The risk of pregnancy is a biological fact with far more severe penalties for women. Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself-- and which also unfairly disadvantaged women.

It's unfortunate that we evolved to be the way we are, but the "instability" we're seeing now is partly a result of fixing much deeper inequalities that've existed for most of human history.

The real source of the present instability is socialized (and partly biological) gender differences in how men and women approach courtship.

It's one interpretation, good for those who accepts the faith tenets of post-structuralism. The other is that it came to exist because of its viability in particular economic conditions.

Also, if acceptance of promiscuity as a social norm really benefits exactly women is a really big question.

"Acceptance of promiscuity" is a bit of a contradiction in terms since "promiscuous" is inherently pejorative. I will say this: "promiscuity" has always been far more socially acceptable for men than it has been for women. Despite "enforced monogamy" prostitution is called the "oldest profession" for a reason and extramarital affairs have been happening for a long, long time. If you want to get nuanced, "enforced monogamy" doesn't really mean "enforced monogamy" because affairs were accepted in certain sociocultral contexts in England and France far before the sexual revolution.

Promiscuity is at first, and foremost was (and still is, in spite of contraception availability) practically more acceptable for men. And monogomy among other things is a constraint on men's behavior - forcing to accept social, and economic responsibilities before fulfilling sexual urges. You are right noting that it rarely worked in any absolute way, but I don't think any law, whether written, or not can be 100% effectively implemented. People steal all the time, but I suppose you wouldn't say it's because related norms are not enforced, right? Monogomy's real application varied over times, cultures, and spaces, but it was certainly enforced by societal pressure, and legally too. Actually, in my father's youth years (and it's not that deep in history) it was hard to have sex before marriage. It was for sure possible, but dangerous for reputation of both participants (probably more damaging for a women, but damaging for both nevertheless). It wasn't US, and "sexual revolution" came to us much later, so that's probably why you may have no living witnesses for it.

Also, prostitution was until quite recent times seen as a moral compromise acceptable only because of long serving soldiers, and sailors. In most societies it wasn't ok for a family man to visit a house of prostitution, and in some cases it was even criminalized.

Philosophy is a deep rabbit hole but cursory philosophy should really be mandatory in secondary education.

I'm not at all affiliated but I found the podcast Philosophise This to be very informative and interesting.

This is arguable with modern society ensuring that support is provided from men. Men are wising up to the long term consequences of pregnancy and relationships with women - see the MGTOW movement.

FWIW, enforced monogamy is harmful to women in some ways (hard to leave a bad relationship), but helpful in others (it's hard to end up a single mom when the norm around unexpected pregnancies is a shotgun wedding).

It'd probably be better if I just ignored the comment. But I think the claim "harms far more people" is absurd if you consider the unequal harms done to women through history, and the fact that they're half the population. The commenter didn't make an effort to engage in good faith discussion with my post so it's unreasonable to apply the same standard to me.

I'm happy to reply to comments like yours though.

Anyway the result of that is a decline in birth rates which will eventually lead to stabilizing or decreasing population. Which I think, in theory, is fine as long as it's stable for a long period of time and evenly distributed among age cohorts (which isn't the case in Japan). In practice though, the current economy is trained for a constant population increase; a lot of countries rely on immigration to maintain said population (and economic) increase.

Er, no, it hasn't. Risk of pregnancy predated the problem, it was not a part of a solution to it.

TFA mentions the low sample size of the original study, and augments it with Twitter polls. But TFA author's Twitter follows aren't exactly a representative sample of the population...

Furthermore, monogamy and sexual activity remains strong for people in their 30s, and I expect this will continue to be true in the future. Women are having children later, but there's still a strong preference for monogamy among people who choose to have children.

This article does a good job at summarizing the problems with the narrativein OP's post: https://ifstudies.org/blog/male-sexlessness-is-rising-but-no...

> It remains to be seen what the end result will be this time around.

More men will learn how to make themselves attractive people, so that women who aren't ready to have children yet are none-the-less invested in forming a strong and lasting relationship that includes a sexual component.

Some men won't accept this and they will be celibate for a good chunk of their 20s.

Oh well.

What should not happen is a regression to the sexual and gender role "morals" of the past. Quantitatively, there are at least as many women as men in the world. Qualitatively, "celibacy during your 20s" is not even remotely similar to the level of harm experienced by the bottom third of women for most of human history.

I also think that will not happen, and fears about social stability are enormously overblown. It's exceptionally unlikely that a small subgroup of men who already refuse to adapt is large enough and motivated enough to hold the rest of society at gunpoint.

I agree, and even if their followers were, all it takes is a single retweet by a popular user, or post in a high-traffic subreddit or Facebook share to wildly skew the results.

Offering the Twitter poll as any sort of evidence at all without major disclaimers makes me quite skeptic of the author's qualifications, to be honest...

Isn't it the point that it's something like 80% of men that are becoming disenfranchised? That hardly seems like a small subgroup to me.

This is what I mean by overblown. People's perception on this issue is just ridiculously out of whack. Young men aren't as dangerous to civil society as a lot of people like to imagine. The violent ones get jail and the rest grow up.

Are you arguing men have a right to sex? Disenfranchisement is the taking away of rights, that's it's definition. If not, you should be more careful using that phrasing.