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.
>Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
Well okay I suppose that the people I'm talking about, in their 50+ year relationships would describe their love for their partner as a type of addiction, but what you might be missing there is: that is a joke, and they are being cute.
If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
You're kind of just arguing past the people in this thread ("these relationships in my life are healthy and not codependent, so codependence is not a problem in relationships"). I would also argue that your takes offer the same "armchair psychoanalysis" you're arguing against, fwiw.
> If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.
No one is redefining anything. This term is poorly defined. Codependence is not "romantic devotion". "Romantic devotion" should not be codependence.
> A codependent is someone who cannot function on their own and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized around another person, process, or substance.
Both this post and the OP strike me as "if it works, it's great, but if it doesn't, it's bad". Different things work for different people, and generalizing too much leads to suggestions that aren't useful for any particular individual situation.
> the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another,
I've been happily married for 17 years and have been with my wife for over 20.
Trust me: there is a big BIG difference between being deeply devoted to your spouse and being co-dependent on them such that you cannot be happy during their absence.
To add to the other replies, my own grandparents sound similar to yours in that they were happily married for 52 years. But my grandfather passed away 5 years ago, and while I know she still misses him deeply, I don't think my grandmother is in a constant state of misery. She is still able to find happiness in life despite now being alone.
I think that's what the parent was getting at. Being devoted to your partner doesn't mean you need them to enjoy life.
I don't think you're arguing against what the parent actually said. If you need your partner in order to be happy, and when they are not around you're unhappy, that is not healthy. Not healthy for you personally, and not healthy for your relationship. That's dependence (or codependence if it goes both ways), and that's not the same as simply missing someone when they're not around.
You can be 100% devoted to your partner and relationship but still be happy when the two of you are apart. A polyamorous relationship, or a person who has a whole other life completely separate from their partner, is not the only other option. You seem to be creating a false dichotomy here.
Pinning your happiness to the presence of another individual is not healthy. You cannot be with that person 100% of the time. And what if they die, or their feelings change and they don't want to be with you anymore? (Certainly either event would be devastating, but it should not destroy your only source of happiness.) How is it healthy for you to put all your emotional eggs in their basket? And even worse, how is it fair to the other person, to make that person an essential part of your constant happiness?
> 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.
Have you actually talked to or people long enough for them to trust you with their past or current martial issues? Because in my experience, after knowing then for long enough, they start talking for real and completely different pictures emerge.
And really really, you don't know whether people are happy nor what that happiness actualy practically means, until they know for really well. Because most people don't talk about how their relationships looks like from inside.
I agree that OP should not have used such absolutist terms, but you are guilty of the same thing. There are couples which are *devoted* to each other. And there are couples that simply have a deep friendship and know that in 30 years they will probably drift apart but continue having respect for each other. Self-awareness and honesty are obviously necessary, but you describing "life-long devotion and complete dependence on one-other" as the only way to build lasting meaningful relationships is simply harmful. Just as harmful as saying that such type of devotion should not exist.
I suppose the best reply to this is that for a healthy romantic/sexual relationship to exist the partners in it must already be basically emotionally healthy, including having the coping skills and support to deal with their own emotional disregulation if it exists.
It's wonderful to see happy partners in lifelong relationships. That is almost certainly a sign of individual emotional maturity and self-regulation. Those people would be happy in or out of that particular relationship (absolutely not discounting the intense grief of losing a lifelong partner, but the emotional resilience to start enjoying life again), and the ones you mention clearly have strong and healthy relationships with other people as well.
Unhappiness with life before finding a partner demonstrates that there is something fundamentally wrong. People feel too lonely, or too insignificant, or too unloved, or too undervalued, or some other excess of negative emotion that at its root is unhealthy self image or mental health issue and needs to be dealt with independently of whether or not that person is in a partnership. Validation from a relationship can certainly mask the underlying negative emotion, but there's a big risk that at some point a partner's validation will stop working and the person will become unhappy again but put the blame on the partner or the details of the relationship without realizing that it's the same internal emotional problem that was always there. Almost certainly if the relationship ends the person will think the partner left because of the incorrect belief they have about themselves due to negative emotions, e.g. "I was unlovable" or "I wasn't attractive enough".
> 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?"
That is indeed toxic. Jealousy is a natural feeling; it can be rooted in some negative beliefs but not always. To me it feels like a fair mix of instinctual response from relationship preference and underlying fears. Unfortunately for the folks you mention instinctual jealousy is a pretty strong indication of a preference for monogamy and not for polyamory. In contrast what I've heard called "compersion" is a feeling of shared joy and happiness about a polyamorous partner's experiences with other partners, distinct from any sort of fetishization of another relationship (which while not necessarily unhealthy is distinct from simple happiness at a partner's happiness). Jealousy for me has usually been rooted in fear of loss; loss of a relationship or fear of missing out. For monogamous people jealousy is also rooted in, for lack of a better word... Monogamy. It's probably the majority relationship preference.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them.
Relationships bring significant happiness. People who are in relationships self-report more happiness. They're richer. They live longer lives. You might say that I'm mistaking cause and effect: maybe happier/richer/healthier people are more likely to enter into relationships? This is probably part of the effect, but not the majority of it. If someone randomly ends up a widower from their partner experiencing a sudden, tragic accident, their happiness doesn't remain level. In fact, it substantially decreases: widowers have some of the highest suicide rates of any demographic group.
Relationships aren't some crazy random idea that just happened to develop in 2020 USA. They exist universally, across all cultures and times. All of them consider a relationship as a good, important goal (even as the typical attributes of relationships do vary). It's hard to name any facet of culture as universal as that.
Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single.
Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy!
Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
I see far more people saying the opposite, that if you're single and unhappy, it's your fault for not trying hard enough to be happy.
Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't. It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see a relationship as an important component of their path to happiness.
> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
This comment comes off defensive and hypocritical to me, rather than contributing to the conversation. You're basically saying we shouldn't talk about good things if some people don't have those good things; and also screw people with good things because they're actually jealous of the have-nots
I think life is incomparably better with a partner. It's not a question and it's not even close: there's nothing I miss about being single and almost every single thing about my life today is better because I'm in a relationship than if I weren't. It's cheaper, I have someone to share the good times with, I have someone to support me in my bad times, I have a teammate for life's plans and adventures, and I never feel lonely. I can also travel and play video games whenever I want; in fact my partner often buys me videogames and I often buy her things for her to enjoy on her own.
That's not dogpiling on anyone. It's not my fault if someone's single, and it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier. It definitely makes me happier, and statistically it's a massive boost to quality of life for the vast majority of people. It's not fun to think that someone's worse off, but changing what you say doesn't change reality. This is meant to be a place where people can discuss ideas and concepts, and not talking about the benefits of relationships doesn't make them any less real.
To be frank, you response sounds a bit more defensive than mine.
Are you arguing that if someone claims that it's possible to be perfectly content and happy while single, that that somehow undermines the happiness you've found with your partner, as if the mere claim that contentment can be found without a partner invalidates the fact that you're happy with your partner?
I can easily read your response as saying something akin to:
"You're single and happy? Nah. You only think you're happy because you haven't experienced true happiness. Only partnered people can truly experience the incomparable joy that I have found, unlike those benighted singles."
You're happy with your partner. Good for you! That's awesome and amazing. But there's no reason to use that happiness as a reason to look down on other people.
Your reading would be an unreasonable stretch, as I explicitly acknowledge in my comment that for a random person,
> it may or may not be true that being in a (good) relationship would make them happier.
I don't know if person XYZ would be happier single in a relationship, and I don't have an opinion on it. Everyone should be free to do what they want, whether or not it makes them happy, and I don't care either way. What I was disagreeing with were your implications that (1) just because some people are single and unhappy, nobody can talk about how good and happy relationships can be, and (2) talking about being in a happy relationship is "dogpiling" on unhappy, single people. To take your wording, there's no reason to use unhappiness as a reason to shut down conversation
Nowhere in the parent post does he seem looking down on anybody. Stating that life can be a whole lot better with the right partner is a morally neutral statement
I have been single, then married, then single again. I can tell that for me single is better. So for each one its own. It irks me when someone tells other people what is good for them.
I don't think anyone is doing that. It's just the case that many (most?) people are happier and more fulfilled in a committed, long term relationship. It doesn't mean that there aren't people for whom that's not the case, and it doesn't mean that those people are somehow defective.
But this entire post is about how some people get sad, angry, and/or hateful when they want to be in a relationship but continually fail at it. It seems off-topic and missing the point to bring up a "well, actually" about how some people don't want or need that.
Do you think it's sad if a couple has shared values and enjoys living those values together?. My partner and I are both very frugal, hoping to be able to retire early. We constantly celebrate how frugally we're able to live because we're together. Everything is half-off: housing, cars, groceries, travel, electronics. We each research different ways to save on bills, support each other to cut down on costs, research different aspects of saving and investing. You may not value frugality, but the cost savings of being in a relationship is undeniable and great for people who do value it.
> They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
To infantilize people like this is more hurtful really. We both know your allotted time with a Nintendo isn't a source of envy. It's a problem, it needs addressing. If you've successfully overridden one of your most primal biological instincts then good for you, you don't need to read all this. However, I suspect most people who say they are just as happy single are not entirely truthful (to themselves).
I'm honestly very surprised at this entire thread.
Clearly the smiley face at the end didn't convey that I was half speaking in jest. But people seemed to have taken my position as an assault on their entire world view.
Let me ask you this though:
> overridden one of your most primal biological instincts
Have you considered the existence of individuals that are gay, lesbian, or asexual? How do these individuals fit into your apparently biological-reproductive-imperative based view of happiness?
Or would you go further to say that those individuals also cannot be happy, since they can't be truly fulfilling their biological instincts either?
Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner."
Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being - is giving away all agency you have over your own happiness.
> Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a partner."
Why does everyone in this thread like posting definitive statements like this? As if it's universally true?
Life isn't as black and white as people like to think.
I was not much of a happy person before I found my (now) wife many years ago. She helps me deal with life in a way no therapist could ever do (and vise versa, me to her). We're in it together and help each other.
I could not figure out how to be happy on my own. Once I found my partner, I was able to be happy.
This isn't universal, of course. Many people are able to be happy on their own, but it's so strange reading definitive stuff like "there's no way!" when it's just not black and white.
People say it as a sugar-coated way to express "if you're unhappy, it's because of a character flaw, so you should internalize your frustration, not express it to other people, deal with it privately, and definitely don't politicize it."
A death of a parent is identified as one of the most significant causes of unhappiness. If your happiness is negatively impacted by the death of your parents, is the issue that your parents died, or that you've given away your agency to choose your own happiness?
>pegging your happiness on something external to yourself - material wealth, social standing, another human being
You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of control over all these things.
I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more respected, having a partner, all those things can add amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it is.
> I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)
This is infantilizing people's desires. Enjoying being single is something that many people just cannot do. To me, it's like telling someone who is paralyzed from the waist down to just walk it off - you can still enjoy all that life has to offer... Assuming those things don't involve the use of your legs!
For many people - this is debilitating. A lot of people are just wired up this way.
How many people are truly incapable of happiness while single and how many need a romantic relationship because they see it as the only reliable way to have a friendship that outlasts eight apartment moves and five job changes? When people no longer have reasonable access to social lives outside work and marriage, it’s no wonder so many are unhappily single.
Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic relationship to be happy is a little overblown?
which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired half of twins with discordant marital status show significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of depression; women also seem to too, but because there were so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that it was able to find any significant differences at all.
Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research. Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of our conversation I would say they are all close enough to what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other).
Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be evidence that widowed and divorced people are more depressed, but not single people (compared to the baseline, married people). At least when running the regression with all the other important variables controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
For the paper I found, I was looking at Table 4, which is of single never-married people comparing to the baseline of married people. Table 3 seems to correspond to what you're seeing. Skimming the discussion, they guess that the difference in depression and BMI scores between never married/married is due to health selection effects, although AFAICT there's not really a way to differentiate between health selection effects and marriage playing a causal role.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
I don't have the all data off hand (see some citations below) but I believe they say married men live longer, commit less crimes and are happier. So yes in some sense, can you be happy if you are not married however, is it almost certainly harder. I assume you would find similar data for not having a romantic parter. You, a human, are not an island and almost certainly would benefit from close personal and romantic connections.
I would say that there is a way of expressing this towards your partner -- especially too early in a relationship -- that can be very draining.
The correlations are clear but causality less so. What if it’s not marriage that makes men happier, less prone to crime, and longer-lived - rather it is that women select for partners who are happier, less prone to crime, and healthier?
It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme I'll do my best. Marriage and having dependents carries with it a lot of economic cost. By revealed choice theory, that implies it has significant benefits, or else nobody would ever do it.
I would be interested in a citation that those entering into marriages and child rearing are aware of the economic costs and are able to enumerate the benefits prior to the events, or if its look back justification after the fact. If you dig, I think you'll find most folks were not aware of the economic and opportunity costs of children, as well as the work involved in maintaining a healthy relationship with a party for an extended period of time.
(removed a bunch of pew research citations that made the comment unwieldy; happy to cite for those interested)
> It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme I'll do my best.
This made me laugh, in a good way :) I'll approach it from that angle:
Monogamous child-rearing looks to me a successful evolutionary strategy for the human race (and keep in mind the "monogamous" part might be relatively recent). It implies less about the happiness of the parental units, though.
The Terran octopus dies off soon after giving birth to its progeny, and this is successful for octopus-kind, but results in no long-lasting happiness for the octopus mother. Likewise with many species of insects, arguably very successful lifeforms on Earth. Many of them die or are cannibalized after mating or giving birth.
Successful species propagation strategies do not necessarily make the parents live happier lives. There is an evolved reason for said strategies, but is happiness the maximized factor?
Well if we want to be all logical and science-y about this, we can't assume humans are rational beings. People obviously make bad decisions all the time.
Just because lots of people have kids, for example, doesn't mean that having kids makes people happier, and in fact studies seem to show the opposite to be true on average. That said, I'm not trying to say that having kids is always an irrational choice, and certainly it makes some people happier (or it might make people "unhappier" but lend them a greater sense of meaning and purpose that balances things out). But clearly you can't just say "well, correlation must imply causation because otherwise why would people do X if it makes them less happy?"
Revealed preference doesn't always work well as an explanation for why people do what they do though. E.g. if someone falls for an investment scam a-la Madoff, the person obviously didn't want to end up destitute because of that.
A closer example here might be a salesperson performing a "hard sell" on an automobile that is just at the edge of affordability for the buyer. The buyer really wants to be able to drive around in this cool looking automobile, but they end up with a lemon that they can't afford to keep drivable and sucks up all their resources. It's not so hard to draw a parallel from that to someone who has a family on accident.
This is counterintuitive. The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.
Producing children is extremely costly for both parents. This is true both in animals and humans - you would generally not say that rearing children is good for the health of the parents. It probably brings emotional benefits to the parents (which it would have to, otherwise they wouldn't do it), but there's no reason to assume that couples are automatically better off in terms of their finances or physical health than singles.
Edit: Since people correctly pointed out that you can have children without marriage, please replace marriage with "romantic relationships that produce children".
> The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.
No. Marriage doesn’t produce children.
Marriage can provide social obligations relating to the support of children, though. (It also provides social obligations of mutual support between spouses.)
I think it would be more accurate to say it had significant benefits, but they decreased. And there is a lot of inertia keeping it popular. This results in a lot of "failed" marriages.
To figure out the causality, you'd need an experiment where people are randomly removed from relationships though random external events.
We do have an imperfect example of this, in the case of widowers. When someone is widowed, does their happiness tend to increase, remain level, or decrease?
That's not enough. One of the often espoused counterarguments is "do happy people marry more, or does marriage make people happier?". You'd have to continuously check happy people and keep a control group from marrying. Checking just the widowers doesn't account for the severity of the loss.
I think it goes both ways. Women obviously do prefer partners who are successful, higher in socioeconomic hierarchy. Yet not being able to find a partner may lower one's self-esteem, which in turn may reduce the likelihood of doing things that increase chances of socioeconomic success.
I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.
In fact, AFAIK, one issue with incarceration is that you are not seen as suitable partner anymore. Turns out that both men and women tend to avoid partners with criminal record.
I think there is a really good point here. However, it should be recognized that some of those studies do not control for divorced vs never married very well and the magnitude of the benefit of marriage is over-stated. Not to say marriage does not have health/happiness/other benefits, but the effect is smaller (although the Harvard study seems to control for it certain cases, in strange ways).
The question of what would most benefit a person's path toward happiness isn't the question of what do people need to be happy, though.
Sloppy analog: If I won the lottery tomorrow, it would allow me to buy a guitar I want sooner than another method; but not winning the lottery doesn't preclude any possibility of my acquiring that guitar.
I'm not sure that not winning the lottery means the path without winning the lottery is harder.
Winning the lottery may even prevent other conditions from developing in the course that would otherwise sustain the goal.
Humans and Islands analogies have been waged in many philosophical battles, but I never gathered that one was settled. Personally, I've subscribed to every man being and island and no man being an island all at once, and think both are fundamentally true in constant contradiction of one another and the contradiction is all you can really point to being true. (the original line "No man is an island" was Donne remarking of man's nature with regard to the Christian god, at least as far as I understood it)
I think if you [general you, not personally] hang your happiness on any one thing you're going to struggle or cause undue burden on someone or something else. And that's what the incel crowd gets so wrong; and I must say the proof kind of seems in the pudding there...
The GP pointed out that the relationship described in this has red flags because the relationship alone is the source of happiness. It would lead to a happier, possibly longer lived, less criminal person.
You seem to be implying (and I don't think this is intentional) that close personal and romantic relationships [for straight men] == a wife. But that doesn't necessarily need to be true. Maybe for romance, but certainly not for close personal friendships.
You're correct that a person isn't an island, but the focus on single romantic partner may be to the detriment of other forms of relationship which are still hugely valuable health wise.
> 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
When you get older, a partner (or children) are important to keep you going. Your body will fail you. Your mind will fail you. Your life will end and (statistically) it will be a long downward slope. Binding yourself to the right person keeps that slope more even, for longer.
People who think being alone is great are right, until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
You have a point, but in this case the author of the article says:
> 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.
So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife. That does look like a red flag to me. Suppose his marriage goes south, will his (ex) wife now be responsible of not only ending the marriage, but also of ending all possible happiness in his life? That's an unreasonable burden to place on her.
> So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy until he met his wife.
Some people feel the existential dread before it is realized. This is shared by both sexes and sometimes expressed at absurdly young ages without prompting.
Yes, that's absolutely correct. In my case at least I remember occasionally waking up when I was very young in hysterics because of general existential dread related to death.
I remember becoming interested in finding a life partner from as young as 7 or 8. I spent my teens and early 20s turning off girls with my seriousness and didn't manage to get laid until my late 20s. I was sore about it at the time, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't meet with more success because I likely would have ended up marrying someone who would not have been a suitable lifelong match.
Would finding a romantic partner help with existential dread related to death? You will not only worry about your own death, but that of your partner's as well. Some degree of this is normal and expected, as it's part of being human, but if it reaches the pathological levels described by the author of TFA...
I agree with this. Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but I feel it can apply to most people.
For a while, I could have been described as "incel" (as in the literal description of the term, not the negative connotations it has picked up). I was not exactly popular with the ladies, and my dating history was close to nonexistent. My now wife was my first girlfriend and we met when I had pretty much thrown in the towel and given up on romantic relationships.
In an alternate version of my life I could have lived the single life and filled it with other activities and material possessions. I could imagine myself being happy to some extent living like that into my 30s, my 40s, maybe even early 50s. But after that?
Now I can't imagine life without her at my side.
I think there is a lot to be said for having a life partner that is beyond just a good friend and always has your back (yes I'm aware not all relationships/marriages are functional). Especially as the two of you grow older.
I feel the same about kids. We don't have immediate plans for kids. Right now we can imagine living without kids forever, but at the same time we also feel this will change and we'll regret not having one when we are in our 50s 60s or 70s, etc.
> People who think being alone is great are right,
I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote.
The same thought expressed as "she makes me happy" and "she's the only thing that makes me happy" are different because of the implied loss of everything (that you will give up everything else that could make you happy to have this person stay).
> until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
I'd say that is pragmatic, but a very selfish thought.
My parents were taught that by their society ("successful kids" == "retirement plan"), but they didn't follow through with that thought during our upbringing - if anything, they thought they were paying it forward.
For an american comparison, the silent generation of America were a lot like my parents in their attitude towards the future (bright, but built for the kids).
> I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote
This is editorial added by the commenter, which is incidental to the point and does not purport to even hold the meaning of "she's the only thing that makes me happy". This is not literally meaning "the only happiness I feel". Ostensibly, the man still finds happiness in sleeping, eating, etc but a good partner fills a particular kind of happiness that is near impossible to replace.
Yes, but that's different. And certainly "empty nest syndrome" is a thing too, but I think there's a large difference between acclimating to a new normal and general mental/physical degradation vs starting out in this mental state in the beginning of your life.
I like doing everything with my wife. It would be hard imagining life without her! Or my kids. But I wasn't an unhappy mess before I met her.
So it seems like old age is the right time to start relationships, as almost everyone will be a lot more willing to start one, and exclusivity will be valued a lot more for practical reasons
While I love being in a relationship, you go too far to imply that all humans need a relationship. There are many people in history who have lived on their own, even as hermits, and been happy that way. Perhaps it's not the right lifestyle for you, but your lifestyle isn't the right fit for everyone else either.
> until some point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your own ability.
Whats your commentary on people who marry and then divorce very late in life like Bill Gates? After all if the primary purpose was to protect against this aggressively lonely stage in life -- no fault divorce has thrown that guarantee out the window.
They seem to now be in the same position as long term single people -- except it's a massive uprooting stressor placed on you in your final years.
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.
I don't agree with this. The desire to bone isn't 'toxic masculinity' and isn't something easily substituted with more friends (unless they are of the "with benefits" variety). In me, at least, it is a distinct and real feeling of need without easy substitutes. More friends may lead to more romantic opportunities, sure, but that is indirect and subject to circumstance.
If it were only about the desire to bone, then “just visit your local prostitute” would be the accepted obvious solution. The need for stable companionship is not as easily solved. Luckily, it is not tied to sexual attraction, like the drive to bone.
Close platonic friendships that outlast romances are more healthy than requiring each new girlfriend to be your primary means of emotional support. The lack of social interactions outside of work and wife is also a cause of codependent burnout: it’s unreasonable to expect that the same person is good in bed, a loving mother to your children, primary full-time emotional support, and a chef.
what I recall from my time in my 20ies my desire to be sexually active was a lot more dominant and in charge of my higher faculties than what it is today nearing 50.
biology determines how strongly we feel we need to be with a partner I think. I accepted much more toxicity and negativity just to not be alone (allowing control by my partner over my emotions and was far more ready to compromise) than what I'm today.
Today any potential relationship needs to be solid on a mental level first before I'd even consider going further. That certainly wasn't the case in my early 20ies. Also I'm today able to spend time by myself (and not just get by but really enjoy my own company, thoughts etc ...)
I think that varies highly between individuals. I consider myself high libido and it's something I have to deal with fairly often, otherwise it starts screwing with my faculties. And the desire has not changed much since my 20s, even if I've learned to be more comfortable in the things that intersect with it
The concept of a dead bedroom absolutely terrifies me. Like, why bother with a relationship if the one person you can have sex with doesn't ever want to have sex?
If the primary thing you want is sex, does it makes sense to tie some relationship to it? Like, in place where prostitution is legal, all you would need is either that or partner that don't mind you having extra.
I wouldn't call it a primary thing, more like an essential component of a romantic relationship. Otherwise, a couple is what? Very committed best friends (I would hope)?
And on your other point, polyamory is increasingly common and a very valid way for people to approach such an inclination
>The desire to bone isn't 'toxic masculinity' and isn't something easily substituted with more friends (unless they are of the "with benefits" variety)
Wow, that's two turns of phrase that erode your point in one sentence.
> 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
I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
Not the parent, but I don't think friends are a substitute for a romantic relationship, but having friends is certainly better and more comforting when you're not in a relationship rather than being truly alone.
Regardless, men in romantic relationships should still be sure to cultivate strong friendships
> I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
I think the difference is between wants and needs. Aside from a very small number of people most of us need friends and family who care about us and meet our emotional needs. Children need this unconditionally but adults have to take responsibility of their emotional needs and fulfill them in a healthy way by making and keeping friends. I think sexual and romantic desires are not needs; they are very strong desires and their fulfillment is definitely wonderful but life can be happy and fulfilling without them.
I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss it as a want for most people. I would wager most men feel like emasculated failures if they cannot attract a mate when surrounded by single women. It seems unlikely that a large portion of men only view romantic success as a mere cherry on top.
What a banal comment. You understand precisely nothing and you start proclaiming solutions that make no sense and then you even have the gal to psychoanalyze the health of the author's relationship.
A perfect example of the attitude of some that refuse to even try to empathize with others.
Your problem is that you just have no ability to comprehend a situation that is not very similar to your life. So for you, anyone who acts in a way that you do not understand is obviously acting up and doing it wrong, rather than acting in a way that makes sense given the person's circumstances.
Agreed- not only is it overly judgmental and presumptuous, it’s also a nitpick of a single passage from an entire article. It’s not off-topic, but it really swerves discussion into a tangent.
That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access to that are privileged.
I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more radicalized.
I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough. It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel alone and wounded.
IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021, it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well, without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.
> if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault
I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite.
It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that?
Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?
I think the answer would go along the same lines as answering the question "whose fault is it that you can't get a job?" when aimed at an identity category such as women or minorities. Basically: society has failed them in some form or other.
I think this is the right way to look at it. This is why I gave myself as an example. I was raised by a mentally ill single parent in poverty. I wasn't taught how to socialize with others in a healthy way. As a result, I wasn't equipped to form healthy relationships.
I think there are a lot of young men who are in a similar position and if they are given proper guidance and healthy role models when they are young, they can be in a better position to succeed in friendships, work and relationships.
I'm not convinced it's the same. When talking about dating, there are a bunch of stuff that you can do that boils down to "make yourself a better person." See: my list above. It's obviously not guaranteed, and many are more genetically gifted than others, but it seems way more manageable of a task than your example.
You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
> You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? Not to mention, maybe it's not just the penis. Maybe you can teach women how to copy the kinds of attitudes (eg: assertiveness) that help men succeed. Maybe you can get more women in engineering by giving them positive role models from an early age.
We can help prevent there being so many incels by supporting young men emotionally from an early age. Right now we have a very punitive approach IMO. The education given to young men is a lot of "don't do this", "that's toxic", "women hate it when men do that", but there isn't enough positive messaging and encouragement.
Yeah, for the most part I agree, I just think that it's possible to frame the fact that a lot of guys simply being at a loss of how to go about this can be framed as a societal failure of some kind.
These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today.
My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about.
I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much!
I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely.
It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.
Generally agree with you. I guess I was looking at it a little differently. If I'm talking to an individual, the only thing that matters is what they can do to better themselves now. It's not productive, on an individual level, to say stuff like "if only society was better!"
> I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else.
To be fair, opening up about my feelings to my family sounds awful. I know I know, society did this to me yada yada.
I learned by watching and doing, not talking about my feelings to my family. College buddies being my wingman and showing me the ropes, etc. and failing until I stopped failing. Then again, last time I dated, "can I buy you a drink" still worked to get a few minutes of face time and I didn't need apps. Not sure what's out there now.
I think talking about my feelings to my family would have done absolutely nothing.
> Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me
Is the "don't kiss her without permission" really they difficult? And frankly the same with flirting.
If these make women minefield, I don't see how to make it better without sacrificing women who fly want to be kissed or flirted with while they have presentation at work.
> Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
This is a bit of a fresh thought to me, but it seems that the standard male self-improvement advice ends up in one of three buckets:
1. The activity is its own reward (lose weight, hit the gym). Even if it’s not immediately successful at helping one find a partner, their benefits are almost immediately self-evident.
2. Advice that is vital for sustaining a relationship but usually not the missing piece when it’s time to find a new one (listen better, lower the ego). They’re needed to get the second date but can’t help get the first date.
3. Advice for the sake of having given advice (read books by female authors).
“Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
> “Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
Yeah I mean, I think most of the things on the list have a "basic" and "advanced" tier.
Lose weight/hit the gym: Basic is to not be obese. Advanced is to be fit.
Small talk: Basic is to be able to start and hold a conversation. Advanced is to be smooth and captivating.
Learn fashion: Basic is learning how clothes are supposed to fit. Advanced is... something like what you said. (I'm not advanced here! haha).
It's often fault of a psychological trauma suffered in childhood. Sexual abuse, for example. So counseling is one thing that society could provide to such men. Sexual therapy treatments have been used successfully in some countries.
This is much more convincing than dnissley's response to me. I wonder how many "incels" have suffered trauma in their childhood.
I certainly don't expect people to just work through childhood trauma without societal help. ex. Make it cheap, easy, and acceptable to get therapy. Much different than my list above IMO where most people can work on it themselves without many excuses.
Hadn't considered that -- but has there been a rise in childhood psychological trauma? There's definitely been a shift in the way we talk about trauma, just in the sense that we open up about it more, so that could be part of it.
The example I'm coming back to though are people like my younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to yelling more than was really necessary.
At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch.
Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
"Cuddle parties" are not a substitute for sex, for men or women. Nor are "strong friendships", as you insinuate above.
Emotional intimacy, physical closeness, and sex are distinct and separable. Though they are linked for most people, for many no one of those is a substitute for any other.
"cuddle parties"... It's about as close to the real thing as jerking off to pornhub is to the happy marriage with a loving partner. It may take care of the immediate physiological urge, but that's it.
> At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch.
I never knew such a thing existed until you posted this, and perhaps I could have done with this at earlier points in my life. My receptivity would have varied greatly at different times though.
Fundamentally, I'm not sure it would have helped me as much as finding a therapist and talking about this stuff. Now that I'm out of the rut it would be much easier to approach a cuddle party.
Men struggle to see therapists as part of the "suck it up" culture so it's extremely difficult to get out of the existence once you are part of it. The system is self-protecting and does things to embed people deeper into the anti-feminist rut.
So feminism's answer to the the problem is "cuddle parties"? Are you serious?
I remember people used to argue that feminism was good because sexual liberation of women meant everyone was gonna get to have lots of sex. Obviously, these incels were not invited to the party. Women are having lots of sex, just not with them. And you actually believe "deep emotional relationships between men" are the cure for this unrest?
This is about deeper issues than friendship. It's about people's essential worth as human beings. People don't just have sex with anyone, they select partners and this implies selection criteria which implies value judgement. By seeking intimacy, we all risk judgement and rejection. Can you imagine what constant rejection by everyone must do to a person's self-worth?
"Cuddle parties" won't solve anything because they fail to understand the problem. Even proposing something like this compounds the issue because it's like saying "you are not good enough to have sex, enjoy this platonic activity instead". The root cause of this issue is society and women especially have decided these men are unattractive and therefore worthless. There is no fixing incels without fixing this inequality.
Jumping on somebody like that is seriously not ok on HN, and breaks the site guidelines badly ("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.").
Taking the thread noticeably further into ideological and gender flamewar, as you did here and elsewhere, is also not ok.
You posted tons of flamewar comments in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please stop and don't do it again.
Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do this. Actually I just banned your account, but decided to unban it after looking a little bit closer. If you keep posting like this, though, we're going to have to.
We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the defining features of the last few decades of feminist writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the most prominent feminists are Black?
Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality has been debunked using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released just before she released her work into the world back in 1989. If you want to see the debunking head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc (Antonio Moore)
Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data.
Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US.
It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
"I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity."
"The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.
Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?
I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?
Masculinity isn't toxic. It becomes toxic when it blames women for its problems.
Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman.
That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag.
Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.
The issue is when people conflate "there's no obligation on any woman to listen to you" with "expression of frustration in a public forum is a character flaw worthy of criticism," or when people conflate "blames women for its problems" with "criticizes toxic gender norms enforced on men."
Imagine a woman who is frustrated because her partner doesn't do any chores or give any indication he respects her. She complains about it online, attributing it to sexist gender norms. Someone says the same thing to her as you say here: men are not obligated to listen to you, your suffering may be real, but please keep it to close friends. If your friends affirm that the reason your relationship is the fault of patriarchy, it's an example of toxicity. It probably makes the most sense to talk to a therapist: they can help you figure out why your way of thinking is flawed and how you can convince your partner to treat you well or, barring that, find a new partner.
That'd be a pretty terrible comment, right?
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
"Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to consider toxic gender norms hurt men.
The fact that it needs to be said means that not everybody knows it yet. But it means that the ones who are listening to it are the feminists. Feminism is an ally in trying to fix the problems of toxicity towards men, and these threads always bring out lots of men who blame feminism for their problems. If I've accidentally confused you for one of them, I apologize.
The issue is that the slogan "patriarchy hurts men" is nearly always used in a way that still puts the onus on men to stop policing gender norms on other men. The reality is that women have every bit as much agency and power in upholding patriarchy that men do, but few women (feminist or not) are willing to acknowledge the extent they enforce toxic gender norms, or even that women enforce toxic gender norms at all.
Women absolutely, positively enforce toxic gender norms. Women are part of the patriarchy. In fact, for many women, the best strategy for them is to embrace the patriarchy as hard as they can. That sets them up for rewards from the dominant paradigm.
Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are the feminists -- which includes both women and men. Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.
That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And lots of men, too.
I agree with you that feminists don't enforce gender roles more than average, so attributing the shitty state of gender relations to feminism is silly.
I disagree that they are particularly willing to call out instances of women entrenching the patriarchy. I think this probably has to do with a root disagreement about the scope of what is considered policing gender roles.
It's true, for instance, that feminists are more likely to criticize a mother who tells her son not to play with dolls, which is good and something I agree with. It's just not the primary mechanism by which women enforce gender roles, which is partner choice. That's not to say that women shouldn't have the right to choose their partner--of course they should--but the patterns of how women choose partners enforce toxic gender norms, and many of the most toxic aspects of gendered male behavior arise from men navigating that landscape.
As a concrete example, consider bisexuality. The majority of women dislike the idea of choosing a bisexual guy as a partner: he's considered less masculine, or dirtied, or some kind of perversion of masculinity. This is their right, but it's also shitty. The problematic aspects I want to call out are that 1) the majority viewpoint among women about bisexual men is still very prevalent among feminist-identifying women, and 2) when someone expresses frustration at these collective choices, feminist-identifying women are far more likely to criticize the frustrated party instead of the toxic gender norms. The net result of this is men being terrified of homosocial affection and remaining closeted so as not to scare off potential partners, both behaviors most people would consider expressions of toxic masculinity.
This pattern repeats itself across a lot of different forms of gendered policing. But many feminists refuse to acknowledge it, because they don't acknowledge that partner choice can be a mechanism for gender role enforcement.
I have no idea what feminists you're dealing with, or under what circumstances, so I'm not going to apologize for them. But I can tell you that you've come across as hostile in this conversation, and it comes as no surprise to me that others have responded to you in a negative way.
The vast majority of "patriarchy hurts men" discussions I've seen, including the Buzzfeed and Washington Post articles I spot checked at the top of this search, have been about how the men reading the article need to fix their bad behavior. Buzzfeed calls for me to learn "specific strategies to end gender violence" so that I won't "engage in everyday sexist behaviours"; Wapo suggests "Giving up a small slice of privilege in exchange for a longer (and happier) life".
Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for one):
* Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all
* Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot
Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and grassroots activism here, and all the complications and inconsistencies that implies.
If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women).
But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
I know you don't intend to do so, but assuming that someone's conclusions about an issue must have come from talking points, and were not arrived at independently, dehumanizes them and makes it difficult to convince them of anything.
It discounts the lived experiences of people who have seen their friends and coworkers radicalized against them, of either gender. "This happened to me" cannot successfully be countered by "stop parroting X/Y/W-wing editorials." (general pattern I've seen even among family, not necessarily your phrasing)
The terminology used also doesn't help make the case for feminism among anyone not already convinced. Terms like "the patriarchy" can be seen as implying that it's okay to talk about men as a whole group who can be vilified, but it's not okay to talk about women in any negative way at all. Or "ally" could be seen as implying that the only identity someone not of group Z can have that matters is as an accessory to their cause.
The most disappointing and insulting thing a friend has ever said to me might be (paraphrasing) "I thought you wanted to be an ally." No, I wanted to be your friend, not a footsoldier who dutifully agrees with you 100% of the time no matter what my independent experiences have been.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement,
Sadly, even some of those who advocate for feminism (whichever branches might be considered "the good kind" for purposes of this discussion) seem to deliberately lump feminist movements together, so one can be forgiven for seeing terms like "the patriarchy" used by different groups and not knowing which group's beliefs to ascribe to the term. I don't think this can be blamed on a particular flavor of media, except maybe social media.
>It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
What should set off alarm bells is this blind acceptance of written works and words, when the actions routinely do not reflect the words feminism espouses. There are entire subreddits and blogs online showing the many cases where feminism doesn't do anything, or worse, actively intervenes at the detriment of women. Your own example shows the same problem: "what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways". Cool, you talk about it, but what are you doing about it?
What is an intellectual disservice, is how quickly you circumvent my question only to berate my manner of writing. If people truly are such huge proponents of feminism, and feminism truly claims to "be good for men", surely they can answer a question this simple and provide clear examples. Do you not realize your own behavior is indication of the problem here? How can you not see that if you can't even answer "well duh, the second issue obviously" on an ideological basis, the claim that feminism is "for all" is complete bollocks?
If I really wanted to go full-on antifeminist, I could've mentioned the many issues that feminism causes for men and women that it seems to be utterly blind to. That's part of the question as well: a clear division between not only "we want the best for women", but "it doesn't need to be at the cost of men". If I really wanted to go and write on nuances, I could write a 12-page blog page and fight against the relentless nitpicking which will ensue. I'm not asking a simple, black-white question for the sake of trivializing a complex, multi-faceted subject. I'm asking it because ideologically, if we can't even answer this part first, there's no point going any further. It means the population of feminists is filled with people joining the movement, without knowing what it actually stands for. Including its most fierce proponents carrying the torches. Surely, I do not have to tell you about the many occurrences in human history where this didn't work out well.
Because the population of Hackernews has a great overlap with the population of Silicon Valley-type software developers and Redditors, who vehemently believe feminism is the same as egalitarianism and believe the few books written by a few big figures make up for the fact feminism contradicts those words at every corner in all of its actions. And when you point that out, the first thing you get is a No True Scotsman claiming "that's not real feminism / not all feminists", despite the argument being that feminism as a whole doesn't seem to care for men beyond empty platitudes and words.
It is literally in the name. FEMinism. If it was truly "for both sexes", we could argue the naming is sexist and supremacist. We already have a better word, egalitarianism, and people still aren't willing to adopt it.
Notice people talk past my example as well. I'm explicitly asking if feminism would prefer resolving an issue which prefers women over men, over an issue which benefits women more but benefits men equally. How this simple question cannot be answered by proponents of a movement this big, is possibly the biggest red flag. Yet we see it in the media every day: some minor issue with women needs major attention, despite there being an egalitarian issue which would help anyone outside the upper class way more. If lamenting about some "pink tax" is more important than resolving a mental health epidemic caused by making people increasingly more competitive with one another, where failure is met with lasting mental trauma, surely that should tell people what feminism really is about.
The very people claiming to be proponents for men in their words alone, are the ones partially responsible for the mess. And they are too blind to see it.
>That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to.
it is, I notice that me or even people in my family who often times tend to show anticonformity behavior need some love.
Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting)
Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
To be clear, "(almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy," is a falsifiable statement of fact. You can go out and measure something to find out whether it matches reality.
On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.
Yeah people who say this are so wrong, companionship and a significant other is a required for a fulfilled life for a majority of people. We evolved to have this, and most people need it. You shouldn’t depend on one for happiness, but there is nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
On the flip side, however, no one owes you companionship or a relationship (platonic or not). If you are struggling to fulfill that need, it's on you to improve yourself through building skills, seeking therapy, finding appropriate medications, or whatever else. Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
On the flip flip side, no one owes anyone anything (except bodily integrity). You aren't entitled to a partner who does a certain number of hours of chores; you aren't entitled to a specific or any job title; you aren't entitled to a particular lifestyle; you aren't entitled to respect and admiration. That doesn't mean the only valid approach is to criticize people who systemically have a harder time reaching those things and feel frustrated by it.
We can simultaneously tell individuals to work on self-improvement to get themselves out of tough situations while also recognizing that society can do things to make life fairer and better for everybody.
Totally, but most people are not emotionally well adjusted or in a place where they an introspect and build themselves up to be the better version of themselves. A lot of folks would be helped by therapy and having someone to talk through to work through this (but that's a healthcare conversation, which we don't have to devolve into here).
I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've seen enough mental health challenges and crises to understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and no one is coming to save you except yourself.
Indeed, you shouldn’t based your identity around it or blame others (e.g. incels) but at the same time you shouldn’t be made to field there’s something wrong with you for wanting it. Like most things there is a balance to be found. I think the stars every day that I failed my way into relationships for most of my life and I can’t imagine the struggle of these individuals.
I don't think the identity of inceldom is necessarily blaming others for being lonely (though probably most incels do), but being angry at society for trying to sell an incorrect narrative of relationships.
Incels call this "maxxing". It doesn't seem to be particularly effective for them.
> Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
Why? Reducing inequality in dating seems like a fair goal to me. People become incels because everyone else rejects them. If that doesn't change, the number of incels will keep growing.
It's not working because they believe the wrong things about why they are struggling to find companionship. It's not just find some stat to max and done, positioning the problem this way is itself part of the problem.
> Reducing inequality in dating
What does this mean, be specific. I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
> It's not working because they believe the wrong things about why they are struggling to find companionship.
So they don't need to improve themselves, they just need to believe in the right things and suddenly women will value them.
Really?
> I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels. Look at data from online dating services, plenty of evidence showing over 80% of men are rejected outright. Do you think this is normal?
No, you misunderstand. They are optimizing for what they think will get them success, not what will actually get them success.
> And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels.
No, incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date. What toxic nonsense.
And also, you still haven't put forward any changes you'd like to see to remedy the situation as you see it. Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
> incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date
Did you not look at the evidence? Online dating is already the primary means of forming relationships. There's data showing women reject over 80% of men they see on dating apps. They actively choose to compete over the other 20%. They'd rather share a top 20% man than settle with a bottom 80% man.
How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
> Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Why bother? I doubt you'd consider any real solution since they would naturally result in disadvantages for women in favor of men and would therefore be "toxic nonsense".
Let me use an analogy. As a manager I help my folks get promoted all the time. The folks who struggle the most are the ones who think about promotion as a set of checkbox items they have to cross off. The ones who are easily promoted are the ones who are looking less at the criteria and more at how they can be introspective and develop themselves.
Framing finding a relationship in a "I'll just check these checkboxes and then I will immediately get a relationship" fundamentally misunderstands that we aren't generally selecting partners for one trait. No one is working from a checklist when they select their partners, so why set yourself up to fail by imagining they are.
Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
> Did you not look at the evidence?
I did a cursory Google search, which suggested online dating results in roughly the same outcomes as in person dating.
> How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
> Why bother?
Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it. Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day. You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
It follows that if you fail to meet these criteria you are considered unattractive.
> Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
This assumes attractiveness is caused by factors that are within our control. This doesn't seem to be the case. Height is a very simple and uncontroversial example. How is a "growth mindset" supposed to help the incel who gets rejected by women on dating apps because he's shorter than them?
This isn't some insane idea either. Women I've dated have complained about short men on dating apps to my face. They want those men to reject themselves so as to spare them from even acknowledging their existence.
> If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
I said the data shows women reject about 80% of men they see on dating apps. The set of rejected men is different for every woman. Universally rejected men (incels) are the insersection of these sets, naturally it is a smaller set than 80% of men.
The fact is there's massive inequality in dating. Like all inequalities, it'll probably get worse over time.
> Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it.
Not providing a fix doesn't invalidate my point.
> Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day.
Yeah, I just encountered this subject. The most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that but obviously female agency will be impacted. You don't seem to be open to any ideas that don't maximize female agency.
> You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
No, you don't get to dismiss people's arguments as "toxic" and then demand they "engage" with your questioning.
> most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that...
And there it is. Yes, that stance is awful. Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with. Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have. And who gets to define 'monogamy' and who does the enforcement?
It also completely ignores the poly folks out there, or the folks who are not interested in long term relationships.
It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
And having a dating scene with an 80/20 distribution isn't? Monogamy seems like the only way to give everyone chance.
So I guess this comes down to whether you think everyone should have a fair chance to find a partner. Do you? And if so how would you achieve that?
> Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with.
Nope, they can still choose whoever they want. The point is to get the top 20% of men committed and off the dating pool as quickly as possible.
> Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have.
Yes? That's the point.
> And who gets to define 'monogamy'
... The dictionary.
> who does the enforcement?
I don't know, society?
> It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
Probably. I did say it was the most obvious. Do you have a better idea? Because this "just be better" stuff doesn't seem to be working.
Assuming people even want to help these incels to begin with. Other posts I've seen just want to pacify them so they don't become violent or something.
How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities? Dating apps do prioritize looks, and especially during COVID I believe it makes finding a partner harder. But in-person the initial “not-as-good-looks” can very easily be overcome if one is kind, honest, funny, etc.
> How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities?
Does it really top all other qualities? Doesn't seem to be the case. There's evidence showing personality is only considered after a minimum threshold of physical attractiveness is met.
And a huge percent of attractivity is nurture rarher than nature.
You can work out and get into shape, you can have good hygiene, you can dress nicely, etc. Just because someone is luckier and doesn’t really have to pay attention to what he/she eats to get a good figure doesn’t mean that others can’t achieve that, although with more work.
Also, the face itself is much more important for men than women.
I don't buy that. If we use the example of height alone, the vast majority of women would not date a man shorter than them regardless of whether the man has a "likable personality". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbG05ePWRQE
Fortunately women’s height shows a normal distribution, as well as it’s not like many 150 cm women would date a guy well above 2m.
(Sorry, don’t know freedom units)
"How about actually having a likable personality, which easily tops all other qualities?"
So do you now agree this statement is obviously false?
Height is just one of the first filters women use, and often the requirement is more strict than just "taller than me". You also have to pass other commons filters. Another very important filter for most women is race, and we're just getting started.
It's a general well known trend. You can make a fake account and test it in a few minutes.
Just like in many other animals, female choosy selection is the limiting factor, and the males either prove themselves or might as well die. That's where all this lack of empathy is rooted.
> You clearly would not stick up for short or ethnic men the way you do for women
Based on what?
> who are already heavily privileged
Depends on country. I’m not supportive of some new-found feminist movements, but all for it in some Muslim secular countries where women are not allowed to drive and are all around thought of as the property of their husband.
> I've seen women with your left wing mentality talk about women's rights and BLM and then, in the next sentence, move on to making fun of Indian men and talking about how they would never date them
That’s called a hypocrite. And I don’t see how generalizing an entire gender based on n=1 is any different than your example where you rightfully was offended by the making fun of Indian men. You do the same shit for half of all people.
> Most of society does share this hateful mindset.
And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
> You responded by saying "the sky is blue", do you believe some races are objectively less attractive than others?
Heh?
In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
The fact that you blamed "personality" for all problems.
> Depends on country.
Well I'm talking about the West, the US in particular.
> generalizing an entire gender based on n=1
It's not n=1, the reason people do it is because it is generally considered socially acceptable.
> And a significant percentage of men also share the mindset that women are inferior/object, or other misogynistic shit. Neither should happen.
You really don't realize how many men are not misogynistic, and how much more acceptable it is to make fun of men for their insecurities (like height).
> Heh? In another thread I did write that men usually don’t want to have relationship with women of another race (and vice versa). But it is all around true, most cultures look down on interracial relationships — which is said.
This is not true, men are more open in general, and women, especially white women, have the strongest bias. Women will even refuse to date ethnic men they find attractive. There are lots of studies on this although I'd have to dig them up. Also why doesn't this affect white men as much if it's just about opposition to interracial relationships? They are preferred by many ethnic women.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but there's a small problem here (and it's not just in the West) -- people dismiss these people, call them names, and put a dark label on them.
And yet, quite often they need help. Changing one's personality, mastering new skills, etc etc. are not small nor easy steps. And some people may not even be capable of doing them by themselves. So what do they do? They seek out people and go public with their frustration... and they come across two groups: Group A, who call them names and shun them out, and Group B, who claim they understand them and talk with them.... all while telling them things like "Look, it's not your fault, man." "They're all whores", etc. What do you think happens next?
What I am trying to say is, some empathy and understanding would go a long way. I get that some people don't want to help themselves and are beyond saving, but there are many others who just need a small push to improve themselves.
>>no one owes you companionship or a relationship (platonic or not).
> That's your opinion
Yes, and it's shared by nearly everyone. The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level. Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
So let me ask you, what changes do you propose, and who owes you a relationship?
Not really. If you're talking specifically about whether an unmarried man that fits some particular criteria is owed a wife, most people in the western world at this point in time would agree with you. But that's far from universal.
>The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty and freedom at any level.
Not really. "Individual liberty and freedom" is not one concrete set of ideas that you have to either accept or reject wholesale.
>Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about the specifics.
Some are, probably. I don't know which you've been talking to.
>what changes do you propose
Bring back severe social shaming for women that engage in sexual activity outside of a committed monogamous relationship (e.g. marriage or on the way to marriage). Bring back social pressure for a man to marry a woman that he has had sex with outside of marriage.
>and who owes you a relationship
I am married, so I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship. If either of us denies the other a relationship without very good reason (meaning something more than just not being happy any more), the one abandoning the marriage should be looked down upon as having done something very wrong.
So... Oppress women is the solution you are proposing here? Why have you gendered it at all? Why do women have to face social stigma and not men? What about gay relationships, presumably you'd apply the same thinking (en route to a marriage or married)? What about poly relationships?
> I think from society's perspective, my wife should owe me a relationship.
I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
>So... Oppress women is the solution you are proposing here?
If that's what you want to call shaming them for certain behavior, yes.
>Why have you gendered it at all?
Because women are, on average, different from men, and, on average, exhibit different tendencies. Different measures are needed to push their behaviors to the same point.
>Why do women have to face social stigma and not men?
As I said, a man who has sex with a woman outside of marriage should be pressured to marry her, or in other words, if he doesn't marry her, he should be shamed for it.
Note that I don't think that should apply if he's not the only man that's had sex with her. In that case she is the one that should be the subject of social shaming to discourage other women from following in her path.
>What about gay relationships, presumably you'd apply the same thinking (en route to a marriage or married)?
I don't think homosexual behavior is very relevant to the discussion of men being unable to find suitable wives, but generally speaking, I don't think society should put any effort toward ensuring homosexuals end up in healthy marriages. And if there is any conflict between the interests of homosexuals and the goal of getting normal people in to healthy marriages, the conflict should be resolved in favor of normal people every time.
>What about poly relationships?
I think society should reject polygamous relationships.
>I'm going to assume you mean owes you a supportive, caring, platonic relationship. Eg, two married people support one another to their mutual benefit. I'm going to assume you don't mean to imply your spouse owes you sex.
I mean both. Both are important to the maintenance of most healthy relationships.
Honestly, you not being able to have partner night have to do with you being coercive and potentially abusive partner. It is the way you think about relationships - you want to create set up in which your potential partners are helpless and have no choice. You don't care about how vulnerable to rape or domestic violence it would make them. You don't care about consequences to children.
As in, potential partners are better off single and alone.
Sorry. But I do really find this persons plans highly coercive and abusive. I dont just disagree, I in fact find it abusive and threat.
And it is also true that such setup would make women super vulnerable for rape or sexual abuse and then forced them to marry their rapists. That is exactly how it worked in the past and how it still works in some radical Christian circles.
It would also create environment in which domestic violence would flourish as women were unable to leave as partner starts the abusing.
The whole plan, in multiple comments, is about creating coercive setup that don't care about violence it puts people at risk for.
I agree that the comments were egregious and banned the account. Nonetheless, it's against the site guidelines to feed such comments by replying to them—that just perpetuates flamewars.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
(Or, if you prefer Old Internet, please don't feed the trolls.)
When they don't get replies and are properly flagged, egregious comments are deprived of oxygen and the fires quickly die out. When they are fed, we end up in various circles of flamewar hell. Such flamewars are a co-creation of the provoker and the provokees. We're trying to avoid that here.
The only egregious thing about my comments is your dislike of the opinions expressed within them. This was not an ideological flamewar. There were no insults being thrown around. Everyone was being respectful. And it was perfectly relevant to the topic of the submission.
You banned my account because you don't like my opinions. It's as simple as that.
I don't care about your opinions (or anyone else's, for that matter) but I do care about users dumping flamebait on HN, like how you want to shame women and whatnot. The issue is what sort of thread such comments will lead to (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). In this case the answer is: extremely bad.
You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now. Would you please stop doing that?
Not that I expect you to care, but I'm not buying it. I was specifically asked what changes I proposed to alleviate the problem discussed in the submission. I gave an answer briefly detailing a system that has been and continues to be used around the world. You don't like that system, so you banned my account.
I never said I wanted to shame women. I said I thought society should do it to alleviate a problem I consider very serious, not because I'm personally enthusiastic about doing it. I think people around here are able to understand the nuance.
>You've been creating accounts to break HN's rules with for a long time now.
> You shouldn’t depend on one for happiness, but there is nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
Precisely; too many men rely on partnership to meet most or all of their emotional needs and that is what drives intense loneliness when they don't have a partner.
I believe everyone is capable of being happy in their own company. It may take a lifetime of work for some people to achieve this. We are social creatures and human interaction is essential for our well-being, but that doesn't mean you can't have your own personal goals and interests or just simply enjoy time with yourself: you are a human being in your own company, too! Frankly without that ability you are not going to have healthy relationships with others no matter how good looking or successful you are. I know so many unhappy couples that put on a good front. I was part of one for years.
In the West in particular we are crippled with insecurity, anxiety and doubt. Are we masculine/feminine enough? Do we fit the image we have of other people's desires? We have incredible wealth and abundance and feel like shit. It's a societal ill as well as a personal one. It is possible to practice contentment, gratitude, and self-compassion and acceptance, these are just things that are not taught or idealized in our culture. I do think the mindfulness movement, commercialized though it may be, has something to offer to modern secular society.
I don't think that is true, but that's because I think there's a huge difference between what people think will make them happy and what actually will. The former tends to be an ever moving target, the latter requires a change in perspective that takes quite a bit of effort and doesn't make anyone any money.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted; others may not agree, but I think you have a very valid opinion. It is an incredibly common human experience to think "I would be happy if only I had X," only to find that achieving X does not actually make one happy.
> This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
This is a very odd western view of things. None of my Bangladeshi aunts would find it at all controversial if a young man said he was sad because he was chronically unable to find a relationship. Humans are supposed to be in intimate relationships of some sort, for the purposes of making children. Friends and hobbies aren’t a replacement.
I find the ease with which people throw around “codependency” similarly perplexing. I don’t doubt that this situation exists among some people. But normal healthy marriage involves a large degree of codependency. The idea you need to be a standalone individual who would be happy with or without their spouse is inconsistent with how people actually work.
Yup, I am from India and the experience of men from South Asian countries completely negates the argument in the original comment. Most men in these cultures have no problem finding strong friendships and family bonds, but can still struggle with loneliness and self-esteem when they fail to find intimate relationships.
I think the criticism was that the post's author expressed being deeply unhappy with himself to begin with, and the relationship was more like a bandaid that only covered up the underlying personal issues.
But it can equally well be the other way around: loneliness causes the unhappiness.
That's very unfortunate tendency how everyone here first assumes some clear-cut cause and effect, and then goes on from there to interpret someone's expressed feelings.
> having a romantic ... relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
Do you think having friends is a requirement for a happy life? It's not strictly necessary, but they are a positive factor, and most people will not be happy entirely devoid of friendship.
Having a partner is a friend you commit to and are closer with than other friends (generalization, sure). I have friends who I would not support through depression, but I would support my partner through depression. Needing someone like that is not unhealthy. It will be difficult to find someone willing to give the same commitment to your friendship as to their partner (generalization again).
> I have friends who I would not support through depression
they aren't your friends then. aquaintences perhaps but not real friends. I'd jump through fire for my friends and know they would do (and have done) for me. but then I also run a tight ship with what I consider a friend. if we haven't gone through some kind of shared struggle together we can never be friends. that's why most men will have trouble making real bonds once they leave their teenage years and early 20ies behind. not much new happens (such as puberty) that you struggle through as a group. try to make friends in your 40ies that are as strong as your oldest friendships and it'll be pretty much futile to get anywhere. it's even worse: trusting somebody at that age to become a close friend is a natural red flag for most men. the smell of danger is too high. you're meant to stand on your own feet with that age and better be used to (or even enjoy) being alone (if you don't have a partner)
Sure. At that point, this is just a semantic difference in acquaintance / friend / close friend / best friend. I would argue that there are many people who have zero friends by your definition.
I have friends (by my definition) who I'd, say, drive 30 min out of my way to pick them up if they got car trouble, but I wouldn't lend them $10,000. These are people I see regularly and actively make time to hang out with. I feel like most people would lean toward my definition over yours, but I could be wrong.
my old roomate wouldn't even lend me $200 one night, but he was more than willing to basically chauffer me around for a week when my car was in the shop. This included taking me to work 20 minutes north every day. Despite that, he wouldn't take the $50 I offered for gas. Definitely still consider him a friend.
This doesn't mean anything at all to this thread, but your comment reminded me of that. it still bugs me a tiny bit, even if I completely understand and don't blame him for it. I know some people are just extremely picky about money.
It is one thing to nominally 'support' friends through depression and another help them see it through to an under-defined end.
Supporting a depressed person will inevitably take a huge toll on your own mental health. That's aside from the time and physical effort it would take up. I am assuming that the friend has some understanding of depression to begin with, which from my personal experience is rarely the case.
I have supported a couple of friends through depression, and it is exhausting. In most cases I was only around them for weeks, and it drained happiness from my life. At time I felt like cutting contact, because depressed people are insufferable. The only reason I stayed to help was because I had personally gone through a similar situation recently, and didn't want to wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a friend.
It's like having a special needs child or being the carer for dependent parent. It is easy to say that you'd gladly do it, but the sad reality is you'll find yourself wishing for a better situation (with all the guilt in the world) once you are knee deep in it.
The medical term for what you are talking about is compassion fatigue. It's symptoms look a lot like depression: "People who experience compassion fatigue may exhibit a variety of symptoms including lowered concentration, numbness or feelings of helplessness, irritability, lack of self-satisfaction, withdrawal, aches and pains, or work absenteeism."
edit: I just found this meme: https://i.imgur.com/WCzNW77.png and I decided to link it here. People think friendship is something that is built over years because it takes years in order to have finally made it through enough hardship and shared struggle so calling each other friends is justified. This is the literal meaning of having a friend. You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without expecting anything in return from them.
> You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without expecting anything in return from them.
I cannot decide if that is more abusive or more romanticized.
If you expect your friends to be there for you without you returning anything, you are abusing them. That isn't friendship, that is exploitation.
And if your friend is there for you even though you are incapable of returning anything, it is incredibly romantic. But also usually very limited, because that drain on your friend has consequences and needs to either be equalized by something (not you) or suck your friend dry until he himself is incapable. Which is a very un-romantic ending, because it leaves the world with 2 emotional cripples.
For me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
life is swings and roundabouts. having nothing to give in return isn't romantic - it's humbling. it's depressing and devastating the one who has no choice but to accept and I'd rather they get out of their dump than thinking about my expectations. it's more important that they're OK to me than if they give back (which I trust will anyway happen because "swings & roundabouts").
I understand most people are more calculating. My own family who would keep tabs of what they give and receive so to never feeling they're in somebody#s debt. I'm like that in business situations, and to those who I know would do it to me, but not to those who are close enough to consider friend.
> for me, friendship is also very much about knowing the limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
No, I'm not. While I would appreciate help in such a situation, I can fully understand anyone walking away. Being a bother to people and needy is one of the worst parts of being ill.
If you have a treatable form of depression, go get treated. If you have a personality disorder, the person you're responding to is the lucky one, not you.
In a "comment a positive message on your facebook status" way? Sure, I'd do that. In a real, be-there-no-matter-what, show up consistently for them even when they're a drain and show no signs of improving for months on end? Some I would, some not.
Really, though, friendship isn't a commitment. I am friends with people I enjoy spending time with. I have plenty of people I am no longer friends with because we stopped having things in common or geography got in the way. That's not a failure on them or me as people. I've made new friends and so have they.
I don't feel bad about saying no to things I don't want to do. I don't want to spend time with someone who isn't fun to be around. With some close friends, I will, out of some sense of obligation or caring about that person. With most friends, I don't feel responsibility over their emotional state, and would rather support my own.
I would argue any "friends" you have that you wouldn't be there for when its not convenient or "fun" for you to be around are not real genuine friends. I cannot imagine a single one of the people I actually consider my friends being unwilling to be there for me if I was going through a depressive spiral and I can't imagine me not being there for them if they were. Friendships are a form of relationships and that means being together through thick and thin, when its easy and when its hard. If you are unwilling to be there for your "friends" when its hard only when it's "fun" then you are not friends as far as I am concerned, you are acquaintances.
It's important for you to understand the difference between actual clinical depression, which is fully treatable with medication, and depression as a symptom of personality disorders, which is not.
I don't know if you have ever dealt with the latter, or if perhaps you are part of that group, but encountering someone who is can be enough to turn you away from ever potentially being involved with anyone displaying depressive symptoms. There's just too much risk to one's personal life and well-being if they end up being the "bad" kind of depressed person, and not the "good" kind.
> 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.
Let me take this in another direction than most of the other comments:
Say you're talking to a homosexual person in a deeply homophobic society, one so bad that you risk becoming a pariah at the very notion that you might enjoy relations with someone of the same sex. Would you tell that person to basically get over it and figure out how to be happy anyways because it's "not a requirement for a happy life"? If that feels like it would be wrong to say, ask why it feels wrong to tell it to that person, but okay to say it to the subjects of the article.
I'm not really sure what should be done offhand. I know the situations aren't exactly analogous. But if you think it's bad to call homosexual people nasty things and they should be allowed to love, then how can it be okay to just casually dismiss straight people who have trouble finding love as being bad people and tell them to get over it?
I agree with a fair portion of the original article and my comment was almost off-topic because it relates more to the author than the article.
The common feeling the author identifies with incels is the intense loneliness and unhappiness. By no means am I criticizing anyone for their feelings. What I am saying is look for the primary underlying cause and dealing with those feelings which is to a) deal with mental health issues. b) focus on building a strong support system for healthy emotional regulation to alleviate loneliness especially. Life should be enjoyable with friends and hobbies, not miserable.
I also want to point out that what a lot of incels want is not a healthy relationship with a woman, but a glorified sex slave or sex worker in exchange for treating them with basic dignity. This is a far cry from gay people oppressed by homophobia. Nonetheless, for the sake of incels who understand what healthy relationships are like and want that:
I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'd advise a gay friend to escape their strictly homophobic society and help them leave. If there's no where to go then I can only offer emotional support and try to fix the society. Likewise, I think introspection about the true source of intense negative feelings is the best thing for anyone who feels intensely unhappy about life for any perceived reason. I have felt intensely unhappy in the past and I have a lot of evidence now that it was mental health and not circumstances like whether I had a partner or not, despite it feeling like the cause sometimes. Love and sex can mask a lot of negative mental health, too.
Pragmatically what else can we do for incels? They feel very bad, none of us (speaking for the men) can give them what they want, and the only way forward for them that I see is helping them find coping skills and support systems to become emotionally healthy. Most of them have unrealistic expectations and will be disappointed until they correct them. The others will have to wait to find the right partner while otherwise enjoying their lives.
> 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.
There is a great amount of neuro-diversity in the human species. Some people are wired to be rugged individualists who could enjoy living by themselves in a cabin in the woods. Other people are wired to need to be around their family.
For some people, its not a choice, its how their brain is wired.
I think the issue is how extreme the statement "It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy" is. I think there is nothing necessarily wrong with that if you find a partner who is comfortable with providing this author's needs. In my mind though that statement signals a codependent relationship which are generally not seen to be a great thing. I'm not saying they are in a codependent relationship as an FYI, but it sounds like something people in that type of relationship would say. Like can the person not be happy at all if they were not in a relationship? Can they not find satisfaction in their job, hobbies, volunteer work, etc? yes it might not be fulfilling as being in a relationship, but to have a binary happy / not happy state based only on being in a relationship seems extreme. This is just going based on how the author worded it. Maybe a better way to have written their statement would be "less happy".
I think that we are engineered to have sexual and romantic partners by default. And there are some, like me, that somehow we can live without one and not fall into addiction traps ( drugs, party, videogames... ).
But we all have friends ( most ) that are not like this, the difference for most of them between being single or not is big, and I don’t agree that they are depressed its just human nature.
Most people need comfort for the misery of their lives.
some choose food (obesity), some choose crazy partners (tend to be great in bed but bad in life), other choose video games (sense of accomplishment), and others try to help others as a way of hiding from themselves.
most people are running, some though are doing it in a socially acceptable way. but the root cause is the same.
Yeah, no, you are wrong. We are social animals. We haven't evolved to be happy alone. My wife is my best friend. I am absolutely the most happy when my best friend is around and the least happy when she is away. I love doing things with her, talking with her, etc. I have tons of hobbies and interests that don't involve her. I could easily fill my days with those things. But frankly they aren't on the same level as my wife in terms of generating happiness, not by a long shot. And I don't think it is co-dependence. It's just best friends enjoying being together.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
That's for each person to decide. For incels, it's clearly required. They want it.
It's a fact that interpersonal relationships and sex are part of being human. If you tell them to just give up on this and find other ways to be happy, you're telling them to accept a subhuman existence, that part of their humanity is worthless and should not be exercised.
> basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic masculinity
No. It is normal to want relationships and sex. It is normal to be unhappy if you are constantly rejected by everyone. You can have strong friendships and still want this. There is absolutely nothing "toxic" about this.
Hi. I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, had difficulty forming romantic relationships. For most of my life, I also had a lot of trouble forming close friendships. So this is a topic that is very personal for me, and please listen carefully to what I have to say.
First: close friendships are not a substitute for romantic relationships. Friendship and romance are two distinct needs. Not every human is wired to need romance, but _many_ people are. At this point in my life, I'm fortunate enough to have a circle of close platonic friends, but I'm still single, and I'm acutely feeling the lack of romance.
That being said, you have a valid point that romantic relationships are not a substitute for close friendships. Some incels want to get a girlfriend as a substitute for making friends, and I agree that's a bad idea. But telling them "make strong friendships" is not helpful! Most people in this situation will struggle to form to close friendships for the same reasons that they struggle to form romantic relationships.
So how _should_ the problem be fixed? There are no easy solutions. And there especially aren't easy solutions that the sufferers can implement on their own; if there was an easy way out, they would have done it already. I believe this problem will continue until _society_ changes how it treats socially awkward people. Society needs to be more sensitive towards people who lack social skills, and stop demonizing them. For example, there's a tendency to conflate "incels" in the sense of "misogynistic assholes who use terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid", with "incels" in the sense of "any man who's lonely and complains about it". The former group is a tiny fraction of the latter group, and conflating them is very unfair to the latter group. This needs to stop.
> 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.
Vast majority of people are only happy when they're in a relationship and have a circle of friends. We've evolved this way. If you have no friends, you focus on your partner to get this social interaction.
When you have no friends, no partner, then you turn to poor substitutes for social engagement, like online forums. If you ask me that's the red flag (using Internet a lot).
And what makes you think Maslow was right? Just because someone wrote something down or a belief is held as true in the Zeitgeist does not make it objectively true. There are many things that we hold as "true" which we really can't say are objective fact.
I'm not trying to be combative, I just believe that it's important to question things we believe to be true when we don't fully understand the reasoning.
Admittedly, though I know OF Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I have no idea HOW Maslow came to their conclusions. So, I just looked it up:
> The most significant limitation of Maslow's theory concerns his methodology. Maslow formulated the characteristics of self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative method called biographical analysis.[1]
> He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he identified as being self-actualized. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of this specific group of people, as opposed to humanity in general.[1]
> From a scientific perspective, there are numerous problems with this particular approach. First, it could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as it is based entirely on the opinion of the researcher. Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces the validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow's operational definition of self-actualization must not be blindly accepted as scientific fact.[1]
Doesn't seem like the experiment was very rigorous or even scientific.
The linked article goes on to explain more modern and scientific research on the subject that seems to disprove some of the original hierarchy's assumptions.
Try substituting 'crave' for 'need' there. You're assigning moral weight to something that acts more like hunger, or attempting to breathe whilst drowning.
People can adapt to this lack more gracefully than they can adapt to drowning, but it's not a thinking process being addressed here. This is an animal drive and you can't switch it off just because it's ungraceful.
Why don't you think people deserve housing and food, in the richest country in the history of the world? Our society could absolutely provide them, it just doesn't because they're "not worthy".
Sorry what? USA doesn't provide food to poor people? I find that a little hard to believe. Even India, with one tenth the resources per capita, manages to do that.
> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
A romantic and sexual relationship is very much like having money. Money is not a requirement for a happy life. However, having enough money sure does make it much easier to have a happy life.
It is the same with romantic and sexual relationships. You can be happy without them, but having them is such a happiness multiplier that most people want them for very good reason.
Also it has important societal features. If people are poor and they see all the happy, rich people, and they don't think they have any way of getting money, all the psychology self-help telling them that they should be happy being poor, is not going to work. Eventually, a certain proportion will get resentful.
I think it is similar with singles, especially singles who want to be in a relationship but can't. Telling them that they don't need sexual relationships to be happy is not going to work, and will eventually lead to a lot of resentment.
>Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you.
Men can feel lonely and unhappy and unfulfilled when they are involuntarily celibate even after having strong relationships with other men and with their families.
This has been my experience talking to hundreds of men in India. India has a strong family culture and a strong culture of strong friendships between men (sometimes even involving completely platonic hand-holding which is perceived as weird by the West) but not much of a culture of dating before marriage. The dating pool has a huge under-supply of women, so most men that do want to date would never find a girlfriend. In my experience, many of these men really struggle with loneliness and self-esteem. Eventually, they give in to the family pressure and just agree to an arranged marriage.
This sounds pretty ignorant and insensitive. What someone wants or needs to live a happy life cannot be generalised. While I don’t think people owe you more than some empathy and politeness, they shouldn’t also be allowed to make sweeping judgments about your character on the basis of what you hold valuable or not.
It can be generalized. Sex drive is a biological imperative. To suppress it takes a lot of effort and adaptation. Workarounds take a lot of effort.
When you buy certain species of pets, you will only be able to buy them in pairs. Holding them solo is considered animal cruelty. I do consider holding humans solo cruelty, and people advocating things like "the world doesn't owe you a companion" cruel. Maybe the world isn't able to provide, but it should endavour to.
Sorry but I’ll have to downvote this, there’s something about humans that is either cultural or genetic, but we travel and live in groups and we settle with partner(s). Being alone might be OK in a tribe, but as we moved to more isolated and individualist ways of living being alone means something completely different. On top of that every song you hear is about love and every movie you watch has a love story. You go out and you see happy couples around you, conversations most often revolve around dating.
My theory is that behind every violent crime or act of terrorism there is a huge amount of frustration that built up from not having that someone.
Your choices are not limited to "being adhered to a codependent sexual partner" and "being totally disconnected from society trying to live as a Randean ubermench ascetic".
It is the belief that those are the only possibilities that makes people incels, not the lack of a chick.
Isn’t the point of incels that they want something that is majorly important in society, yet can’t get it. It’s a bit like telling poor people that they should not care about money.
They want something that they think is important in society, but isn't.
Nobody gives a damn if they have a sexual partner or not, and it is not anybody's obligation to be theirs so that they can achieve their misguided idea of personal fulfillment.
I think it's normal to be happier when you're in a relationship than when you're along, but you certainly shouldn't be completely miserable on your own.
There's a quote I read when I was younger that helped me realize this and come to find peace with my own loneliness at the time.
"Until you get comfortable being alone, you'll never know if you're choosing someone out of love or loneliness."
> romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life
We have proof of various intelligent animals, domesticated and wild, that display signs of depression, loneliness and self-harm when separated from their bonded partner. If anything, the need for intimacy and romance are central to life as we know it.
"Deep emotional relationships" are based on trust, of the sort that's only really possible with a handful of people at any given time. A relationship that boils down to "spend your time with others who like you and enjoy your company and validate you" is pretty far from "deep", by definition. At that point, you're probably better off just getting a dog.
I think in this context it's not about toxic masculinity, but simply biology. We're merely animals with big brains, and most individual animals have a deep desire to reproduce. So it's not exactly weird that historically everywhere in the world young men unable to find a partner have been frustrated and a source of social problems, especially as with men troubles finding a partner tend to correlate with lower socio-economic status in general.
>It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. ...then something is wrong.
I don't think work life balance and societal expectations are given enough discussion in these matters. Having a toxic job or no balance is going to breed problems in even the most well adjusted people.
Likewise, men are taught by society at large to providers. Men are expected to get great jobs so the wife can stay at the mcmansion with the kids and that anything less than this is a failure of their person. I'm obviously exaggerating, but these messages still abound in pop culture.
I don't know what the solution is, but I think it starts with employees taking more control over the work they do, how they work, and what happens to the profits they create.
> 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.
I agree with you in that this is the best solution, but modern employment is making that hard. When you have a 1h single-way commute, an 8 hour regular work day with an hour of lunch break, another hour of "expected" overtime and "expected" taking part in socializing events to "fit to corporate culture", you lose 11-13 hours each day to work and are probably exhausted. Add another one and half hours to make breakfast and dinner and 8 hours of sleep, that doesn't leave much space for any activities. And God may help you if you're one of the persons who has to take on a second or third job to make rent.
Boomers always complain my generation are "snowflakes" and depression ain't real... yeah no. Depression is real and these people had the luxury of being able to afford two kids, a house and a decent car on one person's salary without ridiculous overtime. Times have changed and not for the better.
I agree with most of this (though "Toxic Masculinity", like "Triggers," "Privilege," and so many others, is a phrase that used to be useful and has now been utterly destroyed by the socially fashionable).
The general "response" to the incel phenomenon seems to be to diagnose (and dismiss) them as the sexual version of anorexics: people who have an unrealistically negative view of their sexual appeal and potential and end up harming themselves as a result. If they could just stop being so hard on themselves and relax, they'd be fine!
This is a problem for two reasons. First, a lot of people genuinely are seriously, perhaps even hopelessly impaired in terms of finding a sexual partner. Appearance, money, and the ability to navigate a host of social and psychological interactions are vital to the process, and some people lack enough of these that their ability to find a partner is slim to none, and will not be improved by a few personal tweaks. The situation is similar to depression: everyone has felt down at some point and gotten over it with simple coping strategies, so they inevitably suggest these strategies to depressed people, not realizing they're dealing with a much deeper problem.
But second, the real issue, as demonstrated in the discussion here, is that a large portion of the population has an unhealthy obsession with having a sexual partner. They view it both as an unqualified good and as a necessity, and are thus terrified of going without it for any significant period of time. For these people, you are not complete as a person unless you're in a relationship. This is a profoundly unhealthy and destructive way to live life, even for ordinary people.
Relationships CAN be good. They can also be bad. On the whole, they generally end up creating almost as many problems as they solve (and sometimes more!). Having a partner is optional. It isn't like air or water or good nutrition. You have to find peace within yourself, with yourself, before anything else. Trying to fix that with any outside thing, including sexual or romantic partners, is a recipe for disaster.
This thread is full of people continuing this warped line of thinking. Relationships aren't evil, they can be good and they can have positive effects on people. But they aren't necessary, and they won't fix you. Only you can fix you.
In short, our culture very clearly has an addiction to sex and romance. Not in the dopamine sense, but because we believe the answer to our problems lies in someone else. In people with the ability to feed this addiction you get mild to moderate problems. In people without that ability, you get incels. Incels are just the most extreme symptom of a deeper disease.
This depends on the attachment style of the person. An avoidant would say 'I want to be independent and no one should take a dependence on me. I feel suffocated if someone does. Nobody likes it".
The other extreme is anxious attachment style. The extreme forms of both are considered personality disorders.
I have lived a significant part of my life being independent, without a partner. But now that I have, I enjoy the interdependence. It is very fulfilling.
>Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you.
The author has a great followup comment that should really be part of the original article that addresses this line of thinking exactly. Pasted below:
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I want to have a dialogue about this, because I think it's important in a couple ways. To start, I agree in sort of generic terms that a lot of the Incels must be whining without doing anything to fix it; that's just necessary.
But your scenario here for them, parsed, seems to be making a lot of assumptions I'm not sure are true. One thing I get told a lot when I talk about dieting/obesity is that everyone WANTS to be thin; if it were possible/doable/easy then we'd expect to see a bunch of obese people losing weight, and we don't, so it would be wrong to treat all obese people as lazy fat slobs. Basically that they deserve sympathy and the assumption should be that even if they aren't trying real hard at the moment, that what they would have to try is real hard, and it's more complex than just writing them off as voluntarily broken.
In this case I'm not sure what you are doing is the same, but it feels similar. It's something like "Yes, there's a problem - why don't they just change their personality, looks, and conversational abilities?". If that's easy, great; if that's even something someone can do, fine. But I'm not sure it's that simple; I don't know that many people who have drastically upgraded their personality successfully (read: I don't know any people who have done this) and I don't know many people who have ever made themselves more than marginally better looking (read: I've known some people who have done this, but not many). There's probably some dudes out there who are romance-marketable if they just start showering more, dress a little better and make some token effort at not being rancid assholes, but it's relevant that we think about whether those guys are the norm, or outliers.
I say this because, like, the solutions you propose besides that are A. Something that's expensive, stands a good chance of getting them sent to jail and only solves a small part of the problem most of them have B. Something that's expensive, slow and that we'd only expect to fix the underlying problem if the underlying problem is entirely them - i.e. if the stats I posted above are completely the un-loved faults, with no "market" problems they are getting screwed by.
If you are a guy who isn't a capital-I Incel seeing those suggestions, I'm suspicious that it's not that unlike seeing someone complain about their obesity and how society treats the obese and saying "Well, stop whining, bucko - it's hard to have any sympathy for you when "eat less, exercise more" is an option - do you even have a gym membership?".
If it's anything like that, it gets really easy to imagine this lower-case-i not-yet-toxic incel turning to some community somewhere that will give him some level of sympathy. What I'm saying is, we have an option to have sympathy for the generic condition without having sympathy for the bad behavior, something like "Hey, I get that it's hard out there and that this might not feel like or even be something that you can just 'fix' in that way. I feel for you, that's terrible" so they have some other option at all besides "listen, man, I'm going to explain 100 ways women are whores and this isn't your fault at all".
And the normal stuff with escalating problems applies - this is a problem that got almost twice as bad over the last couple decades. Right now, nobody is paying any real attention to it; some people acknowledge that those stats above exist, but nobody is seriously looking into why or what societal trends are pushing it. If we get down the road another 20 years and suddenly 50% of everybody in a certain high-energy-high-rage age range is relationship-less and the only people who have been sympathetic to them at all are terrible people, we can't act surprised when there's suddenly a much larger terrible-person cohort on the ground instead of the much larger sad-but-not-ruined group we might have had.
In the same way that it's not required to be rich to have a happy life. In theory, yes. In reality, many doors open or close (ESPECIALLY once you're 40+) based on your marital status. for a few of the many examples:
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but being excluded from social outings mostly from your friends who are married may start to affect your social circles.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but paying higher taxes and more rent due to the rise of the housing market expecting two-incomes may in fact financially affect you.
- Not having a spouse may be fine, but receiving all your societal worldviews and mentalities from your same sex friends exclusively may lead you to have some problematic views in the long run.
It can affect a lot, and goes much deeper than sex. Even in some world where prostitution was not only legal but societally encouraged, these above issues from sexual intimacy wouldn't disappear overnight.
>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.
Strongly disagree, unless you have low testosterone. Nowhere on Earth except in possibly some religious circles do people mentally push away and control to the point of elimination from awareness their sexual desires and not suffer for it in some form. You don't need to be a Freudian to know that the drive exists and gets out, somehow. If you have a low drive, then it makes sense that it would be viewed as optional.
I mean, if you apply this same reasoning, then "eating this big mac is extremely necessary unless you have one of these weird genes that makes you not crave these type of foods" becomes also a valid argument. It's not about what humans feel they need, it's about what they can live without without tearing their lives apart.
Not analogus at all, there's a wealth of consumable objects other than a Big Mac to sate your hunger. Setting aside fetishism, there's really just one object that sates sexual drive and that's a human being. Or do you think a sex doll is an adequate substitute with no second-order effects?
Me wanting to be famous can only be satiated by other people considering me an enjoyable person. But would you consider that I would be unhappy if I failed at being famous?
>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.
This is nonsense. The instinct to reproduce is inescapable for the vast majority of people. Without it humans would not exist. There is only so much social conditioning that can be done to override the innate drive for partnership and sex. Ignoring this basic drive, which is implicit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, disenfranchises young men who are disproportionately driven by evolutionarily derived instinct to seek romantic female companionship.
>A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are supposed to have
No, more like friends are not a replacement for intimacy.
Everything has already been said about this subject. Looking at it as a technology problem, it's not a novel problem, i think every advanced and successful society has dealt with it in the past. In ancient athens, Solon's 'technological' solution was to create state brothels for everyone with regulated prices. Rome's foundational myth contains the abduction of the Sabine women, which fulfilled the needs of Roman incel warriors for wives. Victorian age london was full of brothels. The second part of this 'technological' solution was the subjugation of women.
Nowadays, as the article says, it's hard to deny that the problem exists, but it's fair to say that the solutions above are not going to recur in any advanced society. However, we do have sex tech that is advancing by leaps, and we should be able to solve the physical/sexual part of the problem soon. We don't have a tech solution for the intimacy deficit, but I think that it can be dealt with alternative bonds and more generally with doing things that are fulfilling. We are not far from the first ex utero children, which should contribute to solving that intimacy deficit.
Now, i don't know how many startups are working in this area at the moment; there are definetly some teledildonics companies.
> 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?
I guess I fall outside that range. Do most people actually find themselves having emotional recoil here? I personally feel very much a pro-women and pro-men rights supporter. Do most people not feel like that? But see it as a women vs men and not a equal rights for all kind of thing?
I'm an incel. It doesn't have to be sexist. I don't have any specific feelings towards women. I just know I don't get an ROI on investing in dating. So I just invest in my self for my self and allow myself one sexual interaction a month through paying for it like a service. I'm available for dating or relationships but have no expectations. It's healthy enough.
I interpret it as in the dating market I am effectively involuntarily celibate, perhaps there’s a more accurate subculture but I love incel tears. I also like the edginess. It’s a banned word on twitch.
This is a long essay which raises problems but has no solutions, and so it is difficult to give a deeply coherent response to it which covers all of the points. However, since it seems to focus, however nebulously, on "problems with/for men," I can attempt something.
When was the last time you hear someone mention "masculinity" without "toxic" leading out in front like a particularly ugly hood ornament? With that in mind, what are men going to do around one another, waving this big TOXIC badge around? Men's groups? Derided, often pried apart legally if they reach the level of some kind of club. Nor have individual bonds escaped notice: deep friendship between men, that's largely reformulated as "bromance," because of course men do not understand friendship, we have to make everything they do about the pursuit of sex.
You can hear from many married men about the sudden winnowing of their friendships based on the approval list. If you're a man who is a bachelor, you know that friendships with other bachelor men are different than friendship with married men, and quite a bit of the latter is the approval factor. Acceptable, if barely, would be a "sports bar" with boozy comments to near strangers about the performance of strangers; shallow, not deep.
And so modern society has atomized men. To stretch the metaphor further, we're pretty much only allowed covalent bonds with women. Being single is out. I can't tell you the number of times I have had a co-worker, invariably a woman, say "Don't you want a girlfriend?"
And thus our only real value is to serve as providers to women, if they'll have us. If not, well, we're certainly not supposed to hang out with one another and find other things fulfilling. Once men with such hunger would fork over their dollars at strip clubs; now a new generation has abstracted this away to OnlyFans, in keeping with the general trend that previous person-to-person interaction will eventually attract a corporation which wants to mediate this, for profit.
And the indoctrination goes so deep: Elliot Rodgers, misogynist, right? Kills twice as many men as women, but hey, is it like men count? When was the last time you heard of someone who shot and killed men referred to as a "misandrist"? Please, try to recall.
Frankly, the trend of demonizing men cannot continue forever and I suspect the repercussions will be disliked, but so many seem to focus on staying that particular course, full speed ahead. I'm out of the game myself (one might argue that I never really entered the field), but I cannot help but feel tremendously for the young men today.
Our inability to talk about sex is a big problem that enhances all the others. Some people are happy abstaining from sex altogether, those folks might have useful advice for the Incels but they're shy of offering from having been burnt before.
There's plenty of people for whom sex isn't necessarily involved in romance; I personally think a lot of people suffer because they confuse and conflate those two ideas.
Abstaining from sex is not useful advice. Sex and intimacy is a fundamental human desire and it’s cruel and unethical to tell people that they should just suck it up and suppress it.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the abstinate community exists, and could help. I've seen them try.
If you think "abstinate" isn't a valid sexuality, that there aren't people who choose not to have sex just as there are people who choose other genders, machinery, etc; then we'll just have to disagree.
I agree about the porn thing, but I'd argue that is not so much one of the major issues surrounding it so much as teens not having sex at the rates they used to. More teens are entering college as virgins, men aren't being taught how to navigate social/sexual relationships by their fathers or friends, media content online holds greater value over real personal relationships, and frankly videogames nowadays have all but turned into time wasting gambling. I mean if you put a weak willed person in a room with any vice they'd want, they're gonna fail. And we're packed to the brim with vices. Now how do you expect any impressionable young man growing up to not become jaded because dating is bar none more difficult than it has ever been? Not only that, the fear of getting the girl pregnant and she keeps it or divorce. I feel like with all the stories about how men appear to get the short end of the stick oftentimes, it's led to a jaded understanding of the system.
Assuming porn causes incels, but the golden age of porn started at 1969, so that doesnt work. Assuming incels cause porn, has porn become more profitable in the past ~20 years? I 'd say probably true based on the innovation of the profitability models , expecially after onlyfans became a thing
We're just relying on guesswork here but to think that the internet only created a 25% increase in porn exposure for teens seems really off, especially considering how hard porn was for minors to obtain pre-internet.
Also, it's worth considering that the "porn" they would have had easiest access to was Playboy magazine content--not the catalog of Pornhub.
Porn has been around since the 70’s, internet porn since the 2000s. The incel phenomenon arrived in the 2010s, around the same time dating apps took off.
People are very reluctant to talk about porn for some reason. Porn is the reason all men are able to (virtually) practise polygamy today. But most will adamantly deny that it has anything to do with a natural male desire for polygamy.
Ok, I was expecting something caustic and awful but that all seemed pretty reasonable. It does suck being a young man who can’t get anyone to date you. Water water everywhere as they say.
Here’s one thing that might help: women are in my experience often afraid of unattached young men, for good reason. They are afraid of being assaulted, they are afraid of being called “sluts”, they are afraid of men who become clingy and needy. And for good reason. If men’s behavior would change- which takes generations- women’s would too. Men need to be taught how to identify snd deal with their emotions at a young age, like women are, and how to think about the needs of others. That’s to do with upbringing and socialization.
A person who doesn’t know how to be gentle and considerate is scary, especially when he is 6 inches taller and has 30 pounds more muscle mass than you, and it doesn’t take many of them to poison the well so that women just can’t take chances. Every woman has a stalker story- ask her about it.
We have plenty of places decriminalizing sex work. What they are not decriminalizing, however, is purchasing sex work. Both are required for the first item on your list to do anything. And it that is going to require a lot of nuance, too. I recall seeing someone reacting to a post by a former sex worker who lamented how these men had been "raping her body." If that is considered a valid viewpoint, then even more work must be done at the decriminalization level, otherwise you will have seller's remorse hanging over someone with a very long statute of limitations.
Right, it must be decriminalized entirely, not just select aspects. It reminds me of when a lot of places decriminalized marijuana possession, while somehow forgetting that weed does not materialize out of thin air but must be grown and distributed. Meaning the thing they just "decriminalized" was still part and parcel of illegal acts. So far only those same cowardly half-measures have been used towards sex work in most of the US.
Almost everything on /r/relationships can be boiled down to poor communication on the part of one or more parties. Seriously. If everyone were taught proper communication and confrontation skills, there would be a lot more happy people on this earth.
Dead bedrooms: instead of making a spreadsheet of your wife's excuses and passive aggressively emailing it to her, talk to her without anger or blame, explain how you feel, get a sense for how she feels, and make a plan to address the issue.
Incels similarly have terrible communication skills and most probably wouldn't be incels today if they learned how to communicate. Their worldview is a way to cope with their issue without admitting they have an issue; by blaming another group (women) for the issue.
It has nothing to do with communication. People either desire you or they don't. You can't negotiate desire. I don't understand why anyone would want to be with someone who needs to be convinced and pressured to have sex.
Spreadsheet guy eventually realized this. He saw the pattern for what it was and decided to end it. Yes, he could've handled it a lot better but I still respect him for exiting. He understood what he wanted, realized he was not getting it and decided to get out.
I was quite out of tune with this whole issue until I watched the Alek Minassian[1] interview/confession[2]. I still don't really know what to make of it. I will warn you: it's not easy listening, however, it is eye opening and adds further context to this substack post.
I think more Americans should consider going back to Europe city. If things are not working out here. Do what other people have done and move away. Things are deteriorating here anyway and standard of living is going down.
If you move to a larger European city, chances are you will end up walking a lot more, lose weight, and meet new people. People walk all the time.
Just the idea of working here overtime for the next 30+ years to barely afford a new house should be enough motivation.
If I was born a few years later I could have easily ended up on those nice-guy, red pill type of forums. If you feel rejected by society it's easier than ever to retreat to your room and immerse yourself in an imagined sense of belonging to online groups. The basic ingredients are shyness, social anxiety and low self esteem (all easier to acquire than ever). After that it's a self-fulfilling downward spiral. You feel unlovable and so the world affirms it.
The message we get from the media is that finding a partner is only for those who ooze confidence and charm. The West has a hidden Hikikomori epidemic too. Shared houses are full of single guys living on the internet and takeaway food in their rooms. We just don't have a word in the culture for it yet.
Thankfully I met someone who was willing to look past the awkwardness and shyness and surface level quirks. I'm happily married now. I'm not sure I would have ever found my self esteem without her positive encouragement and support. The author's plea for compassion is probably what these guys need to begin healing.
It's weird because I thought I was part of that demographic, but I'm really not.
What matters here is mental health, communication and a willingness to stop using stereotypes about masculinity or feminity. Body image problems and stereotyped social skills also are the problem. There is an arm length of emotional issues and personality types that stems from childhood.
I discovered that most of the social mechanics at play in a romantic relationship are the same as in other types like friendship. Once you get that, it's easier.
I've never really subscribed to the incel rhetoric, but there are interesting notions like non monogamy, female hypergamy, not to mention a lot of other statistics that help think about this issue.
I don't understand if this post is exclusively about people who think that others are responsible for them not having sex, or about all those who don't get sex.
I come in the latter category, and I don't think anyone needs to sympathize with me. The reason for me never having being in a relationship is exclusively due to issues with me, some that I have/had control over, like weight, grooming, and some that I have little/no control over, like looks, mental issues, height.
It would however be nice if people didn't ridicule/look down upon lonely men, and if society wouldn't assign value to a man solely based on what he can provide to his family.
What a fascinating article! I came away with a very bold “misery loves company” feeling. Misery amongst a group begets misery. I wonder how feeling the psychological need to blame someone, some thing for failure, plays in relationships?
> My apologies for the poor-quality clip; the wife has since scrubbed the post and all her comments. For better or worse, this is what remains of this particular piece of internet history.
What kind of asshole takes a deeply personal thing like this, which has been deleted by the original poster, keeps a screenshot of it lying around, and then reposts it as completely unnecessary flair on their blog? Maybe take the hint that she regretted posting it or didn't want it public anymore. Just because technology has all but destroyed privacy doesn't mean that it's ok to take advantage of it and be indecent.
There are certain drugs that bring sexual desires to zero, and the experience could be really liberating, as I may personally attest. Life could be easier for those surplus men if they went this route.
This person is basically saying "show sympathy to those with intentionally despicable viewpoints, because maybe you can convert them". Stating this ulterior motive undermines the whole point - if your motivation is to change them, it is not to understand them or sympathize with them.
It also begs the question: are these newly formed sympathizers susceptible to being converted themselves? Could the sympathy train lead to even more incels, not fewer?
I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, struggled to form romantic relationships. For a long time, I also struggled to form friendships. So I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this, and here are my thoughts:
The term "incel" is used to mean two wildly different things:
- One meaning is "an incel is someone who's single and complains about it". Statistically, a few percent of 30-year-old men are virgins. Some of those are for religious reasons, but a lot of them are involuntary. So in this sense of the term "incel", I'd guess there are somewhere around a million male incels in the US today.
- The other meaning is "an incel is a misogynistic asshole who uses terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid". This is a _much_ smaller group; I doubt there are more than a few thousand people active on incel forums.
A lot of people conflate these two groups, and that's very unfair to the former group. There's been a lot of discussion of the latter group, because they're dramatic and highly visible. But the former group is actually much larger; they just aren't as visible, often because the sufferers try to hide it. We need to talk about the former type of "incel" -- people who are lonely and suffering, but haven't done anything wrong!
My theory for how people get into this situation, is that they get stuck in a vicious cycle of impaired social skills:
1. For some reason, they don't have age-appropriate social skills.
2. Because they lack social skills, their peers don't want to interact with them.
3. Because they don't interact with their peers, they don't develop social skills.
When the problem gets bad enough, social interactions become traumatic. The sufferer learns that every time they try to interact with other people (whether romantically or not) they'll receive cold stares and harsh rejection. So they become scared to even try to interact with people, which makes it even harder to escape the cycle.
Many different things can potentially trigger this cycle. Sometimes it starts with something like autism that biologically impairs their social skills. Other times there's nothing biologically wrong with them, but their peers shun them for some reason, and then it becomes self-reinforcing.
There are no easy solutions to this problem. In particular, there certainly aren't easy solutions that are accessible to the people suffering from the problem; if there was an easy way out, they would have done it already! Therapy can help, but it's slow, expensive, inconvenient, and not guaranteed to work; so it's a poor substitute for "not being traumatized in the first place". I think the real solution will have to involve changes in society's attitude towards socially awkward people:
- For one thing, we absolutely need to stop conflating the "raging misogynist" meaning of the word "incel" with the "man who's lonely" meaning of the word "incel". Lonely men should be able to talk about their suffering without people acting like they're misogynists.
- For another thing, we should be kinder and more sensitive to socially awkward men when they try to make friends, or ask women on dates. Socially awkward people are often unintentionally rude, or accidentally make other people uncomfortable. Some people assume the awkward person is being rude on purpose, and react harshly; this makes it much harder for awkward people to escape the cycle. (Of course, nobody's obligated to be friends with a socially awkward person if they don't want to -- and in particular, women certainly aren't obligated to go on dates when they don't want to -- but I do think people should make an effort to reject socially awkward folks without traumatizing them!)
You are overestimating the role of social skills in attraction and not talking about looks.
People who are good looking experience halo effect where others put a positive spin on everything they are doing. If a guy is good looking, but shy, women will find it cute. If a guy is ugly and shy, he will be seen as a creep.
Some people have done real dating experiments with profiles of good looking men who describe themselves as child rapists. Guess what? These men have no problem getting women, at least from online dating:
> For one thing, we absolutely need to stop conflating the "raging misogynist" meaning of the word "incel" with the "man who's lonely" meaning of the word "incel"
The term "incel" was originally coined in an online community founded by a Canadian woman (Alana B) who identifies as a queer feminist. It is rather ironic that a community founded by a queer feminist woman morphs into "raging misogynist". But maybe reminding people of that history can be helpful in winding back than transformation and bringing the term back to what it originally meant, a useful word to describe a predicament which has the potential to afflict people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
As long as social skills matter, they will be the more serious barrier over things like exercise, grooming/hygiene and other self improvement fixes because those can be improved on your own while practicing social skills takes willing partners. If it's bad enough, you're in a chicken and egg situation. There are ways out of it like rejection challenges but that's really painful.
"we should be kinder and more sensitive to socially awkward men when they try to make friends, or ask women on dates" Again I agree, this would help so much. But I get that many women are not in a place where they feel comfortable doing this yet. "I do think people should make an effort to reject socially awkward folks without traumatizing them!" Saying no is a skill that many of us are very bad at, especially doing it gently and unambiguously.
Social skills is one area where society can help, by encouraging more in-person role models, mentors, and conversation partners (men AND women) to give young people these skills. Maybe better fictional role models too.
> But I get that many women are not in a place where they feel comfortable doing this yet. Saying no is a skill that many of us are very bad at, especially doing it gently and unambiguously.
This is a totally valid point, and I don't mean to make anyone feel bad if they have trouble finding the words to let someone down gently. All I ask is that people should be aware that social awkwardness can sometimes look similar to rudeness, and should make an effort to let socially awkward men down gently, to the extent that they can.
There is no easy solution, but there is a simple solution (simple is often hard to do): work out 5x1.5 hours a week for a year (and then don't stop) and eat healthy.
I was incel for a long time because I believed that personality matters with dating (it matters for finding a long term partner, but not for getting laid). The ,,game'' helped incels (including me) to go even more on the wrong path.
I appreciate you trying to help, but I don't think your advice is really applicable to me personally. My problem isn't that I'm ugly; in fact, I'm probably slightly above average attractiveness. My problem is that I have trouble forming relationships because my social skills are broken, and I have a ton of lingering trauma from being shunned by my peers for most of my childhood. (But everybody's situation is different, and your advice could be certainly be very helpful for some people!)
I see, I understand. I had to go through a lot of change in my personality to get from a point where I think about what the other person thinks of me to the point where I'm more concerned about whether the relationship is working. But it took about 15 years for me.
What concretely changed after a year at the gym? Like did you get far more dating app matches? Were cold approaches in a public or social setting better received? Did women start approaching you when they didn't beforehand?
I can't seem to make head and tails of this data. I guess the explanation would be that older men are dating younger women, which explains why younger men are single compared to younger women. But looking at the distribution, it seems it would need to come from the 65+ cohort... And that would be a little surprising.
Super interesting read, I'm a data science and did some research on the same topic as part of a side business I was making that targeted tinder incels. Check it out, and my proposed solution (lol) https://smoothopener.com/
Instead of a spreadsheet, use ML to predict if you will get sex or an excuse. Predict the excuse with a confidence level, and add suggestions on what to do for breaking the pattern. Happy coding :)
“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, Whatever
I watched this average looking girl on youtube go to stunning. She started by caring about her appearance. And started looking to basically start upgrading her self, one step at a time.
1) She started to work out regularly
2) She got a nose job
3) Buys well fitting designer clothes
4) Spends money on hair and nails
5) Wears gold jewelry and hand bags.
All of these complement her appearance.
When some girls go to so much effort to look good. While the incel guy does nothing to improve their appearance. And often does the opposite. Terrible diet and sometimes even terrible hygenie. Yet expects to date a girl like this.
I agree but this is only applicable to incels who are "ugly". Some people are incels because they have no "game" and that is hard to fix.
Also, not everyone can just get a nose job and be attractive magically.
I think many people in the incel community don't understand how far showering, dressing well, and working out will get them. Its much better than complaining without any action. Also, I see many of them complaining about not dating "10s" yet never bother to look at people at their level.
> I think many people in the incel community don't understand how far showering, dressing well, and working out will get them. Its much better than complaining without any action. Also, I see many of them complaining about not dating "10s" yet never bother to look at people at their level.
This is not really true. At least in the observable, online incel communities. Incels talk a lot about "-maxxing"[1]; looksmaxxing (improving appearance), gymmaxxing (improving physique), surgerymaxxing, moneymaxxing, therapymaxxing, ... you get the point.
The most common advice (showering, better clothes) is also a meme within the communities, like the "Just take a shower, bro" meme.
At the same time... if all the incels improve their fashion, attractiveness, and dating game... it's going to be at the expense of someone else, right? Or do we think more in total will end up partnered and the total size of the pie will increase?
I'm not sure how to answer that. The dating game is in some ways like any other game. There's some minimum threshold of competence below which nobody wants to play with you. Ideally, you have enough skills that people will want to play with you all the time. If you conduct yourself well, they will look forward to playing with you over and over.
But at the same time, I recognize that there are people beyond mastering even the basics.
But also, dating is usually many to many type of activity. Sure maybe marriage is one to one. But you can enjoy dating even if it does not result in marriage, multiple times with multiple people.
I dated a very obese, unattractive girl before. Ultimately it was her selfishness and failure to understand reciprocity in a relationship, that made me not want to see her anymore. Still was an interesting experience.
On the balance I didn't really enjoy dating. There were some fun points, but there was plenty of annoyance, too. For me, stable, partnered life is a lot more enjoyable.
Is there any real policy options we can pursue? We can't assign mandatory girlfriends, and even if we could, they may not find it was what they wanted.
I can help the poor and destitute much more effectively than I can wealthy people with vague psychological issues, and they also have more immediate needs. We all have limited time on our hands, and in terms of effectiveness, working with incels seems like something that's a lot of effort for very little benefit.
There are policy options. I suggested in a comment: Decriminalize sex work, provide universal mental health coverage and implement a more expansive version of sex education in schools.
Is sex that is paid for the same as one in a relationship where both people actually desire each other?
The statistics in the article point to the "problem" being women's increasing standards that young men can't meet. Mental health coverage, polyamory, sexwork, etc. don't seem like relevant solutions.
After reading the article, I'm not sure what the main thrust of it is besides, "there are people with relationship problems stemming from one party wanting more sex than the other."
There's a discussion about incels and statistics cited, as well as an appeal for sympathy towards those with these difficulties.
Is there something I'm missing?
I think some of the language isn't quite right but it easily passes considering the spirit of good intent.
The article is arguing against the contrary position, common the author's circles (and in my own), that these problems aren't real and the people who express them deserve condemnation rather than sympathy.
That was a very, very, very long winded way to say "I'm sorry about what incels go through". I almost feel cheated to have read the whole thing without finding any substance :-/
The whole post strikes me as an example of how guarded we have become in our opinions... we have to build a fortress around discourse guarding against potential critics and justice warriors.
The vast number of people commenting here that are convinced that a happy, healthy life is impossible without a sexual/romantic partner is eye-opening, and a bit horrifying.
Other people will not fix you. Trying to drown your problems in a woman (or man!) is no different then trying to drown them in food, or alcohol, or any number of harder drugs. Stop running from your problems and face them.
Mind explaining (a) precisely whom you're talking to in your second paragraph, (b) how you inferred that they're running from their problems, and (c) what those problems are?
>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.
This will be downvoted and poorly received, but the fact is that women despise weak men. If a man is in a poor state, most women will be visibly disgusted by him. A man generally should not expect sympathy from women, because most of the time he'll get scorn instead.
I'd say this is true for all genders and people. Homosexual people also display this tendency just as well as heterosexual males. Heck, even in friendships, it can be hard to enjoy being with a buddy that is going through a deep funk despite all your efforts to rouse them out of it. People want to be with people like themselves. Misery loves company, and vice-versa
You'd be surprised, just today we had to have a conversation with a family member about how consistently taking in loser degenerate men is ruining her life.
The men that are ruining her life are not the sort of "weak men" being discussed here. The ones ruining her life, I can just about guarantee, exude the impression that they don't play by other people's rules. To women, that is strength.
There are plenty of women with strong mother instincts, that happily take on a “weak man”.
But of course you would not want to be with someone not giving any sort of “benefit”. A relationship goes two ways, so without any other good qualities I’m not sure what they want.
In my mom's case, at least, the "benefit" is being able to feel superior and having someone to fight with 24/7 (she absolutely loves conflict - arguing and starting fights is her favorite activity in the world).
I'd rephrase this as "people despise weak men". I don't think women are unique in this conditioned view, and putting this in terms of Us vs Them doesn't quite get to the root of the problem.
The image of a damsel in distress is a common one that invites sympathy. Being seen as someone temporarily down on their luck who, with a quick pep talk, a removal of glasses, and a loosening of hair, will become the perfect date in your teen movie. Men do not benefit from this sympathy but nor do they suffer from its accompanied baggage and condescension.
I can't say that the solution is "just do for men what we do for women" since that sympathy has some real nasty undertones and connotations. Still, you really hit the crux of the problem with "people despise weak men". And I think we could grow a productive solution from there.
I couldn't agree with this more, and very much to my personal detriment I spent way to much time trying to live those ideals. In the end it's just left me fruitless and feeling like a sucker.
Some of my best friends are women and have been there for me in ways that my other guy friends certainly haven't during bouts of loneliness during times of lockdowns.
But perhaps it is different when it comes to partners.
I'll never forget the girlfriend who when I showed emotional vulnerability grabbed that knife and twisted it in the wound, telling me to man up. More painful than the immediate situation was the realization that I couldn't rely on her, that she was a fairweather girlfriend. Yes I broke up with her and yes I talked to a therapist about it. Never had a guy say anything like that to me. Other girlfriends have been there for me and were very supportive.
Maybe some parts of toxic masculinity are perpetuated more by women and the media than other men.
| Maybe some parts of toxic masculinity are perpetuated more by women and the media than other men.
Absolutely. During the Kavanaugh confirmation process I was blown away by how many women spouted off the "boys will be boys" excuse. It was frankly disgusting. In a similar way, the body image problems that so many women have are very much driven by male ideals about beauty.
> I've cried in front of maybe three SOs. In each case, they were very understanding and empathic about it and their sexual attraction toward me started a gradual but inexorable slide to zero.
Ah yes, reddit, that great bastion of facts and well-sourced research.
If you're a man and you're with a woman who stops being attracted to you because you've cried in front of her, that's a great thing, because you've dodged a bullet, and found a strong signal that you should find a better girlfriend.
I think this speaks more about the type of woman you're attracted to more so than women in general. Literally the only person I speak to about emotions, and make myself generally vulnerable around, is my partner.
In fact, I think this is common enough that it contributes in part to the high suicide rates for divorced men as opposed to divorced women [0] - women have friends that they can lean on emotionally during this time while men don't typically cultivate that kind of relationship.
The only person who is in a position to judge whether a woman (or man) is right or wrong for you is yourself. Any judgement or blame you read in my message is a product of your own mind - we've all got our own type, yours just appears to skew towards one region on the plot.
Or maybe it is due to not being socially acceptable for many generations before, so that men grew up hearing that you should be strong, get over it, etc? And especially the other guys make “weakness” into a weakness, not women, though of course they also uphold the attributed social status to the genders.
I don't mean to be glib, but, are you saying women who are in a poor state are desirable? I don't think so... Is it bad that women don't find some men attractive, when those same men probably wouldn't find some women attractive?
I apologize if that misconstrues your opinion, but I've heard it elsewhere before: that somehow women 'should' be more forgiving of unattractiveness than men are, and that's really weird to me. Women don't owe it to any men to find them desirable, and vice-versa.
I have no data on this but my anecdata tells me that if a woman is in a poor state but is attractive plenty of men will be willing to treat her nicely and not consider her "pathetic" at least long enough to sleep with her.
And how is it a good rebuttal? It means that some men would exploit a women in poor mental health for a one-nighter.. They will most definitely not put up with her illness and dump her after a short play. The only difference is that a “weak men” may not be as desirable to have a one-nighter with.
>Is it bad that women don't find some men attractive,
Not at all, especially because it's most likely that they can't help it. It'd be like asking me to find ugly girls sexually attractive. Even if I felt it would be the best the to do morally, I couldn't will myself to it: it's out of my control for the most part. And so it is with women: we really shouldn't hate someone for their innate preferences. (and especially we shouldn't hate a whole class of people -- 51% of them in fact!)
I think the primary problem here is that idealists have tried to force beliefs that they think are the "best" beliefs, but many of these don't match up with reality. When I finally learned how women work, I didn't become some bitter incel; rather, I met the woman of my dreams, and we've been happily married for almost 8 years. The relationship with her has been the only really successful relationship I've had, in my opinion. What changed? Well, it's too long to get into all the details here, but I started discarding nearly all of the dating advice I'd gotten from peers, TV, movies, etc.
> I started discarding nearly all of the dating advice I'd gotten from peers, TV, movies, etc.
What seems to have worked in my circles is simply lowering overly high expectations. It is interesting how long some are willing to wait, pining away, for that perfect match when they themselves are ... not exceptionally attractive.
Their preferences may be innate, but their standards are not. Their standards change depending on their life experience. If men they find very attractive give them attention (but not commitment), they are going to have a harder time settling down with men they find less attractive but which are willing to commit to them.
actually, i do personally prefer women of poor, humble backgrounds myself. and believe it or not, since i'm just a random person on the internet, i'm actually worth $15m (from inheritance) so it's not like i'm trying to date within my class or something.
It's a generalization about social trends. These traits often show on a bell curve, with some outliers on each side, but those outliers don't mean that the trend isn't real.
The original NSDAP was quite socialist, and even as Hitler developed it into his own party, it retained a strong socialist faction, which we now refer to as the Strasserites. It was purged eventually, but the history is there.
FWIW, "red-brown" political alliances are still a prominent thing in some countries, usually based on shared social conservative ideals. Furthermore, there are political movements such as National Bolshevism that explicitly draw this connection.
When the Internet started expanding, the first communities to connect were communities forming around common interests shared by the majority of people and businesses.
But then something happened... controversial/evil communities started forming: hate speech, racism, harassment, mysogenists, flat earthers, anti vaxxers, scammers...
Geographically speaking, incels are very sparsely distributed. But now the incel guy in one town can connect to an incel guy in another town. And groups that did not have a critical mass to start a community before, now do.
Before the Internet, without interaction with an incel communities, incels would be brought back to sanity through assimilation by other groups in society. Now with the Internet, incels can connect with other incels, reinforce their behavior and become radicalized. That sucks.
Connecting people is not necessarily a good thing.
Calling the DNA and the life it produced worthless seems a bit simplistic. Consider e.g. worker bees, which are infertile and rarely reproduce, but are certainly not worthless -- they are crucial to the success of the hive. This is an example of kin selection. [0]
Take care of yourself - health (mental and physical etc).
Sex work should be legal if there is a "market failure" as the article argues.
If someone doesn't want sex in a relationship and other person does - any way to negotiate something - ie, get on tinder for one person or whatever if the issue isn't so critical to break up over?
Is porn a problem? ie, perception everyone getting lots of crazy deep throat action or whatever? Real life is not exactly like that I don't think?
One tip - get off computer / phone / ipad and out from in front of TV. Seriously your life gets better so many ways. Board in bed? Sex gets a lot more interesting.
Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one wants to talk about it. So either porn or the rare few that do want to talk about it. But those few are going to be such outliers they're likely not average or just lieing
Well, that's the thing. People either lie or (more likely) what they say and what they do are different. My guess is that any study you look at is only slightly tied to reality if it depends on interviews or questionnaires.
I think we need to legalize both polygamy and sex work.
1) Given the dating dynamics of 80% of women wanting only 20% of the men, clearly society is depriving these women of their desired relationships.
2) If the 80% of men cannot have a relationship, and we agree sex is a basic need, and we don't have sex robots yet, then sex work fulfills a valuable role.
This is kind of ignoring that people get and look for different things in sex work than they do in regular relationships. There's no indication that 20% actually would prefer to be sex workers to get more men.
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.