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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3357 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Then there's all the people arguing for why no-fault divorce, and sometimes even the decline of marriage, have been vast positives for women, and therefore society, because they're no longer forced to "settle" as their grandmothers were.

I think it says a lot about you that you hear "settle" and immediately think "woman forced to stay in a marriage with an unattractive husband" as opposed to "women forced to stay in abusive marriage/marriage with a drunk/marriage with a deadbeat" etc.

The fact that women are more likely to come when having sex with an attractive man does not remotely imply that women in relationships with less attractive men are therefore miserable. Sexual satisfaction is but one component of many in what makes a relationship work. (Also, most unattractive men still have fingers and tongues.)

ScienceDirect: "Correlates of satisfaction in British marriages":

Nowhere in the excerpted passage is it mentioned that women married to less attractive men are miserable. The study found that husbands are more satisfied if their wives are more attractive than they are, which is a separate question.

Lucas et al. (2006) looked at heterosexual couple marriages in four different cultures, and found that in every culture, physically attractive people who married a person with approximately the same attractiveness level were more satisfied about their marriage than physically unattractive people, or couples that differed in attractiveness."

This does not imply that attractive women in marriages with less attractive men are miserable, only that they are less satisfied than attractive women in marriages with attractive men.

Lucas, Wendorf, Imamoglu, Shen, Parkhill, Weisfeld, & Weisfeld "Marital satisfaction in four cultures as a function of homogamy, male dominance and female attractiveness"

Nowhere in the excerpted passage is it mentioned that women married to less attractive men are miserable.

Psychology Today: "(4 Reasons Not to Settle in a Relationship)[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/201404/4-reasons-not-settle-in-relationship]":

Again, you're conflating "an attractive woman marrying a less attractive man" with "settling". That's not what "settling" means. I imagine quite a lot of women would rather marry a plain-looking man who is caring, supportive and a good provider over an attractive man who cheats on her and can't hold down a steady job. Plenty of attractive women in relationships with attractive men are still settling.

Or in "How Couples Deal With the Loss of Physical Attraction"

This is just an opinion piece, I don't care.

From the Stanford Graduate School of Business via newswise.com "No-fault Divorce Laws May Have Improved Women's Well-being":

Again, you haven't come close to demonstrating that attractive women in marriages to unattractive men are more prone to suicide. There are hundreds of better reasons a woman might divorce her husband (abusive, drunk, deadbeat, philandering etc.).

Which numbered step is unclear? Where do you "lose the thread," as it were?

You've demonstrated that some rather weak and equivocal evidence exists for step 1, but are treating step 1 as if it was axiomatic and basing the subsequent steps on that.

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