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Notes -
Another possible contributing factor: rising obesity rates causing reduced sex drive/erectile dysfunction etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_and_sexuality
But of course that would contradict the evidence from Japan, where obesity rates are fairly flat over the last fifty years but the rate of sexlessness has skyrocketed.
Or perhaps East Asians just have lower testosterone levels/sex drives in general and so the recent technological/cultural driven drops in sex drive is effecting them to even more dramatic levels?
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From a pretty significant amount of observational experience, there's little chance that obesity can account for most or even much of the reduced amount of sex, at least via inducing ED.
Are you saying you have seen a lot of fat guy's erections? Being a doctor is so glamorous.
No, that's the lot of my prettier colleagues 🦋
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There seem to be a lot of cultural elements in Japanese society which may be contributing to that. I can only speak from "stupid crap I've seen online" but for entertainment there is a sub-genre of "[name] texts" which are a sort of misery porn for women, so far as I can make out? And while they're all supposedly set in America, it's fairly clear they originate in Japan (and other East Asian countries mimicking them).
The main scenario is "wife/daughter-in-law" (and daughter-in-law status is mega-important here) or "daughter/sister/sister-in-law" is being taken advantage of by husband/in-laws/own family.
The cultural assumptions are heavily biased towards what, in the genre, are acknowledged to be old-fashioned, traditional ideas, but even the 'yeah this is how everyone lives' assumptions are pretty eye-opening.
(1) Men will stay late after work for drinking parties with co-workers/clients. They won't come home. This is fine and normal. (2) Men will work a lot of overtime, to the point where they won't come home for days at a stretch. This is fine and normal. (3) Men will be sent overseas/to another area to work, even for years at a time. They won't come home except for flying visits. This is fine and normal.
(All the above is "fine and normal" until wife finds out that husband is using this as an excuse to cheat, kicking off the revenge scenario of the texts).
In family life:
(1) Mothers-in-law expect to rule over the household with a rod of iron. This is how it always was, and even if it's now an old-fashioned notion, you owe filial respect to her. (2) This can extend to "give me your bank book, send me money, clean the house, do my errands, obey my every whim". Granted, this is in the context of setting up the misery porn/revenge scenario, but there is the underlying expectation that, as the daughter-in-law, you try and get on with her and do a heck of a lot more obedience and biting your tongue than any Western woman would accept. (3) You may be derided as a stay-at-home housewife only living off your husband's money or as a working woman who is not taking proper care of the household. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. (4) Grandkids. You have got to produce grandkids, or else. Perfectly acceptable for threats of divorce if you don't get pregnant.
A ton more assumptions around elder and younger siblings, respective places of in-laws, etc. Now of course, I realise all this is exaggerated in the same way romance novels are exaggerated, but by the same token, there has to be a certain level of grounded in reality for this to work. If nobody had a nagging mother-in-law and a mama's boy husband in reality, then this stuff wouldn't resonate.
The takeaway is, if I were a Japanese woman, I certainly would have no interest in marriage under those conditions. Parents-in-law expect to move in to household or at the very least be taken care of by me, constant interference by in-laws, and a husband who may be absent more than he's present due to work, and I am supposed to put up with all this and take it.
No wonder there is a high rate of sexlessness. Even on the best showing "Sorry honey, I won't be home all week because work is sending me someplace/keeping me working overtime, I'll get a hotel room" isn't the way to have a flourishing sex life.
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It's ubiquitous porno usage, not obesity. The Japanese example supports this heavily
I'm very skeptical that there has been a significant change in access to porn in the past 25 years.
25 years puts us before the heydey of online porn. There's been an enormous change since then.
25 years puts us in 1999 when internet porn was already widely available. Make that 20 and people even have broadband and can watch videos too. I don't know what you think the heyday of porn is, pornhub? They didn't invent internet pornography, there were plenty of before then. But really, mindgeek was founded almost exactly 20 years ago. Time flies.
Broadband was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is now. Pornographic content was not as extreme or 'hardcore' as it often can be today. There's also a portaling effect where any one of the major video platforms (in a whole sea of them) can keep serving you up not just the one video you sought, but a dozen others loaded up to go on the sidebar or right beneath the player. I don't know how frequent the "Finish, close 30 tabs" meme came up back then, but it's surely more common now? Don't even need to get into video streaming quality, or quality in general. Live shows were a joke, in retrospect.
I dunno, man. I remember what it was like downloading porn as a teenager in the late 90s and early 00s. A lot of grainy 30-second clips, a lot of slow download speeds, a lot of waiting for Kazaa to finish up (sometimes days). Give me this evening and I could probably hoard and/or access more porn than I ever could during my entire adolescence. Maybe it was a gradual phenomenon that sloped real hard with the advent of 'hub sites. But that's still good enough as a marker IMO.
Also, widespread smartphone usage didn't start until roughly 2014, which is also a big factor.
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My guess is that anyone who wanted broadband in 2004 had it. In the US penetration was 25% for broadband and 30% for dialup and dialup started declining in 2001. And dialup back then was completely fine for porn. The internet adoption curve post 2000 is a lot flatter than you'd think
Hard disagree on this one. Back in the Kazaa days you would easily download CP by accident.
I have a hard time believing any of this would make much of a significant difference.
Fair enough but even hub sites are almost 20 years old at this point, youporn for example launched in 2006.
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