[HN Gopher] On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of lo...
___________________________________________________________________
On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
Author : nceqs3
Score : 411 points
Date : 2021-05-04 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (residentcontrarian.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (residentcontrarian.substack.com)
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| I think it's fair to say his data shows a high percentage of
| "incels" are not the incels on the internet that are bad, but
| just guys who can't get women and they don't deserve our hatred.
| Similar to the Japanese phenomenon of "grass eaters"
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "Not deserving hatred" isn't enough today. Nuance is too much
| to ask for. Lump them all together and despise them, that is
| the order of the day.
| Sakos wrote:
| It's easier that way. If they're demonized, it means we don't
| have to grapple with the deeper issues and try to find some
| sort of solution to these issues. They're incels, thus
| (according to mainstream thought) they aren't deserving of
| empathy or help. They're sexists, racists and alt-right
| scumbags. Who cares if they die alone? Sympathize with them
| and you're lumped in with them too.
|
| It's not surprising, considering how difficult the topics are
| that are at the base of these issues, but it's still
| depressing. We're no closer to bridging the gap between the
| genders than we were 40 years ago, and it seems to be getting
| worse in different ways.
| underseacables wrote:
| What a fascinating article! I came away with a very bold "misery
| loves company" feeling. Misery amongst a group begets misery. I
| wonder how feeling the psychological need to blame someone, some
| thing for failure, plays in relationships?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| haskellandchill wrote:
| I'm an incel. It doesn't have to be sexist. I don't have any
| specific feelings towards women. I just know I don't get an ROI
| on investing in dating. So I just invest in my self for my self
| and allow myself one sexual interaction a month through paying
| for it like a service. I'm available for dating or relationships
| but have no expectations. It's healthy enough.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| sounds more like mgtow than incel.
| Hitton wrote:
| _> I just know I don't get an ROI on investing in dating._
|
| Nothing wrong with that, but that means it's voluntary. And the
| latter part means that it isn't even celibate.
| woeirua wrote:
| Legalizing sex work is just papering over the problem here. A lot
| of men want long-term, committed relationships as well as sex.
| They want to build families and have children. Allowing them to
| consort with prostitutes will only solve this fundamental
| imbalance temporarily.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I watched this average looking girl on youtube go to stunning.
| She started by caring about her appearance. And started looking
| to basically start upgrading her self, one step at a time.
|
| 1) She started to work out regularly
|
| 2) She got a nose job
|
| 3) Buys well fitting designer clothes
|
| 4) Spends money on hair and nails
|
| 5) Wears gold jewelry and hand bags.
|
| All of these complement her appearance.
|
| When some girls go to so much effort to look good. While the
| incel guy does nothing to improve their appearance. And often
| does the opposite. Terrible diet and sometimes even terrible
| hygenie. Yet expects to date a girl like this.
| mlyle wrote:
| At the same time... if all the incels improve their fashion,
| attractiveness, and dating game... it's going to be at the
| expense of someone else, right? Or do we think more in total
| will end up partnered and the total size of the pie will
| increase?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I'm not sure how to answer that. The dating game is in some
| ways like any other game. There's some minimum threshold of
| competence below which nobody wants to play with you.
| Ideally, you have enough skills that people will want to play
| with you all the time. If you conduct yourself well, they
| will look forward to playing with you over and over. But at
| the same time, I recognize that there are people beyond
| mastering even the basics.
|
| But also, dating is usually many to many type of activity.
| Sure maybe marriage is one to one. But you can enjoy dating
| even if it does not result in marriage, multiple times with
| multiple people.
|
| I dated a very obese, unattractive girl before. Ultimately it
| was her selfishness and failure to understand reciprocity in
| a relationship, that made me not want to see her anymore.
| Still was an interesting experience.
| yamellasmallela wrote:
| I agree but this is only applicable to incels who are "ugly".
| Some people are incels because they have no "game" and that is
| hard to fix.
|
| Also, not everyone can just get a nose job and be attractive
| magically.
|
| I think many people in the incel community don't understand how
| far showering, dressing well, and working out will get them.
| Its much better than complaining without any action. Also, I
| see many of them complaining about not dating "10s" yet never
| bother to look at people at their level.
| Sevastopol wrote:
| > I think many people in the incel community don't understand
| how far showering, dressing well, and working out will get
| them. Its much better than complaining without any action.
| Also, I see many of them complaining about not dating "10s"
| yet never bother to look at people at their level.
|
| This is not really true. At least in the observable, online
| incel communities. Incels talk a lot about "-maxxing"[1];
| looksmaxxing (improving appearance), gymmaxxing (improving
| physique), surgerymaxxing, moneymaxxing, therapymaxxing, ...
| you get the point.
|
| The most common advice (showering, better clothes) is also a
| meme within the communities, like the "Just take a shower,
| bro" meme.
|
| [1] https://incels.wiki/w/-maxxing
| justwalt wrote:
| Great post. As a man in my twenties, I think that, even though
| we're hearing about this from the men at the bottom end of the
| sexual-success spectrum, the problem is still being felt by
| average men as well. Many of my friends have complained about how
| dating these days feels like women are always holding out for the
| next best thing, and I have to agree with them.
|
| A female friend of mine echoed a bit of the sentiment that a few
| of my friends had theorized was at least partly to blame, and
| that's that she felt like had too much choice and was getting too
| much attention. She felt like her ego was being inflated in a way
| that was unhealthy, and so she turned away from online dating and
| eventually met her fiance through mutual friends.
|
| I wish I had some actionable advice to give along with this
| anecdote, but I'm still stuck in the dating game myself.
| rc-1140 wrote:
| One thing about the post in its entirety, not just the content,
| that really stood out to me was that there was a commenter
| "kayla" who behaved _exactly_ in the manner that the author
| outlined when talking about the "feminist" and "MRA" subgroups.
| They immediately jumped onto the aggressor's bandwagon, saying
| that the lowercase-i incels were simply too lazy to fix their
| problems even though extremely-generalized and dismissive
| solutions (prostitutes, therapy) existed.
|
| The author tried to open a discussion about their position with
| an incredibly well-thought out response, and all "kayla" could do
| was respond to their own post afterwards about having sympathy
| for the users of the "dead berdoom" board on Reddit but still
| behaving in the same manner that the author outlined (i.e., just
| fix your problem you lazy bum).
|
| It's very troubling that the type of person described by the
| author immediately arrives on site and starts their spiel.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| If the model did not accurately predict the hostile reaction,
| it was not a useful model.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| perhaps troubling, but entirely unsurprising. Societal
| learnings won't necessarily be undone in one article, no matter
| how insightful. Especially when a group in question is
| lambasted on the internet as one actively regressing civil
| rights and social liberties
| colmvp wrote:
| Yup, and that's why it's practically impossible to talk about
| in real life. All they do is push people who experience this
| into the darkest places of the internet.
|
| Their beliefs that all you have to do is try harder belong in
| /r/thanksimcured
| Igelau wrote:
| Kayla's suggestion about prostitution was positively revolting.
| That position seems to hate just about everyone: incels should
| just go solve their problem illegally in a way that happens to
| be the antithesis of feminism.
| yamellasmallela wrote:
| Isn't sex work peak feminism? Women choosing what to do with
| their bodies and also earning a living?
| JohnBooty wrote:
| In many cases, yes!
|
| Though in practice women can end up pimped/trafficked. Or
| abused by their clients, with no legal recourse... which is
| of course why pimps exist, because having _somebody_ to
| maybe-protect you may be preferable to no protection
| whatsoever.
|
| Of course, legalizing prostitution cures a lot of these
| ills.
| standardUser wrote:
| Sex work is in no way, shape or form the "antithesis of
| feminism". And I think it was clear that Kayla was suggesting
| that such work _not_ be illegal, not that men go solve their
| problem in an illegal manner.
| andred14 wrote:
| Face the facts people: Our loneliness has been exacerbated by
| media, politicians and their new cult of fear and destruction.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every
| day without her more or less miserable. It's arguable she's the
| only reason I'm able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are
| similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding
| someone, and it's impossible for me to not feel something.
|
| This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only
| thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their
| partner then _something is wrong_. Mental health is no joke and
| not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an
| underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but
| anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
|
| I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well; having
| a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a
| happy life. No one wants to be the partner that gives meaning to
| another person's life, unless they're also codependent in some
| way. It's emotionally draining to take on that kind of
| responsibility.
|
| EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling
| men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic
| masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional
| relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong
| friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and
| enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a
| replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are
| supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing
| this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the
| solution.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| I agree with most of this (though "Toxic Masculinity", like
| "Triggers," "Privilege," and so many others, is a phrase that
| used to be useful and has now been utterly destroyed by the
| socially fashionable).
|
| The general "response" to the incel phenomenon seems to be to
| diagnose (and dismiss) them as the sexual version of anorexics:
| people who have an unrealistically negative view of their
| sexual appeal and potential and end up harming themselves as a
| result. If they could just stop being so hard on themselves and
| relax, they'd be fine!
|
| This is a problem for two reasons. First, a lot of people
| genuinely are seriously, perhaps even hopelessly impaired in
| terms of finding a sexual partner. Appearance, money, and the
| ability to navigate a host of social and psychological
| interactions are _vital_ to the process, and some people lack
| enough of these that their ability to find a partner is slim to
| none, and will not be improved by a few personal tweaks. The
| situation is similar to depression: everyone has felt down at
| some point and gotten over it with simple coping strategies, so
| they inevitably suggest these strategies to depressed people,
| not realizing they 're dealing with a much deeper problem.
|
| But second, the real issue, as demonstrated in the discussion
| here, is that a large portion of the population has an
| unhealthy obsession with having a sexual partner. They view it
| both as an unqualified good and as a _necessity_ , and are thus
| terrified of going without it for any significant period of
| time. For these people, you are not complete as a person unless
| you're in a relationship. This is a profoundly unhealthy and
| destructive way to live life, even for ordinary people.
|
| Relationships CAN be good. They can also be bad. On the whole,
| they generally end up creating almost as many problems as they
| solve (and sometimes more!). Having a partner is _optional_. It
| isn 't like air or water or good nutrition. You have to find
| peace within yourself, with yourself, before anything else.
| Trying to fix that with any outside thing, including sexual or
| romantic partners, is a recipe for disaster.
|
| This thread is full of people continuing this warped line of
| thinking. Relationships aren't evil, they _can_ be good and
| they _can_ have positive effects on people. But they aren 't
| _necessary_ , and they won't fix you. Only you can fix you.
|
| In short, our culture very clearly has an addiction to sex and
| romance. Not in the dopamine sense, but because we believe the
| answer to our problems lies in someone else. In people with the
| ability to feed this addiction you get mild to moderate
| problems. In people without that ability, you get incels.
| Incels are just the most extreme symptom of a deeper disease.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other
| men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you._
|
| The author has a great followup comment that should really be
| part of the original article that addresses this line of
| thinking exactly. Pasted below:
|
| -----
|
| I want to have a dialogue about this, because I think it's
| important in a couple ways. To start, I agree in sort of
| generic terms that a lot of the Incels must be whining without
| doing anything to fix it; that's just necessary.
|
| But your scenario here for them, parsed, seems to be making a
| lot of assumptions I'm not sure are true. One thing I get told
| a lot when I talk about dieting/obesity is that everyone WANTS
| to be thin; if it were possible/doable/easy then we'd expect to
| see a bunch of obese people losing weight, and we don't, so it
| would be wrong to treat all obese people as lazy fat slobs.
| Basically that they deserve sympathy and the assumption should
| be that even if they aren't trying real hard at the moment,
| that what they would have to try is real hard, and it's more
| complex than just writing them off as voluntarily broken.
|
| In this case I'm not sure what you are doing is the same, but
| it feels similar. It's something like "Yes, there's a problem -
| why don't they just change their personality, looks, and
| conversational abilities?". If that's easy, great; if that's
| even something someone can do, fine. But I'm not sure it's that
| simple; I don't know that many people who have drastically
| upgraded their personality successfully (read: I don't know any
| people who have done this) and I don't know many people who
| have ever made themselves more than marginally better looking
| (read: I've known some people who have done this, but not
| many). There's probably some dudes out there who are romance-
| marketable if they just start showering more, dress a little
| better and make some token effort at not being rancid assholes,
| but it's relevant that we think about whether those guys are
| the norm, or outliers.
|
| I say this because, like, the solutions you propose besides
| that are A. Something that's expensive, stands a good chance of
| getting them sent to jail and only solves a small part of the
| problem most of them have B. Something that's expensive, slow
| and that we'd only expect to fix the underlying problem if the
| underlying problem is entirely them - i.e. if the stats I
| posted above are completely the un-loved faults, with no
| "market" problems they are getting screwed by.
|
| If you are a guy who isn't a capital-I Incel seeing those
| suggestions, I'm suspicious that it's not that unlike seeing
| someone complain about their obesity and how society treats the
| obese and saying "Well, stop whining, bucko - it's hard to have
| any sympathy for you when "eat less, exercise more" is an
| option - do you even have a gym membership?".
|
| If it's anything like that, it gets really easy to imagine this
| lower-case-i not-yet-toxic incel turning to some community
| somewhere that will give him some level of sympathy. What I'm
| saying is, we have an option to have sympathy for the generic
| condition without having sympathy for the bad behavior,
| something like "Hey, I get that it's hard out there and that
| this might not feel like or even be something that you can just
| 'fix' in that way. I feel for you, that's terrible" so they
| have some other option at all besides "listen, man, I'm going
| to explain 100 ways women are whores and this isn't your fault
| at all".
|
| And the normal stuff with escalating problems applies - this is
| a problem that got almost twice as bad over the last couple
| decades. Right now, nobody is paying any real attention to it;
| some people acknowledge that those stats above exist, but
| nobody is seriously looking into why or what societal trends
| are pushing it. If we get down the road another 20 years and
| suddenly 50% of everybody in a certain high-energy-high-rage
| age range is relationship-less and the only people who have
| been sympathetic to them at all are terrible people, we can't
| act surprised when there's suddenly a much larger terrible-
| person cohort on the ground instead of the much larger sad-but-
| not-ruined group we might have had.
|
| ------
|
| https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-incels-dead-bed...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Deep emotional relationships" are based on trust, of the sort
| that's only really possible with a handful of people at any
| given time. A relationship that boils down to "spend your time
| with others who like you and enjoy your company and validate
| you" is pretty far from "deep", by definition. At that point,
| you're probably better off just getting a dog.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a
| requirement for a happy life._
|
| This reminds me of rich people who think that money isn't that
| important.
|
| In reality, loneliness is one of the leading causes of suicide.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
|
| No it isn't.
|
| My grandparents, who were married for 60 years had this
| mentality. My wife's grandparents, who were married for a
| similar amount of time, also shared this mentality. My wife's
| parents still share this mentality (and are _obviously_
| completely devoted to one another, which you will notice if you
| spend about 5 seconds with them). My parents divorced, which
| has had an incredibly destructive effect on my family, almost
| certainly as a result of my father 's belief that he needed a
| life that was independent of our family, and that he could
| somehow live "independently" and still fulfill his role with my
| mother as the leaders of our family unit.
|
| Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in
| marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally
| _completely_ devoted to one another, and as an extension their
| families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally
| full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable
| relationships.
|
| There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea that
| seems to be running through tech especially that devotion to
| your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually leads to
| "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are you
| _jealous_? "
|
| And then, predictably, that leads to relationship collapse,
| heartbreak, and bitterness about 100% of the time. Shocking.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think you're arguing against what the parent actually
| said. If you _need_ your partner in order to be happy, and
| when they are not around you 're unhappy, that is not
| healthy. Not healthy for you personally, and not healthy for
| your relationship. That's dependence (or codependence if it
| goes both ways), and that's not the same as simply missing
| someone when they're not around.
|
| You can be 100% devoted to your partner and relationship but
| still be happy when the two of you are apart. A polyamorous
| relationship, or a person who has a whole other life
| completely separate from their partner, is not the only other
| option. You seem to be creating a false dichotomy here.
|
| Pinning your happiness to the presence of another individual
| is not healthy. You cannot be with that person 100% of the
| time. And what if they die, or their feelings change and they
| don't want to be with you anymore? (Certainly either event
| would be devastating, but it should not destroy your only
| source of happiness.) How is it healthy for you to put all
| your emotional eggs in their basket? And even worse, how is
| it fair to the other person, to make that person an essential
| part of your constant happiness?
| watwut wrote:
| > Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been in
| marriages that have lasted the entire lives are generally
| completely devoted to one another, and as an extension their
| families. Unsurprisingly, those families seem to be generally
| full of happy, healthy people in their own happy, stable
| relationships.
|
| Have you actually talked to or people long enough for them to
| trust you with their past or current martial issues? Because
| in my experience, after knowing then for long enough, they
| start talking for real and completely different pictures
| emerge.
|
| And really really, you don't know whether people are happy
| nor what that happiness actualy practically means, until they
| know for really well. Because most people don't talk about
| how their relationships looks like from inside.
| [deleted]
| xxpor wrote:
| Both this post and the OP strike me as "if it works, it's
| great, but if it doesn't, it's bad". Different things work
| for different people, and generalizing too much leads to
| suggestions that aren't useful for any particular individual
| situation.
| yissp wrote:
| To add to the other replies, my own grandparents sound
| similar to yours in that they were happily married for 52
| years. But my grandfather passed away 5 years ago, and while
| I know she still misses him deeply, I don't think my
| grandmother is in a constant state of misery. She is still
| able to find happiness in life despite now being alone.
|
| I think that's what the parent was getting at. Being devoted
| to your partner doesn't mean you _need_ them to enjoy life.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > the ones who have been in marriages that have lasted the
| entire lives are generally completely devoted to one another,
|
| I've been happily married for 17 years and have been with my
| wife for over 20.
|
| Trust me: there is a big BIG difference between being deeply
| devoted to your spouse and being co-dependent on them such
| that you cannot be happy during their absence.
| salusinarduis wrote:
| thank you for stepping up and saying this
| NickM wrote:
| I would argue that a high level of devotion is not the same
| thing as codependency. I'm not sure you and OP are actually
| disagreeing with each other here.
|
| It's entirely possible to have an enduring, meaningful,
| devoted, monogamous relationship that brings a great deal of
| happiness to both partners without that relationship being a
| _requirement_ for the people involved to experience any
| amount of happiness or fulfillment in their lives.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Yeah man I don't think I would classify a committed
| relationship where partners end up missing their partner
| when they're gone as "codependent". And honestly this whole
| trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with
| whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is
| getting out of hand.
|
| Codependence is when two people have some unhealthy trait
| that is reinforced by the other person's unhealthy trait.
| From wikipedia:
|
| >Codependency is a concept that attempts to characterize
| imbalanced relationships where one person enables another
| person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity,
| irresponsibility, or under-achievement.
|
| That is not the same as "I get sad when my wife is gone
| because she is my life partner".
| Nursie wrote:
| > Yeah man I don't think I would classify a committed
| relationship where partners end up missing their partner
| when they're gone as "codependent".
|
| > I spent every day without her more or less miserable
|
| This is a bit more than "missing" them.
| ratww wrote:
| This phrase is kinda ambiguous.
|
| I still don't understand if by that sentence the article
| author means he was miserable before, or if this means he
| misses her after just one day of her being away. "Spent"
| is in the past, so I assumed it's the former.
|
| I have the impression that people are talking about
| different things in some replies.
| La1n wrote:
| But;
|
| >It's arguable she's the only reason I'm able to be
| happy.
|
| Is less ambiguous. I would not want to be in a
| relationship with someone who is that dependent on me to
| be happy.
| Nursie wrote:
| > I still don't understand if by that sentence the
| article author means he was miserable before, or if this
| means he misses her after just one day of her being away.
|
| Honestly to me it's not important, if it's either of
| those things, if it's misery every day without someone
| that's pretty extreme. IMHO, YMMV etc. Glad he's happy,
| but that's a lot to put on a partner.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Go talk to some elderly people: the ones who have been
| in marriages that have lasted the entire lives are
| generally completely devoted to one another, and as an
| extension their families. Unsurprisingly, those families
| seem to be generally full of happy, healthy people in
| their own happy, stable relationships.
|
| > And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to
| psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble
| their read on twitter is getting out of hand.
|
| No offense, but that's exactly what you just did. I
| personally know of families with 30+ years of marriage
| who appear "full of happy health people" on the outside
| but independently disclose their lifelong frustration.
|
| Maybe let's _all_ stay out of psychoanalyzing then?
| vidarh wrote:
| You're interpreting this _very_ different to how I read
| it. Missing someone is very different from being
| miserable when apart _because you don 't have anything
| else to give your life meaning_.
|
| I'm not miserable when I miss someone. I'd never describe
| it as that way, because if I'm apart from someone, while
| that sucks, at the same time it means I have someone.
| Longing is not misery to me at least.
| void_mint wrote:
| Right, but this is the statement that someone pointed out
| as a red flag, that you disagreed with
|
| > I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent
| every day without her more or less miserable. It's
| arguable she's the only reason I'm able to be happy.
|
| Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.
|
| Well okay I suppose that the people I'm talking about, in
| their 50+ year relationships _would_ describe their love
| for their partner as a type of addiction, but what you
| might be missing there is: that is a joke, and they are
| being cute.
|
| If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction"
| then I think we have officially lost the plot.
| void_mint wrote:
| You're kind of just arguing past the people in this
| thread ("these relationships in my life are healthy and
| not codependent, so codependence is not a problem in
| relationships"). I would also argue that your takes offer
| the same "armchair psychoanalysis" you're arguing
| against, fwiw.
|
| > If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction"
| then I think we have officially lost the plot.
|
| No one is redefining anything. This term is poorly
| defined. Codependence is not "romantic devotion".
| "Romantic devotion" should not be codependence.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| When you use the word "codependent", what do you mean?
| lovegoblin wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency#Romantic_relat
| ion...
|
| > Commonly observable characteristics of codependency
| are:
|
| > intense and unstable interpersonal relationships
|
| > *inability to tolerate being alone, accompanied by
| frantic efforts to avoid being alone*
|
| > ...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency#Individual_dyn
| ami...
|
| > A codependent is someone who cannot function on their
| own and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized
| around another person, process, or substance.
| jamespo wrote:
| Hmm it seems like you're reframing things to shore up
| your argument
| mlyle wrote:
| Look-- my life would be crap without my wife. She's
| awesome and I am much happier in partnered life. I'd
| survive and have some enjoyment alone, but most of us end
| up partnered up because it's a serious buff to life
| fulfillment.
|
| That doesn't make us codependent, to know that I'd spend
| lots of time miserable if unpartnered and without my wife
| in particular.
| gsk22 wrote:
| There's a big difference between "I am happier with a
| partner" and "I am miserable without a partner".
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah. I think for me, in the long term, I'd be miserable
| without a partner. The continuity and shared journey is a
| key part of what makes life tolerable. Yes, friendships
| are great, but they're not the same. Not to mention: I
| like getting laid.
|
| I also think my wife is a uniquely good partner for me.
| If I lost her, for some reason, it would be difficult to
| find a situation nearly as good for me.
|
| That's hardly the same as codependence, though.
|
| I also gotta say: When my wife leaves to travel on her
| own or with the kids for a few days... it's bliss, both
| during and after. A few days without her is great, and
| reunion and the chance to share stories of our
| independent adventures is great, too.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Miserable is defined as "wretchedly unhappy"...you really
| would feel that way without a partner? That sounds like
| an unhealthy mindset.
|
| I understand not being as happy or fulfilled without a
| partner, but _miserable_?
| mlyle wrote:
| It's hard to say.
|
| I've known people who are happy and fulfilled living
| alone, but it's hard for me to picture myself in their
| shoes.
|
| My wife and I have an awesome relationship. I would be
| okay-ish, but it couldn't hold a candle to what I have
| now.
|
| The big bright spots in my life are my work, my
| relationship with my wife, and my kids. I _would_ have
| more time to play video games and consume media, and I 'm
| sure I'd have some more friends and hobbies... But it's
| hard for me to picture papering over her absence with
| friendships and hobbies.
| void_mint wrote:
| I don't think it's generally worthwhile to argue with
| people whose arguments center around "I love my wife and
| you cannot tell me that's not okay." Lots of these
| responses read as though people are feeling attacked,
| which isn't a great baseline to start any reasonable
| conversation.
| mlyle wrote:
| In fairness, the tone of the earlier comments has been
| edited-- the original tone of "you're all codependent"
| and the statement that we're all just jealous that we
| can't play video games whenever we want maybe reasonably
| made people feel attacked.
| void_mint wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that the person feeling attacked isn't
| right to feel that way (I didn't see the comment you're
| referring to, but this topic seems to be kind of heated
| in nature regardless).
|
| Mostly just, attempting to reason with someone that's
| feeling attacked (much less, someone that's feeling
| attacked about something as emotional as loving their
| wife) is an unwinnable task. I wish this conversation
| started better, because I actually think it's very
| important (and I generally think/agree that lots of
| relationships are unhealthy and it contributes to a lot
| of more negative societal issues), but I think discussing
| those topics with those that think you're trying to
| invalidate their relationship serves no one.
| mlyle wrote:
| See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved to
| prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large portion
| of the population is still substantially affected by
| those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to
| biological imperative.
|
| I agree that people should be "okay" without a partner
| and freestanding as their own person. But, this doesn't
| mean that it's unhealthy for partnership to be a major
| portion of life's happiness and fulfillment.
|
| I don't know what the version of me without a stable,
| long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know
| that my life became much better around the time that I
| met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and
| cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part
| of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction
| with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the
| negative impact from it yet.
| void_mint wrote:
| Apologies, I didn't realize you were the commenter I've
| been referencing as feeling attacked.
|
| > See, I disagree, because I believe that we've evolved
| to prefer stable, partnered life, and that a large
| portion of the population is still substantially affected
| by those drives. Not all of us can just say goodbye to
| biological imperative.
|
| Can you reference any legitimate science to back this up?
| I believe the push towards partnered life is a byproduct
| of capitalism, and has nothing to do with evolution or
| biology.
|
| > But, this doesn't mean that it's unhealthy for
| partnership to be a major portion of life's happiness and
| fulfillment.
|
| This is the strawman that keeps getting thrown around in
| this comment section. Nobody is suggesting that finding
| happiness and fulfillment in a partner is unhealthy.
|
| > I don't know what the version of me without a stable,
| long-term relationship would be like. But-- I do know
| that my life became much better around the time that I
| met her; that the improvement appears to have lasted and
| cumulated, and also that it seems to me that a large part
| of my fulfillment and happiness comes from interaction
| with my wife. If this is unhealthy, I haven't seen the
| negative impact from it yet.
|
| This is again a strawman. "Incapable of being alone" is
| different than "enjoying being together". The former is
| what is unhealthy, as has been referenced over and over
| again in these comments.
| krastanov wrote:
| I agree that OP should not have used such absolutist terms,
| but you are guilty of the same thing. There are couples which
| are *devoted* to each other. And there are couples that
| simply have a deep friendship and know that in 30 years they
| will probably drift apart but continue having respect for
| each other. Self-awareness and honesty are obviously
| necessary, but you describing "life-long devotion and
| complete dependence on one-other" as the only way to build
| lasting meaningful relationships is simply harmful. Just as
| harmful as saying that such type of devotion should not
| exist.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea
| that seems to be running through tech especially that
| devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy"
|
| I feel like you're responding to a different argument than
| the one that was posed above. They weren't saying that a deep
| devotion to your partner is bad at all. They were saying that
| if you're miserable every moment you're not with your
| partner, there is likely something wrong that needs to be
| addressed.
|
| Being able to be comfortable and happy even when your partner
| isn't around doesn't preclude you from having a devoted long
| term relationship. In fact, that feels like a recipe for a
| healthier long term relationship. Otherwise you can end up
| with codependency or separation anxiety.
| [deleted]
| Ntrails wrote:
| Actively not enjoying single life is a reasonable state of
| being. Not desirable, but not a mental health issue.
|
| Being measurably happier with a partner in your life is a
| positive outcome, indeed is one we should all strive for
| (or why bother)
| piva00 wrote:
| But you are moving the goalposts, the statement in
| discussion is this:
|
| > I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent
| every day without her more or less miserable.
|
| This is not healthy, doesn't matter how much you care
| about your partner and relationship. Feeling miserable
| every day without someone is not a good sign.
|
| You can be much happier when you are with your partner,
| you can enjoy to spend most days with your partner,
| that's natural. Not enjoying a single day without them is
| pretty alarming.
| kova12 wrote:
| Don't you think this might have been figure of speech
| rather than statement of fact?
| piva00 wrote:
| No, I really don't given the whole paragraph:
|
| > I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating
| marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for
| relationships came with what I feel were comparably
| overgrown feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky
| when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her
| more or less miserable. It's arguable she's the only
| reason I'm able to be happy. I imagine some of these men
| are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in
| finding someone, and it's impossible for me to not feel
| something.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >Feeling miserable every day without someone is not a
| good sign.
|
| I would guess that the main issue here becomes the
| tendency for folks to become housebound. Retirement is no
| joke in terms of becoming inwardly focused.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I feel like you're reading that text differently. I don't
| think they're saying "if my wife or I are apart for a few
| days [business trip or something], then I'm miserable",
| but rather "I was miserable before I found the
| relationship with my wife, but we can perfectly well be
| apart for normal business trips without issue."
| Trasmatta wrote:
| But what I'm responding to is the idea that if you're
| only ever happy when your partner is there, there's
| likely something wrong. I didn't even really bring up
| single life.
|
| > indeed is one we should all strive for (or why bother)
|
| What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
|
| (As an aside, I actually _don 't_ think that being in a
| relationship is something that all people need to strive
| for.)
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > > indeed is one we should all strive for (or why
| bother)
|
| > What do you mean by this? Why bother with what?
|
| Why bother finding a partner. If you aren't measurably
| happier with a partner, why go through the effort of
| finding one?
| void_mint wrote:
| An inability to be happy without a person is not the same
| as a person making you happy.
|
| "I'm miserable when my partner isn't around", is not the
| same as "I'm happier when my partner is around". Does
| that make sense?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| That isn't what I was replying to.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Why bother finding a partner.
|
| > "I'm happier when my partner is around"
| plus wrote:
| Being miserable whenever you aren't around your partner
| does rise to the level of a mental health issue, I feel.
| You aren't going to be around your partner 24/7/365, and
| it's not healthy or reasonable to spend that away time in
| misery.
| benlivengood wrote:
| I suppose the best reply to this is that for a healthy
| romantic/sexual relationship to exist the partners in it must
| already be basically emotionally healthy, including having
| the coping skills and support to deal with their own
| emotional disregulation if it exists.
|
| It's wonderful to see happy partners in lifelong
| relationships. That is almost certainly a sign of individual
| emotional maturity and self-regulation. Those people would be
| happy in or out of that particular relationship (absolutely
| not discounting the intense grief of losing a lifelong
| partner, but the emotional resilience to start enjoying life
| again), and the ones you mention clearly have strong and
| healthy relationships with other people as well.
|
| Unhappiness with life before finding a partner demonstrates
| that there is something fundamentally wrong. People feel too
| lonely, or too insignificant, or too unloved, or too
| undervalued, or some other excess of negative emotion that at
| its root is unhealthy self image or mental health issue and
| needs to be dealt with independently of whether or not that
| person is in a partnership. Validation from a relationship
| can certainly mask the underlying negative emotion, but
| there's a big risk that at some point a partner's validation
| will stop working and the person will become unhappy again
| but put the blame on the partner or the details of the
| relationship without realizing that it's the same internal
| emotional problem that was always there. Almost certainly if
| the relationship ends the person will think the partner left
| because of the incorrect belief they have about themselves
| due to negative emotions, e.g. "I was unlovable" or "I wasn't
| attractive enough".
|
| > There is a bizarre (and imo destructive, and toxic) idea
| that seems to be running through tech especially that
| devotion to your partner is rooted in "jealousy". It usually
| leads to "maybe you guys should become polyamorous. What are
| you jealous?"
|
| That is indeed toxic. Jealousy is a natural feeling; it can
| be rooted in some negative beliefs but not always. To me it
| feels like a fair mix of instinctual response from
| relationship preference and underlying fears. Unfortunately
| for the folks you mention instinctual jealousy is a pretty
| strong indication of a preference for monogamy and not for
| polyamory. In contrast what I've heard called "compersion" is
| a feeling of shared joy and happiness about a polyamorous
| partner's experiences with other partners, distinct from any
| sort of fetishization of another relationship (which while
| not necessarily unhealthy is distinct from simple happiness
| at a partner's happiness). Jealousy for me has usually been
| rooted in fear of loss; loss of a relationship or fear of
| missing out. For monogamous people jealousy is also rooted
| in, for lack of a better word... Monogamy. It's probably the
| majority relationship preference.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement
| for a happy life.
|
| It is for many, many, many people.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| So are sugar, TV and status symbols.
| [deleted]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yeah people who say this are so wrong, companionship and a
| significant other is a required for a fulfilled life for a
| majority of people. We evolved to have this, and most people
| need it. You shouldn't depend on one for happiness, but there
| is nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's kind of like a rich person telling a poor person "hey,
| money isn't everything!" True, but it won't make the poor
| person feel any better.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > You shouldn't depend on one for happiness, but there is
| nothing wrong or weird about longing for one.
|
| Precisely; too many men rely on partnership to meet most or
| all of their emotional needs and that is what drives
| intense loneliness when they don't have a partner.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| On the flip side, however, no one owes you companionship or
| a relationship (platonic or not). If you are struggling to
| fulfill that need, it's on you to improve yourself through
| building skills, seeking therapy, finding appropriate
| medications, or whatever else. Pushing the blame outwards
| to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs
| is a real problematic stance.
| M277 wrote:
| I agree with you wholeheartedly, but there's a small
| problem here (and it's not just in the West) -- people
| dismiss these people, call them names, and put a dark
| label on them.
|
| And yet, quite often they need help. Changing one's
| personality, mastering new skills, etc etc. are not small
| nor easy steps. And some people may not even be capable
| of doing them by themselves. So what do they do? They
| seek out people and go public with their frustration...
| and they come across two groups: Group A, who call them
| names and shun them out, and Group B, who claim they
| understand them and talk with them.... all while telling
| them things like "Look, it's not your fault, man."
| "They're all whores", etc. What do you think happens
| next?
|
| What I am trying to say is, some empathy and
| understanding would go a long way. I get that some people
| don't want to help themselves and are beyond saving, but
| there are many others who just need a small push to
| improve themselves.
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| >no one owes you companionship or a relationship
| (platonic or not).
|
| That's your opinion.
|
| >is a real problematic stance.
|
| Oh, no, not problematic! What if there are actually
| external factors that influence your ability to succeed,
| and you would like to advocate for modifying those
| external factors to increase your ability to succeed?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| >>no one owes you companionship or a relationship
| (platonic or not).
|
| > That's your opinion
|
| Yes, and it's shared by nearly everyone. The alternative
| is that you believe someone does owe you a relationship,
| which is anathema to anyone who values individual liberty
| and freedom at any level. Everyone who is advocating for
| making changes to society to improve their chances is
| really fucking cagey about the specifics.
|
| So let me ask you, what changes do you propose, and who
| owes you a relationship?
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| >Yes, and it's shared by nearly everyone.
|
| Not really. If you're talking specifically about whether
| an unmarried man that fits some particular criteria is
| owed a wife, most people in the western world at this
| point in time would agree with you. But that's far from
| universal.
|
| >The alternative is that you believe someone does owe you
| a relationship, which is anathema to anyone who values
| individual liberty and freedom at any level.
|
| Not really. "Individual liberty and freedom" is not one
| concrete set of ideas that you have to either accept or
| reject wholesale.
|
| >Everyone who is advocating for making changes to society
| to improve their chances is really fucking cagey about
| the specifics.
|
| Some are, probably. I don't know which you've been
| talking to.
|
| >what changes do you propose
|
| Bring back severe social shaming for women that engage in
| sexual activity outside of a committed monogamous
| relationship (e.g. marriage or on the way to marriage).
| Bring back social pressure for a man to marry a woman
| that he has had sex with outside of marriage.
|
| >and who owes you a relationship
|
| I am married, so I think from society's perspective, my
| wife should owe me a relationship. If either of us denies
| the other a relationship without very good reason
| (meaning something more than just not being happy any
| more), the one abandoning the marriage should be looked
| down upon as having done something very wrong.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Totally, but most people are not emotionally well
| adjusted or in a place where they an introspect and build
| themselves up to be the better version of themselves. A
| lot of folks would be helped by therapy and having
| someone to talk through to work through this (but that's
| a healthcare conversation, which we don't have to devolve
| into here).
|
| I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails
| in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and
| harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've
| seen enough mental health challenges and crises to
| understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and
| no one is coming to save you except yourself.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Indeed, you shouldn't based your identity around it or
| blame others (e.g. incels) but at the same time you
| shouldn't be made to field there's something wrong with
| you for wanting it. Like most things there is a balance
| to be found. I think the stars every day that I failed my
| way into relationships for most of my life and I can't
| imagine the struggle of these individuals.
| dnautics wrote:
| I don't think the identity of inceldom is _necessarily_
| blaming others for being lonely (though probably most
| incels _do_ ), but being angry at society for trying to
| sell an incorrect narrative of relationships.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > it's on you to improve yourself
|
| Incels call this "maxxing". It doesn't seem to be
| particularly effective for them.
|
| > Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not
| bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic
| stance.
|
| Why? Reducing inequality in dating seems like a fair goal
| to me. People become incels because everyone else rejects
| them. If that doesn't change, the number of incels will
| keep growing.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| It's not working because they believe the wrong things
| about why they are struggling to find companionship. It's
| not just find some stat to max and done, positioning the
| problem this way is itself part of the problem.
|
| > Reducing inequality in dating
|
| What does this mean, be specific. I cannot think of
| anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove
| agency from women.
| scarmig wrote:
| On the flip flip side, no one owes anyone anything
| (except bodily integrity). You aren't entitled to a
| partner who does a certain number of hours of chores; you
| aren't entitled to a specific or any job title; you
| aren't entitled to a particular lifestyle; you aren't
| entitled to respect and admiration. That doesn't mean the
| only valid approach is to criticize people who
| systemically have a harder time reaching those things and
| feel frustrated by it.
|
| We can simultaneously tell individuals to work on self-
| improvement to get themselves out of tough situations
| while also recognizing that society can do things to make
| life fairer and better for everybody.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Happiness comes and goes with the wind. Greet it openly when
| it visits you, but it will be gone tomorrow. Seek contentment
| instead.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't think that is true, but that's because I think
| there's a huge difference between what people think will make
| them happy and what actually will. The former tends to be an
| ever moving target, the latter requires a change in
| perspective that takes quite a bit of effort and doesn't make
| anyone any money.
| NickM wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted; others may not
| agree, but I think you have a very valid opinion. It is an
| incredibly common human experience to think "I would be
| happy if only I had X," only to find that achieving X does
| not actually make one happy.
| flatline wrote:
| I believe everyone is capable of being happy in their own
| company. It may take a lifetime of work for some people to
| achieve this. We are social creatures and human interaction
| is essential for our well-being, but that doesn't mean you
| can't have your own personal goals and interests or just
| simply enjoy time with yourself: you are a human being in
| your own company, too! Frankly without that ability you are
| not going to have healthy relationships with others no matter
| how good looking or successful you are. I know so many
| unhappy couples that put on a good front. I was part of one
| for years.
|
| In the West in particular we are crippled with insecurity,
| anxiety and doubt. Are we masculine/feminine enough? Do we
| fit the image we have of other people's desires? We have
| incredible wealth and abundance and feel like shit. It's a
| societal ill as well as a personal one. It is possible to
| practice contentment, gratitude, and self-compassion and
| acceptance, these are just things that are not taught or
| idealized in our culture. I do think the mindfulness
| movement, commercialized though it may be, has something to
| offer to modern secular society.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs
| some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not
| something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access
| to that are privileged.
|
| I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many
| "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many
| young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their
| suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call
| them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more
| radicalized.
|
| I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In
| many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of
| other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how
| to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did
| eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my
| 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty
| bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make
| it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous
| message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get
| women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough.
| It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're
| really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel
| alone and wounded.
|
| IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one
| way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021,
| it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they
| face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it
| up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is
| really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some
| room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well,
| without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words
| other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > the existence of so many "incels"
|
| Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?
|
| I suspect there were more decades ago because of more
| cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's
| different now? That these folks are angry about it?
| ratww wrote:
| I'm guessing it's just the fact that the internet
| happened.
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| Yes, there are more now than in the past.
| https://ifstudies.org/ifs-
| admin/resources/figure1newlymaninc...
| watwut wrote:
| Women get to be single and lonely too.
| jfengel wrote:
| Masculinity isn't toxic. It becomes toxic when it blames
| women for its problems.
|
| Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It
| practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not
| feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't
| get a woman.
|
| That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to
| listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you
| can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job
| to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is
| up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is
| going to be an enormous red flag.
|
| Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just
| suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend
| you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But
| be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame
| feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to
| reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends
| are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't
| have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason
| the word "toxic" came to be applied.
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| >It becomes toxic when it blames women for its problems.
| Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It
| practically begs them to.
|
| Gotcha, it wants them to talk about their issues, as long
| as they don't say anything unapproved. Why would any man
| want to go along with that, again?
| scarmig wrote:
| The issue is when people conflate "there's no obligation
| on any woman to listen to you" with "expression of
| frustration in a public forum is a character flaw worthy
| of criticism," or when people conflate "blames women for
| its problems" with "criticizes toxic gender norms
| enforced on men."
|
| Imagine a woman who is frustrated because her partner
| doesn't do any chores or give any indication he respects
| her. She complains about it online, attributing it to
| sexist gender norms. Someone says the same thing to her
| as you say here: men are not obligated to listen to you,
| your suffering may be real, but please keep it to close
| friends. If your friends affirm that the reason your
| relationship is the fault of patriarchy, it's an example
| of toxicity. It probably makes the most sense to talk to
| a therapist: they can help you figure out why your way of
| thinking is flawed and how you can convince your partner
| to treat you well or, barring that, find a new partner.
|
| That'd be a pretty terrible comment, right?
|
| Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're
| only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt
| women as a politicized issue.
| jfengel wrote:
| _Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we 're
| only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt
| women as a politicized issue._
|
| "Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets
| hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page
| is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to
| consider toxic gender norms hurt men.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=patriarchy+harms+men
|
| The fact that it needs to be said means that not
| everybody knows it yet. But it means that the ones who
| are listening to it are the feminists. Feminism is an
| ally in trying to fix the problems of toxicity towards
| men, and these threads always bring out lots of men who
| blame feminism for their problems. If I've accidentally
| confused you for one of them, I apologize.
| scarmig wrote:
| The issue is that the slogan "patriarchy hurts men" is
| nearly always used in a way that still puts the onus on
| men to stop policing gender norms on other men. The
| reality is that women have every bit as much agency and
| power in upholding patriarchy that men do, but few women
| (feminist or not) are willing to acknowledge the extent
| they enforce toxic gender norms, or even that women
| enforce toxic gender norms at all.
| jfengel wrote:
| Women absolutely, positively enforce toxic gender norms.
| Women are part of the patriarchy. In fact, for many
| women, the best strategy for them is to embrace the
| patriarchy as hard as they can. That sets them up for
| rewards from the dominant paradigm.
|
| Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject
| it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are
| the feminists -- which includes both women and men.
| Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are
| guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.
|
| That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And
| lots of men, too.
| scarmig wrote:
| I agree with you that feminists don't enforce gender
| roles more than average, so attributing the shitty state
| of gender relations to feminism is silly.
|
| I disagree that they are particularly willing to call out
| instances of women entrenching the patriarchy. I think
| this probably has to do with a root disagreement about
| the scope of what is considered policing gender roles.
|
| It's true, for instance, that feminists are more likely
| to criticize a mother who tells her son not to play with
| dolls, which is good and something I agree with. It's
| just not the primary mechanism by which women enforce
| gender roles, which is partner choice. That's not to say
| that women shouldn't have the right to choose their
| partner--of course they should--but the patterns of how
| women choose partners enforce toxic gender norms, and
| many of the most toxic aspects of gendered male behavior
| arise from men navigating that landscape.
|
| As a concrete example, consider bisexuality. The majority
| of women dislike the idea of choosing a bisexual guy as a
| partner: he's considered less masculine, or dirtied, or
| some kind of perversion of masculinity. This is their
| right, but it's also shitty. The problematic aspects I
| want to call out are that 1) the majority viewpoint among
| women about bisexual men is still very prevalent among
| feminist-identifying women, and 2) when someone expresses
| frustration at these collective choices, feminist-
| identifying women are far more likely to criticize the
| frustrated party instead of the toxic gender norms. The
| net result of this is men being terrified of homosocial
| affection and remaining closeted so as not to scare off
| potential partners, both behaviors most people would
| consider expressions of toxic masculinity.
|
| This pattern repeats itself across a lot of different
| forms of gendered policing. But many feminists refuse to
| acknowledge it, because they don't acknowledge that
| partner choice can be a mechanism for gender role
| enforcement.
| jfengel wrote:
| I have no idea what feminists you're dealing with, or
| under what circumstances, so I'm not going to apologize
| for them. But I can tell you that you've come across as
| hostile in this conversation, and it comes as no surprise
| to me that others have responded to you in a negative
| way.
| scarmig wrote:
| I'm honestly confused enough that you read that comment
| as hostile that I'm wondering if you're confusing me with
| someone else.
|
| Regardless, I do hope everyone will call out policing of
| gender norms whenever we see them. Best wishes.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The vast majority of "patriarchy hurts men" discussions
| I've seen, including the Buzzfeed and Washington Post
| articles I spot checked at the top of this search, have
| been about how the men reading the article need to fix
| their bad behavior. Buzzfeed calls for me to learn
| "specific strategies to end gender violence" so that I
| won't "engage in everyday sexist behaviours"; Wapo
| suggests "Giving up a small slice of privilege in
| exchange for a longer (and happier) life".
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on
| what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether
| feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for
| one):
|
| * Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but
| doesn't help men at all
|
| * Working on an issue which helps both women and men a
| lot
|
| Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men
| as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is
| for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed
| up with some strong cases.
| NationalPark wrote:
| I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a
| singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in
| conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're
| talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and
| grassroots activism here, and all the complications and
| inconsistencies that implies.
|
| If you're looking for something in particular to make
| this case for you, I recommend reading the short book
| Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does
| specifically talk about mens issues and how what she
| calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively
| affects men in different and unique ways (compared to
| women).
|
| But again, editorials - especially on the right -
| typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible
| positions and try to make them appear to be normalized
| and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an
| intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate
| the motivations and biases of any piece of media that
| leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people
| (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact
| wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm
| bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any
| claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men,
| might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that
| you're missing some nuance or complexity.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _editorials - especially on the right_
|
| I know you don't intend to do so, but assuming that
| someone's conclusions about an issue must have come from
| talking points, and were not arrived at independently,
| dehumanizes them and makes it difficult to convince them
| of anything.
|
| It discounts the lived experiences of people who have
| seen their friends and coworkers radicalized against
| them, of either gender. "This happened to me" cannot
| successfully be countered by "stop parroting X/Y/W-wing
| editorials." (general pattern I've seen even among
| family, not necessarily your phrasing)
|
| The terminology used also doesn't help make the case for
| feminism among anyone not already convinced. Terms like
| "the patriarchy" can be seen as implying that it's okay
| to talk about men as a whole group who can be vilified,
| but it's not okay to talk about women in any negative way
| at all. Or "ally" could be seen as implying that the only
| identity someone not of group Z can have that matters is
| as an accessory to their cause.
|
| The most disappointing and insulting thing a friend has
| ever said to me might be (paraphrasing) "I thought you
| wanted to be an ally." No, I wanted to be your friend,
| not a footsoldier who dutifully agrees with you 100% of
| the time no matter what my independent experiences have
| been.
|
| _I don 't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a
| singular movement,_
|
| Sadly, even some of those who advocate for feminism
| (whichever branches might be considered "the good kind"
| for purposes of this discussion) seem to deliberately
| lump feminist movements together, so one can be forgiven
| for seeing terms like "the patriarchy" used by different
| groups and not knowing which group's beliefs to ascribe
| to the term. I don't think this can be blamed on a
| particular flavor of media, except maybe social media.
| serverholic wrote:
| I don't know why you're getting downvoted. People keep
| parroting that feminism is about mens issues too but I
| don't see that anywhere.
| quonn wrote:
| David Burns would disagree and I'd recommend his books to
| those who want to read them. :)
| benlivengood wrote:
| At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties
| for platonic physical touch.
|
| Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like
| I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity
| is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships
| between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is
| that only men can really participate in that healing
| because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've
| observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other
| women and have most of their emotional needs met that way.
| Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
| smsm42 wrote:
| "cuddle parties"... It's about as close to the real thing
| as jerking off to pornhub is to the happy marriage with a
| loving partner. It may take care of the immediate
| physiological urge, but that's it.
| alex_smart wrote:
| So, feminism's answer to the problems men face is
| completely disconnected with men's own experiences and
| feelings.
|
| Color me surprised.
| zerkten wrote:
| > At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle
| parties for platonic physical touch.
|
| I never knew such a thing existed until you posted this,
| and perhaps I could have done with this at earlier points
| in my life. My receptivity would have varied greatly at
| different times though.
|
| Fundamentally, I'm not sure it would have helped me as
| much as finding a therapist and talking about this stuff.
| Now that I'm out of the rut it would be much easier to
| approach a cuddle party.
|
| Men struggle to see therapists as part of the "suck it
| up" culture so it's extremely difficult to get out of the
| existence once you are part of it. The system is self-
| protecting and does things to embed people deeper into
| the anti-feminist rut.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So feminism's answer to the the problem is "cuddle
| parties"? Are you serious?
|
| I remember people used to argue that feminism was good
| because sexual liberation of women meant _everyone_ was
| gonna get to have lots of sex. Obviously, these incels
| were not invited to the party. Women _are_ having lots of
| sex, just not with them. And you actually believe "deep
| emotional relationships between men" are the cure for
| this unrest?
|
| This is about deeper issues than friendship. It's about
| people's essential worth as human beings. People don't
| just have sex with anyone, they _select_ partners and
| this implies selection criteria which implies value
| judgement. By seeking intimacy, we all risk judgement and
| rejection. Can you imagine what constant rejection by
| everyone must do to a person 's self-worth?
|
| "Cuddle parties" won't solve anything because they fail
| to understand the problem. Even proposing something like
| this compounds the issue because it's like saying "you
| are not good enough to have sex, enjoy this platonic
| activity instead". The root cause of this issue is
| society and women especially have decided these men are
| unattractive and therefore worthless. There is no fixing
| incels without fixing this inequality.
| colanderman wrote:
| "Cuddle parties" are not a substitute for sex, for men or
| women. Nor are "strong friendships", as you insinuate
| above.
|
| Emotional intimacy, physical closeness, and sex are
| distinct and separable. Though they are linked for most
| people, for many no one of those is a substitute for any
| other.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| 'Cuddle parties'? This is brilliant. Is it free?
|
| Are the wimmen at them good lookin'? I'm all for this
| concept.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Feminism is a front for white supremacy
| NationalPark wrote:
| How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the
| defining features of the last few decades of feminist
| writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the
| most prominent feminists are Black?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality has been
| debunked using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
| that was released just before she released her work into
| the world back in 1989. If you want to see the debunking
| head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc
| (Antonio Moore)
|
| Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is
| simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black
| male incarceration because all of the labor statistics
| preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and
| its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat
| them like they are the white patriarchy and that they
| have privilege they really don't when you look at the
| data.
|
| Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in
| isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens
| rights, and applied them to black people without nuance
| to the difference between how white men and black men are
| treated by institutions in the US.
|
| It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial
| inequity that is the basis for much of black women's
| suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell
| me what you think they got wrong.
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| >That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone
| needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but
| it's not something anyone is entitled to.
|
| That's not a truth about life, it's an opinion.
| brianxp wrote:
| it is, I notice that me or even people in my family who
| often times tend to show anticonformity behavior need
| some love.
|
| Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to
| hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon
| away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own
| genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an
| expert neither in science or parenting)
|
| Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with
| 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married,
| although all of them seem to fare well economically
| speaking.
| 2lwxxtj wrote:
| To be clear, "(almost) everyone needs some amount of
| physical intimacy to be happy," is a falsifiable
| statement of fact. You can go out and measure something
| to find out whether it matches reality.
|
| On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is
| entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion,
| unless it is limited to a specific context like within a
| specific social system.
| thelean12 wrote:
| > if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault
|
| I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am
| honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it?
| Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this
| message is the opposite.
|
| It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's
| fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed
| to do about that?
|
| Most men that I know, including myself, function better
| when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight,
| hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice
| small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
|
| I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if
| you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest
| criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it,
| what's the point?
| dnissley wrote:
| I think the answer would go along the same lines as
| answering the question "whose fault is it that you can't
| get a job?" when aimed at an identity category such as
| women or minorities. Basically: society has failed them
| in some form or other.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I think this is the right way to look at it. This is why
| I gave myself as an example. I was raised by a mentally
| ill single parent in poverty. I wasn't taught how to
| socialize with others in a healthy way. As a result, I
| wasn't equipped to form healthy relationships.
|
| I think there are a lot of young men who are in a similar
| position and if they are given proper guidance and
| healthy role models when they are young, they can be in a
| better position to succeed in friendships, work and
| relationships.
| thelean12 wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's the same. When talking about
| dating, there are a bunch of stuff that you can do that
| boils down to "make yourself a better person." See: my
| list above. It's obviously not guaranteed, and many are
| more genetically gifted than others, but it seems way
| more manageable of a task than your example.
|
| You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
| dnissley wrote:
| Yeah, for the most part I agree, I just think that it's
| possible to frame the fact that a lot of guys simply
| being at a loss of how to go about this can be framed as
| a societal failure of some kind.
|
| These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any
| setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems
| to me that young men really aren't given much actionable
| advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one
| point the rules/expectations were a little more codified
| than they are today.
|
| My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a
| nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself".
| On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT
| to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to
| kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when
| it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these
| kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel
| like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating,
| but of course that has its own rules and expectations
| that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or
| anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive
| she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't
| expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new
| minefield to walk through when you start getting more
| serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries,
| another thing we don't do a very good job of talking
| about.
|
| I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably
| successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended,
| I feel like we were right for each other in the sense
| that we had things to offer each other and I learned so
| many valuable life lessons from my partner during that
| time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's
| going great as well, still learning so much!
|
| I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing
| a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal
| space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into
| something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it
| feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing
| like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about
| it more concretely.
|
| It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not
| yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try
| and fail to get them to open up about their feelings
| about this or anything else. They don't use the word
| incel but it could certainly apply.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Generally agree with you. I guess I was looking at it a
| little differently. If I'm talking to an individual, the
| only thing that matters is what they can do to better
| themselves now. It's not productive, on an individual
| level, to say stuff like "if only society was better!"
|
| > I try and fail to get them to open up about their
| feelings about this or anything else.
|
| To be fair, opening up about my feelings to my family
| sounds awful. I know I know, society did this to me yada
| yada.
|
| I learned by watching and doing, not talking about my
| feelings to my family. College buddies being my wingman
| and showing me the ropes, etc. and failing until I
| stopped failing. Then again, last time I dated, "can I
| buy you a drink" still worked to get a few minutes of
| face time and I didn't need apps. Not sure what's out
| there now.
|
| I think talking about my feelings to my family would have
| done absolutely nothing.
| watwut wrote:
| > Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission.
| Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never
| appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made
| interactions with women feel like a minefield to me
|
| Is the "don't kiss her without permission" really they
| difficult? And frankly the same with flirting.
|
| If these make women minefield, I don't see how to make it
| better without sacrificing women who fly want to be
| kissed or flirted with while they have presentation at
| work.
| thelean12 wrote:
| You responded to the wrong person. I didn't write that.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| > You can't expect women to work on having more of a
| penis.
|
| That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? Not to mention, maybe
| it's not just the penis. Maybe you can teach women how to
| copy the kinds of attitudes (eg: assertiveness) that help
| men succeed. Maybe you can get more women in engineering
| by giving them positive role models from an early age.
|
| We can help prevent there being so many incels by
| supporting young men emotionally from an early age. Right
| now we have a very punitive approach IMO. The education
| given to young men is a lot of "don't do this", "that's
| toxic", "women hate it when men do that", but there isn't
| enough positive messaging and encouragement.
| RichardCA wrote:
| It's the old Joseph Campbell quote, how regrets are just
| illuminations come too late.
|
| https://www.jcf.org/works/quote/every-failure-to-cope-
| with-a...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| It's often fault of a psychological trauma suffered in
| childhood. Sexual abuse, for example. So counseling is
| one thing that society could provide to such men. Sexual
| therapy treatments have been used successfully in some
| countries.
| dnissley wrote:
| Hadn't considered that -- but has there been a rise in
| childhood psychological trauma? There's definitely been a
| shift in the way we talk about trauma, just in the sense
| that we open up about it more, so that could be part of
| it.
|
| The example I'm coming back to though are people like my
| younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods
| (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason
| or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to
| some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to
| yelling more than was really necessary.
| thelean12 wrote:
| This is much more convincing than dnissley's response to
| me. I wonder how many "incels" have suffered trauma in
| their childhood.
|
| I certainly don't expect people to just work through
| childhood trauma without societal help. ex. Make it
| cheap, easy, and acceptable to get therapy. Much
| different than my list above IMO where most people can
| work on it themselves without many excuses.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a
| requirement for a happy life
|
| That's for each person to decide. For incels, it's clearly
| required. They want it.
|
| It's a fact that interpersonal relationships and sex are part
| of being human. If you tell them to just give up on this and
| find other ways to be happy, you're telling them to accept a
| subhuman existence, that part of their humanity is worthless
| and should not be exercised.
|
| > basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic
| masculinity
|
| No. It is normal to want relationships and sex. It is normal to
| be unhappy if you are constantly rejected by everyone. You can
| have strong friendships and still want this. There is
| absolutely nothing "toxic" about this.
| baby wrote:
| Sorry but I'll have to downvote this, there's something about
| humans that is either cultural or genetic, but we travel and
| live in groups and we settle with partner(s). Being alone might
| be OK in a tribe, but as we moved to more isolated and
| individualist ways of living being alone means something
| completely different. On top of that every song you hear is
| about love and every movie you watch has a love story. You go
| out and you see happy couples around you, conversations most
| often revolve around dating.
|
| My theory is that behind every violent crime or act of
| terrorism there is a huge amount of frustration that built up
| from not having that someone.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Your choices are not limited to "being adhered to a
| codependent sexual partner" and "being totally disconnected
| from society trying to live as a Randean ubermench ascetic".
|
| It is the belief that those are the only possibilities that
| makes people incels, not the lack of a chick.
| smooth_remmy wrote:
| > This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the
| only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is
| their partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke
| and not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an
| underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but
| anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
|
| There is a great amount of neuro-diversity in the human
| species. Some people are wired to be rugged individualists who
| could enjoy living by themselves in a cabin in the woods. Other
| people are wired to _need_ to be around their family.
|
| For some people, its not a choice, its how their brain is
| wired.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I think the issue is how extreme the statement "It's arguable
| she's the only reason I'm able to be happy" is. I think there
| is nothing necessarily wrong with that if you find a partner
| who is comfortable with providing this author's needs. In my
| mind though that statement signals a codependent relationship
| which are generally not seen to be a great thing. I'm not
| saying they are in a codependent relationship as an FYI, but
| it sounds like something people in that type of relationship
| would say. Like can the person not be happy at all if they
| were not in a relationship? Can they not find satisfaction in
| their job, hobbies, volunteer work, etc? yes it might not be
| fulfilling as being in a relationship, but to have a binary
| happy / not happy state based only on being in a relationship
| seems extreme. This is just going based on how the author
| worded it. Maybe a better way to have written their statement
| would be "less happy".
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| >It's arguable she's the only reason I'm able to be happy.
| ...then something is wrong.
|
| I don't think work life balance and societal expectations are
| given enough discussion in these matters. Having a toxic job or
| no balance is going to breed problems in even the most well
| adjusted people.
|
| Likewise, men are taught by society at large to providers. Men
| are expected to get great jobs so the wife can stay at the
| mcmansion with the kids and that anything less than this is a
| failure of their person. I'm obviously exaggerating, but these
| messages still abound in pop culture.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, but I think it starts with
| employees taking more control over the work they do, how they
| work, and what happens to the profits they create.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a
| requirement for a happy life.
|
| A romantic and sexual relationship is very much like having
| money. Money is not a requirement for a happy life. However,
| having enough money sure does make it much easier to have a
| happy life.
|
| It is the same with romantic and sexual relationships. You can
| be happy without them, but having them is such a happiness
| multiplier that most people want them for very good reason.
|
| Also it has important societal features. If people are poor and
| they see all the happy, rich people, and they don't think they
| have any way of getting money, all the psychology self-help
| telling them that they should be happy being poor, is not going
| to work. Eventually, a certain proportion will get resentful.
|
| I think it is similar with singles, especially singles who want
| to be in a relationship but can't. Telling them that they don't
| need sexual relationships to be happy is not going to work, and
| will eventually lead to a lot of resentment.
| srean wrote:
| This depends on the attachment style of the person. An avoidant
| would say 'I want to be independent and no one should take a
| dependence on me. I feel suffocated if someone does. Nobody
| likes it".
|
| The other extreme is anxious attachment style. The extreme
| forms of both are considered personality disorders.
|
| I have lived a significant part of my life being independent,
| without a partner. But now that I have, I enjoy the
| interdependence. It is very fulfilling.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Yeah, no, you are wrong. We are social animals. We haven't
| evolved to be happy alone. My wife is my best friend. I am
| absolutely the most happy when my best friend is around and the
| least happy when she is away. I love doing things with her,
| talking with her, etc. I have tons of hobbies and interests
| that don't involve her. I could easily fill my days with those
| things. But frankly they aren't on the same level as my wife in
| terms of generating happiness, not by a long shot. And I don't
| think it is co-dependence. It's just best friends enjoying
| being together.
| jvidalv wrote:
| As a lone wolf I totally disagree.
|
| I think that we are engineered to have sexual and romantic
| partners by default. And there are some, like me, that somehow
| we can live without one and not fall into addiction traps (
| drugs, party, videogames... ).
|
| But we all have friends ( most ) that are not like this, the
| difference for most of them between being single or not is big,
| and I don't agree that they are depressed its just human
| nature.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Most people need comfort for the misery of their lives.
|
| some choose food (obesity), some choose crazy partners (tend
| to be great in bed but bad in life), other choose video games
| (sense of accomplishment), and others try to help others as a
| way of hiding from themselves.
|
| most people are running, some though are doing it in a
| socially acceptable way. but the root cause is the same.
| [deleted]
| treesrule wrote:
| > having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a
| requirement for a happy life.
|
| I don't have the all data off hand (see some citations below)
| but I believe they say married men live longer, commit less
| crimes and are happier. So yes in some sense, can you be happy
| if you are not married however, is it almost certainly harder.
| I assume you would find similar data for not having a romantic
| parter. You, a human, are not an island and almost certainly
| would benefit from close personal and romantic connections.
|
| I would say that there is a way of expressing this towards your
| partner -- especially too early in a relationship -- that can
| be very draining.
|
| https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sampson/files/2006_crimino...
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens...
|
| https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-marriage-really-make-us-heal...
| burlesona wrote:
| The correlations are clear but causality less so. What if
| it's not marriage that makes men happier, less prone to
| crime, and longer-lived - rather it is that women select for
| partners who are happier, less prone to crime, and healthier?
| keerk43 wrote:
| I think it goes both ways. Women obviously do prefer
| partners who are successful, higher in socioeconomic
| hierarchy. Yet not being able to find a partner may lower
| one's self-esteem, which in turn may reduce the likelihood
| of doing things that increase chances of socioeconomic
| success.
|
| I mean, advancing in life generally requires leaving your
| comfort-zone, but that may be hard if you lack confidence.
| watwut wrote:
| In fact, AFAIK, one issue with incarceration is that you
| are not seen as suitable partner anymore. Turns out that
| both men and women tend to avoid partners with criminal
| record.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It's weird to try and explain this from a sterile alien-
| studying-humans perspective, but since that's the HN theme
| I'll do my best. Marriage and having dependents carries
| with it a lot of economic cost. By revealed choice theory,
| that implies it has significant benefits, or else nobody
| would ever do it.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| This is counterintuitive. The obvious benefit of marriage
| is producing children.
|
| Producing children is extremely costly for both parents.
| This is true both in animals and humans - you would
| generally not say that rearing children is good for the
| health of the parents. It probably brings emotional
| benefits to the parents (which it would have to,
| otherwise they wouldn't do it), but there's no reason to
| assume that couples are automatically better off in terms
| of their finances or physical health than singles.
|
| Edit: Since people correctly pointed out that you can
| have children without marriage, please replace marriage
| with "romantic relationships that produce children".
| srean wrote:
| > The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children
|
| Have been married a long time. Today I learned from you
| that apparently we are missing out on an obvious benefit
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You can produce children without marriage and a lot of
| people don't get married to have children.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The obvious benefit of marriage is producing children.
|
| No. Marriage doesn't _produce_ children.
|
| Marriage can provide social obligations relating to the
| _support_ of children, though. (It also provides social
| obligations of mutual support between spouses.)
| alexvoda wrote:
| I think it would be more accurate to say it had
| significant benefits, but they decreased. And there is a
| lot of inertia keeping it popular. This results in a lot
| of "failed" marriages.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Or perhaps the benefits haven't decreased but the costs
| have increased. Especially up-front.
| dnissley wrote:
| Revealed preference doesn't always work well as an
| explanation for why people do what they do though. E.g.
| if someone falls for an investment scam a-la Madoff, the
| person obviously didn't want to end up destitute because
| of that.
|
| A closer example here might be a salesperson performing a
| "hard sell" on an automobile that is just at the edge of
| affordability for the buyer. The buyer really wants to be
| able to drive around in this cool looking automobile, but
| they end up with a lemon that they can't afford to keep
| drivable and sucks up all their resources. It's not so
| hard to draw a parallel from that to someone who has a
| family on accident.
| d0mine wrote:
| > or else nobody would ever do it.
|
| People often do things that are not good for them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would be interested in a citation that those entering
| into marriages and child rearing are aware of the
| economic costs and are able to enumerate the benefits
| prior to the events, or if its look back justification
| after the fact. If you dig, I think you'll find most
| folks were not aware of the economic and opportunity
| costs of children, as well as the work involved in
| maintaining a healthy relationship with a party for an
| extended period of time.
|
| (removed a bunch of pew research citations that made the
| comment unwieldy; happy to cite for those interested)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Does marriage have economic costs? Dependents sure, but
| marriage seems to be economically beneficial: taxes,
| fewer bedrooms, etc.
| NickM wrote:
| Well if we want to be all logical and science-y about
| this, we can't assume humans are rational beings. People
| obviously make bad decisions all the time.
|
| Just because lots of people have kids, for example,
| doesn't mean that having kids makes people happier, and
| in fact studies seem to show the opposite to be true on
| average. That said, I'm not trying to say that having
| kids is always an irrational choice, and certainly it
| makes some people happier (or it might make people
| "unhappier" but lend them a greater sense of meaning and
| purpose that balances things out). But clearly you can't
| just say "well, correlation must imply causation because
| otherwise why would people do X if it makes them less
| happy?"
| nradov wrote:
| People don't necessarily optimize for maximum happiness.
| It's not a good target metric.
| d0mine wrote:
| You might be surprised to learn (I was) that it [kids
| making people "unhappier"] depends on the country
| https://time.com/4370344/parents-happiness-children-
| study/
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's weird to try and explain this from a sterile
| alien-studying-humans perspective, but since that's the
| HN theme I'll do my best._
|
| This made me laugh, in a good way :) I'll approach it
| from that angle:
|
| Monogamous child-rearing looks to me a successful
| evolutionary strategy for the human race (and keep in
| mind the "monogamous" part might be relatively recent).
| It implies less about the _happiness_ of the parental
| units, though.
|
| The Terran octopus dies off soon after giving birth to
| its progeny, and this is successful for octopus-kind, but
| results in no long-lasting happiness for the octopus
| mother. Likewise with many species of insects, arguably
| very successful lifeforms on Earth. Many of them die or
| are cannibalized after mating or giving birth.
|
| Successful species propagation strategies do not
| necessarily make the parents live happier lives. There is
| an evolved reason for said strategies, but is happiness
| the maximized factor?
| scarmig wrote:
| To figure out the causality, you'd need an experiment where
| people are randomly removed from relationships though
| random external events.
|
| We do have an imperfect example of this, in the case of
| widowers. When someone is widowed, does their happiness
| tend to increase, remain level, or decrease?
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| That's not enough. One of the often espoused
| counterarguments is "do happy people marry more, or does
| marriage make people happier?". You'd have to
| continuously check happy people and keep a control group
| from marrying. Checking just the widowers doesn't account
| for the severity of the loss.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| There's a correlation/causation issue here.
|
| The GP pointed out that the relationship described in this
| has red flags because the relationship alone is the source of
| happiness. It would lead to a happier, possibly longer lived,
| less criminal person.
|
| You seem to be implying (and I don't think this is
| intentional) that close personal and romantic relationships
| [for straight men] == a wife. But that doesn't necessarily
| need to be true. Maybe for romance, but certainly not for
| close personal friendships.
|
| You're correct that a person isn't an island, but the focus
| on single romantic partner may be to the detriment of other
| forms of relationship which are still hugely valuable health
| wise.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| The question of what would most benefit a person's path
| toward happiness isn't the question of what do people _need_
| to be happy, though.
|
| Sloppy analog: If I won the lottery tomorrow, it would allow
| me to buy a guitar I want sooner than another method; but not
| winning the lottery doesn't preclude any possibility of my
| acquiring that guitar.
|
| I'm not sure that not winning the lottery means the path
| without winning the lottery is harder.
|
| Winning the lottery may even prevent other conditions from
| developing in the course that would otherwise sustain the
| goal.
|
| Humans and Islands analogies have been waged in many
| philosophical battles, but I never gathered that one was
| settled. Personally, I've subscribed to every man being and
| island and no man being an island all at once, and think both
| are fundamentally true in constant contradiction of one
| another and the contradiction is all you can really point to
| being true. (the original line "No man is an island" was
| Donne remarking of man's nature with regard to the Christian
| god, at least as far as I understood it)
|
| I think if you [general you, not personally] hang your
| happiness on any one thing you're going to struggle or cause
| undue burden on someone or something else. And that's what
| the incel crowd gets so wrong; and I must say the proof kind
| of seems in the pudding there...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| On the other hand, there's the joke:
|
| "Why do married men die before their wives?
|
| Because the _want_ to. "
| ameminator wrote:
| I think there is a really good point here. However, it should
| be recognized that some of those studies do not control for
| divorced vs never married very well and the magnitude of the
| benefit of marriage is over-stated. Not to say marriage does
| not have health/happiness/other benefits, but the effect is
| smaller (although the Harvard study seems to control for it
| certain cases, in strange ways).
| ufmace wrote:
| > I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well;
| having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement
| for a happy life.
|
| Let me take this in another direction than most of the other
| comments:
|
| Say you're talking to a homosexual person in a deeply
| homophobic society, one so bad that you risk becoming a pariah
| at the very notion that you might enjoy relations with someone
| of the same sex. Would you tell that person to basically get
| over it and figure out how to be happy anyways because it's
| "not a requirement for a happy life"? If that feels like it
| would be wrong to say, ask why it feels wrong to tell it to
| that person, but okay to say it to the subjects of the article.
|
| I'm not really sure what should be done offhand. I know the
| situations aren't exactly analogous. But if you think it's bad
| to call homosexual people nasty things and they should be
| allowed to love, then how can it be okay to just casually
| dismiss straight people who have trouble finding love as being
| bad people and tell them to get over it?
| rafaelero wrote:
| There is a world of difference between being allowed to love
| and being guaranteed love.
| benlivengood wrote:
| I agree with a fair portion of the original article and my
| comment was almost off-topic because it relates more to the
| author than the article.
|
| The common feeling the author identifies with incels is the
| intense loneliness and unhappiness. By no means am I
| criticizing anyone for their feelings. What I am saying is
| look for the primary underlying cause and dealing with those
| feelings which is to a) deal with mental health issues. b)
| focus on building a strong support system for healthy
| emotional regulation to alleviate _loneliness_ especially.
| Life should be enjoyable with friends and hobbies, not
| miserable.
|
| I also want to point out that what a lot of incels want is
| not a healthy relationship with a woman, but a glorified sex
| slave or sex worker in exchange for treating them with basic
| dignity. This is a far cry from gay people oppressed by
| homophobia. Nonetheless, for the sake of incels who
| understand what healthy relationships are like and want that:
|
| I'm trying to be pragmatic. I'd advise a gay friend to escape
| their strictly homophobic society and help them leave. If
| there's no where to go then I can only offer emotional
| support and try to fix the society. Likewise, I think
| introspection about the true source of intense negative
| feelings is the best thing for anyone who feels intensely
| unhappy about life for any perceived reason. I have felt
| intensely unhappy in the past and I have a lot of evidence
| now that it was mental health and not circumstances like
| whether I had a partner or not, despite it feeling like the
| cause sometimes. Love and sex can mask a lot of negative
| mental health, too.
|
| Pragmatically what else can we do for incels? They feel very
| bad, none of us (speaking for the men) can give them what
| they want, and the only way forward for them that I see is
| helping them find coping skills and support systems to become
| emotionally healthy. Most of them have unrealistic
| expectations and will be disappointed until they correct
| them. The others will have to wait to find the right partner
| while otherwise enjoying their lives.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other
| men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you. A
| partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close
| friends humans are supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm
| not the best at doing this, to my own detriment, but I think
| it's basically the solution.
|
| I agree with you in that this is the best solution, but modern
| employment is making that _hard_. When you have a 1h single-way
| commute, an 8 hour regular work day with an hour of lunch
| break, another hour of "expected" overtime and "expected"
| taking part in socializing events to "fit to corporate
| culture", you lose 11-13 hours each day to work and are
| probably exhausted. Add another one and half hours to make
| breakfast and dinner and 8 hours of sleep, that doesn't leave
| much space for any activities. And God may help you if you're
| one of the persons who has to take on a second or third job to
| make rent.
|
| Boomers always complain my generation are "snowflakes" and
| depression ain't real... yeah no. Depression is real and these
| people had the luxury of being able to afford two kids, a house
| and a decent car on one person's salary without ridiculous
| overtime. Times have changed _and not for the better_.
| screye wrote:
| >Lonely? Make strong friendships!
|
| Poor? Get rich?
|
| Self-fulfilling prophecies are futile.
|
| > romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a
| happy life
|
| We have proof of various intelligent animals, domesticated and
| wild, that display signs of depression, loneliness and self-
| harm when separated from their bonded partner. If anything, the
| need for intimacy and romance are central to life as we know
| it.
| tryonenow wrote:
| >This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only
| thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is their
| partner then something is wrong. Mental health is no joke and
| not being able to enjoy life is usually a symptom of an
| underlying cause. Depression is probably the most common but
| anxiety disorders can be similarly hard.
|
| This is nonsense. The instinct to reproduce is inescapable for
| the vast majority of people. Without it humans would not exist.
| There is only so much social conditioning that can be done to
| override the innate drive for partnership and sex. Ignoring
| this basic drive, which is implicit in Maslow's hierarchy of
| needs, disenfranchises young men who are disproportionately
| driven by evolutionarily derived instinct to seek romantic
| female companionship.
|
| >A partner is not a replacement for the natural circle of close
| friends humans are supposed to have
|
| No, more like friends are not a replacement for intimacy.
| [deleted]
| fnord77 wrote:
| inceldom is a form of covert narcissism.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > the best explanation that I've heard for the feeling men have
| of basic unhappiness without romance and sex is toxic
| masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep emotional
| relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make strong
| friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you and
| enjoy your company and validate you
|
| I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close
| friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which
| are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that I
| want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a replacement
| for a close circle of friends, but neither is close circle of
| friends a replacement for a partner.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > I'm not sure I buy this. I'm a man who has lots of close
| friendships (many of which are with women, but some of which
| are with men), and I still feel like it's not enough and that
| I want a romantic/sexual partner. A partner is not a
| replacement for a close circle of friends, but neither is
| close circle of friends a replacement for a partner.
|
| I think the difference is between wants and needs. Aside from
| a very small number of people most of us need friends and
| family who care about us and meet our emotional needs.
| Children need this unconditionally but adults have to take
| responsibility of their emotional needs and fulfill them in a
| healthy way by making and keeping friends. I think sexual and
| romantic desires are not needs; they are very strong desires
| and their fulfillment is definitely wonderful but life can be
| happy and fulfilling without them.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss it as a want for most
| people. I would wager most men feel like emasculated
| failures if they cannot attract a mate when surrounded by
| single women. It seems unlikely that a large portion of men
| only view romantic success as a mere cherry on top.
| watwut wrote:
| But that is basically wanting trophy wife. So you have
| her, do that you can show off to other guys.
|
| And I mean, she will eventually figure out and resent
| that.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not the parent, but I don't think friends are a substitute
| for a romantic relationship, but having friends is certainly
| better and more comforting when you're not in a relationship
| rather than being truly alone.
|
| Regardless, men _in_ romantic relationships should still be
| sure to cultivate strong friendships
| seryoiupfurds wrote:
| If you are lonely, your feelings are invalid and you are guilty
| of toxic masculinity.
|
| Can you imagine why lonely people might not be receptive to
| this argument?
| Supermancho wrote:
| > This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the
| only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is
| their partner then something is wrong
|
| When you get older, a partner (or children) are important to
| keep you going. Your body will fail you. Your mind will fail
| you. Your life will end and (statistically) it will be a long
| downward slope. Binding yourself to the right person keeps that
| slope more even, for longer.
|
| People who think being alone is great are right, until some
| point after the slide begins that has slowly eaten away at your
| own ability.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| So you are saying to marry is a way to earn yourself a free
| nurse in old age? I say better make enough money to pay for a
| nurse.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| So it seems like old age is the right time to start
| relationships, as almost everyone will be a lot more willing
| to start one, and exclusivity will be valued a lot more for
| practical reasons
| s_dev wrote:
| > until some point after the slide begins that has slowly
| eaten away at your own ability.
|
| Whats your commentary on people who marry and then divorce
| very late in life like Bill Gates? After all if the primary
| purpose was to protect against this aggressively lonely stage
| in life -- no fault divorce has thrown that guarantee out the
| window.
|
| They seem to now be in the same position as long term single
| people -- except it's a massive uprooting stressor placed on
| you in your final years.
| Supermancho wrote:
| A couple billion dollars generally ensures you'll have
| maximum potential capability until you expire.
| s_dev wrote:
| Right but the example wasn't a billionaire per se -- just
| someone who divorced late in life. Bill Gates just being
| a good recent example of that.
| gopalv wrote:
| > People who think being alone is great are right,
|
| I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the quote.
|
| The same thought expressed as "she makes me happy" and "she's
| the only thing that makes me happy" are different because of
| the implied loss of everything (that you will give up
| everything else that could make you happy to have this person
| stay).
|
| > until some point after the slide begins that has slowly
| eaten away at your own ability.
|
| I'd say that is pragmatic, but a very selfish thought.
|
| My parents were taught that by their society ("successful
| kids" == "retirement plan"), but they didn't follow through
| with that thought during our upbringing - if anything, they
| thought they were paying it forward.
|
| For an american comparison, the silent generation of America
| were a lot like my parents in their attitude towards the
| future (bright, but built for the kids).
| Supermancho wrote:
| > I think the critical part is the "only thing" in the
| quote
|
| This is editorial added by the commenter, which is
| incidental to the point and does not purport to even hold
| the meaning of "she's the only thing that makes me happy".
| This is not literally meaning "the only happiness I feel".
| Ostensibly, the man still finds happiness in sleeping,
| eating, etc but a good partner fills a particular kind of
| happiness that is near impossible to replace.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| While I love being in a relationship, you go too far to imply
| that all humans need a relationship. There are many people in
| history who have lived on their own, even as hermits, and
| been happy that way. Perhaps it's not the right lifestyle for
| you, but your lifestyle isn't the right fit for everyone else
| either.
| decafninja wrote:
| I agree with this. Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but I
| feel it can apply to most people.
|
| For a while, I could have been described as "incel" (as in
| the literal description of the term, not the negative
| connotations it has picked up). I was not exactly popular
| with the ladies, and my dating history was close to
| nonexistent. My now wife was my first girlfriend and we met
| when I had pretty much thrown in the towel and given up on
| romantic relationships.
|
| In an alternate version of my life I could have lived the
| single life and filled it with other activities and material
| possessions. I could imagine myself being happy to some
| extent living like that into my 30s, my 40s, maybe even early
| 50s. But after that?
|
| Now I can't imagine life without her at my side.
|
| I think there is a lot to be said for having a life partner
| that is beyond just a good friend and always has your back
| (yes I'm aware not all relationships/marriages are
| functional). Especially as the two of you grow older.
|
| I feel the same about kids. We don't have immediate plans for
| kids. Right now we can imagine living without kids forever,
| but at the same time we also feel this will change and we'll
| regret not having one when we are in our 50s 60s or 70s, etc.
| the_af wrote:
| You have a point, but in this case the author of the article
| says:
|
| > _I was a bit of an oddity in that I was anticipating
| marriage since early adolescence; that outsized-value for
| relationships came with what I feel were comparably overgrown
| feelings of loneliness. I got absurdly lucky when I found my
| wife, but I spent every day without her more or less
| miserable. It's arguable she's the only reason I'm able to be
| happy._
|
| So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was unhappy
| until he met his wife. That does look like a red flag to me.
| Suppose his marriage goes south, will his (ex) wife now be
| responsible of not only ending the marriage, but also of
| ending all possible happiness in his life? That's an
| unreasonable burden to place on her.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > So it's not old age, but youth in his case that was
| unhappy until he met his wife.
|
| Some people feel the existential dread before it is
| realized. This is shared by both sexes and sometimes
| expressed at absurdly young ages without prompting.
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| Yes, that's absolutely correct. In my case at least I
| remember occasionally waking up when I was very young in
| hysterics because of general existential dread related to
| death.
| the_af wrote:
| Would finding a romantic partner help with existential
| dread related to death? You will not only worry about
| your own death, but that of your partner's as well. Some
| degree of this is normal and expected, as it's part of
| being human, but if it reaches the pathological levels
| described by the author of TFA...
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| > Would finding a romantic partner help with existential
| dread related to death?
|
| For me it did not.
| c22 wrote:
| I remember becoming interested in finding a life partner
| from as young as 7 or 8. I spent my teens and early 20s
| turning off girls with my seriousness and didn't manage
| to get laid until my late 20s. I was sore about it at the
| time, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't meet with more
| success because I likely would have ended up marrying
| someone who would not have been a suitable lifelong
| match.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| I think the word "only" is key in that sentance.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yes, but that's different. And certainly "empty nest
| syndrome" is a thing too, but I think there's a large
| difference between acclimating to a new normal and general
| mental/physical degradation vs starting out in this mental
| state in the beginning of your life.
|
| I like doing everything with my wife. It would be hard
| imagining life without her! Or my kids. But I wasn't an
| unhappy mess before I met her.
| thekashifmalik wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow; sex and sexual activity are a part of
| the first level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
|
| Note, it's not intimacy but sex itself. Intimacy lies on the
| 3rd level.
| scriptkiddy wrote:
| And what makes you think Maslow was right? Just because
| someone wrote something down or a belief is held as true in
| the Zeitgeist does not make it objectively true. There are
| many things that we hold as "true" which we really can't say
| are objective fact.
|
| I'm not trying to be combative, I just believe that it's
| important to question things we believe to be true when we
| don't fully understand the reasoning.
|
| Admittedly, though I know OF Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I
| have no idea HOW Maslow came to their conclusions. So, I just
| looked it up:
|
| > The most significant limitation of Maslow's theory concerns
| his methodology. Maslow formulated the characteristics of
| self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative
| method called biographical analysis.[1]
|
| > He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he
| identified as being self-actualized. From these sources, he
| developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of
| this specific group of people, as opposed to humanity in
| general.[1]
|
| > From a scientific perspective, there are numerous problems
| with this particular approach. First, it could be argued that
| biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as
| it is based entirely on the opinion of the researcher.
| Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces the
| validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow's operational
| definition of self-actualization must not be blindly accepted
| as scientific fact.[1]
|
| Doesn't seem like the experiment was very rigorous or even
| scientific.
|
| The linked article goes on to explain more modern and
| scientific research on the subject that seems to disprove
| some of the original hierarchy's assumptions.
|
| [1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#evaluation
| ayyy wrote:
| You might be confused because Maslow thought sex was on the
| same level as food and sleep.
|
| Of course, today, the idea that men need sex simply because
| they are alive is repulsive.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Try substituting 'crave' for 'need' there. You're assigning
| moral weight to something that acts more like hunger, or
| attempting to breathe whilst drowning.
|
| People can adapt to this lack more gracefully than they can
| adapt to drowning, but it's not a thinking process being
| addressed here. This is an animal drive and you can't
| switch it off just because it's ungraceful.
| andi999 wrote:
| Why is this idea repulsive?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think they are conflating needing sex with deserving or
| being garunteed sex.
| ayyy wrote:
| Yes, I've conflated the idea of "needing" something with
| the idea of "deserving" something.
|
| For example, some people need food, but they don't
| deserve it just because they're alive. We call that
| hunger.
|
| Other people need housing, but they don't deserve it just
| because they're alive. We call that homelessness.
|
| Some need sex, but they don't deserve it just because
| they're alive. We call those people incels.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Why don't you think people deserve housing and food, in
| the richest country in the history of the world? Our
| society could absolutely provide them, it just doesn't
| because they're "not worthy".
| alex_smart wrote:
| Sorry what? USA doesn't provide food to poor people? I
| find that a little hard to believe. Even India, with one
| tenth the resources per capita, manages to do that.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| They do, food stamps are a monthly allotment on a debit
| card for low income households.
| keerk43 wrote:
| I think in this context it's not about toxic masculinity, but
| simply biology. We're merely animals with big brains, and most
| individual animals have a deep desire to reproduce. So it's not
| exactly weird that historically everywhere in the world young
| men unable to find a partner have been frustrated and a source
| of social problems, especially as with men troubles finding a
| partner tend to correlate with lower socio-economic status in
| general.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| > having a romantic ... relationship is not a requirement for a
| happy life
|
| Do you think having friends is a requirement for a happy life?
| It's not strictly necessary, but they are a positive factor,
| and most people will not be happy entirely devoid of
| friendship.
|
| Having a partner is a friend you commit to and are closer with
| than other friends (generalization, sure). I have friends who I
| would not support through depression, but I would support my
| partner through depression. Needing someone like that is not
| unhealthy. It will be difficult to find someone willing to give
| the same commitment to your friendship as to their partner
| (generalization again).
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > I have friends who I would not support through depression
|
| they aren't your friends then. aquaintences perhaps but not
| real friends. I'd jump through fire for my friends and know
| they would do (and have done) for me. but then I also run a
| tight ship with what I consider a friend. if we haven't gone
| through some kind of shared struggle together we can never be
| friends. that's why most men will have trouble making real
| bonds once they leave their teenage years and early 20ies
| behind. not much new happens (such as puberty) that you
| struggle through as a group. try to make friends in your
| 40ies that are as strong as your oldest friendships and it'll
| be pretty much futile to get anywhere. it's even worse:
| trusting somebody at that age to become a close friend is a
| natural red flag for most men. the smell of danger is too
| high. you're meant to stand on your own feet with that age
| and better be used to (or even enjoy) being alone (if you
| don't have a partner)
| tonyp2121 wrote:
| Why would you not support your friends through depression?
| [deleted]
| corty wrote:
| Because supporting depressed people is depressing and often
| futile. Mental illnesses can be transmissible that way.
|
| Also, supporting a depressed person needs lots of time and
| effort, and while they are depressed they give nothing back
| except bad vibes.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Mental illnesses can be transmissible that way.
|
| The medical term for what you are talking about is
| compassion fatigue. It's symptoms look a lot like
| depression: "People who experience compassion fatigue may
| exhibit a variety of symptoms including lowered
| concentration, numbness or feelings of helplessness,
| irritability, lack of self-satisfaction, withdrawal,
| aches and pains, or work absenteeism."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You're making assumptions that you won't find yourself in
| the same state one day where you require the selfless
| help of others.
| corty wrote:
| No, I'm not. While I would appreciate help in such a
| situation, I can fully understand anyone walking away.
| Being a bother to people and needy is one of the worst
| parts of being ill.
| tonyp2121 wrote:
| Thinking your depressed friend is a bother to yourself
| has told me that I'm very blessed you and I are not
| friends.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I'm very glad we're not friends.
|
| edit: I just found this meme:
| https://i.imgur.com/WCzNW77.png and I decided to link it
| here. People think friendship is something that is built
| over years because it takes years in order to have
| finally made it through enough hardship and shared
| struggle so calling each other friends is justified. This
| is the literal meaning of having a friend. You know
| they'll help you even you got nothing to give and without
| expecting anything in return from them.
| corty wrote:
| > You know they'll help you even you got nothing to give
| and without expecting anything in return from them.
|
| I cannot decide if that is more abusive or more
| romanticized.
|
| If you expect your friends to be there for you without
| you returning anything, you are abusing them. That isn't
| friendship, that is exploitation.
|
| And if your friend is there for you even though you are
| incapable of returning anything, it is incredibly
| romantic. But also usually very limited, because that
| drain on your friend has consequences and needs to either
| be equalized by something (not you) or suck your friend
| dry until he himself is incapable. Which is a very un-
| romantic ending, because it leaves the world with 2
| emotional cripples.
|
| For me, friendship is also very much about knowing the
| limits of what i should make my friends suffer through.
| xenihn wrote:
| It's important for you to understand the difference between
| actual clinical depression, which is fully treatable with
| medication, and depression as a symptom of personality
| disorders, which is not.
|
| I don't know if you have ever dealt with the latter, or if
| perhaps you are part of that group, but encountering
| someone who is can be enough to turn you away from ever
| potentially being involved with anyone displaying
| depressive symptoms. There's just too much risk to one's
| personal life and well-being if they end up being the "bad"
| kind of depressed person, and not the "good" kind.
| ikiris wrote:
| Because they're self centered and only want friends when
| it's convenient for them.
| screye wrote:
| It is one thing to nominally 'support' friends through
| depression and another help them see it through to an
| under-defined end.
|
| Supporting a depressed person will inevitably take a huge
| toll on your own mental health. That's aside from the time
| and physical effort it would take up. I am assuming that
| the friend has some understanding of depression to begin
| with, which from my personal experience is rarely the case.
|
| I have supported a couple of friends through depression,
| and it is exhausting. In most cases I was only around them
| for weeks, and it drained happiness from my life. At time I
| felt like cutting contact, because depressed people are
| insufferable. The only reason I stayed to help was because
| I had personally gone through a similar situation recently,
| and didn't want to wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a
| friend.
|
| It's like having a special needs child or being the carer
| for dependent parent. It is easy to say that you'd gladly
| do it, but the sad reality is you'll find yourself wishing
| for a better situation (with all the guilt in the world)
| once you are knee deep in it.
| slver wrote:
| > This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the
| only thing making or allowing a person to be happy in life is
| their partner then something is wrong.
|
| Vast majority of people are only happy when they're in a
| relationship and have a circle of friends. We've evolved this
| way. If you have no friends, you focus on your partner to get
| this social interaction.
|
| When you have no friends, no partner, then you turn to poor
| substitutes for social engagement, like online forums. If you
| ask me that's the red flag (using Internet a lot).
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| What a banal comment. You understand precisely nothing and you
| start proclaiming solutions that make no sense and then you
| even have the gal to psychoanalyze the health of the author's
| relationship. A perfect example of the attitude of some that
| refuse to even try to empathize with others.
|
| Your problem is that you just have no ability to comprehend a
| situation that is not very similar to your life. So for you,
| anyone who acts in a way that you do not understand is
| obviously acting up and doing it wrong, rather than acting in a
| way that makes sense given the person's circumstances.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Agreed- not only is it overly judgmental and presumptuous,
| it's also a nitpick of a single passage from an entire
| article. It's not off-topic, but it really swerves discussion
| into a tangent.
| alex_smart wrote:
| 100% agreed.
| rayiner wrote:
| > This is basically a red flag for any relationship.
|
| This is a very odd western view of things. None of my
| Bangladeshi aunts would find it at all controversial if a young
| man said he was sad because he was chronically unable to find a
| relationship. Humans are supposed to be in intimate
| relationships of some sort, for the purposes of making
| children. Friends and hobbies aren't a replacement.
|
| I find the ease with which people throw around "codependency"
| similarly perplexing. I don't doubt that this situation exists
| among some people. But normal healthy marriage involves a large
| degree of codependency. The idea you need to be a standalone
| individual who would be happy with or without their spouse is
| inconsistent with how people actually work.
| electrondood wrote:
| I think the criticism was that the post's author expressed
| being deeply unhappy with himself to begin with, and the
| relationship was more like a bandaid that only covered up the
| underlying personal issues.
| rini17 wrote:
| But it can equally well be the other way around: loneliness
| causes the unhappiness.
|
| That's very unfortunate tendency how everyone here first
| assumes some clear-cut cause and effect, and then goes on
| from there to interpret someone's expressed feelings.
| alex_smart wrote:
| Yup, I am from India and the experience of men from South
| Asian countries completely negates the argument in the
| original comment. Most men in these cultures have no problem
| finding strong friendships and family bonds, but can still
| struggle with loneliness and self-esteem when they fail to
| find intimate relationships.
| [deleted]
| mancerayder wrote:
| >I think that's the strongest criticism of incels as well;
| having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement
| for a happy life.
|
| Strongly disagree, unless you have low testosterone. Nowhere on
| Earth except in possibly some religious circles do people
| mentally push away and control to the point of elimination from
| awareness their sexual desires and not suffer for it in some
| form. You don't need to be a Freudian to know that the drive
| exists and gets out, somehow. If you have a low drive, then it
| makes sense that it would be viewed as optional.
| rafaelero wrote:
| I mean, if you apply this same reasoning, then "eating this
| big mac is extremely necessary unless you have one of these
| weird genes that makes you not crave these type of foods"
| becomes also a valid argument. It's not about what humans
| feel they need, it's about what they can live without without
| tearing their lives apart.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Not analogus at all, there's a wealth of consumable objects
| other than a Big Mac to sate your hunger. Setting aside
| fetishism, there's really just one object that sates sexual
| drive and that's a human being. Or do you think a sex doll
| is an adequate substitute with no second-order effects?
| rafaelero wrote:
| Me wanting to be famous can only be satiated by other
| people considering me an enjoyable person. But would you
| consider that I would be unhappy if I failed at being
| famous?
| alex_smart wrote:
| >Lonely? Make strong friendships! Spend your time with other
| men who like you and enjoy your company and validate you.
|
| Men can feel lonely and unhappy and unfulfilled when they are
| involuntarily celibate even after having strong relationships
| with other men and with their families.
|
| This has been my experience talking to hundreds of men in
| India. India has a strong family culture and a strong culture
| of strong friendships between men (sometimes even involving
| completely platonic hand-holding which is perceived as weird by
| the West) but not much of a culture of dating before marriage.
| The dating pool has a huge under-supply of women, so most men
| that do want to date would never find a girlfriend. In my
| experience, many of these men _really_ struggle with loneliness
| and self-esteem. Eventually, they give in to the family
| pressure and just agree to an arranged marriage.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| EDIT to add: the best explanation that I've heard for the
| feeling men have of basic unhappiness without romance and sex
| is toxic masculinity; the general societal rejection of deep
| emotional relationships between straight men. Lonely? Make
| strong friendships! Spend your time with other men who like you
| and enjoy your company and validate you. A partner is not a
| replacement for the natural circle of close friends humans are
| supposed to have. I'll be honest that I'm not the best at doing
| this, to my own detriment, but I think it's basically the
| solution.
|
| I don't agree with this. The desire to bone isn't 'toxic
| masculinity' and isn't something easily substituted with more
| friends (unless they are of the "with benefits" variety). In
| me, at least, it is a distinct and real feeling of need without
| easy substitutes. More friends may lead to more romantic
| opportunities, sure, but that is indirect and subject to
| circumstance.
| lurquer wrote:
| Even the most logical and unemotional person has to grapple
| with the pon farr every now and again.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| it's also a question of age I think.
|
| what I recall from my time in my 20ies my desire to be
| sexually active was a lot more dominant and in charge of my
| higher faculties than what it is today nearing 50.
|
| biology determines how strongly we feel we need to be with a
| partner I think. I accepted much more toxicity and negativity
| just to not be alone (allowing control by my partner over my
| emotions and was far more ready to compromise) than what I'm
| today.
|
| Today any potential relationship needs to be solid on a
| mental level first before I'd even consider going further.
| That certainly wasn't the case in my early 20ies. Also I'm
| today able to spend time by myself (and not just get by but
| really enjoy my own company, thoughts etc ...)
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I think that varies highly between individuals. I consider
| myself high libido and it's something I have to deal with
| fairly often, otherwise it starts screwing with my
| faculties. And the desire has not changed much since my
| 20s, even if I've learned to be more comfortable in the
| things that intersect with it
|
| The concept of a dead bedroom absolutely terrifies me.
| Like, why bother with a relationship if the one person you
| can have sex with doesn't ever want to have sex?
| watwut wrote:
| If the primary thing you want is sex, does it makes sense
| to tie some relationship to it? Like, in place where
| prostitution is legal, all you would need is either that
| or partner that don't mind you having extra.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a primary thing, more like an
| essential component of a romantic relationship.
| Otherwise, a couple is what? Very committed best friends
| (I would hope)?
|
| And on your other point, polyamory is increasingly common
| and a very valid way for people to approach such an
| inclination
| cushychicken wrote:
| >The desire to bone isn't 'toxic masculinity' and isn't
| something easily substituted with more friends (unless they
| are of the "with benefits" variety)
|
| Wow, that's _two_ turns of phrase that erode your point in
| one sentence.
| fellellor wrote:
| This sounds pretty ignorant and insensitive. What someone wants
| or needs to live a happy life cannot be generalised. While I
| don't think people owe you more than some empathy and
| politeness, they shouldn't also be allowed to make sweeping
| judgments about your character on the basis of what you hold
| valuable or not.
| corty wrote:
| It can be generalized. Sex drive is a biological imperative.
| To suppress it takes a lot of effort and adaptation.
| Workarounds take a lot of effort.
|
| When you buy certain species of pets, you will only be able
| to buy them in pairs. Holding them solo is considered animal
| cruelty. I do consider holding humans solo cruelty, and
| people advocating things like "the world doesn't owe you a
| companion" cruel. Maybe the world isn't able to provide, but
| it should endavour to.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| I think it's normal to be happier when you're in a relationship
| than when you're along, but you certainly shouldn't be
| completely miserable on your own.
|
| There's a quote I read when I was younger that helped me
| realize this and come to find peace with my own loneliness at
| the time.
|
| _" Until you get comfortable being alone, you'll never know if
| you're choosing someone out of love or loneliness."_
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| I remember growing up in the 90s, and in the AOL Instant
| Messenger profiles of my friends, was commonly the quote: "You
| have to love yourself before you can love another." Also a lot
| of DMB song lyrics... it was a different time.
|
| I remember there being a few hopeless kids in high school, but
| looking back there was also a lot of undiagnosed asperger's and
| who knows what else.
|
| What I'm really curious about is if the number of Incels is
| increasing through the years, or if now the underserved
| mentally ill just have platforms to espouse their misery. The
| Incel seems to be singularly focused on sex. Companionship,
| shared interests, mutual respect don't seem to get any daylight
| in their psyche. I would like to blame the consumption of
| instant, abundant hard core pornography. But I don't have any
| data to back that claim up. I'm just thinking of a difference
| from the 90s (I know porn existed online back then, but come
| on, everyone was on dial up) versus today.
| a_puppy wrote:
| Hi. I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, had difficulty
| forming romantic relationships. For most of my life, I also had
| a lot of trouble forming close friendships. So this is a topic
| that is very personal for me, and please listen carefully to
| what I have to say.
|
| First: close friendships are not a substitute for romantic
| relationships. Friendship and romance are two distinct needs.
| Not every human is wired to need romance, but _many_ people
| are. At this point in my life, I'm fortunate enough to have a
| circle of close platonic friends, but I'm still single, and I'm
| acutely feeling the lack of romance.
|
| That being said, you have a valid point that romantic
| relationships are not a substitute for close friendships. Some
| incels want to get a girlfriend as a substitute for making
| friends, and I agree that's a bad idea. But telling them "make
| strong friendships" is not helpful! Most people in this
| situation will struggle to form to close friendships for the
| same reasons that they struggle to form romantic relationships.
|
| So how _should_ the problem be fixed? There are no easy
| solutions. And there especially aren't easy solutions that the
| sufferers can implement on their own; if there was an easy way
| out, they would have done it already. I believe this problem
| will continue until _society_ changes how it treats socially
| awkward people. Society needs to be more sensitive towards
| people who lack social skills, and stop demonizing them. For
| example, there's a tendency to conflate "incels" in the sense
| of "misogynistic assholes who use terms like
| Chad/Stacy/femoid", with "incels" in the sense of "any man
| who's lonely and complains about it". The former group is a
| tiny fraction of the latter group, and conflating them is very
| unfair to the latter group. This needs to stop.
| scarmig wrote:
| > having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a
| requirement for a happy life.
|
| This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant,
| if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy
| lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if
| the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without
| relationships as they would be with them.
|
| Relationships bring significant happiness. People who are in
| relationships self-report more happiness. They're richer. They
| live longer lives. You might say that I'm mistaking cause and
| effect: maybe happier/richer/healthier people are more likely
| to enter into relationships? This is probably part of the
| effect, but not the majority of it. If someone randomly ends up
| a widower from their partner experiencing a sudden, tragic
| accident, their happiness doesn't remain level. In fact, it
| substantially decreases: widowers have some of the highest
| suicide rates of any demographic group.
|
| Relationships aren't some crazy random idea that just happened
| to develop in 2020 USA. They exist universally, across all
| cultures and times. All of them consider a relationship as a
| good, important goal (even as the typical attributes of
| relationships do vary). It's hard to name any facet of culture
| as universal as that.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single.
|
| Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a
| relationship and be happy!
|
| Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
|
| I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for
| you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged /
| worse off / going down the drain because you're single.
| They're just jealous you can travel and play video games
| whenever you want. =)
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >>Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
|
| Married people live longer on average compared to single
| people.
|
| https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-
| guides/news/20191010/marriage-t...
|
| Just wanted to add to the dog pile. ;)
| bradlys wrote:
| > I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good
| for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged
| / worse off / going down the drain because you're single.
| They're just jealous you can travel and play video games
| whenever you want. =)
|
| This is infantilizing people's desires. Enjoying being
| single is something that many people just _cannot_ do. To
| me, it 's like telling someone who is paralyzed from the
| waist down to just walk it off - you can still enjoy all
| that life has to offer... Assuming those things don't
| involve the use of your legs!
|
| For many people - this is debilitating. A lot of people are
| just wired up this way.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > Way to dogpile on people when they're down.
|
| > They're just jealous you can travel and play video games
| whenever you want. =)
|
| This comment comes off defensive and hypocritical to me,
| rather than contributing to the conversation. You're
| basically saying we shouldn't talk about good things if
| some people don't have those good things; and also screw
| people with good things because they're actually jealous of
| the have-nots
|
| I think life is incomparably better with a partner. It's
| not a question and it's not even close: there's nothing I
| miss about being single and almost every single thing about
| my life today is better because I'm in a relationship than
| if I weren't. It's cheaper, I have someone to share the
| good times with, I have someone to support me in my bad
| times, I have a teammate for life's plans and adventures,
| and I never feel lonely. I can also travel and play video
| games whenever I want; in fact my partner often buys me
| videogames and I often buy her things for her to enjoy on
| her own.
|
| That's not dogpiling on anyone. It's not my fault if
| someone's single, and it may or may not be true that being
| in a (good) relationship would make them happier. It
| definitely makes me happier, and statistically it's a
| massive boost to quality of life for the vast majority of
| people. It's not fun to think that someone's worse off, but
| changing what you say doesn't change reality. This is meant
| to be a place where people can discuss ideas and concepts,
| and not talking about the benefits of relationships doesn't
| make them any less real.
| newsat13 wrote:
| This comment sounds so dismissive. And yet the first
| thing noted as benefits of a relationship is "cheaper".
| That's truly sad.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I have been single, then married, then single again. I
| can tell that for me single is better. So for each one
| its own. It irks me when someone tells other people what
| is good for them.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think anyone is doing that. It's just the case
| that many (most?) people are happier and more fulfilled
| in a committed, long term relationship. It doesn't mean
| that there aren't people for whom that's not the case,
| and it doesn't mean that those people are somehow
| defective.
|
| But this entire post is about how some people get sad,
| angry, and/or hateful when they want to be in a
| relationship but continually fail at it. It seems off-
| topic and missing the point to bring up a "well,
| actually" about how some people don't want or need that.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| To be frank, you response sounds a bit more defensive
| than mine.
|
| Are you arguing that if someone claims that it's possible
| to be perfectly content and happy while single, that that
| somehow undermines the happiness you've found with your
| partner, as if the mere claim that contentment can be
| found without a partner invalidates the fact that you're
| happy with your partner?
|
| I can easily read your response as saying something akin
| to:
|
| "You're single and happy? Nah. You only think you're
| happy because you haven't experienced true happiness.
| Only partnered people can truly experience the
| incomparable joy that I have found, unlike those
| benighted singles."
|
| You're happy with your partner. Good for you! That's
| awesome and amazing. But there's no reason to use that
| happiness as a reason to look down on other people.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Your reading would be an unreasonable stretch, as I
| explicitly acknowledge in my comment that for a random
| person,
|
| > it may or may not be true that being in a (good)
| relationship would make them happier.
|
| I don't know if person XYZ would be happier single in a
| relationship, and I don't have an opinion on it. Everyone
| should be free to do what they want, whether or not it
| makes them happy, and I don't care either way. What I was
| disagreeing with were your implications that (1) just
| because some people are single and unhappy, nobody can
| talk about how good and happy relationships can be, and
| (2) talking about being in a happy relationship is
| "dogpiling" on unhappy, single people. To take your
| wording, there's no reason to use unhappiness as a reason
| to shut down conversation
| srean wrote:
| Nowhere in the parent post does he seem looking down on
| anybody. Stating that life can be a whole lot better with
| the right partner is a morally neutral statement
| scarmig wrote:
| I see far more people saying the opposite, that if you're
| single and unhappy, it's your fault for not trying hard
| enough to be happy.
|
| Some people need relationships to be happy. Some don't.
| It's silly to deny the existence of either group, but most
| discourse seems to deny that it's valid for someone to see
| a relationship as an important component of their path to
| happiness.
| kreft wrote:
| > They're just jealous you can travel and play video games
| whenever you want. =)
|
| To infantilize people like this is more hurtful really. We
| both know your allotted time with a Nintendo isn't a source
| of envy. It's a problem, it needs addressing. If you've
| successfully overridden one of your most primal biological
| instincts then good for you, you don't need to read all
| this. However, I suspect most people who say they are just
| as happy single are not entirely truthful (to themselves).
| cushychicken wrote:
| Another way to phrase the original top comment (which, btw,
| is _very deservedly_ the top comment): "If you can't be
| happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with a
| partner."
|
| Happiness comes from within. Pegging your happiness on
| something external to yourself - material wealth, social
| standing, another human being - is giving away all agency
| you have over your own happiness.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >pegging your happiness on something external to yourself
| - material wealth, social standing, another human being
|
| You have incomplete and varying, but nonzero levels of
| control over all these things.
|
| I agree with the whole "if you're not happy alone" rule
| of thumb but happiness isn't a binary. It's a scale. And
| amassing a little more wealth, becoming a little more
| respected, having a partner, all those things can add
| amounts of happiness that push someone from "unhappy" to
| "good enough". Look at the reverse case when people lose
| all that stuff if you really want to see how evident it
| is.
| scarmig wrote:
| Happiness comes from the interaction of a person with
| lived events.
|
| See, for example:
|
| https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/36/6/1244/819019
|
| A death of a parent is identified as one of the most
| significant causes of unhappiness. If your happiness is
| negatively impacted by the death of your parents, is the
| issue that your parents died, or that you've given away
| your agency to choose your own happiness?
| d0mine wrote:
| > Happiness comes from within.
|
| It sounds good but it is BS e.g., money won't make you
| happy but the absence of money would make unhappy many
| people.
|
| You can try to become Stoic or Buddhist monk but it is
| not the natural state for most humans.
| thelean12 wrote:
| > Another way to phrase the original top comment (which,
| btw, is very deservedly the top comment): "If you can't
| be happy on your own, there's no way you'll be happy with
| a partner."
|
| Why does everyone in this thread like posting definitive
| statements like this? As if it's universally true?
|
| Life isn't as black and white as people like to think.
|
| I was not much of a happy person before I found my (now)
| wife many years ago. She helps me deal with life in a way
| no therapist could ever do (and vise versa, me to her).
| We're in it together and help each other.
|
| I could not figure out how to be happy on my own. Once I
| found my partner, I was able to be happy.
|
| This isn't universal, of course. Many people are able to
| be happy on their own, but it's so strange reading
| definitive stuff like "there's no way!" when it's just
| not black and white.
| scarmig wrote:
| People say it as a sugar-coated way to express "if you're
| unhappy, it's because of a character flaw, so you should
| internalize your frustration, not express it to other
| people, deal with it privately, and definitely don't
| politicize it."
| rafaelero wrote:
| Not disagreeing with your main point, but twin studies show
| that marriage status account for only 1% of variance in
| happiness. So maybe the idea that most people need a romantic
| relationship to be happy is a little overblown?
| scarmig wrote:
| Do you have a particular study you could point me to? I do
| find twin studies useful.
|
| I found
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3629371/
|
| which addresses a variation of the question. The unpaired
| half of twins with discordant marital status show
| significantly (in the case of men) higher rates of
| depression; women also seem to too, but because there were
| so few twins of discordant marital status in general, the
| test is pretty underpowered and so the confidence intervals
| are huge. Given that, it's actually pretty impressive that
| it was able to find any significant differences at all.
| rafaelero wrote:
| Sure, here it is: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.111
| 1/j.1467-9280.1996.tb...
|
| Thanks for sharing the findings of your quick research.
| Depression score is indeed not exactly the same as
| happiness, or life satisfaction, but for the purpose of
| our conversation I would say they are all close enough to
| what matter to us, so they are all sufficiently
| meaningful (and probably very correlated to each other).
|
| Eyeballing the paper you cited, there appears to be
| evidence that widowed and divorced people are more
| depressed, but not single people (compared to the
| baseline, married people). At least when running the
| regression with all the other important variables
| controlled. Am I reading it wrong?
| scarmig wrote:
| For the paper I found, I was looking at Table 4, which is
| of single never-married people comparing to the baseline
| of married people. Table 3 seems to correspond to what
| you're seeing. Skimming the discussion, they guess that
| the difference in depression and BMI scores between never
| married/married is due to health selection effects,
| although AFAICT there's not really a way to differentiate
| between health selection effects and marriage playing a
| causal role.
|
| I'll take a look at your paper later.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Seems like no one ever heard of church. I saw so many sewer pigs
| of both genders score a new young spouse it was rediculous.
| j3s wrote:
| This person is basically saying "show sympathy to those with
| intentionally despicable viewpoints, because maybe you can
| convert them". Stating this ulterior motive undermines the whole
| point - if your motivation is to change them, it is not to
| understand them or sympathize with them.
|
| It also begs the question: are these newly formed sympathizers
| susceptible to being converted themselves? Could the sympathy
| train lead to even more incels, not fewer?
| draw_down wrote:
| If you think that's bad, wait till you see what happens when the
| husband isn't interested in sex! Guess who's fault it is in that
| scenario.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The average man will go through a period of involuntary celibacy
| and I don't believe this is a new thing but we're now good at
| labeling. History shows that 80% of women reproduced compared to
| only 40% of men! https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-
| who-stray/2012... (Note not sure the primary source on this stat,
| but the general idea is that polygamy was once common leading to
| fewer men reproducing)
|
| We're doing much better than that today, but how were things
| through history when 60% of men were "incels"? (Generally lots of
| violence)
|
| In the interim, the most restrictive religious social systems
| apportioned one man for one woman, held sex as a reward for
| marriage, and punished those that strayed outside of these lines.
| This achieved the objective of efficient coupling but I don't
| think we would ever want to go back to those repressive systems
| that controlled women.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I know we joke about it a lot, but I think there's a serious
| case to be made that the Internet's ability to connect groups
| of previously unconnected people might end up literally ending
| humanity, or at least severely setting humanity back from a
| human rights standpoint.
|
| "Incels" are one example of this that you're pointing out here,
| where a group of people who've always existed without name are
| now able to group together and create a feedback loop amongst
| themselves that results in literally mass murder.
| waterhouse wrote:
| > create a feedback loop amongst themselves that results in
| literally mass murder.
|
| I dispute that causation. Mass murderers are extreme outliers
| that usually have identifiable mental problems, and I would
| say the primary cause of their behavior is those mental
| problems, not whatever particular thing they say triggered
| them. Also, even if you did show that a certain ideological
| group was significantly overrepresented among mass murderers,
| you would have to rule out the other methods of causation
| (e.g. this guy is a loner because of various problems, and he
| joined this group of loners because they welcomed him--
| doesn't mean the group caused him to go commit the murders,
| and in fact it's conceivable that being in the group reduces
| the likelihood of the potential murderers actually going and
| doing it).
| ianai wrote:
| I think the internet can act like an insulating force and
| for certain people a viscous feedback loop. Like it's far
| more easy for certain types of personalities to call
| themselves "incel" and whine about it on the internet than
| get out of their bubble and talk to people. The insularly
| force is clearly amplifying other communities so this is
| probably "just another" instantiation of the same effect.
|
| Edit-I don't know the best way to exit this problem. But
| I'd probably start with telling the disparate groups that
| their positions are not so abnormal and maybe they would be
| happier focusing on other things-like hobbies that require
| time offline. Have your "incel" days and have days you
| force yourself to do something, anything else than think
| that.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| New forms of mass communication can certainly create
| political instability. The connection between the rise of
| Nazi Germany and the increasing widespread radios in
| everyone's homes is an interesting link (1)
|
| (1) https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-
| nazi-pro...
| belorn wrote:
| Reminds me of a case here in Sweden where a father was
| found guilty of attempted murder of his half year old
| child. Just hours before the attempt he had been at the
| hospital begging to be committed since he was hearing
| voices and he was scared that he might hurt someone, but
| the beds was full so he was sent home.
|
| Healthcare for mental health is still very much
| underdeveloped, especially when the patient is male. It is
| just easier to blame the individual.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think that's an extremely interesting take -- that with
| the advent of the Internet, we've created a vehicle for
| mental illness to metastasize, and the only real solution
| is to treat mental illness like we treat malaria or even
| COVID, and upgrade our global healthcare systems to
| handle the influx of this "new" disease variant.
|
| The analogy breaks down when you start to try and think
| of what our "vaccine" might be, though perhaps education
| can be a rough proxy. It's also possible there's nothing
| we can do, and we've reached a spread that is
| incurable...
| bloak wrote:
| "History shows that 80% of women reproduced compared to only
| 40% of men!"
|
| That doesn't necessarily imply polygamy, and it doesn't
| necessarily imply "incels". Imagine a society in which women
| get married at age 16 and typically die during childbirth
| before they reach the age of 32, and men get married at age 32,
| if they live that long, which most of them don't, and then get
| married again when the first wife dies during childbirth. I'm
| not saying that's how it was, but some societies were a bit
| like that and I think you could probably get the 80% and 40%
| numbers with a set-up something like that.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Sure, but the most powerful men today practise polygamy, so
| it's pretty likely that has been going on throughout history
| as well.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I think that you have a good point, there's other factors
| that could contribute to the stats. We have seen that war can
| throw demographics out of balance even in modern times, such
| as Russia after WWII.
| username90 wrote:
| Women have lived longer than men throughout most of history
| and in basically every society, so your theory doesn't hold.
| Childbirth was dangerous but men's work was even more
| dangerous.
| coronasaurus wrote:
| Citation needed. A quick Google search on life expectancy
| during the middle ages tells me that men lived longer than
| women.
| daenz wrote:
| Where do you see that? Every result from my quick
| searching is listing women as longer than men. Example:
| https://www.purplemotes.net/2015/08/23/medieval-life-
| expecta...
| coronasaurus wrote:
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/2847291?seq=1
| istinetz wrote:
| There are A LOT of claims itt, and not nearly enough
| sources for any of it.
|
| It feels like you're right, but what "feels right" turns
| out to be wrong pretty often.
| navait wrote:
| Is there any real policy options we can pursue? We can't assign
| mandatory girlfriends, and even if we could, they may not find it
| was what they wanted.
|
| I can help the poor and destitute much more effectively than I
| can wealthy people with vague psychological issues, and they also
| have more immediate needs. We all have limited time on our hands,
| and in terms of effectiveness, working with incels seems like
| something that's a lot of effort for very little benefit.
| standardUser wrote:
| There are policy options. I suggested in a comment:
| Decriminalize sex work, provide universal mental health
| coverage and implement a more expansive version of sex
| education in schools.
| Sevastopol wrote:
| Is sex that is paid for the same as one in a relationship
| where both people actually desire each other?
|
| The statistics in the article point to the "problem" being
| women's increasing standards that young men can't meet.
| Mental health coverage, polyamory, sexwork, etc. don't seem
| like relevant solutions.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Essentially, what we have right now in the sexual marketplace
| echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the sex is being
| had by a small fraction of the people. The need for sex is
| perhaps as high as the need for money but nobody talks about this
| crushing inequality, perhaps because there is no practical way to
| "tax and redistribute" sex. The problem is worse for men since a
| man needs a certain set of skills and traits to get casual sex,
| but is probably equally bad for the genders in terms of finding
| long term relationships.
|
| When social norms dictated that you must be married to have sex,
| every woman and man paired off and got to have sex, however low
| quality and in however unhappy of a marriage. I'm not sure this
| world is an improvement.
| alcover wrote:
| "It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents
| a second system of differentiation, completely independent of
| money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as
| mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore,
| strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic
| liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces
| phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every
| day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some
| make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's
| known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an
| extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all
| ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise
| an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to
| all ages and all classes of society."
|
| -- Michel Houellebecq, Extension du domaine de la lutte
| toyg wrote:
| _> there is no practical way to "tax and redistribute" sex. _
|
| But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to
| prostitution.
| hn8788 wrote:
| That doesn't work out as well as it sounds. Unsuprisingly,
| the amount of women willing to have sex with strangers for
| money is relatively low. Studies have shown that legalizing
| prostitution increases the rate of human trafficking to meet
| the greater demand.
|
| https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-
| legalized-...
| toyg wrote:
| That's a function of massive income inequality across
| countries, though. Fix that, and the incentive for
| trafficking disappears.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| But fixing income inequality would presumably reduce the
| number of women willing to sell sex, so you're back to
| square 1.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Fixing income inequality creates more opportunities to
| perform activities, which leads to more socialization
| leading to more potential romantic encounters. Hard to
| think about a spouse when you're making $8/hr but
| spending 33% of your life behind a counter.
|
| I also wager a portion of the people who feel they "need
| but can't get sex" may also learn that what they desired
| wasn't what they actually cared that much about.
|
| In this regard, I guess one can argue that prostitution
| is a crutch to a much larger problem that may never truly
| be solved.
| toyg wrote:
| That also depends on other factors. When being a
| prostitute means being a criminal, obviously it's not
| desirable.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Let's start with the assumption that we will have to
| solve this problem while under the constraints of actual
| reality.
| toyg wrote:
| Are you saying that massive economic inequality is
| a-OK...?
|
| These are all big problems we ain't gonna fix in 5 years
| or 10.
| robocat wrote:
| Physical sex is not intimacy.
|
| Sex work leads to some very strange dynamics, because often
| the Johns are desperate for intimacy, but they are paying for
| women that provide zero actual intimacy (because it is
| usually entirely faked.) I am sure there is some ideal world
| where prostitution could satisfy emotional needs, but in my
| admittedly very limited knowledge it doesn't.
|
| Prostitution has been legal in my country since 2003, however
| it is still stigmatised for both men and women (at least for
| my demographic, and I haven't noticed any difference for
| other demographics.)
| [deleted]
| mettamage wrote:
| This.
|
| I sometimes walk by the red light district.
|
| One time I seriously considered having sex with a sex
| worker.
|
| I talked to multiple of them to find a click and I was
| appalled by all my interaction.
|
| I realized that I wanted intimacy leading into sex.
|
| What they offered: strictly penetrative sex and nothing
| else.
|
| As I got older, another issue arose: to what extent is
| intimacy actual intimacy when you are paying for it?
|
| Intimacy implies someone caring about you and you caring
| about him/her. That suddenly means it has an ethical
| component of idealism attached to it.
|
| For me anyways.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> But there is a way to improve supply: give dignity to
| prostitution.
|
| Better yet, guys need to learn to be the kind of man women
| want to fvck. They're not obligated and attraction is non-
| negotiable. Reality can be harsh. Guys need to treat
| themselves with dignity and put themselves together.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The problem is that teaching men to become the kind of men
| that women want to fuck generates pretty toxic men if there
| isn't anything beyond the "fuck." I really do believe the
| old model, where you taught men to be the kind of men that
| women want to _marry,_ is fundamentally different even
| though sex and marriage are closely related. A 18-21 year
| old woman looking for a man to spend the rest of her life
| with is going to look at a broader set of criteria, and
| thus incentivize a broader set of achievements by men, than
| a woman looking to just spend the next hour with a guy.
| Being the kind of guy who women want to marry, so that you
| have the broadest choice of women to marry, requires some
| effort towards the criteria for sexual desirability:
| muscles, grooming, etc., but also things like having a good
| reputation in the community, having a good job, being
| perceived as one who would be a good father, etc.
| notyourday wrote:
| I find it fascinating that non 18-21 women and especially
| men know what are the 18-21 women want in a partner.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I'm not talking about 18-21 year old women now, I'm
| talking about those who got married when extramarital sex
| was taboo. The best place I've seen to hear about how
| they chose their spouse is a radio site called
| StoryCorps.
| nradov wrote:
| People (especially young people) make those decisions
| based on impulse and emotion, then rationalize after the
| fact. You can't believe the explanations they give. Most
| people just say what they think they're supposed to say,
| or what they think would please the interviewer.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Did you even read the article? We are discussing this topic
| from a sympathetic standpoint. Sure, the idea of
| "destigmatize prostitution" is an over simplified magic
| bullet, but so is your response. And their point would
| probably do more towards alleviating the problem than yours
| honestly. You're basically saying "want to solve the
| problem? That's easy: solve the problem."
|
| Different people want different things. Prostitutes want
| money. Maybe "being the kind of man women want to fuck"
| includes being the kind of man prostitutes want to fuck,
| that is, being willing to give them money for sex.
|
| The problem we are discussing is that some people _aren 't_
| desirable for some reason they don't know how to do
| something about. Reality is harsh, that's why in order to
| get to the bottom of it you need more nuance. A lot of men
| out there want you to draw them a picture with crayons that
| depicts what "put themselves together" means. If they knew
| what it meant they'd do it in a heartbeat. Now the one
| thing they don't understand, that's not necessarily a
| solution to their problems but would still help them
| understand, is that there's _not_ a one size fits all
| crayon drawing of that it means. Absolute statements like
| yours and the one you 're replying to don't help much if at
| all.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I think this is a good thought. My own religion gave me
| some direction for how to become to type of man women want,
| but it did leave something to be desired. And then upon
| searching for this sort of direction later in life while
| trying to improve my own relationships I stumbled upon the
| "red pill" communities. There's a lot of nuance to these
| communities as well. They tell men that you can become the
| type of man that women want, and they give you a roadmap to
| do so (work on your personality, lift weights, take care of
| yourself, take care of your life) but unfortunately these
| communities also come with some ideas that range from
| strange to downright misogynistic.
|
| I think there's room for some down to earth, responsible
| men to try and fill this space. Right now the "teach young
| men how to be" space is mostly filled with misogyny and
| terrible pick up artists.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think there's room for some down to earth,
| responsible men to try and fill this space.
| Right now the "teach young men how to be" space
| is mostly filled with misogyny and terrible pick
| up artists.
|
| Goodness yes. The PUA and red pill communities have
| absolutely _poisoned_ this space and, at least in
| America, it 's impossible to see how a healthy
| alternative could even take root. I know that if one
| sprang up, _my_ first reaction would be to lump it in
| with the toxic crap and never give it a second look.
|
| It's a shame because there is absolutely a need for this.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| goes back to the author's statements:
|
| >there's a vast difference between a person who believes
| the stated beliefs of a group as opposed to a person who
| holds membership in a group as a defining part of their
| identity. Imagining a conversation with someone who
| generically believes women should be treated well is a
| much different experience than imagining the same
| conversation with person who boldly declares themselves a
| feminist; the same is true for what you'd expect from a
| talk with an MRA.
|
| Always seems to come down to good intentions, bad actors
| that make such "identities" dangerous. Even if it's an
| otherwise honest person that just wants some self-help
| advice.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It is arguably less effort to be financially successful and
| pay for the encounters you're interested in than change
| your self to meet someone else's ideal, which may or may
| not lead to said encounters.
| tsm_sf wrote:
| The problem is this bizarre set of expectations that's sprung
| up with some folks. Sex isn't equal. It never has been. It
| never will be. Think about it for real for a minute.
| spoonjim wrote:
| You can say the same about wealth, or height, or anything,
| that doesn't change the fact that the people who don't have
| any want some.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I would argue that recent switches to a "pick up style" of
| dating app (e.g. Tindr) exacerbates this problem.
| spoonjim wrote:
| For sure. Most heterosexual women would prefer sex every 10
| days with a very sexually appealing man who is having sex
| with 9 other women than having sex every day with an average-
| looking exclusive Schlub. The latter was their life under the
| proscription of extramarital sex but Tinder allows them the
| former.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Is there a research study on this? I'm not sure I buy into
| the Don Juan hypothesis.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The numbers in the article itself state that more 18-29
| year old women than men are having sex. Excluding gay sex
| this implies the "Don Juan hypothesis" as you call it.
| kemayo wrote:
| Not necessarily -- it could just as well imply that 19-29
| year old women are having entirely-monogamous sex with
| men outside (hopefully _above_ ) the 18-29 range.
|
| Also, that 18-29 chart is about people looking for a
| relationship. The data about actually-having-sex [1] used
| different age ranges, breaking up 18-24 and 25-34. It
| shows a spike of no-sex in 18-24 men, which evens out
| with women once they're into the 25-35 range. The article
| didn't use the handy graph in figure 1 from the study
| which was quite informative: [2]
|
| [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/ful
| larticle...
|
| [2]: https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journ
| al/jaman...
| shejeod wrote:
| This is accurate. When I was 18-24 life sucked, because
| all the younger women were still in high school, and
| almost all of the women my own age were hooking up with
| older guys. The sweet spot for men starts around the late
| 20s.
|
| My hypothesis is that this is because of a pretty
| significant gap in EQ and maturity between young men and
| women. Also women's prime reproductive years (physically)
| are from late teens to early 30s. Men's prime years to be
| able to support their partners is usually starting around
| 30s. Makes sense when you think of it like that.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| cannot be upvoted enough.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Not if you take into account people having sex with large
| age disparities.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I can understand why people think of these as "market
| problems," but I think this angle tends to loom larger than it
| actually is.
|
| It's at its strongest in a 19 year old, "dorm room" context.
| These times mean a lot to people, but in practicality this is a
| short period of time at the end of adolescence. Overall in
| life, relationships are not generally like a market. There's no
| "50% of the girls shagged 50% of the guys" stuff to make it
| like one. Mostly people are in monogamous relationships.
| Discrepancies (in the article) are smaller and are from dating
| patterns between age brackets.
|
| In any case, why analogize? Think of it as a culture. Dating
| culture. Marriage culture. Late 40s hookup culture. Whatever
| "failures" exist are cultural failures.
|
| If it really was mostly a market situation, the market would
| clear.
| Balgair wrote:
| > Essentially, what we have _right now_ in the sexual
| marketplace echoes what we have in the economy... a lot of the
| sex is being had by a small fraction of the people.
|
| (Emphasis mine)
|
| Possibly. DNA analysis shows that for every 17 human females
| that reproduced, one male reproduced. Meaning that quite high
| rates of polygamy, rape, or other unbalancing factors were the
| norm in human history.
|
| http://awakeningtimes.com/8000-years-ago-17-women-reproduced...
|
| http://econintersect.com/pages/analysis/analysis.php?post=20...
| Figure 5
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| There was some mating skew no doubt. But that number is total
| nonsense and the study does not show that.
| pydry wrote:
| >there is no practical way to "tax and redistribute" sex
|
| This is part of the function of anti-bigamy laws and frowning
| upon promiscuity, is it not?
| toyg wrote:
| That's a cap (and supply restriction), not redistribution.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Let this be the moment when the pendulum began to swing back in
| the conservative direction. Conservatives get a lot of things
| wrong but not all of it.
| foogazi wrote:
| > what we have right now in the sexual marketplace echoes what
| we have in the economy...
|
| It's an economy of sorts (age, looks, height), but it also
| follows the financial security aspect. Inequality creates a
| class of people that hoard desirable traits
|
| > When social norms dictated that you must be married to have
| sex, every woman and man paired off and got to have sex,
| however low quality and in however unhappy of a marriage
|
| Might we see a return to conservative values here?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This is a long essay which raises problems but has no solutions,
| and so it is difficult to give a deeply coherent response to it
| which covers all of the points. However, since it seems to focus,
| however nebulously, on "problems with/for men," I can attempt
| something.
|
| When was the last time you hear someone mention "masculinity"
| without "toxic" leading out in front like a particularly ugly
| hood ornament? With that in mind, what are men going to do around
| one another, waving this big TOXIC badge around? Men's groups?
| Derided, often pried apart legally if they reach the level of
| some kind of club. Nor have individual bonds escaped notice: deep
| friendship between men, that's largely reformulated as
| "bromance," because of _course_ men do not understand friendship,
| we have to make everything they do about the pursuit of sex.
|
| You can hear from many married men about the sudden winnowing of
| their friendships based on the approval list. If you're a man who
| is a bachelor, you know that friendships with other bachelor men
| are different than friendship with married men, and quite a bit
| of the latter is the approval factor. Acceptable, if barely,
| would be a "sports bar" with boozy comments to near strangers
| about the performance of strangers; shallow, not deep.
|
| And so modern society has _atomized_ men. To stretch the metaphor
| further, we 're pretty much only allowed covalent bonds with
| women. Being single is out. I can't tell you the number of times
| I have had a co-worker, invariably a woman, say "Don't you _want_
| a girlfriend? "
|
| And thus our only real value is to serve as providers to women,
| if they'll have us. If not, well, we're certainly not supposed to
| hang out with one another and find other things fulfilling. Once
| men with such hunger would fork over their dollars at strip
| clubs; now a new generation has abstracted this away to OnlyFans,
| in keeping with the general trend that previous person-to-person
| interaction will eventually attract a corporation which wants to
| mediate this, for profit.
|
| And the indoctrination goes so deep: Elliot Rodgers, misogynist,
| right? Kills twice as many men as women, but hey, is it like men
| _count_? When was the last time you heard of someone who shot and
| killed men referred to as a "misandrist"? Please, try to recall.
|
| Frankly, the trend of demonizing men cannot continue forever and
| I suspect the repercussions will be disliked, but so many seem to
| focus on staying that particular course, full speed ahead. I'm
| out of the game myself (one might argue that I never really
| entered the field), but I cannot help but feel tremendously for
| the young men today.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> there was a fairly polarized split between the she-
| doesn't-owe-you-sex-you-child crowd and the good-for-him-dump-
| the-frigid-broad edgelords. I envied their respective positions
| and their certainty of being right, because I know too many
| people...
|
| There is a version of this essay that's about establishing who's
| right and wrong, personally and/or publicly. In some cases, those
| essays need to be written. Those don't require much empathy, and
| if they do it's a judicial sort of empathy.
|
| This essay we need more of, at least if we want to know more.
|
| Everyone is responsible for their own arseholery. I do think we
| need to be somewhat firm about what that is or isn't. But drawing
| lines isn't the whole game. Empathy is an actual requirement for
| understanding, because what empathy _is_ , is human's innate
| ability to understand one another when we try.
| [deleted]
| a_band wrote:
| The correlation of the appearance of this phenomenon with the
| rise of porn really shouldn't be ignored.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Porn has been around since the 70's, internet porn since the
| 2000s. The incel phenomenon arrived in the 2010s, around the
| same time dating apps took off.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Assuming porn causes incels, but the golden age of porn started
| at 1969, so that doesnt work. Assuming incels cause porn, has
| porn become more profitable in the past ~20 years? I 'd say
| probably true based on the innovation of the profitability
| models , expecially after onlyfans became a thing
| globular-toast wrote:
| People are very reluctant to talk about porn for some reason.
| Porn is the reason all men are able to (virtually) practise
| polygamy today. But most will adamantly deny that it has
| anything to do with a natural male desire for polygamy.
| gustavo-fring wrote:
| Can't be ignored but that rise was caused by and coincides with
| a ton of other cultural, social, and technological changes.
| a_band wrote:
| I agree. But porn directly targets sexual behavior and
| response. It's the sugar soda to obesity.
|
| But to singly focus on it would also be a mistake.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I agree about the porn thing, but I'd argue that is not so
| much one of the major issues surrounding it so much as
| teens not having sex at the rates they used to. More teens
| are entering college as virgins, men aren't being taught
| how to navigate social/sexual relationships by their
| fathers or friends, media content online holds greater
| value over real personal relationships, and frankly
| videogames nowadays have all but turned into time wasting
| gambling. I mean if you put a weak willed person in a room
| with any vice they'd want, they're gonna fail. And we're
| packed to the brim with vices. Now how do you expect any
| impressionable young man growing up to not become jaded
| because dating is bar none more difficult than it has ever
| been? Not only that, the fear of getting the girl pregnant
| and she keeps it or divorce. I feel like with all the
| stories about how men appear to get the short end of the
| stick oftentimes, it's led to a jaded understanding of the
| system.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| I think we need to legalize both polygamy and sex work.
|
| 1) Given the dating dynamics of 80% of women wanting only 20% of
| the men _, clearly society is depriving these women of their
| desired relationships.
|
| 2) If the 80% of men cannot have a relationship, and we agree sex
| is a basic need, and we don't have sex robots yet, then sex work
| fulfills a valuable role.
|
| _https://web.archive.org/web/20091121080804/http://blog.okcup...
| gustavo-fring wrote:
| This is kind of ignoring that people get and look for different
| things in sex work than they do in regular relationships.
| There's no indication that 20% actually would prefer to be sex
| workers to get more men.
| jsdwarf wrote:
| I think relational "age brackets" play a huge role in the incel
| phenomenon. Let's assume that by convention the male partner in
| an adult relationship has to be 0 to 6 years older than the
| female.
|
| This means that a female of 22 years can look for a partner
| between 22 and 28 years. A male at the same age can only look for
| 18-22 year olds (consent age, maturity of younger females)
| resulting a 33% smaller age range for potential partners.
|
| The male "hunting range" is further diminished by the fact that
| they cut the ties to their high school at the age of 19 (college,
| job). This means they lose access to younger potential partners
| and have more equally aged women in their environment, who are
| likely more attracted to older males.
| Jun8 wrote:
| You might also want to read Scott Aaronson's excellent analysis
| on an adjacent but related topic:
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3766
| openasocket wrote:
| > if 51% of young men are single and only 31% of women in the
| same age bracket are, that implies something is up
|
| So that statistic really confuses me, how could that be the case?
| The data seems to imply a significant number of women are dating
| men far older than themselves, which just doesn't seem true to
| me. I'm wondering if that is a sampling error or different
| genders are interpreting the question differently.
|
| It kind of reminds me of a study I heard about a few years back
| claiming that straight men average three times as many sexual
| partners as straight women. Except, that isn't possible! If
| you're only having heterosexual relationships, and you have the
| same number of men and women, the average number of relationships
| for men and women should be identical! The conclusion is that
| either that study either had sampling issues, or the respondents
| were exaggerating. That could be the obvious (men inflating their
| number of sexual partners, women deflating their numbers, due to
| societal pressures) but also different interpretations of the
| question.
|
| I'm wondering if we're seeing the same thing here. Either those
| Pew statistics aren't a representative sample, or we're seeing
| inconsistent responses.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| I don't know about second study or what flaws they had, but
| that definitely is possible if:
|
| A) the men in the study are having "side chicks" i.e. in sexual
| relationship with multiple women at the same time.
|
| B) women are more selective with whom they sleep with i.e. they
| rather not have sex than have sex with a "loser".
|
| It only doesn't make sense if everyone are in monogameous
| relationships and everyone has sex as often as everyone else.
|
| For the study cited in the post it could be different
| definitions of "commited relationship" i.e. maybe more of the
| young men don't view their relationships are serious, but the
| women who they are dating view it as such. But also I am not
| surprised that 20 year old women are dating/marrying 30 year
| old men, but that is seldom the other way around.
| openasocket wrote:
| So your explanations for why men might have more sexual
| relationships than women on average is flawed, none of those
| reasons would change the averages. Imagine if you had 5 men
| and 5 women, where 1 man had a sexual relationship with all 5
| women and the other 4 men had no sexual relationships. The
| average number of sexual relationships for women would be 1,
| because each has a sexual relationship with the one man. The
| average for the men is : (5 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0)/5 = 1 ! So
| whether or not there is monogomy, or different patterns of
| behavior, the average remains the same. The only way the two
| numbers could be different is if you included same-sex
| relationships, or if there were more men than women (or vice
| versa).
| Manuel_D wrote:
| "Average" can mean median, not mean. If 10 men all have 3
| sexual relationships, and 7 women have 1 sexual
| relationships and 3 women have 10 sexual relationships it
| evens out.
| mucle6 wrote:
| This isn't calculating averages, it calculates percent of
| people that are single. Single is a boolean, so in your
| case 80% of men are single while 0% of women are single.
| widougher wrote:
| The question was who is single, not how many partners.
| toyg wrote:
| _> The data seems to imply a significant number of women are
| dating men far older than themselves, which just doesn 't seem
| true to me._
|
| My anecdata matches that data. All my female friends are
| married to older men, in some cases the difference is in the
| double digits.
|
| Age and height are very hard barriers for women.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| In the modern hookup-based dating culture, you need a smaller
| number of chads to service a larger number of women.
| chainwax wrote:
| While I'm not sure about the sexual partners statistic, I
| certainly believe the age-range one. This is obviously
| anecdotal, but as someone with a large-ish social group in
| their late twenties it is extremely common to see women with
| partners in a bracket above them. This was true when I was in
| my early twenties and remains the same now.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > So that statistic really confuses me, how could that be the
| case? The data seems to imply a significant number of women are
| dating men far older than themselves, which just doesn't seem
| true to me.
|
| Having just read a bunch of research coming from psychology on
| sex differences, this is very plausible to me. Most studies
| indicated that women wanted to date someone a few to ten years
| older while men wanted to date someone few to ten years
| younger.
| jedberg wrote:
| > the average number of relationships for men and women should
| be identical!
|
| When those studies say average they usually mean median.
|
| Imagine a population with 10 men and 10 women.
|
| 3 of the men sleep with each woman once.
|
| The average hookups for both men and women are three each, but
| the median for men is none while the median for women is three.
|
| This is a contrived example, normally in each population you'd
| have outliers, but the point is the data presented here shows
| that "hookups" are more evenly distributed amongst women than
| men.
| naveen99 wrote:
| seems women's ideal sex frequency is lower than men's. what
| to do ?
|
| The market answer is to price relationships with women,
| weather short or long term. And the market does do this,
| under various names in increasing cost: hookups, porn,
| escort, dating, mistress, marriage.
|
| People just don't always manage risk: children, disease,
| divorce, alimony, dying married bedroom, aging...
|
| banning / discouraging prostitution favors women over men.
| But it harms men more than it helps women.
|
| Interestingly, encouraging female promiscuity actually work
| economically in the same direction as prostitution by adding
| to the total number of sexual encounters involving women (ie
| in favor of men, lowering the price of sex with women)
| ff317 wrote:
| > It kind of reminds me of a study I heard about a few years
| back claiming that straight men average three times as many
| sexual partners as straight women. Except, that isn't possible!
|
| It really depends on whether they were reporting the "mean" or
| the "median". It's entirely possible for the median values for
| the two sexes to differ greatly while the mean values are
| comparable, which would imply that each group had a very
| different shape to the curve of their data.
|
| One of many example hypothetical sets of shapes that would fit
| the data would be one where a graph of the males shows a fairly
| "normal" distribution with the mean and median having similar
| values, but the female graph was more of an exponential curve,
| where a small percentage at the top had _tons_ of partners, and
| the rest of the women drop off the curve fairly quickly,
| resulting in a much lower median value than the men, but still
| the same mean value.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| My very strong suspicion is there's lots of relationships that
| are encapsulated by this Mitch Hedberg quote:
|
| "I don't have a girlfriend. I do have a girl who'd be mad if
| she heard me say that."
| [deleted]
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A million dollar startup idea:
|
| Instead of a spreadsheet, use ML to predict if you will get sex
| or an excuse. Predict the excuse with a confidence level, and add
| suggestions on what to do for breaking the pattern. Happy coding
| :)
| chasd00 wrote:
| isn't sex/partner/pro-creation at the very root of all forms of
| life? If you can't have sex then nature is saying you shouldn't
| have sex.
| usbline wrote:
| No, this is a social problem and has nothing to do with nature.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Humans are social animals. The size of our brains, ability to
| use language, are all "nature's" solutions to social
| problems.
|
| That women are deep down attracted to men of status is hard-
| wired, and the result of thousands of years of natural
| selection.
|
| The nexus among status-seeking behavior, current economic
| realities, and the changing marketplace of dating, is the
| primary driver behind "incels".
|
| In other words, nature _is_ a significant factor in this
| problem.
| usbline wrote:
| >status-seeking behavior
|
| not nature
|
| >current economic realities
|
| not nature
|
| >the changing marketplace of dating
|
| again, not nature
| [deleted]
| jimmaswell wrote:
| When a monkey vies for status in its group, it's nature,
| but when a human does the same thing, it's not?
| fghthidudhmbdi wrote:
| Even more Darwinianly: if you can't have sex, nature dictates
| your dna, and the life it produced, is actually worthless.
| valec wrote:
| worthless is a human value judgement. biologically things
| don't have a purpose. those with more successful traits on
| average passed these traits down.
|
| evolution is just things happening. there's no goal, no
| purpose, no meaning.
| ObserverNeutral wrote:
| I guess you are saying to yourself "I am worthless" every
| time you put a condom on... :|
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I love this analysis and I think the faster you come to terms
| with it, the easier life becomes as a single man.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Calling the DNA and the life it produced worthless seems a
| bit simplistic. Consider e.g. worker bees, which are
| infertile and rarely reproduce, but are certainly not
| worthless -- they are crucial to the success of the hive.
| This is an example of kin selection. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Everything has already been said about this subject. Looking at
| it as a technology problem, it's not a novel problem, i think
| every advanced and successful society has dealt with it in the
| past. In ancient athens, Solon's 'technological' solution was to
| create state brothels for everyone with regulated prices. Rome's
| foundational myth contains the abduction of the Sabine women,
| which fulfilled the needs of Roman incel warriors for wives.
| Victorian age london was full of brothels. The second part of
| this 'technological' solution was the subjugation of women.
|
| Nowadays, as the article says, it's hard to deny that the problem
| exists, but it's fair to say that the solutions above are not
| going to recur in any advanced society. However, we do have sex
| tech that is advancing by leaps, and we should be able to solve
| the physical/sexual part of the problem soon. We don't have a
| tech solution for the intimacy deficit, but I think that it can
| be dealt with alternative bonds and more generally with doing
| things that are fulfilling. We are not far from the first ex
| utero children, which should contribute to solving that intimacy
| deficit.
|
| Now, i don't know how many startups are working in this area at
| the moment; there are definetly some teledildonics companies.
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| For another similarly compassionate view of "incels" see:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
|
| Edit: fixed link to point to the right article
| colanderman wrote:
| I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions is the
| seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some
| prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how _deep_ a
| _need_ for sex many people have. To think sex can be replaced
| with "strong friendships" is _laughable_ to anyone who actually
| feels a strong desire for sex.
|
| The dead bedroom situations I've seen with my friends (M->F
| equally as well as F->M) are always the result of one party being
| incapable of understanding the other's desire for sex. This leads
| them when pressed to try approaches such as, substituting "being
| nicer" for sex, trying therapy to reduce their partner's sex
| drive, or just forgetting about the problem because they are
| unable to sympathize with it. Ideas such as initiating sex more
| often or opening up the relationship either don't occur to them,
| are vehemently opposed, or forgotten about.
|
| No-one is entitled to sex. But individuals in a sexually-
| exclusive relationship are entitled to sympathy, action, and
| compromise from their partner to bridge severe differences in
| sexuality, just the same as any other sticking point in a
| relationship.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Agreed. This is also ancient wisdom. The major religions all
| maintain that spouses have a duty to sexually please each
| other.
| colanderman wrote:
| Unfortunately major religions seem to approach this subject
| with a cudgel. I think a more charitable reading of their
| approach is often recognizing that sexual incompatibility is
| just cause for (otherwise taboo) divorce.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| if one is monogamous then there is obligation or so the bible
| says.
|
| we modified one but not the other. we reap what we sow.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Quick edit:
|
| No-one is entitled to sex. But individuals in a sexually-
| exclusive relationship are entitled [to leave and find more
| compatible partners].
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I feel a common issue with such "dead bedroom" discussions
| is the seeming lack of capacity of some parties (including some
| prominent toplevel comments here) to understand how deep a need
| for sex many people have.
|
| When I first saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs sex appeared on it
| TWICE. Once on the bottom level as a basic physical need (to
| what extent varies of course) and again I think on the 3rd
| level or so as a form of intimacy.
|
| Putting it on that pyramid has somehow fallen out of favor. One
| (fem) writer claimed it somehow justified rape. That's as
| absurd as saying the need for food justifies armed robbery. I
| suspect the real issue is that it offered an explanation (not a
| justification) that differs from the authors pre-conceived
| notions (men are evil blah blah). Anyway it seems to have
| become unpopular to claim it's a basic need.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| It's not a basic physical need. It's a psychological need. We
| know, because many people can go years or decades without
| sex. That's fundamentally different from food, air, water and
| shelter from the elements.
|
| Not saying it isn't an important psychological need, but it's
| not a literal "basic physical need". Words mean things.
| jlokier wrote:
| The context is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is not
| only about physical needs. Physical is just the basics, at
| the bottom.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I reacted to this: "... sex appeared on it TWICE. Once on
| the bottom level as a basic physical need ..."
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| most pyramids I've seen lump Physical and Psychological in
| the same bottom category. So it would still go at the
| bottom of the pyramid despite not being something you would
| die without.
|
| It's in the same vein as non-intimate socialization
| (another aspect we can technically go years without, but
| has shown to have dire mental effects. Sometimes shockingly
| fast).
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I'd say it's a basic urge or desire in most people, but
| not even necessarily a need. A goal, an aspiration,
| something to seek. Similar to wealth, status, respect
| etc.
|
| Also, there are asexual people. It seems strange to
| define something as a "basic" human need if many people
| can live a healthy life without it.
|
| And yes, a certain level of socialization is definitely
| necessary to become a functional human.
| dqpb wrote:
| > That's as absurd as saying the need for food justifies
| armed robbery
|
| Before considering lofty philosophical ideas like
| "Justification", it's useful to consider basic system
| dynamics:
|
| "This paper provides an overview of the link between food
| insecurity and violent conflict, addressing both traditional
| and emerging threats to security and political stability."
|
| https://www.wfp.org/publications/occasional-paper-24-food-
| in...
| vsareto wrote:
| I think I remember something about the bottom level also
| including solo activities, which makes it much more
| reasonable as a physical need. The higher level was then
| intended to be with someone else.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _One (fem) writer claimed it somehow justified rape. That
| 's as absurd as saying the need for food justifies armed
| robbery._
|
| People conflate "explaining" or "causing" with
| "justification". They also think that by eliminating words
| they will eliminate the actual problem...
| Kye wrote:
| Strong friendships can involve lots of sex, but it seems like
| people outside queer communities have a harder time with that.
| colanderman wrote:
| Not if you're in a sexually exclusive relationship.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Sexual exclusive relationships are a subset of healthy
| relationships.
| Fargren wrote:
| That would imply all sexual exclusive relationships are
| healthy, which is very much not the case. Sexual
| exclusivity and relationship health are orthogonal.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think you're taking the set theory a bit too far...
| Fargren wrote:
| This might just be different customs of language usage.
| But to me, if you say "This is a subset of That", you are
| saying "every case of This is also a case of That". I
| suppose you are using it to mean "That does not imply
| This", and honestly I don't think seen it used that way
| elsewhere.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| I mean, that is the immediate conclusion one can draw
| from what you're saying. It sounds like you're saying
| _all_ sexually exclusive relationships are within the
| group of healthy relationships, which is different than
| saying only _some_ of them are within that group.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| There's a strong willingness to openly talk about mental health
| in society these days, yet I mostly see zero talk that sexual
| desire (whether super strong or nonexistent) is most likely due
| to hormonal circumstances than emotional connections etc. it's
| sad to see articles about "cooking for each other", "talk about
| X", yet no articles on "get your blood checked"
| schnevets wrote:
| I am frequently surprised by the number of "dead bedrooms" I
| know about among friends, and I sincerely believe the problem
| is the western world's secretly coy perception of sex. There is
| a superficial surface level that is extremely wrong (for
| example, Successful people have sex, the most successful people
| have the hottest sex with the hottest partners; Sex isn't about
| planning it's about letting the desire overcome you; Doing this
| thing will make you more desirable to your partner... unless
| you suck; All people are secretly kinky and the happiest people
| figured out what makes them tick), and then there is a deeper
| level of taboo that discourages any honest communication about
| sex.
|
| There is no panacea to this problem because it involves mutual
| collaboration between both members of the couple. The things
| that seem to work (couples therapy, self-help books) only
| actually work because they spark a conversation. Regardless, it
| always seems to involve rejecting some of those superficial
| notions I listed above and acknowledging that 90% of the stuff
| you learned or assumed about sex is wrong.
|
| I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so I
| would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from
| other cultures.
| graphtrader wrote:
| I just don't think people value sexual compatibility enough.
|
| If you aren't compatible sexually then you are not
| compatible.
|
| I have been married twice. My first wife was practically my
| "soul mate", we had the same taste in everything. We were
| best buds, everything was perfect besides our sex life
| sucked. It always led to conflict and problems.
|
| My wife now we have almost nothing in common when it comes to
| taste, art, music, hobbies, nothing. We have an amazing sex
| life though. I couldn't be happier.
|
| That is not how it works in the movies. I am supposed to meet
| my first wife and live happily ever after. It is the
| difference between real life and fiction.
| e40 wrote:
| _I just don 't think people value sexual compatibility
| enough._
|
| Agreed, but I think it's deeper: when I was in my 20's I
| didn't even know what sexual compatibility was. Given that,
| how could I even have made it a criteria for partner
| selection?
|
| That assumes people figure out their sexuality. I've been
| way too many people that didn't figure it out until their
| 50's. Like, "heterosexual until later in life" figure it
| out. And, there's an entire spectrum until that.
| supernovae wrote:
| Not sure you ever figure it out, you just live it as you
| go along.
| maest wrote:
| I think some imortant parameters are: age when you started
| and ended first marriage, age when you started second
| marriage, current age.
|
| I suspect sexual compatibility lowers in importance as
| people age.
| capableweb wrote:
| The most parameters are: who you are as a person and all
| that comes with that.
|
| Saying that this matters less when that, or you'll loose
| interest in sex as you grow older simply won't fit for a
| lot of people. But for a lot maybe it will.
|
| But since all of this is such a inherently personal
| thing, its opinion around the world will be as divided as
| our own butts.
| swiley wrote:
| I used to think this (Americans don't have sex because
| they're shy about it) but the data says the opposite.
| schnevets wrote:
| I'm curious about what data suggests this, since getting
| honest answers about sexual activity from the public is a
| famously difficult challenge.
|
| As an entertaining example, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's big
| data book Everybody Lies mentioned a study that asked
| people in the United States how frequently they had sex,
| and how frequently they practiced safe sex with a condom.
| If the resulting data was accurate and projected across the
| entire country, the United States consume 2.7 billion
| condoms a year... even though only 600 million condoms are
| sold in a year.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/our-
| searc...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > I am frequently surprised by the number of "dead bedrooms"
| I know about among friends
|
| I originally thought they were mostly an old people thing,
| but I am hearing more stories about it from friends. And we
| are mid 20s.
| Balgair wrote:
| One thing to note is that birth-control may decrease libido
| in _some_ women. The science is a bit mixed though.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-
| sex/201902...
|
| As for the male side of things, I'm not sure if there is a
| environmental culprit like birth-control.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Antidepressants and antianxiety medications decrease
| libido as well.
| robocat wrote:
| Depression and anxiety usually reduce libido.
|
| Edit: Also an unhappy relationship often can lead to poor
| sex, depression, and anxiety.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Sounds like we need to address depression and anxiety
| with something other than drugs.
| supernovae wrote:
| Shorter work weeks, universal healthcare, affordable
| housing, open borders, freedom to travel, less
| consumerism, more time for friends/family...
| coldtea wrote:
| Depression and anxiety even more so, modern work-life
| balance and social media too...
| throwaway1492 wrote:
| Bluntly, pornography and masturbation can lead to
| desensitization and difficulty in "real" sex with a
| partner. A lot of the r/nofap people have discussed this
| extensively. I know of no studies to cite, but there's a
| tone of anecdotal evidence available on that particular
| subreddit.
| nradov wrote:
| Exposure to phthalates reduces testosterone in both men and
| women, and thus lowers sex drive. Phthalates are widely
| used chemicals, primarily for softening plastic.
|
| https://news.umich.edu/reduced-testosterone-tied-to-
| chemical...
|
| That's not the only cause. Increased obesity levels also
| play a role. Probably other factors.
| colanderman wrote:
| Yep same here (mid 20s-30s). I guess it shouldn't really be
| too surprising; young people often don't know what they
| really need and/or are capable of providing before diving
| headlong into an exclusive relationship.
| schnevets wrote:
| It was a trend that began in my mid 20s as well. I have
| also noticed women are more inclined to voice frustrations
| than my male friends. I guess I became more approachable
| after proposing to my now-wife (and the things I hear are
| G-rated compared to the things I hear secondhand from my
| wife)
| rscho wrote:
| I'll go on a limb assuming you don't have children yet.
| schnevets wrote:
| I don't. But neither do those friends who speak about
| sexual incompatibility with the people that they love.
| Children are a completely new factor that this thread
| hasn't introduced, and I'm impressed by anyone who can make
| it work with a toddler. But for the most part, the
| demographic I'm talking about have no kids, live together,
| are financially comfortable, enjoy spending time
| together... and yet don't want to do it for some reason.
| bigthymer wrote:
| > I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so
| I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from
| other cultures.
|
| From my understanding, in Islam, sex is a normal, expected
| part of marriage. If one partner doesn't want to have sex, it
| doesn't give the other partner the right to demand it.
| Rather, if there is a lack of desire for sex, it is grounds
| for divorce.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Understanding of the original intent? Is this a thing in
| actual marriages of Muslims? I've never heard of any of
| this as a thing that is common knowledge. I could be out of
| the bubble though.
| piva00 wrote:
| > I think this is a very Americanized perspective, though, so
| I would be especially interested in hearing perspectives from
| other cultures.
|
| I agree this is very Americanised, I can chime from two
| different perspectives and cultures: Brazil and Sweden.
|
| Brazil is... Very Americanised, I believe that the same
| issues the USA has with sex are present in Brazil, it's
| expressed in some different ways but the underlying issues
| are more-or-less the same. Even though Brazil is seen through
| a very sexualised image from the outside, it's still a very
| conservative society where women are shamed for having sex.
|
| Now for Sweden: I don't think anything you said really
| applies here, people are very open about sex, parents just
| consider it a natural thing and will allow their teenagers to
| have sex in their house, I heard stories from friends who had
| breakfast with the parents of a hook up after a night out,
| etc. There is very little taboo about sex here, even though
| not everyone is open to talk about it, the vast majority is
| completely fine with people having sex.
|
| Which brings me to a point I don't really grasp how it
| happens, my sexual experiences here showed me that women
| suffer some similar issues as the women in Brazil: lots of
| them don't have good sex, not even with their partners, most
| of the times not due to a lack of communication but a lack of
| understanding from men. I've heard from girlfriends similar
| behaviour from men here as in Brazil, not the aggressive type
| but the lack of care about their needs, a lack of interest
| and curiosity in sex itself, to improve it, etc.
|
| And then I don't know if this is something global and most
| men in the world are really that bad sex partners, it was
| really surprising to hear from Scandinavian women some of the
| same issues that girlfriends in Brazil went through. Not even
| counting the abuse, in Brazil it's much more extreme but I
| was surprised by how many of my girlfriends here had at least
| one instance of rape or sexual abuse, usually from partners.
| llampx wrote:
| Men on the other hand are generally taught by society that
| good sex is entirely their responsibility, and that if the
| woman does not get off, it is their fault.
|
| This is one of the reasons why men are hesitant to talk
| about sex. It is easy to talk about it if you can say "No I
| didn't enjoy it and it isn't my fault." and less so if you
| have to introspect. Thoughts like, is my penis big enough?
| Am I not lasting long enough? Am I good-looking enough? and
| other thoughts come unbidden to the subconscious.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| > I was surprised by how many of my girlfriends here had at
| least one instance of rape or sexual abuse, usually from
| partners.
|
| Same here, absolutely appalling. Whenever I speak about it
| with guy friends they don't quite believe me and try to
| rationalise it (which is a common response for me on many
| topics as well), often by arguing semantics of what is
| considered rape or abuse etc, or the integrity of the
| person in question.
|
| I'm not sure what prompts this skepticism exactly. The
| friends I've discussed this with who are skeptical, tend to
| otherwise be quite understanding and well thinking
| individuals. It's a bit akin to my own first reactions to
| allegations of Chinese genocide against Uyghurs, the
| concentration camps, etc. That can't be... There's probably
| some nuance I'm missing. I was only convinced after reading
| more and being exposed to more information and evidence.
|
| It's very hard to have these conversations with some guy
| friends as none of my female friends have wanted me to
| share any part of their experiences with anyone else. That
| makes it really tricky to convince anyone else of the
| veracity of their claims. If I could, I could say 'well
| it's actually my partner, who I fully trust, or my mother
| who is completely honest, or our mutual best friend for the
| past 15 years', people whom my friends also hold in high
| regard and believe at face value, like I believe them.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I don't think I've ever asked a woman older than her mid-
| twenties about her experiences _without_ hearing about an
| instance of assault. Some serious, some not, but
| _universal_.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I typically don't talk about it here, but I'd say I've been
| part of a pretty sexually liberated community (US based)
| for... about 15 years.
|
| Because of our educational focus, we had a high number of
| new people come through, learn and mature, and then go off
| to do other things. So I'd like to think I learned
| something watching the common arcs.
|
| In American culture, there are two big hangups about sex:
| (1) nobody is comfortable admitting ignorance & (2) the
| former leads to nobody being able to communicate about
| anything sexual.
|
| Essentially every critical sexual conversation is some
| variant of this: "I'm not sure about X. How do you feel
| about X?" "I've never tried X. Do you want to try it?" "I'm
| nervous, but I do. How about if we Y'd and Z'd to start?"
| "I don't think I'd like Y. What if we Y_1'd and Z'd?" "I'm
| up for that!"
|
| Notice the numerous admissions of ignorance. Because real
| conversations start in truth, without judgement. And it's
| worth it, because that's how you get to the fun times.
| Either in or out of a relationship.
|
| (And ironically, you know who _is_ typically comfortable
| admitting ignorance? Those with the most experience)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Everyone will be different, and unfortunately sex is an
| extremely sensitive topic that is rife to end up in either
| flame wars or a bunch of jokes, despite it being a serious,
| personal, nuanced topic. In my culture personally (American),
| it also seems to be one constantly suppressed from conversation
| outside of maybe medical talks.
|
| And in my experience on the internet, we're still a very, very,
| very long way from creating a community that can civilly speak
| on the topic. Heck, maybe even IRL; cultures as a whole still
| can't even agree with what kinds of sexual content is _legal_
| to sell (not even age-gated, just outright denying a consenting
| adult the choice to buy professionally made content), so this
| may be a while. It may not even be resolved in my lifetime.
|
| On a personal level, I'm fine with the myriads of porn I have
| stashed about my house. But I can't take cat girl out for a
| quick lunch and chat about the day. I miss friends.
| insickness wrote:
| > dead bedroom situations are always the result of one party
| being incapable of understanding the other's desire for sex.
|
| Couldn't disagree more. Sexual attraction is not about
| 'understanding' how your partner feels. A man who is no longer
| attracted to his wife won't suddenly become attracted when he
| understands how she feels. Attraction is not a choice. It's not
| something you can talk yourself or someone else into.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Sexual attraction is not about 'understanding' how your
| partner feels_
|
| Not quite what the parent was talking about. They were
| referring to truly understanding that some people _need_ sex
| to be happy, as opposed to others who like or even dislike
| it.
|
| But understanding what your partner wants (whichever of those
| three it is) is a required starting point for having a better
| sexual relationship. There's no amount of counseling that can
| bridge "Well, they should just feel exactly like I do about
| it."
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| >It's not something you can talk yourself or someone else
| into.
|
| This seems based in some fantasy land, though. I'd be
| absolutely stunned if you didn't have at least a few
| unattractive friends who do very well in
| dating/relationships/finding sex partners, because they are
| funny, or charismatic, etc (speaking about male friends here
| generally but this can apply to anyone).
|
| If attraction was as you described, no one would be attracted
| to anyone outside of pro athletes and supermodels. Clearly,
| many normal, non-models are quite attracted to their non-
| model partners.
| serverholic wrote:
| Totally agree. OP should tell that to my friend who worked as
| hard as he could to save a dying marriage. No amount of
| understanding will help if the other person just doesn't feel
| it.
| colanderman wrote:
| I don't think I implied that it was. But someone in an
| exclusive relationship who no longer is willing to fulfill
| one of their partner's basic needs, has an obligation to work
| with their partner to find a way to fulfill that need.
| Otherwise you are just denying them something they are
| incapable of not needing.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >A man who is no longer attracted to his wife won't suddenly
| become attracted when he understands how she feels.
| Attraction is not a choice. It's not something you can talk
| yourself or someone else into.
|
| You have a point. And the scary factor (at least, in my
| society) is that admitting this would be rife to criticism
| (be it insensitive and maybe misogynistic if a man, or
| shallow and a slut if a woman), because so much of our
| teachings say that we shouldn't judge others based on looks.
|
| It's not exactly about looks in this situation, but it's a
| very similar situation. You may find that you need something
| else out of a relationship, but the not only lack of
| communication, but *active discouragement" to communicate
| such inconvenient truths probably causes much more tension
| than the short term tension of a breakup/divorce
|
| (not to say breakups aren't painful in and of themselves, but
| it's the difference between keeping a thorn in, and removing
| it. The latter gives you a chance to heal).
| mettamage wrote:
| > Attraction is not a choice.
|
| I sense a seduction community vibe in that quote.
| coldtea wrote:
| Seduction would make it, if not a choice, something you can
| tap with the right skill.
|
| The parent says the opposite: it's NOT a choice, you either
| feel it or not. So seduction techniques would not apply.
| pengaru wrote:
| Isn't it kind of obvious that young single men are competing with
| nearly _all_ adult men for the young women?
|
| Esp. with the rising divorce rates, more non-young men are going
| back on the market than previously, and they've got more
| financial stability and general security to offer than most their
| younger competitors. I'm betting they're not exactly chomping at
| the bit to shack up with women their age or older.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Divorce rates have been falling over the past decade. In 2019
| divorce rates hit an all time low.
| ameminator wrote:
| Only because marriage rates have been falling faster. The
| divorce rate (divorces/population) has not fallen as fast as
| the marriage rate (marriages/population). The number of
| divorces/marriage is still on the rise. No one is getting
| married these days and when they do, they are more likely to
| get divorced.
| Jaygles wrote:
| This is a sensitive topic that's hard to bring up and keep things
| productive in discussing it. So often I see examples of bad
| behavior, and the commentary is often to demonize and treat the
| offender as an outcast.
|
| We aren't going to make progress until we start considering that
| the offenders might be acting out due to internal turmoil and
| trauma, and that we should be trying to help these people, not
| outcast them.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| There is a lot to unpack here, and it is difficult to know where
| to begin.
|
| I had a friend who was a pastor who lamented he didn't like that
| his yearly board game get-together with his other [often pastor]
| friends often ended up discussing their dead bedrooms. I have no
| idea how these dynamics have come to be so common, even taking
| into account the usual ebbs and flows in relationships. I don't
| know if this problem occurs at higher rates in more religious
| couples. I suspect that this is the collateral damage of
| [obviously misguided] purity culture, but we see the same
| patterns outside of religious couples.
|
| Edit: I should clarify to say the only reason I'm writing this is
| that these problems have a big impact on people's lives, aren't
| easy to fix, and often buried from everyone around them.
| iammisc wrote:
| Religious couples tend to have the most fulfilling sex lives.
| Conservative religious couples have the best:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7060099/Highly-reli...
|
| Myself, as a highly conservative married man, my findings
| confirm the daily mail article, esp. when I look at the sex
| lives of my married friends who were more libertine in their
| youth.
|
| EDIT: A few theories:
|
| 1. My wife is not on birth control, which means she ovulates,
| and thus has the normal cyclical female sex drive. Her desires
| during ovulation are way past mine, even if my average is
| higher than hers. I believe this is why modern men feel so
| undesirable -- most women are taking hormones that directly
| affect how attractive they perceive their men to be.
|
| 2. No points of comparison. I have no point of comparison with
| other women. At this point my sexual response, probably through
| repeated exposure, is finely tuned to my wife. I have
| fantasies, like any man, but the vividness of my lived
| experience far surpasses them in excitement.
|
| 3. No pornography. I'm not saying I've been perfect, but my
| religion believes that consuming pornography (same with
| masturbation) leads to hell, so it's not something I typically
| do. I have a high sex drive as a result, and instead of
| masturbating, we have sex instead.
|
| 4. No condoms. Similar to number 1. Sex without a condom is
| better. We tried it once (in violation of my religion) and it
| was awful. I wouldn't describe it as the same experience. I'm
| pretty sure there's something in each of our secretions that
| makes no condom sex better. I'm not a sex scientist, but this
| is my observation.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Your experience is different from many others in a few
| regards. I assume that either you can afford to continue have
| more children, or you're no longer capable of conceiving.
| There are many monogamous married couples in the US who must
| use hormonal birth control or other contraception simply
| because they can not afford to raise another (or any) child.
| Childcare is expensive and very little is subsidized by the
| government to encourage more people to have children. Even
| simply giving birth is enough to financially ruin some
| people, and again the government does very little to
| subsidize this to encourage more people to have children. In
| fact, many political candidates run on platforms of doing
| away with anything that might actually enable families to be
| able to afford to have children, so it's no surprise at all
| that many people are using birth control, whether they're
| married or not.
|
| You seem pretty fortunate to be in a position where you can
| afford to have unprotected sex with your wife, because many
| people can't afford that luxury. Perhaps it's no surprise
| they're depressed with unfulfilling sex lives.
| iammisc wrote:
| My wife and I used natural family planning (ovulation
| tracking) with great success when we were not having
| children. We had our first child four years into marriage
| (conceived quickly). We have never gone more than a few
| months without conceiving, when we have had sex freely.
| When tracking cycles, we've gone years.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's great. It doesn't work for everyone nor is it
| guaranteed. When your financial stability is tenuous, it
| seems far more prudent to use more reliable methods, or
| even to layer multiple methods.
|
| I personally know people who used that method; it didn't
| work. Conversely my wife and I have used that method with
| the intention of getting pregnant, and it still took a
| while because accurately tracking it can be difficult for
| a variety of reasons.
| iammisc wrote:
| I'm trying to have a productive conversation here. The
| original question was about how to avoid dead bedrooms,
| and I gave my opinion as well as empirical evidence to
| back it up. I can't comment on the efficacy of birth
| control. I can say that we have been in fairly
| financially unstable times, and I have not found that
| children cost very much, although I can certainly see how
| some could spend lots of money on them.
|
| If you want to discuss more about having a good sex life,
| I'm happy to engage but don't want to get derailed by the
| contraceptive argument. I will say I'd rather have ten
| kids, less money and a good marriage than a few kids,
| lots of money and a terrible marriage.
| souprock wrote:
| Childcare expense has a natural limit: the income of one
| parent. I have a dozen kids, and I certainly do not attempt
| to pay for childcare. The kids have a mother to care for
| them.
|
| It's interesting to ponder how close people might be to
| hitting that natural limit. Some have gone over it, perhaps
| without realizing so. There must be many people who would
| save money by parenting their own kids.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this perspective. Honestly, it was
| really interesting to hear about "traditional" sex, and make
| me realize just how unnatural most sex has become.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I would suspect that usage of antidepressants is lower in
| highly religious couples. The one-two combo of
| antidepressants and hormonal birth control absolutely destroy
| libido.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Hah. That's an interesting point.
|
| It seems to me that people could stand to turn these issues
| into sub-issues. I can't see much similarity between
| undersexed 25 year olds (typically male) and 60 year old
| couples who are either constructed differently or have
| health issues.
|
| My main take-away is to heavily invest in sex robots and
| teledildonics.
| didibus wrote:
| That survey describes personal satisfaction. So it doesn't
| mean that they have more sex, or better sex, simply that to
| their own standards and expectations they are satisfied with
| their sex life.
|
| With this in mind, I'm not surprised that religious couple
| feel more satisfied.
|
| Having said that, maybe society does set unrealistic
| expectations when it comes to sex, and it's possible that
| skews people's perspective and make them all feel like
| everyone else is having more and better sex, which in turn
| renders them disatisfied.
|
| So I'm not putting judgement either way, but this seem like a
| good explanation to me.
|
| Another aspect is knowing better. If you've ever only had
| Nescafe, you'll still enjoy it and be satisfied with it as
| your daily coffee driver. But if you've had top notch
| espresso from world class baristas, you might no longer be
| able to enjoy Nescafe the same way you used too. Does this
| apply to sex, I don't know fully, but I think it could be,
| and religious couple would tend to have less points of
| comparison, so that could similarly drive them to be able to
| continuously enjoy and be satisfied with what they have.
|
| Don't take my coffee comparison too literal, "better" with
| sex doesn't mean like better partner or anything like that, I
| think just means memories of better times you've had having
| sex, of more excitement, choice, and all that. I know some
| people who have an ex-girlfriend, or a one night stand where
| they still remember that as their best sex. It might often be
| more because they were simply younger and it was more new to
| them, then anything to do with the person in itself. And
| clearly those would have been terrible partners for them. But
| that memory kind of hunts them with being satisfied in their
| current relationship sexually, as they can't help but compare
| one with the other.
|
| This is just all hypothetical, don't take it as ground truth,
| I'm only exploring the phenomenon.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| A lot of this stuff is just fact to you, isn't it?
|
| It's hard to engage when some of the things you talk about
| here seem immutable to you but are not even reasonable points
| of contention to me.
|
| "Pornography leads to hell" <- how can we really have a
| conversation about any of this if you're making blanket
| statements about some of the content, especially when the
| statement is so negative? Obviously _if_ hell were real and
| _if_ pornography certainly led to eternal condemnation in
| hell, pornography would be bad, but neither of those "if"
| statements really lead for much discussion.
|
| What was the goal of your comment?
| iammisc wrote:
| I believe pornography leads to hell, yes. I also believe
| that, even if you didn't believe that, it would lead to
| unhappy marriages? You should feel free to argue to me the
| benefits of pornography, though.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think entering into an argument knowing you won't
| change your mind is disingenuous, and I think your
| argument that pornography leads to unhappy marriages
| hinges on the idea that pornography leads to hell,
| otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's actually
| the only reason you've given, and then you built your
| conclusion on top of it.
|
| My point is by bringing religion into the conversation,
| you ratcheted up the severity to an 11, since the
| negative consequences of religion tend to be literally
| the worst thing you can experience for all of eternity.
| Before it was a tough conversation about sex, and now
| it's a tough conversation about sex where if you get it
| wrong, you're doomed to hell.
|
| At a certain point, I'm left to wonder what your
| intention actually was, and I'm running out of positive
| options. For example, you created a throwaway, and I'm
| curious about what I'm supposed to take away from that
| decision.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They responded on a thread where _someone else_ brought
| religion in by specifically mentioning the discussions
| held amongst pastors about their sex lives.
| iammisc wrote:
| > I think your argument that pornography leads to unhappy
| marriages hinges on the idea that pornography leads to
| hell, otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned it. It's
| actually the only reason you've given, and then you built
| your conclusion on top of it.
|
| Actually, the argument pornography leads to hell would
| suggest I think porn makes for a more pleasurable
| marriage since things that lead to hell typically are
| extremely fun.
|
| I believe porn leads to unhappy marriages because it
| causes comparisons, and it causes men to desire things
| that are not the traditional sex I believe is the most
| fun and fulfilling. For example, I think it causes men to
| seek a dopamine rush in sex, like the dopamine rush they
| get from porn, instead of the connection with another
| human being that I believe leads to lasting happiness.
|
| EDIT: > For example, you created a throwaway
|
| Actually, this is not a throwaway. I created a new
| account because I had to close my previous ones for fear
| of being doxxed.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I don't know a _ton_ of married men but every last one of them
| has managed to let me know one way or another that their sex
| lives are essentially over. All of them. And it all seems to
| follow this cliche that people will _scream_ at you does not
| exist.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| Are these people explicitly telling you this? If a bunch of
| my married friends got together and started bitching about
| their sex lives, I might nod along in agreement even if my
| sex life isn't over.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Solo, one-on-one conversations all.
|
| One friend, recently married, much younger than I. Never
| brought up sex _once_ in all the time I knew him, just
| casually drops at a party while the two of us are alone in
| a hallway that the cliche was real.
|
| My longest friendship, married a woman who talked a good
| game, was very out and proud about her kinky background,
| and so on. Another dead bedroom, this usually mentioned
| during long car rides while we go out. She keeps saying
| that she'll try to do better but does nothing, meanwhile
| everything she has on the table is a crisis.
|
| And so on and so forth.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| That's interesting. i googled around a bit but couldn't
| find any stats or studies on % of dead bedrooms. Maybe
| the myth is more common that we think
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| > [obviously misguided] purity culture
|
| As far as I understand it celibacy of men devoted to religion
| or spiritual endeavours is not about "purity" but total focus.
| And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very resolute.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| That was in reference to the evangelical version of those
| ideas, where the body was inherently sinful.
|
| > And I don't think that is misguided. It's just very
| resolute.
|
| Agree. Celibacy is difficult but can teach much.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| It's not my cup of tea. But I don't like the general
| "celibacy is bad and turns men into criminal pedophiles"
| agenda.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't think that the body being inherently sinful is
| actually a part of evangelical Christianity. I'm sure there
| will be some within the evangelical category that teach
| that, but I think the core evangelical position is this:
| Sex is for marriage. Outside of marriage, sex is
| sinful/evil. But within marriage, it is good and to be
| enjoyed.
|
| Now, you can still think of that as "misguided purity
| culture", but it's not "the body is inherently sinful".
| [deleted]
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| There are certain drugs that bring sexual desires to zero, and
| the experience could be really liberating, as I may personally
| attest. Life could be easier for those surplus men if they went
| this route.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| These issues are far more serious than is known and commenters
| saying "too bad, you don't deserve to date someone" really don't
| understand how ineffective this approach is. You can't just shame
| tens of thousands of men into accepting a substandard life.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not making any ethical judgments here, just
| observing.
|
| This problem didn't really exist before for three reasons.
|
| One, widespread access to prostitution and its social
| acceptability. Reading books from earlier centuries, it's
| noticeable how common this was and how little anyone seemed to be
| socially stigmatized by going to a brothel.
|
| Two, enforced monogamy. Our current culture is centered on
| removing restrictions. And as with every market, removing the
| restrictions on sexual access means the top players get more
| "resources" while the bottom get none. Monogamy was historically
| the solution to this.
|
| Three, the primary model of marriage being one of love or
| connection, and not of uniting families, having children, or
| passing on property. This, combined with our consumeristic
| society, leads people to always assume that a better option is
| available. Add easy divorce laws and Tinder, and the incentives
| for trying to work out any problems (or even get into a
| relationship in the first place) are nearly nonexistent.
|
| It really doesn't seem like the culture is going to accept
| enforcing monogamy (2) or restrictions on divorce (3), but it
| does seem like (1) might be legalized at some point. Personally,
| that seems something of a dystopian solution to the problem, but
| that's just me.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Personally, that seems something of a dystopian solution to
| the problem_
|
| It's the one with the fewer externalities. Forcing an unhappy
| couple to stay together can traumatize children, produce
| widespread violence (another one of those things that were
| kinda just "accepted" in the past), and even end up in murder.
|
| It would be much more dystopian to force women into
| distributing sex equally, surely?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| These aren't either or situations. Acting as if the only
| options are an abusive marriage or prostitution is really
| misleading.
|
| There are plenty of ways to incentivize monogamy,
| disincentivize divorce, and yet still allow for individual
| freedom.
|
| Why haven't these been tested? I'll suggest because like all
| movements, the gender equality movement has been driven
| largely by extremist activists (who gain social power) and
| corporations (who gain more workers and consumers), not by
| average people.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Why haven't these been tested?_
|
| Have they not? Marriage is widely incentivized in most
| societies. The UK reality at the moment, for example,
| heavily punishes singles: the housing markets optimizes for
| two incomes, pricing out singles; the taxing system favours
| spreading income over two individuals; and you have plenty
| of other marriage-related allowances. I'd be surprised if
| this was significantly different in the US.
|
| The reality is that, as soon as you give people the choice,
| a good chunk of them will take it.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I wouldn't say that it's incentivized at all. Weddings
| are expensive, divorces are financially disastrous (yet
| easy to initiate), and a sizable segment of the
| population thinks the idea of marriage is "uncool", for
| lack of a better word. Things like adultery are nearly
| outright encouraged in Netflix shows and novels.
|
| It doesn't surprise me at all that many people look at
| marriage as it currently stands and just say, no thanks.
| This goes against pretty much every society,
| historically.
|
| https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tv-shows-about-
| cheating/ran...
| toyg wrote:
| I fear that words like "easy" or "expensive" in this
| realm are difficult to evaluate objectively.
|
| Weddings, for example, are _not_ expensive, if you
| consider them as a bureaucratic act: in most countries,
| it 's just a few forms to fill him with minimal fees
| attached. However, if you impose on them oversized
| cultural expectations (which come from "netflix shows of
| the past"...) of white horses, diamonds, banquets and so
| on, then yeah, it's an expensive act. Maybe, if one
| wanted more weddings, one should support reducing some of
| these artificial obstacles...?
|
| _> a sizable segment of the population thinks the idea
| of marriage is "uncool"_
|
| That's always been true, as showed in literature of the
| past.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We spent around $700 on our wedding. Front yard ceremony,
| $150-200 for the justice of the peace, trays of food from
| the local BBQ place, more wine, beer, and drinks than our
| 25 or so closest friends could consume.
|
| Getting married isn't inherently expensive. People make
| it so because an entire industry is optimized around
| convincing you to spend more on a dress than we spent on
| an entire wedding.
| [deleted]
| alpaca128 wrote:
| As someone living in a country where prostitution is legal I
| have a hard time seeing how your argument goes from that to
| dystopia. It's heavily regulated and controlled, which is
| better than people doing it anyway without any oversight and
| the safeties from that.
|
| And even aside from that I don't see a problem with it, of
| course as long as it's 100% consensual. Maybe I'm missing some
| obvious problem, but the thing currently driving my country
| towards a dystopian society is mainly growing corruption with
| shrinking consequences as well as ignorance, not people
| choosing what to do with their bodies.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > One, widespread access to prostitution and its social
| acceptability. Reading books from earlier centuries, it's
| noticeable how common this was and how little anyone seemed to
| be socially stigmatized by going to a brothel.
|
| uh, but:
|
| > Two, enforced monogamy. Our current culture is centered on
| removing restrictions. And as with every market, removing the
| restrictions on sexual access means the top players get more
| "resources" while the bottom get none. Monogamy was
| historically the solution to this.
|
| You do realize that the portrait of historical norms you
| present in these two paragraphs are diametrically opposed,
| right?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| No, because they aren't referring to the same groups.
| Prostitution was historically only acceptable for men, while
| women were forced to either have a husband or be celibate. At
| least, in terms of social acceptability.
|
| Today, the restrictions have more or less been removed for
| both genders.
|
| Again, not saying it "was better back then", just pointing
| out what's changed.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| When the Internet started expanding, the first communities to
| connect were communities forming around common interests shared
| by the majority of people and businesses.
|
| But then something happened... controversial/evil communities
| started forming: hate speech, racism, harassment, mysogenists,
| flat earthers, anti vaxxers, scammers...
|
| Geographically speaking, incels are very sparsely distributed.
| But now the incel guy in one town can connect to an incel guy in
| another town. And groups that did not have a critical mass to
| start a community before, now do.
|
| Before the Internet, without interaction with an incel
| communities, incels would be brought back to sanity through
| assimilation by other groups in society. Now with the Internet,
| incels can connect with other incels, reinforce their behavior
| and become radicalized. That sucks.
|
| Connecting people is not necessarily a good thing.
| neom wrote:
| I was quite out of tune with this whole issue until I watched the
| Alek Minassian[1] interview/confession[2]. I still don't really
| know what to make of it. I will warn you: it's not easy
| listening, however, it is eye opening and adds further context to
| this substack post.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_van_attack
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGFWovUuWak
| diveanon wrote:
| Can we please leave this kind of stuff on reddit?
|
| I know HN has pretty broad rules, but between stuff like this and
| the near constant posts about the SV housing market it really
| cheapens the forum.
| jmull wrote:
| Use the "hide" link. It's perfect for the posts on topics you
| don't want to see any more of.
| diveanon wrote:
| Does it hide later posts on similar topics?
| standardUser wrote:
| There are some real solutions to be had here...
|
| 1) Decriminalize sex work.
|
| 2) Implement a national healthcare system that fully covers
| mental health services, including regular therapy sessions.
|
| 3) Expand sex education to include more diverse types of sex and
| relationships, including non-monogamy.
|
| These won't solve the problem. They will absolutely make the
| problem less severe.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| We have plenty of places decriminalizing sex work. What they
| are not decriminalizing, however, is _purchasing_ sex work.
| Both are required for the first item on your list to do
| anything. And it that is going to require a lot of nuance, too.
| I recall seeing someone reacting to a post by a former sex
| worker who lamented how these men had been "raping her body."
| If that is considered a valid viewpoint, then even more work
| must be done at the decriminalization level, otherwise you will
| have seller's remorse hanging over someone with a very long
| statute of limitations.
| standardUser wrote:
| Right, it must be decriminalized entirely, not just select
| aspects. It reminds me of when a lot of places decriminalized
| marijuana possession, while somehow forgetting that weed does
| not materialize out of thin air but must be grown and
| distributed. Meaning the thing they just "decriminalized" was
| still part and parcel of illegal acts. So far only those same
| cowardly half-measures have been used towards sex work in
| most of the US.
| coderintherye wrote:
| For any suffering a communication issue in your relationship, I
| can't recommend enough the book: "Conscious Loving" [1]
|
| Asides from being an enjoyable read, it provides an excellent
| framework and guide for how to have conversations about difficult
| topics successfully. It pairs well with the book "Nonviolent
| Communication"
|
| These things take time and effort, but they really truly work.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Loving-Co-Commitment-Gay-
| He...
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| The vast number of people commenting here that are convinced that
| a happy, healthy life is impossible without a sexual/romantic
| partner is eye-opening, and a bit horrifying.
|
| Other people will not fix you. Trying to drown your problems in a
| woman (or man!) is no different then trying to drown them in
| food, or alcohol, or any number of harder drugs. Stop running
| from your problems and face them.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Reproduction may be the most fundamental desire that humans
| have and is essential to the continuation of the species.
| Sevastopol wrote:
| > healthy life is impossible without a sexual/romantic partner
| is eye-opening, and a bit horrifying.
|
| It seems to be true for most people, in my experience. I don't
| see it as "horrifying", just a normal/typical human thing.
| creata wrote:
| Mind explaining (a) precisely whom you're talking to in your
| second paragraph, (b) how you inferred that they're running
| from their problems, and (c) what those problems are?
| scottrogowski wrote:
| I have a pet theory for this phenomenon. If you look at recently
| contacted peoples or those who have little contact with the
| outside world, endemic warfare is common. In these societies,
| well over 20% of men are killed in the ongoing conflicts.
| Evidence points to endemic warfare being common for most of human
| history and prehistory. Looking at our closest evolutionary
| cousins, the chimpanzees, it is the same if not more brutal.
|
| I think, on average, that men are more polyamorous than women
| partially because this fit our environment. It allowed women in a
| clan to be in child-bearing partnerships even if gender ratios
| were grossly imbalanced. While we are now in a very different
| environment where almost all men survive, our relative sexual and
| coupling urges have remained the same.
|
| Through most of the modern-era, post feudalism, this was solved
| through socially enforced monogamy. Now of course, with loosening
| restrictions, polyamory is gaining an acceptance it probably
| hasn't experienced since earlier eras of endemic warfare.
|
| To be clear, the lack of violence in modern life is a strictly
| _good_ thing. But I'm not sure where it leaves us for the future.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Our inability to _talk_ about sex is a big problem that enhances
| all the others. Some people are happy abstaining from sex
| altogether, those folks might have useful advice for the Incels
| but they 're shy of offering from having been burnt before.
|
| There's plenty of people for whom sex isn't necessarily involved
| in romance; I personally think a _lot_ of people suffer because
| they confuse and conflate those two ideas.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Abstaining from sex is not useful advice. Sex and intimacy is a
| fundamental human desire and it's cruel and unethical to tell
| people that they should just suck it up and suppress it.
| h2odragon wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the abstinate
| community exists, and could help. I've seen them try.
|
| If you think "abstinate" isn't a valid sexuality, that there
| aren't people who choose not to have sex just as there are
| people who choose other genders, machinery, etc; then we'll
| just have to disagree.
| temp667 wrote:
| Is this too simplistic?
|
| Take care of yourself - health (mental and physical etc).
|
| Sex work should be legal if there is a "market failure" as the
| article argues.
|
| If someone doesn't want sex in a relationship and other person
| does - any way to negotiate something - ie, get on tinder for one
| person or whatever if the issue isn't so critical to break up
| over?
|
| Is porn a problem? ie, perception everyone getting lots of crazy
| deep throat action or whatever? Real life is not exactly like
| that I don't think?
|
| One tip - get off computer / phone / ipad and out from in front
| of TV. Seriously your life gets better so many ways. Board in
| bed? Sex gets a lot more interesting.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex
| life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one wants
| to talk about it. So either porn or the rare few that do want
| to talk about it. But those few are going to be such outliers
| they're likely not average or just lieing
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| > or just lieing
|
| Well, that's the thing. People either lie or (more likely)
| what they say and what they do are different. My guess is
| that any study you look at is only slightly tied to reality
| if it depends on interviews or questionnaires.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex
| life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one
| wants to talk about it.
|
| i assume the Kinsey Institute has studied this; they do
| regular surveys and such on the topic.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| So few people talk about it ever that as far as I'm aware,
| all these children born nowadays have all been immaculately
| conceived.
| hbeqresponse wrote:
| "It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a
| second system of differentiation, completely independent of
| money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as
| mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore,
| strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism,
| and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of
| absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others
| five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with
| dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law
| of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the
| domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes
| of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the
| domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes
| of society." - Michel Houellebecq, Whatever
| [deleted]
| rmk wrote:
| What I'm saying below applies to the advanced liberal economies
| (the rest of the world is not in this place yet).
|
| I think the intersection of feminism, women entering the
| workforce, globalization and the attendant economic insecurity,
| and the shift to a service-oriented economy (where women do much
| better than men) have all combined to put men in a difficult
| position: on average, women are feminists when it comes to power
| plays that pit females as a class against men (feminism is first
| and foremost about power, equality second), but they still expect
| men to be the providers (most women do not want to marry a man
| who makes less than them), and also expect men to do the
| dangerous occupations (oil rig workers, police, military,
| particularly infantry, waste disposal and handling,
| construction). Perhaps women have won a pyrrhic victory here:
| they have successfully risen in power, pay, education,
| independence, and social standing, but at what cost? The
| asymmetry in sexuality between the sexes has always been there,
| but now, there is no framework to reconcile it: traditional
| norms, which reconciled this at great cost to women, have now
| been overturned, but modern-day practices have pushed things in
| the opposite direction, extracting a heavy cost from men. It's
| difficult to say one is better than the other.
| carlisle_ wrote:
| I really like this post because it exudes nuance. So many
| problems are boiled down to terse summaries that are barely
| accurate when examining details.
|
| People being hateful and violent are a problem. More of a problem
| are the conditions that push people in this direction. When
| presenting the underlying cause, people push back and instead
| focus on scapegoating or minimizing.
|
| This problem occurs in engineering all the time too. We accrue
| "tech debt" and when it bites us we're quick to blame
| incompetence or bad luck. Nobody wants to hear that the problem
| is because we have to "waste time" working on hardly visible
| components that don't change anything except "down the road."
|
| The problem is the same now. We blame "bad apples" and "bad days"
| instead of blaming our own culture and society and undertaking
| the effort to improve it. We try to make the world fit our own
| perspectives instead of critically examining our biases. We
| outright lie to ourselves, and I'm frankly sick of it.
| neolefty wrote:
| Agreed. It definitely helped me be more sympathetic to a wider
| variety of single men.
|
| All of us can do better (in the article's case, that includes
| single men who are romantically frustrated) and _almost_ all of
| also us deserve some sympathy. I thought the article did a
| great job of generously showing the overlap between the two.
|
| Showing that intersection -- imperfect people with whom you can
| still sympathize -- is key to being helpful. And overcoming
| imperfections is so much easier when you have help and a
| listening ear. I know plenty of young men who could use someone
| to talk to about this.
| dandare wrote:
| Remark 1: To my knowledge, it is not uncommon that men switch
| genders when sharing their stories on reddit simply to get more
| empathic reception as opposed to some "men up" rebuttal. I did
| that after a therapist told me a man can not be abused by woman,
| I wanted to see if I am really emotionally abused or just crazy.
| It was very helpful.
|
| Remark 2: I vividly remember those gnawing feelings of sexual and
| romantic unfulfillment I suffered as a young man. But it is quite
| difficult to talk about those things without being accused of
| implying that men deserve sex and women are obliged to provide
| it. This post did an excellent job dancing around all the
| landmines, but not everybody has the capacity to do that and
| especially young people should have a safe platform where they
| could talk about these things.
|
| Remark 3: I have noticed that men's rights activists and
| feminists nowadays constantly accuse each other that the other
| group wants privileges, not an actual equality. I would love to
| see a reputable research on this topic.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Have there been any comparative studies on this phenomenon
| between countries with legalized sex work and countries without?
| I live in a country where it is illegal and have gone through
| very long dry spells, and let me tell you it is extremely
| frustrating.
|
| If love, sex, and relationships are as core to people's self-
| confidence as the author makes it out to be, it seems imperative
| to let people have access to those things in at least some form.
| I've certainly been envious of those countries where I would have
| the option to order up a temporary lover, and the useful-if-
| fleeting confidence boost that comes with.
| a_puppy wrote:
| I'm a guy who has, for my entire life, struggled to form romantic
| relationships. For a long time, I also struggled to form
| friendships. So I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about
| this, and here are my thoughts:
|
| The term "incel" is used to mean two wildly different things:
|
| - One meaning is "an incel is someone who's single and complains
| about it". Statistically, a few percent of 30-year-old men are
| virgins. Some of those are for religious reasons, but a lot of
| them are involuntary. So in this sense of the term "incel", I'd
| guess there are somewhere around a million male incels in the US
| today.
|
| - The other meaning is "an incel is a misogynistic asshole who
| uses terms like Chad/Stacy/femoid". This is a _much_ smaller
| group; I doubt there are more than a few thousand people active
| on incel forums.
|
| A lot of people conflate these two groups, and that's very unfair
| to the former group. There's been a lot of discussion of the
| latter group, because they're dramatic and highly visible. But
| the former group is actually much larger; they just aren't as
| visible, often because the sufferers try to hide it. We need to
| talk about the former type of "incel" -- people who are lonely
| and suffering, but haven't done anything wrong!
|
| My theory for how people get into this situation, is that they
| get stuck in a vicious cycle of impaired social skills:
|
| 1. For some reason, they don't have age-appropriate social
| skills.
|
| 2. Because they lack social skills, their peers don't want to
| interact with them.
|
| 3. Because they don't interact with their peers, they don't
| develop social skills.
|
| When the problem gets bad enough, social interactions become
| traumatic. The sufferer learns that every time they try to
| interact with other people (whether romantically or not) they'll
| receive cold stares and harsh rejection. So they become scared to
| even try to interact with people, which makes it even harder to
| escape the cycle.
|
| Many different things can potentially trigger this cycle.
| Sometimes it starts with something like autism that biologically
| impairs their social skills. Other times there's nothing
| biologically wrong with them, but their peers shun them for some
| reason, and then it becomes self-reinforcing.
|
| There are no easy solutions to this problem. In particular, there
| certainly aren't easy solutions that are accessible to the people
| suffering from the problem; if there was an easy way out, they
| would have done it already! Therapy can help, but it's slow,
| expensive, inconvenient, and not guaranteed to work; so it's a
| poor substitute for "not being traumatized in the first place". I
| think the real solution will have to involve changes in society's
| attitude towards socially awkward people:
|
| - For one thing, we absolutely need to stop conflating the
| "raging misogynist" meaning of the word "incel" with the "man
| who's lonely" meaning of the word "incel". Lonely men should be
| able to talk about their suffering without people acting like
| they're misogynists.
|
| - For another thing, we should be kinder and more sensitive to
| socially awkward men when they try to make friends, or ask women
| on dates. Socially awkward people are often unintentionally rude,
| or accidentally make other people uncomfortable. Some people
| assume the awkward person is being rude on purpose, and react
| harshly; this makes it much harder for awkward people to escape
| the cycle. (Of course, nobody's obligated to be friends with a
| socially awkward person if they don't want to -- and in
| particular, women certainly aren't obligated to go on dates when
| they don't want to -- but I do think people should make an effort
| to reject socially awkward folks without traumatizing them!)
| kar5pt wrote:
| I believe that there are a lot of sexless/loveless men who aren't
| violent or misogynistic. The problem is nobody pays attention to
| them. They only become visible to society when they say and do
| violent, misogynistic things. Then people say that it must be
| their fault for being violent and misogynist.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I think more Americans should consider going back to Europe city.
| If things are not working out here. Do what other people have
| done and move away. Things are deteriorating here anyway and
| standard of living is going down. If you move to a larger
| European city, chances are you will end up walking a lot more,
| lose weight, and meet new people. People walk all the time. Just
| the idea of working here overtime for the next 30+ years to
| barely afford a new house should be enough motivation.
| didibus wrote:
| > In that sense at least we are all feminists and men's rights
| activists, but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have
| felt some emotional recoil from being called at least one of
| those two things. Why?
|
| I guess I fall outside that range. Do most people actually find
| themselves having emotional recoil here? I personally feel very
| much a pro-women and pro-men rights supporter. Do most people not
| feel like that? But see it as a women vs men and not a equal
| rights for all kind of thing?
| Secretmapper wrote:
| It's the label, as both of the labels sadly have very negative
| connotations now due to echo chambers.
| standardUser wrote:
| I can't help but react negatively to "Men's Rights" the same
| way I react negatively to "White Power" or "Corporate Welfare".
| djoldman wrote:
| After reading the article, I'm not sure what the main thrust of
| it is besides, "there are people with relationship problems
| stemming from one party wanting more sex than the other."
|
| There's a discussion about incels and statistics cited, as well
| as an appeal for sympathy towards those with these difficulties.
|
| Is there something I'm missing?
|
| I think some of the language isn't quite right but it easily
| passes considering the spirit of good intent.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The article is arguing against the contrary position, common
| the author's circles (and in my own), that these problems
| aren't real and the people who express them deserve
| condemnation rather than sympathy.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It's a great thing we are finally starting to talk about these
| issues in a normal way instead of ridiculing them.
| theropost wrote:
| It must be confusing to be a boy these days with all the
| conflicting messaging on how they should or should not be. The
| expectations of men are conflicting, confusing, uneven, and ever-
| changing. Equality is thrown around, with many exceptions across
| the board. Men simply bite their tongues in society, and are
| expected to do so without much complaint. Men are told to share
| their feelings, but then ignored or shamed when they try. It's a
| very confusing time for men/boys - I have a daughter and a son. I
| feel like my daughter can do anything, and will be fine in the
| future. I can't same the same for my son these days, I worry the
| paths he will have to choose.
| standardUser wrote:
| Your son will likely never be sexually harassed or assaulted,
| which is something we can't say about most women.
| dandare wrote:
| Let's ignore that your numbers are wrong, what is your point?
| That boys/men should be somehow punished by default? Or that
| women have it harder?
| addison-lee wrote:
| And there it is, your bias is exactly the problem.
|
| Per https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics 81% of women experience
| sexual harassment/assault in their lifetimes along with 43%
| of men.
|
| Please educate yourself and stop spreading the lie that men
| are not sexually assaulted, it's incredibly destructive.
| standardUser wrote:
| Less than half? Seems like my statement was factual, but
| that didn't stop you from jumping all over it to make some
| kind of point.
| addison-lee wrote:
| 43% of men experience sexual assault/harassment in their
| lifetime, yet you are sticking by your statement that
| "Your son will likely never be sexually harassed or
| assaulted"? A 57% chance of something happening is
| definitely not likely.
|
| And yes I am clearly making a point: people that gloss
| over sexual crimes against men are spreading destructive
| lies not supported by any data. Maybe it went over your
| head the first time I said it?
| kace91 wrote:
| >I can choose to pity or hate him, but having chosen I can't
| pretend the choice didn't exist; it's something I had to do.
|
| I've had to face similar situations in my family life, and this
| part really resonated with me. It's an extremely eloquent way of
| capturing something I've never been able to put into words. Thank
| you for that.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I'm really worried for my teenage son. Dating was brutal when I
| was doing it 20 years ago, and as far as I can tell, it's
| gotten so, so much worse since. Modern dating can't literally
| be "winner take all", but it sure looks like it's getting
| close.
| standardUser wrote:
| I strongly disagree, but my evidence is all anecdotal. I'm
| not saying that literally every guy can find a partner, but I
| have seen all manner of men end up with perfectly lovely
| partners (and/or occasional sex partners). And when I say
| "all manner" I mean dumb guys, ugly guys, short guys, guys
| with terrible hygiene. The spectrum of men I have personally
| witnessed have success with women is vast and diverse and
| even kind of disgusting.
| colmvp wrote:
| As a short guy, I chuckled at being grouped with dumb guys,
| and guys with terrible hygiene lol
|
| You're not wrong though, both men and women love to make
| fun of a short guys.
| skindoe wrote:
| And how many men who are unbeknownst to you alone and
| completely struggling in the dating market have you seen
| but are conviently ignored for a couple flashy examples
| that stuck out in your mind?
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| The solution is to stop dating for dating's sake, and just
| get out there and socialize with people. At some point,
| you'll end up in conversation with someone really interesting
| and things can/will escalate from there.
|
| Get out of the "dating scene" and just do stuff with people.
| chdaniel wrote:
| I didn't really understand that part. Mind re-wording it in an
| easier manner for me?
| CaveTech wrote:
| He has abrasive behaviour due to his circumstances. The
| author has the choice of overlooking the negatives and
| empathizing with him (pity), or rejecting his behaviour
| regardless of why (hate).
|
| Both reactions can be rationalized and he has the ability to
| choose which way he leans.
| odiroot wrote:
| The longer I live, and especially after having read that post,
| the more I think the civil institution of marriage is a mistake.
| We would be better off, if it remained a purely religious or
| traditional ceremony, without the government putting a stack of
| papers into the equation.
|
| Just let people be happy together; even bound by a promise, if
| they wish so, but without the external pressure and the fallout
| in case they fall out of love. Divorces are such a complicated
| and often-times life ruining experience.
|
| So many people are pushed by their families (or even blackmailed
| by their partners) to go into a marriage they are often not very
| sure about, and have no easy way to get out of. It's probably one
| of the riskiest contracts one can sign.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'll take some of the other side here. I'm married; my wife
| didn't have strong feelings about getting married (lived in
| Europe for a while and was comfortable raising a family
| together unmarried); I wanted to get married earlier than we
| did.
|
| We have two children together and she wanted to stay home with
| the kids for a few years but wasn't willing to do that without
| the framework of a marriage in place. Was 10 years ago and no
| sign that we're headed for trouble, but the civil and legal
| framework and what was at stake as a result was helpful to
| support a choice that we were all fortunate to benefit from all
| around (with a slight hit to retirement savings account
| balances).
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It's 2021, and it would be pretty hard to find someone who would
| come out and say that women deserve to be treated worse than men
| by default, and similarly difficult to find someone believes men
| shouldn't have rights. In that sense at least we are all
| feminists and men's rights activists, but nearly 100% of everyone
| reading this would have felt some emotional recoil from being
| called at least one of those two things. Why? Because there's a
| vast difference between a person who believes the stated beliefs
| of a group as opposed to a person who holds membership in a group
| as a defining part of their identity."
|
| The piece of the puzzle that this misses is _the difference in
| perceived reality_ between the groups - the definitions those
| groups use to define equal and the policies they think would
| provide equality. Sometimes the policies of the two groups in
| question are actually at odds with each other, and even their own
| stated intent (equality).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Or the fuzzier "equity" vs "equality" debate.
| giantg2 wrote:
| In case others are looking for more on this...
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/equality-vs-
| eq...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Or equality of opportunity vs equality in outcomes.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I've seen this thrown around by Jordan Peterson and his
| fans but I've never met anyone, regardless of how crazy
| their ideology was, advocate for equality of outcomes
| outside of basic necessities. I'm convinced it's a
| strawman.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Haven't had a refresher on it since high school, so I
| might be totally out of the loop, but isn't equality of
| outcome the point of marxism?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The goal and concept of Marxism is to remove economic
| capital as an input to the circumstantial function that
| defines a person's outcome. What inputs' weights should
| increase to replace it is open to interpretation.
| jhgb wrote:
| No, the point of Marxism is transitioning the society
| through socialism into communism.
| bjl wrote:
| Not even a little bit...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No, not really in any sense.
|
| You might say that marxism is for _more_ equal outcomes
| than we have under today 's system, but that's true of
| lots of things that aren't marxist (any form of
| progressive taxation to fund social programs, for
| example).
|
| But even that's sort of an oversimplification and doesn't
| do either marxism or "equality of outcomes" justice.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| No, it's not. Marx was critical of the capitalist mode of
| production. Marxism is a lens of looking at economics and
| sociology.
|
| Communism and socialism, which are considered different
| in modern writing but were the same in Marx's time, are
| something Marx believes are an inevitable outcome of
| capitalism.
|
| Marxism suggests that when the workers own the companies,
| then benefits are distributed to the workers who
| own/operate the company. Profit doesn't get centered in
| individuals, it gets spread across the workers of a
| company.
|
| Folks like Lenin/Stalin took this idea further and
| created an authoritarian regime out of the ideas, and
| create what we commonly think of as 'communism' in the
| states.
|
| Edit: Parent comment asked a question about Marxism, I'm
| getting downvoted for explaining some high level concepts
| of Marxism? Do folks want me to dive deeper into the
| dialectical models Marx discussed? Lol
| rjbwork wrote:
| You're correct, of course. I was also downvoted for an
| even slightly more simplified version of this post.
|
| Not too surprising given the general demographics of HN
| being quite biased towards startup founders, VC's, and
| the like.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I'd understand if I was out here being like, "SV SHOULD
| BE MARXIST" but I'm literally just answering a question
| that's a common misconception.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Not at all. Marxism is a method of analyzing history and
| the present through the lens of class conflict.
|
| Generally "Marxism" is thrown around as a boogie man term
| by people with little understanding for something
| approximating extreme authoritarianism in which the state
| owns all the means of production and allocates everyone
| the same resources.
| jhgb wrote:
| It's not "a boogie [sic] man". Marxist governments were
| definitely not "analyzing history", they were enacting
| government policies. That's what governments do,
| unsurprisingly.
|
| (Source: I grew up in a Marxist country and was taught
| Marxism by a Marxist teacher.)
| rjbwork wrote:
| You're probably thinking of Marxism-Leninism, though it's
| hard to know without knowing what country you're talking
| about. I'm not even sure what a "Marxist" country could
| possibly entail. They'd dedicate all resources to
| analyzing society through the lens of historical
| materialism?
| jhgb wrote:
| You surely won't be surprised if I tell you that Marxism-
| Leninism embeds the ideas of Marx about stages of
| societal development.
|
| Also, no; most prominently, we largely dedicated our
| resources to pointless heavy industry at the expense of
| light industry and services.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism. The
| Marxian ideas about stages of societal development for
| example have no bearing about whether you should focus on
| light or heavy industries.
|
| If you're talking about the USSR, there was actually some
| dissension after the death of Lenin on whether light
| industry or heavy industry should be focused on. Lenin
| wanted to focus especially on neither, with his NEP that
| would create a temporary market economy to figure that
| out on it's own.
|
| Eventually, the decision was taken to focus on heavy
| industry. The decisive arguments for a focus on heavy
| industry had nothing to do with Marxian economics - those
| arguments went either way. The main determinant of the
| Soviet focus on heavy industry was the failure of Stalin
| to obtain security assurances from Western Europe,
| leading to a focus on heavy industry for _military
| purposes_.
|
| At least in the 20s this was a solid move, because Soviet
| heavy industry saved tens of millions of lives by
| stalling the Nazi offensive, whose plan was to kill 50%
| of the Soviet population (something very bad).
|
| After the end of WW2 however, it was pointless in
| retrospect to continue the focus on heavy industry. But
| the Soviet Union did not really calculate the geopolitcal
| impact of nuclear weapons and built a military that could
| rival NATO, and this required a _lot_ of heavy industry.
|
| Pretty much, Marxism had nothing to do with Soviet
| investment in heavy industry. The main reason was to feed
| the Soviet war machine, from the very beginning.
| int_19h wrote:
| > Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism.
|
| Not quite. According to the original Marxist dogma,
| Russia couldn't become socialist in 1917, since it had
| too few proletarians, and too many peasants - i.e. it
| wasn't capitalist enough for a socialist revolution.
| Bolsheviks disagreed with that, obviously (and some
| Marxists even say that this forcible approach in a
| society that wasn't ready for it is precisely why the
| USSR turned out like it did).
| jhgb wrote:
| > Marxism-Leninism is a strict subset of Marxism.
|
| If this statement were true then the statement above
| about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would
| be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right
| there, just like a claim that a human _is a_ head is
| incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of
| a human.
|
| > The Marxian ideas about stages of societal development
| for example have no bearing about whether you should
| focus on light or heavy industries.
|
| I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did
| our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And
| there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away
| into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP
| period; our economic failures stretched all the way from
| 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron
| Curtain.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| >If this statement were true then the statement above
| about Marxism being "a method of analyzing history" would
| be false. So there's an obvious contradiction right
| there, just like a claim that a human is a head is
| incompatible with the statement that a leg is a subset of
| a human.
|
| I don't see the incompatibility. Lenin used Marxism, a
| method of analyzing history, to derive a political
| program for the Russian empire. Not everything that the
| Soviet Union did was done because of Marxism Leninism -
| the vast majority was done out of practical
| considerations, outside of the general guidelines.
|
| >I didn't claim any such thing. You simply asked what did
| our Marxist government focus on, and I answered. And
| there's no reason to jump hundreds of kilometers away
| into the USSR and decades into the past into the NEP
| period; our economic failures stretched all the way from
| 1960's onwards all the way to the fall of the Iron
| Curtain.
|
| You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of
| the Soviet Union. I explained to you why this focus on
| heavy industry had nothing to do with Marxism, and
| everything to do with the geopolitics of the Soviet
| Union. I gave an explanation that was valid from death of
| Lenin to the end of the Cold War. It seems to me that my
| thesis that the Soviet government wasn't a "Marxist
| government" but rather a government whose political
| program was initially based partly on a Marxist analysis
| of history, but were many of the fatal decisions and
| errors had nothing to do with Marxism.
| jhgb wrote:
| > I don't see the incompatibility.
|
| Subsets can't contain elements that their supersets lack.
| If A is a subset of B, then if x is an element of A, x is
| also an element of B. So the claim that a state ideology
| is a subset of a method of analyzing history would
| necessarily imply that methods of analyzing history
| habitually contain elements of state ideologies at their
| core, which I haven't observed. Hence I see a
| contradiction there.
|
| > You were talking about the focus on heavy industries of
| the Soviet Union.
|
| I did not grow up in the Soviet Union, hence I wasn't
| talking about it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Marxism Leninism was on paper the state ideology of the
| Soviet Union, sure. But in practice the vast majority of
| decisions taken by the Soviet Union did not have much to
| do with the official state ideology.
|
| As for a method of understanding history containing and
| ideology, this is absolutely the case. All methods of
| analyzing history and social systems at some level rely
| on an ideology. Marxism as a method of analyzing history
| also is an ideology. For other methods of analyzing
| history often the ideology defaults to the current ruling
| ideology.
|
| Marxism also contains economic theory, and social theory,
| all in the goal of analyzing history and changing it.
| Marxism writ large contains all of its sub-tendencies
| which understandably after 150 years evolved a lot.
|
| As far as my assumption that you were talking about the
| Soviet Union, often Marxism Leninism refers to the
| precise ideology of the Soviet Union. If you meant it in
| a different way, you'll have to specify the country and
| time period because various different ideologies call
| themselves Marxism Leninism (and none of them come from
| Marx or Lenin).
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| That's a common _misconception_ about marxism. "To each
| according to his needs" does not mean "To each the same
| amount". Societies that reportedly strived to be marxist,
| still had different people doing different things and
| being granted different resources - and that's
| inevitable. It was even a typical complaint of soviet
| societies, the fact that "connected" people would get
| more than others.
|
| It just so happens that, given the pre-existent
| distribution of wealth will have followed other rules,
| the first step of marxist enaction inevitably ends up
| being "the big reset" where inequality of outcome gets
| temporarily removed for everyone.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No. Marxism is for the abolish ment of social classes,
| with classes defined as contradictory groups related to
| relationships of production.
|
| So a Marxist would want, for example, the
| employer/employee distinction to be abolished. But there
| would be no issue with inequality in the employee class,
| an employee may very well produce 3-4 times more value
| than another.
|
| This is something that Marx explicitly wrote about - he
| thought that different people had different needs and
| abilities and thus should receive sometimes very
| different amounts of resources. The examples he gave
| would be someone that works much faster and better that
| someone else, or someone that has children to raise.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > advocate for equality of outcomes
|
| Well, usually when I see somebody arguing "equity vs.
| equality", they're advocating strict racial quotas:
| absolute equality of outcome, at the level of race.
| vimy wrote:
| Progressives advocate abolishing advanced classes in high
| school because "they have too many white and Asian
| students". Several schools have done so. That is equality
| of outcome in practice.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Citations?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Several schools have done so.
|
| Every time I see a news article about this, they aren't
| being honest about what is happening. My high school in
| particular is often in the news for this reason and the
| reactionary articles are universally BS.
| Loughla wrote:
| The only times I've seen "advanced classes" get abolished
| is when districts KEPT advanced classes in high schools,
| but got rid of "ability tracking" (read: high, middle,
| and low-performing tracks) in early grades (k-6 usually).
| This is because low-income and minority students are more
| likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades,
| thereby baking in the inequity in the system. Eliminating
| those tracking systems, while keeping AP and other TAG
| programs is actually a very good way to ensure equality
| in access with no promise of equality in outcome. . . .
|
| Those headlines tend to get spun as "Chicago district
| eliminates advanced classes" or something to that effect,
| because it gets people riled (spelling?) up.
|
| Please, point me to your sources if you are talking about
| something different.
|
| EDIT: The tracking still occurs in early grades, the
| isolation grouping does not. Students are still tracked
| and tested for ability, deficiency, and performance. What
| they are not doing is grouping them exclusively into
| high, medium, and low, and letting those groups dictate
| resource access. They are grouping across abilities,
| allowing high performers to work with medium and low,
| thereby allowing them to take a leadership role while
| still providing the other two groups with valuable
| resources.
| parineum wrote:
| > This is because low-income and minority students are
| more likely to be tracked low performing in lower grades
|
| Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect
| of bias?
|
| It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that children
| with less resources do worse. I thought the purpose of
| performance tracking was to give the ability to help
| those who were struggling. Instead, you're saying that
| it's more helpful to just not know who's struggling and
| that somehow creates more equality.
| Loughla wrote:
| Edited for clarity.
|
| >Are they actually lower performing or is this an effect
| of bias?
|
| This is why these programs in early grades are eliminated
| - they absolutely were based on bias and external
| factors. Yes, children with less resources do worse. That
| was the problem. Students with less access would be
| tracked low, thereby ensuring they had access to even
| fewer resources (which were diverted to high performers
| and TAG classes).
|
| >Instead, you're saying that it's more helpful to just
| not know who's struggling and that somehow creates more
| equality.
|
| I didn't explain it well. They still track student
| ability for interventions, they don't group solely by
| ability. When they did the latter of those two, the
| have's had even more and the have-nots had even less.
| parineum wrote:
| That makes much more sense although the argument I'd make
| is still that the issue wasn't the tracking and grouping,
| it was the allocation of resources. The schools/policy
| makers have to allocate resources in a zero sum way which
| makes the question whether to help those who are
| struggling or push those who are excelling, both, I
| think, are worthy motives.
|
| The shame in all of this is that the choice has to be
| made at all. I think, ideally, every student should have
| a roughly equal amount of attention and dollars allocated
| to them and if a school is underfunded, everyone suffers
| until the problem is remediated.
|
| I suspect there's some sort of incentive on the
| administrators of these schools, be through funding,
| personal career advancement or something else, that makes
| them want to max out the top end rather than raise the
| low end.
| Loughla wrote:
| In my experience (granted, that is limited to a dozen or
| so districts in two states), they used to focus on the
| top end students because a) they were well-connected
| compared to their peers, b) they came from the higher
| income (and therefore higher property-tax) portions of
| the district and were therefore more well connected to
| local funding source, and c) had parents that were savvy
| enough of systems such as education to advocate strongly
| for their children.
|
| >ideally, every student should have a roughly equal
| amount of attention and dollars allocated to them and if
| a school is underfunded, everyone suffers until the
| problem is remediated.
|
| The problem is that this is sort of what happens right
| now, and it's not great. The current funding scheme
| relies disproportionately on local property taxes, which
| only serves to exacerbate the effects of inequality. The
| current system is a warehouse for student bodies, with
| oversize classes, underfunded supplies, underpaid
| teachers, and too many unfunded mandates.
|
| Ideally, we figure out funding (that's way above my pay
| grade), and then we can move on to cross-ability
| grouping. Seriously, it's just a fact that high achievers
| learn much better when they are left to (roughly) their
| own devices, with guidance and outlines for progress as
| appropriate. Low achievers learn better when they are led
| through the process by someone who can put the language
| in terms they can understand; ideally with support
| outside of the teacher, such as from peers (look up
| supplemental instruction for a model in there). Middle
| achievers will consistently live up to the exact
| expectation you place on them; so they need a system and
| environment that places increasingly more strenuous
| expectations on them, both socially and educationally.
|
| Combine all of that, and you have a wonderful cross-age,
| cross-ability classroom focused on social development as
| well as academics. The ability to specialize for various
| fields such as STEM, art, or technical education is just
| built in, as well!
|
| If anyone is interested in funding my charter school idea
| - it's a neighborhood based one-room-schoolhouse model
| where education and learning are led by the abilities and
| desires of the students. Much free time, much outdoor
| time, and incorporating everything in the above
| paragraph. Completely unrealistic for public schooling in
| the united states due to the inordinate per pupil cost.
| But just a lovely idea.
| giantg2 wrote:
| We have a public high school around me that is for STEM
| students. It has limited seats available. It is not only
| based on prior grades but on essays about why you deserve
| to go and stuff. It ends up rejecting many students every
| year. I can see requiring an entrance exam or prior
| grades to prove you have the ability and won't be slowing
| people down, but this goes way beyond that.
|
| I wonder how it can be that one has the desire and
| aptitude to succeed there and the _public_ school can
| deny people that opportunity. That just seems
| antithetical to _public_ education.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| The trick is in how broadly you define "basic
| necessities." Go talk to a plains Indian in the 1700s and
| ask them if a permanent structure all to themselves with
| running water and a refrigerator is a basic necessity.
| Now think about access to doctors and drugs.
|
| That's the real crux of what we talk about when we talk
| about equality of outcomes. What qualifies as a
| necessity? And that's when you start getting arguments
| that start with things like "well in a modern society..."
|
| You'll probably be hard pressed to find someone that says
| that someone deserves to starve to death because they're
| unwilling to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
| You'd probably also be equally hard pressed to find
| someone who thinks that waigu beef is a basic necessity.
| You say "strawman" and they say "moving the goalposts"
| and none of that is productive, this is a legitimate
| discussion that is going to be had, needs to be had and
| is not over or settled, shutting it down by calling the
| opposing viewpoint fallacious on false premises will not
| change that, it will only be counterproductive.
| etripe wrote:
| Have you never seen people decrying unequal
| representation in, say, tech? I've seen plenty of people
| make that claim and expect the distribution of groups to
| match the distribution in the general population. That's
| equality of outcome, not opportunity. It's also only
| really possible in two scenarios:
|
| A. Everyone regardless of demographic has the same
| opportunities, talent and interest in tech
|
| B. You force people into positions they don't want and
| force people out that do want them
|
| The same goes for education, nursing, construction,
| sewage, fire fighting...
| Loughla wrote:
| I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I
| haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and
| progressive university circles that I run in, who
| advocate for equality in outcome. It's equality in
| opportunity that's important. It's about letting 'your
| freedom as an individual to choose your own destiny'
| actually be 'free' from the start and not constrained by
| social mores, ingrained biases or discrimination, and/or
| other external factors.
|
| The freedom in outcomes argument is 100% a strawman used
| by far right pop culture icons to drum up views and
| clicks.
| LanceH wrote:
| The left regularly trots out statistics as "proof" of
| racism. That something isn't equal directly indicates
| racism (or some other -ism). So inequality of outcome
| implies inequality of opportunity. It leaves no room for
| the possibility of equal opportunity and different
| outcome.
|
| Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the
| inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This
| immediately implies sexism because no other explanation
| is even possible.
| 1_person wrote:
| I have met many people in left and progressive circles
| who literally advocate for equality in outcomes and
| dismiss meritocracy as various internalized not-giving-
| them-what-they-wantisms.
| textgel wrote:
| It's a core belief of progressivism; those who claim it
| isn't know it is but are interested in protecting a
| movement that gives them a means of attacking those they
| dislike.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see
| inequality of outcomes _at the group level_ , correctly
| identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no
| progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should
| have the same outcomes.
|
| That's different from wanting similar outcomes between
| groups of millions of people, because those almost
| invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
|
| I don't know of any left tendency that believes in
| equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in
| equality of outcome.
| textgel wrote:
| You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of
| outcome.
|
| In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some
| ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't
| believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as
| they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or
| any of the other causes that claim to champion but they
| like the power that comes from doing so.
|
| For example no progressive has any issues with an
| imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts
| brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech
| industry.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from
| every different group should do the exact same in every
| job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of
| dealing with inequalities either.
|
| I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount
| of work, black and white people should have similar
| salaries, for example. Something that is not the case
| today.
|
| This is a disparity that can't be explained away by
| choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead a result of
| inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the
| opportunity gap.
|
| I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's
| because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing
| and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In
| a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in
| general decide not to become nurses, that's fine.
|
| Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination
| against women in tech at every level. For example,
| different countries have massively different amounts of
| women in engineering. Women in countries where this
| amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is
| clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in
| opportunities led by sexism.
|
| It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute
| worst possible interpretation of the argument of your
| interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and
| generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite
| rude.
| textgel wrote:
| Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core
| part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-
| scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly
| embarrassing to have supported.
|
| And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap
| in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent
| global-push to rectify the issue.
|
| Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries
| with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended
| to produce the higher number of female engineers; and
| that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards
| "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There absolutely are programs for men into nursing.
|
| Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in
| engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I
| live, these measures were very successful and in the
| leading engineering-only university the rate of women
| graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me.
|
| As for this: > _Perhaps you don 't, but for progressives
| it remains a core part of their ideology and one that
| can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief
| has become publicly embarrassing to have supported._
|
| The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to
| find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism
| is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the
| negative. I can give examples however of specific far-
| left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism
| to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological
| level, aim for equality of outcome.
| textgel wrote:
| Brushing away the example as "cherry picking" because no
| counter argument can be given isn't convincing,
| particularly when the pattern is seen in developed
| countries in general.
|
| As for your university efforts I'd have to know what
| those actually were before making a call.
|
| And re progresivism and quotas; it isn't based on it but
| it subscribes heavily to it due to its utility.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I gave a counter argument - for many universities this
| did actually work. The example I was talking about is
| Polytechnique Montreal. But it's far from being the only
| one, though admittedly Scandinavia had a failure in this
| goal.
|
| As far as progressivism and quotas, I simply can't argue
| on this unless you give me a specific progressive
| tendencies. If you're talking about US progressives writ
| large then the main reason quotas are so popular is
| because the people in power that put those quotas in
| place, which often weren't even progressives, found
| quotas to be easy to implement as other solutions are
| very difficult and inconvenient for those in power,
| though popular.
| textgel wrote:
| Apologies I meant what those efforts entailed; what
| actually was done in the universities to achieve the
| numbers increase?
|
| As for the 2nd point, that's more of what I'm getting at;
| that core populist/mainstream progressive movement. I
| could certainly believe that the leaders are jumping on
| it purely due to, as you say the simplicity and
| popularity of them.
| 1_person wrote:
| > It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute
| worst possible interpretation of the argument of your
| interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and
| generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite
| rude.
|
| To me it seems you have gone to great lengths to clarify
| that you mean exactly what the original poster is
| referring to.
|
| I don't believe their reading your argument at face value
| is in any way assuming the worst possible interpretation.
|
| It's not a personal attack for someone to disagree with
| your beliefs.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| If the goal is to have equal opportunity, but inequity is
| assumed to be indicative of unequal opportunity then
| that's just a long-winded way of saying the goal is
| equity.
|
| > Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination
| against women in tech at every level. For example,
| different countries have massively different amounts of
| women in engineering. Women in countries where this
| amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is
| clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in
| opportunities led by sexism.
|
| Do you have a source for this claim? Because this
| contradicts the sources I have read on this topic. The
| share of women in engineering varies, but not by much.
| Most countries fall between the 20-30% range. We see no
| countries where women make up the majority. Furthermore,
| the representation of women in countries with better
| gender equality is actually lower than ones that are
| highly misogynistic [1].
|
| 1.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-
| more...
| Loughla wrote:
| Those are a lot of absolute statements you're making, and
| I just don't understand. There is so much wrong with your
| argument. You're attributing motive and action to someone
| else, with zero proof, in my opinion.
|
| >You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of
| outcome.
|
| Who is 'you' here? Who said they believe in quotas?
|
| >they like the power that comes from doing so.
|
| Again, who is this mysterious strawman you're building?
| Where is this argument coming from? What is your proof? I
| am very progressive, and I very much have disdain for
| racism, sexism, and any other bigoted activities. It has
| nothing to do with power. Often, I am unable to do
| anything about this behavior because I lack any sort of
| structural power in my local area. So what does that mean
| for your argument?
|
| >For example no progressive has any issues with an
| imbalance in genders in nursing
|
| I literally work to bring men into underrepresented
| fields in higher education. There are programs across the
| nation specifically designed to recruit, assist, and help
| ensure the academic success of men in nursing, men in
| daycare/education fields, and men in other traditionally
| 'feminine' fields. Claiming this absolute of a statement
| is just absurd.
| textgel wrote:
| If you would follow a couple steps up the comment chain
| you'll note that the discussion centred around
| progressive ideology; you're welcome to re-read the chain
| and respond again once you have familiarised yourself
| with the context.
| Loughla wrote:
| I followed the chain to that comment and then asked the
| questions I asked. Please answer them, I would appreciate
| it.
|
| You seem to be building an odd little strawman to knock
| down based on some bogeyman theoretical progressive you
| have imagined. I'm trying to point that out to you.
| textgel wrote:
| You're genuinely going to try and claim, on HN of all
| places that no one is advocating for enforced gender
| requirements in hiring?
| jimbokun wrote:
| > That's different from wanting similar outcomes between
| groups of millions of people, because those almost
| invariably come from inequality of opportunity.
|
| Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems
| you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the
| same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group
| level.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Unless you believe there are innate differences between
| the ability of these groups, then yes the two are
| logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not
| going to get in this debate today.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The trick is that life is a series of "opportunities" and
| equality of opportunity at any particular point of choice
| generally results in perpatuating any imbalance of
| opportunity that has occurred before that.
|
| For the sake of illustration, assume two large groups of
| kids who _innately_ would have had identical ability, but
| one 's growth and education is (on average) more stunted
| because their families are more likely to be single
| parent families, or have a parent in jail, or just very
| poor (which affects a lot), so _right now_ they don 't
| have identical average ability because they did not get
| equal education and support some decades ago.
|
| If you want to have equal representation of the groups,
| you'd have to artificially correct for all the previous
| differences in opportunity - without a time machine, you
| can't _actually_ fix the differences in their skills and
| experience (no matter how fairly or unfairly those
| differences came to be), you can only pretend that those
| differences don 't exist. And so we come to the core
| issue that granting equal treatment to unequally capable
| candidates means granting unequal treatment to equally
| capable candidates, there's no way around it.
|
| And there's also a gap between treating individuals
| fairly and treating groups fairly. You can't/don't
| measure the opportunity differences on an individual
| level, but on a group level, and individual variation in
| opportunity is huge. In general, any "compensating
| opportunities" happen at a group level, because if one
| group is underrepresented under a "background-blind"
| schema, then it's because lots and lots of capable
| individuals from that group have "filtered away" and gone
| on to very different life paths long before applying -
| and any corrective action or quota system is not helping
| those individuals who suffered most from the lack of
| earlier opportunities, instead it's granting a larger
| (compensating) opportunity to _other_ individuals who
| just happen to be from the same group but had enough
| opportunity to "stay in the game", while punishing
| individuals who have had limited opportunities despite
| belonging to a group that on average has more
| opportunities.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Or there could be equal ability, but population-wide
| differences in preferences, demographics, or other
| factors. Is it your position that men are
| underrepresented in teaching and nursing because these
| fields are highly biased against men? Likewise, there's a
| significant overrepresentation of Asian in tech. Does the
| fact that tech hotspots like the Bay Area and Seattle
| metro have higher than average Asian populations have no
| role in this disparity?
|
| Claiming to support equal opportunity while
| simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily
| indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded
| way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes.
|
| And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency
| between equity and equality, then they believe in innate
| differences between groups is very reductive. There are
| plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography,
| and more.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| That's not true. It is a false dichotomy. There are a
| myriad of reasons you'd find different behaviors or
| results in different groups of people besides either
| ingrained innate unchangeable differences and lack of
| opportunity for that group. Even if you sampled two
| equally sized samples of equal distribution of the same
| kind of people (whatever that means to you) you'd find
| aggregate disparity to some degree. No innate differences
| at all, and no difference in opportunity based on group
| membership, you'd still find disparity. Your dichotomy is
| false.
|
| Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often
| nowadays that there's some invisible force creating
| opportunity disparities between different arbitrary
| groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously
| convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the
| disparities are because it was the will of God.
|
| Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if
| you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk
| to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if
| you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with,
| why are you on a discussion website at all?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Hell, if you want to take it to the limit, even Karl Marx
| didn't believe in equality of outcomes.
| cabraca wrote:
| Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority
| groups or genders basically that? we hear that there are
| only xy % of women in tech or PoC in tech and that the
| goal is to get for example 50/50% women/men. Isn't this
| basically a discussion about equality of opportunity vs
| equality of outcome. 50%/50% is basically equality of
| outcome. We can see for example in scandinavia that you
| get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of
| opportunities.
| ska wrote:
| > Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain
| minority groups or genders basically that?
|
| Not really, but it's easily confused.
|
| I'm not taking a position here on what is correct, but
| advocates for this sort thing will state that inequality
| in _current_ distribution of outcomes is due inequality
| of opportunity in the past. If you accept that as true,
| you have a problem from a policy level as to what to do
| about it, if anything.
|
| One approach would be to attach the opportunity side
| only, and assume that in a few generations a more
| equitable distribution will arrive over time.
|
| Another is to try an tip the scales a bit to correct to
| impact of opportunity on those people effected, or on
| your company say (or other institution) or both. A
| problem with this approach is you by definition don't
| really know what the correct distribution should be, so
| you are likely to be a bit hamfisted about it.
| Loughla wrote:
| I mean, if you just take it at face value, then it could
| be interpreted that way. I think the problem is that
| there isn't an easy soundbite that companies can put out
| to identify how they will impact equality of opportunity,
| so they take the easy way to seem 'woke' or whatever
| other adjective you want to put on it, and attack with
| equality of outcome. I'm not trying to have a 'no true
| scotsman' sort of thing, but profit-driven companies are
| not a great measuring tool for most social issues.
|
| I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only
| xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily
| digestible way of saying, women do not have the same
| opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for
| companies to outline the steps to ensure those
| opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal.
|
| >We can see for example in scandinavia that you get
| unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of
| opportunities.
|
| Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post
| history because I wondered if you were another person who
| brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And
| that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split
| and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose
| needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be
| level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in
| fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at
| birth such as gender and ethnicity."
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I've encountered a slightly more nuanced equity position
| that comes in the form of supporting equal opportunity,
| but simultaneously claiming that inequitable outcomes are
| indicative of unequal opportunity. If the goal is to fix
| inequality and inequity is assumed to be evidence of
| inequality, then that's just a roundabout way of pursuing
| equal outcomes.
|
| I'm not saying that this is your position. It's just a
| position I've encountered with fequency.
|
| Inequity is not evidence of inequality. Evidence of
| inequality are things like: sending identical resumes
| save for male vs. female names and measuring the
| difference in response rate, anonymizing candidates'
| voices and measuring changes in interview performance, or
| other tests that see changes in output directly
| attributable to aspects of the candidate's identity.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree. How do you propose measuring it if not using the
| 50/50 metric? Are we already at the point of equal
| opportunity? If not, why?
| Loughla wrote:
| >How do you propose measuring it if not using the 50/50
| metric?
|
| If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a
| billionaire. Really though, I have no practical ideas,
| because it isn't something I work with regularly. It
| seems like a sociologist could come up with something,
| some way to measure sentiment among youth, or something
| to that effect, but that's beyond me.
|
| >Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If
| not, why?
|
| I don't believe so. Even the often touted Gender-equity
| paradox can be boiled down to gender stereotypes
| manifesting in individuals' decisions
| (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/49/31063).
|
| All I know is that I see nearly no women enter STEM
| majors at the institutions I have worked with, whereas
| education and social work is almost 100% female. That is
| lopsided enough to tell me that something is at play
| here. I just simply am not educated enough to know what,
| how to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Have you looked into that study? That seems kind of shady
| to me. They are using math attitudes to say there's a
| stereotype. It's not even asking stuff like 'do you think
| boys or girls are better at math' etc. It's just stuff
| like "Math is important for my career" etc. Well if they
| already have ideas about the careers they want to
| perform, then obviously the study is looking at the
| outcomes and not the drivers - why did they choose those
| careers? So it seems we're back at square one - that
| women as an aggregate choose fields that aren't as math
| centric. It seems like a leap to assume some implicit
| meaning behind those general questions on the survey.
|
| "If I had that answer, I honestly think I would be a
| billionaire."
|
| If we can't even define the problem and the underlying
| causes or measure the outcomes, then how can we fix it?
| Even if we try things, we would have no idea if they are
| actually beneficial because we don't even know what to
| measure.
|
| "I just simply am not educated enough to know what, how
| to measure it, or how to attempt to fix it."
|
| If we can't measure it and don't know how to fix it, then
| do we even know that a problem exists?
|
| "Even the often touted Gender-equity paradox can be
| boiled down to gender stereotypes manifesting in
| individuals' decisions"
|
| But if it's their own free choice, then why should we
| interfere with that? It's like saying my mom doesn't want
| me to play football because I might get hurt, so I'm
| going to base my decision on that. That is up to the
| person to decide if they want to use that as part of
| their decision making. Nobody is forcing them.
|
| The study had a question about if being a house wife is
| fulfilling. If a person finds that fulfilling, should we
| prevent them from doing that? I ha e a STEM job and I
| don't feel fulfilled. Judging by the number of
| disillusioned posts on HN, it looks like an engineering
| job is not something that is fulfilling. I don't see
| forcing people into it as a fix for anything. You're
| talking about swapping social norms that value family
| (fulfillment as a house wife) for the social norm that
| making more money, even at the expense of fulfillment, is
| what society values.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Quotas guarantee opportunity they don't guarantee
| outcome.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem
| to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs
| "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found
| that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male,
| and decided to try to change this by instituting a new
| program exclusively focused on recruiting women.
|
| A progressive might argue that this program gives women a
| better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative
| would say that the program was created for the purpose of
| influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively
| on women the program is intentionally creating _unequal_
| "opportunities".
| Loughla wrote:
| That seems like a very fair observation. I think I am
| inclined to agree with that assessment.
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| You don't know any communists in your insanely left and
| progressive university? I find that hard to believe. I
| went to a fairly right wing university and the place with
| lousy with communists. They mostly got better, but still.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I worked at a company that set a diversity target of 33%
| women in tech roles. In the same all-hands that announced
| this target leadership said using our definition of a
| "tech role" 20% of the workforce was women. To achieve
| this, we gave women two chances to pass the pre-onsite
| coding interview instead of one. Sure, this isn't as
| forceful as a hard 50/50 quota but it is pushing the
| needle away from equality and towards equity. Equity
| taking precedence over equality is also the basis of
| affirmative action used by private universities. And
| progressive taxation.
|
| In fact, I'm a supporter of equity over equality in
| plenty of instances beyond basic necessities. I think
| certain avenues to pursuing this are better than others,
| and that there are some instances where pursing equity
| over equality is misguided. But yes, I do believe there
| are instances where pursuing equity - at least in part -
| is better than exclusively pursuing equality.
| intergalplan wrote:
| > And progressive taxation.
|
| Point of order: I'm taxed the same on my one-millionth
| dollar of income (assuming the same source) as Jeff Bezos
| is.
|
| ... I just don't have a one-millionth dollar of income to
| tax, but if someone wants to shift things toward equality
| rather than equity I'll happily accept donations toward
| that end. To make things more equal for Bezos and to
| strike a blow against equity, naturally.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > To make things more equal for Bezos and to strike a
| blow against equity, naturally.
|
| This is exactly my point: a flat tax rate would be more
| equal, but less equitable. And I do support a tax code
| that is more equitable, rather than more equal in this
| regard.
| toomuchredbull wrote:
| There's this thing called communism, not sure if you have
| heard of it but it's becoming quite popular again amongst
| the younger generation.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Genuine question: Isn't this equivalent to equity vs
| equality?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Exactly. There's a good fence and box example in here.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/equality-
| vs-eq...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Genuine question: Isn't this equivalent to equity vs
| equality?
|
| Not generally, no; "equity" generally refers to fairness
| of treatment (as distinct from non-differentiation in
| equality); while concepts of fairness vary, equivalence
| of outcomes not the moat common understanding pursued
| under the banner of "equity".
|
| Which is not to say that the two are never (especially in
| particular narrow domains) the same, but they aren't in
| general the same.
| slg wrote:
| In my experience, people who are against "equity" call it
| "equality of outcome" because it sounds more
| Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor
| of choice is. Very few people actually advocate for
| "equality of outcome".
|
| Equity is closer to "equality of opportunity" than
| "equality of outcome". "Equality" is neither of those
| things because it doesn't correct for differences in
| opportunity and therefore obviously doesn't yield an
| equal outcome.
| yamellasmallela wrote:
| People who use "equity" really do mean equality of
| outcome, and that is a huge problem.
|
| Equality of outcome is undeniably evil.
| PeterisP wrote:
| > Very few people actually advocate for "equality of
| outcome"
|
| There are certainly many people advocating for explicit
| "equality of outcome" policies e.g. various quota systems
| that mandate granting unequal opportunities for otherwise
| equally suitable applicants in order to achieve an
| equitable outcome for various groups (e.g. gender,
| ethnicity, caste, etc) the applicants represent.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| >In my experience, people who are against "equity" call
| it "equality of outcome" because it sounds more
| Orwellian/communistic/whatever your dystopian descriptor
| of choice is.
|
| I call it Harrison Bergeron:
|
| https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Be
| rge...
| eloff wrote:
| Honestly because neither feminists nor men's rights activists
| want equality, despite whatever they purport to be about.
|
| Just like there's a political spectrum with the crazies at the
| edges of both left and right, there is also a spectrum on
| gender issues, race, or any other social issue. The crazies are
| to be found at the edges of that, again on both sides.
| [deleted]
| michaelpb wrote:
| The problem with this line of thought is that some of the
| "crazies at the edge" in the past are the sensible, moderate
| ideas that you no doubt hold right now. For example, viewing
| slavery as an evil institution was considered the "crazies at
| the edge" opinion in the early-mid 1800s in the US, as
| opposed to the dominant opinion among "sensible"
| abolitionists that slavery was personal sin that requires a
| redemption process (like drinking). In some cases, this
| change of sentiment can take only a couple decades: See
| opinion polling on gay marriage or weed legalization.
|
| This is why both-sides-ing or argument to moderation is not
| really a useful or convincing rhetorical device.
| eloff wrote:
| Nothing about what I said means that values are static over
| time or that the balance can't shift. It's true that
| today's crazies at the edge might be tomorrows center -
| although I find that thought troubling!
|
| But make no mistake, the extremes at both ends harbor
| dangerous crazies. In politics, while the evils of the
| right are obvious and dangerous, the evils of the left are
| much more seductive but have been just as dangerous this
| past century (think fascists vs communists).
|
| On gender issues, the incels are clearly unhinged. But so
| are the extreme feminists.
| eloff wrote:
| Just an aside, I've noticed that anything I post
| criticizing the right gets me upvotes on HN. Anything
| criticizing the left is much more controversial. I wonder
| how HN leans as a whole?
|
| I view myself as left of center, but not left enough by
| the standards of this community.
|
| I just find that interesting.
| toyg wrote:
| Both you and parent are right, but you have to acknowledge
| that extremists and totalitarians do exist.
| krastanov wrote:
| "you have to acknowledge that extremists and
| totalitarians do exist" is a cheap rhetorical device to
| sneak in "both sides are the same" fallacies. Yes, of
| course there are crazies in any political movement,
| demographic, subculture, or other group. Elevating these
| crazies to the first thing mentioned when discussing the
| actual substance of the beliefs of a group is silly at
| best, but more frequently it is simply a dishonest
| distraction. This is not a slippery slope (also typically
| a fallacy in practice).
| michaelpb wrote:
| Yeah, exactly!
|
| It's also simply not a useful type of statement even when
| made in good faith. It assumes all issues fit on scales.
| For example, there are people today who call themselves
| feminists, and have extremely different views about
| LGBTQ+ rights compared to others who call themselves
| feminist (notably around the BTQ+ part). I really don't
| know who is the more "extreme", since that implies that I
| am referencing an agreed upon "center" which these
| positions differ from, and that simply doesn't exist.
| There is no agreed upon "center" for anything. Both claim
| to be feminists, and claim the other side is wrong, and
| neither would consider the other either more "extreme" or
| more "centrist".
|
| This is just one example, but I would argue that this
| holds true in nearly every case: Reducing something to a
| scale with "extremes" on each side mostly just shows how
| the speaker perceives other positions and is otherwise
| not very useful.
|
| CS stuff: IMO a better mental model would be non-
| Cartesian. Perhaps a weighted graph, where the vertices
| are ideologies (or, to be more granular, people), and the
| edge-weights represent some fuzzy metric of overlap of
| beliefs.
| eloff wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not saying both sides are the same -
| that's a value judgment. But it's obviously not a one
| side is right and the other is wrong situation either.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I think that it is just as important to talk about the
| extremes and the bad ideas as it is to talk about the
| good ones. We bring up the extremes because they're
| there, and they can be tempting, and so we should warn
| each other about them. Saying what you're saying usually
| (but not always) is an attempt to not address the usually
| perfectly reasonable point one is responding to without
| outright defending the extremes. Extreme ideas _do_ need
| to be pointed out precisely to do what you want: prevent
| the reasonable discussion from becoming one between two
| extremes.
| krastanov wrote:
| You are completely right in the appropriate context: when
| talking about ideology A we should consider more than
| just its most standard version. But when comparing
| ideology A and ideology B, focusing on the extremes of
| ideology A while considering only the middle ground of
| ideology B (what happened in this thread) is more or less
| whataboutism.
| krastanov wrote:
| Are you equating reasonableness of the *average* person that
| self-identifies as feminist and the *average* men's-rights-
| advocate?
| textgel wrote:
| Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify
| with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would
| describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold
| the traits inherent in the movement that so many find
| despicable.
| krastanov wrote:
| You are making some pretty wild misrepresentations of
| reality: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2020/07/07/a-centu...
|
| The closest thing I can find to your interpretation is
| that women of color are less probable to adopt the term
| "feminist" because they are less probable to feel the
| movement has done enough for them.
|
| I do not know who has convinced you of an alternative
| definition of the word, but feminism means "believing in
| equal treatment / equal opportunity / etc".
| textgel wrote:
| Literally the first google result of "women identifying
| as feminst" https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/american-women-
| and-feminism
|
| And plenty more for the willing student; however an
| ideology that considers "men are on average taller and
| stronger than women" to be a controversial statement
| might understandably place some difficulty on those in
| need of finding these things.
|
| And funnily enough the definition of a group has nothing
| to do with how it behaves; or are you suddenly going to
| proudly identify as a mens rights activist? I suppose its
| just as well that naming North Korea a democratic peoples
| republic magically fixed the place overnight as well.
| krastanov wrote:
| Could you spell out how the link you shared says anything
| about "year on year decrease" or anything about the
| movement being viewed as "despicable". Especially in the
| context of your very reference saying that the results
| depend significantly on how the question is phrased?
| textgel wrote:
| Ask yourself if you or other people would be more
| comfortable identifying as feminists publicly now as
| opposed to 5/10 years ago; that'll give you answer 1.
|
| As for answer 2, I've shown what basic searches can come
| up with. "why im not a feminst" might give you what
| you're looking for.
| michaelpb wrote:
| Not OP, but Answer 1: Yes, it's anecdotal but you
| definitely see the trend.
|
| Answer 2: So I did the Google search as you requested,
| and read about the book [1]. I hadn't heard of it but it
| looks interesting, thanks for recommending. From what I
| can tell, it's central claim is that feminism has an
| image problem due to it being co-opted by the US right-
| wing which she calls "choice feminism", and the remedy is
| a need to return to a leftist concept of what she calls
| "radical feminism". Is that what you're saying?
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Am-Not-Feminist-
| Manifesto/dp/1612...
| textgel wrote:
| A full on reading into one particular book is probably
| going above and beyond (though I cant immediately see
| anything about right wing co-option on a skim read of
| that particular one; the general criticism at the moment
| seems to centre on the radical lefts takeover).
|
| The search for me at least brings a number of articles
| which highlight common criticisms of the movement such as
| rampant sexism, advocacy for abolition of basic rights
| (free speech, right to fair trial etc), general hypocrisy
| and bad faith action (see the Cathy Newman vs Jordan
| Peterson interview for a great example of this)
| Kaze404 wrote:
| > an ideology that considers "men are on average taller
| and stronger than women" to be a controversial statement
|
| Citation needed
| textgel wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nu_INVli0
| Kaze404 wrote:
| You can find footage of people defending literally any
| controversial take you might have. Doesn't mean there are
| enough subscribers to consider their position.
| textgel wrote:
| Never happened > Okay it happened but not that big a deal
| > etc etc.
|
| These conversations always take such a predictable path.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I'm not surprised these conversations are predictable to
| you, if every time you twist the other person's argument
| into one that fits the narrative.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Highlighting one extreme statement in a huge ideological
| umbrella framework does not indict the entire ideology,
| as your original sentence claimed.
|
| Is that controversial statement a common one in that
| ideology? An official one? Do many groups from that
| ideology subscribe to it?
|
| You keep using the phrase "feminism", a memeplex that's
| as massive and diverse as any social movement, political
| ideology, or religion. But it's easy to oversimplify and
| be reductive towards such a memeplex, which includes
| members as diverse as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria
| Steinem, Zoe Quinn and Ariel Levy, Andrew Dworkin and
| Malala Yousafzai. You have to understand when dealing
| with a hugely variegated ideology it's unhelpful to speak
| in absolutes.
| textgel wrote:
| No but the groups behaviour however does; behaviour
| illustrated in just one example I have given. And I never
| claimed one example was what it took to make the
| situation, I stated the situation and gave an example
| when pressed for evidence.
|
| The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those that
| they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity within the
| movement the resultant behaviour remains the same.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > The "memeplex" offers no such nuance to any of those
| that they oppose; and for all the claimed diversity
| within the movement the resultant behaviour remains the
| same.
|
| On the contrary, memeplex indicates quantity, size. A
| massive ideology with a thousand schools of thought
| inside. J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Clymer both identify
| as feminists. So do both Naomi Wu and Sarah Jeong. Such
| an umbrella term of ideologies contains myriads of sub-
| ideologies, many of them often in direct competition and
| contradiction with each other. To judge such an umbrella
| based on a single facet is to equate all of Islam to
| Salafi jihadism, or all of Christianity to Joel Osteen.
| It would seem that I am not the one operating without
| nuance, in this discussion.
|
| > behaviour illustrated in just one example I have given.
|
| A single statement from a single video? Perhaps that's
| the measure by how you judge all ideologies, but most do
| not subscribe to that heuristic.
|
| > I stated the situation and gave an example when pressed
| for evidence.
|
| And thus it is up to you to further prove that such
| evidence is indicative of the ideology, broadly.
| etripe wrote:
| > feminism means "believing in equal treatment / equal
| opportunity / etc
|
| While this might be what feminists like to tell
| themselves, that is untrue. Feminism is (and can only
| ever be) the movement asserting women's rights in
| society. It is unlikely to (and doesn't) advocate for the
| abolition of advantages women enjoy, like the tax
| disparity, criminal sentencing disparity or child custody
| disparity. It is also increasingly uninterested in the
| male perspective, further reducing its utility.
|
| MRAs, while too androcentric as well, are a younger
| movement. Like the first wave of feminism, it's focusing
| on today's disparities. Also like feminism, it has its
| elements of disdain for the other perspective. And
| finally, like feminism, men's rights can never be
| anything but a narrowly focused movement ensuring men
| aren't treated less than women.
|
| The word you're looking for is egalitarian.
| eloff wrote:
| No, because men's rights advocates are a smaller group
| further to an extreme end of the spectrum. Let's be
| generous and say it's 0.2 % of the population. Are the most
| extreme 0.2% of the population identifying as feminists
| just as unhinged? Could be. I don't think either of us
| could say for sure, but it's plausible. There's some value
| judgments to be made there. But there are crazies on both
| sides of the issue - that's self evident, right?
| swiley wrote:
| There's something in humans and I'm not sure if it's an anglo
| culture thing or a biological thing but men who haven't reached
| a certain stage in life are more or less considered sub-human.
| Many don't reach it and still more don't develop far past it.
|
| I feel like I'm just there and there's a night and day
| difference in how people treat you but it's most extreme with
| your female peers. It's also nice to have some friends from
| before, I feel like they're the people I would go to if my life
| fell apart.
| dartharva wrote:
| > but nearly 100% of everyone reading this would have felt some
| emotional recoil from being called at least one of those two
| things
|
| What's the rationale behind this statement? It seems like it's
| implying "nearly 100%" people are one or the other kind of
| extremists when it comes to Gender politics. Wouldn't it rather
| be the other way round, people knowingly identifying themselves
| as both Feminists and MRAs (redundant, as "Feminist" by itself
| means someone who strives for _equality_ among genders), since
| most are normally moderate in their opinions?
| betwixthewires wrote:
| The rationale behind that statement is explained in the
| subsequent statements in the article. Something about how
| there's a difference between agreeing with some group or
| cause's ststet principles and identifying as an in group
| member as a part of ones identity. The article explains it
| better than I am.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Yeah that quote is a bit silly.
|
| Nazi was a shortening of "National Socialist German Workers'
| Party" which, by this article's logic, means that socialists
| today should feel at least some level of kinship to the Nazi
| party. In reality, the Nazis were socialist largely in name
| only. Likewise, today's feminists have a much broader and less
| altruistic agenda than one could reasonably infer from their
| name.
| int_19h wrote:
| The _original_ NSDAP was quite socialist, and even as Hitler
| developed it into his own party, it retained a strong
| socialist faction, which we now refer to as the Strasserites.
| It was purged eventually, but the history is there.
|
| FWIW, "red-brown" political alliances are still a prominent
| thing in some countries, usually based on shared social
| conservative ideals. Furthermore, there are political
| movements such as National Bolshevism that explicitly draw
| this connection.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > feminists have a much broader and less altruistic agenda
| than one could reasonably infer from their name
|
| What is the evidence that leads you to this nonsense
| conclusion?
| edgyquant wrote:
| Far right propaganda
| textgel wrote:
| Which when translated from the progressive "your truth"
| to reality comes out as video and written evidence.
| tryonenow wrote:
| The problem with the definition of equality within the modern
| feminist movement is that it does not make allowance for the
| social power that females intrinsically have over men. In
| particular it completely ignores that, as in the vast majority
| of sexually dimorphic species, women are (at social scales)
| effectively the gatekeepers of the bedroom, and this gives
| females massive influence over male behavior. The dominant
| socially acceptable view of equality therefore is markedly
| unequal, and quite self serving as the "ideal" balance of power
| within the feminist framework becomes rather lopsided.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| > the gatekeepers of the bedroom
|
| There is no way this can be true. Sex takes two consenting
| people; there is no "gate" to be unequally "kept" because
| both parties have autonomy.
|
| Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central role
| of autonomy is a nifty trick. But casting individual bedroom
| decisions as a matter of social equality is to presume a
| degree of entitlement in the bedroom. After all, we're
| entitled to be treated equally, right?
|
| By governments? Yes. By our managers at work? Yes. By those
| who we desire? No, not at all.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Trying to shift to "social scales" to escape the central
| role of autonomy is a nifty trick."
|
| I don't understand this comment. Isn't feminism addressing
| an issue at social scale, often in areas that include
| autonomy? Even looking at marriage, you are expected to
| treat each other fairly.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| There are absolutely places where the social scale is
| relevant: places where one is entitled to equal
| treatment.
|
| Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these
| places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of
| sexual attention as some other man. Thus the
| "gatekeepers" language when there is no gate.
|
| The social-scale concerns are totally appropriate when it
| comes to how we construct masculinity and what male
| attractiveness requires, and feminists are by and large
| interested in that conversation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I saw the gatekeeper comment as being more related to the
| natural processes of diamorphic species. Take for example
| your statement below. This very much implies a "gate" and
| that women are making choices to keep that gate closed
| for some men. Just because a person is not _entitled_ to
| what is behind that gate, doesn 't make that gate less
| real. If anything, it enforces the analogy in the fact
| that gates do exist in real life to keep out those who
| are not _entitled_ to what lies beyond them.
|
| "Incels mistakenly think that the bedroom is one of these
| places, and that they are entitled to an equal amount of
| sexual attention as some other man."
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The proof is that men _aren 't_ described as gatekeepers,
| even though just like women, they choose to have sex with
| certain people, and not with others.
|
| The "gate" you're talking about uncontroversially belongs
| to each individual in the form of their bodily autonomy.
| Yet women are _uniquely_ cast as "keeping out" certain
| people. That's not a matter of dimorphism: that's a
| matter of mens' bodily autonomy being assumed, and
| womens' being up for debate.
|
| In other words: for the sake of argument, sure, there's a
| gate. But only women are viewed as gate _keepers_ , as
| though keeping others out _undermines_ equality, rather
| than being part-and-parcel of having the equal autonomy
| to choose one 's partners.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's not "gatekeeping the bedroom". That's called "bodily
| autonomy". They're allowed to decide who gets to stick what
| inside their body -- exactly the same as you have.
|
| You appear to resent women for being allowed to decide what
| happens to their own bodies. You also seem to think that this
| is the only thing in society that actually matters -- that
| this one thing gives women all of the power.
|
| I believe you should reconsider these positions. Bodily
| autonomy is a bare minimum. What is it about access to a
| woman's body that is so vitally important to you?
| tryonenow wrote:
| I really take offense to the notion that simply for
| criticizing the feminist movement or acknowledging the
| romantic power dynamic, I "resent women". Nor have I
| implied that "this one thing gives women all of the power".
| Neither of these are arguments, instead they are cheap,
| disingenuous dismissals which only stifle meaningful
| discussion.
|
| I am merely explaining that this is a particular domain
| over which women have massively disproportionate power,
| however feminists refuse to acknowledge the existence of
| this power while claiming to be in pursuit of social
| equality.
|
| A movement which seeks to re-engineer social norms in
| pursuit of "equality" is bound to disenfranchise men if
| this power dynamic is ignored. The result is movements like
| "incels". None of this implies that men are entitled to
| access to female bodies, but there is an inescapable give
| and take. If women are to be treated the same as men in all
| domains, then restructuring romantic interactions while
| maintaining the onus on men to bear the brunt of initiation
| and rejection unfairly shifts the power dynamic in favor of
| women.
|
| And this has consequences for women too. Indirectly, in
| that frustrated men are likely to withdraw and/or become
| antisocial (criminally or violently). And directly in that
| it shifts the dating dynamic toward hypergamy, where many
| females compete for a small proportion of men. Though
| perhaps there is an argument that some or most women prefer
| a polygamist arrangement, but I don't know if that's the
| case and it certainly is detrimental to men. Monogamy is a
| social norm which maximizes romantic equity for both men
| and women, not merely a patriarchal construct. Regardless
| of the argument of bodily autonomy, the romantic/social
| marketplace is an economy and can be modeled with the same
| sort of inequality measures that we apply to financial
| economies, with consequences for the function and overall
| happiness of society.
| luminaobscura wrote:
| Who said Bodily autonomy is bad? They are just explaining
| the consequences of it in human species.
|
| Access to women's body obviously important for men (sex,
| kids etc.). Why is this even a question?
| monksy wrote:
| > difficult to find someone believes men shouldn't have rights.
|
| There are quite a lot of people who would try to argue that
| mean don't deserve rights.
|
| "men need a curfew"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8cwX6g3do
|
| MRAs being counter protested:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gd9y4/who-do-mens-rights-ac...
| (and this article that handwavy justifies a counter-protest)
|
| Speech being protested and threatened:
| https://thevarsity.ca/2012/11/17/arrest-assaults-overshadow-...
| didibus wrote:
| I can't seem to make head and tails of this data. I guess the
| explanation would be that older men are dating younger women,
| which explains why younger men are single compared to younger
| women. But looking at the distribution, it seems it would need to
| come from the 65+ cohort... And that would be a little
| surprising.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Almost everything on /r/relationships can be boiled down to poor
| communication on the part of one or more parties. Seriously. If
| everyone were taught proper communication and confrontation
| skills, there would be a lot more happy people on this earth.
|
| Dead bedrooms: instead of making a spreadsheet of your wife's
| excuses and passive aggressively emailing it to her, talk to her
| without anger or blame, explain how you feel, get a sense for how
| she feels, and make a plan to address the issue.
|
| Incels similarly have terrible communication skills and most
| probably wouldn't be incels today if they learned how to
| communicate. Their worldview is a way to cope with their issue
| without admitting they have an issue; by blaming another group
| (women) for the issue.
| [deleted]
| waythro123123 wrote:
| My pet theory is that the developed or post-industrialized world
| is becoming increasingly two-classed. I have had the privilege of
| having a decent job (being so-called "economically desirable")
| and decent education and was able to find someone who I think
| loves me for who I am, for some definition of "I am".
|
| That being said, the "incel" problem concerns me. I think the
| existence of this entire class of individuals shows that the
| ideals of equity in gender relations, just like the ideal of
| equity in relations across economic classes (i.e., being equal
| before the law, regardless of how much money you have) is
| obviously a grand ideal that we cannot live up to.
|
| I once tried talking to my girlfriend about it when the topic
| came up. I brought up the usual statistics that show that men
| graduate from college at a lesser rate than women, nowawdays.
| That they are more likely to die in violence or from drugs. That
| this compounds with the fact that the status of women in the
| world has generally raised (a _good_ thing!) and that the average
| woman wants someone who is above them on the social or economic
| ladder. Her response was that they had so much "male privilege"
| and that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus,
| they should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the
| goal being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull
| themselves up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also
| must remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of
| "toxic masculinity".
|
| Of course, all of this was foreseen by French novelist
| Houellebecq. Economic liberalization has lead to social/sexual
| liberation. After a period of free love things settle down and
| here we are. Just as most of the new income generated by later
| periods of economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is
| with the sexual market.
|
| I've tried to stop moralizing it for my own mental health. Like
| the author, I just try to look at it with a degree of sympathy.
| It's complex, and it's kinda fucked up. For myself, these hard
| statistical realities have increasingly robbed me of the romantic
| impulse. Marriage to me now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic
| victory.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > these hard statistical realities have increasingly robbed me
| of the romantic impulse
|
| I think you should reflect on how sensible it is to apply
| population-wide statistical trends to your personal situation
| (which is not statistical at all). If you follow the statistics
| you should not start a business or go to college[1]. I really
| urge you to take seriously that your own personal experience is
| more valid than statistical instruments and that, even if by
| some measurement you are "below average" (whatever that means)
| you can still be happy and healthy.
|
| I agree that men are doing "worse" than they have been and I do
| think your girlfriend's attitude towards men who are struggling
| is not in line with egalitarian principals. I also think that
| you're promoting a view of society where winners taking all is
| expected, and in that kind of society, you would expect men to
| be distributed away from the "middle" of society. After all, if
| you imagine it's a zero sum competition, then the winning men
| would push the losing men towards the bottom of society as much
| as possible to protect their gains. I think this is worth
| pointing out because I do not think we need to follow that
| model of society.
|
| Humans will secure the resources they can in situations where
| zero-sum resource distribution is enforced, but altruism and
| reciprocity are also possible if we build systems which allow
| them. If you live life like you either win it all or your life
| is a waste, then it will almost certainly feel like a waste[2].
| You do not have to do that.
|
| [1] https://erikrood.com/Posts/college_roi_.html
|
| [2] This doesn't ignore the many people who are at various
| kinds of social and material disadvantage. The statistics are
| real, they just don't mean that men are disadvantaged as a
| whole.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If you follow the statistics you should not start a business
| or go to college[1].
|
| Some statistics only talk about the average subject. If you
| assume you are not average, there might be a different
| statistically optimal path.
| dudul wrote:
| > Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and
| that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they
| should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal
| being that they... shouldn't be.
|
| I genuinely don't understand how someone can reconcile these in
| their head.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Replace gender with race and some voting/political patterns
| become obvious.
| slg wrote:
| They aren't contradictory. One is an assessment of the
| currently perceived reality and one is a stated goal. The
| mindset is simply that we haven't reached the goal yet.
| dudul wrote:
| But the "currently perceived reality" (eg the fact that men
| are now behind in terms of college graduation) is exactly
| what you would see once you've reached the goal.
|
| By saying "well, they were so far ahead they have no excuse
| to not be better anyway" you're basically saying that you
| will reject potential evidence that the goal has been
| reached.
|
| Maybe I misunderstood the GF's point, but it just sounds
| like such a lack of empathy for people who face hardship
| for reasons that are specific to their individuality. It's
| like saying "poor men are too stupid to not be poor, they
| have no excuse to be poor".
| slg wrote:
| You are making a different argument now that her
| perceived reality is not actual reality. You originally
| asked how someone could reconcile the two quoted ideas as
| if they were contradictory. I pointed out how they could
| coexist.
|
| Regarding her perceived reality, we really need more
| information than college graduation rates, violent
| deaths, or any of the stats mentioned by OP. For example
| if every woman is graduating with an English degree and
| every man is graduating with a nuclear engineering
| degree, more women can be graduating and men can still
| have a much higher mean income among post college age
| people.
|
| Whether the goal has been reached is clearly a matter of
| debate. It isn't unreasonable for some people to think we
| haven't reached it yet.
| dudul wrote:
| > You are making a different argument now that her
| perceived reality is not actual reality.
|
| I never said that. I said that what she perceived as
| actual reality (she didn't seem to disagree with all the
| points brought up by her partner) should be seen as
| evidence that maybe the goal has been reached at least in
| some domains. However, she seems to just brush it off and
| instead say that these evidence that the goal may have
| been reached are anomalies since the goal has not been
| reached.
|
| As for income disparities, as long as women are not
| prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering
| degrees and men are not prevented from studying English,
| I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long
| as equality of opportunity is achieved.
|
| Anyway, not gonna die on that hill :-)
| slg wrote:
| >I said that what she perceived as actual reality (she
| didn't seem to disagree with all the points brought up by
| her partner) should be seen as evidence that maybe the
| goal has been reached at least in some domains.
|
| You didn't say that in you original comment. Maybe that
| was your intent, but it didn't come across due to the
| specific portions of the original comment you quoted.
|
| >As for income disparities, as long as women are not
| prevented from graduating with nuclear engineering
| degrees and men are not prevented from studying English,
| I don't think equality of outcome is interesting. As long
| as equality of opportunity is achieved.
|
| More women graduating from college is not evidence of
| "equality of opportunity" because the opportunity people
| are advocating for is some combination of self-
| determination and a good quality of life that are near
| impossible to measure. They end goal is not college
| graduation. No one here is advocating for "equality of
| outcome".
| mrweasel wrote:
| There was an excellent interview in Danish radio with
| male/couples therapist, his take was really interesting. There
| are three groups of men, in his view. The lower class, being
| uneducated and poor, the upper class, being extremely
| successful. Both of these group have no problem with the
| changing male roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it
| doesn't affect them. They just continue as always and it works
| for them. Then there is the largest group of men, the middle
| class. They're told that the male role has to change, or is
| changing, and they do as they always do, they adapt. The kicker
| in this thesis is that they're then told that everything is
| still wrong. That is confusing, angering and leave a large
| number of men in a state where they no longer care or they
| develop an anger towards modern society and women.
|
| The solution, again according to this theory, is not to
| redefine the male role in society, because that was never going
| to work. Instead we should return to the traditional male
| ideals, without the negative aspects. In essence to bring back
| the gentlemen.
|
| Personally I like this theory, because it has practicality,
| something that is lacking in the idea that men need to evolve,
| adapt or "find their place in modern society".
| crocsarecool wrote:
| Please bring back the gentleman! I feel like men and women's
| roles have taken a left turn from becoming equals in society
| to striving for sameness.
| medicineman wrote:
| Do it. Less competition for my sons.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Both of these group have no problem with the changing male
| roles or feminism, they just ignore it or it doesn't affect
| them.
|
| That's also true for a growing number of women, especially
| above a certain age. They feel completely alienated by the
| current 'feminist' movement and don't identify with it.
| Wonder if the younger generation might not do the same.
| indigochill wrote:
| > For myself, these hard statistical realities have
| increasingly robbed me of the romantic impulse. Marriage to me
| now seems absurd. An empty, pyrrhic victory.
|
| I don't follow why that is. Just because the world's fucked up
| doesn't mean exclusive devotion to another person doesn't have
| its romantic appeal.
|
| There was some philosopher I was reading about the other day
| who posited that the "free love" crowd weren't really free
| because they were slaves to whims and circumstance. A truly
| free person, as I gather, is one who decides and acts
| independently of personal feelings and circumstance.
|
| Ergo, if you don't want to give yourself to your partner, do it
| anyway. Not out of external obligation, but out of the
| commitment you decided to make to them. In that perspective,
| committing to lifelong unconditional love is one of the few
| victories we have over being mechanical cogs in a sensational
| machine.
|
| What makes this even better, though, is when you're loving
| someone unconditionally, it's usually hard for them not to
| return some of that love sooner or later. So you build a
| gradual virtuous cycle. Someone's just gotta make the first
| move.
| snarf21 wrote:
| It is very complicated. My experience in dating post divorce is
| that men feel like they are in a no win situation. A lot of
| women still want prince charming and chivalry but they also
| want independence. They want a man who will take care of them
| but still want to have the freedom to do what they want. They
| want to be wanted but give only when it suits them. They want a
| sensitive man with high EQ but also one that will get in a
| fight for them at a bar.
|
| That being said, I don't blame them. Why not want it all? A lot
| of this is cultural. They grow up with Cinderella but very few
| will get to play that role. They grow up thinking that
| motherhood is a must but a lot don't really want that life.
| They work hard and rightly feel desire to have what they want.
| You mix all these things together and it is no wonder there is
| confusion.
|
| Another take is one from Billy Crystal in City Slickers, "Women
| need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." This
| difference greatly captures a lot of people's approach to sex.
| newsclues wrote:
| Why not want it all?
|
| Because perfect is the enemy of good and you end up bitter,
| old and alone
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and
| that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they
| should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal
| being that they... shouldn't be. They need to pull themselves
| up from their bootstraps, and "man up", but we also must
| remember that "man up" is a problematic term that is part of
| "toxic masculinity".
|
| That made absolutely no sense.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| My reading of it is that the commenter is interspersing
| things his partner said during that discussion with
| conflicting opinions that she expressed at other times. It's
| unlikely that she stated all of these things at a row.
|
| I think it's normal for people to hold some contradictory
| views. Our abstract web of mental concepts may have a lot of
| nodes in it that resemble one another, but with different
| neighbors. Duplicate records lead to poor consistency!
|
| It seems like the commenter, upon reflection, noticed this
| inconsistency and was bothered by it. But he has the EQ to
| realize that starting an argument over it is unproductive, so
| poster here under a throwaway to get some catharsis.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| I just read it as "you need to break up with this woman
| yesterday."
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Just as most of the new income generated by later periods of
| economic liberalization go to the top 20%, so it is with the
| sexual market.
|
| I don't even know what this means. What is "the new income" in
| "the sexual market"? What is "the top 20%" ? How does "income"
| "go to" any particular percentile in "the sexual market" ?
| volkk wrote:
| OP means that the top 20% of men are getting all of the
| attention in the dating market. it's a well known fact at
| this point. i think the numbers largely come from dating apps
| but they reflect real life pretty well (from my anecdotal
| experience)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| OKCupid used to have a post of sort of barebones
| statistical analysis of what men considered "average"
| versus women's outlook. It was ... enlightening.
| [deleted]
| imbnwa wrote:
| That's a classic post from their defunct blog. Another
| one is Black women and Asian men are the least messaged.
| standardUser wrote:
| This would imply that the "bottom" 80% of men are not
| finding partners. When we look around at the world, either
| anecdotally or statistically, do we see 80% of men without
| partners? Not even close.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Her response was that they had so much "male privilege" and
| that they have no excuse for underperforming. That, thus, they
| should still be _ahead_ of women, presumably, despite the goal
| being that they... shouldn't be.
|
| This will be downvoted and poorly received, but the fact is
| that women despise weak men. If a man is in a poor state, most
| women will be visibly disgusted by him. A man generally should
| not expect sympathy from women, because most of the time he'll
| get scorn instead.
| Balgair wrote:
| > but the fact is that women despise weak men.
|
| I'd say this is true for all genders and people. Homosexual
| people also display this tendency just as well as
| heterosexual males. Heck, even in friendships, it can be hard
| to enjoy being with a buddy that is going through a deep funk
| despite all your efforts to rouse them out of it. People want
| to be with people like themselves. Misery loves company, and
| vice-versa
| serverholic wrote:
| A weak woman will still be able to find a man to take care
| of her. A weak man not so much.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This is an opinion, not a fact.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| It's a generalization about social trends. These traits
| often show on a bell curve, with some outliers on each
| side, but those outliers don't mean that the trend isn't
| real.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| source?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Here[1] is one, Ctrl+F "our traits and abilities tend to
| be distributed normally, in a bell shaped curve."
|
| [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-
| therapy/2011...
| rrradical wrote:
| I don't mean to be glib, but, are you saying women who are in
| a poor state are desirable? I don't think so... Is it bad
| that women don't find some men attractive, when those same
| men probably wouldn't find some women attractive?
|
| I apologize if that misconstrues your opinion, but I've heard
| it elsewhere before: that somehow women 'should' be more
| forgiving of unattractiveness than men are, and that's really
| weird to me. Women don't owe it to any men to find them
| desirable, and vice-versa.
| skystarman wrote:
| I have no data on this but my anecdata tells me that if a
| woman is in a poor state but is attractive plenty of men
| will be willing to treat her nicely and not consider her
| "pathetic" at least long enough to sleep with her.
|
| Doesn't really work the same way for dudes
| letonmorri wrote:
| Yes its more common than you think, in fact in the hiphop
| community a slur was created for men like that called
| "captain save a ho".
| medicineman wrote:
| With how much advice there is in dealing with BPD women,
| yeah, I would say they are desirable despite being in an
| extreme poor state.
| stockboss wrote:
| actually, i do personally prefer women of poor, humble
| backgrounds myself. and believe it or not, since i'm just a
| random person on the internet, i'm actually worth $15m
| (from inheritance) so it's not like i'm trying to date
| within my class or something.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Everyone wants everyone else to adopt an idealistic world
| view while they use shrewd pragmatism to navigate life.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| It's a shame this account is a throwaway.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I couldn't agree with this more, and very much to my
| personal detriment I spent way to much time trying to live
| those ideals. In the end it's just left me fruitless and
| feeling like a sucker.
| colmvp wrote:
| Some of my best friends are women and have been there for me
| in ways that my other guy friends certainly haven't during
| bouts of loneliness during times of lockdowns.
|
| But perhaps it is different when it comes to partners.
| serverholic wrote:
| Assuming you're a straight male, I dare you to cry in front
| of your girlfriend/wife.
| caymanjim wrote:
| > My apologies for the poor-quality clip; the wife has since
| scrubbed the post and all her comments. For better or worse, this
| is what remains of this particular piece of internet history.
|
| What kind of asshole takes a deeply personal thing like this,
| which has been deleted by the original poster, keeps a screenshot
| of it lying around, and then reposts it as completely unnecessary
| flair on their blog? Maybe take the hint that she regretted
| posting it or didn't want it public anymore. Just because
| technology has all but destroyed privacy doesn't mean that it's
| ok to take advantage of it and be indecent.
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