Yep. The problems will be generational. On one hand you have the possibility that the men are very aware of this problem, and any relationship they find will be tainted by knowing they weren't good enough to party with but good enough to marry.
But more important than that is the time a couple spends actually getting to know each other is greatly cut down. Which then impacts how the children are raised.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see an increase in divorce and/or single family rates over time.
I am confused by this.... I would feel much better about myself knowing I was the one good enough to marry rather than the one who was only good enough to party with.
Specifically, I believe we've seen a devaluation and financialization of morality (what makes me a valuable person?) in a broader sense. Christopher Lasch caught the beginning of this back in the 70s, arguing that we now judge ourselves in terms of the views of our peer group rather than relative to an authority figure or multigenerational community.
The result is that sleeping around becomes a mark of virtue (at least, among men). This sentiment is at odds with more "traditional" forms of morality and virtue, particularly coming from religious traditions, and the resulting internal conflict can cause a lot of psychic distress, a lot of asking "who am I really?" and "am I really good enough, is she merely 'settling' for me?"
If you can navigate that conflict and feel satisfied that you were good enough to marry, then I applaud you for having a level head and for having your values in order. But I expect many men do not feel this way :(
If there are no kids, then for a woman that has spent the best years of her life dating attractive alpha males, an unattractive male is never going to measure up. Empirical evidence leads me to believe that kids can change that and be a stabilizing influence, bridging the gap between these models since both parties are able to make compromises by coming together and focusing on their kids.
There’s always a transactional aspect to being in a relationship. Are you good looking enough, healthy enough, wealthy enough, well connected enough, emotionally connected, personality etc.
It may not be fruitful to frame a relationship exclusively in those pros and cons terms, but that’s the way nature has always worked.
You can very well imagine a woman in Victorian times, keeping her virginity until her arranged marriage (in less developed Western countries this was still the case up until the 70s and 80s) to an average, physically unattractive male. The fact that he was the only male she knew sexually could very well provide the basis of a stable and healthy, loving longterm relationship, assuming he wasn't completely incompetent in giving her pleasure. This woman has acquired her model of a sexual relationship from the only man she ever knew. She never has a chance to find better, to compare.
This is definitely no longer the case. Women in developed countries are spending the formative and best years of their lives with multiple sex partners thus developing expectations and also reinforcing their baseline models and sexual norms acquired from said interactions. An average physically unattractive male looking for a stable longterm relationship faces very slim odds with this type of woman -very prevalent in the West- today unless he performs massive compromises and lowers his requirements.
I don't want to sound regressive or socially conservative, but this obviously does not bode well for the future of these societies. A permanent, ever-rising underclass bombarded daily with norms of sexual desire and models that it can never meet. One should expect the incel phenomenon -still at its infancy- to drastically intensify. Life-like sex robots may alleviate part of the problem but are probably at least 50 years away. Let us hope that VR comes together in providing alternate meaning-generating realities, sooner.
Do you mean an average physically unattractive male has a better chance of acquiring an average physically unattractive mate?
The mere idea that a society where a woman may have multiple sexual partners to compare against and the idea and that a man may need to exceed the standard "completely incompetent in giving her pleasure" in order to win her affections is inherently unstable reads a lot like someone claiming heavier than air flight is impossible in the 1980s. It's utterly inexplicable. People have been having sex with more than one person for a LOT longer than the 80s. What did happen in the 80s is the beginning of a massive rise in inequality that began with the top 10% earning 26% of all income in 1980 to where we are at the present time where they earn half while the bottom 50% share around 10% between them down from 2O%.
What you are framing as a crisis caused by too much female sexual choice is in fact a crisis of inequality wherein females are choosing "not poor" and the group "poor" expands year after year. Vastly more females escape this trap because men overwhelmingly value youth and attractiveness while women want people with some degree of complimentary earning power.
More recently what has happened is that the internet has allowed more niche groups to connect with their fellows. Incels are a group not of those who aren't getting any but rather those who aren't getting any who have decided to blame society in general and more particularly women. They are fetishizing both self hate and hatred of women. In the context of their in group communication their behavior and statements that would in larger contexts be considered aberrant are normalized by familiarity because people confuse repetition with truth.
If you want to decrease the negative impact of this behavior address inequality, make mental health more broadly available at zero cost, keep shutting down such communities and start putting people in prison who publicly call for acts of violence against others.
Driving evil and maladaptive behavior into hiding means less people will encounter it. Thus fewer will let its poison turn their pain into evil, or begin to view it as normal.
Wishing women boinked fewer men is a complete failure of analysis.
> People have been having sex with more than one person for a LOT longer than the 80s.
This is not accurate for less-developed countries, which is what I mentioned. I've lived in eastern Europe during the 70s and the 80s, the social stigma for a woman having multiple sex partners before marrying was enormous. Doesn't mean it didn't happen but it was definitely not the norm. Today, teenage girls in the west go through sexual partners like they go through cell phones.
> What you are framing as a crisis caused by too much female sexual choice is in fact a crisis of inequality wherein females are choosing "not poor" and the group "poor" expands year after year.
Income inequality is a very weak factor and does not explain female hypergamy today. Spend two weeks living on campus in any US college watching poor but extremely attractive male students and you can validate that for yourself. Money does not buy love or sexual attraction. Spend some time on incel forums reading their posts, assuming you can see past the hate and lingo, and you will realize that most/all of them crave these lost-youth experiences. They don't necessarily just want a partner in their 30s or 40s, but to feel wanted and loved in their 20s. Once they realize that opportunity is gone forever, they have to pick up the pieces.
> Incels are a group not of those who aren't getting any but rather those who aren't getting any who have decided to blame society in general and more particularly women.
This is very superficial since you are not examining the root causes. Look at advertisements today, movies, sports, Facebook, Instagram, reality shows, series on Netflix. We are bombarded by models of sexual attraction every minute of every day, models that are so skewed towards a specific minority that your average physically unattractive male literally stands no chance whatsoever. It's these projected models that strongly reinforce female hypergamy (for both attractive and unattractive women) while at the same time pushing the unwanted males further into the abyss. The worst of all possible worlds. Additionally, not only have all artificial limiters (e.g. social stigmas and pressure towards non-promiscuity) been lifted but accelerators like Tinder have wreaked havoc. Carnage on a societal level.
> If you want to decrease the negative impact of this behavior address inequality, make mental health more broadly available at zero cost, keep shutting down such communities and start putting people in prison who publicly call for acts of violence against others.
If you take the OkCupid studies seriously (you should), then you'll realize how antithetical to any sort of progress your recommendations are. You can't hide this problem or explain it away by shouting mental illness. This is a huge chunk of the population at large and if you miss or deliberately ignore the root causes because they tend to make you uncomfortable then your approximation of reality is completely off and any sort of analysis that you're performing invalid. Look at smoking in its heyday. Imagine being blasted by "smoking is cool" ads, watching most of "successful" society smoke whilst you not being able to afford even a single cigarette. How would that make you feel? Is that a mental illness on your part? Is it not conditioning massively amplified by very specific agents and societal effects? Should you just learn to "deal with it?"
Now consider that smoking is neutral in terms of self-perception of how other people see you compared to sexual rejection by other living, breathing humans. The psychological damage of realizing one is not wanted can be immense. We are talking about a core biological need and for the vast majority of people reason to exist. Surrogate activities (video games, traveling, hobbies of all sorts) are the counterbalance but they're not yet good enough to make this problem disappear.
OkCupid research opened the floodgates but there will be additional studies like the one linked here and societal effects coming home to roost (as it's been clearly happening). At some point, those effects will be too obvious to be ignored or explained away. Let us hope that ways to manage this catastrophic problem manifest, before the ticking time bomb goes off.
After we freed the slaves im sure lower income laborers too poor to have been responsible for owning anyone were put off by having to compete for jobs.
Incels long for an imaginary time when naive women would have accepted their advances and been happy instead of chosen men like jobs or cars by comparing specs.
They rationalize away any actual responsibility for their own lives by pretending it's all down to immutable factors like height, race, facial structure and mock fellow incels for trying to improve health, self, or wealth because this would invite self blame for not doing so.
Inequality is a legitimate concern but this evil self hate isn't on society. We will have to help everyone we can with mental health support and for those who commit acts of violence and terror we have bullets and jail cells.
Do you have a better idea or would you like to indulge yourself in more nostalgia for a world that was worse for everyone except middle class white men?
Of course this self-hate is on society, to imply otherwise because your morals won't allow you to see the facts is to stick your head in the sand. Imagine having a heroin addict on withdrawal surrounded by people using heroin. Blasting him day and night with models that reinforce heroin usage and then blaming him for not being able to cope.
> Do you have a better idea or would you like to indulge yourself in more nostalgia for a world that was worse for everyone except middle class white men?
You didn't address any of my points and suggestions and you're implying that I'm "nostalgic about the past?" Is that really what you got from everything I wrote? Let me put it in plain terms. We have a serious problem here and ignoring it because it's confronting and/or treating it with "bullets and jail cells" is not going to make anything better.
I repeat myself but what specifically would YOU like to do about the problems you yourself have outlined. I think mental health support and fighting inequality are reasonable suggestions what is your counter offer. If you ran the world how would you fix it.
I think most of my worries stem from an increase in reactionary politics combined with a growing group of young, 'have-not' males. That seems to me like a particularly bad combination.
Has it? The question is not if people change. The question is who they choose and why - now, versus before.
> There’s always a transactional aspect to being in a relationship. Are you good looking enough, healthy enough, wealthy enough, well connected enough, emotionally connected, personality etc.
That doesn't explain the decrease in sex. As a group people are supposedly still about the same.
> It may not be fruitful to frame a relationship exclusively in those pros and cons terms, but that’s the way nature has always worked.
If we talk about humans, the article talks about the changing data. The proposed explanation is that views have changed. You're saying that views always have been like that. So there is a difference in data.
If you go back enough you’ll find that there is waaaay more choice now than before
This is all based on decades of empirical observations. On the plus side for men, it is definitely possible to learn to detect this extremely reliable indicator. On the minus side, one needs a lot of experience with many different women, which isn't the case with average, physically unattractive males.
On the other hand, people who have suffered at length can be quite grateful to find a decent person. Someone like that can make a great wife (or husband).
The guy who is among the top 10% of men is the one who is good enough to party with AND good enough to marry. However, though this guy has a plethora of women at his disposal, he can only select one for marriage.
For the women who weren't chosen, their first choice guy is no longer an option, so they have to settle for a plan B (that is, a less desirable man).
So even if you were "good enough" to marry, you weren't first choice in that either.
A marriage is about finding a person who fits with you, and you can build a life together. That is not the same person for everyone. My best partner is not the same as your best partner.
You say that "a marriage is about finding a person who fits with you, and you can build a life together". So take the viewpoint from a pragmatic woman's perspective; wouldn't these aforementioned traits be desirable because the man who possesses them is a candidate more likely to provide the best life to build together?
Second, there are a lot of other traits that aren't inherently good or bad; things like "do you like going out on the weekends or staying in" and "does your communication style work with mine?" and "are the things you are good at complimentary to the things I am good at?"
My best friend and his wife get along great, but both my wife and I can't imagine living our lives like they do. I am sure they feel the same about us.
This thread has been discussing the implications of the observation quoted in the article: "Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported."
So it's unclear what point you're trying to make in relation to that.
On the plus side if you’re in your early 30’s and economically stable and well enough off for your area your get to experience life on easy mode.
I got to experience that after my last brake up before I got fed up and went for something more stable and it was really an eye opening experience.
I pretty much spent my whole 20’s in a single LTR that ended so I never had to experience Tinder before but it was a whole other experience.
Also speaking from my own experience while I’ve experienced finding women more attractive as I got to know them better it wasn’t the same type of an attraction, as it wasn’t sexual but rather more complex in terms of seeing long term future possibilities and wanting to share experiences with them in order to enrich my own life, but it never really affected how physically attractive I found them.
Maybe I’m different, maybe men are different in general but at least for me I won’t settle for someone that doesn’t want to jump me or that I wouldn’t want to jump them to me it seems unnatural.
It's the difference between playing a game in easy vs nightmare mode.
This is all based on empirical observations. I am 55 years old, I've had more than 100 sexual partners in my life and a lot of relationships, some of them lacking the initial biological/animalistic sexual attraction factor I described here. I've been married twice, now divorced and in a long-term relationship with my partner. I have two daughters in their 20s.
Almost everyone wants to be desirable.
Yes, it was a tough and emotional week. But things are better out in the open and we have started to rebuild the relationship on love, not lust.
She did ask if I was having affairs. But I honestly said that I'm finished with sex now, I've just no time or interest in playing the chasing games. There are more important things in life.
> As I stated previously the average female “likes” 12% of men on Tinder. This doesn't mean though that most males will get “liked” back by 12% of all the women they “like” on Tinder. This would only be the case if “likes” were equally distributed. In reality, the bottom 80% of men are fighting over the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men. We can see this trend in Figure 1. The area in blue represents the situations where women are more likely to “like” the men. The area in pink represents the situations where men are more likely to “like” women. The curve doesn’t go down linearly, but instead drops quickly after the top 20% of men. Comparing the blue area and the pink area we can see that for a random female/male Tinder interaction the male is likely to “like” the female 6.2 times more often than the female “likes” the male. [2]
> The researchers determined that while men’s sexual desirability peaks at age 50, women’s starts high at 18 and falls from there. [3]
> “The age gradient for women definitely surprised us — both in terms of the fact that it steadily declined from the time women were 18 to the time they were 65, and also how steep it was,” said Elizabeth Bruch, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and an author of the study. [3]
[1] https://www.acog.org/patient-resources/faqs/pregnancy/having...
[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/style/dating-apps-online-...
These women tend to be wealthier on average, and thus have access to various “artificial” methods for conception. Egg freezing is becoming mainstream.
[1] https://socwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/fact_2-2010-...
We had a friend over to our home, who earlier in life judged my partner for leaving a career to have children, and could not have a child of their own now. The regret during our conversation was palpable while she watched our children play in our backyard, and frankly it hurt my heart.
Reducing women to vaginas on legs that can't be obtained outside of tinder is a big part of why 1/3 not 80% of men aren't getting much play.
For other contributing factors I would look at generational differences in socialization and inequality.
Nowhere on the radar is "hypergammy" a piece of incel lingo not spoken but suggested.
Honesty I'm surprised to read this thread on hacker news instead of reddit.
Evidence shows that online dating is immensely dominant.
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-popular-w...
Whether people use it to find relationships is a different question. I did not use it for that, but some of my friends did... (or tried...)
However, your theory doesn't hold up. The study found that men who had part time employment, no employment, or were students were more likely to be sexually inactive. There isn't any data that suggests that those men are only using Tinder and failing or anything else you described.
If you define inequality in terms of employment or wealth, you may be right, but that does indeed still suggest the culprit is hypergamy actually as women select men with better employment prospects.
Female choice is rational our society is not. We cannot fix anything if we cannot even identify the problem.
What is not true though is that this is entirely an economic problem. If it were entirely economic, then why did sexual activity decrease for men but not women? Is that because men gave up? Are men disproportionately likely to self sabotage? Are men disproportionately likely to suffer from economic inequality than women? Do men not care about economic status in partners but women do?
Furthermore men value youth far more than women do so a only moderately physically gifted 20 year old might be valued over her counterpart a dozen years older and twice as well off herself.
Young poor females are in a much better position to leverage their looks and youth.
Basically men pick boobs and youth and men pick status and ability to support and you have somehow identified the women as the parties making an irrational choice and labeled this hypergamy.
But it doesnt add up. Given that most relations are monogamous, both have as much sex as the other in a relation. So you either need a very high relationship turnover rate or sex outside of the relation to have this sex imbalance between genders.
Or maybe you need a very high age difference.
I also didn't say that men didn't have preferences either.
I don't think there is any disagreement so the word 'hypergamy' shouldn't be a dirty word.
However, I think the people expressing concern about female hypergamy are saying the same thing you are but that for men they might have broader taste and for women more narrow and that may lead to situations where vast swaths of men are un-dateable. I don't have any opinion on that scenario. I don't know much about it.
Definition of hypergamy
: marriage into an equal or higher caste or social group
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypergamy
Here is how people actually use it online
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hypergamy
> The tendency for women to deceive men and leech money and resources off them.
> An evolutionary psychology theory that beta males and feminists refuse to look at or even acknowledge exists. They will usually blame the MGTOW and MRA community for making it up, but that just shows their lack of research, even though these same groups will tell their detractors and opponents to "do your own research" or "educate yourself". The theory itself is the study that women seek higher status men and men with more resources to give her seed to the best possible mate. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but left unchecked can cause societal problems.
> Evolutionary Psychology theory on the instinctual desire of humans of the female sex to discard a current mate when the opportunity arises to latch onto a subsequent mate of higher status due to the hindbrain impetus to find a male with the best ability to provide for her OWN offspring (already spawned or yet-to-be spawned) regardless of investments and commitments made to a current mate.
If good looking poor chicks and middle income+ chicks of all degrees of attractiveness want middle income+ men with acceptable social skills then poor men or people with bad hygiene, and or social skills will be left with the poor and unattractive portion of that Venn diagram.
Whats more the intersection of physically unappealing and poor is a much smaller group than JUST poor which is HUGE so not all of them will likely find mates.
If you want to bring up why don't the poor but reasonably attractive dudes just interact with the more financially well off females this certainly happens but it is a MUCH less successful strategy for a man.
No, Tinder is reality. It's naive to believe that just because it's a platform that facilitates communication and hookup that it's somehow disconnected from reality in it's own little microcosm or niche.
All Tinder does is reflect human behavior. Between Tinder, OkCupid and N other apps you have more than enough data needed to draw some very damning conclusions. Way beyond "more than enough", actually.
People who reject reality and live in their own little fantasy worlds will find themselves in for a bad surprise when they come to.
I mentioned this in a post further below - this is not new knowledge. Long before online dating apps, in the 90s, there existed alt.seduction.fast newsgroup that outlined all of this for people. Read Neil Strauss' "The Game" for some chilling truths, and then bring yourself back to 2020 and look at what is happening today. It isn't much different.
"a book about scared men who were afraid of women."
He also says he himself at the time of writing suffered from mental illness.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/10/neil-st...
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Love-Commitment-Puzzle-Male-ebo...
It seems harsh, but I see a lot of people externalize all their personal issues on perceived societal changes outside of their control, when really the the only change happening to society is the expectation that you treat everyone with equal respect.
The modern world is like being on a different planet.
E.g. if you're among roughly progressive upper-middle white people, your shibboleths are stuff like your comment, your ingroup that you're not allowed to overtly acknowledge exists but that you must still honour is progressive upper-middle class white people, and the outgroup you should show sufficient: A, hatred towards the rich B, disdain towards is lower-class white people.
Showing appropriate opprobum vers the outtribe might not be strictly speaking necessary, just highly recommended. Wouldn't want to be mistaken for them.
Well they are already kind of sitting out.
> the expectation that you treat everyone with equal respect.
Thats an old humbug. IMO it merely means respect for people or group who are ideological flavor of the season.
Most of them are too stubborn to deviate from "they just have to accept me the way I am".
Seriously, getting a nice haircut, dressing nicely, grooming yourself and smelling good has nothing to do with your personality.
In this sense, men have it way easier than women, because men can influence their chances significantly without much effort. And that doesn't mean "fake", it means presenting yourself.
It's pretty simple basically, if you want a woman to pick you, you have to offer her something. And the same will be true for the women, who you will expect to offer you something.
Anyway, colored men (mainly indian guys in my wife's practice) significantly increase their attractiveness by dressing nice and well groomed, so same rules apply.
But what I get from your explanation is that it's all the womens fault of not looking past that. Well maybe it's time for you to face reality.
This assumes people really want to do that. Children are too expensive unless you have a lot of resources already. I think if costs of basic living keep increasing the future is increasingly childless for many people.
Oil & gas has a major presence here in Houston, and is a huge employer of engineers -- not sure about compsci people, but probably them too. The salaries are not as high as California, but the effective housing-adjusted salaries are probably higher. You can buy a nice 3+ bedroom house in a safe neighborhood for $200-400k. When, in California, Google giveth and the landlord taketh away, that isn't really money in your pocket (except you still owe taxes on it).
People want control over their lives, and this is one of the chief reasons why people want to own homes. They want to do with their property as they see fit, have a place to truly call "home", provide a sense of security, and have a place where they can raise their children under ideal conditions where a landlord can't just raise the rent or evict them.
When aspects of self determination such as ownership are removed, people become demoralized. If people don't feel a sense of agency, but can fill the void with artificial fulfillment like TV, games, food and "travel", the likelihood that they're going to want to bring children into the world is going to be diminished.
Of course, for much of history, people didn't own homes. The difference between now and times gone is people would choose starting a family in order to fill that void. But when there's plenty of "soma" for everyone, and people's dreams feel out of reach, what exactly is the incentive for the average person to have children?
I do periodically feel a lack of agency from my kids and their needs basically controlling my life, but I also feel an immense sense of accomplishment for satisfying, or at least attempting to satisfy those needs.
Technically, you can raise children in a war torn country, since it obviously has happened for many millennia. But with the advent of birth control, it’s much easier to choose.
Having to move can mean your kid has to find all new friends, and if buying a home is a complete impossibility for you, you might be further down Mazlowe's hierarchy than starting a family, and might have a life that's more financially brittle than you'd want it to be when you're taking care of kids.
It's harder to compare housing but fertility rates are declining even in countries with free/cheap healthcare, daycare, and university.
I believe sex is an integral part of getting to know someone and determining long term relationship viability. That does not mean the connection with the person was made in pursuit of sex.
This of course doesn't change who is having all the sex, but the intention may be very different.
I feel like 100% of your comments in this thread could be applied to any current social justice protests and they would be just as out of place, but you'd get shot down. There are studies, there's data, but for you it appears being able to imagine other reasons has more weight, and the studies get waved away with as "imaginary social problems".
Why the hate?
Right, right, but nothing like that has happened here, yet you've imagined, shall we say, alternative facts as possible explanations of what has been scientifically studied. Why?
> It is exactly like visiting a white supremacist online community with a different target population.
To be honest, you sound like one, only with a slightly different perspective. They'd replace "incel" with "nigger" and spout pretty much the same stuff. If you showed them studies on police violence, they'd say "Maybe that isn't real and many in fact are just criminals", making up some random thing that may or may not explain something (without offering any statistics, of course, and ignoring statistics that suggest the opposite) and speak of "imaginary social issues".
Eliot Rodger, 2014 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings
I was a student at UCSB at the time. He killed one of my good friends. He was a hardcore incel before it was a thing. Many incel communities praise this monster.
That's a pretty gross way of looking at the world.
the parent poster
>> “Incel” terrorism is already much more common than class terrorism
My response
> Them being defective is a problem we can only address by making mental health services more available
The subject is people who literally commit acts of terror and murder because they themselves collectively blame women for not having sex with them and instead collectively gifting their virtue to higher status men instead of concluding that they are failing at the mating game. There is NOTHING that society needs to fix about itself in order to avoid mutilation and murder. The perpetrators of such crimes are defective in the literal not pejorative sense in the same fashion that a leaky gas line that is liable to blow up and kill people. Suggesting that resources be devoted to help such people before their actions harm themselves or others is the opposite of gross.
18-25 is a lot of fun, but if you want a relationship you either have to find a trust fund baby or become a sugar daddy which most men don’t want.
Hookups and casual dating with someone that is just getting by is fine proper relationships is much harder.
My current partner is just under 7 years younger than me (I’ve just turned 34) she has good enough of a career that if we can go to Tenerife or Ibiza on a whim for a weekend we don’t have to plan for it and even if I end up spending a bit more money she doesn’t feel like she’s selling herself out and I don’t feel exploited.
Even after 1 year in a relationship there is a big difference between buying a girl a drink or paying for dinner and paying for a flight and a hotel.
The good ones won’t be comfortable with the latter and you probably don’t want to get into a relationship with those who would expect you too.
Who wants to be last choice? Maybe many of these men will wise up and marry a foreign girl(despite the usual shaming) or just hire sexual workers.
Given that there are similar amount of girls and boys, this guarantees that younger men of next generation will have to compete with older men for same pool of women.
Given the ratio of men and women in Asian culture for example, it's a much crowder competition space. That's even more true considering the fact that a large percentage of those Asian women in the US are either highly educated, or from wealthy families that sent them study abroad. They look for partners who are equally educated/successful.
I don't think that assessment is wrong or offensive (although I wouldn't say "foreign").
I think a lot of the problem is culturally related. I've had far better relationships with people I've dated outside of typical white middle class US culture. US parents often inflate egos to absurd levels, set unrealistic relationship expectations, and frequently create terrible personalities, especially for their daughters.
"Easier" isn't inherently a bad thing in this context. I would argue dating someone with reasonable expectations who is actually kind, approachable, and less afflicted by negative culturaly induced behaviors is far more appealing than someone who assumes they're better than say 90% of the population which a lot of US women have adopted in their dating mentalities.
Did someone inflate your ego?
> especially for their daughters
Oh, I have a daughter and the message I tell her is “there are 1,000s of guys out there that would love to go out with you, don’t settle”
we compete for mates in relatively tight geographic circles. that means that one's attractiveness can change purely based on location (arbitrage in the american english sense of the word).
handsome, blue eyed, blonde haired men are a dime a dozen in Berlin, NYC and Seattle. that can be massively arbitraged in Latin America and SE Asia (possibly elsewhere); you suddenly have exotic and attractive features. similarly for wealth: $100K is mediocre in NYC and fairly rich in above locales. etc.
I think he literally means foreign. Like not in the US.
Is being a desperate choice of someone who faces "economic realities" so much better than being a desperate choice of someone who faces "biological realities"?
[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-american-men-ever-be-h...
I have no idea how class plays into this dynamic, but I assume it's not the poorest that aren't having sex, unlike in the societies where this dynamic works as a powder keg.
That being said, this little excursion into Google turned up some nascent evidence that this historical dynamic is shifting. The modern world is very odd in lots of different ways: wealth, recreational opportunities, the incredibly wide social circles one's exposed to. It's entirely possible that this dynamic has changed, but the research hasn't caught up yet.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an...
[2] https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/33306/origin...
It's a classic case of correlation is not causation. Yes, there have been societies where men couldn't form families that were violent (like the Wild west in the US) but that doesn't mean that that was the cause of it.
Similarly, many on the left have long thought that porn viewing causes sexual violent crime against women. And there is ample evidence showing that men who view porn are more likely to be sexual offenders than non-viewers. But then came the internet and the amount of porn and porn viewers skyrocketed - but the amount of sexual violence against women didn't - therefore busting the theory.
In the same way, evidence from Japan, China, South Korea and even India means that there can't be a causative link between family formation being unavailable for young men and civil unrest.
Perhaps these counterexamples are evidence of additional factors, in cancer or in unrest, but they do not prove that a causal relationship doesn't exist.
Do you conclude that the overwhelming abundance of data that shows that smoking causes lung cancer is wrong? That there cannot be a causative link between smoking and cancer because there is a counterexample where it didn't appear? I would say that these other factors are also having an effect of comparable scale.
Data suggests that social unrest in China has increased in correlation with incel count. I would count that as supporting evidence for the theory above. But you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that, because the initial rate of unrest was so low, and the increase didn't push that rate above that of other countries, incels cannot be a causal factor in unrest?
Help me understand where we disagree here. What part of ´inability to start a family->unhappiness->social unrest' do you think is questionable?
Regardless of the theory.
I have found such X. In principle you agree, but you want to save your theory so you say "Well, if X and not Z then Y!" and that explains my counter example because my group probably had Z.
Here Z being the racist idea that Asian people are less violent than others and that that's why social unrest hasn't erupted in their countries.
You might be right. But then your theory is "inability to start a family and non-asian -> social unrest." Clearly, not the same as "inability to start a family -> social unrest."
Back to cancer, heavy smokers who did not develop cancer are an example of some X for which X->Y is false. Like you said, you would need to take a random sample of cases and see whether Y correlates with X against a control group.
You introduced the concept of Asian countries having lower rates of social unrest, and I have never said this is related to race at all. Perhaps you are reading into the genetic confound in the cancer example, but it was just intended as an example of a confound within the analogy. There are plenty of differences between life in these countries and elsewhere that can act as confounds.
I'm just trying to say that very few things are actually that causal in big complex systems. I'm trying to say that such issues are very likely have many-many factors, and we see an aggregate effect.
And so in case of such aggregates arguing for-against them with very simple first-order reasoning is kind of useless. Because each piece of data (supporting or counter evidence) just explains a part of the big picture. So, without accounting for all data we can't really make general statements about what causes the aggregate effect that we see.
That is exactly what is being done here.
Well, perhaps videogames and internet porn (both inaccessible in the past) could workaround that now ...
Sounds like mental health problems are even more rampant than we guessed. We should probably handle that.
If society's "normal" (which tends to include a "healthy sex life" or at least a supportive social community) becomes impossible for many to achieve, the question for many is no longer "maybe something is wrong with me?" and becomes "maybe society is the problem?"
Other than generalized chemical castration I don't see how you could eliminate the "problem" of most of the male population unfulfilled sex drive. For all its problems and unfairness, patriarchal society provides an answer to that problem, if an ugly one.
Traditional solution of the past was to lure them in the army and let them die in some foreign country.
Whether enough people would see such a thing as acceptable for it to become policy is an entirely different issue.
Mind if I ask what you had in mind to make you think that such a situation would dissuade someone from raising a son?
I'm not really interested in that kind of conversation, thanks though!
1) Civil society is much improved by encouraging as many stable partnerships between pairs of humans as possible.
2) Child rearing within intact families leads to significantly better outcomes on average than single parent households.
3) Societies with lower birth rates suffer financial/economic difficult in properly supporting their elderly populations.
And given strength difference between women and men, it is safer to be alone then with someone who is into outrage at 24 for not having partner yet.
Romantic relationships don't cure anger nor violence. But, women who believe so are the typical domestic abuse victim. They date guys thinking they will change them and blaming themselves for abuse.
I mean, abuse is a real thing (and both genders do abuse). But someone who can get so angry and is physically stronger is double bad news.
I can honestly pinpoint you the day my life changed forever for the better. It's the day I lost my virginity. That one moment where I felt myself being accepted made me realize I was good enough.
Ever since then, I'd become less angry, more confident, more loving of myself, more charitable towards other people's insecurities instead of positioning myself higher in some imaginary pecking order.
I am far from being truly non-judgmental. I am also still very competitive with others, not un-occasionally in some mean, vicious way. But I no longer feel completely rejected by women, which, for some reason, mattered so much before that very moment.
Obviously, I am just one person and my anecdote may mean nothing to the breadth of your experiences. But I can't agree with this one sentence.
That would be a.) unusual and not confirmed by any study b.) honestly still too much risk for an individual to get into relationship.
While I'm sure there may be many studies that illustrate the continued abusive behaviour of men who have romantic relationships, I ask myself whether it's possible to show how many men would've been otherwise angry and aggressive had they not experienced acceptance earlier in their lives.
And perhaps I have not specifically addressed your point that it is risky to date known angry people. And I am sure you are right about that.
The point I was making however is more about being a very young man, the insecurities felt as a teenager, the moments that can change the trajectories of their lives, before they become truly angry men. I only hope that other insecure young men could experience that kind of relief from anxiety as I did.
If you see sex as only proof of being accepted (as opposed to friendships and other social contacts), then I can see how it eases anxiety. It does not sound as if woman in question was important here.
If it is about physical aspect, prostitution sounds like fair way to solve it. If it is about philosophical or social aspect, making self worth less dependent on sex would help there.
The worth given by woman when having sex is however only illusion. Women deciding on having sex with you or not is not actually deciding on your worth. The range of reasons for sex varry quite a lot, from positive to negative, from emotional to practical or to physical or just routine. But actual decision making is not scoring of worth.
Who it was with mattered. Being desired mattered. Buying it would have felt empty for me.
> The worth given by woman when having sex is however only illusion.
This isn't the first time I've encountered this idea. I'm sure everyone is exposed to the idea from a very young age. As a teenager, I would've accepted it rationally but rejected it emotionally. Being told something like that would be as effective as telling a hormonal teenager to stop being so emotional.
The data from old OK-Cupid studies clearly show that most women are only immediately attracted to a very small subset of men. It is these men who are having all the sex. Seems like a powder keg over time as the excluded men become bitter and forced to postpone getting married and starting a family. I believe many of these men will eventually find someone once enough of the women who are now rejecting them face biological realities and are forced to settle if they want to have children.