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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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Whereupon I unsubscribe from Matt Stoller

I had long considered Stoller to have solid analysis and a respect for markets, even when I didn't agree with his political slant, editorial direction, or choice of topics. But he has lost me here, and probably forever, in his simpering defense of the Harris economic plan, which includes price controls on groceries and vague yet sinister crackdowns on so-called price gouging.

It’s all predictable, both the economist revolt, and reporters who interview economists as if they know anything. I suspect what’s going on is that economists, as moral reformers who ordain truth, believe price-setting is beyond the realm of elected leaders or normal people. Harris has interfered with that belief, leading to an angry reaction of religiously scorned zealots. Another possibility is that those who think the most about how to set prices are monopolists and economists. And like anyone who sees someone new coming into one’s realm of expertise, they are angry at Harris. Regardless, I can’t see much of a downside to being attacked by economists and experts, after all these are the elites who got us into this mess.

Someone hasn't read The Road To Serfdom. I'm actually kind of flabbergasted to see this, though I shouldn't be surprised.

It is strange to see what is a dressed up Ad Hominem attack.

"These people said x. What is your response to x?"

"Those people suck"

It also isn’t anything new! It is ignoring history—not just someone upset that someone is encroaching on their turf.

I’m not at certain what her price controls are. I know the food production end of things (not the stores) is highly consolidated into a couple of big companies that therefore own most of the food market. Breaking up those monopolies seems like a good way to get grocery priced down a bit. If that’s what she’s actually proposing, I would support it. But she hasn’t been very clear on what her plan actually is.

Those companies have small margins—very small margins.

I know the food production end of things (not the stores) is highly consolidated into a couple of big companies that therefore own most of the food market. Breaking up those monopolies seems like a good way to get grocery priced down a bit.

I strongly don't believe breaking up these "monopolies" will do anything other than raise prices.

In order to be an entity with monopoly powers you need to be the only game in town. An oligopoly can imitate monopoly power if they are all coordinating (and punishing defectors).

The problem with calling single producers of a product a monopoly is that substitution is a thing that exists. There could be a single company that produces strawberries and all strawberry related products and they would not have a single bit of monopoly power. Hell, they could probably expand to all fruit products and still not have much monopoly power. Because people can eat different kinds of food. Even if someone cornered the entire grocery market they would still not have monopoly power. Because restaurants and fast food exists and some of the larger chains are their own suppliers.

It is basically impossible to gain any level of monopoly power in the modern day food market. If anyone says there are food monopolies they are either lying, or using a non-economic definition of monopolies. Its fine if they use a non-economic definition of monopolies, economists don't own the word. But these people often say "this company is a [non-economic] monopoly, so we need to do what economists say to do about [economic] monopolies".

I can't say I'm an expert on monopolies, but I'm beginning to think that with today's informational velocity and the past ~100 years of legal precedent, it's nearly impossible to actually function as a monopoly.

The term monopoly conjures up images of John D. Rockefeller and other robber barons. I know just enough history to be aware that the practices of Standard Oil in the early 20th century are now patently illegal at a variety of levels, not just at the level of anti-monopoly. I mean, for one, it's pretty evident that Standard Oil was routinely offering kickbacks aka bribes all up and down their operation. One thing America has actually become pretty damn good at is making bribery a really bad business strategy.

But the 8th grade textbook of monopoly still owns an unreasonable amount of mindshare in the minds of activist politicians and bureaucrats. Lina Khan loves to get up in the morning and begin the next chapter of her "I'm the main character heroine fighting evil money dragons" autobiography.

Inflation, inefficiency, and capital appreciation malaise are what has and will continue to kill the middle and working classes. Government do-gooders operate under the flawed assumption that they can (a) understand the complexities of the dynamic system that is the economy and (b) craft laser precise legislation or regulation that will target only "the bad thing" and have zero unanticipated or secondary effects. It really is an alarming level of intellectual hubris.

Its always been quite easy to become a monopoly. The trick is to get government to make it happen for you. The post office still jealously guards its first class mail monopoly.

The history of Standard Oil is very frustrating to learn. They were an efficient modern business way before its time. If there were kickbacks along the rail line it was because everyone had to do some version of that. They were something like 90% market share when the government brought a case against them for monopoly. By the time the case resolved against them they were about 60% market share. There was also a war about to happen and the government wanted access to the resource for cheap so they nationalized part of standard oil. Standard Oil created most of the Oil byproducts that we have today. All of their competitors were dumping toxic waste chemicals into rivers. They thought 'how can we use this "waste" instead of throwing it out?'

But the 8th grade textbook of monopoly still owns an unreasonable amount of mindshare in the minds of activist politicians and bureaucrats. Lina Khan loves to get up in the morning and begin the next chapter of her "I'm the main character heroine fighting evil money dragons" autobiography.

I was on capital hill briefly about a decade ago. And yes they are constantly looking for badies to fight. Back then they kept complaining how google has a "search" monopoly. Which showed a hilarious lack of understanding of google's actual business model (advertising), and an insulting level of paternalism assuming that people were somehow "stuck" with google search.

Inflation, inefficiency, and capital appreciation malaise are what has and will continue to kill the middle and working classes. Government do-gooders operate under the flawed assumption that they can (a) understand the complexities of the dynamic system that is the economy and (b) craft laser precise legislation or regulation that will target only "the bad thing" and have zero unanticipated or secondary effects. It really is an alarming level of intellectual hubris.

I went more in depth on the history back in my college days. And the only thing that has really changed is the ability of government propaganda to cover things up. They've gotten worse at that. Even when the economy was much simpler they routinely failed to bring in good regulations.

I was on capital hill briefly about a decade ago.

From what I have heard from friends with direct experience, it is a "children with dynamite" situation. You've got mid-20s to mid-30s people without any real world experience who think they can understand and entire industry / social problem / international conflict after a few briefings. Then, they have access to the actual fucking Federal legislative process. The formula for disaster is obvious.

It's a good thing bills move so slowly through Congress. I think more Americans would agree with this if they understood who the primary authors are.

There has never been an incidence of 'cornering the market' as per the bogeyman definition of monopolistic price gouging. Technical abuses of mechanical inefficiencies arising from information arbitrage are not repeatable actions, and there is a different conversation to be had about the effect of frictionless cross national capital transfers.

The only successful way to perform market cornering to capture the producer surplus is by regulatory capture, not 'lose money until competitors all exit, then hike prices'. If your product was only bought because it was cheap, raising its price won't magically force the demand equilibrium to shift in line with your price manipulation. Open competition can certainly lead to value-destructive capability duplication and tragedy of the commons (public infrastructure is the most common example of this) but the stable equilibrium will never allow for a permanent marginal producer surplus. The only way that can happen is if the needle is jammed in place by a government exercising monopoly on force. In places where the government does not have a monopoly on force, parallel governments spring up to get their hands on the mechanisms of regulatory capture, even if we just call those governments 'citizen committees' or 'corporate towns'.

The only successful way to perform market cornering to capture the producer surplus is by regulatory capture, not 'lose money until competitors all exit, then hike prices'.

I feel like pointing out that this("lose money until...") is the actual exact method used by Dollar stores to choke out competition. They open a bunch of stores in an area, sell at a loss until they can kill the competition, then consolidate their stores into one and raise the prices once they kill off their competition. Predatory pricing is actually a real thing that happens, and the effectiveness of it is great enough that people want the government to do something about it. Sure they don't have a true monopoly, but an effective local one is a decent substitute.

Dollar generals are an interesting case, and they do indeed perform predatory pricing once local competition is snuffed out, but I don't think they are laughing their way to the bank once they kill the competition. Their price rises are only to whatever the local equilibria is for their provided service, and any presumed producer surplus the monopoly is expected to accrue is obviated by theft ("its only shrink" will be claimed by insistent progressives), low barrier alternatives (DG isn't the only dollar store after all, and delivery exists) or other intrinsic factors. DG does not have a cheat code that forcefields their stores against poverty induced crime paired with ineffective law enforcement.

The negative effect of DG isn't the subsequent price hiking as DG tries to stabilize its price needle after factoring in theft while outcompeting alternatives, it is the utility calculation of the goods on offer and the utility destruction stemming from misallocated capital. The legacy mom and pop stores are only in dead small towns or shit neighborhoods because they are the ones with a 'monopolistic' hold as the locale simply cannot justify additional investment for higher grade inventory, much less fitouts. The fresh produce on offer (I presume; I've never seen fresh produce at a black-heavy bodega, but spanish harlem always had peppers and onions) has a presumed higher utility per dollar for health outcomes, but for personal utility calculations that same dollar spent on ricearoni and DMD goes much further. These 'food deserts' exist because the local population simply was not having its personal utility preference exercised by expensive and effort heavy 'healthy' foods. The cheap consumer surplus phase of DG expansion is DG rolling the dice on where the stable marginal surplus needle lies, and DG bets on its competitive advantages to be the one that captures a greater marginal surplus. The consumer surplus returns to its stable point after the ZIRP-funded gambling ends. At no point is DG laughing its way to the bank.

Indeed. Ask the Hunt brothers (also note CIA / Watergate ties) about cornering the silver market. One went broke trying to defend it, having overleveraged in the process. Some lawfare was waged against him, for sure, but no one agent can outweigh the market, in a fair and free market^TM. Even when collusion and cartels are attempted between multiple agents, the incentive to defect generally busts the last empty bagholder.

Defect is both active intent and incapability. There are a number of Indonesian and Malaysian financial scandals that all shit themselves because the parties involved were too stupid to execute the bare minimums of their plans. Failure was inevitable for things like the maminco tin scandal, but the fail point occurring earlier in the chain than expected happens because incompetent retards fuck up their end of the conspiracy without knowing they fucked up.

This could be inverse survivorship bias too. There likely are a number of successful corners and exploits conducted under the radar without common knowledge. What little I know of shadow banking is that avoiding the taxmans eye is the most successful way of 'exploiting' a market opportunity, and these small scale illicit money movements are simpler to aggregate into pools steered by bankers and accountants to magically clean cayman island accounts.

It's funny because though he's right to say economists know very little compared to how much they usually claim to, the negative effects of price controls is one of the very few things that is both consensual among economists and backed by solid historical evidence. If you had to name the one thing the entire discipline actually agrees on for the most part, it's that.

Now if we want to be maximally charitable, maybe they overstate it, sometimes you may be willing to eat the deadweight loss for political reasons. But handwaving the concern away as experts clutching at pearls is a bit zany.

Yeah, pretty much the only policy as universally unpopular among economists as price controls is protectionist tariffs.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works

Protectionism is essential for building up an economy. See the section on Korea in the link ..

That is a very expansive take away from that book.

I'd say its thesis was that protectionism worked for East Asian countries during a brief time period.

There has always been a theoretical case that tariffs can work as protectionist trade policy. Economists stopped telling people this about a century ago, because what consistently happened is that countries would just start applying tariffs to everything and tank their economy. (or spark trade wars that tanked everyone's economy)

Its as if some people heard that radiation therapy can be good for you if you need to remove a cancerous tumor, so they all went and sat inside of nuclear power plants.

I wish there were a book called 'Things That 90% of Economists Agree On'. I imagine it would be a pretty thin book, the only thing I know of that would definitely be in it is rent control. But it would at least give a baseline of policies that are so clearly bad that no serious administration should consider it.

Part of the problem is that the profession has lost a lot of credibility. The public has - belatedly - realised that you can always find some economist or other to wheel out in favour of/against almost any policy under the Sun. When that rare issue comes along that unifies the profession it isn't always legible to the public, who have gotten used to ignoring them.

Part of the problem is that the profession has lost a lot of credibility.

A frequent joke heard in my circles is "What do you call an economist who opens his mouth?" "Wrong." Their reputation is so terrible among the public that a lot of people would go stick their head out of the window and look up if they heard one say the sky was blue.

Basically the Law of Supply and the Law of Demand are agreed on, and the other things agreed on follow directly from them. All that is micro. It's macro that's the big mess.

I wish there were a book called "Things That 90% of Economists Agree On".

Consensus Among Economists 2020

Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90 percent)

Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (95 percent)

If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the course of the business cycle rather than yearly. (93 percent)

Fiscal policy (e .g., tax cut and/or expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (94 percent)

Appropriately designed fiscal policy can increase the long-run rate of capital formation and economic growth. (90 percent)

The Earned Income Tax Credit program should be expanded. (90 percent)

Immigration generally has a net positive economic effect for the US economy. (97 percent)

Antitrust laws should be enforced vigorously. (93 percent)

Addressing biases in individuals and institutions can improve both equity and efficiency. (90 percent)

See also the surveys conducted by the University of Chicago's Clark Center for Global Markets. (The website seems to be a bit broken at the moment, possibly due to a recent domain-name change. Older surveys can be found using the Internet Archive.)

Capping annual rent increases by corporate landlords at 5 percent, as proposed by President Biden, would not make middle-income Americans substantially better off over the next ten years. (85 percent)

Capping annual rent increases at 5 percent, as proposed by President Biden, would substantially reduce the amount of available apartments for rent over the next ten years. (72 percent)

Capping annual rent increases at 5%, as proposed by President Biden, would not substantially reduce US income inequality over the next ten years. (79 percent)

Very nice, thank you sir!

If I remember correctly, “The Myth of the Rational Voter” is primarily concerned with the topic you speak of; policies that are politically popular but have almost universal condemnation from Economists.

Just because it's never worked before, that doesn't mean it won't work this time.

That isn't a joke. It's probably true that grocery chains are overcharging a little bit right now. If the price controls are done very delicately, they might be able to reduce prices a little bit without damaging the economy.

The USA is more advanced than Venezuela. There are lots of things the USA can do that Venezuela can't. Successful price controls could be one of them.

If there are people making huge profits, they're not running grocery stores, which as a rule operate on unbelievably thin margins and run losses on some products. Remember - store brands are cheaper than name brands, not the other way around.

It's probably true that grocery chains are overcharging a little bit right now.

Why is that "probably" true? Walmart is operating at a 2.7% margin. The grocery store market remains competitive - there's at least five chain stores plus independent grocers in my area.

Because consumers hate it when prices increase. When inflation hits, grocery stores prefer to raise their prices in one big jump rather than many small jumps - or so I've been told. The idea is that if you increase prices by X 5 times the consumers will register 5 separate increases, but if you raise it by 5X then they'll only register one increase. Because of that, grocery stores (and stores in general) will increase their prices ahead of expected inflation to avoid having to continue to make small price increases over time.

The logic is essentially that stores are currently priced according to next year's inflation. When inflation is low that's no big deal, but when it's high it can be a pretty penny. Continuing that logic, they could be forced to match current inflation rather than preemptively raising prices for future inflation. This would shave a small but meaningful amount off prices.

What's the optimal way to determine price of any good, in your opinion?

Optimal for what purpose? In order to optimize you must first have a goal.

This is not consonant with the behavior of grocery prices. They are, in fact, extremely volatile. And the consumer price index for food at home certainly does not lead the producer price index for supermarkets by a year.

Because of that, grocery stores (and stores in general) will increase their prices ahead of expected inflation to avoid having to continue to make small price increases over time.

So why are their margins so shit?

they could be forced to match current inflation rather than preemptively raising prices for future inflation.

How?

I have an idea for an invention that will revolutionize the fashion industry in the Northeast. It's a garment that women can wear underneath their shirts that will support their fleshy bosoms. This invention would have the benefit of further concealing the breasts, but making them appear firmer and fuller, and preventing sagging when women approach old age.

Seriously, I feel like the modern urban world has forgotten about the bra. When I'm in big Northeast cities riding public transit, I rarely see a single woman wearing one. What's with this development? Is it some feminism thing? Is it fashion? Is it just that it's hot these days? Was the bra always worthless but women wore it out of modesty, but now there's no more modesty? I would guess that is some feminist notion that bras are a relic of patriarchy, and that has influenced fashion over the last decade to make it less fashionable. And that this has enabled the more lazy women out there to just not bother wearing it, and in turn, the link between bras and female modesty is disappearing (along with maybe the modesty itself, or the idea that women should be modest).

This is funny to me because the other day a female coworker of mine was clearly showing nipple through the shirt. But she clearly wasnt braless, its just the power of the modern bra is often inhibited.

It's a garment that women can wear underneath their shirts that will support their fleshy bosoms.

As long as we're being crotchety about stuff, I have to point out that bosom refers to the entire chest area, not a single breast. Woman or man, everyone has one single bosom.

everyone has one single bosom.

Can’t the same be said for the breast? Thats the only thing the Iliad ever taught me.

But I have to say the boob is my favorite part of a woman.

No, women definitely have two breasts. Men only have one.

Not true. I’m a man and I have two nipples. Check your DMs for proof.

I'll raise your pedantry: a woman has a bosom, women have bosoms.

Touche. This is some excellent next level pedantry, I salute it.

Two women have two bosoms.

Fair enough, I took it the other way because it's such a common error. But it can be correct to use the plural in this case.

Still seems more common than they did in the 70s, when if you look at old pictures it looks like nobody wore them at all.

preventing sagging

They neither prevent it nor increase it, it’s genetic and in some cases accelerated by hormones released during pregnancy.

I assume the OP meant that they conceal sagging.

Out of all the issues in our world, "women around me are showing me more of their breasts" is not one that I personally consider a problem. I have some disagreements with women on average - for example, while I am pro-choice and so to some extent understand why women are reluctant to vote right, I also do not understand women's tendency to vote left despite it leading to some policies that are to both their own detriment and mine, such as when it comes to law and order. But overall, I do think that in some ways women are wonderful. They really do tend to be nice and gentle, at least to men. I have heard some horror stories from women about how other women treat them, but as a man I can say that the vast majority of women I have encountered have been very nice to me. And no woman has ever punched me in the face, whereas some men have. Some my closest actual friends are women. So my attitude towards women is more or less that for the most part they are like men in terms of the kinds of qualities that I value, but with the added benefit that I am also sexually attracted to some of them. Experiences of being intimate in bed with women, both sexually and emotionally, have been some of the highlights of my life. Obviously the vast majority of "extreme right end of the bell curve" intelligent people in history have been men but oh well, while I wish that I was, I really doubt that I am in that extreme right end myself as a man. It's not something to hold against women. And I have known a handful of women who are as intelligent or even more than I am.

This is all a long-winded way to say that overall, I tend to love women, and part of that is that I love enjoying women's erotic company. Female modesty seems rather pointless to me. One could make an argument that immodesty from both genders contributes to a chaotizing of society, a focus on hedonism instead of on the often-boring tasks of upholding a decent society, such as raising families. And that could be an interesting argument to make, but I am not sure how much truth there is to it. Overall, I would say that immodesty is extremely low on the list of our society's problems, if it even is a problem to begin with, which I doubt. It is not half-naked women in the streets that are causing Walgreens to get robbed left and right or politics to be ruled by corrupt incentives. And an extreme focus on female modesty has not stopped Islamic societies from being shitholes. Victorian England, from what I understand, despite all of its prudity was not some pinnacle of social order, it had a higher violent crime rate than modern England.

This is a bit of a tangent, but why do women tend to lean left? I say this as a moderate who dislikes both the left and the right. So I am not coming at this from a right-wing perspective, I just am sometimes baffled why so many women are actually left-leaning rather than being a centrist like me. What is the appeal? Is it mainly the fact that the right is associated with socially conservative prudes who favor patriarchy-coded social structures and are not pro-choice? Is it some higher degree of empathy from women that makes them feel more bad for the so-called oppressed of the world than men do? That is a common argument, but in my personal interactions with women, while I have found that the vast majority of women are nice to me, I have not found women to be more sympathetic to others abstractly than men are, on average, so I am not sure. Women do tend to be much more pro-social than men are on average, mainly because there is a small fraction of men who do the vast majority of both genders' anti-social activities. But do they really tend on average to be more "naive bleeding-heart liberal" than men are, and if so, why?

Women tend to be more about relationships and community membership- not exactly in agreement with anglosphere conservatism.

Women and their community memberships used to be the beating heart of Anglosphere conservatism.

The case for modesty, to me, is much the same as any other standard— it’s about self respect and dignity. And keeping a high standard both personally and culturally is important because it treats yourself and others as people worthy of respect. When a person doesn’t dress appropriately, either because they’re immodestly dressed or dressed sloppily, it tells me that not only are they not someone who I should take seriously (because they don’t take themselves seriously) but that they don’t respect the fact that other people might not want to see someone dressed in that way.

The same can be said of other standards. If you don’t put forth your best efforts, or can’t behave in public, or a thousand other things you do among others every day, eventually you have a society in which everyone does the bare minimum, you’re surrounded by trash, and so on.

While I don't think you're categorically wrong, I think there's the danger here of misusing a heuristic as a law.

Sloppily dressed people are often, yes, sloppy people who don't do good work, don't take care of their relationships, can't be relied upon etc.

And then, sometimes, they're astrophysicists who are so engrossed in their work that they never learned how to dress themselves. Before it become an coopted fashion signaling mechanism, the Silicon Valley "hoodie and shorts" was the mark of a developer who was a bit of a slob because he was dedicating 18 hours a day to working on his app.

On the modesty side of things, there are definitely women who use their wardrobes to appeal to the male lizard brain and attract attention that way. There are a lot of women who simply follow fashion trends and don't really put a lot of thought into what signals they're sending men but do care about what other women think. There is a certain small proportion of women who literally do not understand that wearing yoga pants and a sports bra 24/7 is going to result in increased male attention. Are any of these subgroups more prone to promiscuous and/or anti-social behavior. Hard to say. You can make some generalizations, but the danger there is the slippery slop of generalization --> heuristic --> iron law.

In the past 5+ years, I've never had a conversation about fashion expectations with a woman where she expressed frustration towards modesty standards (either too much or too little). Mostly, it was the simple and unending difficulty of keeping up with whatever is in fashion to signal (to other women) that you're "with it."

In the past 5+ years, I've never had a conversation about fashion expectations with a woman where she expressed frustration towards modesty standards (either too much or too little).

I may be misunderstanding you; let me know if I am. I don't know a women who isn't frustrated with the clothing available, and it's not all about pockets. I cannot easily find a shirt that isn't too low cut / designed to expose more of my chest than I typically prefer. Tshirts or fairly masculine tailored button downs are pretty much the only shirts I can depend on to meet my preferences. And hemlines are incredibly short. I can either go with long-and-flowy don't show an inch of skin, which tends to be too frilly and feminine for my preferences, or "this is so short it may not be long enough to cover my backside when sitting down" which is ridiculous. Apparently, wanting fabric to extend to my knees or there-abouts is too demanding.

But, I'm not sure I'd talk about these issues in regards to "modesty" because that term isn't really something I talk about much. I'd call it preference, or style. Modesty's part of it, but outside of a religious context I just don't see that term in use.

Apparently, wanting fabric to extend to my knees or there-abouts is too demanding.

Isn't this just a midi skirt? There's like a million of those on the market.

Tradcath women I know who can't sow often buy clothes from Mormon clothing stores, and while the modesty probably overshoots a little bit it probably overshoots by less than the undershoot you're complaining about. Their clothes seem feminine and not-frumpy.

I wasn't referring to the garments themselves, but more general attitudes / vibes around clothing expectations.

Too low cut and your other examples - absolutely, have heard that.

"I don't think I can wear what I want too because it's too revealing / I don't think I can wear what I want because it's too buttoned up" <-- Have not heard that.

I like the case for modesty as intimacy increasing. There is something to having a large delta between the woman that she presents to the world and the women she presents herself as to you personally. I'm not sure how that weighs against other interests but I am sure there is at least some value there.

As for why women are more lefty I can see this from a bunch of different lenses and have trouble coming up with as strong reasons for the opposite. the evo psych lens is pretty simple that women do best in stable safe environments where all their offspring can make it to adulthood and men do best in somewhat more risky environments where they might sire children with many women. When resources are plentiful women might prefer they be shared equally and men might prefer a chance to roll the dice and end up with a bigger share. From the self interested lens the redistributive state as it is today tends to take from men and give to women on average. The social dynamics lens tells us that caring, self sacrifice and gentleness are a feminine traits that women compete with each other on and leftists successfully pitch leftism as the humane alternative to callous and brutal liberalism. Older masculine framings of leftism like those in the soviet era of manly men menacing their enemies with the tools of their trade and demanding what is theirs would see a different skew but the feminine framing predominates today. From a propaganda lens it seems like the leftist strategy of just showing as many dead or suffering children as possible and drawing some plausible causal chain to the status quo is more effective on women than men.

and men do best in somewhat more risky environments where they might sire children with many women.

This is not your main point, but it's always seemed like a particularly BS part of the whole redpill evopsych narrative to me. Men may have evolved instincts to take advantage of conditions where promiscuity is possible, sure. But that's not the same as them "doing better" under those conditions.

I recall a discussion here pointing out that the modal historical outcome for superfluous weak males is not frustrated inceldom, but early violent death. Given that a monogamous pairbonding system vs. a lothario/harem system necessarily offer identical expected value in terms of offspring, and that the harem almost certainly offers lower expected value in terms of personal pleasure owing to the lothario's diminishing marginal returns from screwing multiple partners, I don't understand how men in these spaces seem to regard promiscuity as some kind of inherently manly value that's unfairly gatekept in our women's world.

What you correctly hit upon here regarding polygynous systems marks a crucial distinction between blackpillers/self-identified-incels and redpillers/PUAs. The latter are more in favor of polygyny and harems, as they see themselves as better able to thrive under such a system, armed with their Game. The former, in contrast, long for a patriarchal system of strictly-enforced monogamy and government-mandated gfs.

Of course, to any normal, well-adjusted person, this all has the same flavor as arguments between the People’s Front of Judaea and the Judaean People’s Front.

A fair nuance. I'm not quite a red piller and do think that monogamy is a good a social technology. For the evo-psych perspective though it's sufficient that men with the ability to influence such things would generally prefer more risk though as it's selected for where they can influence reproductive success and irrelevant where it doesn't.

The patriarchy's social norms regarding modesty, although never stated openly, functioned in effect as affirmative action / a safety net for ugly/fat/plain etc. women, basically as a treaty of nonaggression and voluntary disarmament among women, with a net benefit for all women and society as a whole. (Men used to have something similar, but that's another matter). When such norms are dismantled in the name of liberty and happiness, it contributes to a sexual arms race among women where they are given various socio-cultural incentives to pander to the sexual whims of the top 5-10% of men. This takes place in parallel with the erosion of other patriarchal norms, which results in women in general gradually losing their ability to elicit long-term commitment from the men they're attracted to, which in turn fuels the said arms race even more. This is a net negative for society, but once this said female cartel is gone, it'll not be replaced, because any woman who wants to dress modestly in effect opts out of the arms race and loses.

Very interesting idea. Whats the male version of this "disarmament treaty" you feel we have lost?

In the Christian patriarchy, every man may only have one wife and not more, premarital sex is not normalized, cheating isn't either, and keeping a mistress is only tolerated implicitly in certain circumstances. This, in effect, represents a tacit agreement among men not to fight one another over women.

No sex outside of marriage.

A tweet I saw recently suggested that women are hotter today than ever partially because Instagram has made the competition for attractiveness so cutthroat and winner-take all.

The ability of high-quality skincare, makeup, digital filters, and a wide selection of clothes to modify individual women's body shapes into ideal shapes makes it a system that requires a significant investment.

More like higher variance than ever, rather than higher mean. Mean or median might very well be lower.

On the right-tail, perhaps young modern hot chicks are indeed hotter than ever due to online dating- and social media-induced female intra-sexual competition and thot-maxxing knowhow with regard to skincare, makeup, filters, clothes, cosmetic surgeries, etc., that indulge the preference of young women to be sex objects.

However, on average, young modern women are also fatter than ever. Looking at old photos of groups of young women from the latter half of the 20th century, there are fewer smokeshows. However, in such photos, there are also far more WOULDs due to lack of obesity, as opposed to the WOULDN'Ts in modern day due to fatness.

Obesity is a big one, as it matters relatively little how good your skincare, makeup, nails, clothes, and surgeries are if you're fat. Something something about putting lipstick on a pig, and/or polishing a turd. Some other points against the modal young modern woman are tattoos, single motherhood, and promiscuity.

Yeah, this what I assume is going on as well. The sexual arms race is escalating among a subset of (mostly) young hot women that is small and probably becoming smaller due to the obesity epidemic, demographic implosion etc.

promiscuity

Has this actually risen for the modal woman, as opposed to a bigger right tale? My impression is that the modal woman is less promiscuous than typically portrayed.

This is a bit of a tangent, but why do women tend to lean left?

My basic understanding:

  1. The median woman is a lot less liberal (in the proper sense - "supportive of liberty") than the median man. Freedom of speech, in particular, is supported far more strongly by men than by women (e.g. Cato Institute poll - women tend to be far more easily offended and more willing to censor than men, mostly regardless of political valence of the speech). Free speech is now* mostly a right-wing issue, and is pulling men with it (like me!) but not women.
  2. As a strongly-related but mildly-distinct point, women tend to be more conformist, and the education system has made SJ the "default" among the younger generations*; more men defect from that default than women.
  3. A reasonable amount of SJ-influenced social policies are just explicitly stacked in favour of women (e.g. investigating male-dominated industries for sexism, but not female-dominated ones; here in Oz removing maths as a required year 12 subject but still requiring English); one should not be surprised that these tend to piss off men more than women, although this is AIUI less important than it sounds like it should be, because neither men nor women are Homo economicus and they don't vote purely their personal interest.

*Note the time-dependence here; IIRC in the 60s women tended to be further right than men.

Out of all the issues in our world, "women around me are showing me more of their breasts" is not one that I personally consider a problem ... I tend to love women, and part of that is that I love enjoying women's erotic company.

If you can get women's erotic company, of course you'll feel that way. But presumably you can understand why men who can't feel that immodest women are flaunting something in front of them that men are biologically hardwired to respond to, having no intention of rewarding that response with anything except disgust or punishment. From that perspective, it's oblivious at best and cruel at worst.

I grew up in a mostly-male environment, and my introduction to female company coincided with my introduction to online 'gamer girl' feminism which was anti-sex in a way that would leave Christian fundamentalists gaping. By the time I got enough worldliness to appreciate how far those feminists were detached from reality, it was too late. I had missed all the opportunities for learning how men and women were supposed to flirt in a low-stakes environment, and been warped into a sort of cringing resentfulness that is obviously toxic to women. Had things been otherwise, I would feel otherwise. Path dependency at its finest.

So while I too feel that there are greater problems in the world, I get why a lot of men would like sexiness to just go away and stop taunting them. As with our commentator however many months ago who wished that it was okay to enter a monastery in the modern world, or Scott Aaronson who wished to be allowed to chemically castrate himself.

Tangents:

Victorian England, from what I understand, despite all of its prudity was not some pinnacle of social order, it had a higher violent crime rate than modern England.

To be fair, modern England has CCTV and DNA forensics. I think it's quite possible that Victorian England mores transferred to the present day would be far better than what we have now.

why do women tend to lean left?

I think it's most a desire not to be nasty. Most right-wing philosophy ultimately gets to the point of saying, 'we are going to have to do nasty thing X to avert bad scenario Y'. I've generally found the women in my life much less likely to bite bullets than men.

As with our commentator however many months ago who wished that it was okay to enter a monastery in the modern world

You can 100% do this. Monasteries still exist. Sure, the median motteizean would likely have to convert beforehand, but a monastery is already a lifelong commitment.

A few times in my life I've done a retreat at a Trappist monastery a few hours from where I live. You get a small private room and have some interaction with the monks, including the Keeping of the Hours, which I particularly enjoy. What I enjoy more than anything though is that guests agree to the honor the same prohibition on speaking that the monks do. There are designated "talking spaces", everywhere else is Silent. I don't like talking. I don't like being spoken to. This is simply not something that is compatible with modern life. Going 5 days without idle chatter is like floating in a dream for me.

A random aside but I do sometimes wonder why in the west becoming a monk (or functional equivalent) a lifetime commitment while in the east it was possibly to take temporary vows.

I know there’s a world of difference between Abrahamic religions & Vedic religions and their offshoots but I’m simply unsure of the answer.

I wonder what the west would have been like if it were possible to take temporary vows like in Thailand and be a monk for a few years.

Temporary vows are totally a thing in the west, though. In fact the normal process for taking vows in Catholicism is to have a postulancy(measured in months) to see if the lifestyle is doable, then a novitiate with vows taken for a year at a time until the novice is ready to take lifelong vows(this is usually an expected number of years depending on the order, ranging from three to seven). Religious Catholic circles are overflowing with people who took one set of temporary vows but left before taking lifelong ones. Eastern Orthodoxy is less well regulated and defined, but likewise doesn't allow any rando to show up at the monastery gate and make a lifelong commitment the next day.

Obviously this is different in the sense that one doesn't make temporary vows without intending to later take permanent ones. But laypeople who spent time in religious life are part of the framework of apostolic Christianity.

Neat, I had forgotten all about that. Reading this does remind me that I’ve actually met someone who did just that, took vows for a year and then changed his mind when it came time for permanent ones.

He was… very gay.

The protagonist of Houellebecq's Submission tried joining a monastery for a non-permanent period, but left after just two days. I don't know how realistic that is.

So while I too feel that there are greater problems in the world, I get why a lot of men would like sexiness to just go away and stop taunting them

That's pretty much how I feel. At least, in environments where it's frowned upon to flirt with women, like in the office, I really wish they would stop wearing sexy clothes. It's like a constant mental tax I have to pay, "don't look at her don't look at her don't look at her," and there's no way to complain about it without sounding like either a huge pervert or an overbearing puritan.

I feel like food is maybe the gender-switch version? As a guy, I like chocolate, but I can take it or leave it. I have no trouble just eating one chocolate and ignoring the rest. But there was a holiday party at my office, and some woman sent in a complaint to HR, crying that she just couldn't stop eating the chocolate, it was making it impossible for her to work and maintain her diet with all these scrumptious chocolate lying around in front of her all day. And I was thinking... woman, you have no idea...

I just couldn’t imagine emailing HR over such an issue.

Serious question: I know nothing about you and the guy posting above you, but if y'all are (like seemingly every other male around here) going home and jacking off to images of breasts for hours every night, aren't you somewhat responsible for greatly strengthening the existing circuitry that links that visual cue to a state of arousal and sexual reward?

Sure, it's natural for men to find bodies sexy, just as it's natural for that lady to find chocolate delicious. But if I knew that your coworker went home every night and deliberately spent hours burning chocolate-scented candles while watching candy-tasting shows, baking brownies and licking them then throwing them away while fantasizing resentfully about what it'd be like to eat them... I'd have a lot less sympathy with her complaints that thoughts of forbidden chocolate were ruining her focus at work the next day.

I'm not. But maybe we could try an experiment. Let's take a large sample of men from a conservative, old-fashioned society where porn and sexy clothes are strictly forbidden. Let's bring them into a modern western society where it's normal for women's bodies to be on display all the time. Since they've never watched porn, they should have no problem with it right? They should easily adjust to this new society and not even notice the wanton display of sexuality, since they didn't have porn to hijack their brains, so they'll just be pure and innocent and oohhhhh crap that experiment didn't work out very well.

Are you under the impression that historical modesty and sexiness exists on a simple linear scale from burqas to tank tops? Probably there's a universal thrill with full view of certain parts of the anatomy, but past that, modesty norms and male perceptions of "sexiness" are very much in the eye of the beholder. Plenty of extremely "conservative, old-fashioned societies" in equatorial regions have far less covered-up norms of dress than we do. Public breastfeeding used to be far more common in the West, while there's a huge amount of historical hand-wringing about the immodesty of women showing their sexy, sexy free-flowing hair, which today men view in their co-workers without experiencing unmanageable erections.

My point is that there is underlying instinct, but then there's a huge amount of situational conditioning on top of that. If a man complains that he feels uncontrollably, painfully aroused and frustrated by the tops of a woman's breasts at work, then goes home every night and deliberately stimulates himself while looking at images of the tops of women's breasts, then all I'm saying is that he's clearly the dog AND Pavlov in that situation.

No but I feel like you're overthinking this. Nobody (well, hardly anyone) is going crazy over seeing a woman's hair or the idea of her breastfeeding. But when you see a woman wearing a super cut low tank top with a pushup bra and high-heeled pumps, and the absolute tightest pants she could possibly wriggle into... cmon. That's sexy. She isn't wearing that "just to be comfortable." She, or some fashion influencer, designed that outfit to sexually attract men. It's not "uncontrollably, painfully aroused and frustrated," It's more like a mild discomfort. It's just a feeling that never, ever goes away when you're surrounded by women like that at work and in daily life, constantly, and you're expected to not hit them with the dreaded "male gaze." Sometimes I feel paranoid that I might accidentally look in a way that makes someone feel sexually harassed. I feel like I need to get one of those eye trackers that some streamers use, to record my eye movement, in case I ever need proof that I wasn't ogling them.

Again, I'm not saying that there isn't a hardwired component to sexual arousal. But organisms are very good at using environmental information to upregulate and downregulate behavioral programs depending on what's most reward-rich at the moment. The dynamics of this are pretty consistent; remove a reward and there's an extinction burst of increased drive to regain it, then after a while that program gets turned down as temporarily no longer profitable.

So if someone expresses that their constant impulses toward free-floating sexual opportunism with random women are troublesome and uncomfortable to them, BUT also a primary leisure activity is protracted rubbing of their genitals while they look at a bunch of images of random women in postures that suggest sexual opportunity, then I feel like they clearly aren't doing all they could to persuade their bodies to turn down the constant sex-seeking.

More comments

aren't you somewhat responsible for greatly strengthening the existing circuitry that links that visual cue to a state of arousal and sexual reward?

It may be true but most men won't perceive it that way because our perception is that abstaining will just make you more distracted. This is actually the most common advice: fast long enough that you redirect the inevitable energy towards something useful. The idea of retaining your sexual energy has taken on a life of its own amongst the porn-saturated via NoFap but seems to predate it so the idea was out there.

It's unlike chocolate, so I think the condemnation might actually be stronger from the other direction: you're going to feel arousal anyway. The problem is you're associating sexual arousal with an ultimately fraudulent reward and powerlessness, which heightens the anxiety that comes with feeling sexual desire.

I hadn't considered the role of anxiety before, but there is a match with the kind of edgy, restless, compulsive feeling that comes after eating a bunch of shitty nutrition-free junk-food.

Also the same feeling you get when you’re stuck in a doom-scrolling loop. All three are of a kind.

I totally get that. When I was a teenager I was a sexually very frustrated person, the idea of actually flirting successfully with a woman seemed alien to me. One time when I was about 17, I literally cried after seeing a picture of a beautiful woman in a bikini online, I cried because I felt like there was no way I could possibly ever have sex with a woman, I felt miserable. It took me years to get over my shyness. It took a lot of effort, I forced myself to go out and interact with people in general and women specifically, and a lot of it was scary, but I was deeply motivated... back then, to tell the truth, it wasn't even that I was necessarily so motivated by my sexual urge. I could have alleviated most of my sexual urge with porn. It was more that I was motivated by hurt pride. I was like, "no, fuck this, there is no fucking way that other guys are having sex and I'm not". Which was part of my own problem... having my ego bound up with it. Once I started getting laid, that ego-driven thing started to cause me problems, and it took more years for me to address it and actually get to a place where I'm fully driven by erotic desire rather than by any semblance of wanting to ego-fix the insecurity I remember from when I was a young man. And it is so so much better that way, to not have the ego thing. But the ego thing did help drive me to force myself to go from a frustrated virgin to a guy who was competent at getting laid, so I guess I have to thank it for that even though overall it's not something you want to have in your life. Like a rocket stage, useful to propel you into orbit, but should be discarded afterward.

I have been on both sides. I remember being a frustrated guy who wasn't getting laid, and I understand what it's like to be a guy who gets laid. I totally understand that there is some fraction of the male population who have extremely hard issues getting laid for no faults of their own. If you are really short or fat or disfigured, obviously it's fucking tough. If you are average-looking, on the other hand, it's only your mind holding you back. I'm just a bit above average looking at best, I am average height and have a decent face, but not Brad Pitt or anything like that. There is an element of modern online culture that tells men that if they're not 6'5" with a six-pack and $1 million in the bank, they have no sexual future, and that is complete nonsense. How am I getting laid if that was true? Cause I'm no Brad Pitt and I don't have $1 million in the bank. What I do have is a willingness to try to shoot my shot, to try to flirt with women, won through long successful struggle against my shyness, and also a level of experience with women that I have developed because I succeeded in that struggle, so I have a certain sense for what turns women on, a sense that I have largely developed because of the experiences that I have had with women once I overcame my original brutal shyness.

Kudos, and thank you for the story.

I haven't noticed that, but my area is a bit behind the trends, so I'm still seeing athleasure and wide trousers. I've seen a lot of advertisements this summer for built in bra tops, but have not yet tried them to see if they are in fact adequately supportive or not. Personally, I would wear it under a blouse unless it was really hot, but there's a heatwave this week.

Different women have different preferences for what is or isn't comfortable, and sometimes it can be challenging to find one that fits right, especially when buying online, vs going into a store to be measured.

I personally wear a bra even at home for comfort reasons, but I also wear long skirts and button up blouses at home for comfort reasons (rolling cuffs up and down), and feel depressed in things like hoodies and sweatpants, which doesn't seem super common.

Some very common advice with seemingly strong evidence to support is to make sure you dress nicely, even if you are just hanging out at home. Obviously not like formalwear, that’s too much, but wearing nice clothes even if you are just by yourself is a strong psychological signal to yourself of your self worth and self esteem.

It’s great that you’ve intuited that. Of the several terrible bouts of depression I’ve had in my life, making sure I got dressed in proper clothes when I woke up was one of a handful of good habits that set a higher baseline mood for me and helped me climb out of it on my own power.

so I'm still seeing athleasure and wide trousers

Is this behind the trends? What even are the trends?

and feel depressed in things like hoodies and sweatpants, which doesn't seem super common.

No, I think that’s very common, the young people wearing hoodies and sweatpants are just already depressed, so they can’t tell the difference.

I’m a huge fan of this trend. Not in a pervy way, to be clear. Or at least, not primarily in a pervy way. With two young kids barely out of diapers I far more strongly associate boobs with breastfeeding than anything else. But boobs are great, they’re a nice-looking part of the human anatomy, in the same way as toned abs or beefy biceps, and best of all they’re not hostage to the fortune of BMI in the same way as bellies. My idea of the ultimate dystopia in terms of how humans dress would be something like radical Islamism where everyone has to wear drab colours and clothes that make them look like walking phone booths and conceal the natural beauty of the human form. So hurrah for bralessness and the greater familiarity with boobs it bequeathes.

(Also, women obviously still choose to wear them when it matters, whether for comfort or style. I assume we’re talking about the baseline here)

A Bacon allusion in a bra debate is the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to the Motte. Well played.

During covid, a lot of people who started working from home started dressing more casually. I am a C or a D cup, depending on brand, and have been since I was 12. If I'm working out, hiking, or doing physical work, I generally prefer to wear a sports bra just to keep my breasts in check. Otherwise, I'm perfectly content not wearing a bra. So during covid, I pretty much stopped wearing a bra. That meant if I needed to run to the grocery store for something, I went without a bra. I'm not my mom. I'm not going to change out of my jeans into something "appropriate" for outsiders, put on some hose, and do my hair and face to go to the store. I wasn't raised in the 50s. I'm comfortable slipping on some sneakers, running a brush through my hair, and going to get some lettuce. How much effort should I expend on this? Are my nipples truly that distracting in the produce aisle? I've given birth and nursed a baby. You can see my nipples. Even when I wear a bra - form-shaping underwire or breast-squooshing sports bra - you can see my nipples.

I'm old, so when I go into the office, or otherwise need to be observed to be professional, I'll throw on a bra. But on my own time? Forget it. In my lifetime we've stopped requiring hose if our ankles might show and (mostly?) stopped requiring shoes that deform and mutilate feet. I'm all for tossing out bras as a required undergarment. FWIW, my understanding is bras at best can contribute to comfort (see my comment about physical activity) and at worst can actually be harmful. From my perspective, they're usually uncomfortable, challenging to size properly, expensive, require special laundering, and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!" Observing my college-aged daughter's peers, they seem to be treating bras much like I treated hose at their age (old people expect us to use them, so we will when we think we should care about old people, but otherwise hose/bras are dumb and we're not going to bother unless we want to for a particular reason).

Is not wearing a tie lazy? And I think the undershirt is another lost garment. Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Is not wearing a tie lazy? And I think the undershirt is another lost garment. Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Yes, men should put in the effort to dress properly, and I'm 100% willing to be judgemental about it- but it's mostly a decline in formality, not modesty. Skinny jeans are a marginal phenomenon.

I think there's a decent argument that while not wearing a tie is declining formality, forgoing an undershirt is forgoing modesty.

I think that's fair in some contexts but not others- a man wearing a white dress shirt with no undershirt really is a bit exposed, but in a lot of other cases it doesn't really make any difference.

Men should wear an undershirt when in professional or even "business casual" contexts. It should, however, be a v-cut neck unless you're totally buttoned up with a tie.

A visible white crew neck under a dress shirt is, with the exception of the military, a massive fashion faux-pax that, unfortunately, a lot of men are not aware of.

Casual / clubbing / beach / summer button down shirts without undershirts are a move for young dudes or a recently divorced fella with money in his 50s.

Is not wearing a tie lazy?

I have no opinion on whether women should wear bras, but I will say that not wearing a tie (on occasions that call for one) is very lazy. Like if I'm at a wedding, and some dude can't even be arsed to put on a shirt and tie? That's lazy as hell and doesn't speak well to that guy's character.

Men used to wear ties when out and about, just like women used to wear skirts and hose. It wasn't just for presumably formal occasions like a wedding.

Also they miss out on the obviously cool “late night tie relaxation” move

and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!

Can you elaborate on this more? Why does the state of your nipples have anything to do with whether or not bras are related to modesty? I'm not sure I'm following there.

I'm not a woman, but I have spoken about bras with my woman friends. A common theme I have heard from them is that when they were given a talk by their moms about why they should wear bras, modesty was brought up. I could see this being true. After all, it conceals more of the form, leaves more to the imagination, makes them less "in your face".

Hell, don't take it from me. Seinfeld had a character who's entire schtick was that she didn't wear a bra and as a result ends up stealing Elaine's boyfriend and perpetually attracts attention to herself, bugging the hell out of Elaine.

Covering women's areolas and nipples has been used as a work around for women going topless, leading me to believe those are the areas of primary concern when people talk about bras and modesty. Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them, and wearing a bra is considered more modest than not wearing a bra (by the OP) that is potentially the case here. It's weird. More clothes is generally considered more modest than fewer clothes, but bras specifically highlight breasts, you would think people who think of bras as for modesty would be arguing for binding, not bras. Bras accentuate the form, they don't conceal it.

So from my perspective if the concern is nipples, bra or not isn't going to change what people see of mine. And braless-me is less breasts-forward than bra-me is.

Covering women's areolas and nipples has been used as a work around for women going topless, leading me to believe those are the areas of primary concern when people talk about bras and modesty.

Perhaps others will disagree, but I'm not actually convinced that that's true. I think it might be more of people having modesty norms that allow for part of the breasts to be uncovered, and that's the easiest way to draw a line, rather than being what is relevant in itself.

I don't really have opinions on what effect bras have on modesty.

I'm with you. It's an easy line to draw in a law somewhere, but I'd call pasties less modest than simply being topless.

Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them

Hard disagree, here. IME, bras standardize the form of breasts under the shirt, thus drawing attention away from them, by making them more uniform. They also hold them in place and tuck them away, once again drawing attention away.

Note that I'm excluding push-up bras from this category, since those are the case where they unequivocally exist solely to accentuate and highlight breasts. But they're also not the norm.

This is fascinating. As a breast haver and occasional bra wearer, my perspective is that wearing a bra makes my breasts more pronounced. And I am just talking regular bras, not any fancy gravity defying wizard bra. When I am not wearing a bra, you can see my breasts as forms under my shirt, but they don't pop out, they aren't molded into stereotypical half domes thrust out from my chest.

The biggest difference is the "liveliness" of braless breasts. If they are big enough to have a jiggle, an inertia of their own, however small, they will draw male attention.

Regular, every day, lift and separate bras don't immobilize breasts. They still move. But yes, they visibly move less than braless breasts do.

Do you think it's the movement that draws the eye, or that OP expects women to be wearing a bra, and is drawn to the deviation from his standard? (Or embrace the power of "and.")

That's an interesting question and I don't know how to separately test these two hypotheses.

Is not wearing a tie lazy?

Yes.

Should we be concerned about male modesty?

Yes.

Is this supposed to be that hard?

Personally I love wearing ties but avoid it whenever possible because my understanding is that they're directly detrimental to one's health.

Wait, is wearing ties unhealthy? I've never heard that before, and to be honest I'm a bit skeptical of the claim. Do you have a source?

Something something constriction of the neck being very bad over the long term.

He might be referencing the old adage of wearing a tie around machinery that it could get entangled in and potentially do bad things to fragile human flesh is a big no-no. Rings are similar.

Other than that, I have no clue.

Then we are likely a lost cause and should abandon all hope. More women wear bras than men wear ties and undershirts. If these things need fixing, the work must start at a more basic level.

Ehh I think undershirts mess up the tuck of my dress shirt.

Are you ironing both your undershirt and your dress shirt?

Is that the trick?

The real workaround is the shirt stay, which if you’re not familiar is a garter that wraps around your thigh and keeps your shirt tucked in with full range of motion.

I wear them almost every time I wear a shirt that’s tucked in.

@The_Nybbler will be here soon with your welcome bag.

We're all out, as usual.

I mostly agree.

I can understand. I disagree - I really don't want to go back to the requirements of my youth of wearing hose over any bared leg and having to do my hair in something more presentable than a pony tail. But I understand people who think we're all a too slovenly.

Things have changed pretty quickly. I remember when my mom first wore jeans outside of the house/yard. Now my kid'll wear sweat pants in public. 3 generations - from skirts and hose in public to PJ bottoms.

If you accept that fashion is signaling, then the overall move might be less toward "informality" than toward subtler and harder-to-fake signals of wealth and status.

Formal clothing controls and covers your body, allowing most people to look presentable if they can buy approximately correct garments and keep them in good repair. By contrast, sweatpants look good almost exclusively on women who can afford to spend a lot of time at the gym and yoga studio (or later, the plastic surgeon's), and who know how to do understated high-quality makeup with expensively well-maintained skin and hair; everybody else just looks schlubby and run-down, like the poors they are.

I've heard a similar argument made about the transition from corsets to the "freedom" of bras and elastic waistbands: every body fits neatly into an hourglass-figure dress when wearing a corset, but now we have to stress and starve ourselves to manufacture de facto corsets out of our own abdominal muscles, yay. And I suspect stockings, bras and other undergarments probably work the same way. Lissome twenty-somethings, and the class of older ladies who drop $$$ on sclerotherapy and implants, look fine in bare legs and bralettes; not so much the rest of us.

If it took us three generations to get here, it'd be unreasonable to expect us to take less than three generations to go back. Baby steps.

Going braless is one of those things that goes in and out of fashion every fifteen to twenty years. Watch old episodes of Charmed, tons of visible nipples under shirts. Was very in fashion in the early 70s as well.

In every case there's an ideological superstructure of justification built around it, but it's mostly barber pole fashion theory. Much like the baggy-tight-baggy cycle of jeans, and the skinny-wide-skinny procession of ties. People will write essays about the ideological undercurrents lying within the choice to pursue a fashion, but it's post hoc.

Yeah exactly, it changes because people get bored of how it was before. Bras will be back, and so will skinny ties (at least for those few who still wear them).

Most women I see seem to be wearing bras. Even if I'm in deep ellum. My point is, this sounds like a regional trend.

Bruh. Starting a thread because you're offended that you see women going braless?

This isn't a warning, but really, put a little more effort into "kids on my lawn" posts.

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Well, I wasn't offended. Though you have offended me with your reply.

If you're going to warn me, warn me, or else, you're just implying threats because you personally don't like this topic. I'm already well-aware of how you feel about the subject of the responsibilities of women with regard to society and sexuality, and needless to say, I disagree with you. So be it.

I think it's an interesting subject, that the social contract of how women relate with society is being renegotiated on the fly over the last decade (in more ways than just bras, though I think bras may be a canary of the greater forces at work), and certainly it is part of the culture war. I put forth my observations and theory, and I'm interested in others as well. I fully accept I may be wrong. Some people are replying saying they don't even think this is a trend, and I don't doubt their experience or interpretations. They may be right, I may be wrong, but either way, I'm interested to hear what people have to say.

I didn't warn you, but I'm still allowed to express my opinion, which is that your complaint is silly and wasn't much more than "Here is a thing I don't like."

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If you weren't talking as a mod, then it's a low-content comment. That's what the downvote button is for.

OP doesn't sound very offended to me.

My partner has told me that bras can be uncomfortable for women to wear. Admittedly, as a guy, I don't quite understand much about them other than they support a woman's breasts.

My question to you is, what impact does it have on you personally if more women stop wearing bras? Men don't get scrutinized for their nipples being visible in public. Why should women?

No, it's not "fair" and it's not "equal," but women's bodies are more sexual than men's because of the differences between male and female sexuality.

Homie, women's thighs are sexual. Women's butts in tight jeans are sexual. The curve of a woman's silhouette in a fitted dress is sexual. Lipstick is sexual. Women's clothing/lack of clothing can accentuate or attenuate these features of their bodies in ways that actually make a huge difference in the amount of visual stimulation that is flooding into a man's eyes.

Apparently women aren't exactly privy to this? But try looking at a target and notice how naturally your eyes are drawn to the center.

I'm not trying to go Sharia on everyone's asses, but I am getting older, and the share of women in my life who are younger than me is only going to keep increasing. Women's fashion was fun when I was a horny teenager. As a married man however it's incredibly distracting, and I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Women know; it’s uncouth to admit it. But if you happen to hear women trashing other women, it is pretty clear they know.

As a married man however it's incredibly distracting, and I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Plenty of conservative religious groups talk about it all the time, including directly to the young women -- you could go spend time at one of their men's groups if you want to as well?

Conservative religious men's groups don't bring up modesty very much- although they do bring up staying away from porn/internet filters/whatever you want to call the topic.

Thanks for the reply. I am religious and do have some people I might possibly discuss this with, carefully.

Out of curiosity, what do you imagine a men's group's response would be if I complained to them about, say, someone at work who frequently shows cleavage in a low-cut top?

Their response would be to not look at it because you can't do anything.

What advice would you give to someone who complained about a coworker who wore well-tailored slacks?

"Typical human beings are not distracted by such things, so I think you're not sincere about it".

I'm not sure.

I was Evangelical as a teenage girl, so I got the teenage girl side of the conversation, where the advice was usually not to wear low cut tops unless you're, um, courting or something, but it was not well followed outside the very conservative homeschool groups I also participated in. As an adult, I've been Orthodox Christian, where they emphasize that flowy skirts and scarves and blouses are beautiful and dignified and fun to wear. I strongly prefer this approach. Female office wear is generally not very fun or beautiful, and I suppose the woman feels a bit better about her appearance in the low cut top than other options. It doesn't work super well on most figures, aesthetically, to do something like tucking a button up into trousers, because it just looks kind of drab. When I have to go into work in jeans and my official work t-shirt that's in a color that looks bad on me, I feel kind of irritable and like I don't want anyone to look at me all day. I don't know what women are supposed to wear in offices lately, but I'm pretty sure it includes a bra, anyway.

I think more women would choose to be modest if the options were better. If you want modest stuff, it generally is either childish or tent-like or otherwise just ugly. I want to be modest enough to not attract sexual attention.

Tin-foil hat conspiracy: This is self-evidently true but is expressed by objectively ugly clothes / styles currently being in fashion.

It started with their weird 1970s extra large glasses. One of the hallmarks right now are the giant, boxy, usually light wash jeans that are in no way flattering to either waist or hips. My (again tin foil hat) theory is that this is a way to get back to "neutral" non-sexually signaling clothing without capitulating to "traditional" styles. The entire "normcore" aesthetic has to be this, right? There's no way these styles can be considered ... good looking ... right?

I've thought the same thing, like ugly Zoomer fashion is just young women trying to act out a sexual counter-revolution without having to dress up like it's the 1950s.

But then I remember that young men have moustaches and mullets now, and I don't believe for a second that they are trying to desexualise themselves. Fashion is just arbitrary and weird (which, I suppose, seems pretty obvious when I look back at how some of my more fashionable friends dressed when we were teenagers).

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Are you sure women's bodies aren't "more sexual" than men's because of ... men? Maybe you're wanting to require us to wear bras because of your issues, not ours?

For what it's worth, typically not wearing a bra doesn't accentuate breasts. If, as a woman, I want to accentuate my breasts, I'm involving a bra. Not wearing a bra is them in their natural state. If I want to accentuate my lips, I'll wear lipstick. Eyes, eyeshadow. If I'm not wearing lipstick or eyeshadow? It's just my face. I'm not accentuating anything. My face is with me everywhere I go. Like my breasts. Can't leave home without them.

Are you sure women's bodies aren't "more sexual" than men's because of ... men? Maybe you're wanting to require us to wear bras because of your issues, not ours?

I'm clearly in agreement with you that it's men's "issue." Your own bedroom, where you're not being perceived by anyone else, because of this, does not have a dress code. Indeed: men, and more specifically men's visual perceptions of women, are precisely why women's bodies are more sexual than men's. But...you do know you share a world with men?

This is obviously a sensitive topic. And it's not women's fault that they are (by default) effortlessly pleasing to look at. I'm just saying that women's bodies have greater and more pronounced visibly sexual qualities than men's, and this fact has social consequences that the sexes should negotiate with each other cooperatively.

In the past cultures have put guidelines on a woman's appearance, without negotiating with women about it. And now the shoe is simply on the other foot: women's visible sexual qualities are a man's problem, and he should simply ignore the bombardment of visual stimulation as women largely fail to realize just how potent the stimuli are because men have been socialized into silence on the matter. There's gotta be something in the middle.

I'm just saying that women's bodies have greater and more pronounced visibly sexual qualities than men's,

I agree with fribble that this is a statement about the viewer's sexuality, not about women's bodies. Women are not pleasing, others are pleased to imagine the things they could do to them. Women are not sexual, they are sexualized. (We also need more gay dudes in the conversation, I guess.)

Re: social consequences, here's a weak parallel case. One reasonably common hardwired female response to a man's body is fear. Men are on some level intimidating to be around, with their height, thick muscles and wide shoulders. To a much smaller person, male bodies telegraph, accurately, the potential to inflict violent physical harm and domination, regardless of how nice the guy actually is. This is why many little kids are instinctively afraid of strange men, before they're socialized to suppress that feeling. Some women find it attractive, particularly in a context where it could be aligned with their own interests. But the physicality of an unaligned male is generally at least a little viscerally scary.

Male fashion is also designed to emphasize and aestheticize those same traits of physical dominance. It accentuates shoulders, chest and neck, making the body look squarer and more muscular. Much male fashion even mimics the working clothes of violent occupations, like military uniforms and gangster clothing! If you're a guy and have an outfit that you think looks really sharp, odds are good that some part of the design, deliberately or not, is making you look more intimidating.

Now, suppose you're wearing your favorite perfectly normal mall-purchased outfit to work, and a woman in the office objects. It's anxiety-causing for her, your big scary body in these strength-emphasizing clothing makes her feel on edge all the time and limits her ability to act freely around you. Why should you be allowed to dress to frighten other people? If you were really considerate, you'd wear something softer, frillier, maybe with a cute animal print or something to signal your harmlessness.

That woman's biological fear response to your body is just as real and unpleasant as your biological arousal response to a sexy coworker. But you didn't dress to be "scary" to her! Probably you didn't think of her reaction at all. You just wanted to look presentable within the normal idiom that gendered fashion currently provides for you.

Does it seem more reasonable that you should go home and put on something frillier? Or that she should get therapy to gain more control over these maladaptive biological responses?

You have neglected to mention option 3: avoidance. Instead of requiring people to change either their clothes or their opinion, just give people the option to not work with people who make them unavoidably afraid or aroused.

In a state of nature, sure. But in a society, everybody is expected to muster the self-control to behave sociably to others in public spaces like the workplace, as long as others are behaving conventionally in return (and all the clothing mentioned in this thread has been extremely middle-class conventional; nobody's asking people to roll with assless chaps or nudism).

I think the problem is in assuming that because certain fear and arousal instincts have a biological basis, they're therefore radically "unavoidable," indeed unalterable, and justify making outsize demands for accommodation from others. It didn't make sense back when anxious students were demanding full veto power over triggering college syllabus material, and it doesn't make a lot of sense in this context, either.

But you didn't dress to be "scary" to her! Probably you didn't think of her reaction at all. You just wanted to look presentable within the normal idiom that gendered fashion currently provides for you.

In your worldview going braless to work is an aspect of trying to look presentable?

I believe OP mentioned braless women on the commute, not at work; the work attire I've seen criticized here was tight AKA "skinny" pants and tops with cleavage. But if you're asking if all these garments can be worn strictly with a view to looking presentable according to current fashion standards, then the answer is emphatically yes. Check out reddit femalefashionadvice and various women's clothing blogs, and you'll hear women trying to use clothes to communicate things like effortless, comfy cool (the braless or bralette tank, loose crocheted cardigan, 90s jeans look) and tailored polish (the skinny office pants look, which you'll be pleased to note has been replaced with swingy trousers). Sometimes women think about sexual display for date-night outfits, but in my decades of fashion discussions I have literally never heard or read a natal female remarking excitedly that an everyday outfit displays her nipples or shows how her breasts move, and will thus doubtless inspire random men to imagine emotionlessly fucking her as they pass by on the train.

On the bra thing specifically, visible bra straps (unavoidable under some tops) have at various points been considered un-presentable, and I've heard women express relief that the braless option solves that fashion problem.

So, I'm going to assume your answer to my question is a "yes, in my worldview going braless to work is an aspect of trying to look presentable."

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In the past cultures have put guidelines on a woman's appearance, without negotiating with women about it. And now the shoe is simply on the other foot: women's visible sexual qualities are a man's problem, and he should simply ignore the bombardment of visual stimulation as women largely fail to realize just how potent the stimuli are because men have been socialized into silence on the matter. There's gotta be something in the middle.

Why do you think women fail to realize that men are visually stimulated? We're told this constantly. We're told that if a man acts out, it's because of what a woman wore, how she looked. Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?

Given different cultural standards in modesty and dress, I don't believe that cleavage, breasts, legs, or any particular piece of a woman's body is just instant "brain off, hormones gone crazy" for men. It's all what we're used to.

We're told that if a man acts out, it's because of what a woman wore, how she looked. Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?

I have only ever seen this used to denounce hypothetical bad people who might think such an abhorrent thought. I have never seen someone actually state this.

It's generally not actually stated in those stark terms, these days. People try to avoid being seen to blame the victim. But the subtext is definitely still there more often than it should be.

One of my husband's acquaintances is That Guy. The guy who says he can't help but leer at women on the beach, because of what they're wearing (actually on the beach). Not notice and keep it in mind for later thinking or whatever over, but rudely staring in a creepy way. Who'll defend his behavior, because she's wearing a two piece, or is particularly well endowed, or whatever excuse to make his behavior absolutely outside of his control, because of her.

Every single woman I know has been told, more than once, to change what she's wearing because it'll send the wrong message. Which is goofy, because we also know we're going to get catcalled/propositioned/groped wearing a hoodie and jeans, so damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Why do you think women fail to realize that men are visually stimulated? We're told this constantly. We're told that if a man acts out, it's because of what a woman wore, how she looked. Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?

Here it is, women's favorite motte and bailey. Yes, if a man rapes a woman he is responsible for it no matter what she is wearing. However, what you wear is signaling. Wearing clothing that draws attention to your sexual characteristics and then complaining when people give you sexual attention (eg, lewding, catcalling) is sexual harassment. On your end. You initiated it, you are responsible for it.

"Clothing that draws attention to your sexual characteristics" is very culturally relative. Fundamentalist Muslims aren't lying when they say they think women who aren't in burkas are flaunting their sexuality, and even in relatively liberal Muslim countries like Egypt (where a hijab is not required, just "strongly encouraged"), women not wearing hijabs are subject to levels of abuse and catcalling that would make New York steelworkers blush. (And incidentally, even conservatively dressed women don't get much less harassment because once you accept that you can determine a woman's modesty and how much she deserves harassment based on how she dresses, it's easy to rationalize that even women in full burkas are doing something to deserve it.)

There is definitely clothing that is intentionally meant to draw male attention, but if women have a motte and bailey, so do men whose motte is "drawing attention to your sexual characteristics" and whose bailey is "dressing in any way that I notice, especially if the bitch isn't with me."

I mostly agree with this and would say that both extremes here are bad, but I believe that in the West women are getting away with more than men in this case. For instance, women who wear shirts like this should be recognized as doing so to harass men and such harassment should be punished to a greater extent than it currently is.

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No, what I wear is clothing. Your interpretation is your problem. Your behavior is yours to control.

You can be sexually stimulated without acting on it (physically or vocally).

I know Chappelle is persona non grata to one half of the cultural fence these days but comedy is comedy.

Don't know if you heard about this controversy, but I was wondering what would be your opinion about this charming bloke showing up dressed like that at a conference. Apparently it caused quite a stir, particularly from feminists.

Your choice in what to wear is expressive speech in the "freedom of speech" sense of the term. Wear whatever you want in private. In public, your choice in what to wear is communication and if your communication is not respectful to those around you then don't expect respect in return.

Why do you think women fail to realize that men are visually stimulated? We're told this constantly. We're told that if a man acts out, it's because of what a woman wore, how she looked. Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?

This may have been a point worth hearing in the past, but it seems wildly out of date by now. Anyone even thinking of trying to use that argument in public would immediately catch a ton of shit. Maybe a recent Muslim immigrant could get away with it, though it will probably depend on what his politics are.

I wish it were wildly out of date.

Girls and women are very clearly told that what we wear makes us responsible for men's behavior towards us.

See the comment above: "Wearing clothing that draws attention to your sexual characteristics and then complaining when people give you sexual attention (eg, lewding, catcalling) is sexual harassment. On your end. You initiated it, you are responsible for it."

What's clothing that draws attention to our sexual characteristics? Anything that makes it clear we have breasts, legs, butt, any part of our anatomy a man might find arousing.

That's not really the same as "Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?". Also a niche forum founded for the explicit purpose of debating controversial opinions is not a good barometer for what's socially acceptable. Show me someone saying that face to face in polite company, or even just on some mainstream Reddit sub.

Girls and women are very clearly told that what we wear makes us responsible for men's behavior towards us.

And men are told that it is fine to creep shame us if what we wear makes women uncomfortable. So which is it? Are people responsible for what they choose to wear or not?

Indeed: men, and more specifically men's visual perceptions of women, are precisely why women's bodies are more sexual than men's. But...you do know you share a world with men?

No, that implies that men's visual systems are more inherently sexual than women's. I suppose it's reasonable to say that women's bodies are more commonly sexualized than men's.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's wise for women to go around topless or anything, of course.

If I say oranges are tangy, and someone interjects that it's actually my brain's interpretation of signals from nerves in my tongue that is what's actually tangy, where should the conversation go from there?

It makes sense to say that (many?) women't bodies are sexy, sure.

If someone says they're asexual, or heterosexual, or whatever other kind of sexual, that usually implies something about their preferences, not the viewer's. Oranges don't have preferences, so I'm not sure there's anything analogous that applies to them.

Oranges don’t have preferences, so I'm not sure there's anything analogous that applies to them

Orange you glad that’s the case?

Are you sure women's bodies aren't "more sexual" than men's because of ... men?

In my experience, even straight women are more likely to find a woman's body sexual than a man's body. It's actually a little astounding how disinterested many women are in men's bodies. So it seems to me that there's a broad consensus that men's bodies are not particularly sexual. Gay men obviously disagree.

I am a straight woman. I might find particular anatomy aesthetically pleasing, and culturally that might be more true of traditionally female anatomy (I don't know that this is true but it doesn't matter), but a man's body is infinitely more sexually appealing to me than a woman's body. I don't think I am an outlier among straight women in this regard. I also think it's true that straight women are unlikely to be as open, perhaps outside of other straight women, as men are about these things. But I think that's cultural - women who indicate sexual interest, desire, or awareness are sluts and sluts are bad. Girls learn to control themselves and comport themselves appropriately. I am convinced boys are also capable of this, even though our society does not require it of them. However I also think it's perfectly good for girls to comfortably express sexual desire and interest, so rather than have boys learn the self control and denial we impose on girls perhaps we loosen up a bit on expressions of female sexual interest and tighten up a bit on expressions of male sexual interest.

As a quick note, my comment about girls and boys expressing sexual interest was a response to a claim that women's bodies are more inherently sexual and that even straight women find them so. Which I disagree with and think is an opinion formed from differences in how men and women are taught to express their sexual interest (or not).

I appreciate your more extended comment, but it's a riff in a different direction (I may get back to it - I have to be amused at your perception of me first).

You have no idea what a world in which men were completely open with their sexuality would look like. We are emphatically not in that world. You would find it difficult even to imagine it.

You don't have to imagine it, just take a quick look at the gay community.

@Amadan, @urquan, what happened here? This was a very nice post, worthy of AAQC, why did you nuke it?

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I'm not trying to go Sharia on everyone's asses,

Like ... literally.

Men don't get scrutinized for their nipples being visible in public. Why should women?

Women don't get in trouble for leering at men's nipples when they are visible in public, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the men. Women can have the same "freedom" to expose themselves when they give up the power to sexualize and punish men's gaze.

Women's breasts are secondary sexual characteristics in a way that is not at all isomorphic to men's chests. This is obvious and well-understood. It's difficult for me to believe that you're not putting forward this opinion in bad faith.

That is exactly my point. I'm not saying men's and women's nipples should or shouldn't be treated the same, I'm saying that the difference in treatment @Stingray3906 was asking about is tied to social expectations placed on others. You can't change one without the other.

My mistake.

I don't find your last point at all convincing, if your suggestion is that female breasts are on the same level as the male chest in terms of a sexualized part of the anatomy.

edit: apostrophe

Should men be stigmatized by society, or be accused of being creepy, if they decide to not wear underwear? It is very restricting and hanging loose feels much comfier.

Would I know if a man weren't wearing underwear? If he's wearing pants where strangers in public would notice the lack of underwear, the problem is probably with the outer garment.

Er, are you implying they shouldn't be?

Going out without underwear as a man is, at best, slobbish. I'm in favour of some mild level of social pressure to get men to wear underwear.

I don't think it would very hard, because underwear is comfortable (if yours isn't, perhaps you've got the wrong size?), and indeed I'd feel much more uncomfortable going out without it, but still - yes, men should wear underwear.

No comment on bras. I don't wear them and don't have a good sense of their utility.

What? It's no one's damned business if I'm wearing underwear or not. You can't tell by looking, so it "neither picks [your] pocket nor breaks [your] leg".

What? It's no one's damned business if I'm wearing underwear or not. You can't tell by looking, so it "neither picks [your] pocket nor breaks [your] leg".

That's a heuristic for if something should be illegal. In my opinion a bad heuristic (hard drug dealing doesn't directly pick my pocket but it should still be illegal as far as I'm concerned), but my thoughts on the heuristic aside, it is still usually deployed to argue that something distasteful to one but not directly injurious should not be the purview of law. The line before it is "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others".

I really don't agree with the OP of this thread. I think the lack of bras currently is, as he suggests as a possible reason, just fashion.

But I also think your argument doesn't really dispute him nor the person you directly responded to. Neither said anything about imposing a law that required women to wear bras. OOP was venting about a cultural practice and saying that we should have a cultural norm against it.

Er, but you can, can't you? It depends on the trousers, certainly, but someone wearing sweatpants and no underwear may well show it visibly.

I very much doubt you could tell looking at me. But I don't wear sweat pants or track suits.

That's a tough question. The short answer is, nothing I can't handle, though I get irritated with feminism saying EVERYTHING is female oppression, so I'd be annoyed if my hypothesis is right.


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