultures.
I agree this is very Americanised, I can chime from two different perspectives and cultures: Brazil and Sweden.
Brazil is... Very Americanised, I believe that the same issues the USA has with sex are present in Brazil, it's expressed in some different ways but the underlying issues are more-or-less the same. Even though Brazil is seen through a very sexualised image from the outside, it's still a very conservative society where women are shamed for having sex.
Now for Sweden: I don't think anything you said really applies here, people are very open about sex, parents just consider it a natural thing and will allow their teenagers to have sex in their house, I heard stories from friends who had breakfast with the parents of a hook up after a night out, etc. There is very little taboo about sex here, even though not everyone is open to talk about it, the vast majority is completely fine with people having sex.
Which brings me to a point I don't really grasp how it happens, my sexual experiences here showed me that women suffer some similar issues as the women in Brazil: lots of them don't have good sex, not even with their partners, most of the times not due to a lack of communication but a lack of understanding from men. I've heard from girlfriends similar behaviour from men here as in Brazil, not the aggressive type but the lack of care about their needs, a lack of interest and curiosity in sex itself, to improve it, etc.
And then I don't know if this is something global and most men in the world are really that bad sex partners, it was really surprising to hear from Scandinavian women some of the same issues that girlfriends in Brazil went through. Not even counting the abuse, in Brazil it's much more extreme but I was surprised by how many of my girlfriends here had at least one instance of rape or sexual abuse, usually from partners.
Men on the other hand are generally taught by society that good sex is entirely their responsibility, and that if the woman does not get off, it is their fault.
This is one of the reasons why men are hesitant to talk about sex. It is easy to talk about it if you can say "No I didn't enjoy it and it isn't my fault." and less so if you have to introspect. Thoughts like, is my penis big enough? Am I not lasting long enough? Am I good-looking enough? and other thoughts come unbidden to the subconscious.
I typically don't talk about it here, but I'd say I've been part of a pretty sexually liberated community (US based) for... about 15 years.
Because of our educational focus, we had a high number of new people come through, learn and mature, and then go off to do other things. So I'd like to think I learned something watching the common arcs.
In American culture, there are two big hangups about sex: (1) nobody is comfortable admitting ignorance & (2) the former leads to nobody being able to communicate about anything sexual.
Essentially every critical sexual conversation is some variant of this: "I'm not sure about X. How do you feel about X?" "I've never tried X. Do you want to try it?" "I'm nervous, but I do. How about if we Y'd and Z'd to start?" "I don't think I'd like Y. What if we Y_1'd and Z'd?" "I'm up for that!"
Notice the numerous admissions of ignorance. Because real conversations start in truth, without judgement. And it's worth it, because that's how you get to the fun times. Either in or out of a relationship.
(And ironically, you know who is typically comfortable admitting ignorance? Those with the most experience)
I don't know whether this is the case for everyone, but I've noticed that my wife's dissatisfaction tends to correlate very very strongly with periods where I'm completely exhausted.
I genuinely believe most men _want_ to satisfy their partners securely, in the same way that many working mothers _want_ to cook wholesome, healthy meals from scratch for their children, but after yet another stressful day we just don't have focus and energy required to show the love in that way.
> I was surprised by how many of my girlfriends here had at least one instance of rape or sexual abuse, usually from partners.
Same here, absolutely appalling. Whenever I speak about it with guy friends they don't quite believe me and try to rationalise it (which is a common response for me on many topics as well), often by arguing semantics of what is considered rape or abuse etc, or the integrity of the person in question.
I'm not sure what prompts this skepticism exactly. The friends I've discussed this with who are skeptical, tend to otherwise be quite understanding and well thinking individuals. It's a bit akin to my own first reactions to allegations of Chinese genocide against Uyghurs, the concentration camps, etc. That can't be... There's probably some nuance I'm missing. I was only convinced after reading more and being exposed to more information and evidence.
It's very hard to have these conversations with some guy friends as none of my female friends have wanted me to share any part of their experiences with anyone else. That makes it really tricky to convince anyone else of the veracity of their claims. If I could, I could say 'well it's actually my partner, who I fully trust, or my mother who is completely honest, or our mutual best friend for the past 15 years', people whom my friends also hold in high regard and believe at face value, like I believe them.
I don't think I've ever asked a woman older than her mid-twenties about her experiences without hearing about an instance of assault. Some serious, some not, but universal.
Pornography from a young age might be warping their perception of sex and what it’s supposed to look like making them unable to please a woman who needs time to warm up instead of going from 0-100 like men are portrayed as doing.
I totally disagree with your view on Brazil, I have had lots of dates with many kinds of women and lived in Rio Comprido, and had a long term relationship and many friend in Brazil for a few year and I have found it is very acceptable to have had many partners for young women, and that "overly sexualized" image that is perceived from the outside is for the most part valid and people are much more open with their bodies, showing their bodies, and even hooking up with strangers. All you need to do is go to carnaval. Maybe some evangelical christians are like this but, even among them, I find many are sort of 'born again' after a fairly hedonistic lifestyle.
Well, I lived from when I was born up to my 27th birthday in Brazil. I went to school in Brazil, I dated a lot of Brazilian women, I have two sisters in Brazil.
I don't want to dispute your anecdote but I feel I have a bit more hands-on experience with Brazilian society.
Don't compare Carnaval, a one-off whole-nation party week to how society really works on the day-to-day.
As long as your country is offering something that 90% of Earth’s population lacks (access to high-quality free healthcare which is what people usually mean as “universal”) then, yes, you’re going to attract a lot of freeloaders.
I wish I could believe this. Seems more like wishful thinking along the lines of America’s hubris that it could “bring democracy” to the Middle East.
There’s nothing magic about soil. You need to give time for waves of immigrants to integrate, or it leads to backlash and horrible people like Trump getting elected.
I wouldn’t call it extreme, as it has been done before. In the US, for example, borders were completely open for the first hundred years until anti-Chinese racism led to the passage of the Page Act in 1875.
Exposure to phthalates reduces testosterone in both men and women, and thus lowers sex drive. Phthalates are widely used chemicals, primarily for softening plastic.
Widely and freely available HD porn too. It’s easier than ever for people to use it as a substitute, and it reduces the drive to seduce. It contributes to a downward spiral of satisficing.
Edit: Getting downvotes from folks in denial. I’m not making this stuff up, college students rarely used to have ED, now porn-induced ED is quite common. Many such cases! [0]
A common side effect of porn addiction is that the addict requires more and more extreme situations and stimulus in order to get aroused. So I would say that is sort of turning one into a sexual deviant.
Would love to see any sort of actual studies on this, because I'm fairly confident it's false.
The argument at face value is a slippery slope, like "sugar triggers dopamine response in the brain in similar areas as cocaine, so any exposure to sugar eventually leads to someone consuming sugar at all times"
I think it's much more likely that people, in general, imprint sexual preferences around the time that they are becoming sexual in their teens, and that doesn't change much as they age.
Religion in the US tends to focus on "any exposure to porn makes you an addict," which is why I am assuming this is what you're trying to imply. If you want to play a semantics game "porn addiction is defined as" then I'd argue that the same people are -true- porn addicts at the same rate that people are -true- sugar addicts. So, not saying they don't exist, but are a significantly lower number of the population than US religions would have you believe.
Stress is higher across the board as the middle class is wrung out of the economy and the gilded age begins again.
Even if it isn't fight-or-flight stress inducement, sheer business and exhaustion are also undeniably up.
All one has to do is look at the laundry list of economic differences (housing, health care, education, salary, etc) between the current generations and the boomers.
It was a trend that began in my mid 20s as well. I have also noticed women are more inclined to voice frustrations than my male friends. I guess I became more approachable after proposing to my now-wife (and the things I hear are G-rated compared to the things I hear secondhand from my wife)
Yep same here (mid 20s-30s). I guess it shouldn't really be too surprising; young people often don't know what they really need and/or are capable of providing before diving headlong into an exclusive relationship.
> I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from other cultures.
From my understanding, in Islam, sex is a normal, expected part of marriage. If one partner doesn't want to have sex, it doesn't give the other partner the right to demand it. Rather, if there is a lack of desire for sex, it is grounds for divorce.
Understanding of the original intent? Is this a thing in actual marriages of Muslims? I’ve never heard of any of this as a thing that is common knowledge. I could be out of the bubble though.
I'm curious about what data suggests this, since getting honest answers about sexual activity from the public is a famously difficult challenge.
As an entertaining example, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's big data book Everybody Lies mentioned a study that asked people in the United States how frequently they had sex, and how frequently they practiced safe sex with a condom. If the resulting data was accurate and projected across the entire country, the United States consume 2.7 billion condoms a year... even though only 600 million condoms are sold in a year.
That seems like it could be an interpretation problem where the definition of sex changes to only include penetrative sex in the context of the safe sex question.
My hypothesis is that Americans are both hypersexual (due to media, porn abuse, etc) and thus deprived of good sex as a result of the over stimulation toward faked, idealized, porn-ified sex. I have no evidence for this, it is merely a hunch and seems to align with what I have heard from people who have moved here from other countries. My parents themselves were immigrants and were shocked at the hypersexuality when they moved here. Simultaneously to that, they were shocked you couldn't even see a boob on TV. The natural human body itself was censored but gigantic fake boobs and butts were plastered all over MTV and VH1, albeit clothed. They'd also never heard of the over emphasis and anxiety over penis size until they came here.
Cultural views on plastic surgery are critical here. I see a clear contrast between underlying beauty standard assumptions, like “you should look natural” vs “you should look like a sex machine”. both allow for a certain amount of body modification but one of them pushes for a transformation to bodily extremes. With the elevation of hip-hop culture and Kardashian-style ‘upgrades’ i think the US and canada are heading towards a culture where perfectly attractive people get tons of surgery, i think driven by anxious status seeking.
I don't. But neither do those friends who speak about sexual incompatibility with the people that they love. Children are a completely new factor that this thread hasn't introduced, and I'm impressed by anyone who can make it work with a toddler. But for the most part, the demographic I'm talking about have no kids, live together, are financially comfortable, enjoy spending time together... and yet don't want to do it for some reason.
>> I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need for sex many people have.
When I first saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs sex appeared on it TWICE. Once on the bottom level as a basic physical need (to what extent varies of course) and again I think on the 3rd level or so as a form of intimacy.
Putting it on that pyramid has somehow fallen out of favor. One (fem) writer claimed it somehow justified rape. That's as absurd as saying the need for food justifies armed robbery. I suspect the real issue is that it offered an explanation (not a justification) that differs from the authors pre-conceived notions (men are evil blah blah). Anyway it seems to have become unpopular to claim it's a basic need.
It's not a basic physical need. It's a psychological need. We know, because many people can go years or decades without sex. That's fundamentally different from food, air, water and shelter from the elements.
Not saying it isn't an important psychological need, but it's not a literal "basic physical need". Words mean things.
Reproduction is in fact a biological imperative - your gene line will die without it. People don't eat food because they know they'll die if they don't, they eat because they're hungry. Biology tells the animal what it needs to do. There is a natural drive even if it's not technically a requirement for the individual animal (human) to survive in the environment.
most pyramids I've seen lump Physical and Psychological in the same bottom category. So it would still go at the bottom of the pyramid despite not being something you would die without.
It's in the same vein as non-intimate socialization (another aspect we can technically go years without, but has shown to have dire mental effects. Sometimes shockingly fast).
I'd say it's a basic urge or desire in most people, but not even necessarily a need. A goal, an aspiration, something to seek. Similar to wealth, status, respect etc.
Also, there are asexual people. It seems strange to define something as a "basic" human need if many people can live a healthy life without it.
And yes, a certain level of socialization is definitely necessary to become a functional human.
Psychological doesn't mean "you can't become a functional human without it". it means "without it, the mental state of a significant amount of humans will be altered". Under that definition, there is certainly an argument to be made about sex in some forms being a "psychological need". which build off the 3 universal psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness:
There are many much more well studied people who have spent much longer debating this, so I'm not interested in debating this here. I just want to note that valid arguments exist, and that I feel you are still conflating "basic" with "psychological".
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>Also, there are asexual people.
If you'd like another more controversial example: consider parental supervision. You can live a healthly life without ever leaving your parents' home nor ruleset. And in some other societies it is entirely expected to live in your parents' home even after marriage alongside one's parents (still following their personal values). However, some may argue that this hampers the psychological needs of autonomy and competence. That one will never have true control and choice and that you can never truly go out and challenge oneself while under a parent's wing.
Much like the basic "needs" of sex, this can be under contention and is ultimately up to society. A few anecdotes of those who made it or not doesn't rule it out as arguably being a psychological need not being met. Much like a few asexual people not necessarily ruling out sex as aruably being a psychological need at some leve.
Let's not get too far away from my original point. When people say "sex is a basic physical need", they want to imply or paint the association that it's like water and air. It's not like that.
"People" say a lot of things that may or may not be outdated, outright stupid, or otherwise missing nuance. If that's your original point, I'm not interested in it, to be frank.
I'm mostly responding to the original idea of "Putting it on that pyramid has somehow fallen out of favor". your initial response of "It's not a basic physical need. It's a psychological need. " made it sound like it didn't deserve to be on bottom part of the pyramid, or that you perhaps didn't know that those two categories are often the same part of the pyramid. So I responded in turn to inform.
I think I remember something about the bottom level also including solo activities, which makes it much more reasonable as a physical need. The higher level was then intended to be with someone else.
> That's as absurd as saying the need for food justifies armed robbery
Before considering lofty philosophical ideas like "Justification", it's useful to consider basic system dynamics:
"This paper provides an overview of the link between food insecurity and violent conflict, addressing both traditional and emerging threats to security and political stability."
>Before considering lofty philosophical ideas like "Justification"
But... that was the whole topic. We're not talking about whether hunger causes violence, or whether sexual frustration causes rape. No doubt they do. The point was that labeling "food" as an essential need doesn't constitute an endorsement of food-related violence, and by analogy labeling sex as essential doesn't constitute an endorsement of rape.
I read your GGP just like the GP did: Somehow you managed to make it look like the point you were making was the complete opposite of what you're now saying it was.
> dead bedroom situations are always the result of one party being incapable of understanding the other's desire for sex.
Couldn't disagree more. Sexual attraction is not about 'understanding' how your partner feels. A man who is no longer attracted to his wife won't suddenly become attracted when he understands how she feels. Attraction is not a choice. It's not something you can talk yourself or someone else into.
> Sexual attraction is not about 'understanding' how your partner feels
Not quite what the parent was talking about. They were referring to truly understanding that some people need sex to be happy, as opposed to others who like or even dislike it.
But understanding what your partner wants (whichever of those three it is) is a required starting point for having a better sexual relationship. There's no amount of counseling that can bridge "Well, they should just feel exactly like I do about it."
I don't think I implied that it was. But someone in an exclusive relationship who no longer is willing to fulfill one of their partner's basic needs, has an obligation to work with their partner to find a way to fulfill that need. Otherwise you are just denying them something they are incapable of not needing.
Maybe, but you'd need to be able to identify first that you were filling a need and that you're no longer. To have a conversation about that, the person in question needs to know that their partner is filling their need rather than some degree of it being optional.
>A man who is no longer attracted to his wife won't suddenly become attracted when he understands how she feels. Attraction is not a choice. It's not something you can talk yourself or someone else into.
You have a point. And the scary factor (at least, in my society) is that admitting this would be rife to criticism (be it insensitive and maybe misogynistic if a man, or shallow and a slut if a woman), because so much of our teachings say that we shouldn't judge others based on looks.
It's not exactly about looks in this situation, but it's a very similar situation. You may find that you need something else out of a relationship, but the not only lack of communication, but *active discouragement" to communicate such inconvenient truths probably causes much more tension than the short term tension of a breakup/divorce
(not to say breakups aren't painful in and of themselves, but it's the difference between keeping a thorn in, and removing it. The latter gives you a chance to heal).
>It's not something you can talk yourself or someone else into.
This seems based in some fantasy land, though. I'd be absolutely stunned if you didn't have at least a few unattractive friends who do very well in dating/relationships/finding sex partners, because they are funny, or charismatic, etc (speaking about male friends here generally but this can apply to anyone).
If attraction was as you described, no one would be attracted to anyone outside of pro athletes and supermodels. Clearly, many normal, non-models are quite attracted to their non-model partners.
This isn't my experience. I lost attraction to someone I was in a relationship with and regained it after doing some work on myself. Attraction is definitely something you can foster within yourself for another person.
I agree that attraction is not a choice, but being attractive to anyone can have facets of choice. If the husband in this case isn't attracted to his wife anymore because she's gained a lot of weight, the choice by either party to remedy that could influence increased attraction, for example.
Totally agree. OP should tell that to my friend who worked as hard as he could to save a dying marriage. No amount of understanding will help if the other person just doesn't feel it.
Everyone will be different, and unfortunately sex is an extremely sensitive topic that is rife to end up in either flame wars or a bunch of jokes, despite it being a serious, personal, nuanced topic. In my culture personally (American), it also seems to be one constantly suppressed from conversation outside of maybe medical talks.
And in my experience on the internet, we're still a very, very, very long way from creating a community that can civilly speak on the topic. Heck, maybe even IRL; cultures as a whole still can't even agree with what kinds of sexual content is legal to sell (not even age-gated, just outright denying a consenting adult the choice to buy professionally made content), so this may be a while. It may not even be resolved in my lifetime.
On a personal level, I'm fine with the myriads of porn I have stashed about my house. But I can't take cat girl out for a quick lunch and chat about the day. I miss friends.
There’s a strong willingness to openly talk about mental health in society these days, yet I mostly see zero talk that sexual desire (whether super strong or nonexistent) is most likely due to hormonal circumstances than emotional connections etc. it’s sad to see articles about “cooking for each other”, “talk about X”, yet no articles on “get your blood checked” (in particular, extreme sides of serotonin levels)
We bridge those other differences by sucking it up and doing things that aren’t our favorites. Someone who has sex she doesn’t want in order to keep the peace in a relationship has been violated and victimized, in a way that someone who does more household chores than he would prefer to or refrains from buying her favorite clothes on the joint credit card, hasn’t. Sex is unique this way.
Maybe that wasn’t the consensus view 50 years ago, but it is now.
> Weston says her abuser used to withhold sexual contact during times when she asked to be intimate. He also used withholding affection as a punishment. “If I looked at him wrong, he refused to kiss me,” she says.
That would imply all sexual exclusive relationships are healthy, which is very much not the case. Sexual exclusivity and relationship health are orthogonal.
This might just be different customs of language usage. But to me, if you say "This is a subset of That", you are saying "every case of This is also a case of That". I suppose you are using it to mean "That does not imply This", and honestly I don't think seen it used that way elsewhere.
I mean, that is the immediate conclusion one can draw from what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying all sexually exclusive relationships are within the group of healthy relationships, which is different than saying only some of them are within that group.
If you put it this way, nobody is entitled to food and shelter either. But we all need these things. Yes, some people can do away with sex, and if it's by their own choice, probably most of them do fine (many don't). But when it happens in marriage, then it's over, also legally - most jurisdictions recognize this.
Unfortunately major religions seem to approach this subject with a cudgel. I think a more charitable reading of their approach is often recognizing that sexual incompatibility is just cause for (otherwise taboo) divorce.
At least all the Abrahamic religions, which I'm most familiar with, emphasize the good of sexual pleasure between spouses. That sex is only for procreation and not pleasure is a common misconception of the Christian view.
> The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation
I really like this post because it exudes nuance. So many problems are boiled down to terse summaries that are barely accurate when examining details.
People being hateful and violent are a problem. More of a problem are the conditions that push people in this direction. When presenting the underlying cause, people push back and instead focus on scapegoating or minimizing.
This problem occurs in engineering all the time too. We accrue "tech debt" and when it bites us we're quick to blame incompetence or bad luck. Nobody wants to hear that the problem is because we have to "waste time" working on hardly visible components that don't change anything except "down the road."
The problem is the same now. We blame "bad apples" and "bad days" instead of blaming our own culture and society and undertaking the effort to improve it. We try to make the world fit our own perspectives instead of critically examining our biases. We outright lie to ourselves, and I'm frankly sick of it.
Agreed. It definitely helped me be more sympathetic to a wider variety of single men.
All of us can do better (in the article's case, that includes single men who are romantically frustrated) and _almost_ all of also us deserve some sympathy. I thought the article did a great job of generously showing the overlap between the two.
Showing that intersection — imperfect people with whom you can still sympathize — is key to being helpful. And overcoming imperfections is so much easier when you have help and a listening ear. I know plenty of young men who could use someone to talk to about this.
My pet theory is that the developed or post-industrialized world is becoming increasingly two-classed. I have had the privilege of having a decent job (being so-called "economically desirable") and decent education and was able to find someone who I think loves me for who I am, for some definition of "I am".
That being said, the "incel" problem concerns me. I think the existence of this entire class of individuals shows that the ideals of equity in gender relations, just like the ideal of equity in relations across economic classes (i.e., being equal before the law, regardless of how much money you have) is obviously a grand ideal that we cannot live up to.
I once tried talking to my girlfriend about it when the topic came up. I brought up the usual statistics that show that men graduate from college at a lesser rate than women, nowawdays. That they are more likely to die in violence or from drugs. That this compounds with the fact that the status of women in the world has generally raised (a _good_ thing!) and that the average woman wants someone who is above them on the social or economic ladder. Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of "toxic masculinity".
Of course, all of this was foreseen by French novelist Houellebecq. Economic liberalization has lead to social/sexual liberation. After a period of free love things settle down and here we are. Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the sexual market.
I've tried to stop moralizing it for my own mental health. Like the author, I just try to look at it with a degree of sympathy. It's complex, and it's kinda fucked up. For myself, these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
There was an excellent interview in Danish radio with male/couples therapist, his take was really interesting. There are three groups of men, in his view. The lower class, being uneducated and poor, the upper class, being extremely successful. Both of these group have no problem with the changing male roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it doesn't affect them. They just continue as always and it works for them. Then there is the largest group of men, the middle class. They're told that the male role has to change, or is changing, and they do as they always do, they adapt. The kicker in this thesis is that they're then told that everything is still wrong. That is confusing, angering and leave a large number of men in a state where they no longer care or they develop an anger towards modern society and women.
The solution, again according to this theory, is not to redefine the male role in society, because that was never going to work. Instead we should return to the traditional male ideals, without the negative aspects. In essence to bring back the gentlemen.
Personally I like this theory, because it has practicality, something that is lacking in the idea that men need to evolve, adapt or "find their place in modern society".
> Both of these group have no problem with the changing male roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it doesn't affect them.
That's also true for a growing number of women, especially above a certain age. They feel completely alienated by the current 'feminist' movement and don't identify with it. Wonder if the younger generation might not do the same.
> roles have taken a left turn from becoming equals in society to striving for sameness.
That was actually also part of this interview. They had the therapist with this thesis and another sexual/couples therapist, and the general consensus between them was that "sameness" kills sexual tensions in a relationship. This results in less sex, which in turn, for most people, means a less happy relationship.
There is an expectation men and women should be the same, expect in the bedroom, where the man should return to some classic or traditional role. That just doesn't work, that duality isn't something most people are able to deal with mentally.
It is very complicated. My experience in dating post divorce is that men feel like they are in a no win situation. A lot of women still want prince charming and chivalry but they also want independence. They want a man who will take care of them but still want to have the freedom to do what they want. They want to be wanted but give only when it suits them. They want a sensitive man with high EQ but also one that will get in a fight for them at a bar.
That being said, I don't blame them. Why not want it all? A lot of this is cultural. They grow up with Cinderella but very few will get to play that role. They grow up thinking that motherhood is a must but a lot don't really want that life. They work hard and rightly feel desire to have what they want. You mix all these things together and it is no wonder there is confusion.
Another take is one from Billy Crystal in City Slickers, "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." This difference greatly captures a lot of people's approach to sex.
> these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse
I think you should reflect on how sensible it is to apply population-wide statistical trends to your personal situation (which is not statistical at all). If you follow the statistics you should not start a business or go to college[1]. I really urge you to take seriously that your own personal experience is more valid than statistical instruments and that, even if by some measurement you are "below average" (whatever that means) you can still be happy and healthy.
I agree that men are doing "worse" than they have been and I do think your girlfriend's attitude towards men who are struggling is not in line with egalitarian principals. I also think that you're promoting a view of society where winners taking all is expected, and in that kind of society, you would expect men to be distributed away from the "middle" of society. After all, if you imagine it's a zero sum competition, then the winning men would push the losing men towards the bottom of society as much as possible to protect their gains. I think this is worth pointing out because I do not think we need to follow that model of society.
Humans will secure the resources they can in situations where zero-sum resource distribution is enforced, but altruism and reciprocity are also possible if we build systems which allow them. If you live life like you either win it all or your life is a waste, then it will almost certainly feel like a waste[2]. You do not have to do that.
[2] This doesn't ignore the many people who are at various kinds of social and material disadvantage. The statistics are real, they just don't mean that men are disadvantaged as a whole.
> Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of "toxic masculinity".
My reading of it is that the commenter is interspersing things his partner said during that discussion with conflicting opinions that she expressed at other times. It’s unlikely that she stated all of these things in sequence.
I think it’s normal for people to hold some contradictory views. Our web of mental concepts may have a lot of nodes in it that resemble one another, but with different neighbors, that developed at different times in different contexts. Duplicate records lead to poor consistency!
It seems like the commenter, upon reflection, noticed this inconsistency and was bothered by it. But he has the EQ to realize that starting an argument over it is unproductive, so posted here under a throwaway to get some catharsis.
> For myself, these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
I don't follow why that is. Just because the world's fucked up doesn't mean exclusive devotion to another person doesn't have its romantic appeal.
There was some philosopher I was reading about the other day who posited that the "free love" crowd weren't really free because they were slaves to whims and circumstance. A truly free person, as I gather, is one who decides and acts independently of personal feelings and circumstance.
Ergo, if you don't want to give yourself to your partner, do it anyway. Not out of external obligation, but out of the commitment you decided to make to them. In that perspective, committing to lifelong unconditional love is one of the few victories we have over being mechanical cogs in a sensational machine.
What makes this even better, though, is when you're loving someone unconditionally, it's usually hard for them not to return some of that love sooner or later. So you build a gradual virtuous cycle. Someone's just gotta make the first move.
> Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal being that they... shouldn't be.
I genuinely don't understand how someone can reconcile these in their head.
They aren't contradictory. One is an assessment of the currently perceived reality and one is a stated goal. The mindset is simply that we haven't reached the goal yet.
But the "currently perceived reality" (eg the fact that men are now behind in terms of college graduation) is exactly what you would see once you've reached the goal.
By saying "well, they were so far ahead they have no excuse to not be better anyway" you're basically saying that you will reject potential evidence that the goal has been reached.
Maybe I misunderstood the GF's point, but it just sounds like such a lack of empathy for people who face hardship for reasons that are specific to their individuality. It's like saying "poor men are too stupid to not be poor, they have no excuse to be poor".
You are making a different argument now that her perceived reality is not actual reality. You originally asked how someone could reconcile the two quoted ideas as if they were contradictory. I pointed out how they could coexist.
Regarding her perceived reality, we really need more information than college graduation rates, violent deaths, or any of the stats mentioned by OP. For example if every woman is graduating with an English degree and every man is graduating with a nuclear engineering degree, more women can be graduating and men can still have a much higher mean income among post college age people.
Whether the goal has been reached is clearly a matter of debate. It isn't unreasonable for some people to think we haven't reached it yet.
> You are making a different argument now that her perceived reality is not actual reality.
I never said that. I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in some domains. However, she seems to just brush it off and instead say that these evidence that the goal may have been reached are anomalies since the goal has not been reached.
As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
>I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in some domains.
You didn't say that in you original comment. Maybe that was your intent, but it didn't come across due to the specific portions of the original comment you quoted.
>As for income disparities, as long as women are not prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering degrees and men are not prevented from studying English, I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long as equality of opportunity is achieved.
More women graduating from college is not evidence of "equality of opportunity" because the opportunity people are advocating for is some combination of self-determination and a good quality of life that are near impossible to measure. They end goal is not college graduation. No one here is advocating for "equality of outcome".
> Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the sexual market.
I don't even know what this means. What is "the new income" in "the sexual market"? What is "the top 20%" ? How does "income" "go to" any particular percentile in "the sexual market" ?
OP means that the top 20% of men are getting all of the attention in the dating market. it's a well known fact at this point. i think the numbers largely come from dating apps but they reflect real life pretty well (from my anecdotal experience)
OKCupid used to have a post of sort of barebones statistical analysis of what men considered "average" versus women's outlook. It was ... enlightening.
This would imply that the "bottom" 80% of men are not finding partners. When we look around at the world, either anecdotally or statistically, do we see 80% of men without partners? Not even close.
These issues are far more serious than is known and commenters saying “too bad, you don’t deserve to date someone” really don’t understand how ineffective this approach is. You can’t just shame tens of thousands of men into accepting a substandard life.
Disclaimer: I am not making any ethical judgments here, just observing.
This problem didn’t really exist before for three reasons.
One, widespread access to prostitution and its social acceptability. Reading books from earlier centuries, it’s noticeable how common this was and how little anyone seemed to be socially stigmatized by going to a brothel.
Two, enforced monogamy. Our current culture is centered on removing restrictions. And as with every market, removing the restrictions on sexual access means the top players get more “resources” while the bottom get none. Monogamy was historically the solution to this.
Three, the primary model of marriage being one of love or connection, and not of uniting families, having children, or passing on property. This, combined with our consumeristic society, leads people to always assume that a better option is available. Add easy divorce laws and Tinder, and the incentives for trying to work out any problems (or even get into a relationship in the first place) are nearly nonexistent.
It really doesn’t seem like the culture is going to accept enforcing monogamy (2) or restrictions on divorce (3), but it does seem like (1) might be legalized at some point. Personally, that seems something of a dystopian solution to the problem, but that’s just me.
As someone living in a country where prostitution is legal I have a hard time seeing how your argument goes from that to dystopia. It's heavily regulated and controlled, which is better than people doing it anyway without any oversight and the safeties from that.
And even aside from that I don't see a problem with it, of course as long as it's 100% consensual. Maybe I'm missing some obvious problem, but the thing currently driving my country towards a dystopian society is mainly growing corruption with shrinking consequences as well as ignorance, not people choosing what to do with their bodies.
I think the dystopia part comes in if a particular male's only chance for a sexual relationship is via prostitution. That seems pretty dystopian to me.
Ah, I can see that. Although a part of this might also be the social stigma attached to the whole thing.
On the flipside I've read somewhere about e.g. the Dutch government acknowledging sex as human desire to a point they pay it for some people with permanent disabilities, kind of as a form of therapy. I guess you could call that dystopian in a sense, I'd say it's much less so than people literally dying from a lack of accessible healthcare. But that's another can of worms.
As someone living in NZ, I had thought the same in the beginning, until they mentioned corruption being a problem. I'm not saying it doesn't exist here at all, but it's so low it's on the bottom of the list of problems this country has
The issue here is that the idea of “100% consensual” is 100% unrealistic. If working as a prostitute is acceptable and pays 10x the average salary, living costs adjust in reaction, then what is consensual about this?
Allowing unhealthy or undesirable behaviors to be economically lucrative doesn’t make them ethically good. To me, the scenario is dystopian because it’s saying we are incapable of managing our own desires to the benefit of society, and instead must (economically) force young women into selling their bodies en masse. Instead of having healthy relationships as the baseline, we just choose the easy option.
Adding to that, prostitution is tied up with human trafficking and lots of other horrible things that have nothing to do with individuals choosing what to do with their bodies.
Are you equally concerned with how many men are (economically) forced into selling their bodies for construction (and other physically taxing) jobs en masse?
If working as a porn actress/actor is acceptable and pays 10x the average salary, then what is consensual about this?
You could say the same here, almost exact same profession other than a more limited pool of partners in exchange for less privacy. What do you say to the nurse in the US who was fired from her job and center of public outrage because as a nurse she got paid so little she decided to make extra money on OnlyFans? Where do you draw the line between this, which is legal, and prostitution?
> prostitution is tied up with human trafficking and lots of other horrible things
You think when prostitution is illegal this problem is nonexistent? Epstein ring any bells? You can have prostitution and still fight human trafficking.
OnlyFans is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline.
Edit: Why do people downvote a comment seconds after it’s been posted? It’s absurd and immature. Leave that behavior back on Reddit, thanks.
> I see its popularity as being indicative of deep moral decline.
The behaviour of people didn't change, OnlyFans just gives them a simpler way for compensation. It's not the first of its kind, it just has more publicity than others.
In terms of moral decline I'm not sure what you mean. Unless you confuse morality with religious faith(some religious people like to equate the two) it's been a better time for morality than almost any other time in the history of humanity.
Enforced monogamy and limited movement curbed the expression of the disposable male pattern in cultures, but with the introduction of dating apps, easy physical transport, increasing domination of financial resources by the few, and cultural lauding of "single life" (it drives so much consumption in consumer culture) implies it is coming back.
I would also like to say that dating culture is evolving at lightspeed right now, and as cultural reflections of internet data enter the overall "pop culture consciousness", then dating culture will shift. In the years I used online dating it went from "closet backchannel" for dating to the primary means of mate seeking, and entire apps are coming into popularity based on different game theory rules applied to the process in short amounts of time.
I'd hazard a guess that the evolution is happening as quickly as internet advertising techniques hit a hot streak for about 1-2 years before everyone collectively catches on and they don't work anyore.
The whole business about "top players getting more resources" is driving me a bit wild; as if there's an epidemic of "Chads each getting multiple Staceys" (in incel-speak). What seems to be more likely - based on the age charts in TFA - is that at the margins (excluding the large portion of people married or partnered relatively quickly and stably) there tends to be an age gap among those playing the fields.
Early 20 year old men might want women their age, but those women have a dating pool that includes men from age 20-35, and so on.
And then when you look at the other end of the age distribution in those diagrams, you have a lot of women over 65 going without, AFAICS mainly because the older men they've partnered with are dead already.
Technically / logically / mathematically, the solution seems blindingly obvious: Women as a group could help not only (younger) men as a group, but themselves (later in life) too, simply by selecting their partners more from their own age range.
> Personally, that seems something of a dystopian solution to the problem
It's the one with the fewer externalities. Forcing an unhappy couple to stay together can traumatize children, produce widespread violence (another one of those things that were kinda just "accepted" in the past), and even end up in murder.
It would be much more dystopian to force women into distributing sex equally, surely?
These aren’t either or situations. Acting as if the only options are an abusive marriage or prostitution is really misleading.
There are plenty of ways to incentivize monogamy, disincentivize divorce, and yet still allow for individual freedom.
Why haven’t these been tested? I’ll suggest because like all movements, the gender equality movement has been driven largely by extremist activists (who gain social power) and corporations (who gain more workers and consumers), not by average people.
Have they not? Marriage is widely incentivized in most societies. The UK reality at the moment, for example, heavily punishes singles: the housing markets optimizes for two incomes, pricing out singles; the taxing system favours spreading income over two individuals; and you have plenty of other marriage-related allowances. I'd be surprised if this was significantly different in the US.
The reality is that, as soon as you give people the choice, a good chunk of them will take it.
I wouldn’t say that it’s incentivized at all. Weddings are expensive, divorces are financially disastrous (yet easy to initiate), and a sizable segment of the population thinks the idea of marriage is “uncool”, for lack of a better word. Things like adultery are nearly outright encouraged in Netflix shows and novels.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that many people look at marriage as it currently stands and just say, no thanks. This goes against pretty much every society, historically.
We spent around $700 on our wedding. Front yard ceremony, $150-200 for the justice of the peace, trays of food from the local BBQ place, more wine, beer, and drinks than our 25 or so closest friends could consume.
Getting married isn't inherently expensive. People make it so because an entire industry is optimized around convincing you to spend more on a dress than we spent on an entire wedding.
Weddings are expensive because historically they were seen as extremely important. This is observable in almost every culture and predates modern consumer culture.
It is a thing still here. The friend who we’d have asked to do that (and has done it before) was unable to attend our ceremony, so we just went down the city’s list and picked someone.
I fear that words like "easy" or "expensive" in this realm are difficult to evaluate objectively.
Weddings, for example, are not expensive, if you consider them as a bureaucratic act: in most countries, it's just a few forms to fill him with minimal fees attached. However, if you impose on them oversized cultural expectations (which come from "netflix shows of the past"...) of white horses, diamonds, banquets and so on, then yeah, it's an expensive act. Maybe, if one wanted more weddings, one should support reducing some of these artificial obstacles...?
> a sizable segment of the population thinks the idea of marriage is “uncool”
That's always been true, as showed in literature of the past.
They were tested and perfected a hundred thousand years ago when humans were living in tribes. In a tribe shaming people for being polygamous was part of the system to keep some checks and balances. With people moving to cities and dating online, those checks and balances are suppressed, and the market balance shifted towards polygamy (few high value man date many women).
That doesn’t even follow logically. Pairing one man with one woman will remove one of each from circulation. With polygamy being more accepted means that basically noone gets removed from circulation, a women can have more than one partner, increasing chances...
Yeah, theoretically. But because of remaining cultural / social mores, women in general probably tend to be less polygamous than male "players" are. So in practice, "polygamy" turns out to be one man having many women much more than the other way around. Therefore a few "Chads" remove disproportionately many women from "the market", and you get many more male incels than female ones.
Well, then it’s unfortunately just a fact of life. I’m sure similar disproportionate mating chances are apparent in many species of animals between sexes as well and it may even serve an evolutionary goal that the stronger gets to pass their genetic lineup.
Either way, the answer is most definitely not viewing women as objects that should be forcefully attached to a male to have any value and other misogynistic shit that incels make up. I do get their frustrations, but it’s a downward spiral. Many of them could very well find a partner if he would actually believe that he is wanted. But even if he himself doubts that, how can he reasonably think that someone else will want to do anything with him? And at this point we are very close to mental health issues, most likely depression, but then that should be treated.
I didn’t attribute any sort of moral value to said thing, but it is a biological fact.
And as a society we should overcome these biological “laws”, or at least what we find immoral. Like healing and caring for weak/ill children, etc.
But I don’t see any solution to this problem that would not infringe on women’s freedom, which should be upheld even at the huge price psychological harm of a few. And attributing this harm to women should similarly be condemned, because one gender having biologically favorable chances of mating is a fact just as much as males having more muscle mass on average.
How do you know if what women find attractive is a result of societal pressure or freedom? Again, do you think women's extreme racial "preferences" in dating are a result of freedom because men of some races are far less attractive and the women are just serving "an evolutionary goal that the stronger gets to pass their genetic lineup"? How do you know society isn't also influencing many other characteristics?
Do you think the average 4'6 Cameroon Pygmy is just as attractive as the average US white guy, or are the Pygmy men just "biologically inferior"?
I've just replied to another comment of yours, where I may have cleared up some things.
I don't believe for a moment that racial "preferences" are a result of some personal freedom without being influenced by culture. But women don't live in a women society, it is shaped by both men and women. My problem is with the framing/blaming of women. And racism is in every culture, interracial couples are looked down in most countries. There is improvements, but it is a slow process. One can hardly change personal views ingrained throughout decades, and it does gets passed down from parents, though hopefully less and less.
And the important thing is regardless of the source of her preference, at the end of the day it is a given women's inalienable choice who she finds attractive -- even if it is not "fair".
Why don't I see almost any feminists fighting against this? Instead they are some of the most racist and hateful people in my experience.
> And the important thing is regardless of the source of her preference, at the end of the day it is a given women's inalienable choice who she finds attractive -- even if it is not "fair".
Sure, but shouldn't they be taking responsibility and criticized heavily on a societal level, I don't see that happening much.
My thought is that enforced monogamy came with the invention of agriculture, and wasn’t really a thing in Hunter-gatherer societies, but I could be completely wrong about that.
If true though, the fact that most of us don’t work in agriculture any more could mean that we are in the midst of a sea change in relationships. I’m too old to say I’ll be around to see how it ends up, but some of the youngest here might be around to see it.
The usual statistic that we hear from people who study genes is that about half of the men are fathers to women. It's a significantly different statistic from OKCupid / Tinder matches, which is closer to 80-20, and the fact that less young men are having sex than before suggests that it translates to real life.
> It's the one with the fewer externalities. Forcing an unhappy couple to stay together can traumatize children, produce widespread violence (another one of those things that were kinda just "accepted" in the past), and even end up in murder.
Two-parent households is a very well studied subject. The outcomes for children are better in almost every category with few exceptions.
Splitting in an acrimonious marriage may be better for the parents, but the data says it’s worse for the children.
"You can’t just shame tens of thousands of men into accepting a substandard life."
I would challenge the "substandard life" assertion, as it's a framing issue.
The biological need for sex is indeed great, I won't argue that point - but I don't believe that lacking sex necessarily makes a life substandard.
In all fairness, it is extremely difficult to re-frame something so primal, but I think a stronger focus on acceptance of the world and healthier views of one's capacity to influence it would be a prime candidate for reducing the harm of the incel mindset.
Getting there in any practical manner, of course, is... probably not gonna happen.
There are many variations of standards of life. Some are objectively better than others. Compare a wealthy person to someone whose standard of life was so bad they froze to death on the streets in winter, due to homelessness.
There are many factors that affect standards of life, including e.g. having a shelter or not, etc. Other factors make less of a difference to the standard, e.g. access to education. This is all obvious and should go without saying. What you're trying to say is that 'having sex or not' is not a factor that affects the standards of life, but I think it quite obviously is one as well.
I agree for the "hard" needs that are, quite literally, as universal as can be imagined. Sex, however, is not one of those. The very existence of asexual individuals who live out a long and happy life is a testament to this.
There are no a-shelter, a-money, etc., individuals who simply do not need those things. There are people without those things, yes - and I agree that their existence is objectively worse off for it.
Sex, on the other hand, can be entirely absent from a person's life and not necessarily impact it.
So I don't think I accept your assertion that sex is objectively a necessity for a high standard of life. It currently behaves as one, because we generally accept that it's desired so deeply by so many that it qualifies as a need - and for the most part, that might well be true. But there is still the case to be made that "having sex or not" is only as much of an impact on one's standard of living as one's worldview dictates. This is not true of other "hard" needs, as pointed out before. Ie: My philosophy on sex can yield an asexual, long, healthy, and happy life, but my philosophy on shelter cannot lead to a homeless long, health, and happy life. (Happy is debatable, sure.)
Monogamy appears to have been successfully enforced for just a brief period of 150 years after the industrial revolution. Studies that show that polygamy was rife before the industrial revolution and now the digital age seems to be bringing back poly relationships in a way.
> One, widespread access to prostitution and its social acceptability. Reading books from earlier centuries, it’s noticeable how common this was and how little anyone seemed to be socially stigmatized by going to a brothel.
uh, but:
> Two, enforced monogamy. Our current culture is centered on removing restrictions. And as with every market, removing the restrictions on sexual access means the top players get more “resources” while the bottom get none. Monogamy was historically the solution to this.
You do realize that the portrait of historical norms you present in these two paragraphs are diametrically opposed, right?
No, because they aren’t referring to the same groups. Prostitution was historically only acceptable for men, while women were forced to either have a husband or be celibate. At least, in terms of social acceptability.
Today, the restrictions have more or less been removed for both genders.
Again, not saying it “was better back then”, just pointing out what’s changed.
> Prostitution was historically only acceptable for men, while women were forced to either have a husband or be celibate.
I'm not certain about that. It also must depend on the culture. But I do remember ads that survived from ancient Rome for a certain well-reputed (male) cunnilingist.
As far as I know, male prostitution was rare globally and primarily used by other men. This was somewhat common in certain eras of Japan, but again, women were not widespread consumers.
The average man will go through a period of involuntary celibacy and I don’t believe this is a new thing but we’re now good at labeling. History shows that 80% of women reproduced compared to only 40% of men!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2012...
(Note not sure the primary source on this stat, but the general idea is that polygamy was once common leading to fewer men reproducing)
We’re doing much better than that today, but how were things through history when 60% of men were “incels”? (Generally lots of violence)
In the interim, the most restrictive religious social systems apportioned one man for one woman, held sex as a reward for marriage, and punished those that strayed outside of these lines. This achieved the objective of efficient coupling but I don’t think we would ever want to go back to those repressive systems that controlled women.
I know we joke about it a lot, but I think there's a serious case to be made that the Internet's ability to connect groups of previously unconnected people might end up literally ending humanity, or at least severely setting humanity back from a human rights standpoint.
"Incels" are one example of this that you're pointing out here, where a group of people who've always existed without name are now able to group together and create a feedback loop amongst themselves that results in literally mass murder.
> create a feedback loop amongst themselves that results in literally mass murder.
I dispute that causation. Mass murderers are extreme outliers that usually have identifiable mental problems, and I would say the primary cause of their behavior is those mental problems, not whatever particular thing they say triggered them. Also, even if you did show that a certain ideological group was significantly overrepresented among mass murderers, you would have to rule out the other methods of causation (e.g. this guy is a loner because of various problems, and he joined this group of loners because they welcomed him—doesn't mean the group caused him to go commit the murders, and in fact it's conceivable that being in the group reduces the likelihood of the potential murderers actually going and doing it).
I think the internet can act like an insulating force and for certain people a viscous feedback loop. Like it’s far more easy for certain types of personalities to call themselves “incel” and whine about it on the internet than get out of their bubble and talk to people. The insularly force is clearly amplifying other communities so this is probably “just another” instantiation of the same effect.
Edit-I don’t know the best way to exit this problem. But I’d probably start with telling the disparate groups that their positions are not so abnormal and maybe they would be happier focusing on other things-like hobbies that require time offline. Have your “incel” days and have days you force yourself to do something, anything else than think that.
As for a “solution”: I think social media should focus on instead of creating echo bubbles to connect distinct groups. Even in in-person, it is unhealthy to surround ourselves with same-minded people, and one should strive diverse circles in terms of opinion/background.
Reminds me of a case here in Sweden where a father was found guilty of attempted murder of his half year old child. Just hours before the attempt he had been at the hospital begging to be committed since he was hearing voices and he was scared that he might hurt someone, but the beds was full so he was sent home.
Healthcare for mental health is still very much underdeveloped, especially when the patient is male. It is just easier to blame the individual.
I think that's an extremely interesting take -- that with the advent of the Internet, we've created a vehicle for mental illness to metastasize, and the only real solution is to treat mental illness like we treat malaria or even COVID, and upgrade our global healthcare systems to handle the influx of this "new" disease variant.
The analogy breaks down when you start to try and think of what our "vaccine" might be, though perhaps education can be a rough proxy. It's also possible there's nothing we can do, and we've reached a spread that is incurable...
Maybe we notice it more because we're paying more attention to it... Or maybe because there actually is more of it, since it now can be transmitted more efficiently -- has become "contagious" in a way it wasn't before. Hard to tell which it is.
New forms of mass communication can certainly create political instability. The connection between the rise of Nazi Germany and the increasing widespread radios in everyone's homes is an interesting link (1)
Ironically, I think the internet's connection is causing the problem on both ends of the phenomenon.
Dating apps allow women to expand their dating pool to people they would never encounter in everyday life. I have quite a few female friends and I've been around them while they're swiping around and they are absolutely brutal in a way that's not at all malicious.
Then the regular (male) losers in that system can then all commiserate on 4Chan.
I think a smaller dating pool forced women to give men who _seemed_ less ideal matches a chance and resulted in more successful relationships.
I suspect that both men and women don't have any idea what would actually make a good relationship but they have a "type" that they like. With a limited pool, you could work through everyone of your type in a reasonable time frame. With a larger pool, it can take forever.
> I have quite a few female friends and I've been around them while they're swiping around and they are absolutely brutal in a way that's not at all malicious.
Depends on how you define "malicious", doesn't it?
I just mean that they're saying "no" to the slightest thing. And, really, they have to do that for time purposes. It's just kind of shocking how selective they can be and still be successful.
"History shows that 80% of women reproduced compared to only 40% of men!"
That doesn't necessarily imply polygamy, and it doesn't necessarily imply "incels". Imagine a society in which women get married at age 16 and typically die during childbirth before they reach the age of 32, and men get married at age 32, if they live that long, which most of them don't, and then get married again when the first wife dies during childbirth. I'm not saying that's how it was, but some societies were a bit like that and I think you could probably get the 80% and 40% numbers with a set-up something like that.
Women have lived longer than men throughout most of history and in basically every society, so your theory doesn't hold. Childbirth was dangerous but men's work was even more dangerous.
Just going by the abstract that you linked, that study seems to only relate to the past 100 years.
And extrapolating this to the middle ages and earlier:
In general, countries with a lower overall life expectancy had a lower number of women per 100 men aged 75+, while countries with higher overall life expectancy had a higher female to male ratio in this age group. A hundred years ago there were nearly equal numbers of women and men aged 75+ in many countries.
War is probably a big factor too. I don't know what the average or minimum age of all those soldiers standing in the lines of medieval battlefields all the way to say, the Civil War era, but I imagine quite a few were virgins and casualties were brutal.
Off topic, but such archaic means of warfare still confound me. Imagine being some 16 year old kid standing in the front line facing charging armored knights in the Middle Ages. Or staring across from another line of musket/riflemen and being expected to eat a volley of musket balls while standing straight and unmoving.
I think that you have a good point, there’s other factors that could contribute to the stats. We have seen that war can throw demographics out of balance even in modern times, such as Russia after WWII.
Essentially, what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the sex is being had by a small fraction of the people. The need for sex is perhaps as high as the need for money but nobody talks about this crushing inequality, perhaps because there is no practical way to “tax and redistribute” sex. The problem is worse for men since a man needs a certain set of skills and traits to get casual sex, but is probably equally bad for the genders in terms of finding long term relationships.
When social norms dictated that you must be married to have sex, every woman and man paired off and got to have sex, however low quality and in however unhappy of a marriage. I’m not sure this world is an improvement.
Sex work leads to some very strange dynamics, because often the Johns are desperate for intimacy, but they are paying for women that provide zero actual intimacy (because it is usually entirely faked.) I am sure there is some ideal world where prostitution could satisfy emotional needs, but in my admittedly very limited knowledge it doesn't.
Prostitution has been legal in my country since 2003, however it is still stigmatised for both men and women (at least for my demographic, and I haven't noticed any difference for other demographics.)
I've made the plunge and become a "John" a few times now, always in other countries where sex work is either legal or tolerated/quasi-legal.
I must say the experience varied a lot. About half were mechanical and just felt like they were trying to get my money. That feels pretty hollow.
But I've also had some really great experiences where I felt like we had a genuine connection. I grant that this is not "real" intimacy in the sense of "they care for you", but it did feel something like chemistry or attraction.
And finally I have not tried this but have read enough anecdotes suggesting that you can get intimacy while paying in good sugar daddy-sugar babe relationships. That won't be cheap though.
I've finished my 2nd viewing of Blade Runner:2049; the replicant K buys an AI(-ish) holographic program that presents itself as a beautiful, loving wife, her name is Joi. Think about that, robots buying robot love (I know it's a movie, work with me.) Comes the turning point, they have to run. Joi has been a constant companion to K all this time, if the bad guys get access to her "memories", they have access to everything K ever did, saw, everywhere he went. You have to destroy the console, she said. But that means if anything happens to the remote, you'd be destroyed, gone forever, he said. Break the antenna too, she said.
On first watch, I thought, awww, semi-sentient AI fumbling toward love. On second watch, I thought, there's nothing here that replicant K doesn't want. He wants to destroy the console. He wants to destroy the antenna. That it came from her voice doesn't change that, especially not when the advert for Joi - a Wallace product - is "Everything you want to see, everything you want to hear." There's no AI in love, there's only K, has been all along. Joi is an extremely well-adapted product.
There exists sex work which in places like Japan where the experience is flirting with girls or cuddling. I haven't tried the cuddling thing but I did go to a few girl bars where you pay an expensive cover fee to get in but the bartenders are all pretty girls who will flirt with you.
My assumption was that the experience would somehow be cheapened because I was paying for it, but that wasn't the case. I came to the conclusion that my limbic system doesn't really know the difference.
Maybe I got lucky. A similar experience could have felt pretty bad if the girl was clearly only trying to get tips, but in this case it worked out.
That doesn't work out as well as it sounds. Unsuprisingly, the amount of women willing to have sex with strangers for money is relatively low. Studies have shown that legalizing prostitution increases the rate of human trafficking to meet the greater demand.
It's clear that they were pointing out exactly what you're getting at in your second sentence: any solution that that depends on solving global income inequality is practically impossible over any reasonable timeline, and therefore not worth much discussion.
Fixing income inequality creates more opportunities to perform activities, which leads to more socialization leading to more potential romantic encounters. Hard to think about a spouse when you're making $8/hr but spending 33% of your life behind a counter.
I also wager a portion of the people who feel they "need but can't get sex" may also learn that what they desired wasn't what they actually cared that much about.
In this regard, I guess one can argue that prostitution is a crutch to a much larger problem that may never truly be solved.
In the grand scheme of the world definition of lower income, no. I haven't looked too deeply into it, but apparently 3rd world countries have as much or more sex, but have less access to birth control.
In the context of "first world lower income", I'd wager there's a loose correlation. i.e the incel movement is one mostly formed from a frustrated lower-middle/middle class (which in the world context, means many americans for the sake of discussion). Another comment in this post heard something similar as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27041400
I'd be interested in any studies that disprove this notion. I'll admit most of this comment is conjecture.
I don't think it's income inequality. It's legality-of-prostitution inequality. That is, the traffickers decided to move their operations from countries where prostitution was illegal to countries where it's legal, because, all else being equal, it's easier to operate in the latter. The link doesn't claim that the total amount of trafficking increased, and the quoted results don't favor the "net increase" hypothesis over the "movement" hypothesis.
>> But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to prostitution.
Better yet, guys need to learn to be the kind of man women want to fvck. They're not obligated and attraction is non-negotiable. Reality can be harsh. Guys need to treat themselves with dignity and put themselves together.
The problem is that teaching men to become the kind of men that women want to fuck generates pretty toxic men if there isn’t anything beyond the “fuck.“ I really do believe the old model, where you taught men to be the kind of men that women want to marry, is fundamentally different even though sex and marriage are closely related. A 18-21 year old woman looking for a man to spend the rest of her life with is going to look at a broader set of criteria, and thus incentivize a broader set of achievements by men, than a woman looking to just spend the next hour with a guy. Being the kind of guy who women want to marry, so that you have the broadest choice of women to marry, requires some effort towards the criteria for sexual desirability: muscles, grooming, etc., but also things like having a good reputation in the community, having a good job, being perceived as one who would be a good father, etc.
I’m not talking about 18-21 year old women now, I’m talking about those who got married when extramarital sex was taboo. The best place I’ve seen to hear about how they chose their spouse is a radio site called StoryCorps.
People (especially young people) make those decisions based on impulse and emotion, then rationalize after the fact. You can't believe the explanations they give. Most people just say what they think they're supposed to say, or what they think would please the interviewer.
One piece of concrete data is that a huge fraction of people in US cities 100 years ago married people who lived in their same block, and a substantial fraction in their same apartment building. That’s evidence of a different approach to mating.
I think this is a good thought. My own religion gave me some direction for how to become to type of man women want, but it did leave something to be desired. And then upon searching for this sort of direction later in life while trying to improve my own relationships I stumbled upon the "red pill" communities. There's a lot of nuance to these communities as well. They tell men that you can become the type of man that women want, and they give you a roadmap to do so (work on your personality, lift weights, take care of yourself, take care of your life) but unfortunately these communities also come with some ideas that range from strange to downright misogynistic.
I think there's room for some down to earth, responsible men to try and fill this space. Right now the "teach young men how to be" space is mostly filled with misogyny and terrible pick up artists.
I think there's room for some down to earth,
responsible men to try and fill this space.
Right now the "teach young men how to be"
space is mostly filled with misogyny and
terrible pick up artists.
Goodness yes. The PUA and red pill communities have absolutely poisoned this space and, at least in America, it's impossible to see how a healthy alternative could even take root. I know that if one sprang up, my first reaction would be to lump it in with the toxic crap and never give it a second look.
It's a shame because there is absolutely a need for this.
>> The PUA and red pill communities have absolutely poisoned this space
I think the PUA has poisoned the space. TRP concepts I find quite good taken as a whole, but a lot of guys are focused on the wrong things for the wrong reasons. At its core, TRP says to put yourself together and everything else will follow, but the everything else is NOT suppose to be your goal. Some of the ideas there like AWALT are toxic when taken literally (as many do) but the point is that as human animals everyone has the potential to be or do certain things. Same for many of the other tenets of it. As one guy said, TRP is a map but not the territory.
But I agree a lot of folks miss the big picture of TRP and get lost. Much like reading NMMNG sometimes produces narcissistic a-holes instead of better people.
TRP concepts I find quite good taken as a whole
[...]
At its core, TRP says to put yourself together and
everything else will follow, but the everything else
is NOT suppose to be your goal.
Some of the ideas there like AWALT are toxic when
taken literally
I'm not asking that facetiously. Sometimes an online forum, official or no, is not an accurate representation of a community as a whole.
Anyway, if it is an accurate representation, I would not describe TRP concepts as "good taken as a whole." The vast majority of top-voted posts are super explicitly sexist: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/top/
Some of the ideas there like AWALT [All Women Are Like That]
Based on what I am seeing, the sexist stuff is not just like, a regrettable undercurrent in an otherwise-helpful self help forum. I mean, it's kind of infused into everything there.
I would most certainly agree with the "get your shit together" elements of TRP, at least. And while I wouldn't be bold enough to call stoicism the one true way, there's a strong stoic aspect to TRP thought and that's generally how I roll. However, that's not some kind of unique TRP concept and there's no real reason to turn to TRP for it unless you really require your stoicism to have a heavy dose of toxic sexism.
>there’s a vast difference between a person who believes the stated beliefs of a group as opposed to a person who holds membership in a group as a defining part of their identity. Imagining a conversation with someone who generically believes women should be treated well is a much different experience than imagining the same conversation with person who boldly declares themselves a feminist; the same is true for what you’d expect from a talk with an MRA.
Always seems to come down to good intentions, bad actors that make such "identities" dangerous. Even if it's an otherwise honest person that just wants some self-help advice.
Also seems to come down to identifying oneself with / as... Well, anything. Maybe hanging one's whole identity on something is a sign that one is obsessing too much about that one thing; "Nobody is just one thing".
(Hmm, I think I just got more of a handle on what it is that makes me uncomfortable with "identity politics".)
Did you even read the article? We are discussing this topic from a sympathetic standpoint. Sure, the idea of "destigmatize prostitution" is an over simplified magic bullet, but so is your response. And their point would probably do more towards alleviating the problem than yours honestly. You're basically saying "want to solve the problem? That's easy: solve the problem."
Different people want different things. Prostitutes want money. Maybe "being the kind of man women want to fuck" includes being the kind of man prostitutes want to fuck, that is, being willing to give them money for sex.
The problem we are discussing is that some people aren't desirable for some reason they don't know how to do something about. Reality is harsh, that's why in order to get to the bottom of it you need more nuance. A lot of men out there want you to draw them a picture with crayons that depicts what "put themselves together" means. If they knew what it meant they'd do it in a heartbeat. Now the one thing they don't understand, that's not necessarily a solution to their problems but would still help them understand, is that there's not a one size fits all crayon drawing of that it means. Absolute statements like yours and the one you're replying to don't help much if at all.
Did you even read my comment? I ended with "Guys need to treat themselves with dignity and put themselves together."
I don't think that includes paying for sex.
Also to your comment "Different people want different things. Prostitutes want money." That's not what prostitutes want, it's what they need from a practical point of view. When you're just trying to get by, you do things you don't want to do in order to get what you need. Now the higher end ones that make big money probably don't need it, but I don't claim to know what their motivations are.
"The problem we are discussing is that some people aren't desirable for some reason they don't know how to do something about."
That we can agree on. My point with the crude comment is to alert them to that fact. Most people don't want to change and will reject the idea that they need to. You gotta smack em with the idea pretty hard sometimes.
> Did you even read my comment? I ended with "Guys need to treat themselves with dignity and put themselves together."
> I don't think that includes paying for sex.
A) That's what you think. Who died and made you God if defining "dignity"?
B) You think that, in large part, because of the stigma associated with prostitution; attitudes like yours are what that stigma is.
C) That's why the original suggestion was to remove the stigma around prostitution. (If that could be done, then you possibly wouldn't be thinking the way you are now.)
It is arguably less effort to be financially successful and pay for the encounters you're interested in than change your self to meet someone else's ideal, which may or may not lead to said encounters.
> Essentially, what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the sex is being had by a small fraction of the people.
(Emphasis mine)
Possibly. DNA analysis shows that for every 17 human females that reproduced, one male reproduced. Meaning that quite high rates of polygamy, rape, or other unbalancing factors were the norm in human history.
Respectfully, after reading the original paper, I agree with the findings of the authors. The last bit in the abstract puts their findings the best:
"In contrast to demographic reconstructions based on mtDNA, we infer a second strong bottleneck in Y-chromosome lineages dating to the last 10 ky. We hypothesize that this bottleneck is caused by cultural changes affecting variance of reproductive success among males."
Saying that the average man reproduces less than the average woman seems to fit the facts as presented in the paper. I've not read other papers that may refute that one though. This is not my area of expertise.
The extreme skew (1 male for every 17 females reproducing) is what's incorrect, not the average man having less reproductive success than the average woman.
Don't forget war. I imagine when two groups of humans whether it be two caveman tribes or two Napoleonic armies, massive numbers of young males were killed off.
I can understand why people think of these as "market problems," but I think this angle tends to loom larger than it actually is.
It's at its strongest in a 19 year old, "dorm room" context. These times mean a lot to people, but in practicality this is a short period of time at the end of adolescence. Overall in life, relationships are not generally like a market. There's no "50% of the girls shagged 50% of the guys" stuff to make it like one. Mostly people are in monogamous relationships. Discrepancies (in the article) are smaller and are from dating patterns between age brackets.
In any case, why analogize? Think of it as a culture. Dating culture. Marriage culture. Late 40s hookup culture. Whatever "failures" exist are cultural failures.
If it really was mostly a market situation, the market would clear.
“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Extension du domaine de la lutte
This is a really interesting perspective. Thank you for posting it. The author also neatly outlines why it's so hard to talk about controversial stuff nowadays.
> Most who expressed outrage at my post, even most in the mass media, did not offer counter-arguments to my analogy.
> They were instead content to identify me with sex-poor people today willing to do or sympathize with violence in order to advocate for sex redistribution.
> Such ‘incel’ advocates were said to be personally deeply icky, and therefore so also were any policies they advocate, and also anyone like me who did not attack they and their policies immediately with extreme prejudice.
For sure. Most heterosexual women would prefer sex every 10 days with a very sexually appealing man who is having sex with 9 other women than having sex every day with an average-looking exclusive Schlub. The latter was their life under the proscription of extramarital sex but Tinder allows them the former.
The numbers in the article itself state that more 18-29 year old women than men are having sex. Excluding gay sex this implies the “Don Juan hypothesis” as you call it.
Not necessarily -- it could just as well imply that 19-29 year old women are having entirely-monogamous sex with men outside (hopefully above) the 18-29 range.
Also, that 18-29 chart is about people looking for a relationship. The data about actually-having-sex [1] used different age ranges, breaking up 18-24 and 25-34. It shows a spike of no-sex in 18-24 men, which evens out with women once they're into the 25-35 range. The article didn't use the handy graph in figure 1 from the study which was quite informative: [2]
This is accurate. When I was 18-24 life sucked, because all the younger women were still in high school, and almost all of the women my own age were hooking up with older guys. The sweet spot for men starts around the late 20s.
My hypothesis is that this is because of a pretty significant gap in EQ and maturity between young men and women. Also women’s prime reproductive years (physically) are from late teens to early 30s. Men’s prime years to be able to support their partners is usually starting around 30s. Makes sense when you think of it like that.
No they don't. In every age group there's more men than women in the 2 and >3 partners categories, while women are visibly ahead in the 1 partner category.
Based purely on that figure, we can reasonably say that after age 18-24 men and women are about as likely to have had sex with at least one person in the last year (within the error bars of each other), with men being more likely to have had sex with more than one person in the last year.
Right, but if the 18-24 women are having sex with older men and the numbers in the older group are equal, there are more men who will be having sex with more than one woman than the inverse, or the numbers wouldn’t balance.
> what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what we have in the economy...
It’s an economy of sorts (age, looks, height), but it also follows the financial security aspect. Inequality creates a class of people that hoard desirable traits
> When social norms dictated that you must be married to have sex, every woman and man paired off and got to have sex, however low quality and in however unhappy of a marriage
Might we see a return to conservative values here?
The problem is this bizarre set of expectations that's sprung up with some folks. Sex isn't equal. It never has been. It never will be. Think about it for real for a minute.
It must be confusing to be a boy these days with all the conflicting messaging on how they should or should not be. The expectations of men are conflicting, confusing, uneven, and ever-changing. Equality is thrown around, with many exceptions across the board. Men simply bite their tongues in society, and are expected to do so without much complaint. Men are told to share their feelings, but then ignored or shamed when they try. It's a very confusing time for men/boys - I have a daughter and a son. I feel like my daughter can do anything, and will be fine in the future. I can't same the same for my son these days, I worry the paths he will have to choose.
And then in the midst of the #MeToo movement, you have books like Fifty Shades of Grey setting sales records, and you're like, "Hol' up".
I think the answer here is that the expectations being thrown into the ring from all parties are unrealistic and self-serving, and the only true bastion of sanity is the one provided by raw biological drives. We as humans can continue attempting to put ourselves above our animal nature, but it does seem that we might be destined to fall on our face.
There is massive difference between fantasy and reality. Afaik, what people watch in porn is not the same thing they want in real life.
People love to read and watch game of thrones. But, in real life, they make torture illegal and demand democracy instead of loyalty to lord. So confusing.
This is all highly reductive. Not sure what you're basing your assumption about porn on. If you're not turned on by something in real life why would you seek porn based on it?
There are plenty of people who long for a life of riding around on a horse swinging a sword at things or exploring the outer reaches of space on a futuristic craft. On the contrary; I'd say that the fiction that people select is highly correlated with their escapist desires.
Keep in mind, im not saying that people who enjoy Fifty Shades want to be raped. But there are enough people with rape/domination fantasies that it makes sense to unearth its sales as a proxy for repressed desires. And these desires are antithetical to a culture that calls for more fairness/equality between the sexes, or at least the claim that deeply seated biological urges don't influence a person's thoughts and behaviors directly.
> There are plenty of people who long for a life of riding around on a horse swinging a sword at things
Those things are people. And contemporary equivalent of those are soldiers who joined one of guerrillas or some such. People who read those books dont go after those experiences.
43% of men experience sexual assault/harassment in their lifetime, yet you are sticking by your statement that “Your son will likely never be sexually harassed or assaulted”? A 57% chance of something happening is definitely not likely.
And yes I am clearly making a point: people that gloss over sexual crimes against men are spreading destructive lies not supported by any data. Maybe it went over your head the first time I said it?
Please don't attempt to argue things like this. "Group A doesn't have X problem that group B has, so group A's problem Y doesn't matter." That's entirely unrelated and not helpful.
One thing about the post in its entirety, not just the content, that really stood out to me was that there was a commenter "kayla" who behaved exactly in the manner that the author outlined when talking about the "feminist" and "MRA" subgroups. They immediately jumped onto the aggressor's bandwagon, saying that the lowercase-i incels were simply too lazy to fix their problems even though extremely-generalized and dismissive solutions (prostitutes, therapy) existed.
The author tried to open a discussion about their position with an incredibly well-thought out response, and all "kayla" could do was respond to their own post afterwards about having sympathy for the users of the "dead berdoom" board on Reddit but still behaving in the same manner that the author outlined (i.e., just fix your problem you lazy bum).
It's very troubling that the type of person described by the author immediately arrives on site and starts their spiel.
Yup, and that's why it's practically impossible to talk about in real life. All they do is push people who experience this into the darkest places of the internet.
Their beliefs that all you have to do is try harder belong in /r/thanksimcured
Kayla's suggestion about prostitution was positively revolting. That position seems to hate just about everyone: incels should just go solve their problem illegally in a way that happens to be the antithesis of feminism.
Sex work is in no way, shape or form the "antithesis of feminism". And I think it was clear that Kayla was suggesting that such work not be illegal, not that men go solve their problem in an illegal manner.
Though in practice women can end up pimped/trafficked. Or abused by their clients, with no legal recourse... which is of course why pimps exist, because having somebody to maybe-protect you may be preferable to no protection whatsoever.
Of course, legalizing prostitution cures a lot of these ills.
perhaps troubling, but entirely unsurprising. Societal learnings won't necessarily be undone in one article, no matter how insightful. Especially when a group in question is lambasted on the internet as one actively regressing civil rights and social liberties
Remark 1: To my knowledge, it is not uncommon that men switch genders when sharing their stories on reddit simply to get more empathic reception as opposed to some "men up" rebuttal. I did that after a therapist told me a man can not be abused by woman, I wanted to see if I am really emotionally abused or just crazy. It was very helpful.
Remark 2: I vividly remember those gnawing feelings of sexual and romantic unfulfillment I suffered as a young man. But it is quite difficult to talk about those things without being accused of implying that men deserve sex and women are obliged to provide it. This post did an excellent job dancing around all the landmines, but not everybody has the capacity to do that and especially young people should have a safe platform where they could talk about these things.
Remark 3: I have noticed that men's rights activists and feminists nowadays constantly accuse each other that the other group wants privileges, not an actual equality. I would love to see a reputable research on this topic.
On remark 2 - I think these feelings of unfulfillment are very common among young men (and women I imagine), but at that age, it's hard to find an audience of peers mature enough to discuss these feelings without falling into stereotypes and tropes (e.g. "bro" advice).
On remark 3 - These are political debates, not conversations. There's no amount of data or statistics you can throw into the conversation that's going to convince either side to stop advocating their viewpoint.
"It’s 2021, and it would be pretty hard to find someone who would come out and say that women deserve to be treated worse than men by default, and similarly difficult to find someone believes men shouldn’t have rights. In that sense at least we are all feminists and men’s rights activists, but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two things. Why? Because there’s a vast difference between a person who believes the stated beliefs of a group as opposed to a person who holds membership in a group as a defining part of their identity."
The piece of the puzzle that this misses is the difference in perceived reality between the groups - the definitions those groups use to define equal and the policies they think would provide equality. Sometimes the policies of the two groups in question are actually at odds with each other, and even their own stated intent (equality).
There's something in humans and I'm not sure if it's an anglo culture thing or a biological thing but men who haven't reached a certain stage in life are more or less considered sub-human. Many don't reach it and still more don't develop far past it.
I feel like I'm just there and there's a night and day difference in how people treat you but it's most extreme with your female peers. It's also nice to have some friends from before, I feel like they're the people I would go to if my life fell apart.
> Genuine question: Isn't this equivalent to equity vs equality?
Not generally, no; “equity” generally refers to fairness of treatment (as distinct from non-differentiation in equality); while concepts of fairness vary, equivalence of outcomes not the moat common understanding pursued under the banner of “equity”.
Which is not to say that the two are never (especially in particular narrow domains) the same, but they aren’t in general the same.
In my experience, people who are against "equity" call it "equality of outcome" because it sounds more Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor of choice is. Very few people actually advocate for "equality of outcome".
Equity is closer to "equality of opportunity" than "equality of outcome". "Equality" is neither of those things because it doesn't correct for differences in opportunity and therefore obviously doesn't yield an equal outcome.
> Very few people actually advocate for "equality of outcome"
There are certainly many people advocating for explicit "equality of outcome" policies e.g. various quota systems that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an equitable outcome for various groups (e.g. gender, ethnicity, caste, etc) the applicants represent.
>various quota systems that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an equitable outcome for various groups
This is the problem in your definitions. Are you talking about equity of outcome at the individual or group level? You are mixing the two there.
No on is advocating equity of outcome at the individual level. People are using equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level because there is an assumption that when two large groups of people have similar opportunities they will have similar normally distributed results at the individual level. If you argue otherwise, you quickly start getting into areas of bigotry by saying that a certain group is not willing or capable to make the most of opportunity.
I'm quite explicitly talking about outcome at the group level and opportunities at the individual level (as you correctly note, it does not make much sense otherwise).
But there seems to be a "definition mismatch" about what "equality of opportunity" means - I'm talking about equality of opportunity and equal treatment for individuals as they are right now at any particular decision point; and this is substantially different from what's measured by, as you say, "equity of outcome at a group level as a measure of equity of opportunity at the individual level" because that essentially measures an "integral" of all lifetime opportunities for all these individuals.
The key difference is whether we consider that "equal opportunity" should include or exclude compensating of earlier unequal opportunities. In general we're talking about specific decisions or policies that unavoidably come after some unequal opportunities e.g. the socioeconomic status of the family you're born in, which correlates with almost every measure of success. I would define "equal opportunity" as a "background blind" system that looks at the relevant attributes of individuals despite of or because of whatever earlier life they had - but it's clear that equal opportunity right now won't result in equal outcomes at the group level, since those would be influenced (and probably dominated) by all the differences accumulated before that. And vice versa, if you're trying to compensate for that, then you might get an equality of outcomes for the groupo, but at this moment you would be granting unequal opportunities to these individuals, even if they actually accurately compensate for other, earlier unequal opportunities to the same specific individuals and not just the groups to which these people happen to belong.
This goes back to my first comment about definitions. You are defining "equality of opportunity" as "equality". You basically want a meritocracy in which everyone is treated the same. I was defining "equality of opportunity" as "equity". This means people are treated differently depending on their needs. This is the classic fence example.
You admit "equality of opportunity" isn't practical right now due to existing systemic biases. The people fighting for equity would probably say it isn't practical in any foreseeable future. Maybe some day we will correct for systemic biases against certain races or genders, but odds are there will always be some sort of inherent disadvantage for various people. Physical disabilities are one example. That is where equity comes into play. Forcing an employer to install a ramp for a an employee in a wheelchair isn't being "background blind". They are not being treated equally because extra attention and resources are being devoted to them in comparison to their coworkers. However this unequal treatment is just in order to provide them an equal opportunity to overcome a disadvantage their coworkers never experienced. They would not have "equality in opportunity" without an inequality in how they are treated.
>In my experience, people who are against "equity" call it "equality of outcome" because it sounds more Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor of choice is.
I’ve seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his fans but I’ve never met anyone, regardless of how crazy their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes outside of basic necessities. I’m convinced it’s a strawman.
I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and progressive university circles that I run in, who advocate for equality in outcome. It's equality in opportunity that's important. It's about letting 'your freedom as an individual to choose your own destiny' actually be 'free' from the start and not constrained by social mores, ingrained biases or discrimination, and/or other external factors.
The freedom in outcomes argument is 100% a strawman used by far right pop culture icons to drum up views and clicks.
Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that? we hear that there are only xy % of women in tech or PoC in tech and that the goal is to get for example 50/50% women/men. Isn't this basically a discussion about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. 50%/50% is basically equality of outcome. We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
I mean, if you just take it at face value, then it could be interpreted that way. I think the problem is that there isn't an easy soundbite that companies can put out to identify how they will impact equality of opportunity, so they take the easy way to seem 'woke' or whatever other adjective you want to put on it, and attack with equality of outcome. I'm not trying to have a 'no true scotsman' sort of thing, but profit-driven companies are not a great measuring tool for most social issues.
I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily digestible way of saying, women do not have the same opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for companies to outline the steps to ensure those opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal.
>We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post history because I wondered if you were another person who brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
I've encountered a slightly more nuanced equity position that comes in the form of supporting equal opportunity, but simultaneously claiming that inequitable outcomes are indicative of unequal opportunity. If the goal is to fix inequality and inequity is assumed to be evidence of inequality, then that's just a roundabout way of pursuing equal outcomes.
I'm not saying that this is your position. It's just a position I've encountered with fequency.
Inequity is not evidence of inequality. Evidence of inequality are things like: sending identical resumes save for male vs. female names and measuring the difference in response rate, anonymizing candidates' voices and measuring changes in interview performance, or other tests that see changes in output directly attributable to aspects of the candidate's identity.
>How do you propose measuring it if not using the 50/50 metric?
If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire. Really though, I have no practical ideas, because it isn't something I work with regularly. It seems like a sociologist could come up with something, some way to measure sentiment among youth, or something to that effect, but that's beyond me.
>Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If not, why?
I don't believe so. Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/49/31063).
All I know is that I see nearly no women enter STEM majors at the institutions I have worked with, whereas education and social work is almost 100% female. That is lopsided enough to tell me that something is at play here. I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it.
Have you looked into that study? That seems kind of shady to me. They are using math attitudes to say there's a stereotype. It's not even asking stuff like 'do you think boys or girls are better at math' etc. It's just stuff like "Math is important for my career" etc. Well if they already have ideas about the careers they want to perform, then obviously the study is looking at the outcomes and not the drivers - why did they choose those careers? So it seems we're back at square one - that women as an aggregate choose fields that aren't as math centric. It seems like a leap to assume some implicit meaning behind those general questions on the survey.
"If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a billionaire."
If we can't even define the problem and the underlying causes or measure the outcomes, then how can we fix it? Even if we try things, we would have no idea if they are actually beneficial because we don't even know what to measure.
"I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it."
If we can't measure it and don't know how to fix it, then do we even know that a problem exists?
"Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in individuals' decisions"
But if it's their own free choice, then why should we interfere with that? It's like saying my mom doesn't want me to play football because I might get hurt, so I'm going to base my decision on that. That is up to the person to decide if they want to use that as part of their decision making. Nobody is forcing them.
The study had a question about if being a house wife is fulfilling. If a person finds that fulfilling, should we prevent them from doing that? I ha e a STEM job and I don't feel fulfilled. Judging by the number of disillusioned posts on HN, it looks like an engineering job is not something that is fulfilling. I don't see forcing people into it as a fix for anything. You're talking about swapping social norms that value family (fulfillment as a house wife) for the social norm that making more money, even at the expense of fulfillment, is what society values.
> Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that?
Not really, but it's a bit nuanced.
I'm not taking a position here on what is correct, but advocates for this sort thing will state that inequality in current distribution of outcomes is due inequality of opportunity in the past. If you accept that as true, you have a problem from a policy level as to what to do about it, if anything.
One approach would be to attach the opportunity side only, and assume that in time a more equitable distribution will arrive over time. The problem is for something like this "in time" is probably measured in generations.
Another is to try an tip the scales a bit to correct to impact of opportunity on those people effected, or on your company (or other institution) or both. A problem with this approach is you by definition don't really know what the correct distribution should be, so you are likely to be a bit hamfisted about it.
I have met many people in left and progressive circles who literally advocate for equality in outcomes and dismiss meritocracy as various internalized not-giving-them-what-they-wantisms.
My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male, and decided to try to change this by instituting a new program exclusively focused on recruiting women.
A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".
The left regularly trots out statistics as "proof" of racism. That something isn't equal directly indicates racism (or some other -ism). So inequality of outcome implies inequality of opportunity. It leaves no room for the possibility of equal opportunity and different outcome.
Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This immediately implies sexism because no other explanation is even possible.
You don't know any communists in your insanely left and progressive university? I find that hard to believe. I went to a fairly right wing university and the place with lousy with communists. They mostly got better, but still.
It's a core belief of progressivism; those who claim it isn't know it is but are interested in protecting a movement that gives them a means of attacking those they dislike.
It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see inequality of outcomes at the group level, correctly identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should have the same outcomes.
That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
I don't know of any left tendency that believes in equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in equality of outcome.
> That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.
Unless you believe there are innate differences between the ability of these groups, then yes the two are logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not going to get in this debate today.
Or there could be equal ability, but population-wide differences in preferences, demographics, or other factors. Is it your position that men are underrepresented in teaching and nursing because these fields are highly biased against men? Likewise, there's a significant overrepresentation of Asian in tech. Does the fact that tech hotspots like the Bay Area and Seattle metro have higher than average Asian populations have no role in this disparity?
Claiming to support equal opportunity while simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes.
And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency between equity and equality, then they believe in innate differences between groups is very reductive. There are plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography, and more.
That's not true. It is a false dichotomy. There are a myriad of reasons you'd find different behaviors or results in different groups of people besides either ingrained innate unchangeable differences and lack of opportunity for that group. Even if you sampled two equally sized samples of equal distribution of the same kind of people (whatever that means to you) you'd find aggregate disparity to some degree. No innate differences at all, and no difference in opportunity based on group membership, you'd still find disparity. Your dichotomy is false.
Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often nowadays that there's some invisible force creating opportunity disparities between different arbitrary groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the disparities are because it was the will of God.
Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with, why are you on a discussion website at all?
The trick is that life is a series of "opportunities" and equality of opportunity at any particular point of choice generally results in perpetuating any imbalance of opportunity that has occurred before that.
For the sake of illustration, assume two large groups of kids who innately would have had identical ability, but one's growth and education is (on average) more stunted because their families are more likely to be single parent families, or have a parent in jail, or just very poor (which affects a lot), so right now they don't have identical average ability because they did not get equal education and support some decades ago.
If you want to have equal representation of the groups, you'd have to artificially correct for all the previous differences in opportunity - without a time machine, you can't actually fix the differences in their skills and experience (no matter how fairly or unfairly those differences came to be), you can only pretend that those differences don't exist. And so we come to the core issue that granting equal treatment to unequally capable candidates means granting unequal treatment to equally capable candidates, there's no way around it.
And there's also a gap between treating individuals fairly and treating groups fairly. You can't/don't measure the opportunity differences on an individual level, but on a group level, and individual variation in opportunity is huge. In general, any "compensating opportunities" happen at a group level, because if one group is underrepresented under a "background-blind" schema, then it's because lots and lots of capable individuals from that group have "filtered away" and gone on to very different life paths long before applying - and any corrective action or quota system is not helping those individuals who suffered most from the lack of earlier opportunities (because they're already "out"), instead it's granting a larger (compensating) opportunity to other individuals who just happen to be from the same group but had enough opportunity to "stay in the game", while individuals who personally have had so-so opportunities get punished if they happen to come from a group that (on average!) has more opportunities.
You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome.
In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so.
For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech industry.
I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from every different group should do the exact same in every job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of dealing with inequalities either.
I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today.
This is a disparity that can't be explained away by choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead à result of inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the opportunity gap.
I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in general decide not to become nurses, that's fine.
Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
If the goal is to have equal opportunity, but inequity is assumed to be indicative of unequal opportunity then that's just a long-winded way of saying the goal is equity.
> Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism.
Do you have a source for this claim? Because this contradicts the sources I have read on this topic. The share of women in engineering varies, but not by much. Most countries fall between the 20-30% range. We see no countries where women make up the majority. Furthermore, the representation of women in countries with better gender equality is actually lower than ones that are highly misogynistic [1].
> It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
To me it seems you have gone to great lengths to clarify that you mean exactly what the original poster is referring to.
I don't believe their reading your argument at face value is in any way assuming the worst possible interpretation.
It's not a personal attack for someone to disagree with your beliefs.
Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported.
And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent global-push to rectify the issue.
Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended to produce the higher number of female engineers; and that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
There absolutely are programs for men into nursing.
Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I live, these measures were very successful and in the leading engineering-only university the rate of women graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me.
As for this:
>Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported.
The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the negative. I can give examples however of specific far-left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological level, aim for equality of outcome.
Brushing away the example as "cherry picking" because no counter argument can be given isn't convincing, particularly when the pattern is seen in developed countries in general.
As for your university efforts I'd have to know what those actually were before making a call.
And re progresivism and quotas; it isn't based on it but it subscribes heavily to it due to its utility.
I gave a counter argument - for many universities this did actually work. The example I was talking about is Polytechnique Montréal. But it's far from being the only one, though admittedly Scandinavia had a failure in this goal.
As far as progressivism and quotas, I simply can't argue on this unless you give me a specific progressive tendencies. If you're talking about US progressives writ large then the main reason quotas are so popular is because the people in power that put those quotas in place, which often weren't even progressives, found quotas to be easy to implement as other solutions are very difficult and inconvenient for those in power, though popular.
> I gave a counter argument - for many universities this did actually work.
What you assert as proof that "it worked" was, if I understood your "30%!" correctly, an increase in equality of outcome.
How does this square with your claim to favour equality of opportunity, not outcome? Doesn't it show that what worked was what you claim not to favour; why would you crow about that?
Apologies I meant what those efforts entailed; what actually was done in the universities to achieve the numbers increase?
As for the 2nd point, that's more of what I'm getting at; that core populist/mainstream progressive movement. I could certainly believe that the leaders are jumping on it purely due to, as you say the simplicity and popularity of them.
Those are a lot of absolute statements you're making, and I just don't understand. There is so much wrong with your argument. You're attributing motive and action to someone else, with zero proof, in my opinion.
>You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome.
Who is 'you' here? Who said they believe in quotas?
>they like the power that comes from doing so.
Again, who is this mysterious strawman you're building? Where is this argument coming from? What is your proof? I am very progressive, and I very much have disdain for racism, sexism, and any other bigoted activities. It has nothing to do with power. Often, I am unable to do anything about this behavior because I lack any sort of structural power in my local area. So what does that mean for your argument?
>For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing
I literally work to bring men into underrepresented fields in higher education. There are programs across the nation specifically designed to recruit, assist, and help ensure the academic success of men in nursing, men in daycare/education fields, and men in other traditionally 'feminine' fields. Claiming this absolute of a statement is just absurd.
If you would follow a couple steps up the comment chain you'll note that the discussion centred around progressive ideology; you're welcome to re-read the chain and respond again once you have familiarised yourself with the context.
I followed the chain to that comment and then asked the questions I asked. Please answer them, I would appreciate it.
You seem to be building an odd little strawman to knock down based on some bogeyman theoretical progressive you have imagined. I'm trying to point that out to you.
I worked at a company that set a diversity target of 33% women in tech roles. In the same all-hands that announced this target leadership said using our definition of a "tech role" 20% of the workforce was women. To achieve this, we gave women two chances to pass the pre-onsite coding interview instead of one. Sure, this isn't as forceful as a hard 50/50 quota but it is pushing the needle away from equality and towards equity. Equity taking precedence over equality is also the basis of affirmative action used by private universities. And progressive taxation.
In fact, I'm a supporter of equity over equality in plenty of instances beyond basic necessities. I think certain avenues to pursuing this are better than others, and that there are some instances where pursing equity over equality is misguided. But yes, I do believe there are instances where pursuing equity - at least in part - is better than exclusively pursuing equality.
Point of order: I'm taxed the same on my one-millionth dollar of income (assuming the same source) as Jeff Bezos is.
... I just don't have a one-millionth dollar of income to tax, but if someone wants to shift things toward equality rather than equity I'll happily accept donations toward that end. To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.
> To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a blow against equity, naturally.
This is exactly my point: a flat tax rate would be more equal, but less equitable. And I do support a tax code that is more equitable, rather than more equal in this regard.
Progressives advocate abolishing advanced classes in high school because “they have too many white and Asian students”. Several schools have done so. That is equality of outcome in practice.
The only times I've seen "advanced classes" get abolished is when districts KEPT advanced classes in high schools, but got rid of "ability tracking" (read: high, middle, and low-performing tracks) in early grades (k-6 usually). This is because low-income and minority students are more likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades, thereby baking in the inequity in the system. Eliminating those tracking systems, while keeping AP and other TAG programs is actually a very good way to ensure equality in access with no promise of equality in outcome. . . .
Those headlines tend to get spun as "Chicago district eliminates advanced classes" or something to that effect, because it gets people riled (spelling?) up.
Please, point me to your sources if you are talking about something different.
EDIT: The tracking still occurs in early grades, the isolation grouping does not. Students are still tracked and tested for ability, deficiency, and performance. What they are not doing is grouping them exclusively into high, medium, and low, and letting those groups dictate resource access. They are grouping across abilities, allowing high performers to work with medium and low, thereby allowing them to take a leadership role while still providing the other two groups with valuable resources.
> This is because low-income and minority students are more likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades
Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that children with less resources do worse. I thought the purpose of performance tracking was to give the ability to help those who were struggling. Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
>Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect of bias?
This is why these programs in early grades are eliminated - they absolutely were based on bias and external factors. Yes, children with less resources do worse. That was the problem. Students with less access would be tracked low, thereby ensuring they had access to even fewer resources (which were diverted to high performers and TAG classes).
>Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more equality.
I didn't explain it well. They still track student ability for interventions, they don't group solely by ability. When they did the latter of those two, the have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
That makes much more sense although the argument I'd make is still that the issue wasn't the tracking and grouping, it was the allocation of resources. The schools/policy makers have to allocate resources in a zero sum way which makes the question whether to help those who are struggling or push those who are excelling, both, I think, are worthy motives.
The shame in all of this is that the choice has to be made at all. I think, ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
I suspect there's some sort of incentive on the administrators of these schools, be through funding, personal career advancement or something else, that makes them want to max out the top end rather than raise the low end.
In my experience (granted, that is limited to a dozen or so districts in two states), they used to focus on the top end students because a) they were well-connected compared to their peers, b) they came from the higher income (and therefore higher property-tax) portions of the district and were therefore more well connected to local funding source, and c) had parents that were savvy enough of systems such as education to advocate strongly for their children.
>ideally, every student should have a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the problem is remediated.
The problem is that this is sort of what happens right now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
Ideally, we figure out funding (that's way above my pay grade), and then we can move on to cross-ability grouping. Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
Combine all of that, and you have a wonderful cross-age, cross-ability classroom focused on social development as well as academics. The ability to specialize for various fields such as STEM, art, or technical education is just built in, as well!
If anyone is interested in funding my charter school idea - it's a neighborhood based one-room-schoolhouse model where education and learning are led by the abilities and desires of the students. Much free time, much outdoor time, and incorporating everything in the above paragraph. Completely unrealistic for public schooling in the united states due to the inordinate per pupil cost. But just a lovely idea.
> The problem is that this is sort of what happens right now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
I've actually ranted about this cause/effect before. I think it's particularly bad here in California given the wide variety of income levels in the state.
> Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led through the process by someone who can put the language in terms they can understand; ideally with support outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle achievers will consistently live up to the exact expectation you place on them; so they need a system and environment that places increasingly more strenuous expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
I think that's all true but it doesn't account for something that I think is a noble goal with somewhat bad implications:
I think we want to maximize the progress and achievement of the top achievers. People seem to want 100 doctors/scientists instead of 10,000 accountants.
> [...] they don't group solely by ability. When they did [that], the have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
I have two thoughts on this:
1. Since our global economy is increasingly winner-take-all, we should consider focusing on the high performers. The lower performers will lose, anyway, so it's most important not to sandbag high performers.
2. It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers, at the expense of their own opportunity to advance academically. Is this fair to high performers? Isn't it the school and faculty's job to teach students, not fellow students' job?
The issue is that low performers are often only such because of external factors (low income, food insecure, other factors like that), and not due to actual ability. If we focus exclusively on high performers in the low grade, we will only create a WIDE and absolutely inhumane division among the have's and the have not's (more so than what exists).
>2.It sounds like the idea is really to extort high performers into doing unpaid labor to educate their lower-performing peers,
No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment. One of the best ways to learn to do something really well is to teach someone else how to do it. This applies to everything. Letting high performers take a leadership role teaches them not just the core competencies, but also those 'soft skills' that are so often left out of advanced curriculum, but are vitally important to success.
Also, just to nitpick, adding [that] via edit to my quote is unnecessary to the sentence. That word isn't at all needed for context, clarity, or proper sentence formation. Not sure why you did that.
> The issue is that low performers are often only such because of external factors (low income, food insecure, other factors like that), and not due to actual ability. If we focus exclusively on high performers in the low grade, we will only create a WIDE and absolutely inhumane division among the have's and the have not's (more so than what exists).
No, those factors all contribute to the actual ability of the student; you seem to be talking about inherent or latent ability. As a student, I don't care why my low-performing peers are holding me back, I just care that they're holding me back.
We shouldn't focus exclusively on the high performers, and we should absolutely try to ameliorate those factors with things like free school meals and after-school programs. These policies help those with latent ability to turn that into actual ability.
But we can't skip that step. It's important for students to be around students of similar actual ability, because we absolutely cannot afford to slow down the high performers in a perverted quest for equity.
> No. You're 100% wrong in your assessment.
Yes, you're 100% correct in your assessment. I know that what most helped me to excel in math was tutoring my peers in basic mechanics and notation and walking them through absolutely trivial exercises with which they still struggled.
Thank God I never had to endure a class that promoted my intellectual growth by challenging me with more advanced material than my low-performing peers could handle. I learned so much more taking a leadership role.
It is obvious you have little to no personal experience in difficult technical subjects (STEM) and are invested in a political agenda to change the world as you see fit rather than enabling our best and brightest to fully self-actualize.
We have a public high school around me that is for STEM students. It has limited seats available. It is not only based on prior grades but on essays about why you deserve to go and stuff. It ends up rejecting many students every year. I can see requiring an entrance exam or prior grades to prove you have the ability and won't be slowing people down, but this goes way beyond that.
I wonder how it can be that one has the desire and aptitude to succeed there and the public school can deny people that opportunity. That just seems antithetical to public education.
Every time I see a news article about this, they aren't being honest about what is happening. My high school in particular is often in the news for this reason and the reactionary articles are universally BS.
The trick is in how broadly you define "basic necessities." Go talk to a plains Indian in the 1700s and ask them if a permanent structure all to themselves with running water and a refrigerator is a basic necessity. Now think about access to doctors and drugs.
That's the real crux of what we talk about when we talk about equality of outcomes. What qualifies as a necessity? And that's when you start getting arguments that start with things like "well in a modern society..."
You'll probably be hard pressed to find someone that says that someone deserves to starve to death because they're unwilling to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You'd probably also be equally hard pressed to find someone who thinks that waigu beef is a basic necessity. You say "strawman" and they say "moving the goalposts" and none of that is productive, this is a legitimate discussion that is going to be had, needs to be had and is not over or settled, shutting it down by calling the opposing viewpoint fallacious on false premises will not change that, it will only be counterproductive.
Have you never seen people decrying unequal representation in, say, tech? I've seen plenty of people make that claim and expect the distribution of groups to match the distribution in the general population. That's equality of outcome, not opportunity. It's also only really possible in two scenarios:
A. Everyone regardless of demographic has the same opportunities, talent and interest in tech
B. You force people into positions they don't want and force people out that do want them
The same goes for education, nursing, construction, sewage, fire fighting...
Well, usually when I see somebody arguing "equity vs. equality", they're advocating strict racial quotas: absolute equality of outcome, at the level of race.
No, it's not. Marx was critical of the capitalist mode of production. Marxism is a lens of looking at economics and sociology.
Communism and socialism, which are considered different in modern writing but were the same in Marx's time, are something Marx believes are an inevitable outcome of capitalism.
Marxism suggests that when the workers own the companies, then benefits are distributed to the workers who own/operate the company. Profit doesn't get centered in individuals, it gets spread across the workers of a company.
Folks like Lenin/Stalin took this idea further and created an authoritarian regime out of the ideas, and create what we commonly think of as 'communism' in the states.
Edit: Parent comment asked a question about Marxism, I'm getting downvoted for explaining some high level concepts of Marxism? Do folks want me to dive deeper into the dialectical models Marx discussed? Lol
No. Marxism is for the abolish ment of social classes, with classes defined as contradictory groups related to relationships of production.
So a Marxist would want, for example, the employer/employee distinction to be abolished. But there would be no issue with inequality in the employee class, an employee may very well produce 3-4 times more value than another.
This is something that Marx explicitly wrote about - he thought that different people had different needs and abilities and thus should receive sometimes very different amounts of resources. The examples he gave would be someone that works much faster and better that someone else, or someone that has children to raise.
The goal and concept of Marxism is to remove economic capital as an input to the circumstantial function that defines a person's outcome. What inputs' weights should increase to replace it is open to interpretation.
That's a common misconception about marxism. "To each according to his needs" does not mean "To each the same amount". Societies that reportedly strived to be marxist, still had different people doing different things and being granted different resources - and that's inevitable. It was even a typical complaint of soviet societies, the fact that "connected" people would get more than others.
It just so happens that, given the pre-existent distribution of wealth will have followed other rules, the first step of marxist enaction inevitably ends up being "the big reset" where inequality of outcome gets temporarily removed for everyone.
Not at all. Marxism is a method of analyzing history and the present through the lens of class conflict.
Generally "Marxism" is thrown around as a boogie man term by people with little understanding for something approximating extreme authoritarianism in which the state owns all the means of production and allocates everyone the same resources.
It's not "a boogie [sic] man". Marxist governments were definitely not "analyzing history", they were enacting government policies. That's what governments do, unsurprisingly.
(Source: I grew up in a Marxist country and was taught Marxism by a Marxist teacher.)
You're probably thinking of Marxism-Leninism, though it's hard to know without knowing what country you're talking about. I'm not even sure what a "Marxist" country could possibly entail. They'd dedicate all resources to analyzing society through the lens of historical materialism?
Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism. The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.
If you're talking about the USSR, there was actually some dissension after the death of Lenin on whether light industry or heavy industry should be focused on. Lenin wanted to focus especially on neither, with his NEP that would create a temporary market economy to figure that out on it's own.
Eventually, the decision was taken to focus on heavy industry. The decisive arguments for a focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxian economics - those arguments went either way. The main determinant of the Soviet focus on heavy industry was the failure of Stalin to obtain security assurances from Western Europe, leading to a focus on heavy industry for military purposes.
At least in the 20s this was a solid move, because Soviet heavy industry saved tens of millions of lives by stalling the Nazi offensive, whose plan was to kill 50% of the Soviet population (something very bad).
After the end of WW2 however, it was pointless in retrospect to continue the focus on heavy industry. But the Soviet Union did not really calculate the geopolitcal impact of nuclear weapons and built a military that could rival NATO, and this required a lot of heavy industry.
Pretty much, Marxism had nothing to do with Soviet investment in heavy industry. The main reason was to feed the Soviet war machine, from the very beginning.
If this statement were true then the statement above about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right there, just like a claim that a human is a head is incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of a human.
> The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for example have no bearing about whether you should focus on light or heavy industries.
I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
>If this statement were true then the statement above about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right there, just like a claim that a human is a head is incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of a human.
I don't see the incompatibility. Lenin used Marxism, a method of analyzing history, to derive a political program for the Russian empire. Not everything that the Soviet Union did was done because of Marxism Leninism - the vast majority was done out of practical considerations, outside of the general guidelines.
>I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP period; our economic failures stretched all the way from 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron Curtain.
You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union. I explained to you why this focus on heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxism, and everything to do with the geopolitics of the Soviet Union. I gave an explanation that was valid from death of Lenin to the end of the Cold War. It seems to me that my thesis that the Soviet government wasn't a "Marxist government" but rather a government whose political program was initially based partly on a Marxist analysis of history, but were many of the fatal decisions and errors had nothing to do with Marxism.
Subsets can't contain elements that their supersets lack. If A is a subset of B, then if x is an element of A, x is also an element of B. So the claim that a state ideology is a subset of a method of analyzing history would necessarily imply that methods of analyzing history habitually contain elements of state ideologies at their core, which I haven't observed. Hence I see a contradiction there.
> You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of the Soviet Union.
I did not grow up in the Soviet Union, hence I wasn't talking about it.
Marxism Leninism was on paper the state ideology of the Soviet Union, sure. But in practice the vast majority of decisions taken by the Soviet Union did not have much to do with the official state ideology.
As for a method of understanding history containing and ideology, this is absolutely the case. All methods of analyzing history and social systems at some level rely on an ideology. Marxism as a method of analyzing history also is an ideology. For other methods of analyzing history often the ideology defaults to the current ruling ideology.
Marxism also contains economic theory, and social theory, all in the goal of analyzing history and changing it. Marxism writ large contains all of its sub-tendencies which understandably after 150 years evolved a lot.
As far as my assumption that you were talking about the Soviet Union, often Marxism Leninism refers to the precise ideology of the Soviet Union. If you meant it in a different way, you'll have to specify the country and time period because various different ideologies call themselves Marxism Leninism (and none of them come from Marx or Lenin).
Not quite. According to the original Marxist dogma, Russia couldn't become socialist in 1917, since it had too few proletarians, and too many peasants - i.e. it wasn't capitalist enough for a socialist revolution. Bolsheviks disagreed with that, obviously (and some Marxists even say that this forcible approach in a society that wasn't ready for it is precisely why the USSR turned out like it did).
Lenin himself did not actually disagree for very long. He changed his mind very rapidly (if it was really set) and enacted the NEP. It was Stalin that tried to "force" communism with disastrous effect and killed everyone that disagreed even among the Bolsheviks, which also fucked up the Soviet political system.
You might say that marxism is for more equal outcomes than we have under today's system, but that's true of lots of things that aren't marxist (any form of progressive taxation to fund social programs, for example).
But even that's sort of an oversimplification and doesn't do either marxism or "equality of outcomes" justice.
The problem with the definition of equality within the modern feminist movement is that it does not make allowance for the social power that females intrinsically have over men. In particular it completely ignores that, as in the vast majority of sexually dimorphic species, women are (at social scales) effectively the gatekeepers of the bedroom, and this gives females massive influence over male behavior. The dominant socially acceptable view of equality therefore is markedly unequal, and quite self serving as the "ideal" balance of power within the feminist framework becomes rather lopsided.
There is no way this can be true. Sex takes two consenting people; there is no "gate" to be unequally "kept" because both parties have autonomy.
Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role of autonomy is a nifty trick. But casting individual bedroom decisions as a matter of social equality is to presume a degree of entitlement in the bedroom. After all, we're entitled to be treated equally, right?
By governments? Yes. By our managers at work? Yes. By those who we desire? No, not at all.
"Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role of autonomy is a nifty trick."
I don't understand this comment. Isn't feminism addressing an issue at social scale, often in areas that include autonomy? Even looking at marriage, you are expected to treat each other fairly.
There are absolutely places where the social scale is relevant: places where one is entitled to equal treatment.
Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man. Thus the "gatekeepers" language when there is no gate.
The social-scale concerns are totally appropriate when it comes to how we construct masculinity and what male attractiveness requires, and feminists are by and large interested in that conversation.
I saw the gatekeeper comment as being more related to the natural processes of diamorphic species. Take for example your statement below. This very much implies a "gate" and that women are making choices to keep that gate closed for some men. Just because a person is not entitled to what is behind that gate, doesn't make that gate less real. If anything, it enforces the analogy in the fact that gates do exist in real life to keep out those who are not entitled to what lies beyond them.
"Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of sexual attention as some other man."
The proof is that men aren't described as gatekeepers, even though just like women, they choose to have sex with certain people, and not with others.
The "gate" you're talking about uncontroversially belongs to each individual in the form of their bodily autonomy. Yet women are uniquely cast as "keeping out" certain people. That's not a matter of dimorphism: that's a matter of mens' bodily autonomy being assumed, and womens' being up for debate.
In other words: for the sake of argument, sure, there's a gate. But only women are viewed as gatekeepers, as though keeping others out undermines equality, rather than being part-and-parcel of having the equal autonomy to choose one's partners.
Gatekeeping is relevant only when there is scarcity. If there is a pair of people (A, B) where A's desire for sex is three times bigger than B's, then although both A and B have full bodily autonomy (that nobody disputes), in practice only B would be a gatekeeper, as sex for A is scarce, while sex for B is plentiful (relative to their desires).
The same argument could be generalized to society. If one gender has on average much higher desire for sex, then the second gender would be considered gatekeepers in practice, as for members of the first the gate is much more selective that for the members of the second gender (due to scarcity difference). That is completely unrelated to equality or bodily autonomy, which is granted to both.
Exactly, which gets back to the actual underlying dynamic: the accusation of gatekeeping only makes sense on a societal level, not an individual one, and can only be turned into an equality issue if one (silently) shifts back to the perspective of an individual who believes they are entitled to an equal amount of sex.
This is a common and disingenuous misconstrual of the argument. It isn't about feeling entitled to sex, it's about making access to sex more evenly distributed across society, for both genders. Not because of entitlement, but because of better overall happiness for both genders.
You are talking about a movement which on its face is about social equality, but refuses to acknowledge that is explicitly engineering norms which are already creating oppressive social inequality. You clearly have disdain for them but whether you want to admit it or not, "incels" are a low status social class, and if they are the way they are because of the efforts of others then by modern progressive logic they are oppressed - by feminists. The refusal to even acknowledge the possibility that this could be happening is a form of disenfranchisement, and is inevitable when your entire worldview is based on a false oppressor/oppressed binary, which is the essence of modern feminism (progressivism really).
So, to be clear, you believe it is axiomatic that one must internalize rape-desire to observe or discuss obvious consequences of sexual reproduction under selective pressure?
It's interesting that the concept of bodily autonomy doesn't extend to the male not wanting his body to engage in a lifetime of forced labor when the female's bodily autonomy extends to carrying an irrational pregnancy to term, though, isn't it?
One might even go to say that there are very real systemic and social inequities which have nothing at all to do with your rape fixation...
That's not "gatekeeping the bedroom". That's called "bodily autonomy". They're allowed to decide who gets to stick what inside their body -- exactly the same as you have.
You appear to resent women for being allowed to decide what happens to their own bodies. You also seem to think that this is the only thing in society that actually matters -- that this one thing gives women all of the power.
I believe you should reconsider these positions. Bodily autonomy is a bare minimum. What is it about access to a woman's body that is so vitally important to you?
I really take offense to the notion that simply for criticizing the feminist movement or acknowledging the romantic power dynamic, I "resent women". Nor have I implied that "this one thing gives women all of the power". Neither of these are arguments, instead they are cheap, disingenuous dismissals which only stifle meaningful discussion.
I am merely explaining that this is a particular domain over which women have massively disproportionate power, however feminists refuse to acknowledge the existence of this power while claiming to be in pursuit of social equality.
A movement which seeks to re-engineer social norms in pursuit of "equality" is bound to disenfranchise men if this power dynamic is ignored. The result is movements like "incels". None of this implies that men are entitled to access to female bodies, but there is an inescapable give and take. If women are to be treated the same as men in all domains, then restructuring romantic interactions while maintaining the onus on men to bear the brunt of initiation and rejection unfairly shifts the power dynamic in favor of women.
And this has consequences for women too. Indirectly, in that frustrated men are likely to withdraw and/or become antisocial (criminally or violently). And directly in that it shifts the dating dynamic toward hypergamy, where many females compete for a small proportion of men. Though perhaps there is an argument that some or most women prefer a polygamist arrangement, but I don't know if that's the case and it certainly is detrimental to men. Monogamy is a social norm which maximizes romantic equity for both men and women, not merely a patriarchal construct. Regardless of the argument of bodily autonomy, the romantic/social marketplace is an economy and can be modeled with the same sort of inequality measures that we apply to financial economies, with consequences for the function and overall happiness of society.
What can be done about this though? I don't think it's a good idea to make life harder for those who are privileged in some way, because it will just lead to a world where everyone is equally miserable. And it would be wrong to put all the women in this category, because not all of them have the privilege that you talk about.
> but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two things
What's the rationale behind this statement? It seems like it's implying "nearly 100%" people are one or the other kind of extremists when it comes to Gender politics. Wouldn't it rather be the other way round, people knowingly identifying themselves as both Feminists and MRAs (redundant, as "Feminist" by itself means someone who strives for equality among genders), since most are normally moderate in their opinions?
The rationale behind that statement is explained in the subsequent statements in the article. Something about how there's a difference between agreeing with some group or cause's ststet principles and identifying as an in group member as a part of ones identity. The article explains it better than I am.
Honestly because neither feminists nor men's rights activists want equality, despite whatever they purport to be about.
Just like there's a political spectrum with the crazies at the edges of both left and right, there is also a spectrum on gender issues, race, or any other social issue. The crazies are to be found at the edges of that, again on both sides.
The problem with this line of thought is that some of the "crazies at the edge" in the past are the sensible, moderate ideas that you no doubt hold right now. For example, viewing slavery as an evil institution was considered the "crazies at the edge" opinion in the early-mid 1800s in the US, as opposed to the dominant opinion among "sensible" abolitionists that slavery was personal sin that requires a redemption process (like drinking). In some cases, this change of sentiment can take only a couple decades: See opinion polling on gay marriage or weed legalization.
This is why both-sides-ing or argument to moderation is not really a useful or convincing rhetorical device.
Nothing about what I said means that values are static over time or that the balance can't shift. It's true that today's crazies at the edge might be tomorrows center - although I find that thought troubling!
But make no mistake, the extremes at both ends harbor dangerous crazies. In politics, while the evils of the right are obvious and dangerous, the evils of the left are much more seductive but have been just as dangerous this past century (think fascists vs communists).
On gender issues, the incels are clearly unhinged. But so are the extreme feminists.
Just an aside, I've noticed that anything I post criticizing the right gets me upvotes on HN. Anything criticizing the left is much more controversial. I wonder how HN leans as a whole?
I view myself as left of center, but not left enough by the standards of this community.
"you have to acknowledge that extremists and totalitarians do exist" is a cheap rhetorical device to sneak in "both sides are the same" fallacies. Yes, of course there are crazies in any political movement, demographic, subculture, or other group. Elevating these crazies to the first thing mentioned when discussing the actual substance of the beliefs of a group is silly at best, but more frequently it is simply a dishonest distraction. This is not a slippery slope (also typically a fallacy in practice).
It's also simply not a useful type of statement even when made in good faith. It assumes all issues fit on scales. For example, there are people today who call themselves feminists, and have extremely different views about LGBTQ+ rights compared to others who call themselves feminist (notably around the BTQ+ part). I really don't know who is the more "extreme", since that implies that I am referencing an agreed upon "center" which these positions differ from, and that simply doesn't exist. There is no agreed upon "center" for anything. Both claim to be feminists, and claim the other side is wrong, and neither would consider the other either more "extreme" or more "centrist".
This is just one example, but I would argue that this holds true in nearly every case: Reducing something to a scale with "extremes" on each side mostly just shows how the speaker perceives other positions and is otherwise not very useful.
CS stuff: IMO a better mental model would be non-Cartesian. Perhaps a weighted graph, where the vertices are ideologies (or, to be more granular, people), and the edge-weights represent some fuzzy metric of overlap of beliefs.
I think that it is just as important to talk about the extremes and the bad ideas as it is to talk about the good ones. We bring up the extremes because they're there, and they can be tempting, and so we should warn each other about them. Saying what you're saying usually (but not always) is an attempt to not address the usually perfectly reasonable point one is responding to without outright defending the extremes. Extreme ideas do need to be pointed out precisely to do what you want: prevent the reasonable discussion from becoming one between two extremes.
You are completely right in the appropriate context: when talking about ideology A we should consider more than just its most standard version. But when comparing ideology A and ideology B, focusing on the extremes of ideology A while considering only the middle ground of ideology B (what happened in this thread) is more or less whataboutism.
To be clear, I'm not saying both sides are the same - that's a value judgment. But it's obviously not a one side is right and the other is wrong situation either.
No, because men's rights advocates are a smaller group further to an extreme end of the spectrum. Let's be generous and say it's 0.2 % of the population. Are the most extreme 0.2% of the population identifying as feminists just as unhinged? Could be. I don't think either of us could say for sure, but it's plausible. There's some value judgments to be made there. But there are crazies on both sides of the issue - that's self evident, right?
Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold the traits inherent in the movement that so many find despicable.
The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is that women of color are less probable to adopt the term "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the movement has done enough for them.
I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".
And plenty more for the willing student; however an ideology that considers "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement might understandably place some difficulty on those in need of finding these things.
And funnily enough the definition of a group has nothing to do with how it behaves; or are you suddenly going to proudly identify as a mens rights activist? I suppose its just as well that naming North Korea a democratic peoples republic magically fixed the place overnight as well.
You can find footage of people defending literally any controversial take you might have. Doesn't mean there are enough subscribers to consider their position.
Highlighting one extreme statement in a huge ideological umbrella framework does not indict the entire ideology, as your original sentence claimed.
Is that controversial statement a common one in that ideology? An official one? Do many groups from that ideology subscribe to it?
You keep using the phrase "feminism", a memeplex that's as massive and diverse as any social movement, political ideology, or religion. But it's easy to oversimplify and be reductive towards such a memeplex, which includes members as diverse as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem, Zoe Quinn and Ariel Levy, Andrew Dworkin and Malala Yousafzai. You have to understand when dealing with a hugely variegated ideology it's unhelpful to speak in absolutes.
No but the groups behaviour however does; behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given. And I never claimed one example was what it took to make the situation, I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
> The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
On the contrary, memeplex indicates quantity, size. A massive ideology with a thousand schools of thought inside. J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Clymer both identify as feminists. So do both Naomi Wu and Sarah Jeong. Such an umbrella term of ideologies contains myriads of sub-ideologies, many of them often in direct competition and contradiction with each other. To judge such an umbrella based on a single facet is to equate all of Islam to Salafi jihadism, or all of Christianity to Joel Osteen. It would seem that I am not the one operating without nuance, in this discussion.
> behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given.
A single statement from a single video? Perhaps that's the measure by how you judge all ideologies, but most do not subscribe to that heuristic.
> I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed for evidence.
And thus it is up to you to further prove that such evidence is indicative of the ideology, broadly.
You can feel whatever you want about what it indicates, none opposed the worst aspects of their group, most supported them when pressed, most subscribe to a number of malicious beliefs and behaviours; you are welcome to show evidence where they dont. And again they offer no such nuance to those they disagree with so combined with the above none shall be offered in return.
The groups public behaviour indicates the ideology just fine; and when a group becomes publicly malicious enough on a large enough scale the onus is on the defence (eg its a given the nazis were evil; someone defending them doesn't get to come in and just hysterically scream "show me the evidence" because its public knowledge).
There's no feelings involved, only hard facts and cold logic. Comprehensive evidence has not been demonstrated on the other side; only irrational emotion. Argument from outrage is fallacious and has no bearing on reasoned debate. Allegations of public maliciousness must be demonstrated; attempts to claim such exists a priori without actual demonstration is an attempt to engage in the big lie. You have undercut your own position, sir.
You have presented no hard facts or logic. As stated, the groups public behaviour is consistent and malicious enough to be common knowledge. If you can't follow that logic then how can you hope to have an opinion on what is or isn't fact and logic. Or is this another attempt to redefine words for malicious use? Something far from uncommon within said group.
We have seen it over and over again in universities, in the corporate world. We have seen it in their numerous attempts to stifle free speech and to abolish right to fair trial. We have seen it in their uniform hypocrisy (were gendered insults still considered bad or is that mansplaining?)
We have seen it in the trope of sex predators using the identity as a social shield for themselves.
Stating reality I'm afraid to tell you isn't twisting to fit a narrative, but again, subscribers to an ideology who find "men are on average taller and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement will no doubt struggle with this as well.
Could you spell out how the link you shared says anything about "year on year decrease" or anything about the movement being viewed as "despicable". Especially in the context of your very reference saying that the results depend significantly on how the question is phrased?
Ask yourself if you or other people would be more comfortable identifying as feminists publicly now as opposed to 5/10 years ago; that'll give you answer 1.
As for answer 2, I've shown what basic searches can come up with. "why im not a feminst" might give you what you're looking for.
Not OP, but Answer 1: Yes, it's anecdotal but you definitely see the trend.
Answer 2: So I did the Google search as you requested, and read about the book [1]. I hadn't heard of it but it looks interesting, thanks for recommending. From what I can tell, it's central claim is that feminism has an image problem due to it being co-opted by the US right-wing which she calls "choice feminism", and the remedy is a need to return to a leftist concept of what she calls "radical feminism". Is that what you're saying?
A full on reading into one particular book is probably going above and beyond (though I cant immediately see anything about right wing co-option on a skim read of that particular one; the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover).
The search for me at least brings a number of articles which highlight common criticisms of the movement such as rampant sexism, advocacy for abolition of basic rights (free speech, right to fair trial etc), general hypocrisy and bad faith action (see the Cathy Newman vs Jordan Peterson interview for a great example of this)
Oh, so for an incognito search with clear cookies in my locale (bay area), all you get for 1-5 pages or so with the search term you provided is the book and reviews and articles discussing it (with and without quotes): https://google.com/search?q=%22why+i+am+not+a+feminist%22
Perhaps when you search with your normal Google account it's skewing to different results. This particular book and the articles discussing it are critiquing modern feminist movements as too conservative, from what you perhaps would call a "radical left" perspective. I find it interesting that this is the exact opposite of "the general criticism at the moment seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover"!
I personally feel my incognito Google search captures the current zeitgeist better than your search, that people are fed up with conservatives and want a "radical, fearless call for revolution" as Google's auto-summary of my search put it. That said, ultimately it's all "bubbles" all the way down, as there's no such thing as a so-called "algorithm" (ranking formula, etc) free from ideology, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On Amazon it's described by Jacobin (a leftwing magazine in the US popular with Bernie supporters etc): “A searing critique… a necessary contribution to the effort to push contemporary social justice movements further to the left and to weave an understanding of class politics into modern identity-based movements in order to build a radical politics of solidarity.”
All the other summaries on Amazon are similar, i.e. the very top description (New Yorker): "The point of 'Why I Am Not a Feminist' isn’t really that Crispin is not a feminist; it’s that she has no interest in being a part of a club that has opened its doors and lost sight of its politics—a club that would, if she weren’t so busy disavowing it, invite Kellyanne Conway in"
Having never read the book or even heard of the author until you introduced it to me I don't care one way or the other, but it's clear from a reading of these descriptions that her book is a critique from the left.
In defence of the OP, I've also heard that less women are identifying as feminists because they feel the movement has lost its way somewhat. It seems like there's some debate if that's true or just wrong things that people repeat. I've never seen numbers one way or another - and your link doesn't present numbers either, it talks about gender equality not whether more or less women identify as feminist.
> feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc
While this might be what feminists like to tell themselves, that is untrue. Feminism is (and can only ever be) the movement asserting women's rights in society. It is unlikely to (and doesn't) advocate for the abolition of advantages women enjoy, like the tax disparity, criminal sentencing disparity or child custody disparity. It is also increasingly uninterested in the male perspective, further reducing its utility.
MRAs, while too androcentric as well, are a younger movement. Like the first wave of feminism, it's focusing on today's disparities. Also like feminism, it has its elements of disdain for the other perspective. And finally, like feminism, men's rights can never be anything but a narrowly focused movement ensuring men aren't treated less than women.
Great post. As a man in my twenties, I think that, even though we’re hearing about this from the men at the bottom end of the sexual-success spectrum, the problem is still being felt by average men as well. Many of my friends have complained about how dating these days feels like women are always holding out for the next best thing, and I have to agree with them.
A female friend of mine echoed a bit of the sentiment that a few of my friends had theorized was at least partly to blame, and that’s that she felt like had too much choice and was getting too much attention. She felt like her ego was being inflated in a way that was unhealthy, and so she turned away from online dating and eventually met her fiancé through mutual friends.
I wish I had some actionable advice to give along with this anecdote, but I’m still stuck in the dating game myself.
>She felt like her ego was being inflated in a way that was unhealthy, and so she turned away from online dating and eventually met her fiancé through mutual friends.
>I can choose to pity or hate him, but having chosen I can’t pretend the choice didn’t exist; it’s something I had to do.
I've had to face similar situations in my family life, and this part really resonated with me. It's an extremely eloquent way of capturing something I've never been able to put into words. Thank you for that.
I'm really worried for my teenage son. Dating was brutal when I was doing it 20 years ago, and as far as I can tell, it's gotten so, so much worse since. Modern dating can't literally be "winner take all", but it sure looks like it's getting close.
I don't think it's that bad. Being the chosen one is harder, but making connections is way easier.
I am part of the generation that went through the change and saw both "systems", and I personally much prefer the current one - at least you never reach a dead end like you did when you depended on friends of friends to meet news people. It just requires you to be more proactive.
I strongly disagree, but my evidence is all anecdotal. I'm not saying that literally every guy can find a partner, but I have seen all manner of men end up with perfectly lovely partners (and/or occasional sex partners). And when I say "all manner" I mean dumb guys, ugly guys, short guys, guys with terrible hygiene. The spectrum of men I have personally witnessed have success with women is vast and diverse and even kind of disgusting.
My take on it has always been that you wouldn't want to date someone who picks on physical features like that anyway, it's a giant red flag for an overall shitty personality.
Nearly everyone has physical dealbreakers, and height is a very socially acceptable one that the vast majority of women have. Most women also filter on somewhat less politically correct factors like race. The total hypocrisy when it comes to this topic is considered acceptable since women control the market.
And how many men who are unbeknownst to you alone and completely struggling in the dating market have you seen but are conviently ignored for a couple flashy examples that stuck out in your mind?
The solution is to stop dating for dating's sake, and just get out there and socialize with people. At some point, you'll end up in conversation with someone really interesting and things can/will escalate from there.
Get out of the "dating scene" and just do stuff with people.
When you have to make hard choices in life (staying with a partner, maintaining a relationship with a toxic family member, supporting a friend that's behaving in a way you don't approve), it's easy to be on the fence since you will have arguments for and against the decision.
However, once we choose, we tend to incorporate that choice into our narrative as the solution that makes sense, and reinforce it to the point that we end up forgetting there was once an alternative. "I left my wife, it was miserable, I'm so glad I left", etc.
It is good to not forget that there was once a choice to make, the choice wasn't easy, and there were arguments in the other side that could have won.
He has abrasive behaviour due to his circumstances. The author has the choice of overlooking the negatives and empathizing with him (pity), or rejecting his behaviour regardless of why (hate).
Both reactions can be rationalized and he has the ability to choose which way he leans.
> if 51% of young men are single and only 31% of women in the same age bracket are, that implies something is up
So that statistic really confuses me, how could that be the case? The data seems to imply a significant number of women are dating men far older than themselves, which just doesn't seem true to me. I'm wondering if that is a sampling error or different genders are interpreting the question differently.
It kind of reminds me of a study I heard about a few years back claiming that straight men average three times as many sexual partners as straight women. Except, that isn't possible! If you're only having heterosexual relationships, and you have the same number of men and women, the average number of relationships for men and women should be identical! The conclusion is that either that study either had sampling issues, or the respondents were exaggerating. That could be the obvious (men inflating their number of sexual partners, women deflating their numbers, due to societal pressures) but also different interpretations of the question.
I'm wondering if we're seeing the same thing here. Either those Pew statistics aren't a representative sample, or we're seeing inconsistent responses.
I don't know about second study or what flaws they had, but that definitely is possible if:
A) the men in the study are having "side chicks" i.e. in sexual relationship with multiple women at the same time.
B) women are more selective with whom they sleep with i.e. they rather not have sex than have sex with a "loser".
It only doesn't make sense if everyone are in monogameous relationships and everyone has sex as often as everyone else.
For the study cited in the post it could be different definitions of "commited relationship" i.e. maybe more of the young men don't view their relationships are serious, but the women who they are dating view it as such. But also I am not surprised that 20 year old women are dating/marrying 30 year old men, but that is seldom the other way around.
So your explanations for why men might have more sexual relationships than women on average is flawed, none of those reasons would change the averages. Imagine if you had 5 men and 5 women, where 1 man had a sexual relationship with all 5 women and the other 4 men had no sexual relationships. The average number of sexual relationships for women would be 1, because each has a sexual relationship with the one man. The average for the men is : (5 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0)/5 = 1 ! So whether or not there is monogomy, or different patterns of behavior, the average remains the same. The only way the two numbers could be different is if you included same-sex relationships, or if there were more men than women (or vice versa).
This isn't calculating averages, it calculates percent of people that are single. Single is a boolean, so in your case 80% of men are single while 0% of women are single.
"Average" can mean median, not mean. If 10 men all have 3 sexual relationships, and 7 women have 1 sexual relationships and 3 women have 10 sexual relationships it evens out.
> the average number of relationships for men and women should be identical!
When those studies say average they usually mean median.
Imagine a population with 10 men and 10 women.
3 of the men sleep with each woman once.
The average hookups for both men and women are three each, but the median for men is none while the median for women is three.
This is a contrived example, normally in each population you'd have outliers, but the point is the data presented here shows that "hookups" are more evenly distributed amongst women than men.
seems women's ideal sex frequency is lower than men’s. what to do ?
The market answer is to price relationships with women, weather short or long term. And the market does do this, under various names in increasing cost: hookups, porn, escort, dating, mistress, marriage.
People just don’t always manage risk: children, disease, divorce, alimony, dying married bedroom, aging...
banning / discouraging prostitution favors women over men. But it harms men more than it helps women.
Interestingly, encouraging female promiscuity actually work economically in the same direction as prostitution by adding to the total number of sexual encounters involving women (ie in favor of men, lowering the price of sex with women)
> So that statistic really confuses me, how could that be the case? The data seems to imply a significant number of women are dating men far older than themselves, which just doesn't seem true to me.
Having just read a bunch of research coming from psychology on sex differences, this is very plausible to me. Most studies indicated that women wanted to date someone a few to ten years older while men wanted to date someone few to ten years younger.
> It kind of reminds me of a study I heard about a few years back claiming that straight men average three times as many sexual partners as straight women. Except, that isn't possible!
It really depends on whether they were reporting the "mean" or the "median". It's entirely possible for the median values for the two sexes to differ greatly while the mean values are comparable, which would imply that each group had a very different shape to the curve of their data.
One of many example hypothetical sets of shapes that would fit the data would be one where a graph of the males shows a fairly "normal" distribution with the mean and median having similar values, but the female graph was more of an exponential curve, where a small percentage at the top had tons of partners, and the rest of the women drop off the curve fairly quickly, resulting in a much lower median value than the men, but still the same mean value.
While I'm not sure about the sexual partners statistic, I certainly believe the age-range one. This is obviously anecdotal, but as someone with a large-ish social group in their late twenties it is extremely common to see women with partners in a bracket above them. This was true when I was in my early twenties and remains the same now.
Maybe women lie more than men on the question? Or maybe 20% of men are dating more than 1 woman?
For total numbers of partners, it makes sense if you look at the numbers in the top quartile. In other words, men with the most partners have X times as many partners as women with the most partners. You can do that without any multiple partners, just by looking at the top quartile.
But I think there's some other ways it could make sense if you were looking at the average of everybody (perhaps this is just theoretical and there's not much contribution from these to the numbers, tho maybe there is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯): if relationships are not evenly distributed, and if there are multiple partners.
In the first case, say only 30% of men are dating 80% of women. The remaining 70% of men and 20% of women go unmatched in the time period. Now there's two ways this could occur: in serial, or in parallel. In the serial case, 30% of men date 30% of women, until t1, then they all break up, and date the next 30% of women until t2, then 20% of men break up and date the remaining 20% of women until t3. Over t0 to t3 80% of women were paired at some point, and 30% of men were paired. In the parallel case, the 30% of men are dating the 80% of women all at once.
These numbers are just examples, but I think within these parameters and possibilities there could be some truth to how we get these statistics, which I think are totally valid. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there were serial or parallel promiscuity effects on the female side as well, and I think there would be some (but a fewer number, tho more than "society" would expect) of women in the top quartile that would have more, as many or nearly as many partners as the men with the most (female outliers, or female superdaters). Perceived and innate risk of sex as assessed differently between genders, as well as individual gender/hormone influenced preferences, probably account for adjustment as well.
I think relational "age brackets" play a huge role in the incel phenomenon. Let's assume that by convention the male partner in an adult relationship has to be 0 to 6 years older than the female.
This means that a female of 22 years can look for a partner between 22 and 28 years. A male at the same age can only look for 18-22 year olds (consent age, maturity of younger females) resulting a 33% smaller age range for potential partners.
The male "hunting range" is further diminished by the fact that they cut the ties to their high school at the age of 19 (college, job). This means they lose access to younger potential partners and have more equally aged women in their environment, who are likely more attracted to older males.
Isn't it kind of obvious that young single men are competing with nearly all adult men for the young women?
Esp. with the rising divorce rates, more non-young men are going back on the market than previously, and they've got more financial stability and general security to offer than most their younger competitors. I'm betting they're not exactly chomping at the bit to shack up with women their age or older.
Only because marriage rates have been falling faster. The divorce rate (divorces/population) has not fallen as fast as the marriage rate (marriages/population). The number of divorces/marriage is still on the rise. No one is getting married these days and when they do, they are more likely to get divorced.
It's weird that the obvious interpretation of the 'single by demographic group' graph isn't discussed at all. Specifically, there's a bulge of single men at the bottom of the age distribution and a bulge of single women at the top.
While the average age difference of married couples isn't extreme, I would suspect that when you start getting towards the 'margins' of sexual desirability and social opportunity to meet people, the age differences skyrocket.
This seems rather more likely than the idea that there are hordes of Chads each dating multiple women.
It might also be a good thing for guys to remember; some of the advantages of still-on-the-market older men plundering down into their age group (e.g. 30-somethings dating 20-somethings) might be fairly easily simulated (dressing properly, housekeeping, having a job, not being a horny weirdo all the damn time - or at least not showing it quite so much). From experience a lot of guys in their teens and 20s are pretty rough around the edges.
For any suffering a communication issue in your relationship, I can't recommend enough the book: "Conscious Loving" [1]
Asides from being an enjoyable read, it provides an excellent framework and guide for how to have conversations about difficult topics successfully. It pairs well with the book "Nonviolent Communication"
These things take time and effort, but they really truly work.
I think it's fair to say his data shows a high percentage of "incels" are not the incels on the internet that are bad, but just guys who can't get women and they don't deserve our hatred. Similar to the Japanese phenomenon of "grass eaters"
It's easier that way. If they're demonized, it means we don't have to grapple with the deeper issues and try to find some sort of solution to these issues. They're incels, thus (according to mainstream thought) they aren't deserving of empathy or help. They're sexists, racists and alt-right scumbags. Who cares if they die alone? Sympathize with them and you're lumped in with them too.
It's not surprising, considering how difficult the topics are that are at the base of these issues, but it's still depressing. We're no closer to bridging the gap between the genders than we were 40 years ago, and it seems to be getting worse in different ways.
Not to belittle people speaking out against abuse, but at some points in life you just see people digging through years, decades of internet comments and more just to find a "gotcha". It's honestly exhausting.
The longer I live, and especially after having read that post, the more I think the civil institution of marriage is a mistake. We would be better off, if it remained a purely religious or traditional ceremony, without the government putting a stack of papers into the equation.
Just let people be happy together; even bound by a promise, if they wish so, but without the external pressure and the fallout in case they fall out of love. Divorces are such a complicated and often-times life ruining experience.
So many people are pushed by their families (or even blackmailed by their partners) to go into a marriage they are often not very sure about, and have no easy way to get out of. It's probably one of the riskiest contracts one can sign.
A breakup sans marriage is still going to be devastating. At minimum, how do you decide who gets what, without some sort of legal framework around it?
What if you end up in the hospital, unconscious? Who makes care decisions for you? Sure, we can have a legal framework just for that, but that's just one more thing you have to do. What if you die? Who gets your stuff? Sure, you should have written up a will, but many people haven't done it. More overhead.
Something to consider is how long homosexual communities have fought for marriage equality. Yes, part of it is certainly symbolic, but I've spoken to gay/lesbian friends who (when they couldn't get married) were anxious all the time about not having the legal benefits around marriage.
I think it'd be possible to not have legal marriage anymore, but you'd still have to have a bunch of legal constructs around the idea of being partnered to someone in order for many life things to work properly. Whether or not that would be better or worse is certainly up for debate.
> Fallout in case they fall out of love. Divorces are such a complicated and often-times life ruining experience.
The fallout is going to happen no matter what. Marriage and Divorce law exist to bring a bare minimum of equity in the outcome and assure the care of any minor children who are affected.
I'll take some of the other side here. I'm married; my wife didn't have strong feelings about getting married (lived in Europe for a while and was comfortable raising a family together unmarried); I wanted to get married earlier than we did.
We have two children together and she wanted to stay home with the kids for a few years but wasn't willing to do that without the framework of a marriage in place. Was 10 years ago and no sign that we're headed for trouble, but the civil and legal framework and what was at stake as a result was helpful to support a choice that we were all fortunate to benefit from all around (with a slight hit to retirement savings account balances).
There is a lot to unpack here, and it is difficult to know where to begin.
I had a friend who was a pastor who lamented he didn't like that his yearly board game get-together with his other [often pastor] friends often ended up discussing their dead bedrooms. I have no idea how these dynamics have come to be so common, even taking into account the usual ebbs and flows in relationships. I don't know if this problem occurs at higher rates in more religious couples. I suspect that this is the collateral damage of [obviously misguided] purity culture, but we see the same patterns outside of religious couples.
Edit: I should clarify to say the only reason I'm writing this is that these problems have a big impact on people's lives, aren't easy to fix, and often buried from everyone around them.
Myself, as a highly conservative married man, my findings confirm the daily mail article, esp. when I look at the sex lives of my married friends who were more libertine in their youth.
EDIT:
A few theories:
1. My wife is not on birth control, which means she ovulates, and thus has the normal cyclical female sex drive. Her desires during ovulation are way past mine, even if my average is higher than hers. I believe this is why modern men feel so undesirable -- most women are taking hormones that directly affect how attractive they perceive their men to be.
2. No points of comparison. I have no point of comparison with other women. At this point my sexual response, probably through repeated exposure, is finely tuned to my wife. I have fantasies, like any man, but the vividness of my lived experience far surpasses them in excitement.
3. No pornography. I'm not saying I've been perfect, but my religion believes that consuming pornography (same with masturbation) leads to hell, so it's not something I typically do. I have a high sex drive as a result, and instead of masturbating, we have sex instead.
4. No condoms. Similar to number 1. Sex without a condom is better. We tried it once (in violation of my religion) and it was awful. I wouldn't describe it as the same experience. I'm pretty sure there's something in each of our secretions that makes no condom sex better. I'm not a sex scientist, but this is my observation.
That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.
With this in mind, I'm not surprised that religious couple feel more satisfied.
Having said that, maybe society does set unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex, and it's possible that skews people's perspective and make them all feel like everyone else is having more and better sex, which in turn renders them disatisfied.
So I'm not putting judgement either way, but this seem like a good explanation to me.
Another aspect is knowing better. If you've ever only had Nescafé, you'll still enjoy it and be satisfied with it as your daily coffee driver. But if you've had top notch espresso from world class baristas, you might no longer be able to enjoy Nescafé the same way you used too. Does this apply to sex, I don't know fully, but I think it could be, and religious couple would tend to have less points of comparison, so that could similarly drive them to be able to continuously enjoy and be satisfied with what they have.
Don't take my coffee comparison too literal, "better" with sex doesn't mean like better partner or anything like that, I think just means memories of better times you've had having sex, of more excitement, choice, and all that. I know some people who have an ex-girlfriend, or a one night stand where they still remember that as their best sex. It might often be more because they were simply younger and it was more new to them, then anything to do with the person in itself. And clearly those would have been terrible partners for them. But that memory kind of hunts them with being satisfied in their current relationship sexually, as they can't help but compare one with the other.
This is just all hypothetical, don't take it as ground truth, I'm only exploring the phenomenon.
I'm on your side here (in that I have little patience or care for religious dogma around anything, let alone sex), but I think the point you bring up argues the opposite of what you're arguing.
> That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with their sex life.
The thing is, that's literally all that matters in this kind of survey. If I'm 10-out-of-10 happy, that is objectively better than someone who is 7-out-of-10 happy, even if those numbers were arrived at via subjective means. Wouldn't you rather be the guy who says "I literally could not be happier", vs. the guy who says "I'm pretty damn happy, but my life is still lacking in some ways"? Ignorance really can be bliss, sometimes.
Your "knowing better" argument is probably a big factor. But isn't that an argument for only having sex with one person? If you end up enjoying sex with that person, then you have nothing to compare it to; most importantly, nothing to compare it to unfavorably. If you don't end up enjoying sex with that person, then yes, you do have a problem. But the survey data seems to suggest that lifelong-monogamy must not produce that outcome often enough to matter.
Not saying everyone should opt for religiously-motivated lifelong monogamy. It's definitely not something I was ever interested in. But obviously there are benefits to it, or no one would do it. (Well, ok, true believers might cite fear of divine consequences as their reason for doing it, which isn't great.)
Thank you for sharing this perspective. Honestly, it was really interesting to hear about "traditional" sex, and make me realize just how unnatural most sex has become.
I would suspect that usage of antidepressants is lower in highly religious couples. The one-two combo of antidepressants and hormonal birth control absolutely destroy libido.
It seems to me that people could stand to turn these issues into sub-issues. I can't see much similarity between undersexed 25 year olds (typically male) and 60 year old couples who are either constructed differently or have health issues.
My main take-away is to heavily invest in sex robots and teledildonics.
A lot of this stuff is just fact to you, isn't it?
It's hard to engage when some of the things you talk about here seem immutable to you but are not even reasonable points of contention to me.
"Pornography leads to hell" <- how can we really have a conversation about any of this if you're making blanket statements about some of the content, especially when the statement is so negative? Obviously if hell were real and if pornography certainly led to eternal condemnation in hell, pornography would be bad, but neither of those "if" statements really lead for much discussion.
I believe pornography leads to hell, yes. I also believe that, even if you didn't believe that, it would lead to unhappy marriages? You should feel free to argue to me the benefits of pornography, though.
I think entering into an argument knowing you won't change your mind is disingenuous, and I think your argument that pornography leads to unhappy marriages hinges on the idea that pornography leads to hell, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's actually the only reason you've given, and then you built your conclusion on top of it.
My point is by bringing religion into the conversation, you ratcheted up the severity to an 11, since the negative consequences of religion tend to be literally the worst thing you can experience for all of eternity. Before it was a tough conversation about sex, and now it's a tough conversation about sex where if you get it wrong, you're doomed to hell.
At a certain point, I'm left to wonder what your intention actually was, and I'm running out of positive options. For example, you created a throwaway, and I'm curious about what I'm supposed to take away from that decision.
> I think your argument that pornography leads to unhappy marriages hinges on the idea that pornography leads to hell, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's actually the only reason you've given, and then you built your conclusion on top of it.
Actually, the argument pornography leads to hell would suggest I think porn makes for a more pleasurable marriage since things that lead to hell typically are extremely fun.
I believe porn leads to unhappy marriages because it causes comparisons, and it causes men to desire things that are not the traditional sex I believe is the most fun and fulfilling. For example, I think it causes men to seek a dopamine rush in sex, like the dopamine rush they get from porn, instead of the connection with another human being that I believe leads to lasting happiness.
EDIT:
> For example, you created a throwaway
Actually, this is not a throwaway. I created a new account because I had to close my previous ones for fear of being doxxed.
I'm wondering what your intentions are. He's mostly just sharing his personal experiences and perspective and you're responding with a rather negative tone having decided a priori that discussion with him is impossible, when the only questions you've asked him are sarcastic and confrontational ones that don't seem to be posed with an interest in actually having a conversation.
They responded on a thread where someone else brought religion in by specifically mentioning the discussions held amongst pastors about their sex lives.
Your experience is different from many others in a few regards. I assume that either you can afford to continue have more children, or you're no longer capable of conceiving. There are many monogamous married couples in the US who must use hormonal birth control or other contraception simply because they can not afford to raise another (or any) child. Childcare is expensive and very little is subsidized by the government to encourage more people to have children. Even simply giving birth is enough to financially ruin some people, and again the government does very little to subsidize this to encourage more people to have children. In fact, many political candidates run on platforms of doing away with anything that might actually enable families to be able to afford to have children, so it's no surprise at all that many people are using birth control, whether they're married or not.
You seem pretty fortunate to be in a position where you can afford to have unprotected sex with your wife, because many people can't afford that luxury. Perhaps it's no surprise they're depressed with unfulfilling sex lives.
Childcare expense has a natural limit: the income of one parent. I have a dozen kids, and I certainly do not attempt to pay for childcare. The kids have a mother to care for them.
It's interesting to ponder how close people might be to hitting that natural limit. Some have gone over it, perhaps without realizing so. There must be many people who would save money by parenting their own kids.
My wife and I used natural family planning (ovulation tracking) with great success when we were not having children. We had our first child four years into marriage (conceived quickly). We have never gone more than a few months without conceiving, when we have had sex freely. When tracking cycles, we've gone years.
That's great. It doesn't work for everyone nor is it guaranteed. When your financial stability is tenuous, it seems far more prudent to use more reliable methods, or even to layer multiple methods.
I personally know people who used that method; it didn't work. Conversely my wife and I have used that method with the intention of getting pregnant, and it still took a while because accurately tracking it can be difficult for a variety of reasons.
I'm trying to have a productive conversation here. The original question was about how to avoid dead bedrooms, and I gave my opinion as well as empirical evidence to back it up. I can't comment on the efficacy of birth control. I can say that we have been in fairly financially unstable times, and I have not found that children cost very much, although I can certainly see how some could spend lots of money on them.
If you want to discuss more about having a good sex life, I'm happy to engage but don't want to get derailed by the contraceptive argument. I will say I'd rather have ten kids, less money and a good marriage than a few kids, lots of money and a terrible marriage.
I’m not derailing, I’m making a point that there are many external factors involved. You provided some good tips for avoiding a dead bedroom. My point is that the feasibility of those can depend on other circumstances which tie directly into how society at large cares - or doesn’t - for its members. And this greater issue that the article is about is a societal problem. The implication I took away from your original post is that birth control and lack of conservative religious social mores is partly responsible, and I don’t think that’s the whole picture.
There are other societal issues that help lead us to the situation we’re in, some of which are directly caused by conservative approaches to society. I’m not trying to bash conservatism or religion, but the point I’m making is that it is not without it’s own issues and contributions to other problems.
Lastly it’s not a dichotomy between rich and childless and poor with loads of kids, there are certainly families of 3 or 4 that might want more kids but worry that another might make it harder to provide the same as they have been for their current kids.
I don't know a ton of married men but every last one of them has managed to let me know one way or another that their sex lives are essentially over. All of them. And it all seems to follow this cliche that people will scream at you does not exist.
Are these people explicitly telling you this? If a bunch of my married friends got together and started bitching about their sex lives, I might nod along in agreement even if my sex life isn't over.
One friend, recently married, much younger than I. Never brought up sex once in all the time I knew him, just casually drops at a party while the two of us are alone in a hallway that the cliche was real.
My longest friendship, married a woman who talked a good game, was very out and proud about her kinky background, and so on. Another dead bedroom, this usually mentioned during long car rides while we go out. She keeps saying that she'll try to do better but does nothing, meanwhile everything she has on the table is a crisis.
As far as I understand it celibacy of men devoted to religion or spiritual endeavours is not about "purity" but total focus. And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very resolute.
I don't think that the body being inherently sinful is actually a part of evangelical Christianity. I'm sure there will be some within the evangelical category that teach that, but I think the core evangelical position is this: Sex is for marriage. Outside of marriage, sex is sinful/evil. But within marriage, it is good and to be enjoyed.
Now, you can still think of that as "misguided purity culture", but it's not "the body is inherently sinful".
What I'm saying below applies to the advanced liberal economies (the rest of the world is not in this place yet).
I think the intersection of feminism, women entering the workforce, globalization and the attendant economic insecurity, and the shift to a service-oriented economy (where women do much better than men) have all combined to put men in a difficult position: on average, women are feminists when it comes to power plays that pit females as a class against men (feminism is first and foremost about power, equality second), but they still expect men to be the providers (most women do not want to marry a man who makes less than them), and also expect men to do the dangerous occupations (oil rig workers, police, military, particularly infantry, waste disposal and handling, construction). Perhaps women have won a pyrrhic victory here: they have successfully risen in power, pay, education, independence, and social standing, but at what cost? The asymmetry in sexuality between the sexes has always been there, but now, there is no framework to reconcile it: traditional norms, which reconciled this at great cost to women, have now been overturned, but modern-day practices have pushed things in the opposite direction, extracting a heavy cost from men. It's difficult to say one is better than the other.
This is a sensitive topic that's hard to bring up and keep things productive in discussing it. So often I see examples of bad behavior, and the commentary is often to demonize and treat the offender as an outcast.
We aren't going to make progress until we start considering that the offenders might be acting out due to internal turmoil and trauma, and that we should be trying to help these people, not outcast them.
I expect this will get lost in the commotion here, but:
The author uses language around sex that I think treats it, subtly but disturbingly, as a commodity. They write of a "withholder/withholdee", of "women who want to provide sexual intimacy" (note the word "provide"), and of "women... putting out".
The problem with this framework (which is endemic to the larger culture) is that it runs against bodily autonomy for all of us. If sex is a commodity, then the people who provide or withhold it are just means to an end. And treating people (including ourselves) as means to an end is rather degrading.
Imagine using the same language for any other consensual activity. If someone's partner no longer wanted to go out dancing, play board games, or make music together, would we say they were "withholding gameplay" or failing to "provide entertainment" or no longer "putting out music"? I hope not.
The comparison seems off. What you're missing is monogamy. If your partner does not want to play board games as frequently as you, then it is perfectly acceptable to find someone else to play board games with. With sex in a monogamous relationship not so much.
Even still, a healthy relationship is giving and taking. My wife may want me to go for evening walks with her while I hate them, but still I go with her because I know it makes her happy. Dead bedrooms are imo a sign of one partner not giving.
If your weekly tennis partner started canceling on you at the last minute, you'd get annoyed too.
The difference is sex is often intrinsic to the relationship. When someone wants it a lot less or more or different than before then the terms of the relationship unexpectedly become worse for at least one person. That can feel like bad faith even if it wasn't.
This is an excellent point. I always assumed the emotional aspect of sex was part of the reason the verb "withholding" was used, much in the same way it's used to describe a more generalized "withholding" of love and affection, whether it's as simple as a kind word or hug on upwards to the more carnal. But withholding something implies that thing is deserved or earned, which runs contrary to body autonomy.
Even though he used this language, I thought the author did a pretty good job explaining why sex isn't something that's rarely "withheld" as a means to an end. But our language around love (physical and emotional) and relationships needs work.
Legalizing sex work is just papering over the problem here. A lot of men want long-term, committed relationships as well as sex. They want to build families and have children. Allowing them to consort with prostitutes will only solve this fundamental imbalance temporarily.
I believe that there are a lot of sexless/loveless men who aren't violent or misogynistic. The problem is nobody pays attention to them. They only become visible to society when they say and do violent, misogynistic things. Then people say that it must be their fault for being violent and misogynist.
I have a pet theory for this phenomenon. If you look at recently contacted peoples or those who have little contact with the outside world, endemic warfare is common. In these societies, well over 20% of men are killed in the ongoing conflicts. Evidence points to endemic warfare being common for most of human history and prehistory. Looking at our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees, it is the same if not more brutal.
I think, on average, that men are more polyamorous than women partially because this fit our environment. It allowed women in a clan to be in child-bearing partnerships even if gender ratios were grossly imbalanced. While we are now in a very different environment where almost all men survive, our relative sexual and coupling urges have remained the same.
Through most of the modern-era, post feudalism, this was solved through socially enforced monogamy. Now of course, with loosening restrictions, polyamory is gaining an acceptance it probably hasn't experienced since earlier eras of endemic warfare.
To be clear, the lack of violence in modern life is a strictly _good_ thing. But I'm not sure where it leaves us for the future.
Have there been any comparative studies on this phenomenon between countries with legalized sex work and countries without? I live in a country where it is illegal and have gone through very long dry spells, and let me tell you it is extremely frustrating.
If love, sex, and relationships are as core to people's self-confidence as the author makes it out to be, it seems imperative to let people have access to those things in at least some form. I've certainly been envious of those countries where I would have the option to order up a temporary lover, and the useful-if-fleeting confidence boost that comes with.
>> there was a fairly polarized split between the she-doesn’t-owe-you-sex-you-child crowd and the good-for-him-dump-the-frigid-broad edgelords. I envied their respective positions and their certainty of being right, because I know too many people...
There is a version of this essay that's about establishing who's right and wrong, personally and/or publicly. In some cases, those essays need to be written. Those don't require much empathy, and if they do it's a judicial sort of empathy.
This essay we need more of, at least if we want to know more.
Everyone is responsible for their own arseholery. I do think we need to be somewhat firm about what that is or isn't. But drawing lines isn't the whole game. Empathy is an actual requirement for understanding, because what empathy is, is human's innate ability to understand one another when we try.
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something.
This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. No one wants to be the partner that gives meaning to another person's life, unless they're also codependent in some way. It's emotionally draining to take on that kind of responsibility.
EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the solution.
>This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
No it isn't.
My grandparents, who were married for 60 years had this mentality. My wife's grandparents, who were married for a similar amount of time, also shared this mentality. My wife's parents still share this mentality (and are obviously completely devoted to one another, which you will notice if you spend about 5 seconds with them). My parents divorced, which has had an incredibly destructive effect on my family, almost certainly as a result of my father's belief that he needed a life that was independent of our family, and that he could somehow live "independently" and still fulfill his role with my mother as the leaders of our family unit.
Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you jealous?"
And then, predictably, that leads to relationship collapse, heartbreak, and bitterness about 100% of the time. Shocking.
> There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy"
I feel like you're responding to a different argument than the one that was posed above. They weren't saying that a deep devotion to your partner is bad at all. They were saying that if you're miserable every moment you're not with your partner, there is likely something wrong that needs to be addressed.
Being able to be comfortable and happy even when your partner isn't around doesn't preclude you from having a devoted long term relationship. In fact, that feels like a recipe for a healthier long term relationship. Otherwise you can end up with codependency or separation anxiety.
But you are moving the goalposts, the statement in discussion is this:
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable.
This is not healthy, doesn't matter how much you care about your partner and relationship. Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a good sign.
You can be much happier when you are with your partner, you can enjoy to spend most days with your partner, that's natural. Not enjoying a single day without them is pretty alarming.
I feel like you're reading that text differently. I don't think they're saying "if my wife or I are apart for a few days [business trip or something], then I'm miserable", but rather "I was miserable before I found the relationship with my wife, but we can perfectly well be apart for normal business trips without issue."
>Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a good sign.
I would guess that the main issue here becomes the tendency for folks to become housebound. Retirement is no joke in terms of becoming inwardly focused.
> I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something.
Being miserable whenever you aren't around your partner does rise to the level of a mental health issue, I feel. You aren't going to be around your partner 24/7/365, and it's not healthy or reasonable to spend that away time in misery.
But what I'm responding to is the idea that if you're only ever happy when your partner is there, there's likely something wrong. I didn't even really bring up single life.
> indeed is one we should all strive for (or why bother)
What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
(As an aside, I actually don't think that being in a relationship is something that all people need to strive for.)
I would argue that a high level of devotion is not the same thing as codependency. I'm not sure you and OP are actually disagreeing with each other here.
It's entirely possible to have an enduring, meaningful, devoted, monogamous relationship that brings a great deal of happiness to both partners without that relationship being a requirement for the people involved to experience any amount of happiness or fulfillment in their lives.
Yeah man I don't think I would classify a committed relationship where partners end up missing their partner when they're gone as "codependent". And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
Codependence is when two people have some unhealthy trait that is reinforced by the other person's unhealthy trait. From wikipedia:
>Codependency is a concept that attempts to characterize imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.
That is not the same as "I get sad when my wife is gone because she is my life partner".
> Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable relationships.
> And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
No offense, but that's exactly what you just did. I personally know of families with 30+ years of marriage who appear "full of happy health people" on the outside but independently disclose their lifelong frustration.
You're interpreting this very different to how I read it. Missing someone is very different from being miserable when apart because you don't have anything else to give your life meaning.
I'm not miserable when I miss someone. I'd never describe it as that way, because if I'm apart from someone, while that sucks, at the same time it means I have someone. Longing is not misery to me at least.
I still don't understand if by that sentence the article author means he was miserable before, or if this means he misses her after just one day of her being away. "Spent" is in the past, so I assumed it's the former.
I have the impression that people are talking about different things in some replies.
> I still don't understand if by that sentence the article author means he was miserable before, or if this means he misses her after just one day of her being away.
Honestly to me it's not important, if it's either of those things, if it's misery every day without someone that's pretty extreme. IMHO, YMMV etc. Glad he's happy, but that's a lot to put on a partner.
Right, but this is the statement that someone pointed out as a red flag, that you disagreed with
> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy.
Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
Look-- my life would be crap without my wife. She's awesome and I am much happier in partnered life. I'd survive and have some enjoyment alone, but most of us end up partnered up because it's a serious buff to life fulfillment.
That doesn't make us codependent, to know that I'd spend lots of time miserable if unpartnered and without my wife in particular.
I don't think it's generally worthwhile to argue with people whose arguments center around "I love my wife and you cannot tell me that's not okay." Lots of these responses read as though people are feeling attacked, which isn't a great baseline to start any reasonable conversation.
In fairness, the tone of the earlier comments has been edited-- the original tone of "you're all codependent" and the statement that we're all just jealous that we can't play video games whenever we want maybe reasonably made people feel attacked.
I'm not suggesting that the person feeling attacked isn't right to feel that way (I didn't see the comment you're referring to, but this topic seems to be kind of heated in nature regardless).
Mostly just, attempting to reason with someone that's feeling attacked (much less, someone that's feeling attacked about something as emotional as loving their wife) is an unwinnable task. I wish this conversation started better, because I actually think it's very important (and I generally think/agree that lots of relationships are unhealthy and it contributes to a lot of more negative societal issues), but I think discussing those topics with those that think you're trying to invalidate their relationship serves no one.
See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion of the population is still substantially affected by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to biological imperative.
I agree that people should be "okay" without a partner and freestanding as their own person. But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
Apologies, I didn't realize you were the commenter I've been referencing as feeling attacked.
> See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion of the population is still substantially affected by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to biological imperative.
Can you reference any legitimate science to back this up? I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
> But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
> I don't know what the version of me without a stable, long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know that my life became much better around the time that I met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the negative impact from it yet.
This is again a strawman. "Incapable of being alone" is different than "enjoying being together". The former is what is unhealthy, as has been referenced over and over again in these comments.
> I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or biology.
?? This is something that is observed across many cultures. Yes, attitudes of permanence are different, and the strength of prohibition against adultery is different, and you can find an outlier. But e.g. we have pre-capitalist Native Americans practicing marriage and stable coupling, and thousands of years of documented traditions within China, ancient Egypt, etc.
> This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
It's hardly a strawman when it occurred earlier in this thread (and still is there weakly even after edits).
Yah. I think for me, in the long term, I'd be miserable without a partner. The continuity and shared journey is a key part of what makes life tolerable. Yes, friendships are great, but they're not the same. Not to mention: I like getting laid.
I also think my wife is a uniquely good partner for me. If I lost her, for some reason, it would be difficult to find a situation nearly as good for me.
That's hardly the same as codependence, though.
I also gotta say: When my wife leaves to travel on her own or with the kids for a few days... it's bliss, both during and after. A few days without her is great, and reunion and the chance to share stories of our independent adventures is great, too.
I've known people who are happy and fulfilled living alone, but it's hard for me to picture myself in their shoes.
My wife and I have an awesome relationship. I would be okay-ish, but it couldn't hold a candle to what I have now.
The big bright spots in my life are my work, my relationship with my wife, and my kids. I would have more time to play video games and consume media, and I'm sure I'd have some more friends and hobbies... But it's hard for me to picture papering over her absence with friendships and hobbies.
The dead bedroom situations I've seen with my friends (M->F equally as well as F->M) are always the result of one party being incapable of understanding the other's desire for sex. This leads them when pressed to try approaches such as, substituting "being nicer" for sex, trying therapy to reduce their partner's sex drive, or just forgetting about the problem because they are unable to sympathize with it. Ideas such as initiating sex more often or opening up the relationship either don't occur to them, are vehemently opposed, or forgotten about.
No-one is entitled to sex. But individuals in a sexually-exclusive relationship are entitled to sympathy, action, and compromise from their partner to bridge severe differences in sexuality, just the same as any other sticking point in a relationship.