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.
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.