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You’re pretty clearly waging the culture war in your favor here especially in the way you frame and dismiss the “women things.” Take abortion, for example. I say this as someone who is probably more anti-abortion than the median American, but indeed post-Dobbs there is less protection over a woman’s ability to get an abortion and further erosion has been made possible in the future. It’s not a made up thing. You appear to be characterizing this issue as not a “real issue” because you don’t recognize abortion as a right. I mean, fine, we can argue on the merits of whether abortion is a cognizable right but whether a woman can get one matters to lots of women and it’s a live political issue.
Lots of young women would like to be able to get abortions in case they get pregnant while having fun casual sex. Why is the male version of this something cool and fun while the female version of this cat lady hectoring?
While some will say the male version is not cool as well, the fact is you are comparing very different acts. The fact is that women are naturally the gatekeepers of sex. An average young woman who desires to have sex need merely go to a frathouse and remove her clothing, and she will soon be filled by a penis, and eventually if she so desires, semen. A man who disrobes in a sorority or other all female space will soon be in the back of a police car. `
And this is not just because eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap. Although that is a biological reality. The lady in our scenario is more likely to catch an STD by about a 10x factor than the bloke. And if she does its more likely to cause serious damage to her reproductive system. And her system is on a much more tight clock. So our bloke who's "wasting" his sperm at 21 isn't really. He's diminished by 35, but not nearly as much as our girl. And at 45, forget it. She's approaching zero fertility or already there. He is at, "improve your diet and exercise so you have a good shot over a 6 month period".
So yeah, one activity is low effort and actively hostile to your long term fertility. The other is high effort and has de minimus effect on your long term fertility. Pretending they are similar is silly.
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This pretty clearly isn’t inherent in the issue because the reasoning it matters so much to women is implausible conspiracy theories about the handmaid’s tale and government pregnancy tracking.
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Absolutely correct. This has been my repeatedly stated position for years.
I can see that there's some ambiguity in my original phrasing, so let me address that. Young men do want freedom, recklessness, and adrenaline. The destruction of masculine models of behavior is bad because we have to rechannel those desires into something prosocial and constructive. If you simply let young boys go out and be free and reckless adrenaline junkies you get gangs, violence etc. Society should channel it in other ways and, I believe, we used to.
Both of these things are objective anti-social in my estimation. I won't call casual sex 'immoral', but I definitely apply that label to abortion.
There's nothing wrong with young women going out to have fun at festivals/bars/backpacking through europe, whatever. I think casual sex should be treated very carefully. I think abortion is a natural consequence of sex and that people should have to deal with their consequences.
Young men who want to be reckless absolutely face consequences. Get into a fight? Might get your ass kicked, might go to jail. Gang up on someone else and ambush them with your buddies? Jail. Steal something. Jail. Drive fast late at night. Jail (or death). We as a society have spent centuries moderating young male behavior (and, as stated above, rechanneling it) because of its destructive power. I don't think objectively young female activities are as destructive - and so I am, in fact, inclined to give a little more leeway. But that doesn't mean there are (or should be) zero consequences.
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I've never understood this argument. It's not cool and fun when men engage in casual "fun" sex, nor is it cool when women do it. The more we treat sex as something separate from a person emotionally, physically, and spiritually, the more it become commodified and exposed to a 'free market' exchange of sex, in which selfishness is prioritized instead of mutual building. Suddenly we have an increase of single parents which is well documented to lead to worse behavioral outcomes for men, which even the politically washed Bing-GPT still spits out:
This is a very contrarian opinion. On one hand, go off king. On the other hand you are really swimming against the tide on this one.
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No offense but you need to touch grass
Your talking points are straight out of 2015, it's amazing that you just pretend the last decade of evidence for e.g. title IX abuses doesn't exist
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Either make the actual argument, or keep it to yourself. Dropping in for an insult is against the rules.
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Notably, this is not actually an argument.
Can you provide a rigorous distinction between "casual fun sex" and "rape culture", as understood by current-year Feminism? I certainly can't, and I notice most feminists can't draw one either.
We're a full decade past the point where the ideological schizophrenia within Feminism became impossible to ignore. Naïve ra-ra sex-positivism is dead, Jackie killed it, and Title IX cremated the corpse. If you disagree, take it up with Ezra Klein and the DOE.
I think it's better understood as "the Junior Anti-Sex League wearing a rotting skinsuit of sex positivity", which is why feminism for the last 10+ years has been very concerned with promoting everything-but-straight-sex.
The problem with doing that is that eventually, you run out of road and have to get more extreme to still be considered sex-positive, which is why they've pivoted to things like valorizing the castrated (i.e. transgenderism) and ensuring that, provided you pass a paper bag test, the age of consent does not apply to you.
Was Sex Positivity ever actually workable, or did culture war dynamics aid in sweeping its contradictions under the carpet for a decade or two? "Skinsuit" implies that there was something alive and worthwhile inside that skin in the first place. Does it seem to you that this was the case?
It seems to me that Horny Liberalism was never actually going to work long-term. Sex is not, in fact, harmless fun; it simply has too many consequences, physical and psychological, for it to be treated as such. Those consequences can be hidden for a time, but they build up and sooner or later they demand a reckoning. For that matter, it seems likely to me that the same is true for LGBTQ2A+; the reckoning will come, sooner or later.
The latter. It "worked" for a small group of elite men, who could use their celebrity star power to reel in an endless series of naive young women (or teenagers), bang them, and cast them aside. Their wealth and social status shields them from most of the worst consequences. Huge boost for them over the days of Victorian England, when even a celebrity aristocrat like Lord Byron faced the risk of a lynch mob from his scandalous actions.
But its not going to work- it cant work- for the average male. There's not enough women to go around for wvery guy to get groupies, and women aren't going to be attracted to the average guy compared to the celebrities she sees on TV. The women who do sleep with those celebrities often end up psychologally scarred from the encounter. Or in the extreme case, trafficked to Epstein's island or something similiar.
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[I hope this is at least somehow coherent. If I had more time I'd compose a post that has more of a condensed point.]
Sex is harmless fun so long as you're a
manliberal. Most people are notmenliberal, a lot of people resent the fact they're notmenliberal, and thegender role of mensocial role of liberals is to make devotion to them not degrading (a role in which they have failed as is in their nature to do, and something that "well,the man brings home so much money that I can deal with the occasional mistressstandards of living are increasing so quickly that even spaces free of all that liberalism are enhanced by accepting that the sanctity of the commons is diminished by their presence").The Sexual Revolution made it possible for a lot of women to enjoy being
menliberals too. Technology and antibiotics brought the risks of straight sex to an all-time low; so women on the margins (with a slightly higher risk tolerance) could reasonably expect to get more action without getting knocked up. Which is good [citation needed]. It helped marriages in all sorts of ways, too; you could actually have a healthy marital sex life without having so many children that you couldn't fit them all in the station wagon.And then the '80s came and the places you could meet people all died. And a turbo-STD came out as a death sentence. And the economic golden age ended, so the social stakes went higher (to the point where the non-liberals were once again empowered to whip out their purity boners and fuck up everything). In short, sexual liberalism stopped being affordable; it recovered slightly in the '90s and '00s only to take a dive [suspiciously coincident with the rise of ZIRP economics, now that I think about it].
Do I think it was worthwhile to encourage high-value
transgenderliberated people (as in, people who are liberals inside but unable to come out of the closet for various sociopolitical/socioeconomic reasons)? Yes, because I think that when people who can do that get to do that, it makes them happier and thus more productive (and considering the people who can do that tend to be of high value more generally- one only need look at how many furries in tech there are- keeping them happy has far more value than keeping an angry wokescold happy and therefore that wokescold should be oppressed by having to suffer the existence of furries). People who are able to act like children/liberals/mistake theorists all day are more innovative than those who have to act as adults/in self-defense/conflict theory; that's why tech startups outcompete large firms. And so on. (If men must toil, they might as well maximize return on investment while they're at it.)[I do admit this is more 'feelings' than anything else; I haven't measured workplace productivity across free and non-free societies and I'm not even sure you can given different starting conditions. I have noticed that most people who migrate from less liberal nations to more liberal ones tend to be unusually productive, though.]
So yeah, I think there is value in having less friction in sexual relationships (because the negative consequences are less salient, you can disengage from a relationship that goes south much easier), and the need to fuck defensively is net-negative for the enrichment of a class of person who does not actually create anything (while they do tend to spawn 200 pounds of cat food upon death that's not intentional on their part). Especially if we can encourage the people who eventually might end up in the unproductive class to not even consider it.
I'm honestly not sure how their position follows. I think that the only thing that's going to do them in is some unforseen upheaval that puts them in the same company as the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts (i.e. they fall out of favor with old women while old women are in power), and because they're an excuse for old women to wield power through weaponized tolerance, well...
I think the problem with liberalism/childishness is that it's an emergent property of a society (enabled by its wealth) and not a coherent means of political organization (mainly because once they can organize they're too busy enjoying the fruits to plan long-term). If it was able to do this, it wouldn't be liberal, it would be something else.
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Do both parties enthusiastically want to have sex with each other? That is casual fun sex.
It’s really not hard to define rigorously. Of course it’s harder to set down a list objective evidence that proves both people enthusiastically wanted to have sex with each other, but notably for the vast, vast majority of casual sexual encounters the facts are not in dispute.
What if one or both parties later think "You know what, I wasn't enthusiastic about it?"
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This is not a rigorous definition. A rigorous definition would offer a clear way to distinguish the state of "enthusiastically want to have sex with each other" from the absence of such a state.
...You say it isn't hard, and then explain why it is hard, and make no effort to actually do it successfully.
Do you disagree that the vast majority of rapes are unconvicted, and a large majority unreported?
It’s a fully rigorous definition, “enthusiastically want to have sex with the other person” is a well-defined state of the world. Separately, it is difficult to provide objective evidence of this state to outsiders, but that doesn’t mean that the definition isn’t rigorous. Fortunately it’s extremely rare for there to be any disagreements.
So it's a rigorous definition because it's well-defined? What makes it well-defined? What are the simple, easy-to-assess components that allow us to distinguish A from !A?
My understanding is that definitions exist to draw distinctions in reasoning, and rigorous definitions allow us to draw distinctions in reasoning rigorously. You seem to be conceding that your "rigorous definition" can't actually draw distinctions in practical examples of the issue encountered in the real world, which is the fact that I'm attempting to discuss with you. If "rigorous definition" is a hindrance, I'm happy to discard the term and use whichever term you'd prefer to encapsulate the problem of actually determining, whether in advance or in hindsight, whether sex was rape or harmless fun, in a way other than simply the woman's say-so.
If on the other hand, you believe that the woman's say-so is in fact all that is needed, that abuse of this power isn't a problem worth worrying about, and that men concerned about this evident power imbalance are just being silly, I'm prepared to take you at your word. At that point, it would be interesting to hear how you reconcile your perceptions with those of Ezra Klein, the state of California, and the Department of Education, which seem to directly contradict you.
You are arguing that sex is basically just harmless fun in the vast majority of cases, and we don't need to think too hard about the exceptions. Klein is explicitly arguing that enough cases are harmful that a considerable portion of all the Fun in sex needs to be replaced by explicit, government-enforced fear.
So it's all fun, except for the parts you don't want to talk about, and those parts need draconian punishments stripped of due process and all the other procedural safeguards. But they're rare, which is why it's okay to be super-loosie-goosey with who the draconian punishments stripped of procedural safeguards will actually be applied to, and why there's no actual need for someone to be able to tell, in advance, whether they're in danger of them.
Klein says there's a crisis that demands immediate action, and damn the consequences. You say everything's fine.
Which is it?
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So the
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I uh, think he had more to his comment there that you failed to respond to.
For my part, casual fun sex is probably the optimal outcome/lifestyle for like <10% of males, who are psychologically inclined against commitment and towards Hedonism, but outside of the literal rockstars who engage in it, merely being a manwhore doesn't make you 'cool' to the larger population.
The point is men having casual sex are widely perceived as cool.
Yes, and the comment you replied to was making a normative rather than descriptive claim, and it’s wild and uncharitable to interpret it otherwise.
Were the anti-drug PSAs in the 80s that said “it’s not cool to do drugs” making a claim about the belief systems of teenagers?
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I really do not think that is the case.
For example, is a man who constantly goes to strip clubs to pick up strippers for sex, or hires escorts on a weekly basis... do people consider this guy 'cool' for all the sex he has (and pays for?).
Is the guy who hangs around college campuses to hit on younger girls and seduces a new girl every month or hits up frat parties to bring drunk girls home 'cool?'
Is the guy who trolls the apps and hits on every single unattractive female he can find, and manages to bag one every so often, 'cool?'
I think the 'coolness' is ALMOST ENTIRELY derived from the status of the person engaging in the casual sex. A rock star, a celebrity athlete, maybe the guy who fits the 'bad boy' or 'outlaw' model to a T is 'cool.'
The mere knowledge that a guy engages in lots of casual sex isn't going to raise his social status much, but a guy with a lot of social status will have an easier time getting casual sex, and the fact that he gets so much casual sex is considered a perk of being so cool.
I.e. casual sex doesn't grant men status, men acquiring status grants them casual sex.
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I think this is a kind of sleight of hand.
The image of a man who has lots of casual sex is perceived as cool. Movie starts and rock stars, playboy business gurus etc.
The reality is way bleaker - Bikers, gang members, drug dealers, drug abusers, semi-homeless but sort of handsome or a smooth talker, divorced uncles who cruise North Vegas casinos, real estate hustlers and YouTube "buy my course!" influencers. Their sexual partners are not starlets and supermodels - they're desperate, often addicted or otherwise compromised women who are so fragile that a literal smile is all that's needed to win their affections. The reality is that your median "playboy" probably has a familiarity with the criminal justice system and is not someone you would want to hang out with.
This is I believe both inaccurate and extremely uncharitable. Guys who fuck around are probably not mostly criminal losers.
Nor are they mostly superstars. We don't know the real mix, but men that are so successful and popular that women throw themselves at them are rare by definition. The most common non-"criminal loser" guy who has lots of casual sex is a mildly sociopathic college student/young professional: he knows his target demographic, knows how to steer the first or at most the second date towards sex, knows how to dump them the morning after.
But being a guy who gets fresh disposable poon every weekend is lower status than being a guy who gets a new supermodel girlfriend every few years.
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Also I think its a reversal of cause and effect.
Guys who are 'cool' just have an easier time getting casual sex.
So casual sex is a perk of being cool.
So yes there's some association with coolness and casual sex, but I can think of a number of scenarios where guys who get regular casual sex are in fact deemed 'pathetic' by society.
Is a guy that goes to Thailand on a regular basis specifically to engage in sex tourism 'cool?' I can't think of a single case of such.
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I’m not sure what your point is? I’ve been married for a while but had lots of fun casual sex beforehand?
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If abortion advocates would be consistent in making consequence-free sex a human right, not merely for woman, his complaints would ring hollow. But they don't so I would characterize complaints about reduced access to abortion as claims of oppression, while only privileges have been rescinded.
As a taxpayer, child support is a defensive mechanism I rely on to not be indirectly responsible for other people's kids. Or at least a bit less than the alternative.
If there is anywhere a single mom on welfare and food stamps, I advocate the most coercive methods be applied to motivate the father to pay for that child. I'm willing to take a very narrow and permissive understanding of "cruel and unusual" in this matter.
Why not apply "the most coercive methods" to the mother?
She can get a share also. I was responding to a financial abortion post, so my response was deadbeat-dad-focused.
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I’m sorry but “financial abortion” is just way too off putting for normies. If men want to get together and advocate for that that’s fine but when actual abortion restrictions are in play it shouldn’t surprise you that advocates focus on that.
Even when abortion restrictions weren't in play, you'd often hear people defending abortion as something needed because having a child substantially impacts the mother and she's often not ready for it. The same argument applies to men, but then to make that analogy becomes something... deeply stigmatized. It is a clear double standard. I say this as someone who broadly supports maternal abortion rights and opposes financial abortion.
I don't think young men are en masse forming a political identity out of financial abortion, but I do suspect they're becoming bitter and listless because of the dominant oppression lens that obscures their actual lived experiences.
As a man with a kid I will emphatically tell you that there is an extreme asymmetry between being a father who is the sole financial provider and being a woman who carries a pregnancy to term, delivers the baby, and breastfeeds the baby, so much so that it’s basically nonsensical to see the financial aspect and the physical aspect as analogous issues.
If you look at the risk of death, the asymmetry is quite small. In the US, the CDC gives maternal mortality of 22 per 100,000 live births (which is probably overstated). The BLS gives an annual workplace mortality rate of 3.7 per 100,000 FTE workers. An absent father is going to end up spending roughly 4 years working to pay child support (20-25% of after-tax income for 18 years), which would give a death toll from paying child support of 15 per 100,000 live births if child support defendants had average workplace death rates. Since men work much more dangerous jobs than women, the true figure is probably higher than the maternal mortality rate. But the crucial point is that the risks of dying due to giving birth or paying child support are of the same order of magnitude.
Except they have to work anyway, and would die anyway. The number of men who die on a job who would not be on that specific job if not for child support payments is likely not that high. Unless there's some society with a much lower workplace death rate that has divorce banned I'm unaware of.
In America (and, to a lesser extent, other 1st-world countries) the socially acceptable way to not work because you don't need to is to retire early - there used to be a soft norm that blue-collar guys retired at 60 if they could. There are plenty of men in their 60's working who would be retired if they had been able to accumulate more wealth, and for a lot of them the reason why they couldn't accumulate wealth was divorce or child support obligations.
I think you are right that the average guy who is irresponsible enough to knock up a sloot is going to spend the money he saves by avoiding child support on driving a bigger truck rather than saving for retirement. But this doesn't affect the moral point I was making, which is that the male role as breadwinner and the female role as mother have similar death tolls.
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That's a bit harsh; although I can see the argument that being a sole financial provider for 18 years is a worse deal for the father, the asymmetry isn't so great that you can entirely discount women's contribution.
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