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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34965 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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How is it that so many people who are in favor of criminal penalties for recreational drugs use also came to believe that the covid lockdowns were bad because they were an assault on liberty? I think that an authoritarian argument such as "we like small businesses but we do not like drug users" at least is logically consistent although I find it disagreeable. But how is it that so many people who think of themselves as fans of liberty do not notice the contradiction? I believe that even here on The Motte there are some people who make libertarian-ish arguments against the lockdowns yet support the criminalization of recreational drugs.

In general much of the non-authoritarian right's attitudes toward recreational drugs make no sense to me. I dislike the authoritarians but again, at their arguments are consistent. Is this largely a matter of conservatism still being dominated by older people who have a learned-long-ago and now reflexive dislike of the idea of recreational drug use? A reaction against the hippies, some sort of view that drug use in general is politically left-coded and/or linked to sexual promiscuity? As a new generation of currently-young conservatives becomes dominant in the movement will we see the right become more accepting of recreational drug use? Given that so many on the right now enjoy thinking of themselves as dissidents against establishment orthodoxy, perhaps they will at least begin view psychedelics more favorably given that those drugs have at least some power to liberate people's mental attitudes from orthodoxy.

My argument against legalizing marijuana(yes, I know, you mean all drugs, but I’m arguing against the most politically favorable interpretation) rests on the following points-

1: occasional pot use by adults is probably not that bad. But daily use- which tracks way up under legalization- and adolescent use both appear very bad. With alcohol, we accept some frequency of both daily use and adolescent use(even if it’s de jure illegal) as the price for legalizing; I’m not in favor of doing the same for pot.

2: occasional pot use by adults is not that bad, but it’s still not a good thing that should be encouraged except perhaps by people suffering from incurable pain or something like that.

3: marijuana culture is bad and I don’t like it, and like it or not the aesthetics of a society really do influence it’s values and priorities. Other societies- including some which I neighbor- have proven entirely unable to prevent marijuana culture and it’s aesthetics from running rampant and taking over absolutely everything in environments of more permissive pot laws.

4: it smells bad and places like Colorado or NYC which have permissive regimes seem unable to moderate its use.

5: with the society we have, laws are rarely enforced to their maximum extent. Legalizing marijuana even with tight restrictions to curtail undesired/problem use is likely to result in those tight restrictions being ignored or evaded at very high rates because laws are not typically enforced maximally. Additionally, with marijuana in particular, we can expect big city prosecutors(that is, those in the sorts of places where most people live) to be highly sympathetic to marijuana use in a way that creates even more room to evade regulations.

Yes, a lot of them are individually rather weak reasons, but that’s why I listed five of them. To my conservative view authoritarianism isn’t an intrinsic evil; it’s something societies need less or more of depending on how they normally behave. 50’s America would have been fine with legal weed, modern day America isn’t.

Conservatives are not libertarians.

When I am weaker than you I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

-Frank Herbert

Except neither the left or the right are really the principled parties of individual freedom and when the other can gain the levers of power they're going to start pushing authoritarianism if not in general at least on their pet issues justified either with deontology or consequentialism.

If I put on my Antivax hat, there is a very simple argument that covers both: "don't put chemicals in people's bodies that are bad for them."

Finnish culture continues to be fairly strongly against the legalization of any recreational drugs, including cannabis, even if it is probably not quite as strongly as before. Meanwhile, many strong opponents of cannabis legalization or even decriminalization advocate for loosening alcohol laws (including having been against bar restrictions during the Covid era), something that cannabis legalization activists have pointed out as an inconsistency numerous times. Sometimes the cannabis restrictionists basically respond by - and I'm only slightly paraphrasing - that of course cannabis cannot be legalized, because it's a drug, and drugs are criminal.

Without a strong opinion on this topic myself, I've resolved that there is a strong correlation - in Finnish society, but probably also in others - between legality and morality, in the sense that something being illegal automatically takes it into the immoral territory and if something is immoral, well, that is already enough argument for not legalizing it. 'course, if the illegal thing is legalized, it pretty soon also becomes not-immoral, and there's no further argument needed for keeping it legal, and indeed proposing illegalizing it now becomes an onerous restriction on freedom.

Drug restrictions for lost people is a sort of disgust/purity issue, as a holdover from Christianity and other various religions. In my experience when pressed people don’t have good reasons against it.

People will bring up ODs of course but then if you point out that legalizing/decriminalizing heroin and allowing use in supervised scenarios will decrease ODs (like they did in Switzerland) you get the whole “I ain’t gonna pay for those people’s heroin!!”

So your saying someone is “lost” if they don’t want to fund someone elses drug use? Seems reasonable to me.

Besides the giant issue that not many drug addicts want to do their drugs in an institutionalized setting.

I’m saying someone is “lost” if they care more about arbitrary standards of purity than actually solving the horrific problem our society has with drug use. They’re going to pay either way, but the status quo means a lot of people are going to die for their foolish beliefs.

Whats the foolish belief ? Heroin is bad for you? That feels simplistic to me but it doesn’t feel like that bad of steelman to me.

Dope fiends are going to do fentanyl if it’s available. I don’t see a solution than lock a lot of people up. Some burnt out dope fiends will use your treatment centers but not most.

Afghanistan solved their drug issues since the US left by locking everyone up and forcing cold turkey quitting. Believing in that doesn’t feel “lost” to me.

The foolish belief is a standard chemical model of addiction, and the idea that it’s a failing of willpower. Drug addiction is caused by a society wide lack of purpose, meaning, etc.

Blaming addicts is foolish and unscientific, doesn’t solve the problem in fact it makes things worse. Again look to how Switzerland dealt with their heroin problem.

So your just going to ignore the Afghanistan model? Which has worked unlike say San Francisco?

More comments

I would largely put it down to severity of the imposition. It's not exactly positive restrictions versus negative restrictions, but that is a component of it.

To adhere to all Covid regulations and suggestions, you had to

1: Wear a mask whenever you go outside. This requires you to buy a mask, remember the mask exists, have this thing on your face restricting your breating and constantly reminding you of its existence, be unable to see the faces of the people you interact with, and have your adherence be publicly displayed.

2: Not travel to places or spend time with friends and family as much as usual. Not go to work for several months, possibly having severe repercussions on your finances. Change your entire daily routine, and that of your family. Watch your kids miss several months of proper schooling. Have you and your family potentially suffer negative mental health effects.

3: Inject yourself with a newly invented vaccine that may or may not work or be safe (it does work and is probably safe, but that's hard for a 100 IQ person to know when everyone is lying constantly). Multiple times, because apparently the first one isn't good enough.

This was a huge deal. The entire country changed, for years. The economy took a huge blow leading to supply chain issues and massive inflation that it still hasn't recovered from (though part of that is that it rolled into the Russia sanctions, but the bulk of it was Covid). And the rules kept changing every week and people had to keep paying attention and changing their behavior in response. The Covid lockdowns were a big deal. You can argue that Covid itself was a big deal and therefore it was worth the cost, but it was a huge cost.

Meanwhile, to adhere to recreational drug restrictions I have to.... do nothing. I can literally do nothing, go about my daily life, and be in compliance with the restrictions. I can not damage my health by inhaling or injecting foreign substances, and not spend my money on a thing that I don't need or want. People who don't know that recreational drugs exist are in compliance with these restrictions, because it's a restriction against doing something, not requiring you to do something, and it's not something most people want to do anyway. It has literally no impact on the majority of people, so they don't care. You might compare it to if the government outlawed Skiing or something. People would get upset and protest that the restriction was stupid, pointless, authoritarian and evil. But they would be less upset than the Covid lockdowns, because most of them would not be impacted and could comply by simply going about their daily lives not Skiing. And if Skiing had already been illegal for decades then people probably wouldn't get that upset about it, because they wouldn't have made it into a hobby they enjoy or bought equipment for it in the first place.

The ability to use recreational drugs is just not a big deal for most people.

I am a firm proponent of legalization, but I'd say this makes some sense. I am personally much more upset about the consequences of the drug bans (and the horrible "War on Drugs") and the theoretical loss of freedom aspect of it than by actual hardships involved in being personally unable to consume drugs (which for marijuana in the US is none anyway, you can get it practically anywhere easily, even if it's not legal there), especially since I never had any desire to consume any (besides alcohol). This does not apply to medical marijuana though - the fact that marijuana is still officially considered by Federal government as Schedule I - i.e. having zero medical uses - is a colossal idiocy. Everybody knows it's a lie and it harms a lot of people, and still this persists. But for recreational purposes - yes, I'd say the direct effect of such a ban on me is pretty much zero. I still oppose it on the other grounds, but probably I'd feel much less upset than about something that involved personally infringing my freedom and making my personal life worse. Such as COVID lockdowns, for example, which did insane, totally infuriating amount of harm.

A utilitarian frame is logically consistent. Recreational drug use kills a lot of people. In terms of preventable life years lost I would say it’s equal or higher than COVID. Weren’t we around 120k overdose deaths per year and the average death is probably about 40 years old? So you are talking about 40 life years losts per drug death versus like 5 years from COVID death (and mostly late life).

I believe a quant would have no problem making this distinction. Someone whose base a view from “libertarianism” I guess wouldn’t.

A lot of it probably is just tribal but I do think the math makes it rational to have those opinions. And you can probably make a religious argument for those positions too - COVID being natural deaths versus drugs being ungodly etc.

Those 120k deaths happened under a regime of prohibition, so how are they supposed to be evidence in its favor? Of course you can say drug deaths would be way more without prohibition, but that requires further argument (e.g. comparison with places or time periods that had fewer restrictions), which you haven’t given.

We prohibit drug use in the US?

I see needle exchanges in San Francisco and gift packs. I don’t see drug users getting 6 months in an institution to clean up when they use.

Yes, we do, and we spend an enormous amount of money and time enforcing that. Also, it's illegal to federally fund needle exchanges, they're all state or privately run and have to be authorized by state law, and almost all states have extensive laws against drug paraphernalia. And cherry-picking the city with the laxest policies on public drug use in the country, which actively encourages homeless junkies to come there, says next to nothing about what the rest of the US is like. Not to mention that in 2020 (the peak of ODs this decade) San Francisco's rate of OD deaths was about the same as that of Kentucky or Ohio, which are not exactly famous for their state governments' lax attitudes toward drug use.

I’ve never met someone in jail for drugs. Everyone I know has used them. And have known a few ODs. Doesn’t seem enforced in practice.

The plural of anecdote is not data. With that said, I'm not sure how that is even in principle supposed to show drug laws aren't enforced. It isn't per se illegal to be high, what is illegal is being noticeably high in public or possessing drugs/drug paraphernalia. And cops obviously can't just conduct random searches of people's houses to see if they're getting high/possessing drugs in private (without probable cause). So what laws did everyone you know break, or give authorities probable cause to think they were breaking, such that there would have even been an opportunity to enforce them against them?

It could also be that drug laws are being enforced, but they just aren't effective at curbing drug use, and that would produce the same outcomes you're describing. Since whether drug laws are effective is exactly the point at issue here, to treat these instances as proof that drug laws aren't enforced is question-begging.

Honestly think your just being argumentative or don’t go into the party scene. It’s not hard to buy drugs in a club. You could run a sting and find a bunch any night of the week.

And for probably cause. It’s standard for all services to carry narcan in a lot of places. That’s probable cause right there. Those people aren’t getting arrested.

Police departments already spend lots of time doing drug busts, because they get to seize the cash (and much of the other property) that they find, so it's often a major source of revenue. What evidence do you have that stepping up stings would actually make it hard to buy drugs in clubs and the like in the US?

I don't understand what you're saying. Why would it provide probable cause if someone is carrying narcan? And probable cause for what crime? Narcan is legal with a prescription in most if not all states, and half the time the person carrying it is doing so for use on others.

I highly doubt that most OD’s would otherwise be living til 80. Another 20-30 is probably reasonable, though.

I'm not opposed to recreation, I'm opposed to face-eating, overdose deaths, addiction-derived desperation, and the other negative consequences of drug use. Calling the substances in question "recreational drugs" is assuming the conclusion.

Lockdowns were a larger imposition with more missteps and less justification IMO.

Marijuana, at least, is not a big issue along these metrics. AFAIK it doesn't cause "face eating" or overdoses and from a pure addiction standpoint (let alone the direct health consequences) it's no worse than alcohol and substantially better than tobacco.

Yup, which is why I didn't oppose marijuana legalization back when it passed.

How is it that so many people who are in favor of criminal penalties for recreational drugs use also came to believe that the covid lockdowns were bad because they were an assault on liberty?

There's probably a way to square that circle and make the two positions cohere, but the better explanation of incoherent Covid stances on both the right and left is that it's just political tribes picking a side and circling the wagons. In March 2020 there were right wingers who were gungho on pandemic restrictions and left wingers who were blithe to the danger and also were anti-bigpharma vaccine skeptics. But a variety of factors pushed the median left winger to be pro-restrictions and the median right winger to be anti-restrictions. After that both sides rallied around the flag.

Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe:

https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11of65g/i_21m_asked_my_friend_21f_to_be_fwb_and_now_she/?sort=confidence

A clearly very socially awkward nerdy literal virgin (despite being 21 years old) guy thinks a cute girl in his study group is flirting with him. He takes her aside privately after a study session and asks her… does she want to be his FWB (friends with benefits)? He reasons that he wants to have fun like many young men and isn’t looking for a relationship right now.

The girl is shocked and taken aback. She turns him down flat and appears uncomfortable. He feels uncomfortable too and apologizes to her and leaves.

Over the next few weeks, she doesn’t say anything to him at study sessions. He tries to make contact again, not to proposition her, but just to resume their friendly acquaintanceship. She tells him directly that she doesn’t want to speak to him. He is hurt but understands and leaves her be. Soon enough, he learns that she has told her friends and extended social circle what happened, and he is widely reviled as a creep. He feels hurt and violated. He laments that he has lost a friend, and now feels like he’s being lambasted for an innocent error, and he wishes the whole thing would just end and go away.

My take on OP is sympathetic. He comes off as extremely awkward and clearly isn’t well versed in the endless myriad of opaque and seemingly contradictory rules of modern dating. He wanted an FWB, and he didn’t understand that the socially acceptable way to get one is to ask a girl out on a date (usually through Tinder), then hook up with her, then either stay as vague as possible for as long as possible about your intentions while continuing to periodically fuck, or to sort of half way shrug after a fuck session and say, “yeah, I’m just really not looking for anything serious right now.” OP genuinely thought he was being upfront and honest with another person, and assumed that he was proposing something mutually beneficial.

Yes, it’s not a good idea to outright proposition a girl to be an FWB in a library. It’s awkward and weird and I can see how it made her feel uncomfortable. But all signs point to OP making an innocent error. He didn’t know any better. When he became aware of his mistake, he immediately apologized, gave the offended party space, and only later attempted to reestablish contact in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He made an innocent mistake and responded in the best possible way.

And Reddit’s response to OP is… calling him a massive piece of shit in every conceivable way.

What I find interesting about the overwhelming criticisms of OP is that they split in two completely opposite directions, but seemingly from the same critics.

On the one hand, OP is relentlessly slut shamed. He is accused of treating this woman like a “flesh light,” of feeling “entitled” to sex, of creepily trying to fuck an acquaintance, of pursuing sex with a girl instead of trying to date thine lady like a proper Victorian gentleman.

On the other hand, OP is relentlessly virgin shamed. He’s an incel, a fool, a creepy moron. He’s daring to try to have casual sex when he hasn’t even lost his virginity because he is SUCH A MASSIVE FUCKING LOSER. OP doesn’t understand that casual sex is only for chads who have fucked a bunch of girls, FWBs are an unlockable perk, not a privilege of the sexually unworthy.

Fortunately, there is a minority of Reddit commenters backing OP up, but it is a small minority. Meanwhile, many more posters are saying that OP is well on the way to becoming an incel or Andrew Tate fan, and unfortunately, they’re right, just not in the way they think they are.

I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.

only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.

This guy getting barbecued the way he was was a feature, not a bug: the system working as intended. Asking someone out is staking a chunk of your social capital; being so brazen is staking a bigger chunk. This can best be described as FAFO: our hero did not know that he was expected to be celibate for life and dedicate his life to something prosocial and noble, and as such made at least two critical errors. If he was going to fight that...expectation - as arguably he should - the first step starts with recognizing that it's there and that the minefield is a feature, not a bug.

If your daughter comes home one day and says that a guy in her class who she sometimes speaks to came up to her and said “I want to fuck you casually without commitment, you up for it?” and she says she felt uncomfortable and walked away, what would you tell her? Would you tell her not to tell her friends because it might embarrass the guy? Would you feel sympathy with the guy who propositioned your daughter?

I would seek him out and look him in the eye. If he's a fuckboy he'd get a warning to stay away from my daughter. If he's a social retard, he'd get a primer on dating including a warning about second chances.

If he's a social retard, he'd get a primer on dating including a warning about second chances.

You would be very kind. Ordinarily these lessons are taught by peers. He needs you to tell him that as an awkward man he is fundamentally disgusting and transgressive for wanting a relationship - or at least that he is seen this way and that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.

The traditional perspective of the father on his daughter's sexuality is extremely protective, anachronistic, and colored by psychosexual status games, with incestual overtones. He's the last guy I would trust to have a fair opinion on the topic, like a mother-in-law's view of her daughter-in-law, although probably even more so.

Only a universalist could ask this. I can simultaneously believe that capital punishment is a bad policy that often unfairly harms the undeserving AND that anybody who so much as lays a finger on my loved ones should die in agony. The emphasis is on my here.

I just think that it is not a very good exercise, because for some, fatherly duties override almost all other moral concerns. The answer will therefore always be maximally protective of the daughter and maximally hostile to any perceived threats or slights. Regardless of the sympathy the threat may deserve in the abstract.

Tell her to cut him off completely and avoid him wherever possible. Followed by a lecture on Western degeneracy and how we (as a group of people) have our own culture and proud history and most importantly are absolutely not like them at all. Finally ending in a promise that if she desires we (our family) will happily find her a good man from a stable family and a similar belief system to us that she will with high probability be happy with (but first, finish your studies and graduate with good marks).

I'm going to say something perhaps inflammatory: If I had a daughter and that happened, yes, I would feel some sympathy for the guy who propositioned her, and I would expect her to understand that. In order to explain my position, I'm going to relay a personal experience of mine.

Many guys tend to not have the experience of being approached since they are the ones typically expected to initiate and take on all risk. However, I'm a guy who's had an experience of being propositioned by another guy, and though granted his advance was less direct than "do you want to be FWB" it was done by a random dude in a park who I had never met before (and I was admittedly a bit flustered by it and politely rejected him). My initial reaction wasn't really "What an asshole, fuck that guy", instead it was worry about the fact that perhaps I could've cushioned the blow of rejection a little further. My primary emotion was in fact a feeling of sympathy (and a bit of confusion about how he figured out my orientation on sight alone).

I did not think I should be offended simply because he suggested to me something we might both enjoy, and I did not envy his position. Being the one who initiates is terrifying, opens you up to the inherent humiliation of rejection and could end up with you on the receiving end of a claim of harassment. I felt an obligation to respect that. And while I did tell some people I knew about what happened (which I felt comfortable doing because we definitely did not hang out in the same social circles and in fact would likely never see each other again), I never provided any identifying information that would have reasonably allowed anyone even in his social circles to know who he was off my account alone. I certainly did not go blabbering about how terrible he was and in fact made it a point to stress to people I told that I did not think of him as a creep.

I would expect from any daughter of mine the same conduct I expect from myself. No amount of "but physical strength differences, though" works here, because I am unusually small and thin (I barely weigh 100 pounds) and the guy propositioning me was much larger. Furthermore, any claim that the consequences of unwanted sex for women is greater than it is for me also has to contend with the fact that women now have a huge amount of control over their sexuality even after the act has occurred as they have access to things like the morning after pill. As an aside, it is easier for women to escape the consequences of PIV sex than it is for men (whose financial obligations will be enforced even if the sex was against his will).

And yes, women have a different instinctual reaction to these things than men do because of the historic reproductive risks and costs of sex for women which no longer holds up under modernity. Humans are full of evolutionary baggage that isn't necessarily rational under modern circumstances. However, I expect women to deal with their feelings in a way that doesn't blow back on others who have according to all objective criteria done nothing wrong. Managing your emotions and not capriciously doing things that would cause others harm simply for offending your sensibilities is part and parcel of mature behaviour.

If I'd found out my hypothetical daughter had gone and told people about it, and found out it had blown back on the guy to the point he was being treated like a predator, I would definitely at least be telling her that her actions matter, and that she should have thought twice before badmouthing him in a social group where it could result in actual consequences for him.

EDIT: added more

I would unironically tell her to cut all contact with him and not do anything to piss him off too much. Things such as gossiping about it.

Not out of sympathy for him but because there are crazy motherfuckers out there and you dont want to be on the wrong side of someone with nothing to lose all the while being the reason he lost everything, justified or not. Not making unnecessary enemies is usually a good policy regardless of who you are. At the very least Id tell her to tell her friends to keep their mouths shut.

Complete social suicide like this makes rapists and school shooters and assaulters.

This is a leading question because the obvious answer that you want to get ("fuck that dude, you are right to shame him sweetie") is obviously going to conflate people who think OP is wrong because he is not conforming to traditional sexual norms (no casual sex, period), with those who think OP is wrong because he didn't play the game properly (casual sex is fine, OP just went about it the wrong way).

The issue is that if you accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture, OP didn't really do anything morally wrong he just committed a massive faux pas so he doesn't deserved to be permanently ostracised and labelled a dangerous incel. After all, all he did was believe the advice liberal society gave him to be honest and treat women like men.

Most people sympathetic to OP are addressing the fact he is operating in this sexually liberal environment, and judging it on that basis (and finding it hypocritical and treating OP unfairly on its own terms).

This does not mean I think a sexually liberal culture is a good thing. If it were up to me, all these young adults would be pulled away from casual sex. OP would an idiot lecher trying to defile a maiden with premarital sex, and the girl would rightfully scold and shame him for trying to take away her chastity (and I presumably would be the father with a shotgun threatening OP). But that's not the cultural environment this is taking place in, and the girl isn't shaming OP for trying to take her chastity, but for being an incel creep loser.

You can still accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture while arguing that some (mentally sound) people are morally wrong for being interested in sex or relationships at all, or for being interested in certain ways.

Absolutely based. Under my ideal belief system this dude did a lot wrong and deserves to be punished, but the reasons for that punishment aren't the reasons he's being punished for under modern western sexual degeneracy where Women Can Do No Wrong.

Leaving aside everything else, can you explain to me the appeal of "seethe" and why someone would want to engage in a "good old fashioned" variety there of?

I think it's human nature to want to vent about injustice and annoyances. Plus I'm interested in what people here think about the many facets of OP's story, Reddit's reaction, and what it does or doesn't mean about modern culture. Two birds with one stone.

I think that there are rdramanauts among us. Not that I would be one of them or anything... umm... just saying.

Even so, can someone explain the appeal?

Well, it can feel good to imagine that one is an emotionally tough and rational person who from a distance is poking fun at the roiling masses of sensitive people who are seething about issues that the emotionally tough and rational person calmly and amusedly regards from on high while poking his majestic and very rational chin out to the horizon. Not that this is a very charitable feeling to have I guess but it is a thing.

I think that Reddit is a pretty bad sample of the overall human population. It tends to attract overly sensitive people, would-be moral crusaders, and people who are overly confident about being right despite having limited experience with what they are talking about. When I put it that way, I guess it is kind of like The Motte, although without the typical Motteizen's extreme verbosity. However, people on The Motte at least tend to be much more aware that they could possibly be wrong about things than people on Reddit are, and people on The Motte at least tend to not have their thoughts completely dominated by the conventional wisdom of the day. I would not base my opinions of humans in general on Redditors.

This guy sounds like an absolute sperg, and actually discouraging this behavior is a sign of a functioning society.

"Hello, would you like to have sex with me?" is not an appropriate thing to say to a woman unless you are in a relationship with her. "Hello, would you like to have sex with me and then have me absolutely ignore you emotionally and treat you like free prostitute" doubly so.

Do not behave this way. "Friends with benefits" is not a thing for people who are asking reddit if they are autistic or not.

"Hello, would you like to have sex with me?" is not an appropriate thing to say to a woman unless you are in a relationship with her.

Maybe it should be. Right now, I feel like a lot women are under the impression that most of their male friends do not want to have sex with them. I don't know the exact numbers, and I can't think of a way to find out the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure a lot of men would be happy to fuck their female friends if given a no-strings-attached opportunity. Especially the single males but even a decent amount of guys in a relationship. But I constantly see stories like this, where a woman finds out a man wants to have sex with her, and she's disgusted. But why is she surprised? I understand that she doesn't want the sexual attention, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists, and women should be aware of just how common it is. Just because being aware of true facts is good. Lots of woman are friends with lots of men who sexually desire them, but the men just keep it a secret- would it be that much of a disaster if it wasn't a secret, if women were aware their friends desired them?

Maybe our current equilibrium is better. Maybe putting immense pressure on men not to let women know that they're sexually desired is good and prevents women from being pressured into sex they don't want. Maybe this equilibrium has to exist otherwise women would only make friends with the portion of men who genuinely don't want to have sex with them, so other men need to fake not having desire to make female friends. But it still just leaves me scratching my head when I see the degree to which women are shocked and disgusted when they learn that they're desired, since it shows that their mental model of the world was pretty damn off.

Because the idea that a low status male thinks he has a chance with her implies she is low status.

Society is built on certain salutary myths. In Plato's Republic, commoners are taught that citizens are brothers, and that everyone is born with the tools that indicate their role in society. These noble lies are foundational to the polis. In the organizational meme we call society, members must be brainwashed into believing (a) morality is for all citizens, not just your blood relatives, (b) some people must do unpleasant, dangerous, and degrading work for the benefit of the superstructure.

Of course, some societies require many more and more rigorously-indoctrinated lies than others. But for sure societies where women have a public and gender-integrated role require the polite fiction that males aren't lusting after them around the clock.

The problem is, when you enforce a social fiction for long enough, people start to believe it. This is okay and society functions as long as the noble lies pay their keep for the cost of people doing insane things because they believe lies. Children's crusades, flagellants, etc were the price medieval christendom paid for Catholic doctrine. Lysenkoism, collective farms, etc were the price the USSR paid for Leninism. Social friction and loneliness are part of the price we pay for modern gender ideology and a bigger workforce.

One noble lie paid its keep for a thousand years, the second for a few decades, the third, we'll see.

I would agree that (a) is a foundational lie of larger societies. (b), though, is not quite right. It’s not self-sacrifice, but self-interest, that shores up the superstructure.

Not that self-sacrifice isn’t valuable! It adds slack to the society by incentivizing the least fortunate (or competent) to hold firm instead of snapping. It’s just not sufficient. Christian ideals never eliminated theft and sloth among the worst-off. And when a society tries to rely on people to choose their own sacrifices, it works great until the first defection. Soviet communism was a series of increasingly desperate attempts to patch this prisoner’s dilemma. No, sacrificial collectivism loses out to personal incentives.

Women weren’t martyring themselves for God and country by having children. They were performing the most socially valuable role. When the bottleneck was individual brute strength, men had a dominant competitive advantage in farming and mining and war. Technological advances made women’s labor more valuable just as the cotton gin added value to slave labor. This is enough to explain the development of women’s rights without relying on attitudes about male lust.

The game has changed.

But it still just leaves me scratching my head when I see the degree to which women are shocked and disgusted when they learn that they're desired, since it shows that their mental model of the world was pretty damn off.

The women already know they're desired. They are shocked and disgusted by the social faux pas of men confronting them with that desire when they aren't themselves interested.

Maybe. Whenever I hear stories from friends or online, it definitely seems a lot more that they didn't imagine that so many male friends wanted to fuck them. Pretty much every woman I know in real life or seen stories from have been shocked when they go on dating apps for the first time and realize they have hundreds or thousands of likes from men who want to fuck them.

Whenever I hear

I think this is the critical part. You are under a selection effect of "Anecdotes that women think it will be socially advantageous to publicize", so those are the ones you hear about. Other adjacent anecdotes, you don't.

One therefore ends up only hearing the scenarios that women want to humblebrag about. And she can humblebrag about "I'm so hot that X wanted to fuck me but I'm too good for him so I said "Eww, no, nerd" lol", but she can't humblebrag about "I'm so hot that X wanted to fuck me and so we fucked", because that would make her a slut.

The difficulty with the current social mores is that you have to determine the truth values of contradicting advice, and act on it in a sociopathic manner:

-women are just like men, they deserve the same respect, plain speaking, no need to take kiddie-gloves for them (mainstream media feminism/women page articles)

-women are fragile animals full of emotion, that, similarly to children, you can trick into buying your products (the ads running on the side or intersped with the content of the aforementioned articles)

To date successfully, a man has to claim to genuinely believe the former, to the grave, while in practice behaving ruthlessly like the latter (marketing/ad professional), and make it seem effortless, as if there was never any contradiction to resolve.

Once this premise is begrudgingly somewhat internalized, the main obstacle becomes a combination of idealism/integrity and ego.

We want to believe Hollywood lies about the poor, unattractive nerd getting a love story with the girl next door, after he stopped believing in incel conspiracies or started showering or what not.

We want to believe that women will just give the average man a fair chance.

And more than anything we want to believe that we are great as we are and we shouldn't change anything to attract a woman.

I think the greatest tragedy in all of this is how much effort smart men end up deploying before they can secure one wife. For the 50-80% of men who cannot effortlessly attract women they are attracted to, securing a long-term partner becomes a long-term hobby, or a second career. How many of the nerds on this website have dating sites statistics memorized, like Scott Adams with FBI crime statistics?

But but but I just can't believe in God, it doesn't make sense, cries the atheist, before spending the next decade crying about the unfairness of the dating market generated by his elders' criminal apostasy.

I think that there is nothing inappropriate about being forward, but being forward in a way that is geeky and needy is pretty unlikely to work. I speculate that this guy, if the story is real, probably suggested sex while projecting a logical vibe rather than a playful or seductive vibe and that he might have projected more of a "this is super important to me" energy rather than a "I can take it or leave it" energy. Such neediness can be creepy. I think that the fact that he was crushed by what happened lends credence to my theory. Every day loads of guys are even more forward than this guy without provoking the same kinds of negative reactions from women. And it is not because of the "be attractive / don't be unattractive" meme, although I am sure that plays a role, but because they are forward with a playful and seductive vibe rather than with a hyper-logical or needy vibe.

I am geeky and nerdy. This level of asking a woman to be a prostitute for you is not geeky or nerdy, it's sexual harassment.

  • -27

Your premise assumes that the women won't enjoy having a FWB ever. This is true in this case, but it's not "prostitution" if both parties benefit from it.

This is true in this case, but it's not "prostitution" if both parties benefit from it.

But using this as the premise, "prostitution" as a concept itself is a fiction, yes?

But you do know that FWB are a thing, right?

And there are men that successfully proposition women for sex point blank.

And the women not only accept, but feel flattered and tell their friends to make them jealous.

The rule is to be attractive, not unattractive.

Also the men that are successful at this are also probably aware whether or not the women are interested before asking, as they are aware of their sexual worth.

The issue is with generally unattractive men. Any kind of sexual approach will fail for them. They could spend 6 months courting the one lady and it would still fail if she decided in the first minute that she is not attracted to them.

Their failure is not for using the wrong magic words or behavior, but for improperly assessing their sexual attractiveness.

The issue when being an unattractive man is that you see other people successfully dating, so while interacting in a variety of ways with a variety of women, you misinterpret a variety of subtle rejections in different ways.

'she's not immediately wincing at me and politely smiles at me so she must like me'.

If a woman rejects the unattractive man in a polite manner, he gets to imagine that he did better than with the other woman that was having a bad day and rudely put him down for imagining he had a chance with her. 'This rejection went better, I should tweak what I did today and next time it will work.'

What they need to do is actually something along of working out a lot to appear more attractive, getting a lot of money and power to signal status, or fame, or just a lot of drugs and finding the women that are into that.

Or becoming a violent man that can signal spilling blood, that works too with some women (see the ones sending love letters to convicted serial killers).

A friend with benefits is not a prostitute and I do not see how an invitation to be friends with benefits is sexual harassment unless the person doing it persists despite having been rebuffed.

Edit: Also, something that I just noticed. You might have misread me when I wrote "geeky and needy" and thought that I wrote "geeky and nerdy".

Even somebody who's looking for casual sex may still be insulted by this. That's why it's called a "friend" with benefits.

Maybe not a "Prostitute" but certainly not someone you're looking at as proper relationship material, and to that end I think @firmamenti's point holds.

At the risk of sounding like a giga-autist, why does this standard seem to only apply to sex? If OP asked the girl to be a regular tennis partner, no one would accuse him of treating her like a "wall to bounce a ball off of." If he asked her to play video games with him, no one would accuse him of treating her like an "ally NPC."

I don't get why if a guy wants to have sex with a girl but doesn't want a relationship, it's taken to be demeaning and cold, while engaging in any other activity without some sort of grander emotional engagement is fine. Yes, I understand that sex and relationships are traditionally paired, but I also assumed that all but the most trad among us have moved on from that strict coupling in every possible circumstance, especially for college students who are still trying to figure out their dating and sex lives.

Well, from the person's report about what happened:

Recently, she's been more open than usual, getting closer to me when we're working on a problem together and being more chatty/flirty. She and I are both single and have been for a while. I thought that she was interested in me and I decided to take a shot in the dark. I pulled her aside after a study session last week and once everyone else had left I brought up how we're both single and asked if she wanted to be friends with benefits.

It could actually be inferred that she MIGHT possibly have been interested in this guy if he'd just...asked her to go on a date instead of proposing this no-strings sex arrangement.

As a woman, it would imply, to me, that 1.) the guy only wanted me for sex and didn't want to do romantic stuff because...? 2.) he's embarrassed to be seen with me or something?

It comes off like he regarded her as good enough for sex but not good enough to actually be his girlfriend. I'm not sure why the guy thought she'd be more amenable to banging him than to dating him.

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It comes off like he regarded her as good enough for sex but not good enough to actually be his girlfriend. I'm not sure why the guy thought she'd be more amenable to banging him than to dating him.

Exactly.

It makes sense if promiscuous women are judged as lower value. Asking someone to be FWB means you thought there was a possibility she would say yes, which is essentially an accusation of being "easy". Having a reputation of being easy means lowering your chances of a long term relationship with desirable men and increasing your chances of getting propositioned by undesirable men. You would suffer all the downsides of having low social value. A harsh rejection would be necessary to clearly deny such an accusation.

I can see how someone learning about sex and relationships from reading feminist leaning sources would mistakenly think its okay to ask to be FWB. Feminists push for a world where women are not judged for their sexual choices. If there's nothing wrong with being easy then there's nothing wrong with just asking politely as long as you calmly accept a "no". In fact it would be asking for consent, which is the only acceptable thing to do before any kind of sexual escalation.

It doesn't only apply to sex, sex just happens to be the biggest and most obvious example, and the answer is that "because relationships are, by nature, anti-inductive" No relationship is ever going to be about just what you want because the other party always gets a vote, and that vote might very well be "to hell with this".

You ask why it's considered cold and demeaning to want something from someone without making an offer in exchange and I reply that the answer is in the question.

I agree that relationships have an anti-inductive component (even a significant one), but:

You ask why it's considered cold and demeaning to want something from someone without making an offer in exchange and I reply that the answer is in the question.

The answer is... sex. The girl gets sex in exchange for sex. I think most people, or at least most men, see that as a fair trade as long as both parties are attracted to one another.

The obvious, but often unstated retort is that men and women value sex differently. Both enjoy it on a physical level, but women tend to attach more emotional significance to the act, while men generally take a more casual approach and seem to desire the purely physical aspect more.

Ok, that's fine. It is what it is. But to wrap back around to one of the overriding aspects of my original post and many of the comments... why is the female perspective on sex not only seen as the default, but the male perspective on sex is seen as immoral, at least to the Reddit crowd? Isn't that what happened to the OP? He made a (very clumsy) sexual offer based on the male perspective of sex, but the girl had the female perspective, and shamed him for his error.

Traditional Judeo-Christian morality had an answer to this discrepancy. But I don't think modern sexual mores do. The sensible approach to me is for people to be aware of both the male and female perspectives on sex, and to exercise empathy in negotiations over sex. The Redditor perspective (which I think you are sympathetic to based on what you're saying, feel free to correct me) is that the female perspective should be privileged, and the male perspective should be punished, even if it's touted innocently and ignorantly.

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True, I guess as someone who is looking for casual sex rather than for a romantic relationship I can sometimes fail to realize that people who are looking for a romantic relationship might be offended when they fight out that someone else wants only casual sex from them. They might be offended even if that person does not want a romantic relationship with them not because they don't measure up to some preferences but simply because the person just does not want a romantic relationship with anyone at the moment.

Trigger warning: entitlement, obliviousness

Really? People deserve a trigger warning for that? I was cringing slightly as I read the whole scenario but really! At least the trigger warning statement lets me know that I'm about to read something I find disagreeable, which is an ironic fulfillment of the original purpose.

And why do redditors then write up a big, well-linked 'retrospective' post about it like it's some big event? I suppose we're now commenting on the third level and it's somewhat interesting. But we're mostly talking about the social dynamic on the second level, not the first level of 'oh this guy's a creepy repulsive loser'.

Who places the trigger warning, the OP or the subreddit mods?

https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/postrules

Apparently it's a requirement to have trigger warnings and 'mood spoilers' so people don't get too emotionally invested in a reddit story. I'd love to see how these people react to a gore thread or something properly disturbing. It's more perverse than that because people go to these places because there are weird sad and unfair stories! It's like walking into a pornography store and asking for the genitals to be blurred.

I'd love to see how these people react to a gore thread or something properly disturbing.

I mean, if they could handle it just fine, they'd probably be somewhere like 4chan instead.

How does our civilization fail so manifestly that it produces so-called adults who can't cope with a sad story unless they get warned the good guy might not prevail? They should be ashamed to even come up with such an idea. It's pathetic.

I'm reminded of a recent viral story about OpenAI's use of Kenyan labor to train ChatGPT to avoid generating offensive content: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

I thought about making a top-level post at the time because the "outrage" was actually infuriating to read. Somehow we live in a society where paying people to read some vulgar words is conflated with literal slavery. I couldn't summon the necessary restraint to write a neutral summary so I refrained from posting at the time, but man, I want off this ride where it is apparently commonly accepted that written words are equivocal (or, you know, in some cases, worse) than actual violence.

When the sensitivity readers first emerged in the YA lit culture, I knew we were dealing with (Wo)Manchildren the great mayority of times controversy happens.

I wonder if that trigger warning is actually taking the piss and mocking trigger warnings. Usually, trigger warnings in that subreddit are for super cereal things like adultery, self-harm, incest, abuse, sexual assault, homophobia, sexism, racism (where the last five could be in quotes)—things that are heckin unwholesome and might make the reader feel uncomfortable.

The participants in the Reddit BoRU and RA threads are unwittingly putting on an illustration of our threads that discuss male vs. (lack of) female approaching, the Women are Wonderful Effect, the societal eagerness to vilify men.

The elephant in the room there, an elephant that Reddit women will generally avoid (or whose existence they will deny, as the elephant makes them feel less like strong independent #GirlBosses), is that women are extremely passive when it comes to approaching and will not take initiative to… initiate. Men have the burden of performance. It’s up to men to read women's minds as to know when/how to approach or risk making women “uncomfortable,” since nothing is worse than the sin of being a man and making a woman feel “uncomfortable.”

Not that the slightest of fucks is given to a man’s comfort—like hypothetically, gossiping to turn his classmates against him, confronting him about asking a girl to hook up (when it’s none of your business), or texting him from an unfamiliar number to insult him.

How dare Study Session Guy look for a friend with benefits when he’s a stupid low-status virgin? Ugh, the male entitlement. Who does he think he is? Doesn't he know he's a low-level character who lacks the EXP to unlock that part of the map yet, much less pursue that quest? He should be grateful for her friendship, know his place and patiently stay in the friendzone, slowly orbit and monkey dance and maybe one day the friendship evolves into a relationship if he’s lucky she so deigns.

It’s also amusing how young women sometimes act like spoiled children—especially when it comes to courtship and dating—and we pretend it doesn’t happen, provide an “oh dear, dear, gorgeous” like the Ramsay meme, or actively condone and encourage them. Study Session Girl could had just said “no thanks” and discontinued the friendship. She could had even said “no thanks” and continued the friendship. Either way, a level-headed response that might befit an adult. Yet, she had to poison the well, start a gossip mill, sink his reputation, and essentially create a hostile work study session environment for affronting the Lady's honor, for having the audacity as to be insufficiently attractive while thinking she might be That Kind of Girl (which she likely is, just not for him). The crowd had to be set upon him, in name of her honor. Slay, queen! He had it coming.

Obviously, this is not to say directly asking a girl to be your friend with benefits is wise, tactically. Quite the opposite, as it takes away her plausible deniability and ability to dodge accountability, her ability to tell herself and others “we were just talking and hanging out; somehow one thing led to another and omg it just like happened!” If a younger brother, male cousin, nephew, etc. recounted me a story like Study Session Guy's, I'd shake my head and be like "Did we not teach you anything? Let's review the ways that could had gone better..."

@Quantumfreakonomics remarked earlier this week that he would in the past think:

"oh, I'm just too honest for the dirty, lying, backstabbing tricks required for success in the dating market." I typically dismiss this as egoistic rationalization, but I am again starting to wonder if it is true.

I wouldn’t say dirty, lying, backstabbing tricks are necessary for success; I certainly wouldn't like deploying dirty, lying, backstabbing tricks (Russell Conjugation, perhaps: “Others might deploy dirty, lying, backstabbing tricks, but I deploy subtle, creative, smooth maneuvers”). However, I would say a large degree of social engineering and maintaining kayfabe is certainly needed for consistent success. Asking a girl if she wants to be your friend with benefits breaks kayfabe.

"Yes means yes” comes to mind and how it can be construed as an intentional or unintentional civilisational-level shit-test. The nice feminist guys who take it slow and overcommunicate every step of the way will fumble their chances away and remain pussless, whereas the toxic inconsiderate chauvinists who go full steam ahead all gas no brakes will see many more touchdowns. It separates the socially savvy from the non-socially savvy (and in the case of “yes means yes,” helpfully gives women another way to retrospectively claim non-consensuality if they so feel like it).

Decades of gender egalitarianism and mainstream feminist propaganda certainly don’t prepare young men for navigating sex and dating. Men and women are the same, except for when women are more Wonderful but sometimes more vulnerable—and when men are shittier and more toxic.

If you believe their pretty lies about women, the same cultural forces will only blame you for believing their lies. Study Session Guy paid the price for believing that male and female sexuality are similar, that men and women have a similar disposition toward honesty. As @erwgv3g34 commented on the Motte subreddit back in the day:

>Television: *lies to you about women all your life*

>School: *lies to you about women all your life*

>Women: *lie to you about women all your life*

>You: *believes lies about women*

>Society: "Haha, you actually believed the lies we told you about women? FUCKIN' AUTIST".

This is why I hate normies.

If you aggregate up Reddit women’s reactions to threads like these (about men bungling initiation attempts)—and their dating advice (more like “advice”) in general on approaching—it shakes out to something like this:

  • Don’t cold approach women. What kind of creep pesters women he doesn’t know? Women don’t date strangers.

  • Don’t ask out women from class or work. What kind of creep exploits school or work to pester women who are a captive audience?

  • Don’t ask out women from your social circle. What kind of creep takes advantage of his friendships or social circle to pester women?

  • Don’t ask out women that you meet through hobbies like dancing or sports. What kind of creep takes advantage of hobbies to pester women? Women are there for their interest in the hobby, not to meet men.

  • Oh and don’t message girls on online dating or social media. There’s already too many creepy losers in online dating (like you) and what kind of creep pesters women on their social media accounts? Ugh, just because her profile is inundated with bikini pics and lingerie shots doesn’t mean she’s looking for sexual attention.

Of which, Study Session Guy violated the second (while being insufficiently attractive and sufficiently unattractive, of course). However, a man who dutifully and obediently follows these commandments will find himself with no options to improve his dating prospects. Reminds me of that hilarious Motte thread: “Just tell me where you think white people are supposed to live” started by @knob. A confused, frustrated, or indifferent man reading Reddit women’s advice might ask: “Just tell me where you think men are supposed to meet women.”

Nowhere. In the eyes of women, if you’re the type of man who deliberates about where and how to ask out women, you’re unworthy. Women generally view men who approach courtship strategically or opportunistically as inherently creepy or suspicious. They want naturals—not some imposter who, by some combination of the numbers game and clever strategery, managed to punch above his weight. After all, for women, courtship and romance are just magical things that happen to them serendipitously like Acts of God, so what’s wrong with these men who need to bombard women with messages, plot to join hobbies to meet women, or bother innocent study session classmates? So gross and unromantic.

An obvious solution for men, naturally, is to ignore women’s dating advice for men, ignore sanctimonious vilification of men who approach courtship the “wrong way,” strive toward being attractive and not unattractive, and keep a cost/benefit analysis in mind to see what trade-offs of risk and reward might work for you. My approach in recent years is to aggressively DM on social media/online dating (preselection and female mate-choice copying for the win) when I foresee having lots of free time in the near future, but be very conservative in approaching through social circle or the workplace (lest an errant attempt gets my social credit points knocked out Sonic’s-rings-style like what happened to Señor Study Session).

I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with your opinion, but the way you expressed it was very entertaining.

I created an account, after years of lurking, just now to respond to this thread As A Woman. And not only that, As A Liberal, Cisgendered Woman. I supposed I have strong feelings about reading all these sentiments about folks of my sex and gender and couldn’t help myself from chiming in, as I think most of the advice and ideas in this thread are useless for the lurking men reading here who actually want to date a woman.

I have seen tons of absolute and negative statements about my personality (since I am a woman and am therefore lumped in) with little evidence, and am wondering; do you, and folks in this thread who agree with you, actually want to date a woman? Because it doesn’t seem like you fundamentally respect them. It seems to me the general sentiment is that all women are emotionally immature children (without objective evidence to prove it). My subjective observation would be that that attitude - women are liars, women are picky, etc. - about women leaks out into interactions with them, and, understandably, they, or I supposed “we”, do not want to get romantically or sexually involved with someone who thinks so poorly of “us”. Well, I suppose some of “us” do, but that’s a kink lol. I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to.

  • -14

My subjective observation would be that that attitude - women are liars, women are picky, etc. - about women leaks out into interactions with them, and, understandably, they, or I supposed “we”, do not want to get romantically or sexually involved with someone who thinks so poorly of “us”.

I hope you don't feel like you're being dogpiled, but this hypothesis of yours is not new (in fact, it's at least a decade old), greatly lacks for predictive power, and I'm tired of seeing this half-baked hypothesis being trotted out every time the topic comes up.

For most of the last 10+ years, this theory has taken the form of "Nice Guys™/incels don't realise that their misogyny is the very thing preventing them from getting laid. If they just stopped hating women and became feminist, they would have no trouble getting girls to go out with them." Sounds intuitively plausible. I can understand why Alice wouldn't want to date Bob if she gets the impression that he hates her because of her sex.

But on the other hand, the people making this argument tend to argue that the following people are also misogynists: Donald Trump (married 3 times, five children), Ben Shapiro (happily married, three children), every PUA, every man who beats his wife/girlfriend.

I'm not claiming that these characterisations are inaccurate, and I pretty much endorse the idea that a man who beats his wife probably doesn't respect women as a group. My point is, the hypothesis "incels are incels because they're misogynistic" is incompatible with the hypothesis "Donald Trump is a misogynist who has no trouble attracting women" or the hypothesis "men who beat their wives are misogynistic". Misogyny alone cannot explain both "men who are pathologically lonely, who no woman wants to date" and "men who marry a woman in a non-arranged marriage, and go on to beat her": this is a panchreston. Either one of the groups in question isn't misogynistic, or there must be some other factor(s) influencing the outcomes.

Are incels misogynists? Some of them, sure. Are the people on this site misogynists? Some of them, sure, maybe. But don't give me the pat answer "if you just started respecting women then women would be falling over themselves to date you" when this argument has been hashed out a thousand times in the last ten years, and we both know full well that there are innumerable men who have far less enlightened views on women than the average poster on this site who have absolutely no trouble attracting women.

Probably unnecessary clarification: I don't consider myself a feminist, and the typical Western feminist would probably accuse me of being misogynistic. In spite of this, I haven't had any trouble attracting women at any point in the last ~five years, have had an unusually high number of female sexual partners (including several women who explicitly told me that they disagreed with many of my opinions on gender politics), and I'm currently in a relationship with a woman I respect.

My anecdotal experience would tend towards men who are feminist having a harder time getting women to date them than men who aren't. Consider a group of four male friends. The first is me; the second is quite conservative and paid money to see Jordan Peterson live; the third admits that he finds Andrew Tate's content amusing; the fourth is rabidly feminist, who has argued with me at length that female underrepresentation in STEM is principally caused by misogyny among the men who work in those fields, and that any appeals to biological sex differences to explain differing career outcomes is sexist pseudoscience. Three of these men are in relationships with attractive women; one of them had a dry spell lasting at least two and a half years - no prizes for guessing which is which. I know I refer to it a lot, but Tony Tulathimutte's short story "The Feminist" rang incredibly true for me.

"Donald Trump is a misogynist who has no trouble attracting women" is quite a subjective statement in my opinion. As I said below, no sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship with someone who fundamentally does not see them as equal. The women who date misogynists likely have a lot of self-hatred, or are not very emotionally intelligence, or all of the other various reasons why people get into abusive relationships.

To use the fisherman metaphor that seems to be popular here; is a man really a good fisher when the fish he catches are sickly? I'd say no. Those men you say are successful with women I'd say are not successful, just good at finding insecure people with low self-esteem.

My anecdotal experience is every single conservative man I know in my life who is in a relationship is miserable. My father and mother's relationship is full of vicious, childish fighting, and so is my boyfriend's parents to the extent my boyfriend is afraid they will shoot eachother with their many illegal guns. My brother's girlfriend is obsessive and controlling and forced him to move in with her. My boss admitted to me she only married her husband because he caught her in a moment of weakness when giving birth, my other boss is telling strangers at work about her husband's various failures, and my boyfriend's ex-best friend's girlfriend threatened to cheat on him regularly. Both of my roommates' girlfriends fight with them about menial things like going to get fast food together to the point they are slamming doors and screaming, my roommates' mother is begging her husband for cocaine, and the lady I met at my job the other day mentioned her husband bought her clothes to encourage her to lose the baby weight and she was secretly returning them because she didn't want him to know she hadn't lost it.

All of these people, though, would be adamant that they are in love, that their relationship is fine, they're happily married, etc. And yet is it so further from the truth, and I feel quite sorry for them that they don't know how to leave these toxic relationships and find people who actually make them happy. I think if you think Donald Trump's relationships are the definition of happiness and success in relationships, then it shows. So, my personal response to your anecdote is that your three conservative men are dating attractive but unsatisfied and unhappy women, and your feminist friend is not dating the first neurotic, self-hating girl he finds, so understandably he will have "less success". Or, to be more charitable, your three conservative men are very good liars, and may have landed self-respecting women, but that will fall apart when their disrespect inevitably shows, and they will end up like all the other conservative men I've witnessed, and your feminist friend has bad luck. I firmly believe no sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship with someone who considers them lesser or who they consider to be lesser.

Additionally, I didn't say, "if you just started respecting women then women would be falling over themselves to date you". I said, "I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to." Certainly not the absolute statement you make it out to be. I cannot speak for the context of every man, but I can say that, in general, finding women lesser than you is going to lead to lesser relationships.

  • -14

Where to begin.

"Donald Trump is a misogynist who has no trouble attracting women" is quite a subjective statement in my opinion.

I don't know what's subjective about it. It's a matter of public record that Donald Trump has been married three times and has had multiple extra-marital affairs: whatever else you want to say about the man, he's not an "incel". Some people might not characterise him as a misogynist, but I highly doubt you fall into that category. Therefore you must agree with every component of that assertion.

Those men you say are successful with women I'd say are not successful, just good at finding insecure people with low self-esteem.

Which puts them head and shoulders above incels/Nice Guys™ etc., who aren't even able to find insecure people with low self-esteem.

I think if you think Donald Trump's relationships are the definition of happiness and success in relationships

I don't. My point was not that Donald Trump has had many happy successful fulfilling relationships. My point is that, unlike sexually and romantically frustrated incels, attracting women is not a problem for Donald Trump. Perhaps he's only able to attract insecure women with low self-esteem, but, again, that puts him head and shoulders above incels who can't even do that.

So, my personal response to your anecdote is that your three conservative men are dating attractive but unsatisfied and unhappy women

That would come as news to them. I have to say, your comment comes off as extraordinarily condescending to women. "Any woman who dates a man who doesn't share my political worldview must secretly hate herself and be miserable, without knowing it" is quite the blistering take. And how, exactly, can this hypothesis be falsified? "Any woman dating a non-feminist man must be insecure and miserable. If by all accounts she appears happy, satisfied and fulfilled, she's just in denial." What would it take for you to consider the possibility that the apparently happy and fulfilled woman dating a non-feminist man actually is happy and fulfilled?

Or, to be more charitable, your three conservative men are very good liars

What, precisely, do you think we are lying about?

I firmly believe no sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship with someone who considers them lesser or who they consider to be lesser.

If you're using such an expansive definition of "someone who considers them lesser", then most of the human race isn't sane or healthy.

"I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to."

Fair enough, I was misrepresenting your opinion somewhat. I just want you to appreciate that this suggestion isn't new: internet feminists have been bandying it about for over a decade. Sexually/romantically frustrated men hear the suggestion "if you can't get a date, try respecting women more". They look at themselves and notice that they respect women (in many cases they're just as well-acquainted with feminist theory and vocabulary, if not more so, as anyone else in their social circle, including many women). They look around and notice that there is no shortage of men in their vicinity who are able to attract women despite being unacquainted with feminist theory, or even treating the women in their lives inconsiderately or disrespectfully. They (quite reasonably) surmise that, while respecting women is a good thing, it seems to be orthogonal to one's ability to attract women. "But the only women those guys are attracting are neurotic self-hating women with poor self-esteem" OKAY, but a sufficiently sexually/romantically frustrated man is not going to turn up his nose at a woman just because she's neurotic or self-hating, and you're still left with the question of why a non-feminist but attractive man is able to attract (allegedly neurotic and self-hating) women, but an incel can't even do that. There must be some factor other than misogyny/disrespect for women which explains why these two men have such disparate outcomes in the sexual/romantic marketplace. (Hint: it's that adjective "attractive".)

I don't know if being able marry is the baseline for "success" in a relationship. I don't think men dating people they find to be less funnier, less empathetic, less intelligent and less capable than them are head and shoulders above people who are single.

I didn't say "Any woman who dates a man who doesn't share my political worldview must secretly hate herself and be miserable, without knowing it." But I do believe anyone who is with someone that fundamentally disrespects them and thinks they should be subservient has low self esteem, and could be happier.

There is nothing that would make be believe a woman dating a sexist man is happy and fulfilled, any more than what it would take to convince me a man dating a sexist woman is happy and fufilled. It doesn't help I have anecdotally seen dozens of women with sexist husbands who claim they have a wonderful marriage while behind closed doors their husbands are calling them whores in screaming matches or badmouthing them to their children, and dozens of men who claim their girlfriends are wonderful while secretly their girlfriends are threatening to cheat on them with their friends.

I think you are lying about how much you respect the women you are dating. I think, assuming they are healthy, if they knew the full extent of how the three of you felt, they would leave ya'll out of self respect. If they do know the full extent of ya'll feelings, then I'd say they have very low self esteem to stay with someone who sees them as lesser.

I know my suggestion isn't new, but neither is making broad generalization about women based on anecdotal bad experiences. Women are not a monolithic them any more than men are. And yes, I think a sexually frustrated man should not have sex with the first woman who wants to have sex with him if he thinks she is dumber than him and more emotional than him. I would find that would lead to a toxic attitude about sexual relationships.

The other factor I would say is bad luck. Unsatisfying, yes, but success in the dating sphere largely depends on finding someone compatible romantically, and that is as guaranteed as finding someone compatible platonically. If I were to renounce making friendships with other women because I had some bad fallouts in my past, my friends would tease me rightfully for thinking all people are the same.

  • -11

I don't know if being able marry is the baseline for "success" in a relationship.

Good, me neither, never said that. I don't know how I can make my point any clearer. I'm not saying that every man who gets married is in a successful relationship. My first comment directly mentioned men who beat their wives - surely you don't think a physically abusive marriage is my idea of "success"? My point is that incels and romantically frustrated men are complaining about a chronic inability to attract women, and this is not a problem which married men suffer from.

There is nothing that would make be believe a woman dating a sexist man is happy and fulfilled

Okay well if there's literally nothing that could convince you, then we're dealing with a religious belief, not a political or philosophical one.

I think you are lying about how much you respect the women you are dating.

What does "respect" look like to you? I think ultimately what you're doing is falling for the oldest logical fallacy in feminism. The normative belief "I believe that women should have the same rights as men" does not presuppose the factual belief "I think men and women's brains are alike in every way (and any observed differences in behaviour, temperament or personality traits are solely attributable to social influence)". So when you're asserting that I don't "respect" my girlfriend, I think what you're really asserting is that I don't believe male and female brains are alike in every way. Cards on the table: I don't (although I do believe women should have the same rights as men). If a precondition of genuinely respecting women means believing (or pretending to believe) that female brains are exactly the same as male, then I guess I don't respect women, although I don't really understand why. No one thinks that a precondition of respecting Japanese people means pretending that Japanese people are exactly as tall as Swedes.

"So you're saying female brains are worse than male" - nope, never said that. I said different. There are certain traits in which I think men tend to perform better than women, and other traits in which I think women tend to perform better than men. There are other differences which can't really be mapped onto a "better" or "worse" hierarchy: men tend to be more interested in abstract systems and women tend to be more interested in interpersonal relationships, and I wouldn't say that one of these is "better" or "worse" than the other.

And let's leave gender aside from this for a minute: you keep talking about a partner that "sees them as lesser" or similar phrasing. Are you claiming that a mutually respectful relationship is one in which the two partners believe that they are equally skilled in all domains? Such a relationship doesn't exist and never has: it's a category with zero members. In every relationship, one person will be the better cook, or be funnier, or have better social skills, or be better with money, or will be more even-tempered. If you're conflating "a relationship in which one person believes they are better than the other in certain respects" with "abusive relationship", then I'm sorry to say that all romantic relationships in all of human history have been, are and will be abusive.

Women are not a monolithic them any more than men are.

True, but the fact that every member of a set is different doesn't mean that it's impossible to make accurate generalisations about that set, and it's weird that you get so offended when people do so. For example: men are all different, we are not a monolith. Nonetheless, the statement "men are more aggressive than women" (or "men tend to be more aggressive than women" or "men are more prone to aggression than women") is inarguably true. I am not insulted by this statement, even though it's a generalisation about a set of which I am (through no fault of my own) a member. I know that the generalisation isn't true of me personally, even though it is true of the set of which I am a member. In this thread you've repeatedly made the non sequitur that a man who says "women aren't as funny as men" therefore believes that he, personally, is funnier than you personally. But that logic doesn't follow: the statement doesn't imply that interpretation. Hell, the statement "men are more aggressive than women" is true even if asserted by a violent woman (say, Aileen Wuornos) to a non-violent man.

[As an aside: I expect I'm likely to be misinterpreted here, so I'm emphatically not claiming that "men are funnier than women" is as obviously true an assertion as "men are more aggressive than women". My point is that the statement "men are funnier than women" does not imply that literally every man is funnier than literally every woman, or that every man is funny, or that no woman is funny. Those readings of the original statement are just as much non sequiturs as interpreting the statement "men are more aggressive than women" to mean "literally every man is more aggressive than every woman" or "every man is violent" or "no woman is violent".)

Now: is a woman who (accurately) asserts "men are more prone to aggression than women" therefore a "sexist" who "sees her husband as lesser"? Is she obliged to believe (or pretend to believe) that men and women are equally aggressive, in order to protect her husband's feelings? I don't think so. If a man got really bent out of shape every time his wife made this inarguably true assertion and interpreted it to mean that his wife was accusing him personally of being aggressive, I would think he was a thin-skinned numerically illiterate narcissist.

The resentment may be visible, but you reverse cause and effect. All babies are born starry eyed and optimistic, full of love and joy. Only after being burned does the imp come out. Perhaps by then all hope is lost. But you have to answer why that happened.

women are picky

their overall attitude about women

Both these statements can be true though. Most loveless men don't turn out like Elliot Rodger. For all the vitriol online, they tend to be very non-confrontational in real life (and perhaps this inability to express themselves explains their online activity, since it has no checks and balances). You see nearly nothing about their personality and mentality, except that they're very anxious. Flouting even a single minor social norm by accident would send them into panic. The mentality is certainly a problem, but imo the problem lies in how they see themselves, not how they see others.

What am I, being a women, inherently picky about?

  • -15

While I mostly agree with the model of women's behavior of the posters here, I also agree that it's often presented in a bitter and uncharitable way. I'm not really convinced that men can't hide these attitudes for the short term, but I think it would make it much harder to have a healthy long term relationship. To some extent, human nature when it comes to sex and dating is just unflattering, and that includes men's. Personally I try to stay aware those realities without anger or judgement.

Welcome aboard! Good to have you, and I mean that sincerely.

couldn’t help myself from chiming in, as I think most of the advice and ideas in this thread are useless for the lurking men reading here who actually want to date a woman.

No discussion about fishing would be complete without a fish's perspective of course, but do consider that you might not be the best source of actionable and effective advice here.

And quite honestly, I don't really see how you chiding men for not only failing at being attractive to women but also having the audacity to feel destitute about it is really that much helpful either. "Have you considered that you're a piece of shit and that's why you suck?" might be a suitable wake-up call for some people in some situations but I am not yet convinced this is one of those.

do you, and folks in this thread who agree with you, actually want to date a woman?

No. I think that might jeopardize my very happy marriage to a wonderful woman.

It seems to me the general sentiment is that all women are emotionally immature children (without objective evidence to prove it).

No. The general sentiment is that our Soicety (TM) is structured in such a way that women not only get away with being emotionally immature children, they are often rewarded for it.

Because it doesn’t seem like you fundamentally respect them.

What does that have to do with anything? I respect individual women because they have proven that they deserve it. Just like with men. At the same time, I very much do believe that the social dynamics of Current Year are giving women as a class every incentive to behave like narcissists. That is bad for everyone. Feminism hurts women, too!

I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to.

Consider that you might have gotten the direction of causality wrong here and that there is a possibility that bad feelings about women, no matter how much we're trying to insinuate that only a villain could ever develop them, are a result of bad interactions with women.

But did I say, "Have you considered that you're a piece of shit and that's why you suck?" No. I said, "I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to." I'm not too sure where I called anyone pieces of shit or told them they sucked in that sentence, nor where I chided men for failing at being attractive (?) and feeling destitute.

Bad interactions with an individual don't justify vilifications of the collective. A similar argument I've seen is that Germany's economic destitution did not justify their genocide of the Jews as a "common response to being poor", because there are people every day who lose money and become despite and don't resort to racism. Similarly, having bad experiences with women and the resorting to villainizing all women as children is more of a "you" problem than a "society" problem.

The consensus explanation of any and all gender issues in progressive spaces (and therefore: most of academia, education, the media, and entertainment) is that women must never be blamed for the consequences of their actions (in fact, any and all negative outcomes for women are by definition results of an oppressive patriarchy) and that the fault for any undesirable situation must be placed at the feet of men. You see this in a lot of discussions about male issues. Men are not doing so well? Well, the patriarchy hurts men, too! Which means that the solution is more feminism. How about yet another female quota? I bet that would solve men's woes somehow.

Likewise, men growing resentful of sexual dynamics must be a them problem. They must be defective somehow. If only they were more feminist and respected women, their troubles would go away.

You coming in here reads very much as an attempt to enforce that consensus and you are using a very light version of the debate tactics discussed here, here and in subsequent replies.

Your main argument so far has been that you are a woman and that you feel bad when you see positions that don't toe the party line. That is usually enough to win an argument, especially if peppered with shaming tactics. I.e. the men disagreeing with you are resentful and that's why they can't get laid, they don't care about a maiden's distress, they are attacking you personally, their relationships must secretly be unhappy etc. Your dig about Jew-hating Nazis above might just be a reductio to illustrate a point, but it certainly serves other rhetorical purposes as well.

I am not saying you necessarily do this, but this is what I and others might pattern-match your reactions to. I am mentioning this mostly to explain the severe immune reaction you are getting.

But did I say, "Have you considered that you're a piece of shit and that's why you suck?" No. I said, "I would recommend that loveless men consider one solution to their lack of success in the dating market is to re-examine their overall attitude about women and see if that isn’t playing a part as to why women are not responding the way you want them to." I'm not too sure where I called anyone pieces of shit or told them they sucked in that sentence, nor where I chided men for failing at being attractive (?) and feeling destitute.

You engaged in something that would be considered victim-blaming if it were directed at any other demographic. Mainly, you are confusing cause and effect. Some men encounter a landscape of sexual and romantic interaction that leaves them in the dust. They grow resentful because of that. The resentment is not causing that landscape, but it might increase the problem.

Edit: I see that you clarified this in another comment and describe the above as one possible exacerbating factor. We are in agreement then.

Bad interactions with an individual don't justify vilifications of the collective.

That's why I said that the problem lies in the way we structure the landscape of incentives for men and women.

Where on earth did someone in my university tell me I must never be blamed for the consequences of my actions? I certianly, as a progressive feminist active in those spaces, disagree with that. Removing consequences for all women out of some effort to protect their fragile psyche is benevolent sexism, and women who espouse that have internalized misogyny, in the same way the "divine feminine" is benevolent sexism.

What you see as "discussions about male issues" I see as "discussions about why all women are unfunny and shouldn't go to college".

My main argument has been that I think broad generalizations of women are untrue and harmful for men who want to date them? Where did I say "I feel bad" and where did I even mention "party"?

What does "structure the landscape of incentives" mean?

I honestly think the gemmaem thread is an unfair pile-on, of the kind so prevalent in large subs. Sort-of outsider comes in, gets tons of criticism, if he or she reacts with even a fraction of the hostility shown to them, it's proof of bad faith, moral failings, deliberate refusal to accept the oh-so-clear-and-popular truth, and the gloves come completely off. I mean gemmaem's constantly reiterating that she's here in good faith, basically begging for charity, and she's not even a real outsider for us!

Any human slip from robotic, highest-decoupling arguing is interpreted as 'female shaming tactics' and the like. That doesn't mean there isn't a some truth to those things, but people really underestimate how difficult it is to argue cleanly in unfamiliar enemy territory, and with so many hostile judges. Out of charity, we should be the ones to decouple: outside, female shaming tactics exist, but in here, an argument is just right or wrong.

I honestly think the gemmaem thread is an unfair pile-on, of the kind so prevalent in large subs.

I somewhat agree. And I do have some sympathy for her position. Although it is the kind of sympathy I wouldn't have if she were a man - and therein lies the problem.

"I am a woman" shouldn't be considered a very good argument.

"Certain viewpoints make me feel uncomfortable" shouldn't be considered a very good argument.

"I am a woman and those viewpoints make me feel uncomfortable" shouldn't be considered a very good argument. And yet, it is an absolute showstopper almost anywhere. It is the kind of superweapon that trumps all others.

Female shaming tactics are, in fact, so, well, not persuasive, but effective, that virtually any forum that accepts them eventually turns into.... well, Reddit. Or tumblr, if you want a more extreme example.

Do you know that old ridiculously charitable interpretation of 4chan's propensity to reply "tits or gtfo" to any anon identifying themselves as a woman? That anybody who de-anonymises themselves thus only does it because they expect special treatment and that turn of phrase is an effective antidote against that?

Now, I don't think gemmaem was doing that. I have seen her around for ages and never found out she was a woman until very recently. And as I said in a reply to that pile-on, I do think her identity was relevant to the discussion. She very much is one of us, although I am not sure how much of a compliment that is.

And as someone else commented, the antibody reaction to female shaming tactics ironically looks very much like the kind of pile-on you would get for not doing the feminist party line on tumblr. I know no way around it. All I know is that I have seen one too many discussion communities doomed by letting female hall monitors run the show.

More comments

This is unfortunately a very sad pattern of discourse and I don't see any solution to it at all other than the high (HD) decoupler taking on an infinite amount of charity on his shoulders.

It's sad because the HD is a superset of the LD. His arguments are better, his thinking is better, his logic is better, but there is just about no way to (losslessly) communicate with the LD who is often incapable of understanding the HD. (I have a theory that LD is a manifestation of sufficiently lacking verbal IQ, but that's a whole other post, Jordan Peterson thinks as much as well).

Understandably the LD misconstrues the HDs arguments enough times for him to lose any patience and take the gloves off. The LD didn't intend to do this, but at one point you run into JJ's razor and stupidity becomes indistinguishable from malice. There is nothing the LD can do, for it is outside their scope. All responsibility falls on the HD.

I'm very attuned to this dynamic because my mom and dad are a mirror of this. My dad is a HD and can argue around her in circles, she misunderstands nonattacks as attacks and retaliates. Both I and my dad try to keep a lot of patience for it and accommodate her a whole lot, but it really puts a drain on us. We know she means no ill, but it's just an unstable equilibrium and someone has to bear the load. And its a serious amount of load.

Because it doesn’t seem like you fundamentally respect them.

What does that have to do with anything?

Actually, I talked this over with my wife who told me that being able to respect one's partner is pretty high on the list of criteria for suitable mates. She explained it in terms that my proto-autistic brain translates to "assertiveness" and "social status".

This might be another example of typically-minding the other sex, just in the other direction. Assertiveness and social status are not very high on most men's lists. So when women see discussions like that, they are rightfully surprised. Why would men try to sleep with a class of people they find so unattractive? It's the mirror image of men hearing straight women talk about how little aesthetic appeal the male body has to them.

Why would men try to sleep with a class of people they find so unattractive?

Men don't sleep with a class of people though, but with individual women.

And I don't see why you'd need to respect the intellect or such of a person to be able to engage in an activity that is fun regardless of how smart the other person is, whether that is tennis or sex. I also think that the entire argument is in bad faith, as plenty of women have complaints about their partner and talk about them in disrespectful ways. So why is this presented as something that men do?

It seems more like a feminist post-hoc justification than a fair argument. Men are upset at how women behave in dating -> can't actually be any truth to the complaint as then women wouldn't be wonderful -> if we claim that complaining is evidence of misogyny, then every complaint can be dismissed.

However, this argument completely falls apart when you notice that many women complain about men and male dating strategies. By the same logic, these women should then fail at dating and their arguments should be dismissed as evidence of them being man-hating.

No discussion about fishing would be complete without a fish's perspective of course,

Did you originate this turn of phrase? It's brilliant.

I was assuming it was in reference to the saying/joke about fish not recognizing the fact that they swim in water.

No, I've seen this phrase thrown around quite a lot. Even in this thread, I believe.

It's a twist on the phrase "You don't ask a fish how to catch fish, you ask a fisherman", i.e Women be giving contradictory/ineffective advice, consult the proven experts instead.

women are liars

Women are liars in one way but this is not something that is being blamed here. The one way they are generally liar is that they rarely tell a man to their face that they find him repulsive, disgusting, or creepy.

So these low-value men don't often get the feedback needed to reconsider they way before going and interacting with women.

Which makes sense and I would not blame women for, as being too honest (perceived as harsh) with a man [with poor social skills] could lead to violence.

What I think most men here could call women is delusional.

Women will give advice to the population of men who date as if they were only speaking to the men that they have dated (the attractive ones).

They find the attractive men in their life too casual, too promiscuous, too impolite or callous, so they tell all men to be more 'romantic'. Autistic nerds read that advice -the actual target, attractive men don't need to read the fish's advice on fishing- and think they need to do more romantic gestures to get a woman, while being more aggressive would make them closer to a fisherman.

“we”, do not want to get romantically or sexually involved with someone who thinks so poorly of “us”. Well, I suppose some of “us” do, but that’s a kink lol.

“we”, do not want to get romantically or sexually involved with someone who thinks so poorly of “us”. well, i suppose some of “us” do, but that’s a kink lol.

Rape is a kink. Ladies love serial killers. There's all kind of kinks out there.

I've never heard of the kink of 'unassuming nerd that nobody respects who let women tell him how to live his life'. Only as a character in a Jewish comedy.

I quite like Scott's analogy of dating dynamics and being a well-dressed white tourist in Varanasi, India. In this parable, "street beggars" (males) and "tourists" (females) both have unflattering but mostly accurate insights into the psychology of the other. Game theory determines the shape of their interactions, more than the pre-existing personality of both parties. Any street beggar who is too reticent or tourist who is too open handed is sabotaging themselves. (The one flaw in the analogy is of course that our "tourist" is actually looking for a particular "street beggar", and the tourist:beggar ratio is more balanced, but I quibble.)

It's a failure of rationality, though, to be unwilling to concede that negative generalizations of both sides do, in fact, have a basis in reality. This goes for both the beggars and the tourists.

I believe generalizations about gender are useless, as outliers in other cultures prove that the behaviors are arbitrary. Personally, I've also found that every single person I know in real life who follows strict beliefs in gender roles is either in an unequal, aggressive and unhappy marriage/relationship, or is single/divorced. I would personally hate to look at my partner as someone who wants to lie and cheat me out like a street beggar in Varansai, India.

I believe generalizations about gender are useless, as outliers in other cultures prove that the behaviors are arbitrary.

Do you believe the generalisation that men are stronger and larger than women to be useless, and outliers prove them arbitrary?

Do you believe there are no innate social/psychological differences between men and women, and it's all just socially/culturally contingent?

The one flaw in the analogy is of course that our "tourist" is actually looking for a particular "street beggar", and the tourist:beggar ratio is more balanced, but I quibble.

Not a flaw at all. The fated street beggar is actually a guru who will give you Enlightenment, and not so long ago spiritually famished Brits went on entire crusades to India in search of The One, much like overworked middle-aged Western women go to Jamaica in hopes that some beach boy will give them true Rasta love.

The dirty secret of course is that all gurus are more or less street beggars.

(Successful gurus move to the West and build a sex cult with a personal harem within their school, naturally).

The ratio is just a bit more hypergamous than in normal heterosexual relations, but the market provides. India is a big place.

do you, and folks in this thread who agree with you, actually want to date a woman? Because it doesn’t seem like you fundamentally respect them.

Suppose there is an 18-year-old guy. He respects women. He cares about their wellbeing, and he cares about not making them uncomfortable. He also has basic reasoning capabilities. He notices that every time he hits on or asks out a women, the response is at best neutral. The overwhelming majority are straight rejection (n = 10-20 or so). He knows (or at least thinks) that hitting on women and getting turned down is not only embarrassing for him, but deeply uncomfortable for the women. He reasons that because the probability of success on any further attempts is so low, the expected discomfort he will almost certainly cause to the woman cannot be ethically justified. He thus decides to stop approaching women in person.

That person was me. This was, without exaggeration, the worst decision I have ever made in my life. I don't harbor resentment for any of these women. They were all well within their rights to reject me if they so wanted. Nobody made me stop approaching women. I made the decision myself.

Tell me, what was my mistake? Did I respect women not enough, or too much? Or was this in fact the right decision? Maybe there are inherently adversarial aspects of dating such that maxing out the "Respect Women™ " parameter zeroes out actual romantic prospects.

IMO, thinking about this in terms of "respect" is the wrong perspective. That concept doesn't map coherently onto human sexuality.

Your mistake was making generalization of all women based on the individual experiences you had which prevented you from interacting with any women. Assuming all women are deeply uncomfortable with men asking them out assumes all women share the same preferences of who, what and where they want to be asked out. There are women who do not feel terribly uncomfortable with men, friend or not, asking them out. There are women who do. There are women who you should care about making uncomfortable because they are your friends, and women who you don't need to worry too much about making uncomfortable because they are a stranger you just met. You may have been in an area that literally just didn't have someone who wanted to date you.

Assuming that you "probably" were going to fail again assumes all women have the same preferences and reactions. You should have continued to meet women, get rejected, meet more women, and eventually you would have found someone who got along with you through luck. It would have been painful to be rejected so many times, but you would have gotten used to it to the point it wouldn't be so painful it would prevent you from achieving your goals. It is not any different than making friends; would it be reasonable for me, someone who wants friends, to stop talking to other girls to try to be their friend because I have had many girls in my past who rejected my friendship with them? No. I would be told that there are so many people out there I can find at least one who wants to be my friend, if not friendly. Respecting women starts with respecting that they, like men, are not a monolithic "them" who can be controlled with a grand theory of behavior.

  • -10

I probably should make a more substantial reply.

There's nothing wrong with what you're saying, by itself. Men should respect women, but respecting women doesn't mean "do all you can to see that they're not uncomfortable". Someone who is too worried about whether women feel uncomfortable isn't respecting women at all.

But then consider: this whole thread started with an example (though maybe fake) of someone whose big crime was that he made a woman feel uncomfortable. If all you mean by "respect" is to treat women like people, asking a woman for sex--something that he himself, also a person, wants, is treating women like people. So he misunderstood this particular woman. He made a mistake. But he's human; that happens. The woman can just say no. She didn't need to shame him. The idea that women are supposed to shame people like this is based around the idea that yes, respecting women does mean "don't ever make a woman feel uncomfortable" and that someone who might sometimes make a woman feel uncomfortable is a dangerous creep.

I suppose the disconnect is that where you see shame, I don't. If my study buddy randomly asked me to have sex with him with no basis of platonic or romantic intimacy, I would totally tell my friends about it, because I like to tell my friends about weird things that happen in my day, not because I have this notion I must socially shame my study buddy so he doesn't make other girls uncomfortable. There are some girls out there who don't feel the need to tell their friends about things like this, and so in another world OP's example wouldn't even be complaining. OP's example and the study girl were not friends, and she felt no obligation to keep their matters private. It happens, and I believe is not indicative that there is a grand narrative being fed to myself and other women and more indicative that OP severely misjudged his entire study group and how close they were.

I like to tell my friends about weird things that happen in my day, not because I have this notion I must socially shame my study buddy so he doesn't make other girls uncomfortable.

Do you think the comments on that post are people just telling their friends about weird things? Because a lot of them look like shaming to me.

If my study buddy randomly asked me to have sex with him with no basis of platonic or romantic intimacy, I would totally tell my friends about it, because I like to tell my friends about weird things that happen in my day, not because I have this notion I must socially shame my study buddy so he doesn't make other girls uncomfortable.

Your study buddy still ends up shamed and worse off for having ask you out regardless. An ugly man who asks out dozens of girls(even politely) until they get even one yes will end up with a poor social status. At best he'd be regarded as pitiful and sad, at worst he'd be regarded as a borderline sex offender. Especially given all the people out there who underestimate how difficult it is for an ugly man to get a date, so they assume he must just be an asshole who's trying to fuck everything or an egoist who's asking out girls who're out of his league.

You're getting dogpiled on a lot here, I think a lot of men here haven't had great experiences with romance and have a negative bias to your position, and are being too harsh. But I still think that the current status quo of dating in the west(which it sounds like you're advocating for) is very, very harsh on below average men, and even above average men who're just introverted/shy. And I don't think women are getting a good deal out of things either, although their problems are very different from men's in dating.

His mistake was both, because he stopped respecting the women around him as individuals with their own preferences and instead as a monolithic "them" who will respond the same.

Congrats on breaking the lurking barrier.

Anyways, your theory sounds good doesn't work.

Evidence? Anecdotes. Some very successful with women guys I know have let's just say some unenlightened views about women behind closed doors among all-male company. And believe me you will have to work a whole lot to squeeze out the things I say about women in the motte in real life.

So yes, this reasoning does make sense, and I am sure actually does effect some men's chances on the margins, but I would say in large you have cause and effect mixed up. Guys become bitter about women proceeding a lack of success (and sometimes too much of it)(not the other way around), this sometimes manifests into a negative feedback loop, sometimes doesn't.

Here's something I want the 4 female readers to understand. Because they keep on making the same mistake over and over again. You realize how men are generally funnier than women right? (Perhaps because they need to be funny to get laid so they develop a sense of humor?). Men also need to get good at lying to women to get laid as well. Don't believe everything the men in your social circles tell you in polite company.

Men around you could hold views like the ones you read here and just hide their power levels. Hell, I used to draw butterflies and frame them in pretty picture frames and gift them to my ex because she liked butterflies. (Even though it was the gayest shit in the world) Very sweet of me I know.

Don't extrapolate or interpolate from mask-off conversations in anonymous online forums. You certainly know how some in the motte feel about Jews and Blacks. Some discussions are theoretical..

Also, why didn't you oppose any of his claims? Such as {you say X but that's clearly false evidenced by Y}, and instead went straight for the ad-hom?

It's just a very tired form of arguing, imagine every left-wing argument was met with, "maybe you just suck at making money".

This is an extremely common conservative or capitalist rebuttal to socialists

Yes, I know that and I don't find it convincing argumentation in that context either. Because the whole point of arguing is to.. convince the other side. Shitting on them kind of gets in the way of that.

You can make an entire corpus of systems level arguments against leftism spanning system dynamics, control theory, game theory, and economics without having spoken on the character attributes of the leftists even once. But I will sneak in a few comments about how their humanities and social science major asses are incapable of not only understanding the formalized versions of fields but abstracted out models either.

Is there truth to it in both cases? Yes. Even though in the gender war front I would say the lines between cause and effect are blurrier.

Women know that men lie about all these things, by the way. That’s a big reason why women behave the way they do, and the way so many men here complain about.

They might but their mechanisms for dealing with it are terrible. It always just boils down to attractiveness. Which is rational if you assume everyone's a liar and cheater so might as well go for the good looking ones.

Do I think a better mechanism exists? Yes.. just use all that "emotional intelligence" to figure it out.

The blackpill is that it doesn't actually matter if you are a liar, cheater, or immoral (make the inference using the aforementioned proxy variable). I have enough reason to believe as much. Which is again not really a bad thing. Nature is hardly deontological.

I have little desire to speak outside of this thread sadly, as most people here believe I am fundamentally lesser than them and so cannot converse with me in good faith. And as to your attitudes about women, as I said below, it is impossible to believe someone is lesser than you, have general animosity about their biology, choices and personality, and have a conversation with them in good faith, much less treat them well in an private, intimate setting. I am sure most the men you know who secretly think their wives are silly and immature are not very happy behind closed doors. No sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship and therefore spend time and money with someone they consider beneath them.

Unfortunately, anecdotes are neither facts nor sufficient evidence to say absolute statements such as "Women do not know what they want.", which is unfortunate to see in a space that espouses value in objectivity and facts.

Edit: do you have any evidence that men are funnier than women?

Edit...Edit?: Opposing his claims assumes he respects me enough to listen to my argument in good faith. He already believes I am "extremely passive when it comes to approaching and will not take initiative to… initiate". He doesn't care much for my thought process and would likely be glad to have me continue to abstain. However, I think if you want to continue to talk to me you'll have to respond with a reply instead of an edit.

  • -11

I have little desire to speak outside of this thread sadly, as most people here believe I am fundamentally lesser than them and so cannot converse with me in good faith [etc]

This isn't true at all! You can take seriously the arguments of someone who's dumber, or morally lesser, than you. Ancient kings sometimes heeded the advice of philosophers or commoners, despite believing in something like a great chain of being. Not that it matters, most mottizens are liberals or christians or some sort and hold something like 'everyone is equal morally/eyes of god' and also 'honest and clear discourse is important'

to say absolute statements such as "Women do not know what they want"

It's not an absolute statement though, it describes a tendency. If I say "man, islam sure is sexist" on a visit to the middle east, and you point out the large number of liberal muslims in the US who aren't sexist ... this misses the point? But a lot of women make statements that are transparently incompatible with their 'revealed preferences', especially about sex and dating. Obviously more generally both men and women do it, but there are specific patterns to the way women do it - like, describing the behaviors they like in men, or claiming that PUA stuff universally doesn't work (it does! example, second paragraph), which zinker is referring to.

No sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship and therefore spend time and money with someone they consider beneath them.

Like, what's even happening here? What do the words "sane" and "healthy" even mean? If I believe the following: women should be subservient to men, God's law is that a husband and wife should love each other, and then enjoy spending time with my wife in the usual way you do, and "explicitly justify this" via the second premise ... I want to be in a relationship and spend time and money, and yet I consider my wife in some sense "beneath me". A sexist might spend plenty of money on their wife as part of a social game to show wealth! That statement's just not true.

He doesn't care much for my thought process and would likely be glad to have me continue to abstain

Yet we all reply, reply, reply, because this place explicitly exists to have autistic long discussions about politics with people we disagree with!

I disagree. You cannot take seriously someone who you think is dumber than you, because if their argument is sound, it is not because you think their reasoning is sound or their character, but that they got lucky enough to say a smart thing.

But women are not a monolithic religion like Islam. They have their own individual preferences that vary between eachother. For example, I think PUA stuff does universally not work, and...where am I supposed to go with "describing behaviors they like in men"? How are you able to tell I am lying about what kind of man I like by the basis I am a woman? Do you have objective evidence to show women are typically lying about something as fundamentally as what they like?

"Sane" and "healthy", in my opinion, fall under "not being with someone who thinks you should be subservient to them or they should be subservient to you". A sexist is not a sane, healthy person. Does your wife know that you think, explicitly, she should be subservient to you?

it is not because you think their reasoning is sound or their character, but that they got lucky enough to say a smart thing.

That's not what the phrase 'reasoning is sound' means? If their argument is sound, their 'reasoning is sound'. Very dumb people often understand things correctly, e.g. they go about day-to-day life normally, and that requires thousands of bits of 'sound reasoning' - what made that sound, did i buy food yesterday, etc. "Get lucky" and "take seriously" are entirely compatible! If someone with 100iq, purely randomly, discovered the true theory of quantum gravity, the 150iq physicists would love to take his argument seriously. And I've learned a lot from some objectively stupid people who still, by coincidence or life experience, had interesting information.

More specifically, I've had teachers in subjects who were, clearly, much dumber than me, but they had lots of domain knowledge that I didn't have, which it was useful for me to learn, so I learned it! It's difficult to say I wasn't taking said teacher seriously as I learned all that stuff from them, in the exact same way I would from a smarter teacher. Yet that's what your argument would suggest.

They have their own individual preferences that vary between each other.

But nothing is monolithic - the reason for the islam example was precisely because there are a lot of liberal muslims who don't share most of the ideas of conservative muslims. And, similarly, that phrase, as it describes women, is referring to a strong tendency among most women, not all women.

For example, I think PUA stuff does universally not work, and...

Then what explains the many women who say it works on them? An example of which I linked, but there are many more. In general, if one observes peoples' stated desires, they are so clearly influenced by social norms, mimesis, and all sorts of complicated contingencies that they are clearly very often wrong. Not as explicit lies, but more as combinations of alienation, general confusion, not wanting to seem weird, copying the desires of others, confusing signs for signified, etc. So I can just do this - from your perspective, both modern conservative women and generally past 'reactionary' women were wrong about their desires, right? So it's clearly possible.

"Sane" and "healthy", in my opinion, fall under "not being with someone who thinks you should be subservient to them or they should be subservient to you

So have 98% of all male humans who have ever lived not been "sane"? Because 'women have lower status than men and are in some what subservient" is the norm, obviously in many different forms, historically.

A sexist is not a sane, healthy person.

Yet sexists can lead ... perfectly normal lives? Again, by this claim, 99% of all male humans who have ever lived are not sane or healthy. Yet they lived very similar lives to male humans today, and we can read their cultural artifacts, books, diaries, and they clearly are, by every conventional meaning of the word, sane and healthy.

Does your wife know that you think, explicitly, she should be subservient to you?

I haven't ever claimed, anywhere, that women should be subservient to men, or husbands should be to their wives. You've conflated my arguments with the general sphere of 'right-wing arguments' you're seeing here.

I have little desire to speak outside of this thread sadly, as most people here believe I am fundamentally lesser than them and so cannot converse with me in good faith. And as to your attitudes about women, as I said below, it is impossible to believe someone is lesser than you, have general animosity about their biology, choices and personality, and have a conversation with them in good faith, much less treat them well in an private, intimate setting. I am sure most the men you know who secretly think their wives are silly and immature are not very happy behind closed doors. No sane, healthy person wants to be in a relationship and therefore spend time and money with someone they consider beneath them.

I think you are making two mistakes here. The first is to assume that positions that deviate from the bog-standard feminist discourse must be evidence of misogyny. I don't think that is necessarily the case. The posters here certainly don't hate you personally - they don't know you.

Second: I think you are typically-minding men. It is extremely important for most straight women to be with someone they "respect" and can look up to. It would be revolting to be partnered to someone they consider beneath them. The same is not true for men. "Respect", in the sense women use the word, i.e. a stand-up guy that can take care of himself, is assertive and ambitious, that people listen to etc., does not place very high on the list of criteria men have for suitable partners. They do need to respect their partners in terms of earnesty, fidelity, sincerity (and for some: chastity) but it is fundamentally a different dynamic.

I don't see how calling all women lying, indecisive, immature, unfunny children isn't misogyny, and more than calling all men sexually frustrated chimps isn't misandrist. The posters here may not hate me, yes, but as I said earlier, I believe when engaging with people who find you biologically inferior to them, the most charitable interpretation of your arguments will be with pity or amusement. If my argument is sound, it is not because my reasoning or logics are sound, but because putting a monkey in a room with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will cause him to inevitable smash out the works of Shakespeare or, a broken clock is right twice a day, because I am a woman, and things like rationally arguing doesn't come naturally according to posters here, so I either learned it from a man or I have too much testosterone in my system. Not hate, yes, but certainly not a positive sentiment.

Do you have evidence that all men don't want to be with someone they respect earnestly? Because I disagree; I think all people want to be with someone that makes them happy, and being with someone you think will be unfaithful for no reason than their biology sound a bit paranoid and miserable to me.

I don't see how calling all women lying, indecisive, immature, unfunny children isn't misogyny, and more than calling all men sexually frustrated chimps isn't misandrist. The posters here may not hate me, yes, but as I said earlier, I believe when engaging with people who find you biologically inferior to them, the most charitable interpretation of your arguments will be with pity or amusement. If my argument is sound, it is not because my reasoning or logics are sound, but because putting a monkey in a room with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will cause him to inevitable smash out the works of Shakespeare or, a broken clock is right twice a day, because I am a woman, and things like rationally arguing doesn't come naturally according to posters here, so I either learned it from a man or I have too much testosterone in my system. Not hate, yes, but certainly not a positive sentiment.

You continue to misunderstand me and I think it might be because you are conflating the replies of many different people in this thread here. Like women, us non-feminist men and women are not a monolith.

I am also not sure where you are getting that most people here think that women are incapable of reasoning. I would not be surprised if you found that kind of talk around here somewhere - people argue a lot of shit on the motte - but it certainly isn't a very widespread sentiment. We have quite a few very respected female posters here.

What I do think is that our society gives upper middle-class women a free pass for some extremely shitty behaviour that hence becomes normalised. Frankly, we are raising a lot of women to become raging narcissists with all the idiotic #grrrlllllpwrrrrr propaganda that is being blasted on all channels. Consequently, women will be displaying more of these undesirable traits in our Western societies. I also believe there are more male than female assholes in Iran, if that makes you happier.

I also believe that by and large, men and women are different, on average and with large overlaps, and that this difference doesn't stop at the neck. For example, there tends to be a lot more difference between stated and revealed preferences among women, at least when it comes to romantic and sexual preferences.

I am well aware that this makes me a miSogYniSt according to contemporary feminism. It doesn't mean I don't believe in equal opportunities for all. I certainly don't believe in the equalisation of outcomes for unequal effort, though.

Do you have evidence that all men don't want to be with someone they respect earnestly?

You are again substituting what you think respect is and should mean for what I think respect is and should mean - which I believe to be different for men and women. Also, your requests for evidence are an isolated demand for rigour. I could go and look for studies on how much men and women value assertiveness and ambition in their partners, for example. But that takes time and I am not sure it would convince you one bit. You'd have to show me the effort is worth it - I don't see you providing any data backing up your experiences either.

and being with someone you think will be unfaithful for no reason than their biology sound a bit paranoid and miserable to me.

Never said that. Read carefully.

I have little desire to speak outside of this thread sadly, as most people here believe I am fundamentally lesser than them and so cannot converse with me in good faith

No one will know (or care if) you are a woman if you don't start every comment with "As a woman". But you do you.

And as to your attitudes about women, as I said below, it is impossible to believe someone is lesser than you, have general animosity about their biology, choices and personality, and have a conversation with them in good faith, much less treat them well in an private, intimate setting.

I don't know what to say besides the fact that despite it intuitively not being possible, it happens. Especially on the motte. That's kind of the whole selling point of the place, that you can discuss civilly with people you strongly disagree with. Is it not evident to you that multiple 400+ word responses carefully understanding your arguments and then voicing agreement or disagreement at a level much higher than the rest of the internet? Did anyone tell you to "gtfo bitch"? Because that is just about how most of the internet including females you disagree with would have responded. If engaging with you sincerely and respectfully despite "hating your guts" isn't the purest definition of respect, then I don't what is.

Just bring strict arguments, I am sure you know what is good and bad after years of lurking. Leave your identity and emotions and ego at the door and you will be fine. This is "high decoupler" land and all you need are arguments.

Seriously just take my advice, and don't take the words you see here personally. Leave the fact you are a woman and just dive straight into the actual facts. I have used the internet long enough to know that making a discussion about you sanctimoniously will always end badly no matter how much the audience loves you.

Edit: do you have any evidence that men are funnier than women?

Yes, the gender ratio of comedians not only in standup but all forms. And the fact that I make women laugh about 50x more than they make me laugh. Men also make me laugh a lot more than women. This is so obvious to me that I don't feel the need for evidence.

First result from google. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336735385_Sex_differences_in_humor_production_ability_A_meta-analysis

Edit...Edit?: Opposing his claims assumes he respects me enough to listen to my argument in good faith.

Atleast try before immediately assuming the worst? Once again that's the whole point of the motte.

He already believes I am "extremely passive when it comes to approaching and will not take initiative to… initiate"

Which is a fact. Women do approach men a lot less than men approach women.

I don't know what it has to do with YOU in particular. He is speaking in generalities.

However, I think if you want to continue to talk to me you'll have to respond with a reply instead of an edit.

I'm here all day.

Is it not evident to me that multiple 400+ word responses carefully misunderstanding my arguments and then voicing mostly disagreement is a sign of respect and more evident that it is the expected form of discourse here if you don't want to get a ban. Talking politely to me while thinking I am not deserving of higher education, management positions and a place in the workforce because my body makes me emotional and immature is hardly what I consider to be the makeup of a person who respects me and my choices. You say, "Leave the fact you are a woman and just dive straight into the actual facts.", but did the many men here who included the fact they are men and have used mostly anecdotal evidence and subjective, absolute statements doing the same? I would say no. I would say not even you, whose only evidence I see for why men are funny is your opinion of standup comedians and your opinion on the women around you.

I decline to try, because, as I said, it is impossible to have a conversation in good faith with someone you believe is biologically inferior to you. His most charitable interpretation of me would be amusement, or benign pity, because even if my argument was sound, it would not be because my character was sound but because a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time with almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of Shakespeare, or, a broken clock is right twice a day.

The benefit of the rules here is that I can have a conversation with people who disrespect me, not that I can have a respectful one. I am quite sure if it was not for the strict efforts of the moderation team, most men here would indeed tell me "gtfo". Instead, they say, as seen above, "you might not be the best source of actionable and effective advice here.", which I find more conductive for a conversation, yes, but not at all indicative of respect for me.

  • -16

I am quite sure if it was not for the strict efforts of the moderation team, most men here would indeed tell me "gtfo

Huh? Every reply could just be "I don't think you are engaging in good faith." if so. Yet people are trying to argue your points in detail. That said arguments misinterpret your points is ... just how complicated politics discussions often work.

The benefit of the rules here is that I can have a conversation with people who disrespect me, not that I can have a respectful one.

I guess that depends on what you consider a "respectful" conversation.

We have a lot of people here with diametrically opposed viewpoints and identities, and by "diametrically opposed" I mean there are posters who literally believe certain other posters should be dead and/or stripped of their rights. This is not hyperbole (though fortunately, it's also a small slice of the general commentariat).

But generally speaking, this place isn't for "winning" an argument with another poster (though it's an easy trap to fall into). You may be talking to someone who doesn't actually believe you are sapient (we have those too) but that person isn't the only one reading your words.

Obviously, you aren't obliged to talk to anyone you don't want to talk to. But consider that you are not trying to persuade the hopeless, seething misogynist, even if that's the person you're arguing with.

I absolutely agree with your final sentence. Anecdotally, I never said a single word in /r/TheRedPill, and yet through sheer lurking, I found myself so thoroughly redpilled I was asking men on that forum what I should do as a woman to make men happy since I was so naturally prone to pissing them off. Those ghostly eyes watching us are always watching, after all. I like to think here we share counterarguments. If they are good or bad ones depends on those everwatchful lurkers.

Is it not evident to me that multiple 400+ word responses carefully misunderstanding my arguments and then voicing mostly disagreement is a sign of respect and more evident that it is the expected form of discourse here if you don't want to get a ban.

I'm more or less confident most of the users who responded to you would have responded the same regardless of the threat of the ban hammer or not. I've been seeing those names for years.

You might think you merely being a woman is enough to send everyone here into a rage or something but you do realize there are like 5 other women also in the thread?

Talking politely to me while thinking I am not deserving of higher education, management positions and a place in the workforce because my body makes me emotional and immature is hardly what I consider to be the makeup of a person who respects me and my choices.

So what?

I think the majority of the human population doesn't "deserve" higher education. I am not "disrespecting" anyone, I am proposing a way to optimize a system.

Much in the same way the system of dating would be optimized towards a male advantage if women majority non-economically productive majors were not subsidized. You wouldn't even have to think about the women at all, a libertarian can reach that exact same conclusion, and the outcome would be the same.

I also think they (most people) make bad choices. It would be disrespectful to lie about that!

I would say not even you, whose only evidence I see for why men are funny is your opinion of standup comedians and your opinion on the women around you.

I don't know why you are autistically latching onto this one point. Yes, I think men are in general funnier than women, sue me? Once again, what's the big deal if I hold that opinion?

I gave you literally all the evidence in the world for it, and it is all the evidence because there are more pressing matters to study than which gender cracks better jokes.

I decline to try, because, as I said, it is impossible to have a conversation in good faith with someone you believe is biologically inferior to you.

You can try or not, that's your call.

But I would say taking up the challenge is quite literally what the motte is for.

The benefit of the rules here is that I can have a conversation with people who disrespect me, not that I can have a respectful one.

No one is entitled to respect. Firstly because you are a new account and no one knows you as a person. Secondly, "respect" is not a necessary precondition to have a conversation in a pseudonymous forum.

"you might not be the best source of actionable and effective advice here."

This aligns with men's experiences, once again, whats the big deal?

Do you not think that other women think that women as a group are in general better than putting on makeup or some extremely obvious majority-female activity? Are women "disrespecting" men by believing that or just believing in the truth?

You are making the whole thing about yourself and taking an issue with people disagreeing and saying that your general group might not be good at things. Those are not arguments, those are complaints.

If you want to defend the honour of your gender, do it, but you are making it all about yourself and making "omg people are mean to girls here can you believe it" statements. There's no way to engage with solipcism meaningfully.

I do think there are other women that think that all women are better at makeup, parenting, nursing, etc, due to biological preferences and yes, I think it is disrespectful to men to imply that they are incapable of certain things because of their bodies. I think all men and women are capable of exactly the same things emotionally and spiritually, sans physical capabilities due to hormonal differences which can be remedied with science.

I am making it all about myself because I am a woman, and every generalized comment about women is therefore directed at me. When you say men are funnier than women, you are also saying you are funnier than me, for no other reason than because of your body. The "big deal" of you holding that opinion is that I find it's a rather illogical and mean one, and tells me you have rather poor judgement, and also if I were to meet you in real life, I should avoid trying to be funny with you and people who agree with you because you will be hostile to all of my jokes in the company of other men. You have yet to provide me any evidence men are funnier than women other than your belief. If I think men and women can be equally funny because humor is not a physical trait, does that make it trounce yours because I believe it more than you? I'd say no.

I don't know exactly how to engage with absolute statements, which are neither statistically or personally relevant. People here make big claims about women - and therefore me - with little evidence other than personal anecdotes. Your characterization of people just saying "my" group "might" not be good at things is rather charitable for statements that literally call me indecisive, immature, emotional and illogical.

More comments

So, I was going to respond to the above poster, but I think I'll throw it in here.

I don't think this is actually about women. I think this is something much broader, in that I think models based on monodirectional concepts of power (I.E. "Critical") are all essentially shittests. It's harmful to people who actually take this stuff seriously. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt) But I don't think it's any different if it's sex/gender or race or sexuality or what have you. It's all essentially the same effect. It punishes people who actually take it seriously, rewards the people who have the super-secret decoder ring that tells you to ignore this stuff (or have the personality to brute force through it).

Truth is, this is my argument against teaching Critical-based ideas in school. I think kids are more susceptible to internalizing these ideas, to significant harm I think. If steps were taken to protect against this, I'd be OK with teaching it as one viewpoint along-side others (I'm a liberal individualist as an example).

But there's no ethical way to live and be an oppressor. And I think because the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy takes up so much oxygen for reasons, it leads to things like this happening, because we're not guiding men down a proper, healthy path.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm happily married, although I got incredibly lucky that I found someone who came after me. But our marriage got a lot better when I started to push the Critical models out of my worldview and started ignoring the inherent shittests.

Who is "we" and what is "guiding" and what is the "proper path"?

The we is society as a whole.

What I would argue, is in the effort to eliminate the male gender role, activists have created this thing where we're not helping men actually succeed the male gender role in a healthy, sustainable way. (Note: Just because I think we're not getting rid of the male gender role doesn't mean I think the same thing about the female gender role. I absolutely do not) That's what we need to do, that's IMO what the guy in this story did wrong. But I also think that so much of this relies on unstated assumptions that IMO are entirely unfair.

I would argue the gender binary is a construct, since the definition of masculinity and femininity are different in certain cultures, like Japan and Korea. Therefore, since it is a construct, it is arbitrary. Therefore, the elimination of the male gender role is a good thing, because it stops men from being bullied and shamed into habits and mannerisms that are not natural to them, since not all men act the same nor have the same preferences.

The problem is that there's very little to no interest in actually getting rid of the male gender role. It's too useful, both on an individual and on a societal level. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's arbitrary....I think there's a historical development based around material needs....but certainly it's something that COULD be changed if we had the gumption. We just don't.

I don't say that as a macho type man either, truth be told, I had to work pretty hard to get at least somewhat decent both at actually performing the male gender role, and frankly, believing that it's in any way ethical to do so. I'd personally be better off if we jettisoned it. But I think asking men to basically ignore the incentive structures that exist in society is a big part of a lot of the social problems we're seeing today.

"The idea of a 'laptop' is a construct, since, depending on the manufacturer, a tablet with an attached keyboard can be a laptop, or a 20lb bulky monster can be a laptop. Therefore, construct, arbitrary. Eliminating the role of a 'laptop' is a good thing - it will allow increased flexibility in the computing-device market to meet any available needs".

The "constructs of masculinity and femininity" in japan and korea are remarkably similar to ours. Men are physically stronger, physically larger, are more competitive, pursue women more, are leaders more, are more aggressive generally, have more potential for violence, etc.

What is wrong with "increased flexibility in the computing-device market to meet any available needs"? And do you have evidence men are more competitive than women and are "leaders" more?

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I don't see how you can say that masculinity is significantly different in Japan or Korea than the West. Societies where men were still considered leaders, fighters, and those who valued the same masculine attributes/virtues as their counterparts in the West (loyalty, strength/competence, aggression, pursuit of women, stoicism, etc.)

There isn't perfect overlap, (e.g. the aesthetics vary significantly), but I don't see how someone can look at something with 90% similarity and say that it is arbitrary because of that 10%.

If these things were actually arbitrary, you should see massive, significant differences from culture to culture. Women in lots of places should be the sexual/romantic aggressors. Men in lots of places should be considered more sensitive. You shouldn't have to go to the other side of the world, find gender norms that are similar in most ways, and say that because they aren't identical, it must all just be arbitrary.

Because the 10% exists at all means an 11% can exist, and therefore a 12%, and so on. Thus, it is not biologically set in stone, and thus men and women who deviate from Western gender norms are not deviants brainwashed by feminism, but simply expressing natural instincts. The culture of social conservatism versus the culture of social progressivism I would argue is so vastly different that, well, you have the existence of transgendered folks fighting against people who think they are mentally ill. The fact that there are trans women who successfully pass in public defeats the argument that women and men have unchanging traits that make them inherently different, as Western gender roles would have one believe.

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'The reason you're failing with women is because of your negative attitude' is a pretty common trope response to any discussion men have around about structural problems with dating in modern society. As is women taking critiques about female behaviour in the dating world as a personal affront.

Men having mask off discussions like in this thread do not (for the most part) bring negative attitudes to their interactions with women. Quite the opposite, their acceptance of the modern dating environment acts as a pressure release for any resentment they feel towards women.

I think your average guy who isn't getting laid isn't because he has a negative attitude.

OTOH, yes, I think people on this website, specifically, and other sites like it, aren't getting laid because of their negative attitude. The same way say, somebody who spends hours upon hours on /r/antiwork probably isn't going to do great in their career

See, I would disagree that your average guy isn't getting laid.

That's why I said, "your average guy who isn't getting laid."

But yeah, I think most guys are fine about this. Even guys who aren't getting laid regularly. Partly revealed preferences and partly, in many urban areas, things really only opened up the past year or so. I know things were open and freedom was flowing since basically fall 2020 in parts of the country, but mask mandates and the like weren't completely gone in my very blue neck of the woods until March of 2022, and it was only then, that things felt totally back to normal.

You're not wrong and yet they are not wrong either. A negative attitude is, as a general rule, not very attractive.

I would have to think believing half of the human population is fundamentally lesser than you in emotional maturity and intelligence reaches past the range of negative attitude.

If you have an IQ of 100 half the population is literally of inferior intelligence.

Well, I would have to disagree. I have an IQ of 110 and I don't consider those around me with a lower number inferior to me intelligently.

Are you trolling?

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It's also a pretty absurd trope. I'd be surprised if anyone really believes that the successful men in the dating market are always or even mostly those who "respect women". It's an interesting inconsistency so many liberals have where they simultaneously see all of these issues in gender relations and yet so often the dating scene is "working as intended" when they want to use it as a cudgel.

I can buy that, and like I mentioned in my reply to @justawoman, calling it a majority may have gone too far. It's more that we all understand toxic relationships to exist, and we all know that disrespect is often not disqualifying, not just due to recent dating developments but throughout human history. I don't think that it's the best dating strategy to "become an asshole", but at the same time, a fear of being an asshole can hold you back, because it's often exaggerated, so in that sense "respecting women" is not necessarily the first piece of advice I'd give to someone in a bad spot. And I feel like there are a lot of depressed young men who think they are respecting women but are actually just fearing them, which etymology-wise isn't that different.

It's the good ole conflating attractiveness (proxied by dating success) with moral quality. Once you drink the "be a good man to get women" [1] koolaid and actually believe it (god bless their hearts), the logical inference is that men who don't have success with women must be bad.

It is a very female coded thought process though, I have yet to see any man regardless of his success level with women use this line of logic.

[1] Attractiveness is also a near perfect predictor for "personality". Wow much linear relationship. Halo effect is a hell of a drug.

What does "female coded" mean?

X coded Y means, Y is assumed to come from X most of the time, and that it's more natural for X to make Y than Z, for E.g. It's similar to 'connotation'. It's about perception.

https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/about

You think a majority of men want to be in a relationship with someone they fundamentally disrespect? I certainly don’t advocate for anyone to get into an unequal relationship like that.

Edit: I feel it's important for those third parties reading to address your second musing because it appears you are restating my thoughts not in good faith. I do see issues in gender relations, although I do not believe it is strictly because I am liberal, but I believe they occur because of the previous culture of gender roles pressuring all women and men into roles they weren't comfortable with, and as we grow as a society in intelligence, empathy, and communication we shrug those confines off and those who cling to them are uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there is no room anymore for absolute and subjective statements such as "all men" and "all women" "do this", so those trying to use that frame of mind in the dating scene are finding natural failure. No sane, healthy woman (or man) wants to date someone who thinks they are an immature liar.

My point isn't whether you or anyone else advocates for relationships like that, it's just my observation that they happen with a high frequency. The reason everyone talks about "red flags" is because we are so blinded by flattery and the glow of an early relationship that we often miss when the other person actually doesn't respect us. We may not want to date someone like this, but we are certainly willing to trick ourselves that we aren't when we actually are.

Does the disrespectful attitude actually work out to be a majority of successful men? Well, maybe not. But a more defendable position is that every man has the experience of knowing some real assholes who have no problem picking up women, and I think plenty of women have seen the equivalent on their side as well. And many of these kinds of people are perfectly willing to gaslight their target into thinking that it's really "them" who is the one being selfish immature liar. And a toxic relationship can run on those fumes for a very long time.

This should all be common liberal understanding (and I am very liberal myself, full disclosure), and yet when a frustrated young man is resentful, suddenly the liberals become stoic. Surely it's something wrong with the frustrated young man that is preventing him from finding a partner? If a man were to so much as vent, surely that would be evidence of his own insufficiency? But because it's so hard to argue this in the liberal framework, arguments like yours have to be totally tortured to assume that most women, or most anyone, can sniff out good men from bad, and are immune to toxic disrespect.

It's much simpler, and more harmonious for the liberal worldview, to just admit that some men get screwed over by the way women judge attractiveness and by the way society teaches men to date, and that they should get to vent harmlessly if they so desire. And they should eventually let go of the resentment! But they shouldn't have their venting be held against them.

It's much simpler, and more harmonious for the liberal worldview, to just admit that some men get screwed over by the way women judge attractiveness and by the way society teaches men to date, and that they should get to vent harmlessly if they so desire. And they should eventually let go of the resentment! But they shouldn't have their venting be held against them.

By doing so they'd open the status quo up to legitimate critique. Their reluctance to do so is because of some combination of women are wonderful (women can do no wrong) and male hyperagency (men are responsible for everything that happens to them).

By not doing so it does lead to many men going through the 'anger stage' when they find out they'd been indoctrinated with social mores that are against their own personal interest. You could find them on forums like /r/theredpill and some never get over it.

If anything, admitting that "some people are bound to get screwed over" is pretty much fatal to the liberal worldview (which I'm here taking to mean "we all come out good/okay in the end"). Either you can't keep calling yourself a liberal and sleep easy at night anymore, or you go to some illiberal extreme worldview. Kind of like what we see with the rest of the culture war, really.

I have to disagree that anyone, men or women, can hold thoughts like, “I think women are childish and immature.” and have a good faith conversation with a woman.

i thought about not saying this, then saw so many responses

guys, it's fake. it's a fake story. the so-socially-stunted who asks that IRL then goes hard at defending his obliviousness wouldn't be yet astute enough to know that sub, think of it as a good place to ask his question, and know he should use a cutesy throwaway called "throwRA." all those subs, RA, TIFU, AITA, are full of shitty writers posting varyingly obviously fake stories and getting loads of engagement. downthread here are two way more obviously fake stories about a woman whose husband "has become a robot", OP outs themselves as fake when they're trying to flex their prose in the update, and about a jewish guy who discovered his girlfriend is extremely antisemitic. the OP of that story? yeah banned from reddit, probably for dodging the ban they got because of their last fake story posted to RA.

i'm not surprised people who frequent what are among the shittiest subs on reddit chomped the bait but cmon. is there good in "provoking discussion" no probably not unless it's reflecting on credulity, and also how upvotes might, might work in highly niche communities but once used by the masses just become Likes and spur a race to the bottom. modern dating is certainly unideal. stories like this help make it worse.

I don't know if the post is fake or not, but I do know that

know he should use a cutesy throwaway called "throwRA"

is not evidence one way or another: using a username with that prefix was previously a rule in that subreddit, that rule was promulgated vigorously enough that even people like me who do not regularly browse that sub knew about it, and it created a sufficiently strong convention that 12 of the current top 25 posts (sorted by hot, as of this moment) adhere to it.

familiarity with the sub's decorum/old rules further suggests OP is gaming them.

guys, it's fake. it's a fake story.

Does it matter for most of what we discuss here? I have seen similar stories play out in real life quite a bit.

I'm going to be honest, I'm not a fan of "who care's if it's real, it started a conversation, which is the important part", no matter what it's applied to.

I think that the "who cares if it's real" attitude is bad if it's an extreme scenario that never really happens. Like if this was a similar example, but OP claimed that the girl got him kicked him out of university, would not be something that really ever happens. But pretty similar scenarios to OP's story do happen. I could have seen myself making a similar mistake in my first year of college if I was a bit more forward and a bit dumber and a bit more confident a girl liked me. And then it'd only be after the fact I'd seek out a specific sub to help me decide what to do next, after realizing I don't know what to do on my own.

You might want to explain a bit more than your dislike of the matter.

Discussions don't always need to be specific events, they can be about the class of events or a proxy of an event.

Does it matter for most of what we discuss here?

Yes absolutely. While the degree to which we live up to the Sub's foundation can be debated, moving past shady thinking remains a goal.

Does it matter for most of what we discuss here?

Yes? It's bad to generalize from fictional evidence.

I have seen similar stories play out in real life quite a bit.

I don't doubt this, but the tiny details matter a lot in these matters.

Mostly the discussion here is about people's reactions to the story, which are real even if the story is fake.

It still fucks up the analysis. In good Bayesian rationality you need to be reasoning about the process which generated the evidence.

To add onto sarker's response, I think the reactions still have merit and truth value, in that "who you are in the dark"/"The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" kind of way. Consider also the two trans-related Motte-adjacent-adjacent smoke jobs (TraceWoodgrains vs. LOTT and Jesse Singal and that whistleblower).

It doesn't fuck up the analysis. What matters is people's opinions which this story exposes, even if the story didn't happen.

I thought about this and think there's some chance that it's real. That kind of spergyness is difficult for a normal person to make up.

That said, even if the story is wholly fabricated, the reaction of Reddit is revealing of something real (unless there's some secret rDrama thread to manufacture outrageous reactions). About Reddit, at least, and potentially a broader social trend.

I don’t think it’s that hard if you hang about the right places. He tells the story of himself as pretty much a prototypical incel nice guy.

I would reckon a good portion of the stories on that subreddit (and probably 50%+ of the ones that get lots of attention) are either substantially or wholly fabricated.

If we could hear this from the woman's perspective I suspect it would go something like this:

There was this guy in my class/study group who I enjoyed hanging out with and thought was a close (platonic) friend. Then one day, out of the blue, he asked me to have sex with him. Not even to be in a relationship or date or anything, straight to sex! I said no, but what kind of person pretends to be someone's friend to get them to have sex?

I suspect this is the case because if you spend any amount of time in a place where women discuss their relationships you will have heard some variation of the above.

Woman meets man. Man apparently wants to be a platonic friend. They grow close. Man tries to convert platonic relationship into a romantic or sexual one. Woman declines. Suddenly man is no longer interested in being platonic friends.

We are missing the last part from this story, I suspect because the woman in question pattern matched OP's actions to this narrative and cut it off preemptively. All their friendly interactions are suddenly recast through the light of "was this an authentic interaction or did he just want to get in my pants?" She cut off the friendship with OP because she believed she could no longer trust that OP wanted to be her friend in some kind of authentic way vs being her friend as a means to get a sexual relationship with her. This also, I believe, explains the level of vitriol directed at OP from people hearing about it second hand. "Awkward guy in our study group awkwardly asked me for sex" shouldn't, and I think probably doesn't, tend towards that kind of reaction but "guy in our study group pretended to be my friend to try and sleep with me" seems like it would warrant a much harsher reaction.

This also brings us back to the "be clear about your intentions" advice. Contra some other commenters I don't think this advice is satisfied with "be direct about asking for sex when you want it." The way I understand the advice is more like "when starting a long term relationship with a woman (of whatever kind) be clear about what kind of relationship you want it to be." I think a lot of people giving this advice would say OP was not clear about his intentions, given he started the relationship indicating it would be platonic when he wanted it to be sexual. Now, I think an obvious problem with this advice is that one's intentions for a relationship can change over time. Giving OP the benefit of the doubt, he did authentically want a platonic friendship and only developed the desire to convert it to a sexual one (and belief that it could be) some substantial time in to the relationship. Unfortunately this is where I run out of ideas. It's not a position I've found myself in and there doesn't seem to be a great way to be clear about how you want the relationship to change that doesn't involve some risk of destroying the relationship as it already is, beyond what some other commenters have noted.

This argument that men pretend to be friends so that they can get sex strikes me as a rationalization. The situation makes the woman feel bad so she finds a reason to direct the blame onto the man. You never hear about this problem of "pretending to be my friend to get sex" when the feelings are reciprocated. Shouldn't the deception be just as bad a betrayal whether the feelings are reciprocated or not? If the man was more clear about his intentions it could still easily spun into a creeper accusation. The thing that actually matters is the extent to which you can avoid making the woman feel bad or uncomfortable. To the extent that you can't avoid it, you just have to accept the risk that the woman will think you're a creep.

It's almost if people believe that men can't catch feelings. What I mean by this, is that there's the idea that men have to (and are able to) make their decision about what bucket the relationship is going to go in right off the bat.

I have to say, the more I think about this type of situation the more misandry I see in it. Not that I think the guy was correct in this case, to be clear. I can understand why the guy did it, and while wrong, I do think it's understandable. But I think even forget the FwB thing. If he asks her out on a date, which is the more conventional thing....this situation is maybe what...80% of what it is? I don't think it's THAT sizable of a difference.

Again, I think there's a lot of misandry, and yes, objectification of men involved here.

If he asks her out on a date, which is the more conventional thing....this situation is maybe what...80% of what it is? I don't think it's THAT sizable of a difference.

Why so? If he'd simply asked her if she'd be keen for a cup of coffee the next morning (as in, make a harmless offer and make it clear refusal is a valid option) and she'd politely refused, it would be very different. Sure, she might feel weird around him for a little while, knowing that he has some interest in her as a potential date, but will likely still talk to him. And if he'd started seeing someone else (her proof that he's no longer trying to pursue her), it would be like he never asked her out at all. Definitely won't get into "permanently strained and impossible to mend" territory.

If he asks her out on a date, which is the more conventional thing....this situation is maybe what...80% of what it is? I don't think it's THAT sizable of a difference.

No it isn't. One is implying she's a cheap slut by proposing a very one-sided deal, the other isn't.

Unfortunately this is where I run out of ideas. It's not a position I've found myself in and there doesn't seem to be a great way to be clear about how you want the relationship to change that doesn't involve some risk of destroying the relationship as it already is, beyond what some other commenters have noted.

Does a person in this position who takes a chance on love deserve to be cast out for lechery?

He didn't "take a chance on love"; that would be if he simply asked her if she wanted to get coffee or drinks or dinner or any of the other normal things men do when they ask women out. He pretty much directly proposed that they enter an unorthodox relationship whereby he gets sex with out any of the attendant obligations. Starting a relationship out like this with someone you know a little but not well is like saying "I like you as a friend and think you have a nice body so I'd be willing to sleep with you, provided that you understand I don't really like you enough to take the relationship further and see no future there". FWB isn't something anyone really aspires to have; it's something that you end up with when there aren't any better options.

Kinda? Maybe? I don't know. Too much depends on context.

But like @Gillitrut I kind of feel like a lot of these problems can be effectively bypassed by being honest about one's feelings/intentions from the get go. To be clear; I'm not saying "ask for sex directly the moment you meet her" I'm saying that if you are trying to get closer to a woman because you find her attractive do not try to pass this off as anything else. That would be dishonest, and dishonesty deserves to be punished.

Probably not? The issue is distinguishing, from the outside, individuals who are "tak[ing] a chance on love" and individuals with more nefarious motivations.

No that's definitely creepy and he deserves to be regarded as such in real life. But I would agree that if he's saying he knows it was fucked up and doesn't know what he's doing, that the comments are over the top.

It's interesting that people treat poor social skills as a moral flaw in these situations. Break this down. OP (a) guessed a girl might be into him, (b) propositioned her for casual sex, (c) got a 'no' answer and let the matter drop. This is, in broad outlines, what millions of young men do every day. The difference is OP was hamfisted in his game, and he misjudged his SMV.

But people treat this as immoral behavior, worthy of scorn, rather than him being an awkward moron in need of a life skills coach.

If anything, OP should be regarded as stupidly ethical. Other men dangle the possibility of LTRs to young ladies while hunting casual sex. Instead, OP was forthright. It should be adorable, really, like a fresh college grad answering a 'What's your greatest weakness?' question honestly.

Chalk it up to people being programmed to despise low status males, like spiders or snakes.

Scott Aaronson describes a feeling (that I too experienced):

Here’s the thing: I spent my formative years—basically, from the age of 12 until my mid-20s—feeling not “entitled,” not “privileged,” but terrified. I was terrified that one of my female classmates would somehow find out that I sexually desired her, and that the instant she did, I would be scorned, laughed at, called a creep and a weirdo, maybe even expelled from school or sent to prison.

I was not as bad as Aaronson, but I held a completely unquestioned conviction that no girl must ever know how much I desired her, and that no one must know I had any sexual thoughts at all. I have no idea where it came from, but it seemed as evidently true to me as the fact that the sky is blue.

So, reading this story, I wonder if this innate impulse is actually adaptive for spergs. If you don't understand the social landscape of romance and dating, then indeed your best bet is to opt out and hide. If you try to play without understanding the rules, you end up ostracized or worse.

I wonder if this innate impulse is actually adaptive for spergs. If you don't understand the social landscape of romance and dating, then indeed your best bet is to opt out and hide. If you try to play without understanding the rules, you end up ostracized or worse.

Hmm. I mean. The sperg that never finds a partner contributes more to his family's genetics (by helping his siblings) than he would if he got killed by a rival or something, but less than if he had a family himself. However, I think it's genuinely a good thing if our hero gets ostracized. Or even beaten, maimed, or killed: it was not in vain and those that did him wrong may run afoul of the law.

It wasn't as nearly as bad for me either, but I had a great deal of shame about my attraction to women in my early teens and I know where it came from. I was constantly teased about girls when I was a kid and I got a very clear message that liking girls was wrong. I remember being shocked at 11 years old when a friend openly admitted liking girls. I hadn't even admitted to myself that I liked them yet. I remember being 13 when I decided that if a girl I really liked asked me out, I would have the guts to day yes. I was 15 before I seriously considered asking a girl out but I chickened out. The first time I asked a girl out was at 23 and it took me a year to get the courage.

The fact is that I probably was ostracized for my mistakes with women at 28, and looking back, I had no idea how little I understood back then.

I feel like something like there's some component of the opposite of this though. That is, perhaps socially adept people have evolved to shame awkward men into hiding because if they agree to hide then there are fewer men in the dating pool and the remaining men have a lower male to female density and thus more market value. This only works with awkward and weak men as targets because they are unlikely to retaliate, and are more likely to drop out instead of saying "fuck you" and continuing to ask girls out.

We might consider this a form of artificial selection: humans are nudging the fitness landscape in a way that makes being shy and kind less adaptive than it already was, because they are less likely to find a mate, while more aggressive behavior (shamers, and people who ignore negative feedback) becomes more adaptive.

If this is the case, then the correct response is actually the opposite: you should ignore them and in fact become more proactive about pursuing women because you and people like you are being suppressed by a psy-op from a different phenotype of males, which primarily functions by deceiving you and wins if and only if you believe it.

IMHO it's just a special case of desexualization; otherwise-neurotypical Wheelchair Wally gets the same kind of shit even if he's in a wheelchair because a drunk driver T-boned the family car when his mom was picking him up from second grade.

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/how-i-overcame-anxiety

It makes me wonder if it’s adaptive for the species: to keep people with light autism from generating people with heavy autism by reproducing autism genes.

My personal distinction is that us people with autism tend to create new and adaptive tools and interfaces for their people, while people with heavy autism tend to soak up extra resources and be a burden on the tribe.

Evolution works much much more strongly on individual fitness than it does on group or species fitness. So it doesn't have to be adaptive for the species to be selected for, it has to be adaptive for the individuals engaging in the behavior. Socially adept males who shame male autists and cause them to drop out, especially within their own social circles will reduce competition and increase their own sexual market value. This is advantageous for them regardless of the value of autists to society. The only way it wouldn't be advantageous is if the target of shame retaliates (either physically or socially) in a way that costs the shamer more than their expected gain. Which is likely the reason why they don't try to shame non awkward people.

Females who shame male autists don't gain from this source. So it probably lines up with your theory better, but with the caveat that probably most of the value is from the individual female herself not reproducing with the individual after she has shamed him and caused him to drop out.

It reminds me of the Louis C.K. incident in that he asked to do something most think is totally fine if the person wants to do it. But there is a norm about not asking people to do weird sexual things unless you have already broken that social barrier.

Redditors have oddly unusual but also weirdly consistent opinions. There was a post a few years ago where someone was asking if he did something wrong when he slept with a girl who was relying on him for a ride home. It sounded perfectly consensual to me, but no exaggeration, about 99% of the commenters were adamant he had raped her.

The hive mind is real. They often are in near universal agreement on opinions that are, at best, controversial in the real world, if not in the distinct minority.

Another element of this is that people don't understand how cut throat social social interaction is. On the surface, people seem nice, but deep down, they only really care about their social status. This is not just about enforcing rules so as to maximize everyone's well being. A huge amount of shaming behaviour is just opportunistic social climbing. Many rules exist only to give socially adept people the ability to rise in relative status. The rules that exist to enforce niceness are arbitrary in what they allow and don't allow and should never be generalized.

A common mistake young men make is that they see sympathy being given out to people for having problems, so they think their problems will give them sympathy, but the opposite happens. Being socially awkward in a way that gives people permission to attack you will result in them enthusiastically attacking you. It doesn't matter if you aren't causing people harm or are deserving of sympathy. If you have a non-protected character flaw, you will be published for it.

Very typical Reddit unfortunately.

I gotta admit, the thing that most pushes me towards anti-feminist Manosphere type of thoughts isn't anything about actual real-life interactions or sex life - it's the palpable seething contempt on display in places like that towards any man who get it wrong, where getting it wrong is basically defined as anything any woman doesn't like. It seems to me that you can't win with these people, they always want you destroyed no matter what you do. So tell me again why I should push for the promotion to positions of higher power and status of people who revel in displaying how much they hate my guts and want me to die broke and alone in a gutter somewhere? I guess I should just take it on faith that they probably won't actually do that, at least not to me, or not right now.

I don't really want to feel this way, but it's hard not to when you're exposed to this sort of thing.

Well, looking for advice on Reddit is unhappily going to result in the idiots coming on to call you all sorts of names.

And now I'm going to prove myself one of the idiots, because hey! "literal virgin (despite being 21 years old)".

Now, I realise that 21 is over the age of consent and that today's youth engage in fornication outside of marriage, and that this is now socially acceptable, but still. Why should his age have anything to do with it? At what age is it no longer acceptable to be a literal virgin? At what age should he have lost his virginity? Is the new rule that once you hit 14, you should be banging everything with a pulse, be you male, female, or one of the Heinz 57 genders?

I am sympathetic to the guy, even though his approach was the worst possible, but as you say, that's down to cluelessness rather than caddishness. At the same time, I don't think "21 and still not dipped his wick" isn't an attitude to help people like him be confident or reduce self-loathing. "Oh great, another person on the Internet telling me I'm a loser failure fuckup".

I'm glad you point out that virgin-shaming is bad and that blaming the guy for not being a Don Juan is wrong. And yeah, this is exactly the way to drive guys into being incels.

At what age is it no longer acceptable to be a literal virgin? At what age should he have lost his virginity?

I know you're not asking literally, just hypothetically, but still, from my experience, the general societal attitude is that guys should probably lose their virginity by age 18 or 19, or else they're probably doing something wrong, or they're weird, or something. Also, they probably should have at least touched a girl's breasts by like 16 or 17 and kissed a girl by 15. Personally, I don't judge anyone who is older and is a virgin, and I understand that every is different and should take things at their own pace, but there's some part of me that believes that if a guy hasn't done it by 20 or 21, he's probably trying but failing and not going about it the right way.

Huh, reading these general social expectations now is similarly irritating to what it would have been 15-20 years ago. I think I'd've been better at articulating why back then, though in an annoying self-righteous way that is just cringy, but still... this somehow summoned my early 2000s teenaged rebellion mode. I'm not sure what to make of this.

To clarify, by "literal virgin (despite being 21 years old)", I meant to convey:

  • "virgin" is sometimes used colloquially and insultingly online to just mean "awkward around women", but in this case the guy is a "literal" virgin.

  • I mentioned 21 years old because it is an unusual age to still be a virgin and highlights likely social awkwardness, I didn't mean to imply any moral failing on his part for that.

Is English your first language? 'Literally' these days is often used for derisive emphasis. "My boss is literally a jackass", "What a literal retard you are", etc.

To be clear, your English writing is perfect and I wouldn't suspect anything usually. But literally does not mean literally literally, literally.

English is my first language, and @Testing123 is using the word correctly (and the people you mention are using the word wrong regardless of if they are a native speaker). People are shockingly bad at English, but that doesn't make "literally" mean something different just because they're shit at the language.

I can be somewhat accepting of the Valley Girl usage as a kind of emphatic hyperbole -- but this is the first I've seen someone argue that this means the normal usage is deprecated.

Concerning.

Man, I wish you were right, but it's time to give up the ghost. "Literally" is used for emphasis much more than for its original meaning. The fact @FarNearEverywhere assumed @Testing123 was using "literal virgin" as an expression of disgust shows that even highly literate people are using sense two as the primary definition these days.

Everyones here is commenting on the low-hanging fruit, why the guy fucked up. But what explains the vitriolic response?

Like yeah, he fucked up, but fuckups happen. Why is he being painted as an incel scum, entitled sex field, and all the other horrible things in the book? Literal rapists don't get this much vitriol. Adulterers don't get this much vitriol. I really thought you were exaggerating, but I went and read the comments and these people could form a lynch mob if they could. (I spew a lot of anger in the opposite direction too but I don't have malice in me, it's more of the "why are you like this??" type than "incel delenda est" type seen in the comments)

What gives?

I'm sure there are some ingroup outgroup dynamics, but I would posit that there are a few other factors here.

  1. Token ass-covering. I can guarantee you a good chunk of the males commenting on that post are just about the same in the mating hierarchy as OP. But OP's group is reviled, you must disavow him ala 50 Stalins to show where you allegiances lie. You must make it clear to the online strangers that no you are not one of those guys. And you must convince yourself by that you are not that by strongly disavowing it, it hits too close to home for some.

  2. The females commenting there are harder to pin down. But I would say they are taking out their frustrations at men as a class towards the scapegoat. "How dare you think we are meat bags that you can just have sex with?". I also think there is some sort of status anxiety here the women on the post know they can't do much better than the type of guy OP is (seriously you think hot girls use mainstream reddit?), and this fills them with resentment.

    And I think the above is true. "Cool" (high status) people are usually exceptionally well-mannered and tolerant, they don't have much to prove, let alone waste time shitting on the personal attributes of a random online. The stereotype that high-status people are mean and catty is one of the stupidest copes/fantasies ever.

I feel like the vitrolic response is easily explained by redditards being redditarded. To be blunt no one who takes trigger warnings seriously, or who shows up just for the /r/drama, is going to be a bastion of mental health. If you keep expecting obviously insane people to behave sanely, you're going to be disappointed.

Literal rapists don't get this much vitriol. Adulterers don't get this much vitriol.

Maybe it's because there's generally no disagreement that such people are scum, so there no point belaboring the point. But there is disagreement about how much vitriol low status men deserve - even on the linked thread there are some dissenting comments. So if one wishes to change the expected amount from some to much, one must put in the effort, in hopes that the general audience will think "this much smoke, there must be fire."

"Cool" (high status) people are usually exceptionally well-mannered and tolerant, they don't have much to prove, let alone waste time shitting on the personal attributes of a random online. The stereotype that high-status people are mean and catty is one of the stupidest copes/fantasies ever.

Especially in the schoolyard, bullies are usually members of the social precariat. Kinda dumpy girls. Kinda awkward guys. Sociopathic bullies also exist, but bullying is usually best understood as an attempt to shore up social standing through asserting dominance over an outcast. The bullied will inevitably be a safe target with some mark of cain on their forehead.

The failure of popular culture to grasp this dynamic is why I think interventions against bullying have proved mostly ineffective, despite so much energy being marshalled against it.

It's even sadder that people bully for an imaginary audience that doesn't even see them, as on Reddit.

"Cool" (high status) people are usually exceptionally well-mannered and tolerant, they don't have much to prove, let alone waste time shitting on the personal attributes of a random online. The stereotype that high-status people are mean and catty is one of the stupidest copes/fantasies ever.

Yeah. They can sometimes be ruthless, in the Nietzschean sense, but don't usually go around squashing puny peasants like bugs for the same reason we don't sit around squashing ants from an anthill because we can.

Why is he being painted as an incel scum, entitled sex field, and all the other horrible things in the book?

Because self-righteousness knows no boundary of political views, and being able to get away with things without consequences, because you're in an Internet mob, brings out the worst in people. This is why "the mob" was always regarded with suspicion and "democracy" was treated as undesirable.

To quote "Men in Black":

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

I feel some sympathy for OP that he's so clueless and has had so little experience or advice that he thought "Hi, we've had some positive interactions in class so... wanna fuck?" would be an acceptable approach.

But my sympathy is limited - unless he's literally impaired (i.e., autism spectrum, and even then, most folks on the spectrum are able to learn some baseline rules, particularly when it comes to asking people for sex), this was just unbelievably stupid.

I've seen a number of posters suggest that he was done in by bad/disingenuous feminist dating advice, implying that women will tell men "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" and that means you can approach a woman for sex the same way you wish a woman would approach you for sex. But I don't recall ever seeing dating advice, even from feminists, suggesting that any woman wants a proposition like "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" That's a relationship that usually develops from mutual attraction and having hung out together enough that clearly there are some sparks, but neither one (claims) to want a "relationship."

(Do I think "FWB" is generally a stable kind of relationship? No, and I believe that very few women really want to be someone's FWB, it's something they settle for while trying to secure a real commitment.)

So this poor guy wasn't ill-intentioned, but he made an absolutely horrible social blunder, one that anyone, man or woman, could have told him was a blunder, and unfortunately he's suffering the effects people usually do when committing a massive faux pas. It sounds like the consequences for him are that she's told all her friends (and realistically, would you expect her not to?) and he's probably sunk what dating prospects he had at that school. This is sad, but unless this becomes a story of him being charged with actual sexual harassment and academically punished (which I'll grant is certainly within the realm of possibility), I don't think he's suffering more than you'd expect. He fucked up, and fucking up has consequences.

I think he fucked up. But let me say this.

If your social media...and hell...maybe your social experience tells you that FwB relationships are very normal, maybe in that case you think that maybe that's LESS intrusive than asking someone out on a date. I can easily see how someone would think this. Again, I still think that's bad advice, and a dumb thing to do.

(I'll be honest, I don't understand how anybody can ever ask anybody out on a date, but that's just me)

Yeah that's exactly it I think. The OP redditor's main mistake was being under the impression that FwB is a normal thing in modern dating, and that it's the casual next-step after flirty friendship (before taking the much bigger step of committing to a real monogamous relationship). There's almost no way this guy internalized that the mythical social media 'FwB' status was a prize final destination that he was just entitled to waltz right into.

So that's why summing it up as the guy 'essentially' asking "hey, wanna fuck?" / "Hey, wanna be my fuck buddy?" like many are doing here is a borderline strawman. With really minimal charity, it looks like confusion about the modern landscape way more than crassness. He likely already knew he was in trouble when she said "what's that?" and found himself trying to explain it.

If your social media...and hell...maybe your social experience tells you that FwB relationships are very normal, maybe in that case you think that maybe that's LESS intrusive than asking someone out on a date. I can easily see how someone would think this. Again, I still think that's bad advice, and a dumb thing to do.

Yes, I think it's very easy to get the impression FwB relationships are common and normal from the media too. Not just social media. And maybe for some groups of people outside of my filter bubble they are. But OP fucked up by jumping in without understanding the dynamics by which these relationships happen. The name isn't helping: FwB implies it is an "upgraded" friendship (friendship + sex), whereas to my understanding they're more "downgraded" dating (dating - romance and commitment). While the difference between those two definitions seems academical as the resulting status is pretty much the same, there is a meaningful difference in that it changes completely the direction you approach them from.

While the difference between those two definitions seems academical as the resulting status is pretty much the same, there is a meaningful difference in that it changes completely the direction you approach them from.

I think this is correct. That said, I understand why somebody might not be aware of that distinction.

But I don't recall ever seeing dating advice, even from feminists, suggesting that any woman wants a proposition like "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?"

Not directly, and certainly not specifically about that topic. But there is quite a bit of "always be honest about what you want" messaging out there that, on the surface, seemingly points in that direction. Which does indeed seem disingenuous, because following that advice will rarely if ever work out well for the kind of guys who need dating advice in the first place. I don't really believe that "shit tests" are something anyone does in a conscious, deliberate way, but advice like that makes it easy to see why some people find it tempting to believe in them.

There's a difference between being honest and being honest. You talk to said friend and say you've built an attraction to them, and wonder if they're up for exploring things further. You don't walk up an basically say, "want to be friends with benefits" with no lead up.

Now, before you respond, yes, if you were 6' 4" and ripped, you could maybe do that. But even then, that guy could easily crash 'n' burn with an approach like that. Especially in a situation where that isn't expected. Yes, at a club in Vegas you can try for the direct approach, but not at what seems like outside of a study session at a school library.

say you've built an attraction to them, and wonder if they're up for exploring things further. You don't walk up an basically say, "want to be friends with benefits" with no lead up.

The difference here is one of suaveness, not honesty.

There's a lot of advice out there that says, literally, just treat women like people/your guy friends.

So consider: doing something like he did in the gay community would be on the awkward side, but it would still have some chance of success and certainly wouldn't get him buried under accusations of being a would-be rapist. He's just stating he wants something, directly and honestly, and men are told to do just that with the expectation that the worst that can happen is rejection, and nothing bad will happen if you take that rejection in stride. Not the case. His mistake was treating his friend like someone who has agency to accept or turn down a reasonable proposition and move on with life.

Men have to navigate a whole lot of unstated norms and rules when it comes to dating, and those don't come embedded in our heads at birth: it takes learning and trial and error to discover them. (For some of us, clearly a lot more trial and error.) Many women don't like to acknowledge this ("it's easy for the average man to have casual sex, you just have to ask!"), and so when a learning example comes up, they want to attribute malice or evil intent to the rule violator.

It's also worth considering things with the genders flipped: a woman approaches a man in her study group and says she wants to have sex with him, he rejects her, and he then warns everyone in all their shared social circles that she's a desperate slut. It's unlikely that Reddit would pile on and say norm violator is a would-be rapist.

The social response in the original scenario is to be expected, although it's probably miscalibrated: if men are to learn the rules through trial and error, then they need to be granted the space for low stakes, non-harmful trial and error.

Many women don't like to acknowledge this ("it's easy for the average man to have casual sex, you just have to ask!")

I can't say I've ever heard a woman say that, but if someone does I think that most people (even other women) would laugh at it as remarkably naive. All the women I've ever encountered know damn well (and will acknowledge) that it's easy for them to get casual sex and hard for men to do so.

Just my personal experience, but I haven't experienced the same thing you have. Generally, I've seen a lot of women indicating both that is easy for men to get casual sex, and also women who indicate that it's not super easy for women to do that. Just my 2 cents.

And I can't recall exactly the articles, but I remember seeing a few articles back in like 2018 decrying how put upon women were by dating apps like tinder, and how men there are having tons of string free sex, and stringing along the women, taking advantage of them, and how devastating this is to women and how hard it is for them. Anyone in real life knows how much easier it is for women on tinder than 99% of men.

Generally, I've seen a lot of women indicating both that is easy for men to get casual sex, and also women who indicate that it's not super easy for women to do that.

If they genuinely think that it's because they're comparing themselves only to the top few percent of men - the ones they'd actually consider for casual sex, that bar being far higher for most women than most men. At least in that context, virtually all men outside those few percent are invisible to them. It may literally not cross their minds (again, in that context) that other men besides those few percent exist.

but I remember seeing a few articles back in like 2018 decrying how put upon women were by dating apps like tinder, and how men there are having tons of string free sex, and stringing along the women, taking advantage of them, and how devastating this is to women and how hard it is for them. Anyone in real life knows how much easier it is for women on tinder than 99% of men.

Yes, I remember the most infamous one: Tinder and the Dating Apocalypse by Nancy Jo Sales, who I remember mainly cause I hate a lot of stuff she wrote.

But I do recall her getting pushback from journalists who did actually cite the dropping sex rate as a counter to the anecdotes in her article.

It's an effect of online dating - a women can see and match with a lot of men, but those men will disproportionately be from the small group of popular men who can easily have casual sex. Hence the woman can imagine that it's easy for men (she's met a lot of men who are doing it, and many of them did her) while women have it hard (she doesn't like her own results and wants to be treated better). I'm not sure how common this belief is, but I recognize it.

Your second paragraph makes perfect sense to me, but I think it's important to bear in mind that women aren't (in my experience) complaining about casual sex there. Rather, what women complain they find difficult is how hard it is to find a stable relationship. It's easy for them to find someone to have sex with, but harder to find a boyfriend. Which is why in the articles you mentioned, those women are complaining about Tinder and getting strung along by men trying to have no-strings sex. They aren't after sex (which, idk why you're on Tinder if you aren't because that's explicitly the point of Tinder), they're after a boyfriend and are upset it's hard to get one.

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I have more sympathy than this, because while I am very aware of how weird it would be to ask a female friend to have sex with me, I am also very shy and have remained single for many years because everything that might lead to any kind of romantic relationship seemed very weird and overly forward to me at first until I forced myself to do it, with my heart beating out of my chest and every instinct telling me not to.

Because of this, the first time I had sex as an adult was at 25 and I had my first serious girlfriend, who I met online, at 28. The only relationship I've had with someone I met in person started when I was 31. So while I always have a strong reaction to these stories where I think the guy was obviously doing something really weird, I also recognize that I am really bad with women and that I really should be doing a lot more things that feel wrong to me. So who am I to judge people who make these mistakes? At least they're trying.

The thing is, no one ever sits you down and tells you how dating works. Almost everything I know comes from TV, the internet, and experience, and experience is really the most important one that allows you to figure out what from the first two sources is bullshit and what is not.

That's a relationship that usually develops from mutual attraction and having hung out together enough that clearly there are some sparks, but neither one (claims) to want a "relationship."

It sounds like he thought that's what happened.

So this poor guy wasn't ill-intentioned, but he made an absolutely horrible social blunder, one that anyone, man or woman, could have told him was a blunder, and unfortunately he's suffering the effects people usually do when committing a massive faux pas.

And this is probably where my evolved instinct to never take any risks comes from. But I had to force myself to overcome those instincts and when I started trying to date, I made some mistakes which may have resulted in my ostracization from a group of friends in my late twenties, which was very difficult, especially since it happened right before covid. Finding the right level of risk aversion to maximize social success is very difficult when you are fundamentally just not good with people. It's not enough to recognize what you shouldn't do. You also need to be able to recognize what you should do. Telling the difference is the hard part.

I empathize with this more than you might think, and I agree that the poor OP probably did misread the signals he thought she was sending.

I hope his life and future dating prospects are not destroyed by this, but he suffered a painful (and appropriate) lesson which hopefully will be a learning experience for him.

If real I dont think transferring schools to reset his reputation will be a bad call given a fair number of people meet their partners in college and given how retarded he is, he should probably optimize for that.

I think he deserves it, to be honest. Let's also say that he ought to avoid volunteering around children while a student at that school like the plague.

No, not phrased this way, of course. But (some) feminists have put in serious work to change the perception of women as prudish sexual innocents. They've even portrayed casual sex as crucial to their liberation.

The point of that is that women should not suffer negative consequences for having slept with (lots of) attractive men. It certainly isn't so that loser men can proposition them with impunity.

Women already know that loser men want to sleep with them. There is absolutely no rule change needed in that regard, except for them to stay in line and not pester someone above their station.

Instead, he's being treated as a predator.

See above.

I suspect that a very attractive man would have suffered a similar outcome to the poster, although perhaps with less social blowback and maybe later unsolicited requests for sex from other women.

I suspect that a very attractive man would have suffered a similar outcome to the poster, although perhaps with less social blowback

He would've probably got the "I'm flattered, but I'm not interested in this kind of relationship right now" line. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't have any problems finding temporary girlfriends, even though all women know the "age chart" meme by now. No one has succeeded at blackballing blueballing him for his dating practices.

and maybe later unsolicited requests for sex from other women.

Mission accomplished.

Even just approaching someone for sex in a FWB situation, as I understand it, requires that you be friends and have hung out and done things together and that there is some attraction there, before you get to the sex.

I think the guy really hasn't any close friends to advise him so is taking cues off social media, and went for the worst possible approach because he had no idea how it would come across.

There's also the whole problem of mixed signals; he interpreted "she is friendly to me in class and seems to have increased the intimacy level" as "she is flirting with me" and that may not have been the case. Even if that were the case, that is an invitation to treat, as they say, inviting him to up the intimacy level as well.

But that does not mean going straight from "lab partners" to "booty call". Ask her if she wanted to grab lunch together, or go get a coffee, or something easy at first. Depending how that goes, move on to asking for a date. Then broach the "wanna get physical?" question.

Not "I like you, wanna fuck? But on a casual basis, as a convenience to me and not that I'd be interested in a relationship" straight out of the gate. They didn't have the kind of friendship/existing relationship to get to the "I like you, you like me, we're mildly attracted to each other, want to have some fun sometimes?" step.

It's good he did have the courage to ask her out, however clumsily, and I hope he gets some friends to give him good advice and help him out.

Even just approaching someone for sex in a FWB situation, as I understand it, requires that you be friends and have hung out and done things together and that there is some attraction there, before you get to the sex.

Right-o. A central example of a friendship with benefits would be two people who are good friends, have high libido, have some sexual chemistry with each other, but have sufficiently incompatible personalities that they both don't want to become a couple. Then they can agree to help each other out when both of them are going through a dry spell.

"I like you, you like me, we're attracted to each other, want to have some fun?" is not a FwB, it's a fling. "Our time together is limited, when it's over we'll go our separate ways, so how about we don't take it seriously and just enjoy each other's company to the fullest?"

I've seen a number of posters suggest that he was done in by bad/disingenuous feminist dating advice, implying that women will tell men "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" and that means you can approach a woman for sex the same way you wish a woman would approach you for sex. But I don't recall ever seeing dating advice, even from feminists, suggesting that any woman wants a proposition like "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?"

I don't understand the reasoning in these 2 sentences. The latter - "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" - is clearly just an instantiation of the former - "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" and that means you can approach a woman for sex the same way you wish a woman would approach you for sex. It'd be like telling someone that they can order anything from the menu and when they say they want the pizza that's on page 2, responding with "I don't recall ever telling you that you could order pizza."

You might be able to have anything on the menu, but you can't just order it. There is a ritual you have to go through that may end up with you eating what's on the menu if you pass.

Thing is: there wouldn't be rituals if he was making the rules - it'd probably be the stereotype of Grindr. So he projects that unto the woman since, y'know, they're allegedly just like him here.

Which just goes back to "believing that men and women are identical was the error".

I don't understand the reasoning in these 2 sentences. The latter - "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" - is clearly just an instantiation of the former - "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!"

"We like to fuck" does not mean "We like fucking without even an implied relationship or commitment."

There may be some women who like the latter, but the former does not imply the latter.

It'd be like telling someone that they can order anything from the menu and when they say they want the pizza that's on page 2, responding with "I don't recall ever telling you that you could order pizza."

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

It's a strained analogy:

  • everyone's taught the polite lie that it's "baking a pizza together", not "you bake, and I eat"

  • there's a whole spectrum of propositions asking for casual sex maps onto, from "hey, would you be my on-call pizzaiolo?" to "hey, could I have a slice of your pizza the next time you feel like baking one?"

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

I feel like that argument undermines your point. It's totally normal if someone says "I like making pizza" to hit them up and be like "hey would you make me a pizza?".

It varies. I have friends who are chefs who kind of hate it when people expect them to cook at parties, at times they question whether they were invited just to cook. On the other hand if someone became friends with me just to listen to me rant about shit I don't know enough about, I'd be flattered.

Personally I'd consider it kind of rude to ask someone to make me a pizza just because they said they like making pizzas, so interpreting someone saying they like sex as meaning they are DTF with anyone who asks is just deeply weird to me.

I think that @ThenElection picked up on an important nuance I missed. Asking someone to have sex with you isn't like asking "make me a pizza", it's like asking "let's make pizza together sometime". Which is 100% acceptable to ask someone.

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Well, there's a twee expression "a bun in the oven", which usually is the result of making pizza together.

Be rude or stay hungry.

Those are not the only options.

Cannibalism is never aceptable Amadan.

I'd kind of be miffed by "hey would you make me a pizza," though I wouldn't make it a federal case.

Here, though, the question is more analogous to "hey, want to make a pizza together sometime?" Which is entirely reasonable.

"We like to fuck" does not mean "We like fucking without even an implied relationship or commitment."

But that's not the message being discussed here. The message being discussed here is, "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" Which absolutely means "without even an implied relationship or commitment" (beyond the FWB relationship in this case).

No, it would be like saying "I like making pizza" and someone concluding that means "I can randomly ask you to make me a pizza."

The analogy here is quite different from the menu one, but I can engage with it. If the message "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" is analogous to "I like making pizza," then the analogous behavior to asking someone to be fuckbuddies would be more like "hey, want to make some pizza together?" Which would be a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone in your friend group if you know that they like making pizza, especially if you also like making pizza. The whole thing about being fuckbuddies is that it's cooperative, not that one party is being demanded to serve the other person on a whim.

I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

I can see how a socially obtuse person could infer the second statement from the first, but this goes back to the need to help socially obtuse people navigate social messaging that usually communicates things beyond the surface level.

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I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

That is the message people - including some feminists - have gotten.

There's been a recent push for post-Sexual Revolution feminist philosophy for laymen and, from what I've heard from Louise Perry, that is one of the major bones of contention. That a lot of the messaging was basically that: "anything you can do we can do as well, or better"

From a review of her book (which matches what I've heard from her):

Well, not quite everything, as the author herself understands. True, women understandably celebrated their new freedom from unwanted pregnancy and successfully created a culture in which the traditional double standard seemed like the absurd relic of an oppressive age. Yet, over the ensuing decades, as sexual taboos melted away, women found themselves marching to the beat of another set of equally ill-suited norms. These norms largely aligned with the preferences of those high in sociosexuality, which generally means men, writes Perry. The idea was to be able to “have sex like a man,” in Sex and the City’s memorable phrase—purely for fun, without any messy emotions or attachments. Perry catalogues magazine and web articles explaining how to avoid “catching feelings” after a hook up, examples of women who can’t quite explain why they’re unhappy in a friends-with-benefits “pseudo-relationship,” and porn showing women “begging men for painful or degrading sex acts.” The cool kids, goes the message, should be comfortable with any and everything purported to bring sexual pleasure: oral, anal, polyamory, threesomes, BDSM, breath play (i.e., choking). The only limiting factor, the only moral imperative really, is consent from both parties.

https://www.city-journal.org/review-of-the-case-against-the-sexual-revolution

So, even for some feminists, the message was not necessarily that nuanced IRL.

I think our disagreement is that you think the explicit message is "We like to fuck just as much as you do" and that implies "We have exactly the same attitudes towards sex and relationships that you do."

I don't think this quite gets at the heart of it. It's not that "exactly the same attitudes" are implied, but certainly SOME sort of attitude is. Because the concept of "liking" something comes with it certain attitudes. If you like pizza so much that you'd eat it even if you're so full as to throw up or accompanied with chocolate cake or if the pizza is cold, and you're told that someone else likes pizza as much as you do, you'd reasonably be surprised if they only wanted fresh pizza from a specific restaurant and when they're hungry. Even if they clearly got just as much enjoyment out of that pizza as you did and would move heaven and Earth to get to that restaurant for that delicious, delicious pizza. That's not someone who meaningfully likes pizza as much as you do.

I can see how a socially obtuse person could infer the second statement from the first, but this goes back to the need to help socially obtuse people navigate social messaging that usually communicates things beyond the surface level.

Yes, this I agree with, and I think we can say that the types of feminist messaging about which we're talking is for the benefit of the socially apt at the cost of the socially obtuse. Perhaps all social messaging is like this to a large extent, though some are probably better than others at elegantly handling its predictable failure modes.

The latter - "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?" - is clearly just an instantiation of the former - "Yes, we like to fuck just as much as you do!" and that means you can approach a woman for sex the same way you wish a woman would approach you for sex.

Or, you know, the way gay dudes approach sex. Because it very very very much is exactly like that between us.

I don't recall ever seeing dating advice, even from feminists, suggesting that any woman wants a proposition like "How about being my no-strings-attached fuck buddy?"

I did a quick Google search for the phrase "Women want sex as much as men". On the first page I came across this article titled Science Proves Once and For All That Women Want Sex Just As Much As Men Do. Now, this article is not framed as dating advice, but it is the kind of thing a naïve young man trying to understand female sexuality might stumble across. Here are some choice quotes our young hero might focus on:

  • "Breaking news: Women like sex. Furthermore, we're pretty cool with having it outside of marriage and we're increasingly becoming more comfortable demanding it include (at least) an orgasm."

  • "according to a recent survey from the fertility awareness app Kindara, what they want is to get laid — not only at least as much as their male partners do, but actually more often."

  • "In terms of basic desire, though, most women want more sex than they're having. More than half of respondents said they weren't entirely satisfied with the amount of sex they currently have"

  • "As the journalist Daniel Bergner described in his seminal 2013 book, What Do Women Want? scientists have begun to uncover what could be "a new, unvarnished norm" for female sexuality, which could confirm that women's libidinousness is, "at base, nothing if not animal." All of that is to say, it's distinctly more similar to men's than was previously thought."

  • "A study released earlier this year, for instance, found women were as likely as men to be interested in casual sex — but only when there was no threat of sexual violence or of social judgment."

"Women were as likely as men to be interested in casual sex — but only when there was no threat of sexual violence or of social judgment," Hmm, I have an idea. I'll show her that I am trustworthy and nice and nonviolent by being totally honest with her what I want, and I'll show her that I won't socially judge her for having casual sex by acknowledging that FWBs are perfectly ok to have.

NO NO NO NO NO

You know why this is obviously wrong. I know why this is obviously wrong. It is not obvious from first principles why this is wrong. The reasons why it is wrong have to be learned. I would have expected someone 21 years old to have figured it out by now, but do also consider that he was 18 (the age I was when I finally put it all together) when Covid hit. He was locked down while he should have been experimenting.

You know why this is obviously wrong. I know why this is obviously wrong. It is not obvious from first principles why this is wrong. The reasons why it is wrong have to be learned.

Also, people vary dramatically in their exposure to information about how dating works. Some people have close knit groups of friends where it is a constant topic of conversation while others have rarely spoken about it with anyone.

Where is the quote from? It's not in the post you're replying to, nor either of the links it contains, nor the OP.

Fixed. It wasn't meant to be a quote. It was just something I wrote and then thought I deleted. I meant to quote something else. I should stop posting so much from my phone.

Ah, pity. I asked because I liked it and wanted to see it in the original context.

You know why this is obviously wrong. I know why this is obviously wrong. It is not obvious from first principles why this is wrong.

Yeah, feminists have certainly pushed the idea that women enjoy sex (as opposed to the traditional view that sex is something women grudgingly, reluctantly provide in exchange for commitment, and that women who actually like sex are sluts), but like all fraught social interactions, people have to learn how to actually navigate the territory. I feel sorry for the OP that no one ever taught him anything, but I still feel like even passively observing people and popular culture, you have to be pretty socially oblivious to reason from "Women like sex" to "Women like being propositioned for sex by their classmates without even being offered a date."

I feel sorry for the OP that no one ever taught him anything, but I still feel like even passively observing people and popular culture, you have to be pretty socially oblivious to reason from "Women like sex" to "Women like being propositioned for sex by their classmates without even being offered a date."

(emphasis added)

I think one of the big issues in this particular case is that the very same feminist messages we talk about also emphasize that things like pop culture and more generally just modern social norms are irredeemably drenched in patriarchy and thus shouldn't serve as things to learn from. It specifically pushes social obliviousness as the right thing to do; instead of learning how to socialize from observing and experimenting in one's culture, one must follow those aforementioned prescribed rules in order to behave in a truly just and equitable way, lest they be a horrible misogynist. Some people take these messages seriously.

It specifically pushes social obliviousness as the right thing to do;

"Don't believe your lying eyes... No! Not like that!"

Some people take these messages seriously.

This is certainly a problem. A lot of "not being socially oblivious" is figuring out which messages you should take at face value, and which ones you shouldn't.

Also understanding nuance, which a whole lot of people who seem to think the only options are "Yes, asking women to be your fuck buddy is totally appropriate" or "Let's go back to chaperones and all women are virgins or whores" do not seem willing to grapple with.

All he did was verbalize a reasonable request. If he’d made a physical move, it would have amounted to the same thing, except it might have worked. He gets shit for choosing the most innocuous option available, speech.

You serve him the ‘freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences’ hogwash. “This is sad”, indeed. Take responsibility for the punishment instead of delegating it to the passive machinery of consequences. People decided to punish him. Should he be punished for such a crime?

All he did was verbalize a reasonable request. If he’d made a physical move, it would have amounted to the same thing, except it might have worked.

The physical move would include incremental escalation and (likely) plausible deniability of the whole thing if there's no reciprocation. It wouldn't be the 0 to 100 approach taken in his verbalization.

That depends on "I want to fuck you" being seen as a reasonable request, with no "let's go on a date first" set up. While it does have the charm of brevity and directness, it's perhaps a bit too raw unless you're approaching a hooker.

The really sad part is that the guy does seem to have some, at least, romantic interest in the girl and isn't just going for "wanna hit hot chick". But the approach he took has pretty much cut off that possibility.

All he did was verbalize a reasonable request.

You think asking a female classmate "Hey, wanna be my fuck buddy?" is a reasonable request?

If he’d made a physical move, it would have amounted to the same thing, except it might have worked.

I'm not sure what you mean by "physical move" here. The only thing I can think of is pretty uncharitable - surely, you're not suggesting he should have just grabbed her?

You serve him the ‘freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences’ hogwash. “This is sad”, indeed.

You know, sometimes that's actually true. If I approach a woman and say "Hi, wanna fuck?" I am not breaking any laws, but I am certainly committing an egregious faux pas and should expect consequences for that.

People decided to punish him. Should he be punished for such a crime?

Yes. Not literally, since it's not literally a crime. But yes, if you fuck up socially, you get punished socially.

Do you think it should be socially acceptable for men to just straight up ask women for sex without fear of women finding that creepy?

You think asking a female classmate "Hey, wanna be my fuck buddy?" is a reasonable request?

Is it a reasonable request for gays and lesbians?

The only thing I can think of is pretty uncharitable - surely, you're not suggesting he should have just grabbed her?

No, I do not mean rape her over her screams, friend. Of course I mean officially approved infinitesimal physical escalation, like gradually maintaining eye contact for a femtosecond longer than usual, lightly blowing in her direction when she's not looking, sitting one hair closer to her, brushing against her clothed arm for a planck time, and so on, over the course of a lifetime. Or he could just try to kiss her.

Yes. Not literally, since it's not literally a crime. But yes, if you fuck up socially, you get punished socially.

Still too passive. We both know his judges will be women. Will you join them in shunning him (say, if you were both regulars at a sports club), or are you just passively accepting their judgment?

Do you think it should be socially acceptable for men to just straight up ask women for sex without fear of women finding that creepy?

Yeah, not worthy of punishment at all. I'd go further though. I think from a pro-social view it reflects well on his character, though not on his smarts and social skills (not that I think it's 'unbelievably stupid' either. What's with the hyperbole, jesus).

lightly blowing in her direction when she's not looking,

Wait, what? Is this a thing?

No. I confess that sentence has a bit of sarcasm in it, because when you get into the details of the 'escalate' strategy, every escalation no matter how minor can be framed as a violation.

edit: I tracked down the source .

Would not recommend...

Is it a reasonable request for gays and lesbians?

I don't know. Supposing it is, how would that make it reasonable for straight guys?

No, I do not mean rape her over her screams, friend. Of course I mean officially approved infinitesimal physical escalation, like gradually maintaining eye contact for a femtosecond longer than usual, lightly blowing in her direction when she's not looking, sitting one hair closer to her, brushing against her clothed arm for a planck time, and so on, over the course of a lifetime. Or he could just try to kiss her.

I suppose that could work, but that presumes some level of game which our OP clearly did not have in the first place.

Still too passive. We both know his judges will be women. Will you join them in shunning him (say, if you were both regulars at a sports club), or are you just passively accepting their judgment?

I wouldn't "shun" him, but I'd agree with them that that's creepy behavior and if he asked me, I'd tell him "What the hell were you thinking?"

Yeah, not worthy of punishment at all. I'd go further though. I think from a pro-social view it reflects well on his character, though not on his smarts and social skills (not that I think it's 'unbelievably stupid' either. What's with the hyperbole, jesus).

How about "believably stupid" then?

No, I don't think it reflects well on anyone's character to go around asking for no-strings-attached sex and expect that no one will react negatively to that.

I don't know. Supposing it is, how would that make it reasonable for straight guys?

The universality of the human condition, I guess. If I consider it unjustified to act a certain way in one situation, changing one minor parameter should not change my opinion. Take one's own experience: I find it difficult to think of an analoguous situation where I would react with such pettyness. Eg, if my male friend confesses he's gay and proposes to have sex with me, it's going to make the friendship weird for a while to say the least, but shunning him and telling everyone he's a piece of shit? Unjustified.

No, I would hope you'd be kinder than that to your friend, but you'd probably tell him "Dude, what the fuck?"

Random classmate you've been chatty with who suddenly asks if you'd like to be his fuck buddy? I would not blame you for telling him to back the hell off, or for telling your other friends what a weirdo he is. Is that different from "shunning him and telling everyone he's a piece of shit"? That's going to be largely a matter of perspective. Apparently you think this girl's only appropriate response was a polite "No thank you" and then pretend it never happened. I think you are putting an unreasonable expectation on her. She's not only supposed to not take offense, but also not mention it because it might be embarrassing to poor OP.

Why would I be softer on her than I would be on myself? Have you seen Dogville ? It toes the line to unwatchable arthouse crap, but the ending is cool.

From a higher vantage point, I don't view maintaining the current social order, where legible propositions and social awkwardness are harshly punished, as moral. Especially when there is no legitimate answer to his conundrum, according to its proponents. When me and the gang suggest the more viable way, physical escalation, it's also worthy of condemnation. That means to them his desires are immoral in themselves, and I won't accept that.

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Eg, if my male friend confesses he's gay and proposes to have sex with me, it's going to make the friendship weird for a while to say the least, but shunning him and telling everyone he's a piece of shit? Unjustified.

Sure, because a straight guy being propositioned by gay friend is embarassing for both parties. Even if you shunned him you wouldn't want to tell anyone about it because doing so would harm you as much as him. The same doesn't apply with men and women.

Turning down gay sex doesn't harm you, you should absolutely let women you want to sleep with find out - an open invitation to have sex makes you more sexually desirable through peer pressure and fomo mechanics, even from a gay guy to a straight guy. You might take a hit to your status with guys, but not much of one these days.

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You think asking a female classmate "Hey, wanna be my fuck buddy?" is a reasonable request?

I wouldn't think so, but according to this Aella Twitter poll (I know, I know, "Aella Twitter poll"), almost 30% of respondents have had sex with someone within an hour of meeting them. I'm not sure how much I believe that, or how biased the sample is, but empirically, ultra-casual sex does happen. How? I have no idea, but I presume whatever mechanism it happens by would seem unreasonable at first glance.

sex with someone within an hour of meeting them

Two ladders, fellow human being, two ladders. If the dude from the OP had spent only a single study session of intense flirting with the girl before propositioning her for sex, he would've gotten a different reply.

At an event based around any of these themes, it would probably be very easy to find someone to sleep with because that would be one of the main reasons for the event existing.

I've done this. Alcohol was involved. Incidentally, it wasn't that different from this situation because the girl asked me if I wanted to make out within seconds meeting her. Her best friend also asked me the same thing without our having even met. So there's some clustering of these behaviours in the social graph.

I'm skeptical of the sample being representative of the general college-age public, but setting that aside, I'd bet that nearly all of those are in settings that are much, much more likely to be expected locations for immediate propositions. That might range from literal sex clubs to drugged out raves to heavy drinking party bars, but it almost certainly isn't starting in libraries all that often.

You know, sometimes that's actually true. If I approach a woman and say "Hi, wanna fuck?" I am not breaking any laws, but I am certainly committing an egregious faux pas and should expect consequences for that.

Except when it works, which it does more than never. Which is what I assume fuckduck is getting at with the physical move - grabbing her and pulling her into a kiss has a better chance of working than awkwardly and earnestly try to express himself, because sexual dynamics are crazy.

Except when it works, which it does more than never. Which is what I assume fuckduck is getting at with the physical move - grabbing her and pulling her into a kiss has a better chance of working than awkwardly and earnestly try to express himself, because sexual dynamics are crazy.

If asking a classmate to fuck is a bad idea, I think it should be pretty obvious that just grabbing her and trying to kiss her is an even worse one.

If you are the sort of guy who can actually get away with that, you are not the socially awkward OP.

I've done this and gotten away with it and am very socially awkward. The context was different though because it was at a party. I've also had a girl do it to me in even more dramatic fashion.

Agreed, but the socially awkward op is too socially awkward to know that. That's where the tragedy lies imo.

If asking a classmate to fuck is a bad idea, I think it should be pretty obvious that just grabbing her and trying to kiss her is an even worse one.

Obvious and wrong. If she's actually attracted to you, the former is much worse than the latter, usually. Even if you don't get away with it, she'll likely be much less upset.

I'm surprised that there's a disagreement here; it seems obvious that you're right here, in that the kiss would be considered more overly aggressive/thirsty than creepy, and have less social censure placed on it. I'd expect even Reddit to have a more sympathetic response if the situation involved a kiss instead of the invitation.

At the same time, it seems equally obvious to me that in an ideal world an unwanted kiss should be considered much worse than an unwanted invitation to fuck. Words are words and can't violate anything, while physical actions can violate actual boundaries.

I think reddit might not, but that's because it's a super storm of purity spirals.

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Quoting my favorite Scott article,

"How could such a smart guy make such a stupid mistake? My guess: the Soviet government didn’t officially say “We will kill anyone who criticizes us”. They officially said “Comrade Stalin loves freedom and welcomes criticism from his fellow citizens”, and you had to have some basic level of cynicism and social competence to figure out that wasn’t true."

Now of course, dating advice isn't Stalin-era Soviet academia, but it is absolutely an adversarial information environment. If you're a 20-year-old dude and you see the top comment in a Reddit advice thread saying, "Tee-hee, just ask us. Girls like sex as much as guys do.😊" and then you take this literally and use your own sex-drive as a baseline to model the mental state of women you might be attracted to, you are going to end up like poor little OP here. You have to be smart enough to know immediately that this is obvious bullshit even though you still don't know what the correct answer is. You have to notice things like:

  • You see a lot of men trying and failing to get laid, but almost never see women trying and failing to get laid.

  • The overwhelming amount of porn is geared towards men.

  • There seems to be a whole lot of anger and vitriol on places like /r/creepyPMs towards guys who do in fact just ask.

Now, most guys don't end up like OP. It's not that hard to figure out some upper bound on how creepy and assertive you can be, below which you can be sure not to suffer social embarrassment (or worse). The main issue is that many men (myself included) will adopt the "never initiate a conversation with a woman IRL about anything except academic or professional topics," rule.

almost never see women trying and failing to get laid

That, I think, is part of the entire problem in this whole arena. Men don't see the girls who try and fail to get laid, or want more than just to get laid on a one-night stand. They see the guys around them trying and failing with women; they aren't in the same set of women, amongst women, seeing the girls who want something and can't find it: plenty of guys willing to fuck 'em and flee, not so many willing to take it slow and stick around. I have seen guys writing online about "if she doesn't agree to have sex by the third date, I'm dumping her. No point wasting time when I can get someone who will have sex on the first date".

So then we get into a stupid arms race, where women think they have to put out or else they can't get the guy to stick around, and the guys think "look at all those bitches riding the cock carousel!" (for the most jaundiced reaction) or "women have no problems getting laid if they want" (for the milder one).

I'm fascinated by how the 'male looking to [dm]ate female' information environment became so over-the-top noisy and downright adversarial.

My theory is that;

  1. The lack of granularity in information. What should be a flowchart/decision tree based on features such as 'self attractiveness',' target attractiveness',' self social skills',' target social status', 'target flirting ambiguity', etc? (I've conjectured in the past that if a dataset such as this existed, modeling it would be trivial using a tree-based model.) Is just flattened down to lower dimensions and your end up with a shitty model.

  2. Wrong people giving advice: "You don't ask a fish how to catch it, you ask a master fisherman". That statement is absolutely on the mark. Women have 0 idea on how to attract women and you should just about never take their advice (The statement is always preemptively prompted with "the proposer is prince charming"). Having spoken about this with male friends who span the gamut of body counts, I have noticed that only average looking men with very very high body counts (>30) have any useful advice at all (controlled for confounders). At least pre tinder you didn't achieve that high a body count without being physically attractive AND having game, with OLD you can get away with shitty game if attractive enough.

    Moreover, everyone chimes into the conversation because there is some universal aspect to attracting a mate, so you get people who are just bad at articulating things shitting up the space even further and the entire circus along with it.

  3. Gynocentricism. Certain dating advice that will actually work might paint women in a negative moral light. This is verboten in the same way implying that black people have weaknesses as a group is just about verboten. Women's true preferences must not ever be discussed and you will be called an INCEL if you point that out, you must tow the party line that height/looks/wealth has nothing to do with it and its all about a lack of body odour and pErSoNalItY (Seriously, this is the most damning plot I have ever seen, and it doesn't get brought up enough, but it is seriously eye opening, my lying eyes tell me R >= 0.95, the perfect proxy variable, you tell me which is the cause and which is the effect).

    I'm not sure what the mechanisms for this are, perhaps just simple ingroup outgroup dynamics? I would posit that given women are the gatekeepers of sex, any line of actions that short-circuits the expected mating ritual is seen as the equivalent of the dark arts?

Another one is that the women who give out dating advice or write about relationships (and thus who's opinions you see in online discourse) are either useless or non-representative:

1.way inside the basic normie female bubble. Cosmo-tier advice.

  1. Extremely online and ideological (or cynical). Giving Dating Advice is really just them finding a soapbox to talk about how Men Need to Do XYZ. Often it's tuned to attract clicks, not to be useful to anyone, male or female.

  2. Extremely online and incredibly anxious and atypical, (and also ideological). Girls who think dating game begins and ends with avoiding being raped.

"You don't ask a fish how to catch it, you ask a master fisherman". That statement is absolutely on the mark. Women have 0 idea on how to attract women and you should just about never take their advice (The statement is always preemptively prompted with "the proposer is prince charming").

I think this is mostly true but it is somewhat culturally dependent. I have some female French Canadian cousins and I find that that culture is much more honest about dating. I have learned some useful things from them about what attracts women that I think are true.

I also find foreign women are much more upfront about wanting a man with money and status.

I have noticed that only average looking men with very very high body counts (>30) have any useful advice at all

They don't always have good advice though. I have a friend who is pretty average looking but very charming and social and always had a girlfriend. His advice to me - which I immediately recognized as bad - was to just wait because "relationships just happen".

They don't always have good advice though. I have a friend who is pretty average looking but very charming and social and always had a girlfriend. His advice to me - which I immediately recognized as bad - was to just wait because "relationships just happen".

IME that's most women's advice, too, or at least most attractive women. And from their point of view it's perfectly true, but that doesn't make it helpful for people for whom it's demonstrably not true.

I have noticed that only average looking men with very very high body counts (>30) have any useful advice at all (controlled for confounders).

But that's the thing right there! "High body counts"! That is, the kind of women willing to have, or only looking for, casual sex who don't want anything more long-term and aren't interested in a relationship. If you're fishing in that pool, of course your view of women is that they don't mean what they say, don't know what they want, and all the rest of the views about women only wanting handsome bad boys and ignoring the nice guys who would want a relationship, until they're too old and used-up to get men and then they want to hook a beta provider.

Do the guys with high body counts pick a permanent/long-term relationship out of the girls they landed and then discarded, or not? That's the question that needs to be answered.

you must tow the party line that height/looks/wealth has nothing to do with it and its all about a lack of body odour and pErSoNalItY

Yes and no. Do you think a handsome guy who is smelly and mean will get anywhere? A rich guy who is smelly and boring may do, and we all know what the bargain is there. I think the longer version is "Okay, if you're average looking and not very poor or very well-off, the thing that makes the difference is grooming and personality", and that people do have to understand that, life being unfair, the best-looking, richest, and most charming (in whatever combination of those qualities) is going to get the benefits first. Just like tall men allegedly do better than short men even at work, which is unfair, but that's how things are set up.

How many guys, faced with a choice between a plain girl with a lovely personality and a 10/10 girl who is a little bit dumb and airheaded, are going to pick Plain Jane? Works the same way for women.

So yeah, the advice should be worded "if you're not handsome and rich, then in order for Sally to pick you over George, Bob, Phil, Mike, Harry, Eugene and the twenty other guys online dating, you need something like an edge, be that grooming or being funny or whatever".

Another complaint I've seen is that women judge most men on dating sites to be unattractive, and while that sounds wrong because c'mon, they can't all be uggos, I do think that there is a problem of aesthetics going on. I have seen (and being as vague as possible so as not to identify any place or person) dating profiles where the guy puts up a selection of photos, clearly under the impression that "yeah, I look good here" or, something I am coming to think is the salient factor here, "this shows off my interests".

So he'll put up a photo of him after mountain climbing or hiking, thinking "This shows how outdoorsy/fit and active I am", and thinking this is something to back up what he's put in his profile. Meanwhile, looking at it as a woman, he looks like a bedraggled drowned rat in it. A woman isn't thinking "wow, he loves hiking" (unless she's really into hiking too), she's thinking "oh my God, couldn't he at least have taken a shower first before taking this photo?" I've seen photos that made me think "He could have looked really good here, if he only did X, Y and Z" and that would have moved him out of the 85% pile.

So advice like "get a better haircut, get someone to help you pick out clothes, get a good photo taken" really does make a difference.

EDIT: Also, I think guys have no idea of the amount of photoshopping/airbrushing that goes on with magazines etc. when showing models and actresses. I saw one cover today of a woman in a bikini and I went "yeah, they did photo editing to give her wider hips" because the figure as presented wasn't anatomically possible. But a man will look at that and think this is how women can/should look (see the thigh gap thing - when taking fashion photos there's tricks of stance and angles to get the apparent gap).

No man ever looks at photoshopped models except for when he walks past advertisement posters.

Men look at photoshopped Insta and OF pictures all the time.

Not the same photoshopping, one removes pimples (or buccal fat) the other makes tits and ass bigger. Most of womens complaining is about the former.

‘Erected these standards’

The absence of standards is the point. That girl (probably)doesn’t want to be anyone’s FWB, she wants a relationship, and that guy doesn’t know how to ask for what he wanted(if he himself knew).

In the 80’s he would have asked her out on a date, and say yes or not, everyone would have agreed that was an acceptable thing to do.

He fell victim to two of the classic nerd blunders.

The most famous is never assume that the sexes have equal preferences. I want sex, she also wants sex, why don't we have it together? Win-win! A great pareto improvement for our social situation!

I'm gonna channel my inner TLP and switch to the second person singular here:

In reality, you offered nothing for something, i.e. you wanted sex while not even pretending to offer even the prospect of protection or provision. It is as if a woman took you by the side and said "So I don't really want to fuck you, and I mean you specifically, so I won't. But how about you invite me to restaurants and the movies anyway? I have an opening for a beta orbiter right now." Extremely insulting, right? That's because it assumes that you are either desparate enough or enough of a stupid chump to go along with it. She's supposed to at least dangle the possibility of sex in front of your nose!

But you just did the same to her. You insinuated that she's slutty enough and cheap enough to hand out nookie to a socially awkward nerd for free. What kind of whore do you think she is? No wonder she doesn't want to talk to you anymore.

But only slightly less well known is the blunder of assuming that dating is not supposed to be confusing. Nerds do this all the time. It's so inefficient! Why go through all the trouble if we all just want someone to be with? The whole point is to filter out the people without the social graces to navigate rough social waters. It's like showing up to an obstacle course and suggesting that the same distance could be covered much quicker without all the stuff in the way.

But I'm a very nice guy who just wants to follow the rules and get along with everybody without offending anyone! Exactly. What makes you think she wants a push-over with the social IQ of a potato? And how dare you imply that she doesn't have better prospects than that?

I want sex, she also wants sex

From the story as told, if it's true and not someone trolling us all online, there was an assumption on his part about that which may or may not have been true. He interpreted what she was doing as flirting, but it might not have been. It might have been, as well. We have nothing to tell us what went on except his interpretation, and that's one part of the minefield: women will say "I was friendly and he tried hitting on me" and be upset because they were not signalling desire, men will say "She flirted with me and when I reciprocated she got all stand-offish" and be upset, and both sets will be in the right! The man made an honest mistake about thinking it was flirting when it wasn't, the woman made an honest mistake about why he acted like that.

Am I being too utopian in wishing for a world where "I'm not interested in the 'with benefits' part, but sure! let's be friends! I'd love to hang out with you and go to a movie or have lunch together at times!" is acceptable for both parties? That men and women really could be friends, even if the possibility of sex is not on the table? That the guy won't disappear if there isn't the chance of getting laid so all the stuff about "I like you, let's be friends" is bullshit, and the woman isn't perceived as "I want a beta orbiter" if she just wants to go to movies and out for meals with the guy?

Am I being too utopian in wishing for a world where "I'm not interested in the 'with benefits' part, but sure! let's be friends! I'd love to hang out with you and go to a movie or have lunch together at times!" is acceptable for both parties? That men and women really could be friends, even if the possibility of sex is not on the table? That the guy won't disappear if there isn't the chance of getting laid so all the stuff about "I like you, let's be friends" is bullshit, and the woman isn't perceived as "I want a beta orbiter" if she just wants to go to movies and out for meals with the guy?

Opportunity cost.

There are only so many hours in a day, there is only so much money in your going out budget, only so much memory in your brain, only so much energy in an introvert, only so much room in your monkeysphere. Social relationships take active time and effort to maintain; if not maintained, decay to nothingness. Hence, Dunbar's Number. Every female friend a guy has is one less male friend.

If there's no chance of sex, inside or outside a relationship [1], this is a very bad trade. As a man, men are more likely to share your interests, more likely to help you in times of trouble, more likely to have similar experiences from which to give you useful advice, more enjoyable to hang out with, and infinitely less likely to take advantage of your sexual attraction towards them.

I assure you, there is not man on this Earth whose idea of a good time is taking you shopping for a makeover, eating out with you at an overpriced restaurant, helping you move all your shit to your new apartment, listening to you whine about how it's not about the nail, and, worst of all for a guy who is attracted to you, hugging and comforting you while you cry about what an asshole Chad is for pumping and dumping you [2]. Those are things that men do for their wives girlfriends, or for girls that they hope will become their wives and girlfriends; they are the costs of a romantic relationship, not the benefits.

What are the benefits? Sex.

Pretend that you went in to work tomorrow and your boss announced that, effective immediately, he would no longer be providing you with a salary; that he is not interested in a financial relationship with you, but that he hopes you will continue to come to work anyway because he provides you with a challenging environment, a structured schedule, a place to socialize with your co-workers, a meaning to your life, something to put on your resume, and free coffee. What would your reaction be?

If you have any pride and dignity at all, your response will be "fuck you, pay me."

It is the same mistake Sam the barista makes in Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Unspeakable Bargains", which we previously discussed on r/TheMotte. When a girl asks a guy to be her friendzoned beta orbiter, or when a guy asks a girl to be his NSA fuck buddy, they are both committing the equivalent of your boss asking you to work without pay.

So why are there so many beta orbiters? Why are there so many girls getting pumped and dumped by Chad? For the same reason people take unpaid internships. There is a serious power imbalance in the market, and desperate people will accept degrading conditions for the chance to get ahead.

There are at least five females for ever Chad, and at least four beta males for every female. A guy will become a beta orbiter for the chance that the archetypal modern woman will condescend to marry him once she hits the wall and falls off the bottom of Chad's booty call list. And a woman will sleep with Chad because Chad has four other girls on his booty call list and is not going to put up with any "no sex until marriage" nonsense (also, because romance novels and movies have brainwashed her into thinking that there is something unique and magical about her pussy that will cause Chad to settle down and commit even though he has pumped and dumped two dozen girls just like her in the past). If women were willing to walk away from Chad, they would have to settle for Mr. Average. And women would rather fuck a dog than an average-looking beta provider.

[1] And this is a distinction that really needs to be emphasized. When women complain about how their male friends have a sexual interest in them, they often frame it in the worst possible terms, as if the guy just wanted to use her body once or twice and then never see her again. Whereas a sexual interest in your female friend could just as easily be "I am in love with that woman. I want to marry her; I want her to be the mother of my children." Either way, he gets accused of pretending to be her friend when he asks her out. But, for men, being friends with a woman seems like a perfectly reasonable first step. Need to be trained out of that behavior.

[2] Kind of like this scene of My Little Pony where Spike comforts Rarity after she finds out Trenderhoof likes Applejack, except in the real world, Rarity would be crying about how Trenderhoof ghosted her after she gave up her virginity to him, then a week later she saw him going out with Applejack. Spike's relationship with Rarity is a textbook example of a friendzoned beta orbiter. As usual, early Friendship is Magic is surprisingly based.

There are at least five females for ever Chad, and at least four beta males for every female.

Using the pareto principle as source, that's called weaksauce. Per pareto, there are at least four beta females to a Stacy, I therefore declare womankind to be alright.

I assure you, there is not man on this Earth whose idea of a good time is taking you shopping for a makeover, eating out with you at an overpriced restaurant, helping you move all your shit to your new apartment, listening to you whine about how it's not about the nail, and, worst of all for a guy who is attracted to you, hugging and comforting you while you cry about what an asshole Chad is for pumping and dumping you [2]. Those are things that men do for their wives girlfriends, or for girls that they hope will become their wives and girlfriends; they are the costs of a romantic relationship, not the benefits.

Overly strong. I've had female friends with whom the dynamic was the same as with my male friends. (Of course, we did not do those specific behaviors, but I'd wager there's a breed of metrosexual male who enjoys such activities.)

In general, the thing that turns me off Red Pill/manosphere talk is that it's phrased in absolutes that I know from experience are false. AWALT being the repeat offender. To borrow an analogy from another part of this thread, there are in fact poor Indians in Varanasi who will not lie to you and would like to have a friendly conversation with foreigners. You just don't meet them very often.

Am I being too utopian in wishing for a world where "I'm not interested in the 'with benefits' part, but sure! let's be friends! I'd love to hang out with you and go to a movie or have lunch together at times!" is acceptable for both parties? That men and women really could be friends, even if the possibility of sex is not on the table? That the guy won't disappear if there isn't the chance of getting laid so all the stuff about "I like you, let's be friends" is bullshit, and the woman isn't perceived as "I want a beta orbiter" if she just wants to go to movies and out for meals with the guy?

It's not possible and is very much Utopian. @Quantumfreakonomics, said it perfectly, most men would take extreme insult to such as an arrangement as an alternative, which is why the standard protocol is men just abandon the entire relationship if any attempt to turn it into a sexual relationship failed.

That could be a malebrained failure, because men rarely ever reject sexual advances for "arbitrary" reasons; the reasons will always be an easy to identify logistical issue or something about the girl that makes her extremely unattractive, women on the other hand might reject sex based on any number of reasons that might come off as arbitrary to a man. So when men project their framework onto women, they end up concluding that she REALLY REALLY REALLY finds him repulsive. And a relationship is not that easy even if the other person thinks you fail some unrelated to the relationship requirement, for example your relationship with you parents would be tarnished if you found out they think you are extremely dumb, even though your intelligence has nothing to do with your relationship with your parents.

Only if humans were perfectly rational automatons I suppose.

Am I being too utopian in wishing for a world where "I'm not interested in the 'with benefits' part, but sure! let's be friends! I'd love to hang out with you and go to a movie or have lunch together at times!" is acceptable for both parties? That men and women really could be friends, even if the possibility of sex is not on the table? That the guy won't disappear if there isn't the chance of getting laid so all the stuff about "I like you, let's be friends" is bullshit, and the woman isn't perceived as "I want a beta orbiter" if she just wants to go to movies and out for meals with the guy?

Essentially yes? One could construct hypothetical scenarios where both parties are romantically and sexually satisfied, and neither one would prefer the other over their current partner, and each one's partner does not feel threatened by the friendship. In such a situation I think what you propose would work.

In general, I think men understand if a woman is taken and doesn't want to change partners. We get it. We can't all be the most desirable man in the world.

What I don't think women understand is how [disrespectful? infuriating? emasculating? I'm not sure the exact word to use here] it feels when a woman, who is single, tells you that even though she finds you funny, and interesting, and likes being around you, she doesn't want to do anything romantic or sexual with you. It makes it obvious that her revealed preference, despite having deep-seated biological drives to be romantic and have sex, is to refrain from that activity entirely rather than have it with you. I don't want to use the term "dehumanizing", both because it's overused, and because it doesn't quite apply here either, but there is no word for what it feels like to be presented with empirical evidence that the very thing that makes you who you are, your genetics themselves (not your personality or sense of humor, we know she likes that), have been soundly rejected, that there are subconscious signals you could never understand radiating off of you demonstrating your lack of worth to exactly the people you want to impress. You will be reminded of this fact every time you hang out with her, that you could be having much more fun, getting exactly what you've always wanted, if only you weren't made of objectively low-quality genetics.

That is why, in general, men and women can't be "just friends".

poor friend

Pretty much answers your question. An exceptionally poor "friend" at that. You can sever a friendship without tanking his reputation.

but there is no grand female obligation to avoid embarrassing awkward men

One might say there is also no grand male obligation to not make women uncomfortable either. But the equilibrium is men try their best to not do it, and women don't make a big deal out of it if it happens. I think a lot of this overly female-centric discourse is oblivious to the fact that men are women's brothers, cousins, and fathers (It could have been an alternate-reality version of you). (Maybe too many sibling less kids in this generation, I don't fucking know)

If you let behavioral standards slip it turns into a race to the bottom.

Pretty much answers your question. An exceptionally poor "friend" at that. You can sever a friendship without tanking his reputation.

We're taking OP at his word here and we have already found OP to be a complete flummox. From the women's perspective I'd bet it looks something like: this wierd guy from our study group who I barely ever talk to took me aside at the fucking library and asked if I would have sex with him casually while being friends.

If we just take a second and look at it from her angle, everything becomes much clearer.

I agree in the reddit universe, OP bungled it up past any reproach. However I was talking within the universe 2rafas comment exists in.

Even worse -- "guy who's been doing my homework for me wants sex in exchange -- does he think I'm some kind of whore?"

In a circle of friends with 6 dudes and two of them work for the same company (Alfred and Bob with Alfred in a senior role). If one day Alfred lets Bob go, Alfred telling the group before Bob would be an asshole move in my book.

I sympathize with him for being socially shamed, assuming that the post is real.

Reddit is as real as Jerry Springer show, and serves the same purpose - light brainless entertainment and indulging your sense of superiority.

"Maybe I am an asshole loser, but I am not as big asshole and loser as THESE PEOPLE! Praise reason, logic and science!"

This is what Reddit is for, if you use it in other way you use it wrong.

And why shouldn’t the woman he asked discuss the incident with her friends? She might have been a poor friend for doing so, but there is no grand female obligation to avoid embarrassing awkward men.

You answer your own question. She shouldn't do it because it makes her a shitty friend. What do alleged 'female obligations' have to do with it? Is it OK for women to be shit friends to men if they don't violate the 'female obligations'?

If they're friends, yeah she shouldn't do it. Are they friends, though? The story as recounted sounds like he skipped that step and assumed they already were, just because of amicable interactions at college.

I strongly doubt that the girl in question saw OP as a "friend". Sounds more like an acquaintance, at best. Their interactions together didn't go past studying and eating dinner together (which can be very casual and low commitment if everyone is eating at the same on-campus diner anyway).

Is it still a shitty thing to do or no?

Depends. In her mind she is probably venting or, if she is the righteous type, warning other women about a creep.

A big part of what she is doing is of course to get ahead of his insult tarnishing her reputation by reacting as viciously as her character allows. And engage in just a little bit of revenge.

I also feel bad for the reddit OP, but I think it's important to put this in context.

What we're essentially witnessing here is the equivalent of someone who's 85 IQ, but specifically in the domain of social skills rather than general cognitive ability. Do 85 IQ people tend to have good economic outcomes in today's society? No. Increasingly, anyone who doesn't have the intelligence needed to be an engineer or a software developer will be forced to work shit jobs for shit pay, and they'll be pushed into the bottom rung of a class hierarchy that is becoming increasingly stratified. Does anyone actually care that low IQ people are losing out, aside from the low IQ people themselves? Clearly not. You'll get empty political gestures towards "teaching coal miners how to code", but ultimately society makes few affordances to try to make things more equitable.

it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.

Society has always annihilated people over stupid shit. Try telling people in your small village in the middle ages that you don't believe in God, or try telling people in China during the Cultural Revolution that you support capitalism. Honesty has never been the best policy.

My point is that humans are assholes who are generally indifferent to the suffering of others, unless it's suffering along some particular axis that they personally identify with. The lack of sympathy for awkward sexless males is just one special case of this broader phenomenon. Social media has exacerbated people's worst traits, but it certainly did not create them.

People with 85 IQ cannot learn to be high IQ. People with "85 IQ in social skills" can, so IQ is not really a good way to describe it.

Also, society is not happy with shaming people for actually having 85 IQ.

Also, society is not happy with shaming people for actually having 85 IQ.

I don't know, I see that being the go-to insult for people on both the left and the right when wanting to denigrate their opponents. Remember all the "Republicans are dumb, science proves it" stories gleefully passed around about Democrats being more highly educated?

And I myself have seen some of the fine folks who comment on this very site casually referring to "IQ 85 normies" and the like.

This seems analogous to people using "virgin" or "incel" as an insult. When someone actually meets a literal virgin or incel (that is male above a certain age, etc.), I think the antipathy remains. When Democrats who call Republicans stupid meet someone who is literally 85 IQ with the documentation to prove it, do they also keep the antipathy? I'd guess that whatever antipathy remains is lessened, if anything, by the knowledge of their IQ.

While I use the term 95 IQ rednecks, I do it as an illustration of Boudreau or Bubba and not a term of derision.

They don't actually believe the people are 85 IQ. If they did they wouldn't use it as an insult.

ultimately society makes few affordances to try to make things more equitable.

The US spends a bit more than 10% of it's GDP annually trying to make incomes more equitable.

It’s not working.

Compared to what?

Of course not, giving a dumb person money doesn't make them smart, it makes them spend money on things offered by smart people. It doesn't mean that there wasn't a lack of effort though.

Given the recent collapse of SVB, perhaps judging intelligence by money isn't the safest metric? 😁

well, they are getting a "Bail-out" (kinda, it's more depositors protection for the above 250k crowd, but we all know who those folks are) so the suckers in the end as always are the tax-payers.

There are a ton of similar banks that haven't collapsed. Smart people as a whole are fine and still have a lot of money, only a (admittedly large) portion of start ups are disrupted, and even then it's only a cash flow issue rather than a systematic lack of funds issue. Stupid people as a whole aren't fine, and don't have very much money (ideally they would have even less).

Ehh there are still viable economic positions for say 100 IQ persons (eg trades, dangerous jobs). Maybe 85 IQ ppl are shit out of luck but you went a bit too far.

The reddit OP is not average in social skills, but markedly below average. So 85 IQ was a more appropriate comparison than 100 IQ.

It was more in reference to the your statement that if you aren’t an engineer or software guy, you are SOL.

Do 85 IQ people tend to have good economic outcomes in today's society? No.

The difference being that all the political parties loudly exclaim how they want to change things to benefit the low paid (read 85 IQ worker)/extol their virtues and are ostensibly on their side, while nobody wants to be seen on the side of low social skills men who fuck up with women.

Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe

Good subreddit with lots of quality content.

The thread you posted is not the most catastrophic - OP will, at the worst, have to ask to get reassigned to different study group before everyone forgets about the incident and, in a few years, will be out of school and hopefully have good job and be on his way to fuck you money.

This is bad.

My husband became a robot and I don’t know how to help him

and this is real tragedy.

My (21M) girlfriend (21F) went on an anti Semitic rant after getting into an argument with someone. I’m Jewish...

Classic MEMRI meme coming to real life.

LMAO the meme is amazing.

Generally, one shouldn't attribute malice when incompetence is a valid explanation.

I have met a number of people in my life who got exactly zero training from their parents in how to date. I am quite baffled by this myself, as my parents gave me fairly clear norms for what was expected and what goals should be. Too many women who think that sleeping with guys would get them interested and men who believed in Hollywood style romantic gestures work. The idea that young people should tackle complicated life issues by following their feelings, being themselves would never be considered if giving investment advice or diet advice.

I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.

The dating market is a behavioural sink, and a lot of women are deeply frustrated. They are probably ventilating a lot of pent-up anger at men who are inventing their own standards and definitions in the dating market. Totalitarian behaviour often follows behavioural sinks. Revolutions reach their totalitarian phase and require policing. We were all going to be free and liberated from norms, chaos ensues, now we need the state to enforce consent laws. While young men will go to the next Andrew Tate, I believe a lot of young women are going to go full morality police and try to control undesired behaviour in a mob-like fashion.

Could you expand on the concept of behavioural sinks in this context?

One guy starts to pretend he is serious in order to date women, pumps and dumps. This behaviour becomes more accepted and women become more short sighted and harder as a response. Narcissists that can abuse people and arent socially punished behave in ways that spread among the population. One woman puts semi nude pics online and gets loads of attention, now more women have to do it in order to get the attention. Some women start sleeping with guys on the first date, then women who want to wait 10 dates are in a pickle as guys might not wait that long making her pressured to sleep with a guy before she is ready. This perpetuates the trend as the guy once again got laid fast.

The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absolutely terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.

I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.

This is combined with the fact we have a sexually liberal, if not libertine culture. The young man probably though that offering some girl to be FwB directly - despite being a literal virgin - was perfectly fine cause media and social media told him that's just how things are. And besides, men and women are the same, so women must think about this hypothetical arrangement the same way he does.

OP is also an actual idiot for thinking his proposal would end in anyway but horribly badly for him and being stupid enough to think going from virgin to FwB playa is in anyway feasible or a good idea. But the problem is that young men aren't allowed to fuck up in a healthy way and learn from the experience anymore, if young men fuck up they're 'literally incels' and a danger to young women who must be ostracised and exiled.

This is what happens when you have a social environmental where the social rules are poorly defined if they exist at all, the advice the young men get is terrible and contradictory, and the consequences for men are astronomical and completely at women's mercy.

The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absolutely terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.

Yeah, this is "Nice Guy Syndrome", something that absolutely I would argue is pushed by that zeitgeist, combined with the modern sexually libertine environment. This is what you get. Actually, it's not even that unreasonable if you ask me, although certainly it's not a route I'd actually recommend, depending on what advice/worldview you're seeing. Let's say that you wanted to be in a relationship with someone, you might feel the need that you need to prove your sexual abilities in a non-committal way. Thus, FwB.

There's always going to be danger for the neurodivergent who take the world at its word rather than trying to read between the lines.

Perhaps this too is a feature, not a bug: only the resilient and determined - and the attractive - do well.

The vast majority of women want a boyfriend who values them as more than a sex partner. They do not want a friend with benefits, and they are often crestfallen to settle for one after a series of dates and hookups. The cratering self-esteem and mental health of young women in progressive spaces should clue us in that this whole arrangement isn’t great for them either.

Then they shouldn't have set the bar on making approaches so high that only Chad can pass it, and set the penalties so high for failure that only someone who thinks he's Chad, or is utterly clueless, dares try in an environment other than among strangers (e.g. online dating).

Or, more realistically, they should make a man commit to them before he can get his dick wet.

What does commitment even mean these days? Marriage? Getting a fiance ring or something?

Anything that entails the contribution of one's time, effort and patience, plus a willingness to compromise.

I imagine back in the olden days it was socially difficult if you suddenly broke up with your relationship, there'd be all these rumors and voices and your family would be very angry with you. When King Edward VIII wanted to marry an American divorcee it was just not on. He was made to pay a price for that decision.

But what is there now that can prove your commitment? What can be socially enforced? What is commitment in the relationship sense? Nothing.

Well, yes. I suppose I understand what you're getting at.

Times have indeed changed. There was a time when men were responsible for their wives / female relatives, and women were accountable to their husbands/ male relatives. Those times are gone. Dismantling patriarchal monogamy has consequences. I'll argue that proving your commitment is still easy, as it has signals that should be bloody obvious to the other party, but generally speaking, commitment can only be elicited and incentivized, not enforced. That's the social reality today.

That would be part of the problem- see my earlier comment about there are no standards anymore.

In reality, I suspect the immediate result of lowering the bar is to keep getting pumped and dumped, just by less attractive guys, even if this does increase her long-term odds of finding a good relationship,

This isn’t even a good deal for women. In a social environment with poorly defined rules and badly socialized men, women are also vulnerable. If appropriate boundaries aren’t common knowledge, violations are much easier to get away with.

But they aren't. The situation you describe is exactly why we figuratively started to hand out loaded guns to women in the shape of sexual harassment allegations.

It's the Wild West alright, but every woman carries a nuke.

Fair points all around. Some nitpicks:

But they do bear out my general impression that less-than-princely sexual behavior from men is far more common than false allegations from women.

Oh I bet. But that was not the question. The question was whether the current social regime leads to more or less "less than princely behavioor" by men. And that very much depends on what we compare the current situation with. I would hazard the guess that the current risk-reward structure results in much less inappropriate behavior than any other after the sexual revolution.

Two caveats though. One is that what is commonly regarded as inappropriate behaviour has shifted dramatically. This might result in more women feeling victimised than ever before, especially since we started to hand out social and professional rewards for victimhood.

The other is that the punishment for missteps is affecting the behaviour of those least likely to misstep much more than those who simply don't care. The inappropriate-behaviour-per-social-interaction counter may actually go up as a result as the shy and gentle nerds stop trying and the Chads keep on chadding as before.

Even if this is so, the nuclear powers quickly realized that nukes are not an automatic win condition for any given conflict. They do not allow you to order other countries around at will, nor even to credibly deter low-level bad behavior, because everybody knows you'd have to be insane to drop them over anything less than an existential threat.

I'd say there's a fair share of recreational use over fairly trivial matters. Of course, it will be mostly the sociopaths running around using that weapon while those who truly need it to defend themselves will hesitate to use it. As always.

But my sense of the numbers is that the majority of truly inappropriate incidents never result in serious consequences, and only a tiny percentage of miscommunications/bad sex/jiltings result in retaliatory false accusations. Obviously we don't have hard data on this, nor will we get any. But it seems fair to say that a young man's likelihood of having his life torpedoed by a false accusation is similar to a young woman's likelihood of attracting a serious stalker or abuser. Those people are out there and genuinely dangerous, and as I said, they warp the risk calculation for the whole landscape. But just as I try to remind women that, "Hey, you sound a little hysterical when you use the Yorkshire Ripper to justify why you don't walk the dog after ten in your gated community," I'd ask that men try to keep a sense of proportion about the power dynamics here as well.

Well said.

In her youth, crudity was cool and open sexuality was becoming more socially acceptable, but feminism was still developing antibodies to its excesses and abuses.

I think this is why it's interesting that a segment of Gen X women has such a weird dislike for the more communal actions of Millenial and Gen Z women. Like yes, it's a cool story that you slapped the drink out of the hand of the guy that grabbed your ass, but guess what, he went down to the next bar down the street and did the same thing. Meanwhile, the next generation of girls is posting on some private Facebook group/shared Google doc/etc. about creepy guys is far more likely to lead to the creepy guy being shamed, and more importantly, other creepy guys deciding a single ass grab isn't worth it.

I could make a more general political argument about Gen Xers being split in their political views as young people, while Millenial's and Gen Zers are far more left-leaning.

The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absoluting terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.

Giving terrible advice to men does in fact make the woman's job easier. Her job is to discern who is worthy and who isn't. Social intelligence is a big part of that.

The OP in the story clearly doesn't (yet) have what it takes. He therefore should be rejected. Giving him advice on how to fake having what it takes is terrible because it dilutes the signal.

Men do in fact receive very good advice. But it is not them the advice is meant to be good for.

Yeah except this falls apart when men aren't also allowed to improve and be given a second chance. Because a significant portion of men, probably a majority, will fail this torturous mind game at some point. This level of sabotage against men leaves only a small portion of successful men. This is how you end up with the implicit polygynyous relationships of today.

The deck is completely stacked against (young) men now. In the past, there were social conventions and explicit courtship rituals even a social inept but otherwise good man could follow and be reasonably successful. Now it's the wild west, men have no idea that there are no rules, no guidance, the publicly acceptable advice is sabotaging you and you don't even know it, you as a young man assume all the social risk and put at the mercy of a woman's reaction who can utterly destroy you. This is not a stable arrangement.

This arrangement isn't even good for women in the long run either, because it sabotages the formation of long-term stable relationships which both men and women benefit from.

Maybe with respect to a specific woman but there are a lot of fish in the sea.

The deck is completely stacked against (young) men now.

I don't disagree.

This level of sabotage against men leaves only a small portion of successful men. This is how you end up with the implicit polygynyous relationships of today.

By and large, that seems to be the arrangement preferred by women relative to the available alternatives, going by their revealed preferences. A significant portion of women seem to prefer sharing a top man over having a sub-par specimen for themselves. And of course, having the option to utterly destroy a man who slights them.

This arrangement isn't even good for women in the long run either, because it sabotages the formation of long-term stable relationships which both men and women benefit from.

That's what (non-top) men think is best for them and for society. They are probably right. Alas, we live in a longhouse.

A significant portion of women seem to prefer sharing a top man over having a sub-par specimen for themselves.

Which women? Where? Based on what empirical evidence?

This seems to be one of those things - it has plenty of counterparts on the SocJus side of things - that's said because it follows from a theory someone is attached to, not because of any particular evidence that it's true. Outside of a very small number of poly arrangements, in which men at the top of the attractiveness scale aren't that overrepresented based on the ones I'm familiar with, I can't think of any cases where this is true. Yeah, it would logically follow if a lot of the ideas that float around the "manosphere" were true, but so much the worse for those ideas. But it's not something I actually see happening at any significant scale.

Which women? Where? Based on what empirical evidence?

If I'm right, a small number of men should have a lot of sexual partners and a much larger number of men should have very few. Women should be somewhere in the middle and a lot of them should go without sex for longer periods of time despite having every opportunity to do so. This matches my general observations in my social circle, but I am not sure how I would go about finding statistics that aren't hilariously skewed by social desirability bias working in different directions for men and women.

What should we observe if your model were right and how would we find out?

Bit late, but:

I mostly see people monogamously pairing off. There's a small number of eternal singles, mostly men, but the norm is long(ish)-term serial monogamy. Getting a new partner generally involves the guy sticking his neck out to much greater extent than the girl but the gender balance isn't off by that much. Almost no-one in my social circles has multiple partners on the regular (even the theoretically poly people have mostly broken down into straightforward two-person relationships).

There's certainly nothing I'd be tempted to describe as "women... sharing a top man". Which for that matter, seems largely absent from your description of the state of play, as well; and this is especially true when you fill the ellipsis back in, because I certainly can't think of anything that could plausibly be described as an active preference for this on the part of women, even of the revealed variety. As has been pointed out before, ideas often assumed here, like that and the whole "alpha fucks, beta bucks" notion, IME exist primarily in the minds of incels and MRAs, and hardly at all in real life.

It's possible my crowd and I are older than the people you have in mind, but the pattern doesn't change that much when you go back to our teens and twenties. Far more frequent changes of partner, certainly, and more (but still not all that many) actively poly arrangements, but only one that I would be tempted to describe using anything close to the text I quoted.

Ah, I think the issue is a loose use of terminology on my part. I certainly didn't want to insinnuate that poly relationships are becoming anything other than fringe any time soon. But an arrangement where a large portion of women seek out only the top portion of men for sex or relationships and otherwise stay single would satisfy my description of "rather share a top man over having a sub-par specimen for themselves".

It's possible my crowd and I are older than the people you have in mind, but the pattern doesn't change that much when you go back to our teens and twenties.

From my observation, all the good men are paired off, the loser men stay single, and the women who didn't snatch a good man get a cat rather than one of the loser men. I exxegarate, but there is a pattern.

The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absoluting terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.

What "dating advice" outside of porn movies tells young men to introduce themselves: "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?"

I do recall a section of one of Feynman's books that amounts to this -- I think you need to be in an environment where people might reasonably want to fuck for this to work. (and you need to be ready to accept being shot down in flames ~95% of the time, which this guy probably was not)

Yes. Feynman was hitting on women in bars, not asking women at Caltech if they were up for it.

I originally wrote "asking women scientists at conferences", but then I realized this might not be the worst place for casual hookups, just don't pick someone from the same field, lay it on thick, but with mutual plausible deniability.

There was definitely an era in the 2010s where the default advice was "Let her know your true intentions. You don't want to be friendzoned." I don't tend to see that too much anymore though.

The case here wasn't an introduction. The dude had known the girl and was friendly with her for a long time. He we told by society to be fully open and honest about his intentions with women and when he did this was lambasted for it. Totally predictable and the dude made a mistake believing what society says rather than seeing what society does, but this discrepancy is very much real. I hope he takes this as a learning lesson.

The dude had known the girl and was friendly with her for a long time.

Not the same as being friends. Imagine a casual acquaintance or someone you work with. You get on, you're friendly, but you don't consider yourselves to be friends. Then one day this guy/girl/whomever asks you "Hey, wanna have a casual sexual relationship where we fuck sometimes, no strings attached?"

Maybe you would consider "Oh Horace, flattered as I am, I'm not ready for a relationship" as a response. Or maybe you would think "Where the fuck did that come out of? We're not that kind of intimates!" Possibly you might even feel uncomfortable around them and try to avoid them.

Or maybe you'd go "Sure, I'm up for a knee-trembler in the stationery cupboard, see you in ten!"

Sure, but that's still not the same as an introduction of "Hello sweetie. Wanna fuck?". I absolutely agree this man broke a ton of unspoken social rules and it's bad, but society as a whole was also telling him (on the face at least) that what he did would be fine and was the right thing to do relative to "try and become friends with her with an ulterior motive".

I hope he takes this as a learning lesson.

Yeah, but I hope he takes the right lesson from it as well. Poor bastard might end up like Scott Aaronson.

Scott Aaronson.

Happily married, if neurotic and insecure?

That only came after the "I seriously considered castrating myself because I was so terrified of causing a girl to accuse me of rape" paranoia the poor divil went through as a teenager.

I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.


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