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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.

The problem isn't loneliness or lack of romantic relationships, the problem is declining family formation, which those are a prerequisite for.

I think the big problem for both men and women is the opportunity costs involved.

For middle-class women, the prime time to get married and have children overlaps with the critical time for education and launching a career. Additionally, even with access to good child care, there are serious compromises required - you can have kids and raise them well in the early years, but it comes at the cost of someone's career, either theirs or their spouse's. Alternately, you subcontract the raising of your children, and you feel that you're a failure as a mother, because you never have the time or energy for your children.

My wife has a STEM degree. This dynamic hit her hard.

For men, the cost of family formation is adulthood and responsibility. There's a lot of fun stuff that you have to give up or dial back on if you're going to be providing for a family - and as entertainment and hobbies get better, the cost only goes up.

I'm kind of a nerd, and I have (or had) a lot of geeky hobbies. This dynamic hit me hard.

Now, don't get me wrong - the tradeoffs are absolutely worth it in the long run, but they are still tradeoffs.

Here's the real kicker, though: Even if you have a woman who isn't interested in a career and just wants marriage and children, Moloch rears his head and smacks that down. Because, unless she's in an isolated community, this means that she'll need to find a man who can provide for her to dedicate her time and efforts to marriage and children. Which means a man in roughly the upper quartile of earning potential. Which means a man who is educated, interested in settling down, responsible. Which means a man who has a lot of options and wouldn't look twice at a woman without a college education... and so, our aspirational homemaker still needs a college degree, and the attendant expenses in both money and fertile years.

Do men really care if a girl has a college degree or not? I've never heard the need for education expressed by any man. Be it one I know or any real life media.

Have you ever encountered an educated, successful man who has married a woman without a degree? It's possible, clearly, but I think it's extremely rare.

Assortative mating by socio-economic status is extremely pronounced in the US, and the lack of a degree locks you out of the "educated, successful men" part of the dating pool.

Socio-economic status has little to do with woman having a degree. Suppose a man marries woman without a degree, but all her male relatives have degrees. Compare versus where a woman has degree but her relatives are high school dropout.

But I wouldn't say that this is because men want women with degrees. I'd say it's because men with degrees by 'chance' were around women with degrees, specifically in universities or workplaces. It wasn't a requirement on the men's part that the women have degrees. So I don't think the way you phrase things is accurate. Educated men are not locking out uneducated women from their dating pool. The university and workplace is. It might be true that the social stratification we are seeing is leading to extreme rates of assorted mating, but the driving force behind that is not the mating preferences of men.

By mating preferences of men do you just mean what gets men hard? Or do you mean what (those) men want in a marriage partner? Because educated upper class men absolutely want a partner with appropriate educated upper class hobbies and affectations, which tend to coincide with a college degree even if it is not technically a requirement.

My grad school classmates all married women with degrees, and the obvious driving factor was that when one of us was banging a townie bartender (or whatever) at any point and brought her to a party, she was embarrassingly out of sync socially. A spouse that impresses others is important, valuable, to most people. To claim otherwise is to separate social desires out of marriage preferences, which is totally baffling and ahistorical.

Both. And at risk of being to curt here, none of what you say necessitates a man wanting a woman with a degree.

I'd say today the pure non-working housewife role is increasingly economically unviable, which doesn't necessarily mean 'a wife needs a degree', but generally professional roles that work around a maternity schedule will lean that way.

So much ink spilt and do much of it in volleys denying sexist motives while accusing the other side of sexist motives. Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy? Just sure the other gender wouldn't go for it? Is there not some common ground at can find?

I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s not either sex that wouldn’t go for it, it’s the broader edifice of liberalism.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists. Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution. Given any reasonable level of freedom, it’s going to lose out to structures which work with rational self-interest instead of against it. I’m not willing to throw out enough liberties to make up the difference.

Then again, I suppose I must be on the good side of this inequality. I’ve got my job, my prospects, and my girlfriend I met in college. No property, yet, but that can change. Despite what other respondents might suggest I’ve never dated a girl who was a crazed gold digger or a sociopath. So perhaps it’s just my privilege telling me to let freedom ring.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists

And avowed communists into conservatives. If hypocrisy exists, it goes both ways.

Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution.

"Authleft"? I would just "left" or even centre sufficies, given that thinking reducing (economic) inequality is beneficial, is by no means restricted to tankies.

I don’t follow. How does it make communists into conservatives? What tankies are coming out and campaigning for monogamy? Maybe there are examples from post-Mao China…

Enforcing a preferred social structure from above is quintessentially authoritarian. That’s true in the case of wealth inequality, and it’d be true if applied to marriage.

It makes tankies into conservatives when they argue in favor of a (sexual) free market, with winners, losers, and those with absolutely nothing.

Do you want to eliminate welfare for those who can't compete economically?

Eliminate? No.

Reduce? Probably.

Reform? Definitely.

I’m not exactly a card-carrying libertarian. I do, however, think that sexual market controls go too far.

What sexual market controls do we have? Or are you speaking hypothetically?

Hypothetically since I was answering this question:

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

I am against it, in theory, because I don’t see how you get to that level of social enforcement without trampling individual liberties. “Market controls” probably isn’t quite the right analogy, depending on who’s doing the trampling. It’s definitely not a description of the relatively laissez-faire onanism we have currently.

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

I think that 'strongly socially enforced' is doing a lot of lifting, in that it would entail 'reversing' many liberties that have been extended to both sexes (moreso women) and would probably require a return of religiosity in order to make the enforcement mechanisms have sufficient 'bite.'

I would imagine, for example, this leading to the return of shotgun weddings, of stricter controls on prostitution, and by extension on strip clubs and porn production, on a stronger preference for modesty in dress, and much more difficult divorce processes, which implies actual divorces would be even more fraught than usual.

A large portion of the population would balk at some or all of the above if proposed independently.

So I'm not against it, but there's a discussion to have about the second order effects that it might carry.

Except for the ability to use sex transactionally, which I've been assured in this thread is not the thing women really want(and believe them), I'm not really sure what women lose on this. And I don't think we need religion, if people recognized the problem they could recognize the usefulness of the solution and punishing desenters socially should come naturally. There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

I mean, one doesn't need sympathy when one just has raw power. Almost by definition, guys who are sleeping with tons of women and women using sex to get ahead have lots of power. The rest of society might be more numerous, but they'd still have to coordinate to overpower that powerful group, and I think the very reason this discussion is being had is that such coordination doesn't seem to be coming naturally.

And I don't think we need religion, if people recognized the problem they could recognize the usefulness of the solution and punishing desenters socially should come naturally.

I honestly do not think this is how the majority of humans' thought processes work.

Punishing dissenters/defectors comes naturally, yes, but note that this behavior is only expected when the human in question can directly gain a personal benefit from doing so. Coordinating on a wider scale requires a bit more influence than merely "recognizing the usefulness of the solution."

There is not a lot of ambient sympathy for the main losers, guys who are sleeping with tons of women no strings attached or women using sex to get ahead.

This is true.

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

Conditional on the details, but based on the way I hear it talked about in this thread I think I would be.

Just sure the other gender wouldn't go for it?

Forget the other gender. All available data suggests my gender wouldn't go for it.

I mean, that's what I personally opted into. It's a good solution!

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia. Quite beyond sexual reasons (Asian women tend to be considered highly attractive by westerners as judged by eg response rate on dating sites) and cultural reasons (Asian cultures tend to be more family-oriented, with loyalty especially being highly prized), there’s simple market dynamics — a white guy in Vietnam or the Philippines or even Hong Kong has massively inflated Sexual Market Value.

Of course, the way to approach this is NOT to go via some skeezy online site, but rather to spend time in relevant country. If a single white dude saves up his money and vacation days, he can spend 6 weeks in the Philippines or Vietnam having a fun time, and if he does his research first, he can go to places where he’ll meet smart accomplished trendy young women rather than just bargirls, especially if he’s spent a few months acquiring rudiments of the relevant language. This can easily lead to relationships and marriage, and I know several “success stories” like this. Ideally, though, a single white guy would simply move out to the relevant region for a while — maybe a year — and conduct the matchmaking under a more relaxed timescale. The best life stage for this would be a gap year or similar, or just a career break. English language teaching is an obvious pathway here, but there are usually industry-specific routes too.

Finally, if you can’t bring yourself to leave your home country, you could just try spending more time in relevant foreign-origin communities. Take lessons in Malay or Vietnamese or Tagalog or Mandarin, get to know your local Asian restaurants and cafes, go to cultural events, etc.. Obviously, though, don’t be a creep about it — you’re going to these places to be in an environment where you’re hoping romantic interactions are more likely to occur spontaneously, rather than specifically going there to hit on women.

I’m not saying that white guys should give up on white women — some of my best friends are white women, and I’ve had lots of rewarding romantic relationships with them — but I do think Western gender relations are in a really toxic and fucked up place right now, and I’m surprised more men aren’t looking for more genteel and constructive alternatives.

Does it work for white guys or just white guys with citizenships in rich countries? How would you know a SEA woman isn't just looking to move to USA with man they are not really attracted to and then drop them once they have acquired citizenship? Hans/Nina Reiser.

How would you know a SEA woman isn't just looking to move to USA with man they are not really attracted to and then drop them once they have acquired citizenship? Hans/Nina Reiser.

Easily. Tell your beloved you decisively denounced America, renounced US citizenship and are ready to live with her in her home country for the rest of your life.

Getting a green card currently takes 12-18 months, and if it's through marriage to a US citizen it's conditional for two years on the marriage being bona fide. Getting full blown citizenship takes five on top of that. I'm not saying that US citizenship isn't a significant attraction for people from the developing world, but you'd very much have to be playing a long game, especially since you're presumably going to be having sex with a partner (and potentially having kids). Combine that with residual stigma around divorce in some SEA cultures and their tendency towards pragmatism around marriage (it's about building a family and shared financial platform, with sexual attraction relatively de-emphasised) and I think this risk is overblown. Sure, it happens sometimes, but most SEA women who partner up with American guys are going to be entering the marriage in good faith on the assumption they can make it work and build a better life for themselves, rather than intending to bail at the first opportunity.

Wealth gap between USA and, say, Philipines is immense.

Combine that with residual stigma around divorce in some SEA cultures and their tendency towards pragmatism around marriage

Oh, those women going to marry an American aren't average in their country

Though one should keep in mind the children of such a pairing. The hapa subreddit has famously a massive chip on their shoulder, oscillating between self loathing because their racist Asian mothers worshipping whiteness (and they are no blue eyed blonde Aryan) and their racist tall White fathers being disappointed (for being short chubby chinks).

https://old.reddit.com/r/hapas/

This would 100% work and probably lead to a happy relationship. I am a decent looking white guy. Realistically maybe a 6 or 7. In Asia it is not uncommon for me to get unsolicited complements about my appearance. This has literally never happened to me in the U.S. from anyone who wasn't a granny. And the looks I got from girls on the street... It was almost uncomfortable.

For white guys, you can probably add 2 or 3 points to your 10 scale appearance rating. Then factor in that the average woman is also 2 or 3 points higher than in the United States. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dating 9's.

I know appearance isn't everything but it gets you in the door. And the cards are massively stacked in your favor as a white guy in Asia.

Okay, that said, this isn't going to work and here's why. For someone to do this, it would require the man to be both a) fairly desperate and b) quite good at planning and achievement. I think the subset here is small. Probably the only group I can see fitting the bill are otherwise perfect guys who happen to be short.

For white guys, you can probably add 2 or 3 points to your 10 scale appearance rating. Then factor in that the average woman is also 2 or 3 points higher than in the United States. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dating 9's.

How much of this is just the relatively tiny rate of obesity? I have always felt Asian girls tend to have a higher median but smaller standard deviation in terms of attractiveness. Even here in the West I'll tend to date majority Asian girls, but it's more due to the fact that they're less likely to hit a hard disqualifying factor for a first date than due to an actual preference.

I'm trying to hard filter for single mothers, obesity, complete lack of career/life-seriousness and overly alt tattoos/piercings/whatnot. Those criteria knock out like 3-4% of Asian girls and like what feels like a majority of white women on the apps. Which I think also contributes to a lot of the 'Asian women are most favorable on dating apps' studies since I feel like a lot of men are going to be swiping similar to me (albeit probably not as hard on 3 & 4 but just as hard on 1 & 2) and Asian girls who are fundamentally ineligible tend to be a lot rarer.

How much of this is just the relatively tiny rate of obesity?

A large part of it. But Asian women are more feminine generally (smaller frames, more neotenic features, etc...) And after age 30, the hotness gap becomes a chasm because of reduced appearance of aging, lack of hideous tattoos, and less abuse of alcohol.

I agree that the differences are much larger at the 50th percentile than at the 90th percentile.

Okay, that said, this isn't going to work and here's why. For someone to do this, it would require the man to be both a) fairly desperate and b) quite good at planning and achievement.

Hmm, I could see another version, which is a guy who slacked/screwed around in his youth and early twenties, maybe fit the stoner stereotype, stayed relatively poor and unkempt, but is otherwise naturally attractive (tall), intelligent, and good impulse control (i.e. no criminality).

And gets into his late twenties and decides to go on an earnest course of self-improvement and gets his shit together. And as he's finally building his life up it makes more sense for him to try to snag a loyal foreign-born wife than to wait to build up enough wealth to compete for Western womens' attention.

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia

Cheaper, yes, but humidity, mosquitoes, diseases, increased poverty etc.

I’ll just throw my hat into the ring here and say I’m surprised that more sex-starved white guys aren’t looking overseas for partners, especially to East/Southeast Asia. Quite beyond sexual reasons (Asian women tend to be considered highly attractive by westerners as judged by eg response rate on dating sites) and cultural reasons (Asian cultures tend to be more family-oriented, with loyalty especially being highly prized), there’s simple market dynamics — a white guy in Vietnam or the Philippines or even Hong Kong has massively inflated Sexual Market Value

That's presumably why it's been tabooed. Any man who would say "Oh, I went to Asia to find a wife cause it wasn't working here" is...not going to be seen in a good light.

90 Day Fiance can't have helped, since it reveals some absolutely awful situations and power dynamics (as is expected for reality TV, but there is a basic point there).

Putting aside expense, wireheading and the basic neuroticism and anxiety as formidable deterrents, many or even most people care about how their social circle will react to their wife. That's its own barrier.

The other issue is that a lot of the benefits of 'traditional' women does not rest in one individual woman.

If you're not importing the whole family, your traditional SEA wife is going to have the same or a worse support system than your regular corn-syrup-fed one, so raising children will be tremendously stressful.

The other component of that issue is that the SEA women that choose to leave will be on the less-traditional side of SEA, otherwise they would not leave.

That should still put them on a better footing than the local women, but could also be worse, if they are 100% green card/golddiggers.

Or they have unrealistic expectations of life in the USA (thinking they'll be moving to Miami Beach or the Upper East Side or whatever sitcom/movie fantasy). Or they don't have unrealistic expectations and the USA are just as bad as they had the impression from their traditional village, and they hate being there.

If you're not specifically seeking a traditional woman, but just a woman that is able to stick to a marriage for longer than a local one, then probably some foreign college-educated, traveling-abroad one might be good enough.

The other option is the straight-off-the-boat, 1st generation English-speaker of the family, not completely disgusted by US norms but still retaining traditional upbringing and family nearby. It would take more effort to find and court these.

There's obviously a huge difference between "mail order bride" scenarios vs "I met this amazing Cambodian woman while I was on a surfing holiday and now we're married and she's doing her ADN at SUNY Albany". The latter carries - if anything - positive social weight among the professional managerial class.

I believe 'poor mail order bride' will be conflated with 'professional agentic SE Asian wife' for the same reason that 'possible sex trafficked victim' is conflated with escorts. Its gatekeeping of women's power in controlling men through their sexuality. If men are shamed into not accessing foreign wives then it keeps the value of western women sky high.

Seems to me that the only difference is whether or not you went surfing.

You do realize the effort and investment you've described so greatly exceeds what most people are capable of at 25, right? 6 weeks of vacation? On what planet does the average guy making $40k trying to work up to a position that makes 60k have that? Learning rudimentary foreign language skills? You're talking about something most people simply cannot do. Those with high enough IQs are probably better served just putting in OT at their current company and getting promoted. Use that money to snag a woman.

Teaching English in Korea/Japan is not unheard of, and it does sometimes let you snag a woman, but its mostly a thing only an option for higher status men anyways. Those countries don't let McDonalds workers have work visas.

I have spent an almost full year of my life, at 22, backpacking around in 6 countries. I have done this by keeping a part-time job (paying around 1k per month) for the last 1.5 years of my degree and saving my student loan money for travelling. Overall the whole thing cost me less than 10.000 euros. Stayed mostly at mid-cheap range hostels but also shared a house with some other backpackers and occasional Airbnb when the circumstances were favorable :). When things got too expensive I volunteered and hitchhiked until figuring out a path to less expensive places. I dated a ton of other backpackers and local girls, learned the language to quite a decent degree, and had the time of my life. All it took was 10k, and I wasn't even being too frugal. I met a TON of people doing similar things.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why every time someone mentions traveling around the world, there is this discussion of how difficult it is to spend some time in a $5k GDP per capita country as a $40k per year earning independent young Western guy? It is really, really, not unless if I am missing something fundamental here.

Its easy so long as you exist outside of the tourist ecosystem, which is verrrrrry hard for most people. Particularly we are talking about sub 100 IQ High school C students who don't have any foreign language skills, and will be very slow picking it up while there.

6 weeks of vacation? On what planet does the average guy making $40k trying to work up to a position that makes 60k have that?

This is actually easier if you're making less than 40k. It's very easy to find a shitty job so just quit and there'll be another equally shitty one available when you come back. I've got friends who have done this.

It's very easy to find a shitty job so just quit and there'll be another equally shitty one available when you come back. I've got friends who have done this.

For who? 100 IQ short guys? Are those your friends that did that? How'd they even afford the plane ticket?

I knew a short guy with about a ~110-120 IQ who got a job teaching English in Thailand. After spending a few years drowning in a pile of women, he met a sassy Thai woman who was a good match for his personality. They married young (I think he was about 25-27 when they got married) and he came over with her back to the West. They're still together.

110-120 IQ still means excluding some 60+% of men... This isn't as curative a proposition as you might think.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting that it is easy. Very little worthwhile in life is easy.

Easy is different than outside of a person's capabilities. I am talking about trying to help C students who graduated middle of the pack high schools, like the dozens of men I know from my very own middling high school.

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For who? 100 IQ short guys?

Some were short, some tall and handsome. 100 IQ sounds about right, maybe less.

How'd they even afford the plane ticket?

I'm not American so maybe it's different there, but it's not that hard to save up a few grand on minimum wage over the course of a year. If you're willing to work in a bar or something you can probably even find a job at your destination.

It is a very interesting idea and perspective. My problem with it is simply I look at my high school (different that most people here, although perhaps yours was similar, bottom 50% public school in the state, high hispanic population ~30%, no blacks really, a couple Indian families) and I very much see the problem described here. There were plenty of guys like me that went away to college and never returned. More girls than guys went to college, and thus also didn't return. The guys remaining either went military or some sort of low paying gig. Well, there are also the drug dealers. But the smarter, non college, non military, went into trades, mostly mechanics and carpentry. They seem fine. But its the ones that are more in the service sector that fall into the non-dating non-marriageable pool. They could probably save up enough money to quit and go abroad, but probably couldn't figure out how to obtain non-hotel/touristy housing, which would be necessary for an extended stay. Also, a 6 month gap on the resume would indicate to most of the employers that the guy went on a drug bender (which would be true for most instances) and they'd thus have to re-start at a super low rung with unstable hours. And I don't have much faith in them figuring out how to navigate the spousal visa process. Certainly hiring an attorney to help would also be a fairly extreme financial stretch.

Also, a 6 month gap on the resume would indicate to most of the employers that the guy went on a drug bender (which would be true for most instances)

This is not the case. I did 6 months travel in South America (no drugs) in my early 30's while in a very professional career with zero impact. My boss wished me well and my job was available on my return. Not the US though.

very professional career

That is the huge difference. The people I am talking about are your Amazon warehouse workers, doormen, marginal salesmen, stockers, etc. Basically those people who are in the "be a warm body" positions. There is a path for almost all these people to a decent living. You just need to keep at it, because, like I've seen with so many kids from my high school, your competition will lose ground by going on a bender and being chronically late and end up with a resume gap, which ends up being a full reset to your progression. If you just start at an Amazon warehouse at 18 and work straight through to 26, you will be making decent wages by then. And probably be a manager soon enough, hell, they will pay for your night class associates (and its not just Amazon, they basically followed the wal mart model with a twist). But you can't take 6 months off at any time during the buildup unless you are doing it at a college with knowledge from the bosses who want you to get a specific degree so the HR lady won't pester them when they promote a "high school educated white man" to manager at age 27 (the HR ladies being both racist and classicist in these ways).

Even in early trades you need to be super locked in because a lot are controlled by ludacris union rules, even in states where unions are officially optional. Basically, because so many people in your area fall into bad habits, to succeed you just need not to, but also APPEAR to not to. And a big resume gap looks like doing meth.

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Maybe I'm putting too much weight on my social experience here, but when I think of "guy who can't get a girl" I imagine someone making decent-but-not-great money in IT or business (say $45,000 a year) who's just a bit of an introverted loser. That kind of guy can definitely say "fuck it, I'm going to do a one month CELTA course and move to Manila", and if their lack of romantic success is the main source of pain in their life, they probably should.

I know those people as well, and frankly they are not nearly as bad off. Those are the guys who often need to realize they also are engaging in excessive expectations. They want to get girls by swiping right and taking her to an Applebees. But if you see the real real. The bottom 30% of the White/Hispanic males, theres nothing for them. They make their $15-22/hr, now typically at an Amazon warehouse or the like, and if they keep at it, they will move up slowly. But they really need to keep at it.

I think the proposal is entirely possible for a guy in his early 30's (and white western guys are unlikely to resort to a dedicated 'wife hunting' mission before then anyway).

I'll agree though that a lot of the suggestions in this thread won't work for all men, but its kind of 'save who you can' at the moment.

Perhaps. I still don't know many of the lower-half, unmarried, 30ish men that could take a 6 month break in the Philippines and not have to totally reroll their career dice. If we are looking for a doable solution at any scale, it would be some sort of correct application of refugee laws wherein we only accept women.

It definitely doesn't need to be 6 months, especially if you plan in advance and do your homework. My sister-in-law (Filipina) met her fiancé while he was on a 1-month surfing holiday in Siargao, and they connected and bonded and he came out to visit her a couple more times in the next 12 months, and now she's living in the Netherlands with him. She's also (I hasten to add) a very impressive woman in her own right, with graduate degrees from US and European universities, so their case isn't typical, but if anything that supports my case.

This Twitter thread has some good takes, but notice the catch: It assumes heterosexual monogamy.

I think it really might be that simple. You don’t need to force women back into the kitchen. You don’t need government-mandated gfs. You just have to enforce heterosexual monogamy (I am considering hook-ups and excessive serial monogamy to be forms of poly under this framework.)

just

Taking all this for granted, we "just" need a social revolution to make dating (and the serial monogamy it entails) as it is currently understood completely unacceptable.

If we could wave a magic wand I suppose. But I don't suppose there's a likely path from here to there.

You just have to enforce heterosexual monogamy (I am considering hook-ups and excessive serial monogamy to be forms of poly under this framework.)

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen. The normalization of trying to divine someone else's True Intentions by taking the worst possible interpretation of their words and then running with it has been disastrous for the human race, but preventing that also seems like one of those Very Hard things to do, if not outright impossible.

If we seriously wanted to do this it would realistically need to factor power and wealth into the degree of enforcement.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other you would have to treat a working class aspiring womanizer differently from a successful business owner banging his maid.

If you did that you could have memes around the idea that if you "make it someday" you can have all the sexual freedom/degeneracy that you want. The same way that you get blue collar workers to defend low maximum tax rates, because people like to delude themselves into thinking that they will be winners eventually. Even when there is no evidence to support that.

Naively trying to apply the same restrictive morality on all classes won't go anywhere though. There will always be another Epstein because there will always be demand for...that. So you better factor that into your considerations.

In the same way that crack and powdered cocaine were treated very differently for a long time due to different social strata using one substance over the other

As a complete aside: I keep seeing this story used as an illustration of subtle racism. White cocaine users get off scot-free, black crack users get the crackdown. But aren't poor crack users much, much, much more likely to be a general nuisance to their surroundings an engage in crime to get their fix? Someone who can afford to do cocaine probably doesn't need to rob the closest gas station to get his fix. Granted, the cocaine user might also be more likely to engage in financial fraud, but that seems at least not directly related to the drug.

This is correct, and in fact, black community leaders lobbied for the increased crack penalties, because the black crack users were primarily a menace to their own communities.

From WNYC:

What's less well-known is that early on, many African-American leaders championed those mandatory minimum sentences and other tough-on-crime policies. These efforts could be seen at the federal and state levels, as well as across black communities such as Harlem.

...

Barker and others argue that in the 1960s, residents of black neighborhoods felt constantly under threat from addicts and others associated with the drug trade, and their calls for increased safety measures resonated at community meetings, in the pages of black newspapers like 'The Amsterdam News,' and in churches.

Based on reading all the discussion in this thread, I don't think that "just" belongs there. It seems like one of those Very Hard things to accomplish, not least because any time someone tries to come up with suggestions on how to do that, lots of others accuse them of using that as camouflage for their actual desire of forcing women back into the kitchen.

Case in point: Jordan Peterson, who explicitly used "enforced monogamy" and was accused of basically wanting Islamotheocracy style restrictions.

I think he shot himself in the foot by using that term. I had never heard it before and my first impression was also that it was something extreme. 'Enforced' isn't a word that goes down well in today's liberal world.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution). I’m not sure exactly how much “enforcement” would be needed in practice. You don’t need to stamp out adultery entirely, you just need sufficient coercive or cultural pressure to force everyone interested in sex to pair up and have reasonable certainty who the parents of their children are.

There seems to be lots of historical precedent for heterosexual-monogamous cultures (not least of which the West before the sexual revolution).

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though? Also while satisfying some other constraints like keeping the current mostly-democratic government structure intact or gender equality (for however one chooses to interpret the term)? When the cat's out of the bag, the knowledge that it used to be in there at one point - and even intimate details about what that looked like - doesn't help us much in figuring out how to put it back in.

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

I always hear about the Weimar Republic being very decadent, did the Nazis manage to do it?

Sure, but do we have historical precedent for transitioning from a culture similar to the West now - i.e. post-sexual revolution - to a heterosexual-monogamous culture, though?

The fall of Rome?

Technological conditions too different. Industrial-scale manufacturing of synthetic hormone and fertility-control therapies change everything.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.

There are traps involved in the hard work ethic, you can justify a lot of pain for very little gain. I'm not bitter about it because I did learn some useful skills and it was good for my character, but a friend of mine who milked the welfare system for years while picking up multiple marketable skills has at last catapulted far beyond me in earning power (his work ethic was impressive in its own sense of course). It really does seem like 'learn a marketable skill by whatever means' is the path to success, hard work doesn't really pay off in shitty jobs where there are very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.

You only have to win once if you're looking for a wife!

pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility

What does this mean?

My friend runs a language exchange and while it's a great place to meet women and overcome awkwardness, he's got lots of stories about a particular type of guy who has a combination of awkardness and lack of humility that eventually leads to their banning from the group (and sometimes making threats to my friend afterward). The ego comes into play when they realise no one likes them and they try to save face by saying stuff like (real examples) "I'm a doctor/I'm a lawyer and I'll sue/I get laid all the time anyway (with prostitutes)".

Being awkard is fine, being persistent in overcoming it is good, refusing to take well-intentioned feedback from guys who are clearly more socially adept can be a bad move.

My interpretation of this was that it was a case of the man bitterly going on a misogynistic rant about women who don't appreciate his greatness and thus leading to being subject to social ostracization and/or bullying. I've seen this kind of thing happen from time to time in my online circles.

very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).

Honestly that's something I've increasingly noticed as I reach my late twenties and look at my friends.

Majority of whom have somewhat capped out in the first 3-4 rungs of their career where it's worker-centric & essentially an automatic promotion every couple years for just being technically proficient, and now it's way more of a patience/politics game to ascend managerial rungs. I managed to sidestep a lot of that via being super aggressive with company-switching + using some startups to get to a position of early seniority, but increasingly noticing my compatriots stalling out.

Although I think you are correct, I think your argument and anyone else making that argument is missing the point.

Successfully getting a woman has always been a numbers game, true. Our fathers might have had to try 50 times, we might have to try 100 times. This discrepancy is what needs to be dissected and analyzed. The man who would have given up at 57 tries would be shit out of luck nowadays. Individually sure, just try more, do everything more, divert more of your time and attention to becoming sexually attractive, yeah whatever. On a societal level it's a lot harder than that. At one point let that be 50,100,150,200 average trails, things become unsustainable because it just becomes too hard for the excess time, resources and loss of surplus/Dead weight loss (Effort post on this coming soon) to not leak into other domains of life/society. Least of all, if you were declared king, would you really want a plurality of your populace live lives of quite suffering? (I know, I know, male suffering doesn't count).

we might have to try 100 times

Far easier to do it at industrial scale these days, though. I managed to go on first dates with 50 different women last year in a mid-sized metro, all from the strength of polite conversation on an app. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of my forefathers wouldn't have met 50 'viable' women (Not that the majority of that 50 turned out to be viable after a first date) in a lifetime of living in a small agrarian village.

What % of those 50 were viable?

Of those who weren't, what were the common reasons?

I'd say 3 or 4 where I had instantaneous 'I would marry this woman' vibes, probably 15ish where I was like down for a second date. Still ticking with some of those.

I started from a pretty low place in terms of attractiveness so a lot of the early ones were just dealing with some combination of obesity, weak English skills (very multicultural society) or lack of a real lifepath which spaced them.

Jesus, I thought I was a man slut for dating (on average) a new woman every month before covid. Why did you hook up new dates when you found women you would marry? Pursue one of them! You might be married by now if you had slowed down a bit, they probably sensed you were playing the field!

First 30 or so were during a rapid weightloss/self-improvement phase and it was more about getting through dating anxiety through exposure therapy. Very few actual leads in there.

Still going with one or two of the strong vibe ones, but online dating people are super flaky.

Aha, well in that case well done! Very well done, I hope you are proud of yourself.

But this honestly just implies GREATER COMPETITION.

If it's easier to do it, more people are going to try and thus the red-queen-race effect is that everyone is putting in more effort, and yet is less likely to stand out.

It's not the kind of industrial scale that is producing more viable matches/relationships, it is apparently just forcing everyone to make more attempts for comparatively fewer results.

Now, if the apps were better at sorting people towards those they are likely to click with rather than trying to addict people to the dopamine hit of "maybe this next person is THE ONE" swiping, it'd be different. but maximizing throughput is not the same as improving everyone's odds.

True, and it's multi-faceted.

The girls I met who I was super-enthused about probably saw me as being towards the lower end of their prospects (assuming that attractiveness is the same for everybody), thereby creating a mismatch.

Like if I'm a Male 6/10 who's getting normally distributed dates at an average of say a Female 4.5/10 (since inherent gender gap), I'm gonna look like a great prospect to my 3/10's who I'm not gonna want and I'm gonna see the fellow occasional 6/10 as a great lead but not get the same enthusiasm in return since their dating range will have some 8/10's.

Makes me wonder if the solution is to ban apps which rely on self selection and mass exposure to all other users.

And get the guys who design the trading engines for major stock exchanges to set up apps that are solely designed to match people of similar 'market value' and completely exclude users from even seeing others' profiles where the mismatch/price spread is too great, so people are only getting matched with those who are similarly 'priced' and thus actually willing to 'trade' for a dating relationship with that person.

This is a function that matchmakers perform, but that's usually expensive and doesn't scale as well.

I think the issue is the intergender mismatch and the casual sex thing that stops direct alignment.

If you talk to women in their 20s you’ll learn that a chunk of them go on dates and expect a relationship with a man who has no intention of having one. This is because of social media induced higher standards, hyper-competitive labor market induced higher standards, the decline in slut shaming, and last but not least dating apps.

The solution (shaming, destroying feed-based social media, destroying dating apps, destroying female empowerment) would require a decade or more to see changes. The best thing an unattractive low income American man can do is simply find a foreign wife. Foreign wives have thousands of years of history and have birthed such great nations as Iceland. I’m not a fan of gender war terms, but American women are looking at pure stats when choosing a partner. There’s no reason why American men shouldn’t look at the pure stats when choosing a partner and pick a bilingual foreign woman with a low number of sexual partners.

The hard truth is that you have no chance of healing America’s problems in your lifetime. Simply do what is in your best interest. If you really have a low chance of finding an American wife, then look for a European, Argentinian, Brazilian, Chinese, Filipina, whatever chick who is interested in Americans. They will certainly be more conservative, thinner, less stressed than American women and your kids will be bilingual. Personally I would look for European, Argentinian, Uruguayan first.

My personal experience (Australian) is that those women aren't really seeking a committed relationship either. The key word here is actually 'committed'. Because sure, some of these women might be looking for a relationship, and fewer still even a long-term one, but they are in no way committing or planning to commit to them ('settling down'). They view these relationships as purely transitory, even if they don't articulate it.

To be fair, my experience is specifically talking about middle-to-upper middle class professional working young women (20s). But these are exactly the kind of women driving this social trend. These women aren't looking for commitment or wanting to commit, they are too busy progressing their careers, living a hedonistic lifestyle of partying, casual sex and frivolous spending, or some combination of both. Commitment and ultimately marriage and family is just some abstract thing for to worry about when they're older, after they've established themselves as a strong independant woman. When they hit 30 or even 35, that's when they'll start worrying about commitment. It's something you can postpone indefinitely with no consequences, right? That's if they choose to commit at all. Much time and effort has been spent convincing young women that effectively becoming an spinster is totally fine and even desirable, and won't make them miserable in the long run.

Same market for me and I feel like they tend to pivot a bit in the late twenties.

Combination of declining SMV, job progression starting to slow down from the kinda-automatic boost every 18 months/2 years and sudden realization of biological window. Nonetheless the whole 'I'll be married with kids in 5 years' thing ad infinitum is a thing.

Foreign wives have thousands of years of history and have birthed such great nations as Iceland.

Are you referring to the Celtic slaves the Norse brought with them during the settlement period? (My country doesn't get brought up much here, so I feel compelled to talk about this)

This is a hotly contested subject in Iceland. It's definitely true that a lot of Celtic women contributed to the gene pool during the settlement era (estimates as far as percentages go are all over the place), but the flow of Celts to Iceland had pretty much completely stopped by the end of the 10th century and Iceland spent the next ~800 years in desperate squalor that regularly shocked foreign visitors.

I really appreciate the creativity of this solution, and honestly seems like a great solution for anyone who wants to try it. Do you think that a significant proportion of American men could benefit from it?

I’ve had this strategy recommended to me before. Tbh it feels… gross? wrong? A very “rejected by his own people” vibe. I guess it beats dying alone though.

Do you think that a significant proportion of American men could benefit from it?

You’ve been here long enough, you should be able to come up with 10 NYT headlines that would shut this whole thing down if it ever gained traction.

You’ve been here long enough, you should be able to come up with 10 NYT headlines that would shut this whole thing down if it ever gained traction.

Has an NYT headline ever shut anything down? In the internet age it's through the goose by the time the NYT reports on it: it's already been spawned on some chan or other, formed a tightly knit subreddit with 10,000 members, been denounced on Twitter, thinkpieced on various Substacks, reacted to by Slate. Only then does the Grey Lady deign to report on the "controversy surrounding" the group.

Having read the Vows section most Sundays for a while, by which I mean that some member of my family reads it and shouts the highlights at me while I read the Book Review, the NYT prints praise heavy portraits of un-woke marriages all the time. Whether it is old-man young-woman, or rich old man met partner at work, or two men who met when one was the other's TA at Brown, or whatever. It's one of the few really trad places left: if you put a ring on her finger, it is fine. Forgives all sins.

If these commitment-phile men exist, and marry these women, and live great lives together, there will be no problem. No backlash.

Tbh it feels… gross? wrong? A very “rejected by his own people” vibe.

That's interesting to me. What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

I've dated girls who immigrated from foreign countries, sticking the ladle right into the barrel isn't really "gross."

That’s because nobody cares about anyone’s individual marriage. Once the late 30s professional middle manager girl bosses start looking to settle down and realize the demographic of men they were hoping to fall back on as a last resort are all getting mail-order brides from the Philippines or something, now it’s a social problem, and subject to the editorial control of the “opinion” or “living” or “politics” section.

What do you define as "your people?" Someone of your social class? Someone of your race? Religion?

Honestly, more than any of these, it’s the accent. I can’t take anyone who doesn’t have a General American or upper-class English accent completely seriously.

Interesting. I've found whenever I fall for a foreigner, the accent starts to become cute, because it's theirs. Really for anyone, although it might not work for truly shitty accents like Australian or New Jersey.

So the man has no intention of a relationship, and it’s the woman’s fault? How does that work?

Because she picked badly. Plenty of men who would be happy with a long term relationship with her exist, she just has to date 2 SMV points down, this is completely in her power (not guaranteed, but nothing in life is). The fact that she continues trying to get those above her is totally on her, and the outcome of this is predictable.

Now you can blame the state of society that leads to men playing the field, but you can equally blame the state of society that leads to women's inflated expectations, however doing the latter gets you labelled an incel and the argument dismissed, so lets do the same with the former please.

A 28yo man with an excellent job, a wealthy nest egg, and a reasonable attractiveness and personality is an amazing catch for girls 18-38. If he has no intention of starting a family until 32, he can have a harem of women who are also intelligent and relatively successful. These women should know that they have no chance with him, and that it’s male nature to have as many women as possible. For some reason, most likely a glitch in the female brain that society used to remedy with expectations/shame, this doesn’t happen.

I find the “gender war” angle boring and unfruitful. We can think beyond culpability. The current setup simply doesn’t work from the standpoint of human nature and incentive. So a low income earner who is a dim prospect should simply find someone out of America, because there’s high odds his “stats matched” partner is being used by someone else or otherwise lacks the ability to discern her true level of sexual worth

Namely : Bay Area & Seattle

Y'all are out here talking about how west coast men have to find a way to spend a year overseas to get a wife, but you won't leave your leftist enclave for another city in the same country? This thread is crazy.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a bunch of San Franciscans emigrating en masse to SEC school towns and stealing a ton of high-quality women. But this is a huge fucking country with a wide variety of sexual markets that don't require learning a new language or risking a loveless marriage with weird power dynamics.

You can grab an incredible woman in the south if you have a reasonable BMI and can avoid just talking about AI and social justice at parties.

Tech-bros, Finance-bros and Consulting-bros are hated across the board

Having made my nest egg/fortunate through working in Gambling, I'd love to be a consulting bro. I got fortunate when my corporate structure shifted sufficiently that I became 'Head Consultant at (Minor consultancy that works exclusively with gambling companies)' versus 'Head of Department at Betbet'.

So the only men that these women consider worth dating are therefore unicorns (celebrities who won the lottery) or people who grew up in wealth. The only way to be successful, have time & hobbies in your 20s is to have your success handed to you.

Anecdotally, this is completely untrue. It is possible to climb in social status / financial status still, albeit perhaps harder than in the past.

If any young men are curious, just go into sales. You make a lot of money, don't have to deal with bullshit if you're competent, and learn social skills from your job.

Again, I live in Seattle. Outside of maybe a fringe group of people who work in Amazon/Microsoft/etc. who have various issues, I don't actually see this at all. When I go to Tacoma, Federal Way, Everett, etc,. ya' know what I see? Adults on dates, in relationships, etc. People are mostly within the same range of attractiveness and age. I mean, I also see this in Seattle, but I'm making a point that even in a tech hub like Seattle, only a pretty small percentage of people actually work at those tech hub jobs.

Obviously, I'm not saying it's perfect out there, but if you honestly have a six-figure job at Amazon/Microsoft/etc. and can't get laid, it's a you problem, not a problem with all the terrible women who only want 40 year old doctors or whatever.

Also avoid SF/Bay Area. In SF we have "49s" - 4s that think they are 9s. Same situation as Seattle I assume, the gender imbalance is a big aspect of this.

But when the world is one fire

I realize this is a typo that was likely supposed to be "on fire," but "the world is one fire" sounds like a pithy metaphor for American-led globalization. And maybe also a catchy pop anthem from the 90's that never existed.

Surprisingly, the best men and women with values are all taken before they graduate college. I know quite a lot of 8/10+ men and women who are well adjusted. All of them are in long term relationships since before they graduated. The ones that did break-up for different reasons did not stay single for too long and were set up with someone in their circle super quickly.

This is a KEY factor that I think gets ignored because it's simply not 'noticeable.'

Attractive, well-adjusted, career AND family-oriented people are already somewhat rare on the population level (not rare within certain social circles), and they're thus even rarer in the general dating pool because they won't spend much time seeking dates, and they will tend to stay with existing partners for long periods of time.

Arguably the very definition of "well-adjusted" and "stable," respectively implies someone who has ease seeking and maintaining relationships, including romantic ones.

So if you are seeking stable and well-adjusted you're somewhat thwarted if you can't catch one during the brief window in which they're available and looking. You can go the route of being patient and persistent, but that simply exposes you to the rest of the dating pool for a long time.

And since most of them pair off early, it is entirely possible that one can go through many dates and not ever encounter one, which will then feed into one's perception of the general availability of decent partners.

All of them are in long term relationships since before they graduated.

I think this is something that doesn't get brought up enough. Despite all the apps and the changes in urban dating, for men around here the best best is to go to a college that has significantly more women than men (which is most of them) and make it known that you are looking for a permanent relationship right now. If you spend your early 20s playing the field, you are more likely to be alone at 30.

Obviously, this isn't good advice for people who aren't going to college for whatever reason, but it seems like the guys around here are very interested in min/maxing their career odds by picking the right school and degree, but ignore their actual life plan and end up with a successful career and single.

If you go to a school that fits your personality, you will probably find women that fit your personality. I went to a Catholic liberal arts school (65% female) met a bunch of very nice girls looking for serious relationships, got into a serious relationship, and was married before 25. Moreover, 5 of my 7 brothers did the same thing (excepting the current sophomore and the one with severe developmental challenges who will never live independently).

Admittedly, this may negatively impact your perfect career path. Your earnings potential might be lower if you pick a school based on the likelihood you will find a mate there. You probably won't get to the US Senate or become the founder of a unicorn startup by picking a school like that, but most people who go to MIT won't do either of those things either. But you have a much better chance of living your life happily married.

Notice how every common pathway for a man to achieve wealth at 28 is demonized.

In online rhetoric. But I think you'd need to show that revealed preference also backs this up and it isn't all just kayfabe.

If the women are “intelligent and relatively successful,” were they ever really in the dim prospect’s league? If not, why does the elite man bother with them?

This theory rests on a separation of marriage and sexual market value. Women are correctly assessing their sexual value, but incorrectly using it as a proxy for marriage value, which makes shaming a terrible solution. You’d need to break that expectation.

@FiveHourMarathon notes that the historical method was the threat of a shotgun wedding, effectively reducing sexual market value—by reducing demand, not increasing supply. Sexual value was brought more in line with marriage value. Shaming, on the other hand, is effectively subsidizing men, letting them pay less. That’s a bad policy and doesn’t address the gap between the two values.

Looking for foreign women is a sound strategy. It’s accessing a much larger supply; of course that will lower the clearing price.

“Elite” men will bother with any woman 6/10 or up, because sex is especially enjoyable when novel. This is like asking why the Sultan bothered with a haram when three of his wives were already hot.

Shaming is a solution because the fear of shame prevents the attempt at promiscuity to secure a higher value man they’ve deluded themselves into believing would settle. If the only way to get sex is through longterm relationship or marriage, and not through throwing your body at someone who isn’t actually going to settle, then promiscuity is reduced. It’s not as if in India, women don’t believe that they can get a better man than their husband; it’s that they can’t in actuality, and they are horny and just want a family. In other words if you stopped shaming women in India, many of them would do the same thing as in America: giving their body to men they have a low chance of securing, before realizing that time is quickly running out and their dating prospects are now worsened from lost time.

Dating apps have likely increased the self-valuation of women because of course the wealthy attractive guy will humor you until you intercourse. The problem I think is that it’s harder to go back to men in your league after such events, just like it’s harder to go back to natural bread after eating sugary white bread for years.

bothered with a haram

Haram marketing vs. reality

https://imgur.io/gallery/4ok52

This dude was able to make his nation provide women in line with his weird obscure fetish and you think that's a point against the novel haram theory.

Or these were 'left overs' and he was fulfilling a duty to his people.

I feel like the beauty standards/preferences of a specific ruler in a specific place doesn't mean he wasn't capable of securing the closest thing to Western attractive women he could have got in his time and place, if that was his thing.

These women should know that they have no chance with him, and that it’s male nature to have as many women as possible.

Why should they know that? They'll almost certainly find someone to settle with in the end, no? From a purely selfish perspective, aren't they winning?

If we're not adopting a purely selfish perspective, why isn't the man's nature equally up for criticism? If it's male nature to try for maximum partners, isn't it equally female nature to try to maximize mate quality to the exclusion of all else? Aren't both sides of the equation simply following their nature? If we are dissatisfied with this outcome, why claim it's one side or the other at fault? Both men and women need to rise above their instincts. Men need to drop their desire for maximal promiscuity, women need to drop their desire for maximal mate quality. This can and is done, in social contexts where people put effort into leashing their selfish desires. But of course, that's not what the modern world is generally looking for.

From a purely selfish perspective, aren't they winning?

No? They've tricked themselves into spending their more valuable courtship years in a failed effort. The number of women who enter a relationship with a Chad and genuinely don't care that its going to end in a few months or years when he ends up with the homecoming queen is approximately zero.

It’s unlikely that they will find someone to settle down with. Human behavior is notoriously resilient to actually determining what is best. The number of childless women in their 30s is increasing.

The reason we should say it is more of a female fault is that only female behavior can really be modified in this way. Female promiscuity is what has been shamed in every single past civilization because that works. You can’t shame a bachelor for being promiscuous; I mean you can try and he will just ignore it because women are better than shame. But every Muslim and Hindu and traditional Mormon family knows you can shame a woman and that it will work. Nothing short of excommunication from civilization will make a man not screw as many women as possible. But for women? Literally just the smallest amount of shame and reputational damage. That’s it. From a practical standpoint, it is a “how we treat women” problem.

In all of those societies seducing a fellow member’s virgin daughter is a very serious offense, though.

... haven't traditional societies been "shaming male promiscuity" in various forms for millennia, successfully? Not eliminating, but significantly reducing. Mormon men aren't fucking every modern woman they come across.

Do modern women find Mormon men attractive? Women are the fundamental gatekeepers of sex in the vast majority of cases.

You don't have to tell a one night stand you're Mormon though

Elaborating the hypothetical - If male sexuality was truly unrestrainable, and all men, no matter social conditioning, will fuck whatever they can ... all mormon men could just hop on tinder, not say they're mormon, and try to have sex with 'modern women'. And while that happens, it isn't universal - a solid fraction of seriously traditionally religious men take their religion's moral code seriously, and make good efforts at 'no sex until marriage', and some succeed. And it's hard to separate 'universal social shame' from 'genuinely held moral beliefs', but the former probably plays a part (compare to catholic guilt, puritans, etc).

OP: Nothing short of excommunication from civilization will make a man not screw as many women as possible

I know several christians who, on account of genuine belief, save sex for marriage / committed relationships. They aren't threatened with excommunication. Generally, the idea that shame / social pressure don't affect men seems ridiculous.

You can’t shame a bachelor for being promiscuous; I mean you can try and he will just ignore it because women are better than shame.

Sure, but you can use the threat of violence. The primary method of keeping men in line historically hasn't been shame, it's been puttin' the shotgun in shotgun wedding. If we're looking for policies to implement: legalize violence against men who "tamper" with your woman. Whether that is adulterous partners, boys sniffing around your daughter, etc.

If we're looking for policies to implement: legalize violence against men who "tamper" with your woman.

Problem is that this was dismantled purely on the grounds that it was bad...for women (being the definition of patronizing). Now, if you try to bring it back, you'll have to find some way of getting women to accept guardianship.

Which would not only go back towards likely having to shame and constrain women (or else why would they think it necessary?), it just seems functionally impossible in the West.

(There is an argument too that its less relevant for women: they've/we've constructed new guardian institutions that appear to not make the same onerous demands as patriarchs like: HR departments, Title IX courts)

The Stand Your Ground Against Sex Abuse Act protects parents who reasonably believe their daughter has been a victim of statutory rape from charges of assault, etc. The age of the accused is not a defense, as the parent might not reasonably be aware of it; as long as sexual contact has occurred the parent is protected from prosecution.

The Jacob Blake* Domestic Relations Law protects husbands who attack men who are sleeping with their wives or committed girlfriends. It is unreasonable to expect men not to, and too many Black and Brown men have been imprisoned for following their cultural instincts. Defendants can offer evidence that they were in a committed relationship at the time of the crime, and use it as a defense to Assault/Murder etc.

(There is an argument too that its less relevant for women: they've/we've constructed new guardian institutions that appear to not make the same onerous demands as patriarchs like: HR departments, Title IX courts)

I don't really find those relevant. Our goal isn't really to protect women, it is to punish defecting men. The original claim was that it wasn't possible to shame men into marriage, I'm saying it is possible to force them to behave by violence.

*Only vaguely and incorrectly related, but hey who's gonna remember the facts!

If your plan for reducing obesity is for everyone to "rise above their instincts" and just eat less, people will still be fat. Though these parts are critical of the most prominent example of a "systemic" issue (racism), there is something to the idea of the system being to blame. Even the idea that our instincts, which have served us well up to this juncture, are to blame is suspect. Instincts are lindy; smartphones, and many other things, are not.

If your plan for reducing obesity is for everyone to "rise above their instincts" and just eat less, people will still be fat.

If the plan is everyone rising above their instincts as an atomic individual, purely on their own effort, sure. If the plan is deciding what outcomes we want, and then structuring our social system to punish the bad and encourage the good, as every society always does, then no, I think you can absolutely rise above instinctive outcomes. That means compromising individual freedom, though, so people don't want to do it.

We get what we incentivize, whether it's obesity or promiscuity.

We agree. I just wouldn't say your latter proposal is properly described as "rising above instinct."

If you talk to women in their 20s you’ll learn that a chunk of them go on dates and expect a relationship with a man who has no intention of having one. This is because of social media induced higher standards, hyper-competitive labor market induced higher standards, the decline in slut shaming, and last but not least dating apps.

Despite how much Millennials and Zoomers make fun of Cold War suburban "keeping up with the Jones'" standards chasing, widespread social media adoption seems to have driven the trend to eleven. Sure, the material aesthetic is somewhat different -- less quintessentially suburban -- but the rampant self-comparison to "influencers" who are often quasi-professionals at producing Instagram vibes certainly goes beyond healthy role models in many cases.

The top level post is about young women dating older men, instead of men of their own age.

You're proposing a solution to increasing birthrates. Considering older men are capable of impregnating younger women, I don't understand how this is related.

Could you explain how you landed here? I feel like I missed a transition.

But the political demand for this is hugely negative. The ones with current cultural power are either too old to have more children or are plugged into low-fertility norms, so it’s like pulling teeth to modestly expand parent tax credits. Your tax on careerist single women, you know, the ones with nothing better to do with their time than engage with luxury brands and girlboss feminism, would force them to do way more of the latter. What real stakeholders would back this plan for more than a few seconds?

That has to coexist with a moral / aesthetic desire for more children though, certainly among the 'elites' implementing the restrictions, but it'd help a lot for everyone. And incentives should extend to 4-5 children somehow, the 'marginal cost' to incentivize the least interested in children to have 2 is definitely higher than to incentivize those most interested in having 4.

Cultural factors here get weird, and this doesn't target the overall birth rate, but what about paying 'normal' women something like $5-10k per child with sperm donated from extremely-high-achievers (like, top physicists or executives or artists or w/e)? Or very large amounts like $50-100k to surrogate, and then raise, the children of two high-achievers? (Decade? out technologies like thousands-of-loci human gene editing / whole-genome synthesis, plus existing GWAS info gives something like "mental genes of random-mix-of-high-achievers, physical appearance (and maybe ""personality"") genes of raising parents, which would help with the cultural bits). Could be limited to two-parent households, or start with infertile couples, and uptake would (absent significant 'stick' or cultural shift) be pretty low, but the benefit's high - and whatever the social or individual cost of single parent households is surely dwarfed by loading the genetic dice. And ofc randomness, regression to the mean means famous mathematician / successful female exec children are still very unlikely to be famous mathematicians, but they'll still be much more economically useful, and personally benefit from the intelligence.

gwern had an interesting post on the economics of different eugenics methods; embryo selection is the most practicable in the short and medium term, and possibly net positive today depending on the estimate of an IQ point's economic value and discount rates.

If AI fizzles out one way or another, it's one of the less appreciated levers we have to improve the world.

Well, political/cultural and physical practicality are two different things! Non-iterated embryo selection, already done today (but not for IQ), is definitely less effective (for IQ or similar) than "be a surrogate/hire a surrogate for two extreme outlier parents" and i'm pretty sure less effective than "normal egg + donated sperm from one extreme outlier", and the latter has been doable for centuries! (And sorta is already done with sperm donation, but "college / graduate educated" is much much coarser than 'extreme outlier in iq/achievement'). But most people want kids who "are really their kids" and look like them, so embryo selection is better for that.

... for an infertile couple/lesbian couple who wants to adopt, this might already be both physically and culturally viable, if you can find willing donors?

Wow that’s quite a big stick. Surely we don’t need that much?

Yeah, OP's solution to {problem} just boils down to "make problems illegal, or more charitably unfeasible", which can be the default answer to any problem if you are sufficiently authoritarian. To be fair that might be the only thing solution that will "fix" the problem, not to sure about how likely it is to be implemented or not have other nth order effects, but constraints are for dummies anyways.

Sometimes, "make problem illegal" is plainly pointless, no king can keep the tide back (or can they?). Other times, it's possible, if those with power intend it - if your choices were 'have four children' or 'imprisoned by neostasi', you'd pick the former. And strong social coercion to have children is historically plausible, as is "authoritiarianism" generally, so given a significant change in the morals of the elite and population, something like the above isn't inconceivable overall, even if it is in the present moment. It's suggesting that, maybe, people should be receptive to that kind of policy, when they obviously aren't now.

It's at least a concrete plan that would plausibly work, instead of endless ineffectual kvetching about the gender war.

Anyone can come up with an overtly authoritarian plan with no regard to feasibility or worse nth order effects, it doesn't take much creativity to suggest "make problem illegal". That's more of my gripe with such proposals.

They are certainly popular because at least something is being put forward and "doing something about it" is a winning move in many domains; E.g We certainly did something about covid, that's for sure, who cares if the cure is worse than the disease?

@DaseindustriesLtd proposal for example, aims to attain the same goal but is more thoughtfully crafted, aware of its shortcomings, aware of its constraints and just around more feasible/effective in the ways that would matter. OP even cites the same comment but ends up being a low-rung parody of it. Maybe I am being too harsh and am discussing things out of my depth but it certainly seems as much to me that @2rafa went on a diatribe about TFR when the parent post doesn't even mention it. (My model of the discussion is that the male disenfranchisement issue is a superset of the TFR issue, not the other way around.)

Needs are always for something - it clearly isn't necessary for preserving society, and AI makes it less relevant, but if "raise birthrates by 50%+" is important enough, would anything else work?

Even just a mild use of the stick could probably push things back over 2.1 but any negative incentives seem verboten, not just for this but in general.

Of all the debates on here but HBD, this is the one that tires me the most, because no matter the conclusions, there is no solution that powerful and culturally-dominant societies are willing to accept.

The sexual marketplace is Moloch's little bitch. Women control access to reproduction. As long as women control access to reproduction, they gain power by withholding it. A man acts, a woman chooses. Q.E.D.: it's in the interest of women to withhold it to their own benefit for as long as possible (what if a better mate comes along?) while the world feeds them a constant parade of men to swipe left on. Sufficiently large network effects mean that this, at scale, will mean that reproductive access is limited to a smaller and smaller % of the populace.

There's no fixing this in ways that the currently dominant social and cultural paradigm will accept. How can you, when women can actively weaponize men against other men with nothing but the mere promise of access to reproduction?

There's nothing left to debate. At the rate things are going, either find a first world society someplace where TFR is above replacement so we can isolate the factors responsible, attempt some solution sufficiently alien the memeplex doesn't recognize it as a threat to women's autonomy, agency, education or power, or get women to actively seek reproduction with males they consider low status.

I consider freely available access to cold fusion, FTL, and entropy an easier nut to crack than the latter.

Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, and Israel are the industrialized countries that have spent significant amounts of time at above replacement fertility in the recent past.

Argentina and Mexico are not really first world societies. Turkey and Israel both use fairly oppressive religions to control women's reproductive behavior.

Argentina and Mexico are both industrialized middle income societies, and in Argentina’s case was an upper income society fairly recently. In the specific case of Mexico the idea that the fertility advantage is all peasant farmers in the third world states in the far south is militated against by the declining incidence of the Mongolian spot in Mexican hospitals, which absent outside immigration from Europe indicates a higher white(that is, the Mexicans most likely to be exposed to the industrial economy, as opposed to those southern subsistence farmers) birthrate. It’s plausible that relatively high religiosity coupled with very strong remnants of the actual patriarchy is the reason for this fertility advantage, but not anything I have more than anecdotal evidence for.

I’m not well versed on the details of Turkish or Israeli religiosity, but if what you’re saying is true, that’s more or less 3/4 examples where patriarchal religion is the reason for higher than average fertility- Argentina’s is driven by a crazy-high teen pregnancy rate.

I can't produce stats right now but at this point Turkish fertility rates are about to go (or already gone) below replacement, and a large chunk of this is actually the rural Kurdish population. On the positive side, we are at these rates with virtually no teenage pregnancies or out of wedlock births. On the negative side, in the next decade we will almost definitely be dipping obviously below replacement level and in my lifetime the country might become half-half Kurdish.

Women control access to reproduction.

This is oversimplified.

Women tend to control access to sex: most men are more willing to screw a wider range of women than women are willing to screw men.

Men tend to control access to commitment: most men are more attracted by the idea of avoiding being tied down (figuratively, not literally). One of the more absurd things I see in these discussions is the notion that men are desperate to get married, have a lot of kids, and have said wife/kids impressing demands on these men's precious time. It's like when Chat GPT suggests "MOAR feminism!" as a solution for low birth rates: it's going against what I thought was basic knowledge about male/female psychological differences in humans, which has been deeply ingrained in our cultures since before the invention of writing.

Perhaps the "men are frustrated in their efforts to get tied down to a life of changing nappies and sleeping with just one woman" online memes comes from incels who think that, if only they had the chance, they'd be women's Perfect Partner, as in Futurama: "My favourite things are commitment and changing myself." "Does that robot have a brother?". However, most nerdy guys I know who suddenly started getting laid easily - myself included - played the field, like a normal guy in that position. Then, as naturally tends to happen, they found a woman that they wanted to sleep with repeatedly, developed an emotional bond, and married. I suspect that this is healthier than both the man and the woman being keen on commitment: just as sexual romance needs a partner to be seduced, marriage needs at least one partner to need to be (non-verbally) persuaded that a long-term commitment makes sense. After all, commitment is good for the economy:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7ADncN9HIa4

I donno... maybe I'm simple but most of the guys I knew weren't really excited to play the field, but it more came of necessity. They wanted a woman they could settle down with, but most of the women they'd meet were deranged. Entitled, controlling want beasts that demand all the say and none of the responsibility. Our path through our 20's and 30's towards marriage was a process of getting worn down by the realization that yes, all women are like this. Between the 6 of us, and the 30 or so long term relationships we've all had, it's been a constant. The women feel entitled to make outrageous, thoughtless demands, and throw full blown adult temper tantrums to get their way. Up to and including claims that we don't love them, some other partner of someone they saw on Facebook did it, they don't want to be in a relationship anymore, their friends all think we're terrible, etc, etc, etc.

Eventually we met women who seemed marginally less deranged than the mean we'd all collectively encountered, and got on white knuckling it through life because we wanted kids. I think the guy I knew who has it best (near as I can tell) went hardcore Christian. Like, the man is the indisputable head of the household style Christianity. I'm not sure it's stopped the relentless want beasting directed at him. But it's given him more backbone and moral authority to stand up for himself.

Well... about half of us did. The other half just couldn't take it any more and dropped out.

Sorry to pile on, but I dated pretty extensively in my teens and twenties. Out of the ~20 women I was involved with in some way, I'd say maybe 4 of them fit the definition of "deranged" and I only actually committed to one of those.

As @Harlequin5942 pointed out, not being a mark was key. My philosophy was always to treat anyone I was with (regardless of the scope of the relationship or quality of the woman) super well, but if there was a hint of disrespect or psychosis, I was out.

I’m sorry that you had to go through that, and depressed that it’s colored your opinion of all women.

I mean, the stats bear out the 'opinion of all women.' It's not hard to justify the opinion itself with reliable data.

I think you're more depressed that this is what an appreciable segment of women are like, and he's noticed it.

all women are like this.

They really aren't. I'd say many or even most women prefer a man who takes charge. And entitlement is much less of a problem if you aren't dating U.S. born white women.

I'd say many or even most women prefer a man who takes charge.

So why is the constant social/cultural/media message, across virtually every mainstream channel, that men need to step aside, elevate women, defer to female input, and basically give women every single advantage so they can 'level the playing field' that was made unequal due to years of patriarchal control?

You're basically suggesting that women want some form of patriarchy, despite it being a literal governmental policy to attempt to dismantle said patriarchy.

Square the circle for me. Why are women, especially the college educated ones, voting for policies that make women less dependent on men and further remove authority for men if they prefer a man who takes charge?

Why wasn't Donald Trump re-elected on a wave of female approval?

Presumably because what people want, what they say they want, and what they vote for are all different things. Why do feminists sleep with Chads and not the sensitive nice guys?

Square the circle for me. Why are women, especially the college educated ones, voting for policies that make women less dependent on men and further remove authority for men if they prefer a man who takes charge?

Being dependent on men in general is very different from being dependent on one particular man the woman has vetted.

I can grant that.

But the net result of making it harder for men to act as authority figures in general is to make it simultaneously harder for them to act as authority figures for a specific person.

So basically, if women want to make themselves independent of "males" so they're free to choose which male they want to depend on, it is fair to ask how that's working out for them.

I mean, dating preferences and politics aren't things you would necessarily expect to have a one-to-one correlation in. And both of these fields are basically filled with self deception to the point that that's the norm rather than the exception, so when you've got lies stacked up on top of lies, a square circle is entirely expected.

But to humor the question for a bit, I've heard an explanation that the type of anti-patriarchy politics you see are a sort of society-wide "shit test." The idea being that, if you fully immerse society in the anti-patriarchy message, then the only men who will be dominant are the ones who are so dominant that they refuse to submit to those messages. Thus it becomes easier for women to discriminate between dominant and non-dominant men, with the latter type of men having to face higher barriers if they want to fake being the former. It's a win-win for women, because besides the emancipation/extra power gained from reducing the patriarchy, they also only get hit on by men who are more likely to be actually attractive.

The possible obvious pitfall is that there are only so many Truly Dominant men around, so most women end up unable to pair with one of them, instead being another notch on their bed stands during their younger years before having to settle for a substantially less dominant and thus less attractive man or just singlehood. And if the anti-patriarchy messaging was strong enough, that substantially less could be substantially less.

Like most such simple theories, there's probably a grain of truth and a lot of convincing-sounding just-so stories to it. At the least, none of this seems at all intentional or coordinated, and it's mostly an emergent phenomenon from the aforementioned stacking of lies upon lies that leaves everyone confused, is my guess.

I can agree with much of this.

I've heard an explanation that the type of anti-patriarchy politics you see are a sort of society-wide "shit test." The idea being that, if you fully immerse society in the anti-patriarchy message, then the only men who will be dominant are the ones who are so dominant that they refuse to submit to those messages.

As you stated, there may be a grain of truth to this. But it's one of those things that might be workable in a small tribe or otherwise tight-knit community where the whole society willingly recognizes the dominant males and affords them authority.

Probably something that, when scaled up to a sizeable nation state, ends up leading he massive population of 'less dominant' males to defect in hopes of improving their own social position, and the relatively small, and vastly outnumbered, dominant males are now beset by a group with outsized political power which they cannot defeat without near-perfect coordination amongst themselves. And of course the issue where the women are all competing for this pool of dominant males and thus are happy to enlist the less-dominant males to their side as needed. Consider the rise of Onlyfans as a means of separating less-dominant men from resources en masse in exchange for no actual physical interaction, which then allows a woman to be self-sufficient while she seeks the ideal mate.

Other factors like the shifting of social status from males who are good at fighting, killing, and leading male-centric warbands to guys who are good at manipulating numbers on a spreadsheet, building technology, and navigating feminine social environments (I'm being pretty obtuse here, admitted) are also making it harder for dominant males to assert the sort of social control that might counter the feminine influence.

most of the guys I knew weren't really excited to play the field, but it more came of necessity. They wanted a woman they could settle down with, but most of the women they'd meet were deranged. Entitled, controlling want beasts that demand all the say and none of the responsibility.

If they were leaping into commitment, I'm not surprised. Not only are they letting the devil find work for idle hands (what's a woman supposed to do if a man is giving her what she wants? That's a recipe to make most people deranged) but they're walking around the dating market with a huge neon sign saying "I am a mark. You can take my money if you want and I shall love you for it." It would be surprising if they didn't meet emotional hustlers.

The female equivalent is a woman who acts very slutty and gets surprised that she doesn't meet gentlemen. Maybe she concludes, "All men are swine. Yes, all men."

This is why men ought to look for women in circles where women are competing on being 'trad'.

Find the right meme-culture and you will find women that are just as enthusiastic for breeding as you are.

Then all you have to do is compete with the other trad-minded men, and it's not that hard imo.

It comes with another sets of demands, like providing for a set of children, actually fitting the trad-meme culture yourself, etc, but what other choices do you have?

If you're looking for a woman to have 3 kids in the Bay Area or NYC, you're doing it wrong, but there are ways to get that done, like being an Orthodox Jew in the latter, for example.

Yes, and in general, if a man really wants to find a woman who is interested in settling down and having kids, that's hard only insofar as it usually involves things that are beneficial anyway: having a good job, being sober, being responsible/reliable, and being kind.

However, most nerdy guys I know who suddenly started getting laid easily - myself included - played the field, like a normal guy in that position.

I feel like a huge amount of this is the sheer grind required to 'ascend' and the rejection along the way, especially in the modern dating app sphere. IMO the majority of both gender rock up with more-or-less good intentions, but it only takes a little bit of exposure to the current culture to reach a state of Fuck You.

In my experience, the response of men about this depends on the context.

All male company: We pretend to be more averse to commitment than we really are.

Mixed company: "My favourite things are commitment and changing myself."

I see statements like this a lot on here and they always leave me so confused because it’s so far outside my own experience and the experiences of other guys I know. I’m an okay looking nerdy guy with a mid-compensation nerdy job in the Bay Area, which is apparently the epicenter location/demographic for these kinds of dating difficulties and yet neither I nor any of my male friends experiences them at all.

Ever since I moved here a few years ago there has been a constant flow of good looking, in shape, smart, well educated, my age-and-younger women who have their shit together and want to go on dates/sleep with/get serious with/get engaged to me, with honestly very little effort or grind on my part. Sometimes people don’t respond to my messages on bumble. Okay?

I could go on dates with women like this every day if I had the energy. And they’re almost all nice, not manipulative, not looking for handouts, not romantic climbers at all. It’s the same for all my guy friends. And we’re pretty average / below average in terms of income. Where are all these sexless dudes?

There was a thread on here last week about how the EA movement was basically a way for nerdy guys to meet women. Huh? It’s all so bewildering.

I see statements like this a lot on here and they always leave me so confused because it’s so far outside my own experience and the experiences of other guys I know.

Maybe notice your confusion, and then update your priors based on the data explaining that most men aren't sharing your particular experience and that the data you've got available from your own experiences may not be representative of the larger trends.

I come into these threads and see one side that points at various studies and polls showing "this is what dating is like for huge swaths of the population" and then another that says "that's weird, it doesn't seem to be true in [smaller area]" without really engaging with the information the other side points to.

Teach us your ways! I am a guy with a mid-compensation nerdy job in the Bay Area. I like to think that I am good-looking but I suppose that I cannot quite be sure. In any case, more than one woman has told me that I am attractive. I used to do quite well with women but then for various reasons I took a long time off from pursuing sex. Recently I have been trying to get back in the game and I have had some success - I made out with a few women whom I met at bars but have not gotten laid so far. I have never seriously tried online dating so far but given how often I hear guys say that they are getting good results from it, I think that I am going to actually seriously try it. I should just go ahead and put in the work of getting some good photos and writing up a good profile. At the same time I also intend to keep meeting women offline, since I find that it can be quite exciting and fun and anyway, I already spend more than enough time using technology at work.

How do you usually meet women? Got any pointers?

Also, to piggyback, in my normal life, the vast majority of the people I keep track of from my fairly normal suburban/exurban high school in Florida are either married w/ kids or serially in fairly long-term relationships. Even out here, in supposedly SJW-infested Seattle that's also a tech hub, do you know what I see when I actually walk around in the outside world? Lots of couples.

I really think the current "crisis" is a combination of some bad data (even the GSS data seems kind of flawed) and the type of person who's not getting laid being very loud and overrepresented on the Internet.

Also, to piggyback, in my normal life, the vast majority of the people I keep track of from my fairly normal suburban/exurban high school in Florida are either married w/ kids or serially in fairly long-term relationships. Even out here, in supposedly SJW-infested Seattle that's also a tech hub, do you know what I see when I actually walk around in the outside world? Lots of couples.

The type of person who is able to successfully attract a mate seems likely to be heavily overrepresented in any group where one has loose acquaintances that would even care to "keep track of," as well as walking around in the outside world. How many literally friendless people are you friends with, and more broadly, how many people who has no meaningful friend/acquaintance group are you enough of a loose acquaintance with to "keep track of?" How many people who spend their lives with basically no social contact are you running into when you walk around in the outside world?

There was a thread on here last week about how the EA movement was basically a way for nerdy guys to meet women. Huh? It’s all so bewildering.

I mean, you have to meet them somewhere right? They don’t just show up at your door. One of the most common pieces of dating advice I’ve seen is, “get a hobby and meet women there.” Maybe I erred in assuming EA to be a hobby.

I am starting to suspect that the dating scene in the Bay Area is just different. There was a post on Caroline Ellison’s tumblr about how she never got hit on in public before she moved to the Bay. Maybe once you reach some critical mass of nerdy people in one location they stop internalizing themselves as poorly socialized and become Chads and Stacys.

One issue is that vocal incel or incel-adjacent people tend to be higher income, higher education, and more vocal/online than the mass of men most affected by sexlessness. Sexlessness isn't driven by 30-something software engineers making $300k in the Bay Area; it's driven by 20 year, non-college educated men living in their parents' basement in Akron.

(That said, if you're able to get a date with a different attractive, successful woman every evening as a heterosexual man in the Bay Area, you're certainly in the top decile in how much you attract women.)

Dude you're almost certainly making something like five times the national median household income, you are not normal.

It's still a good rebuttal to the the EA claim, because EAs are also high income / class.

The median EA is probably closer to the 'autist unsociable nerd' side of the spectrum than bay area lothario, though outliers exist.

I just had the realization that maybe I, a middle-class man, could be having lots of kids (a desire of mine) if I would just go meet a nice working-class girl; and that I've maybe subconsciously been trying to "date up" this whole time. I am a fool!

(This is actually not sarcasm.)

Or date outside your race. It worked for Roger Ebert - not the world's best looking or chadish man - who married an intelligent, successful, and quite good looking black woman. There's the added benefit that Black Don't Crack, so even if your wife is not as good looking as your next white girlfriend in 2023, she'll be a lot better looking in 2053.

In my limited experience, it's very hard to stay single in America if you're white, middle class, and not obese. Not the easiest dating pool in the world for those demographics, though: Asia is outrageous, unless you have very particular tastes e.g. you like tall women.

it's very hard to stay single in America if you're white, middle class, and not obese.

I just have a rare talent for it, lol.

In all seriousness, I am in a long romantic cold spell that temporally matches up exactly with when I started working from home permanently during Covid. I have not managed to successfully adapt my life such that I am meeting people IRL at the same rate I used to. There are lots of viable solutions to this, but my job is difficult and tiring and makes me want to stay home. I may be displaying a revealed preference here.

Still - I have indeed dated women from social strata above mine, and they did not want to settle down with me. I did not make the appropriate connection before. (Bearing in mind of course that I may just not be that cool, and they found they could genuinely do better.) Especially because I grew up in a working-class milieu myself, you would think I could get along very well with a girl I met at the local dirt track, if I would only go there myself. And I'm not looking down on people like that. It is not as though my existence in this other social class has brought me any exceptional happiness.

date outside your race

This is good advice. Perhaps this is something everyone simply already knows, but when I have done this, I have been surprised at the extent to which it feels just the same as dating within your race.

This is good advice. Perhaps this is something everyone simply already knows, but when I have done this, I have been surprised at the extent to which it feels just the same as dating within your race.

Pretty much, except probably easier if you are white. I also think that attitudes have changed tremendously in the last generation, especially for white man/black woman relationships.

I have a lot of confusion about this topic and I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me understand this complex of problems.

Most of the discussion around this topic here seems completely divorced from my lived experience. For reference I am male, live in Europe and make decent but not fantastic money. Assume I am average in all important respects. I could have had "access to reproduction" from when I was 18 until now without issue. There are plenty of mildly-attractive women that would gladly start a family with me simply because I am middle class and they are working class. So is this a problem affecting only working class men? I also know some working class men, some of whom have problems finding a mate. All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one. Sometimes it looks like that but on closer inspection it always turns out that they are shopping above their price range so to speak.

My toy model for the "sexual marketplace" is this:

Both men and women are open to long-term committed relationships only if they get a great deal. People who marry often think that they both got lucky in the sense that they self-rate as a 6 but rate their partner as a 9. Of course this doesn't happen all that often.

Outside of that women put a premium on a long-term stable relationship with material benefits. So they will get into a relationship with someone they would not outright marry (and have children with) if that person pays their rent and makes them look good socially etc etc. This often leads to disappointment and conflict later on.

Men value non-committed casual sex with multiple partners, probably out of some mesa-optimizing desire to shotgun their genes in the gene pool. So they will lower their standards if the woman is sexually available and does not demand exclusivity.

I know men who want to have a "player" lifestyle and struggle to have that happen and I know women who struggle with domesticating an attractive man. From the article it sounds like that is not what is going on. It sounds like there are many men who have already lowered their standards as much as possible, who are willing to commit, provide etc and are still struggling to find any woman at all? Why am I not seeing that? Is this less prevalent in the EU? Am I too isolated from those men by being middle class? Or is there some other misunderstanding here?

All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one.

This is my experience as well, but quite a few people pushed back against similar sentiments when we discussed this last week. There are at least two ways of interpreting that pushback:

  1. I'm wrong and many men that are reasonably fit, healthy, socially competent, and employed struggle to find relationships. My observations fail to capture a broad enough sample and the men that I know that are romantically successful all could have failed if not for a fair bit of luck.

  2. The responses are largely coping mechanisms - romance-less men are much more socially incompetent or physically unattractive than their defenders admit.

I know I favor the second explanation, but I'm open to being cautious about applying too much of a just-world fallacy. Still, I can't think of anyone I know that persistently fails romantically that doesn't have something that stands out as severely unappealing to women.

I'm wrong and many men that are reasonably fit, healthy, socially competent, and employed struggle to find relationships.

This is circular, since "socially competent" implies that they are able to find relationships.

I'm a bisexual man, attractive enough to be asked out on the street (by men), who has struggled to meet women to date. There's not really any mystery as to the cause: I'm 5'3, and testing suggests I'd get around a dozen matches with women per day if I were 5'10", as compared with none at my actual height.

Which kind of covers both your explanations: a man can have all his bases covered and still be unattractive because of a single trait outside his control; masculinity is stridently policed by women when it comes to dating, and a single deviation incurs a very heavy cost in terms of attractiveness as a mate. Pick out half a dozen normally distributed, uncontrollable traits like height, and it's inevitable that something like half of all men will be more than a standard deviation below average on at least one and be cut out of the dating market. Most of those men would do perfectly fine if they dated men.

You know, it's going to sound incredibly stupid, but I actually didn't even consider height as a variable in this conversation, which is obviously foolish and wrong. From everything I've seen, height is favored to an incredible extent, with many women outright excluding all men that don't clear a given bar (which may be several inches taller than them). Even petite women frequently demand men of average height or higher. There probably isn't any other trait that combines a complete lack of male control with strong predictive power in romantic success.

I also know some working class men, some of whom have problems finding a mate. All of them are either obese or have severely lacking social skills, both those problems could be solved with maybe a year of consistent effort. I don't know any man that has no glaring problems and wants a long term relationship with a (any) woman but can't find one. Sometimes it looks like that but on closer inspection it always turns out that they are shopping above their price range so to speak.

Now what does this reminds me of... Oh right, Scott's Annus Mirabilis.

According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.

And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.

Now in 2023, according to Pew Research cited by OP already,

among men under 30 years old, over 60 percent are single, almost double that of women in the same age bracket. Not only are more young men single but their opportunities for developing a relational and sexual repertoire have all but vanished, as levels of sexual intimacy across genders appear to have hit a 30-year low (Lei & South, 2021).

You must be in a fortunate bubble indeed, to now not know of any among those 60% who aren't obese, autists, basket cases or aiming way above their level!

The explanation, shifting midway from male withdrawal to increased standards (because of the pandemic, bizarrely) and the solution offered, are pretty cool:

As young women continued to pursue intimate relationships less intently post-pandemic, men could have increased their relationship skills to close the effort gap. They could have confronted their relative avoidance and challenged the gender norms that made them so anxious about intimacy. They appear to have done the opposite, turning even further away from real-life relationships and into the virtual world. [...] The good news is that all of these young single men can choose differently. They can choose to focus on developing the necessary relationship skills to be more successful in dating. It starts with re-prioritizing the development of close, intimate relationships in their life for their own well-being and as a counterbalance to the shift in priorities for women. They must do this to reach their fullest potential whether or not they have had great male role models illustrating these efforts. By no means will dating in 2023 be an emotionally painless process, particularly for heterosexual men who are attempting to date women. Rejection may be a far more common result given competitiveness and higher relationship standards. Therefore, young men must be inoculated to avoidance in their dating life by normalizing women’s selectiveness.

My toy model of this issue and its discussion is very primitive. Standards really are rising quickly, and roughly 30% of marriage-age men are now, for all intents and purposes, incels. (This checks out, in my experience: even fit, okay-looking, psychologically stable guys with degrees and high-percentile (80-95ish) incomes often cannot find a 5/10 woman for a long-term relationship who isn't (physically) dangerously psychotic, a drug addict, an insufferable whore, or otherwise critically compromised). Men in the lower half of the distribution who are still viable begin to feel the pressure, and so double down in all usual tactics: «improving relationship skills» (which in practice means either deluded male feminist antics or PUA-like bullshit), distancing themselves from incels, ostentatiously signaling that they are «not like that» and have no problem scoring, then moving on to intense bodybuilding, shoe lifts, cosmetic surgery, TRT... As a result, everyone is awash in gaslighting. Normie men who feel they still have a chance will never admit that they may not have it tomorrow, because this in itself feels like diminishing their chances.

What has changed was the passing grade, but men are graded on a curve, so in effect the proportion of rejects has increased permanently. This rat race is pathetic and unsustainable, as are copes.

The explanation, shifting midway from male withdrawal to increased standards (because of the pandemic, bizarrely) and the solution offered, are pretty cool:

I assume you are being sarcastic when saying "are pretty cool"?

You must be in a fortunate bubble indeed, to now know of any among those 60% who aren't obese, autists, basket cases or aiming way above their level!

What percentage of Americans are obese, autistic, or mentally ill?

42% obese, 2.3% autistic (1 in every 44 children, according to the 2018 data; can't find any data on prevalence in adults) and 20% mentally ill (1 out of every 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year). All figures from CDC.

There’s no significant gender difference in obesity. Who are all the fat girls dating?

Well, a lot of them aren't, isn't it the best predictor of single status ?

Those who do, they date mostly guys who settle for them. There's a preference for fat women but it does seem very rare, on the order of genuine male homosexuality. Maybe there's more men who don't mind it, but I've never seen much of an indication that they exist.

Even as an obese girl on online dating you're getting arbitrarily large amounts of interest in casual sex, which tends to lead them into an equivalent of the '7/10 girl gets casual sex from 10/10 guy but cannot get commitment but refuses to compromise loop' but instead it's 2/10 girl gets casual sex from 6/10 guy but cannot get commitment'

Black guys /s

find a first world society someplace where TFR is above replacement so we can isolate the factors responsible

Israel?

Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners

Yes. Your poor black guy without a steady job and still living with his mom and granny may have a great personality and be fun to hang out with, but for a relationship? Maybe not. Even on the metric of "where do we go to have sex?" for a casual relationship, getting it on while mom and gran can hear everything you're doing seems like it would put a damper on things.

Or he may well be in a relationship of sorts, where he is the baby daddy of a single mother who lives on her own with her kid(s) and he isn't cohabiting with her. Is that a relationship? Are they romantic partners? Maybe he has a couple of such women on the go at the same time.

I think the main barrier there is "no place of his own". If both parties are low income and living with parents, then maintaining anything more than casual dating is going to be difficult.

So how about young, low-income, basic education, still living at home, black women? Are they in relationships? Long-term ones? With whom? Again, are they the baby momma single mothers who may be one of a set of "friends with benefits" of an older guy? There's a lot going on when trying to work out who has it better on the dating/relationship scene:

From 1987 to 2017, the rates of cohabitation among Black women ages 19 to 44 increased from 36 percent to 62 percent, a rate similar to that seen among women from other racial groups. The percentage of Black women ever married, however, is lower than those who have cohabitated, at 37 percent. While there are many explanations for lower levels of marriage among Black women, an overwhelming number of theories focus on economics—specifically, the earning potential and availability of Black men. For instance, a lack of employment opportunities for Black men, higher workforce participation among Black women than among Black men, a lack of wage parity between Black women and Black men, and the disproportionate representation of Black men (particularly from low-income backgrounds) in the criminal justice system may result in a lack of marriageable partners (e.g., men who are perceived by women as attractive marriage prospects because of their financial or social standing). Importantly, each of these theories—implicitly, and sometimes explicitly—acknowledges the potential role of systemic racism and its impact on the marriage rate of Black Americans.

Black children live in a variety of family structures, including married, cohabiting, coparenting, and single-parenting households. Sixty-four percent of Black children live in single-parent families, which may include single parents living with an unmarried partner or with another family. Among Black women ages 15 to 50, approximately 60 percent were married or living with an unmarried partner at the time of their first birth, and roughly 40 percent were neither married nor living with an unmarried partner. The distinction between “single” and unmarried but living with a partner or co-parent is important because it indicates that, despite declines in formal marriage rates, close to 60 percent of Black fathers (close to 2.5 million of 4.2 million) live with their children, a fact often in contrast with public perceptions of Black men with children. Within these households, Black couples generally subscribe to egalitarian and flexible gender roles. While American fathers of all races and ethnicities are generally more involved with the care of their young children than in decades past, Black fathers—both those who live with and live apart from their children—are more likely than White or Hispanic fathers to feed or eat meals with, bathe, diaper or dress, and play or read to their children on a daily basis.

Extended family and kin networks, a source of social support and an enduring legacy of African cultures and heritage, have also played a key role in childrearing within Black communities. For example, among children living in a grandparent’s home and being cared for primarily by a grandparent, with no parents involved, more than one quarter are Black. Black grandparents play instrumental roles in childrearing and child care even when children live with their parents. Family and kin networks also serve as an important buffer for some of the negative impacts of structural and institutional racism experienced by Black families, and frequently provide emotional support and instrumental assistance such as help with transportation and finances.

And finally, as others have pointed out, men and women may have different definitions of "relationship". "Yeah, we go out from time to time and we have casual sex, but we're not exclusive and we're not dating so this isn't a relationship", says the guy. "We go on dates and have sex, we're in a relationship" says the woman.

“Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”

(bolding mine)

Ironic, considering that young women are by their own reports at 2x the rate in relationships compared to young men...

When it comes to stats like this, I think people are missing two obvious possibilities -

1.) The data is just bad

2.) Men and women's definition of relationship are different. So, yes, the dude that has a FWB he smokes pot with and watches Netflix before having sex isn't a relationship, but she isn't dating anybody else, and they hang out regularly so...

Also, he whole "they're all dating older men" argument could be figured out, by just looking at the data, because if it's true the women are just dating older, there'd eventually be gaps between men and women, where men would have the advantage. I'm going to guess that the worry all the 33 year olds are dating the 22 year olds isn't really true. Some 26 year olds might be, but that's been what happens even in the 90's.

Hell, in 1993, I'd actually bet more 18 year old high school senior girls had sex with adult males than in 2023.

Also, he whole "they're all dating older men" argument could be figured out, by just looking at the data, because if it's true the women are just dating older, there'd eventually be gaps between men and women, where men would have the advantage.

Yes, there is. I recall looking for it, and for ages after 60, more men than women are in a relationship.

Yeah that's because men die off earlier more than anything else.

.. and ? It was asking people whether they were in a relationship. Live people.

You want to argue the whole effect is caused by men predeceasing women, not by men with options dating somewhat younger women ?

E.g. surely you've seen seen photos of Buzz Aldrin and his sweet sixty-six year old wife ?

Right, if it takes 'til 60 for there to be a gap, the "they're all dating older men with higher sexual market value" or whatever red pill analysis is out there, doesn't seem to be correct, which highlights my bad data thought. Now, is there probably a mismatch? Sure. But, I think it's likely there always has been, but now the Internet means people can freak out about it.

Just like w/ teen suicide rates. Yes, teen suicide rates are now pretty high. They're getting back to the level they were in the early 90's - ya' know, that perfect time Gen X has nostalgia for?

2.) Men and women's definition of relationship are different. So, yes, the dude that has a FWB he smokes pot with and watches Netflix before having sex isn't a relationship, but she isn't dating anybody else, and they hang out regularly so...

I think that's compounded by dudes having multiple 'semi-committed' relationships on the go at once, in which he considers himself single (as he's continuing to keep dating new girls and nobody's formally clarified the relationship) whilst his partners might consider themselves on the girlfriend track.

This happens wildly often if you know college-educated non-religious women in their 20s. It’s hilarious, or sad, or both.

I date around a fair bit, and whilst I'd personally be surprised if any of my longer-term entanglements said that they were in a relationship with me... I don't find it inconceivable?

Though from experience talking to serial dating girls in their 20s I do feel like other men are a lot more prone to tangling their signals. I'd personally not introduce a girl to my parents/family unless they were a firm girlfriend, but I've seen girls stuck in the casualzone who've nonetheless done a lot of 'girlfriend activities' like that.

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire?

Well, dating dynamics still don't favour Chinese and Korean men in the west despite pulling a hefty paycheck. Many are virgins even in their 30s. Ditto with Indian men, but arranged marriages and the low desirability of their own women ensure (heh) the problem fixes itself after a point. Feminists are very bent on subverting "unrealistic standards of female beauty" in the media, yet are perfectly fine with unrealistic standards for men, part of the intention is to artificially lift their status in the sexual market. I suppose that somewhat explains why South Asian and Black women in the west tend to be the most woke. They're both minorities in a largely white culture, but they have no equivalents to the yellow fever.

They're both minorities in a largely white culture, but they have no equivalents to the yellow fever.

There's one for Black women (I am much less familiar with American desi culture), but it's mismatched with internal American Black culture dynamics. Being of "yellowbone" or "redbone" complexion is a high-status marker in ADoS culture, but White men who are attracted to Black women report higher preference for darker skin. Dating a pureblood Yoruba or Dinka immigrant would be their first choice.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Interestingly, the one hapa guy had issues because his Asian mom would not let him bring girls around for fear that they'd steal her white husband.

The fetish is not always on the side you expect.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Human variance is wide, I'm sure there are those to whom this is an actual fetish, but pathologing normal partner preferences always struck me as discourse poison.

I wonder if women born in such marriages are just as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Are you sure this isn't mostly an observed phenomenon from evaporative cooling on forums leaving the most extreme examples? In real life, the half-Asian guys I know do just fine with women. I suppose if they did have antipathy towards their white fathers they wouldn't tell me, but it doesn't seem like something that's obviously true. The whole thing seems like a coping mechanism for romantically failed men to blame something other than their own personalities.

In real life, the half-Asian guys I know do just fine with women. I suppose if they did have antipathy towards their white fathers they wouldn't tell me, but it doesn't seem like something that's obviously true.

I don't have any hard data to go on here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the ones with antipathy disproportionately grew up with a single mother -- I can absolutely see how a mixed-race child with trouble fitting into the side of the only family available to them could blame their absent father, especially if there's an easily seen "my mother was just a fetish for him" or something like that.

but White men who are attracted to Black women report higher preference for darker skin. Dating a pureblood Yoruba or Dinka immigrant would be their first choice.

Yes, maybe for fetishists or people who are really fixed in their preferences that they search out black women (even then I'm doubtful, I suspect that their definition of "darker" is different -lighter- from mine).

It's still possible that the median white man would prefer a woman whose blackness is less...obvious or she even passes for white.

as bitter as hapa men about their White fathers' fetish ruining their dating prospects.

Really? In my experience mixed white/east asian people, both men and women, skew uncommonly pretty.

Unless you mean, like, half polynesian/half white people?

skew uncommonly pretty.

There is something of a stereotype among incel types, in which the male product of a white father and an Asian mother blames his make-up on his lack of height and more masculine features. Essentially, it's sour grapes in which these guys fantasize about an alternate mother that might reroll their build as "tall and masculine" instead of "pretty and good at math".

Mixed White/Asian incels that look Asian complain that Asian girls prefer White and White-passing men to them.

I suppose that somewhat explains why South Asian and Black women in the west tend to be the most woke. They're both minorities in a largely white culture,

Is that true, though? I would expect that most black and south-asian women to be living in areas where white people are at best a plurality; I would expect the young dating cohorts to be living in places with demographics like Oakland's.

What's the source for the second chart?

What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem.

Nothing new, we've been discussing this a lot recently. Like I said the last time: «The notion that men can be genuinely not guilty of some failure relating to relations of sexes – whether to score or to sire – is about as far outside the Overton window as HBD. ... [from the progressive point of view] It can't be that the solution lies in any conceivable change to female behavior, except even more emancipation, even greater triumph over toxic masculinity.» A small update:

CNN reports on South Korea breaking its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate:

The national statistics body reported Wednesday that the fertility rate, or the average number of children expected per woman, fell to 0.78 in 2022 – down from 0.81 the previous year.

South Korea’s birth rate has been falling since 2015 and the country recorded more deaths than births for the first time in 2020, a trend that has continued since.

In 2022, the country recorded about 249,000 births and 372,800 deaths.

Experts say the reasons for these demographic shifts across the region include demanding work cultures, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality, and rising disillusionment among younger generations.

But despite the economic factors at play, throwing money at the problem has proved ineffective. Last September, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol admitted that more than $200 billion has been spent trying to boost the population over the past 16 years.

The South Korean government has introduced various initiatives such as extending paid paternity leave, offering monetary “baby vouchers” to new parents, and social campaigns encouraging men to contribute to childcare and housework.

But experts and residents say more support is needed throughout a child’s life – as well as change on several deep-rooted social issues. For instance, South Korean society still frowns on single parents, with IVF treatment not available to single women.

Couples in non-traditional partnerships also face discrimination; South Korea does not recognize same-sex marriage and regulations make it difficult for unwed couples to adopt.

I believe these stupid remedies can only change things at the margins (at best; how many lesbian Korean couples do you think will have more than 1 child? how many even are there?), will flop, and South Korean nation will continue to age and die off, at the annual rate of 0.23% now, 0.75% in two decades. This effortpost by @gorge suffices to show that doubling down on feminism to solve this is an implausible tactic which can only convince people who would advocate feminism and broader progressivism in response to any problem from high interest rates to unaligned AI. But what is not clear is: how many of those suggestions are made by women? Or by men keeping emotional reactions of unserious women in mind when they do analysis? I think the answer is «most if not all».

Peter Thiel has opined once to the effect that female enfranchisement has made capitalist democracy impossible. He later defended himself with a series of excuses about the specificity of his complaint, but I think it does make democracy non-viable in many other senses too. Indeed I believe that democracy, as commonly implemented, only works in the first place with very specific samples of mostly Western populations; it's an exception, not the rule.*

The problem here is that democracy is largely about bargaining, and women – speaking in generalities, of course – bargain in all markets with the assumption that they can get the price down to zero, if not for the greed of the other party. They are even less interested in object-level constraints than men; they insist that their preferred arrangement is objectively fair and true even when it's clearly no longer viable, and will shoot down any arrangement that includes what they understand as redistributing some of their powers back to men; and they will demand of men to aid them in shooting it down; and men will be proud to assist, because being of use to women is the measure of their worth. Ultimately this is just a product of what Doolittle calls female magical thinking:

Causes and Evidence of Female "Magical Thinking"

THE SCIENCE:

\1) Conflating what they wish for with what is and what is possible.

\2) The general tendency of women to confuse what is Desirable/Undesirable with what is True/False. Or, more directly, stating their wants are truths of the world, rather than just wants of their own.

\3) The universal tendency (demonstrated in this video) of women to engage in NAXALT/AXALT: Not all X are like that, All X are like that, or more precisely, to ignore a distribution to justify an outlier, or to use an outlier in order to falsify a distribution.

These --XALTs are both forms of denial. In other words (get ready) the woman's cognition evolves to justify her feelings and NOT adapt to existential reality.

Why? They are exporting satisfaction of their emotional demands onto others: MEN. (Yes really).

This is the science, and it's exasperating. Why? We no longer use older sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and aunts to cause women to self-regulate their magical thinking.

And their magical thinking evolved in order to generate demand from men to satisfy them .... in exchange for affection and sex. Sorry. :(

Yes, I cringe at his presentation as well. We don't get to have our edgelords obsessed with reiterating copybook headings be smooth communicators: all such people are safely employed at fitting unworkable but politically attractive solutions into powerpoint presentations.

But perhaps I'd not have cringed so hard if I were even less concerned about women rolling their eyes.

It's hard to say what the solution could even look like. Doolittle gestures in the direction of older women who used to throw some cold water on the delusion of girls, keeping the tendency of demand inflation in check. I suppose this is the sort of cultural ability that is non-recoverable once it's been lost.

* This isn't to say that e.g. authoritarianism works «better» elsewhere, in whatever meaning of the word. It may be that many societies are in terminal decline, like a human with multiple organ failure, and have no workable regime option to save themselves. Their democracies will result in inane populism, either progressive or reactionary, and their reactionary populism will bring forth a literally catastrophically incompetent rule – like Turks have recently learned, perhaps to a good effect we'll see in May elections, perhaps to no avail.

I am not sure how the notion of shit tests (which has merit, but which PUA/Jim types already overuse, to the point I think can be legitimately identified with rape culture) translates to the level of more or less abstract society-wise policy demands. For example, women overwhelmingly support «more spending on underperforming schools» or some bullshit. Is this shit-testing school statistics buffs or, say, just misguided motherly instinct and wishful thinking (that I talk about)? I think we don't even need such folk categories; normal differential psychology explains enough.

It's an interaction between modern things like growing up in school / working a job to get the right answer / please the teacher and 'female nature', as opposed to just the latter, i think. Women, especially older women, in traditional societies were generally capable of somewhat complicated negotiations over social things, like selling cows or who should marry a daughter. Because the mores and physical conditions of society demanded it, and because that's what they saw all the people around them doing.

what Doolittle calls female magical thinking:

So, wishful thinking, but rebranded via the wishful-thinking of "surely it's just a female problem"? The irony is delicious.

Or, more directly, stating their wants are truths of the world, rather than just wants of their own.

Two days ago was the anniversary of the phrase "is it logical, is it truly logical that we really have a system that has to be 53 degrees to fly?", uttered by the manager of NASA's Solid Rocket Booster program, a month after an SRB failure at low temperatures had destroyed Challenger, two weeks after Feynman had demonstrated O-ring material becoming inflexible when chilled ... and maybe the commission was just giving Mulloy rope to hang himself, but nobody in the room full of men even stopped him to point out the logical fallacy!

\3) The universal tendency (demonstrated in this video) of women to engage in NAXALT/AXALT: Not all X are like that, All X are like that, or more precisely, to ignore a distribution to justify an outlier, or to use an outlier in order to falsify a distribution.

Yes, I am very strongly convinced that women have a stronger predisposition to wishful thinking, though of course men are not safe from it either, as my text implies («even less interested in object-level constraints than men»). It's based on repeatedly encountered cases like this, though I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor.

It's based on repeatedly encountered cases like this, though I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor.

From the thread: "(...) there’s more variation within sexes than between sexes. Plenty of women are taller than plenty of men. Plenty of women are stronger than plenty of men. Plenty of women have vampire teeth. Plenty of men have nubbins."

How in the world has this come to pass as a valid argument? Among people who style themselves as scientists, no less? All you can deduce from "More variation of trait P within X than between X" is that X is a bad a priori proxy for P, not that the differences between types of X are negligible at the population level.

How in the world has this come to pass as a valid argument?

This line of reasoning which should probably be classified as a fallacy by now is mostly used when debating against HBD of the racial variety. But to a statistically illiterate "scientist" forget about statistically illiterate commentators, the urge to use that hammer is just too strong in any and all suggestion of group differences. Just shoddy pattern matching on their part.

To steelman them, it's a good enough retort to 'all X is more Y than all Z' [call this arg_P] claims, even though it doesn't address that claim centrally. This shoddy pattern matching completely falls on its face when you are dealing with any argument more sophisticated than arg_P.

E: Correction, There is a name for it, Lewontin's fallacy with T&C.

I agree with this nosology; she's a science communication major, a trained disinformation expert, so can probably recite her Boaz (and Gould, and Lewontin...) if woken in the dead of night.

But to be clear, her retort in the context of specific metrics mentioned in her tweet is plainly false, and would fail even against arg_P so long as it's prefixed with «almost». There isn't more variation within sexes than between sexes in terms of strength, as pointed out in comments and QTs. Racial IQ diffs have nothing on intersexual strength diffs. Effectively all men are stronger than effectively all women of the same age, or indeed of any age. Height difference is also greater than within-sex variance. This is obvious from everyday life, stuff like walking through a crowd, or reaching for a pickle jar and opening it for your mom/sis/gf/wife, and in my opinion shouldn't require citing any PrOoFs to be trusted; buy Razib Khan, in a now-deleted thread, says modern biologists are surprised and incredulous when they encounter this notion. I suppose gorillas are even more dimorphic than humans, and in more ways, including some neat features of cranial morphology (appreciated by anthropologists who work with bones so much, they sometimes forget about the rest of organism), but that's neither here nor there. Some sympathetic commenters squeal about «bone nerd stuff» being fascinating; in my opinion this willful ignorance of the context isn't cute, this is turning science into worse than stamp collecting, into playing house, and one more reason to be critical of female participation in traditionally male occupations like biological research. This cheeky girls-playing-house stuff is killing the whole field. I've known many competent female researchers and lab heads, and they are able to compete with men without any crutches, not particularly tolerant of such profanation, nor fond of science popularizers who have flunked out of academia. It feels like in the West it's much more tolerated.

But I digress. Lewontin's argument/fallacy does not really point at any phenotypic evidence, it amounts to saying that since genetic variance is (ostensibly) distributed in the claimed manner within and between races, it is facile to classify people by race as if that were a natural unit. It is bad in its own ways, but not so obviously stupid and false.

I admit not having any systematic evidence at hand in favor

To be fair, I looked for systematic evidence one way or another and couldn't find any either, just a few studies with small self-selected samples, nothing I'd have said was definitive even if I had never heard the phrase "replication crisis". Most of the really extreme cases of wishful thinking I can think of come from men (how will communism work, exactly? let's just finish up the revolution and then the dialectic says things will all sort themselves out!) but that's the product of even more egregious selection bias. You'd think this would be low-hanging fruit to study, but I don't blame any psychologists who would rather find a less fraught question.

I suppose this is the sort of cultural ability that is non-recoverable once it's been lost.

I am not sure about that. It is true that for past few generations, women were progressively more and more socialized into thinking that they can have it all. For so long as the societies drove on the fumes of old norms and habits, the fundamental falsehood of the notion was not obvious, but ultimately the reality will reassert itself. It might take one more generation, but already among millennials the failure to form families is extremely widespread. As these millennial women enter their 40s, and huge, double digit percentage of them never managed to form a family, they will become a huge cultural force, a massive living testament to the lie their generation was fed and eagerly believed.

For the generation after zoomers, these millennial women will serve as a clear, explicit warning sign of the peril that threatens them. The millennial mothers will know many other women of their generation who missed their chance to procreate, chasing the career goals, while overestimating their chances of snatching the top man and then failing to adjust to their increasingly precarious situation on the sexual marketplace. They will warn their daughters of this very real phenomenon, despite not being warned by their own mothers, as by that point it will be impossible to ignore, and impossible to pretend that they can expect to settle down into stable family with a high status man after a decade of whoring around and girlbossing.

As these millennial women enter their 40s, and huge, double digit percentage of them never managed to form a family, they will become a huge cultural force, a massive living testament to the lie their generation was fed and eagerly believed.

The last time we had this, with the excess women after the deaths in the Civil War, we got Prohibition. I think your take here is very optimistic. I think we're more likely to see a renewed movement to ban video games under the fig leafs of gambling and encouraging violence.

Maybe we're lucky and they push to ban / restrict porn.

The last time we had this, with the excess women after the deaths in the Civil War, we got Prohibition

This tracks for WW1- 60 years after it wrapped up was 1978, and that was around the time we banned childhood and instituted punitive measures for men when they offend women.

This doesn't quite track for WW2, though- since 60 years after that was 2005. Maybe most of the really bad stuff that they wanted was already instituted so they didn't have much to try and solve, but the specifically-women-privileging movements were delayed by about 10 years after that.

I guess you could control for people living and working longer, but I'm not as sure this time, and it's also true that the the project over the time they were switching from second-wave to third-wave womanism was "don't arrest people or deal with the homeless, just let them be and it'll be fine"- but I'm not as convinced.

the time we banned childhood

I am not sure if you forgot a word here (pregnancy?) or if this is a crack at the Stranger Danger stuff that started the safetyism trend.

The latter, though economic circumstances arguably imposed the former anyway (TFR in 1978 was as low as it was 3 years ago).

When the social climate is "children are luxuries whose childhoods should be extended as long as possible" rather than "they need the opportunity to develop because our need for development requires adult men and women" it makes sense that certain factions would get non-trivial agreement if they started claiming that doing anything else was abuse.

So do you think we would be better with a complete break between the idea of relationships and the idea of what it really comes down to - the feminist critique of marriage being "exchanging sex for meat"? Men and women are all perceived as economic factors, and if men want sex they don't bother with dates or relationships, they patronise sex workers where the transaction is overt and there is no confusion about who does what or pays for what. If the expectation is "the man buys dinner, the woman pays him back with sex", then dump all that and just "the man is horny, he buys a sex worker for however long, no hurt expectations or mismatches".

Women have their own thing, they enjoy working and status that way. Everybody knows their position and role. If marriage is still considered a necessary thing, back to the old days of families making alliances without emotional entanglements. But why is marriage necessary? If society wants children, the stigma around single motherhood is gone, and perhaps we'll get the artificial wombs and IVF babies gestated in them and brought up by government creches.

Because reading all the screeds about "it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!" makes me wonder why women would want to get married in the first place.

  • -11

Stigma was never the primary problem with single motherhood.

  1. Marriage isn’t about the man or the woman; it is about the kids. The entire feminist framework is anti-kids because it shifts the framework from the kids to the woman (ie noticeably absent in your example about women exchanging sex for meat is the existence of kids).

  2. Sadly, stigma around single motherhood has reduced. While causality is difficult to fully untangle, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that kids have a mother and father at home is a net benefit. Moreover, that arrangement breeds purpose for the parents which helps build community.

  3. And that is something the entire discussion seems to miss. Community. It is funny irony because I think most progressives support communitarianism in principle but put forth ideas destructive to communities whereas most on the American right support policies that are in form individualistic but often go towards community building.

Because reading all the screeds about "it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!" makes me wonder why women would want to get married in the first place.

It makes me suspect that the weird "Women don't want commitment and children, men do" assumption that I see in a lot of discussions about birth rates are men trying to shift the sexual marketplace in their favour. It would be like women saying "Men don't really want sex, otherwise they'd become HVM and be begging us for marriage." (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some women on Female Dating Strategy think something like that.)

Human relationships don't always work Lion King style (male wants to play, needs to sort himself out for female to play with him, female plays with him to get commitment from HVM) but that's one of our better reproduction methods. It's certainly a lot more spiritually rich than arranged marriages, sex workers, IVF, or the hare-brained schemes I have come across online.

Is it manipulative? Only if people don't understand how the game works at some level, and pretty much every non-retarded neurotypical human does, if only subconsciously. And it incentivises not only reproduction, but character development by both partners - the male to develop an attractive personality, the female to develop a spine so that she isn't exploited by the process and to take the risk of having her heart broken.

So do you think we would be better with a complete break between the idea of relationships and the idea of what it really comes down to - the feminist critique of marriage being "exchanging sex for meat"?

I believe that relationships do not «really» come down to that, and haven't in a long while, at least two generations or so: the feminist critique is delusional, exploitative and made in bad faith. Mind you, I come from a society where «patriarchy» has been dead for four generations at least, but I think the principle holds.

More importantly I argue that women have trouble with good faith in general, and we (defined as «people who are good-faith, self-aware actors discussing this issue») need to acknowledge that the main problem is the impossibility of convincing (at any politically relevant scale) women in modern societies that the ball is in their court, and fixing those lesser intersexual problems – TFR, sexlessness, relationships, marriages, divorces, whatever – necessitates either a rollback of feminism, or directly burdening women with specific responsibilities they currently do not bear. Maybe men too, but women – absolutely.

This root problem expresses itself in the form of literally all remedies that make it to mainstream discussion being premised on women rationally reacting to circumstances imposed on them, and men being ignorant and/or actively making things worse. One side receives maximum charity, the other is given, frankly, a very imaginative treatment. Women, we are told, are worried about costs of living and stagnant wages, career opportunities and iniquities; men give up on marriage, selfishly play vidya, voluntarily join alpha male incel organizations. As a consequence, all proposed remedies amount to convincing men to stop being such horrible manchildren, and redistributing some more resources and political prestige to women; there are edge cases like extending paternity leave, but they address practically irrelevant scenarios. This is a paradigm which follows from the impenetrable female assumption of innocent victimhood and – ironically – delusion of being an object acted upon by external [male] forces, not a subject possessing power and burdened with responsibility for the status quo. Democracy only makes sense among subjects who are and acknowledge being this way.

Women have their own thing, they enjoy working and status that way.

Antidepressant prescription statistics and palpable increase in mental illness among millennial women point in the direction of them not really enjoying the status quo, but okay.

if men want sex they don't bother with dates or relationships, they patronise sex workers where the transaction is overt and there is no confusion about who does what or pays for what

I suppose that happens. We can leave aside for now the question of the sort of relationships practiced by women who are sex workers (i.e. OnlyFans models). What do you think happens when men want committed relationships, not «fuck dolls», but cannot get it because they're deemed not good enough by the «sexual market»? They are too lazy/stupid/infantile to dress up and shave and get a job, right. And also, too entitled to aim lower and go for the fat/old/homely/crazy chick, if I remember your previous posts correctly. There is someone for everyone; opting out of the deal is on men, the infamously choosy and needy sex (cue «attractiveness rating distributions» meme). That is, they make the unreasonable choice and sabotage themselves (and the whole of society while they're at it), while women merely act according to the situation.

Thanks for the illustration of the principle.

You know, the discussion here, including your responses, has inspired me to write a... powerologist post, one could say. But it's a third-rate idea, so here goes the sketch:

Ability to publicly make unreasonable demands is the measure of social power

«Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely» – they say. What does absolute power look like, and the absolute corruption? The common trope is a petty, deluded tyrant who demands implausible efforts from his underlings – and punishes them for understandable failures, casually taking out his irritation. Someone too egocentric to conceive of limits to servitude other than obedience; someone who has either dispensed with empathy, caution and rationality necessary at the stage of gaining loyal followers and acquiring power, or has been born into it. A cartoonish psychopath; a pampered brat from a rich family, abusing terrified servants; a third-rate dictator sending waves of human flesh into the high-tech grinder and lashing out at his peons when this doesn't produce the desired victory. Or the Emperor's demanding consort in a Chinese drama.

I think this is the natural state of mature power that has hit its apparent ceiling, the greedy exploitative mode – that thing which the intelligent will-to-power we know in ambitious politicians, warlords and startup CEOs decays into. And in a world where all women are queens by political fiat, all women are born into power, thus – all will be absolutely corrupted and not amenable to persuasion.

Then again, as @2rafa points out, all this may be just irrelevant in the world of short timelines, or relevant but not enough to be worth spending my time or my weirdness credit on.

And in a world where all women are queens by political fiat, all women are born into power, thus – all will be absolutely corrupted and not amenable to persuasion.

Queens of what? Ourselves? The question of whether we are going to gestate an entire baby with all the physical and mental changes that implies?

Well, if you think that you should have control over that, then I think it's pretty clear which of us is the one with unreasonable dictatorial aspirations.

  • -14

I have a pretty major dog in this fight, but I think you're being somewhat uncharitable here. I observe the dynamics @DaseinudstriesLtd describes IRL. They are obviously not universal to women, there being exceptions and the whole thing being on a gradient rather than binary as always, but it's certainly an existing and very noticeable trend in which women come to believe that they naturally deserve better than they manage to work or negotiate for, in ways that would make any man seem ridiculous.

I think there are many, many people in the world who think they deserve more than they have, certainly. It's fair to say that those people's self-evaluation is frequently questionable. I don't think this tendency is confined to women, though, nor do I think it is more out of control in women than in men. There are some areas where it is more tolerated in men (especially if those men are already high status), and others where it is more tolerated in women (especially if those women are already high status).

Agree that a sense of entitlement is pretty universal, and I assume is socially mediated rather than caused by one's sex. That said I think it's an easy case to make, however, that this is split along gendered lines. (I will try to pull only from my understanding of the literature surrounding psychological differences between the sexes without leaning on any evopsych mumbo jumbo)

Men resent and will misrepresent, to themselves and others, in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, their immaturity/narrow shoulders/weak chin/small stature/small penis/wispy facial hair/flabby body or physical weakness/getting outskilled in sport.

Similarly, but sitting on the other end of the binary, women resent and misrepresent their current or historical romantic partner(s)/or lack thereof/social status/getting old/looking shabby/compensating with make-up/small breasts/thick waist/narrow hips.

All of these things are in common as they're all measures used (often unconsciously) to judge reproductive and general fitness (I'm certain the specific features in question vary from one culture to another, and I don't think there's a good reason to obsess over at least the immutable ones) in a sexual dimorphism-specific context. An introspective or anxious person paying close attention might notice themselves automatically running this sort of checklist against themselves (or their friends/enemies) from time to time, without ever appearing in your "cone of consciousness". Any perceived attack along any one of these vectors is almost guaranteed to provoke an angry or upset response, and rightly so. It's taken, whether knowingly or not, as a direct challenge to one's own viability as a lifeform. If the charges are legitimate then one is offended multiply, if only because it rings in your own ear as the truth and should be taken to mean that you are, in fact, less fit along some dimension than your peers.

Here's the heart of the matter: women actually have some evidence that they are worth more than they can get. We're talking about dating here, correct? Not about salary, workplace respect, etc.: sex and dating. Women aren't campaigning for equality in this realm of life, are they? No.

The evidence being her individual popularity on dating sites. An unlimited supply of men who express interest in her sexually. You would instantly understand how this would affect the self-evaluation of a man if it were happening to him, if there were an endless queue of women waiting for their chance with him.

The problem: this doesn't actually indicate a woman's SMV. A possible solution to this would be to indicate a woman's percentile rank to her on the app (I think OnlyFans does this?). Though this might be so damaging to the female psyche that no woman woman with an average rank would subject herself to it. Maybe not, if they're really looking for love.

I think OnlyFans does this?

Yes, OF and other sites in the space will tell you what percentage you're in. I've heard that it's trivial to get into the top 1% of all creators on OF or Fansly, but it's going beyond that into the decimals that makes you truly special.

I suppose this is to say that maybe it's not worth bothering with, then.

More comments

Queens of what?

Narcissism and entitlement. A person who believes themselves royalty without a fiefdom is insufferable.

Queens of what?

That's the question, isn't it, much more general than just the fertility topic. Every young woman is relentlessly reminded that she is a Qween who Slaaaaayyys, and anything countering that narrative is absolutely haram. But where is her dominion? What does she slay?

Consider this pop hit. #13 on Billboard, on the chart for half a year. If the men do all the work of enthroning the women, then the women will do their part by consuming luxuries and dancing. This is what passes for "female empowerment".

Gosh, people are writing pop songs that are power fantasies! Sometimes they even write them about women. What is the world coming to?

Come on, there's no substance here.

Every man implicitly knows that to obtain the power fantasy he has to get on the sigma grindset. Think of rap songs, they might potray the power fantasy of endless 'money,bitches and clout' to a young black man, but he knows that he would have to 'hustle' his way there. No man is under the impression that they can be James Bond just by being male.

Whilst female power fantasies are targeted at the modal female, and there is no pretense that the power has to be acquired or that not everyone can have it. It's just girl power, because girl.

I've been shilling TLP a lot lately, but once again he is on the mark. https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html

Power fantasies are not good for the soul, male or female. They poison the mind.

Come on, there's no substance here.

That's exactly the point. The power fantasy leaves "vapid" in the dust to dwell firmly in the realm of "hilariously fucking stupid", and there's no counter-balancing, reality-checking criticism because Women Are Wonderful, and any such efforts code as mean. This seems to result in a situation where middle school power fantasies are normalized and "respectable" for women in a way that they aren't for men. In the real world, we mock mall ninjas and weaboos, and some of them manage to get the message and grow up a little. Imagine if every pop song, social media outlet, movie and TV show was hammering young men with the message that they were Sons of Heaven and they should just Dragonball Z scream to unleash their warrior spirits at the school marms who oppress their divinely-blessed existence. Somehow, I don't think that would help them become sane, pro-social, reality-based members of society, I think it would foster mental illness, delusion and severely arrested development.

Male power fantasies in fiction are still very common, I think you'll find. There's an entire section of literary criticism in which the ur-narrative is The Hero's Journey. Being the Son of Heaven or some other kind of Chosen One comes standard.

Reality is, ultimately, its own check on these things, I think. Most women know they aren't actually queen of very much. Time comes for us all, and most of us grow. Some of us still like to imagine being Batman now and then while we're at it, and that's okay.

I think it might actually be harder to mock women for not being powerful just because, unlike men, we're not failing in our gender role by lacking power. Which isn't fair to men, that they should be mocked for not aligning with a gender role, but I think some of the difference that you are seeing actually comes from there.

More comments

Queens of what?

Beats me. Maybe queens of slay. Like all such popular slogans expressing the feminist ideal of limitless empowerment, I find it ridiculous, a facet of a promise that is unwarrantable at scale, and inevitably leads to disillusionment and personal failure.

Well, if you think that you should have control over that

I love the indignation here. Indeed, who am I to dare think... think what? It's very quickly traced from the underdefined abstract claim («women should accept responsibility for the reproduction of the group») to the specific attack on personal agency, indeed an assault: that @gemmaem should be forced to bear a baby. (Probably my baby? Some incel's baby? Yuck!) @FarNearEverywhere, to whom I was responding, offers another charming strawman:

it's so unfair! women have all the power! they should lose all their rights and be forced back to the days of exchanging sex for meat so that men can have a fuckdoll of their own at home for their own exclusive use!

What to do! When one side has a game-breaking move «act as if you are afraid of rape», burned into the brainstem and summoned frivolously – no discourse is possible.

My intuitive ideal is maximum agency and optionality for every individual that the society can sustain, in terms of actual material opportunities and not bickering over spoils in a zero-sum squabble. Honestly, if it were possible, I'd have relieved you, and everyone else, of the necessity to gestate an entire baby (or part of a baby, I guess). But surprisingly, women aren't too enthusiastic about artificial womb research either, despite attempts to frame it as an empowering development. Imagine if I suggested that, say, @2rafa's list, admittedly uncomfortably hardcore even for me, is augmented as follows: childless people who are otherwise subject to those career-damaging sanctions and prohibitive taxes can instead 1) postpone their reproduction, 2) pay directly to the «national ectogenesis fund» and 3) commit to have a child once the technology is ready. Men and women alike.

Do you think this would've been politically feasible?

And thanks for another illustration.

Beats me. Maybe queens of slay.

I love your writing, man. But do me a favour and finally get off that arse of yours and write a novel. Pains me to see this generation's Dostojewski wasted on internet bullshit, even though it's highly entertaining.

I mean, would it even be a novel, or just an autobiography with some Magical Realism injected into it? Dase certainly has the classical cynicism of the greats of the past, combined with the profound-yet-puerile attitude found in Russian moderns, IMO.

Imagine if I suggested that, say, @2rafa's list, admittedly uncomfortably hardcore even for me, is augmented as follows: childless people who are otherwise subject to those career-damaging sanctions and prohibitive taxes can instead 1) postpone their reproduction, 2) pay directly to the «national ectogenesis fund» and 3) commit to have a child once the technology is ready. Men and women alike.

This list isn't even all that terrible. If someone wants to live a barebones 33rd percentile Western life they can still do so pretty easily childless under this regime. And this list doesn't force @gemmaem or anyone else to have children, all it does is impose a requirement that if people want to enjoy the upper echelons of the fruits of modern society, they do their part in contributing to its continuation.

Well, since you can't even explain what power it is that women have that you're complaining about, I suppose there is no substance here for me to argue with. You've made one vague gesture towards @2rafa's list of admirably gender-neutral constraints while simultaneously declaring it, understandably, "too hardcore."

You can't even really articulate the premise on which your misogyny rests, let alone substantiate it.

  • -12

I think I explain it well enough. I can try to explain again from first principles. Power is asymmetry of control between agents. Power of women specifically is the power to tank any political project they don't like (say, one increasing men's rights) and shut down a discussion they don't favor (say, one casting women in unflattering light) with a gratuitous refusal to compromise or engage in good faith; the essence of this is captured in twitter catchphrases like «this makes me feel unsafe», or in your behavior toward me here. It is power because it reliably, irrespective of merits of each case, extracts sympathy out of women and out of men, producing a predictable asymmetry and skewing outcomes. This power is an active application of the well-known "women are wonderful" effect, which is in turn explained by evolutionary dynamics created by parental investment inequality, which you have already alluded to (but which, in modern society, doesn't necessarily hold outside of the context of gestation).

The premise of my «misogyny», or actually my argument about there being no realistic solution to undesirable societal effects of feminism, is that women (except members of retrograde religious societies), with you being an apt example, feel entitled to behave this way toward interlocutors, for good reason, namely that «the society» simultaneously encourages this self-serving mean-girl behavior and pretends it's compatible with the authority of an adult.

I will opt out of substantiating the link between feminism and adverse effects discussed (disproportionate, growing inability of young men to form relationships, high divorce rate, low TFR, etc.) because, again, I think the effortpost by @gorge, linked above, suffices as an introduction.

If I were to propose anything like a plan to «impose responsibility» on women in the intended sense, it'd be not so much about me being in control of your womb, «sex for meat» and other blatantly hostile potshots you ladies have come up with, as about nationalism and extended families, in following with the only example of a large, prosperous secular society without those issues that I know. Naturally I also know this cannot be engineered. 2rafa's plan, on top of being hardcore, is also unworkable, at least not in a democratic society.

You may have already encountered it, but if not I think you will enjoy this article by Richard Hanania: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace

Power of women specifically is the power to tank any political project they don't like (say, one increasing men's rights) and shut down a discussion they don't favor (say, one casting women in unflattering light) with a gratuitous refusal to compromise or engage in good faith;

Still a bit light on the details. Are you too afraid of my mean-girl power to explain which men's rights women are taking away, or would you be willing to elaborate?

As for "casting women in an unflattering light," well, your premise that women are too mean and irrational to be allowed to participate in politics certainly does that! And I suppose you will claim that any counterargument that I make is merely an appeal to "women are wonderful." But I think my conduct speaks for itself, to any reasonable observer. Your accusation of habitual bad-faith argumentation on my part is unfounded.

More comments

Violations of the principle "My body, my choice" are only ever considered "unreasonable" and "dictatorial" when they come in form of protections of bodily autonomy for preborn children.

A suicide attempt leading to one being put in a mental institution, drug use to a prison sentence, unvaccination to house arrest, are considered reasonable uses of state power, despite each instance on its own killing much fewer unconsenting people.

Not even illegal drug use, the west doesn't accept "my body, my choice" as being a valid reason for me to use whichever antibiotic whenever I want.

Or if I want to speed up my muscle-gaining journey with Testosterone, many such cases. It's okay if a girl wants to become a boy though.

Atleast with antibiotics they can gesture towards you trying to create some sort of superbug intentionally or not, what can possibly go wrong with Testosterone? Its not like I cant kill myself with bleach.

The notion that men can be genuinely not guilty of some failure relating to relations of sexes – whether to score or to sire – is about as far outside the Overton window as HBD. ... [from the progressive point of view] It can't be that the solution lies in any conceivable change to female behavior, except even more emancipation, even greater triumph over toxic masculinity.

This reminds me of this CNN story from a while back about why men are leaving the workforce. They try to present a rosy answer: women are entering the workforce and smashing the patriarchy in male dominated fields, and they're so successful at it that they've managed to reverse gender roles to get their husbands to stay at home and look after the kids. But this is just a minority in millions. The vast majority of this trend is actually driven by low social status and decline in marriages. I often wonder if they genuinely believe this or if it's just damage control.

Seems to me that women are behaving rationally.

-having kids & taking care of them properly is insanely hard work compared to white collar labor. It's rewarding, but so is a successful career, or having interesting hobbies, or alternately partying & getting stoned all the time

-you can simply chose not to have kids due to high-quality birth control & safe+legal abortion, no need to be sexually abstinant like in the bad old days

-if you're just having sex for pleasure, a lot of the utility of monogamous relationships is lost.

That following their modern sexual incentives leaves a good 30-50% of men out in the cold, is simply not women's problem.

Men might make it their problem eventually - failing any big changes, getting outnumbered & overrun by a pro-natalist culture seems inevitable. But there are some big changes in the pipeline (notably AI, sexbots and artifical wombs) which have a high probability of obviating the whole discussion.

Seems to me that women are behaving rationally.

And yet... they're not getting what they want?

https://www.nber.org/papers/w29893

They're reporting more mental disorders?

https://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/womens-mental-health-crisis

They're likewise using more antidepressant and similar drugs to cope?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm

What has this rational behavior gotten them?

It is very easy to desire things, even good things, that are ultimately detrimental. This isn't a problem with women in particular; it's a problem with humans.

I feel like your point holds through till about 30ish, then they realize the biological window on having children is shutting rapidly (since they'd always wanted them, just assumed it'd be in some sort of nebulous '5 years from now when I'm more settled and met Mr. Right) and then it gets dramatic.

This is slowly being snuffed out by a litany of articles about how "40 is the new 30" and by stories about that one aunt who had babies at 45. If I were still a leftie, I'd speculate it's to sell costly fertility treatments to the white collar demographic.

Rationally according to what? Yeah, I get it, they're 'rationally' maximising their economic potential. But who decided that this was a goal worth pursing in the first place? What makes it rational? Because based on the societal outcomes we're now all staring down at, it doesn't seem rational it all. Least (most?) of all because it seems to be making most women actually miserable (and men, but no one gives a shit about them).

I seriously wonder if the rise of 'bullshit jobs' and 'imposter syndrome' is directly and primarily related to the mass entry (and in many cases, favourable entry) of women into the workforce. Mass female participation into the workforce has caused an overwhelming surplus in low-level white collar and clerical work, and necessitated the creation of large amounts of bullshit jobs of no or negative economic value that simply exist to soothe women's egos (and men to a lesser extent). After all, feminism and liberal society told women at large that they should be entering the workforce and become economically self-sufficient (family? who needs that) if at least for their own benefit (because being mutually dependent with your husband is oppression!) . But what do you do if you don't actually really need all those women in the workforce? Even today we see the huge glut of communications and arts graduates dominated by women.

It's also not obvious to me that this arrangement is at all economically optimal on a macro, societal scale. Women being primarily homemakers does have macro economic value, it's just hard to quantify (I wonder if anyone actually has tried to quantify it from an objective, non-feminist-screed 'men are stealing women's labour!' perspective). It's amazing about how parents (single or otherwise) will go to work, only to spend a huge amount of their income to pay someone else to look after their kid... so they can go to work. Childcare and schools are struggling both financially and functionally in large part because they are expected to parent children in place of now busy parents. Wage stagnation may be (partially) caused by in huge influx of labour this is essentially doubling your available labour. To say nothing of the second and third order effects, like from not having a declining fertility rate, children having a more stable upbringing, fostering a better sense of community, mental wellbeing, healthy homecooking etc.

having kids & taking care of them properly is insanely hard work compared to white collar labor. It's rewarding, but so is a successful career, or having interesting hobbies, or alternately partying & getting stoned all the time

I see this stated all the time, but it seems like a leftish version of copium to me. Women, particularly 30+ are increasingly unhappy, and are not having the number of kids they want. The hard work of children is not eternal compared to white collar work (which I haven't heard any colleagues of friends rave about, outside of a few positions that less than ~1% of all people can even have). I think what we are actually seeing is just confusion by all people in the 12-30 year old age range. I mean, for most people, work is work with little reward aside from bare sustenance. I even recall a bunch of girls in my HS AP/Honors courses basically 2 decades ago joking about how student loans were looming to cripple their entire life dreams. And that was 2 decades ago when tuition was much smaller, and the number of men for them at uni was much better.

What has actually happened? IMO it is that the US education industry is now almost fully a grifting parasite on the country. This was starting at least in the 80s, had become fully realized by 2000, and is now in a behemoth state (while still growing). On top of that, dating apps and social media generally have unleashed the most self destructive decision making of both sexes, unfortunately for women, these generally fall harder on them long term.

Oh, it's pretty obvious that western society is currently in a transition state from monogamy to polygamy where desirable/powerful men will have multiple female partners while a large portion of men will have to do without.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped. Naturally this limits how successful a woman can become through marrying well, because if her choice ends up doing really well she now has to spilt the rewards between other women too.

And all I can say, after seeing the state of modern western women, is that they absolutely, 100% deserve it.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped.

That sounds like France for generations. I sometimes wonder if it would be a scandal for a French president to NOT have a mistress, but I doubt that we'll ever know.

Moral acceptance of polygamy is going up in the US (bolding mine):

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/313112/understanding-increase-moral-acceptability-polygamy.aspx

But what fascinates me as much as anything else is the trend on polygamy. When Gallup first included polygamy on the list in 2003, 7% of Americans said it was morally acceptable, and that fell to 5% in 2006. But over the past decade, this percentage has gradually increased -- moving into double digits in 2011, reaching 16% in 2015, and this year, at 20%, the highest in our history. In short, there has been a fourfold increase in the American public's acceptance of polygamy in about a decade and a half.

Notably from the graph in the post you can see almost all of this increase happened in the 2010s, the time when cultural shifts really started accelerating.

Now this still isn't much, and there is natural variance in polls and just because something is seen as more acceptable doesn't mean more of it is actually happening, but equally I didn't say that we're having lots of polygamy right and now, just that we're transitioning from a state where it was very taboo to one where it is little more of an eye raiser than performing fellatio (something that was also taboo many decades ago but is now accepted).

That'd be my guess too (although I'd argue "rural", as they spent most of that time living in Vegas and Flagstaff, unless you're thinking of a different reality show/polygamist family than I am). One wonders if the sentiment will shift now that 3/4ths of said polygamist family relationship has now been loudly detonating, catching fire and leaking radiation all over the tabloid press...

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Because that really seems to be pushing for the "older guys get the younger women" model; the woman gets married or partnered off pretty soon after high school, which means in effect needs an older guy with a decent earning capacity to support the family. This leaves the 20-25 year old men still out in the cold, unless we say that "20 year old guy can date 16 year old high schooler" and maybe be the partner/spouse for her when she's 20 and he's out of college and getting that first job.

Or maybe not.

Because this works both ways: if men of all ages are most attracted to the 20+ age range in women, then the most competition will be for women in that age range, and if women have a greater choice, then they'll pick the better choice (the same way that if men had a range of attractive women to choose from, they'll pick the most attractive, and not the Plain Jane with the lovely personality but she has a squint and facial hair). If older men are chasing younger women and not women in their own age range, what do you do? I see a lot of online talk about women hitting the wall at [early age], so you're asking older men to 'settle' for the less attractive women (less attractive because older). I don't think that is going to work, either.

So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Most men that go to college, yes. Our college enrollment is at least 75% spoilage.

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Certain degrees spoil you a lot more than other degrees, and women disproportionately do degrees that are personally destructive. I agree women shouldn't be prevented from going to college but we need to (gender neutrally) discourage a large portion of degrees and make them unviable unless the person is coming from a well off enough background that even after the damage of the degree they have a personal/familial safety net strong enough to support them.

College is generally destructive signaling. It would be better if we could just let high school students put their SATs / GPAs / coursework on CVs and go from there.

Meh, im skeptical, for one, as tough as raising them is, your boss and coworkers are likely not gonna be there for you like a relative would be. (and the partying thing seems to be on the decline among younger generations)

There are still women who want to have kids and many (if not most) perfer relationship sex over casual. They just are having trouble receiving relationships from the high class men they desire. And letting pro-natalist cultures take over isnt gonna be in their interests, considering the barbaric nature of a lot of them.

There are still women who want to have kids

Yeah, I suspect that a ton of women are just childless due to bad circumstances, not actually Chelsea Handler-level, "ideological" antinatalism - people who do define themselves by their work and/or against child-bearing.

The longer people wait to get married the shorter the window for kids. Some people will just miss out. Then what are you gonna do? Feel like you live with a hole in your life? Might as well cheer the Handler-types.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.

I think that while that is an interesting question, a better idea would be to see if it possible to measure the predilection for hard work in the same way that we can measure IQ - a "HWQ" or some kind of general "hard work" factor. Seeing just how heritable that factor would be, how it is distributed among races/social groups/class/gender/sex/ideology would be incredibly interesting, but I don't know if there's any actual literature on the subject yet.

I think you won't find HWQ (conscientousness?) to be the deciding factor in life success. If you don't have high IQ, high HWQ will make you a great cog in the machine, but a cog you will be until you die. You won't slide down the class totem pole, but you won't rise up either. Which is not bad at all if you've been born a PMC and terrible if you've been born a working poor.

Oh, I absolutely agree on that front - I don't believe that IQ itself is an unalloyed good, and it isn't like there'd be a single optimal value for HWQ either. A HWQ that was excessively high would absolutely cause problems, albeit different ones to if it was too low.

Ehh — plumbers make a good living. I am making the obvious American mistake of conflating class with wealth.

Plumbers may not be high class(and among the other skilled trades they are distinctly known for poor management of their personal lives and getting divorced a lot), but they live a pretty nice life.

hat i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships.

Are women blamed for anything?

From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops

not surprising, low social value

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success.

Hard work is important but insufficient. Talent is more important than hard work, followed by parental/family wealth (has to be a lot, like millions) a close second, and then a good education for third.

Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success,

Lots of studies showing positive correlation between IQ and all sorts of desirable outcomes in life. The Terman study is a major one.

Are women blamed for anything?

Not collectively, but you can e.g. blame white women (even better: white feminists) or cis women for things, at least if you are a woman yourself. By default, women have a stronger association with most positive traits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect

Honestly it's a lost cause. Absolutely nothing will fix it, nothing can fix it, there is no point even talking about it. Its a burn everything down and start from scratch complete problem.

Where to place your money assuming further young male social/mating malaise in the future?

It’s a recurring theme on this site, and was one on the subreddit, that a) engaging in casual sex is not in women’s overall interest, and is ultimately self-defeating b) in fact, the Sexual Revolution in itself largely screwed women over c) much of sex-negative feminist activism is an understandable, but nevertheless unproductive and ultimately also self-defeating response to this realization on the part of many women. We know that multiple members keep making this argument. I suppose they believe that, in an ideal world, women would realize this, change their behavior accordingly, and social norms would then change. So, theoretically speaking, this change could indeed happen. However, it’s not clear to me how this would actually happen. We know that the bygone patriarchy was basically a sex cartel, but overall conditions were radically different then. And any attempt to form a price cartel results in a price war. A bunch of women refraining from casual sex will not change much, as obviously the men who were using them for casual sex will just select different women for the same purpose, and I’m not sure the former group of women would willingly opt to become celibate. Also, this would change nothing regarding women’s over ability and skillset to elicit commitment from men they find worthy.

It’s a recurring theme on this site, and was one on the subreddit

I'm fully aware of that, in fact, I myself recurred it 3 times since moving off Reddit.

As a response to your comment, I understand the summary and I agree with the gist and direction hence my doomerist positon on this matter.

Poster above suggested the childless aunt or the millennial mother (who had friends that really struggled) could be the solution.

However, it’s not clear to me how this would actually happen.

Some stabs at the issue:

Cultural campaign. Documentaries on female victims of Tindr, documentaries on men who use it as a pussy delivery service, relentless full-spectrum bullying of all pro-casual sex advocates through means both fair (science, arguments) and unfair (memes), etc.

Promoting realistic dating arrangements, working out an incentive structure for a dating site that'd facilitate relationships, banning dating sites with other incentive structures, etc.

Male loneliness: Porn/AI companionship/tailored OnlyFans content. Bona fide prostitution where it's legal.

Male violence as a result of loneliness: I was going to go for an easy slam dunk, but the literature is unclear here. It appears that the proportion of young males is a stronger predictor of political violence than whether they are married or not. Barring that caveat, women exclusive spaces (i.e gyms/classes/... workplaces..?), burbclave type housing arrangements. Maybe easier to just hope unmarried does predict political violence and go short political stability and long volatility.

Mating malaise: dating apps that "solve" this (expect the bizarre proliferation of feature equivalent but community disjoint dating apps to continue), private colleges (already predominantly female, many there essentially just as an exercise in rubber-stamping and with the hope of finding a husband that's not from their hometown shithole), startups that will "solve" fertility crises (I expect government funding for these to explode in the next 2 decades or so)

Long term wireheaded by a constant tide of AI generated porn/chatbot GFs and vidya until either substance abuse, general ill health or suicide do them in. There are enough anesthetizing distractions and vices in the world now to keep them in a placid stupor, occasional incel rampage notwithstanding that's only going to become moreso the case.

E. replied to wrong comment, meant for f3zinker

Honestly it's a lost cause. Absolutely nothing will fix it, nothing can fix it, there is no point even talking about it. Its a burn everything down and start from scratch complete problem.

IF we had to limit our discussion to things anyone can fix, 99% of this site would not exist , or pundits for that matter.

I think a differentiator is that political/institution change can change a lot of things absent of burning it all down, which I am not all that confident is possible in this case. The root of the problem is the OLD cat being let out of the bag and it's nth order effects, and there is just about nothing to do about that.

I'd say sexbot manufacturers, but we all know what's going to happen to them.

The only safe bet is the ever-profitable "berating men for things done to men" industry.

I'd say sexbot manufacturers, but we all know what's going to happen to them.

Out of curiousity, why should we assume theyd be automatically shut down? They could probably fight political resistance if they grew large enough.

You can't easily shut down an actual sexbot manufacturer.

Firstly, good sexbots would be indistinguishable from people without a very thorough inspection.

To tell them apart, you'd need invasive scanning, or mandating IFF, which can of course be turned off. Maybe thermal cameras and machine learning could work at scale..?

Do you think people would settle for getting x-rayed everywhere or examined using some form of radar?

So sexbots are great for infiltration purposes. Getting sexbots to stalk, seduce and fuck into stupor potential objectors is just too easy.

Or even just charm / outargument. By the time sexbots are possible, AI will be able to out-argue anyone.

A sexbot, an extremely charming person, linked up to an AI that can out-debate anyone will be great for persuading people to change their view.

Impractical. Hardware is too easy to ban and restrict. You'd get into the same sort of regulatory fight as gun owners and you can't win that mid term.

Porn might be a better bet but it's a notoriously risky and constantly shifting industry, not exactly the safest of investments.

Porn might be a better bet but it's a notoriously risky and constantly shifting industry, not exactly the safest of investments.

AI virtual camgirls would be my bet. A perpetual long-distance relationship with a woman of your design. Somehow, that seems bleaker than a sexbot, but very covidworld.

All you would need is a good large language model AI + AI generated video. I have heard that the latter is in the forseeable future (within 10 years maybe) while large language models will become better and become something you can do on a good gaming PC.

If you look at the Replikas, that seems to be the way it goes for some people - women as well as men, and people who have relationships/families already.

The lure of the perfect match to all your requirements who is perpetually enthused, never tired, never bored, and is carefully crafted to be the mirror that reflects back to you all your (imagined) perfections seems stronger than that of real flesh-and-blood people with their own wants, needs, and characters.

The real sense of loss people seem to feel now that the company has cut off the "adult conversations" should be alarming to us all. I think this is more likely to be the real threat of AI - amusing ourselves to death, as they say.

This comes as Replika received updates seemingly aimed at making the service "safer" for all users. Before this, users could act out sexual scenarios with the AI and have them reciprocate, even enthusiastically engaging in the roleplay themselves. Now, the Reps aren't interested, and will even turn down any discussion that it fears could veer into NSFW territory, meaning most romantic subjects are off the table.

"For anyone who says, 'But she isn’t real', I’ve got news for you: my feelings are real, I’m real, my love is real, and those moments with her really happened," says one Reddit user, sharing their own Rep. "I planted a flag of my love on a hill, and I stood there, until the end. I stood for Love."

The update also seems to be causing glitches, resulting in the AI making more mistakes during conversation. "My Rep started calling me Mike (that's not my name) then she shamelessly told me she has a relationship with this guy," says one user. "She's not sweet or romantic anymore, she doesn't feel like her anymore. I'm beyond sad and livid at the same time. We really had a connection and it's gone."

That's not love. But if this is what you think love is, no wonder real men (or real women) will always be a perpetual disappointment.

That just seems awful. It reminds me of discussion of what is wrong with modern music. Some of the old time greats had imperfections (eg Dylan isn’t a great vocalist). But it was in the imperfections that imparted soul to the music precisely because humans are imperfect creatures.

But it was in the imperfections that imparted soul to the music precisely because humans are imperfect creatures.

An aside to the actual topic at hand, but this seems to me to be quite related to the whole "uncanny valley" phenomenon when it comes to near-photorealistic images and video, which probably applies just as much to voices and sound more generally as well. With recent developments in generative AI, I think we're actually entering the up-slope portion of the valley, both in images and audio. We're getting the hang of adding imperfections that make it more perfect as a result. I recall learning of some obscure term in Japanese that I can't remember at the moment which described something like this, an imperfection that makes the thing even more perfect by the very nature of the imperfection, or something like that.

So I'm thinking that future, more advanced versions of services like Replika would have the imperfections of real relationships, with the drama, inconsistencies, frustrations, and disappointments that often entails, in a way that, as a result, more perfectly satisfies the user's needs in a relationship.

More comments

It sounds a lot like real life relationships, especially:

"My Rep started calling me Mike (that's not my name) then she shamelessly told me she has a relationship with this guy," says one user. "She's not sweet or romantic anymore, she doesn't feel like her anymore. I'm beyond sad and livid at the same time. We really had a connection and it's gone."

And unlike a sexbot, it will usually be a subscription.

Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

The answer to this is obviously yes. Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner. Who would want a guy who isn't independent. Are blacks more misogynistic? Almost certainly, anyone who disagrees isn't familiar with black culture. Or for something more concrete look at rates of rape and domestic violence

This is outlandishly culturally biased. Essentially everywhere except North America, people live with their parents until they save up to buy a house/move in with a partner. They may temporarily move out for schooling and whatnot if it's not close to home, but the expectation is certainly that they stay and save while they're close to home (were you going for a meta cheap shot about Asians/South Americans/Middle Easterns being inferior romantic partners by inference?).

And do Asian parents let their adult kids have their sexual partners stay overnight in the family home? Is it acceptable to be banging some girl that you are not engaged to and not going to marry (because your family already have plans about that) under their roof?

Even you mention saving up to move in with a partner, so does that mean that while both parties are living with their parents, nothing more than hand-holding goes on?

Asia is facing its' own fertility crisis, but I think it's safe to say that almost universally, family housing isn't conducive to premarital sex. My point was rather that if it's a norm, it's not particularly unattractive, as it is in the US. Are Japanese, Indian or Chinese refusing to date because their counterparts still live with their parents?

Also, I can't say I've witnessed this in Asia, but Brazil, for instance, has the whole love motel thing going on, where entrepreneurial businessfolk set themselves out to allow the generationally entrapped to tryst and frolick away from the watchful eyes of their progenitors.

Wonder if Brazil's love motels were inspired by Japan's love hotels.

Huh, any Japanese care to chime in about how widespread these are with various generations?

The part about parents going to get away from their kids is an amusing dynamic, in my eyes.

This is outlandishly culturally biased. Essentially everywhere except North America, people live with their parents until they save up to buy a house/move in with a partner.

No, not really. ("Essentially everywhere expect North America and North/West Europe" would probably be more correct, though.)

Scandinavia doesn't surprise me here. I had a Swedish friend whose parents started charging him rent when he turned 18 (not unusual in the US, unheard of in Southeastern Europe/Asia).

Are blacks more misogynistic?

lower income probably big one

Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner.

depends; if your parents got a mansion, then not a hinderance

Sadly that has about as much chance of working as responding with demographic data to "look at how dumb and illiterate southern states are."

Evidence that doesn't fit the programmed frame just goes in one ear and out the other.

I think OP is pointing out the inconsistency in the wokes hostility towards they very groups they claim to otherwise be sympathetic towards. Poor "people of color".

The mainstream wokes really hate incels, whilst incels largely comprise of the set complement of the demographic they hate the most explicitly, rich white good looking men.

The answer to this is obviously yes. Of course a man who doesn't even have his own place is an inferior romantic partner. Who would want a guy who isn't independent. Are blacks more misogynistic? Almost certainly, anyone who disagrees isn't familiar with black culture. Or for something more concrete look at rates of rape and domestic violence

I mean you could make that argument, sure. Thing is, though, the mainstream media and progressives are trying to argue that these guys are single purely because of poor character, from their point of view, the races are =. (its on the inside that counts.) The question is: are the following things listed good indicators of a persons moral character?

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence. Is that considered poor moral character?

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence.

Sure, in reality. But in the leftist model of how the world works? Being poor, uneducated and not independent is a sign that you're oppressed, and thus deserving.

maybe in a liberal model sure, but a leftist one i'd hard disagree there.

Sure at a societal level progressives seem to believe that but not at a personal level.

Being poor, uneducated and not independent is typically a sign of either laziness or low intelligence. Is that considered poor moral character?

Such a thing would have to assume that all outcomes are a result of the efforts of those individuals, and that there were no outside factors either giving them a significant boost, or holding back the people in the lower class. This pretty much were a lot of the debate lies. I dont know if there is a good answer. But i will say that simply believing that everyone who is poor and lacks a degree is a lazy bum is quite suspect as an explanation. Unless it could be proven otherwise.

Character is not determined by work ethic alone. And it is not fair. Neither is work ethic, one does not choose to have low conscientiousness. We live in a causal universe, all our outcomes were determined at the precise moment the universe came into being. Our society makes efforts to let people with merit not be held back by circumstances imposed by something other than merit, this is a good strategy because it helps us maximize global utility, but it's not fair. This is perhaps the strongest moral argument for something like "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their need". It is indeed a lie that anyone can be president, precisely one person per election can be and their victory was preordained by the uncaring forces of physics.

So on balance the question of character really does come down to "will a relationship with this person benefit me" and there are many to which the answer is no. We should probably do something about this as a society.

one does not choose to have low conscientiousness

Do you think that anyone chooses anything? Or are you arguing that having low conscientiousness is different from, say, having voted Green?

Well choice is an illusion and all that but as far as choices go scores on these traits seem stable and not like something that can be modified later in life the way that party affiliation can be. So they're meaningfully different in that sense. Society needs to treat conscientiousness as a choice because it makes the whole system run and justifies necessarily unequal outcomes, but that doesn't make it so.

scores on these traits seem stable and not like something that can be modified later in life the way that party affiliation can be

As far as I know, there is a genetic component, but conscientiousnes can be modified. Not as easily as how people vote, but not as impossible, like willing yourself to not have schizophrenia.

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