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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

This is not news to anyone who has been following the changes in gender dynamics in the past ~15 years.

Without giving an opinion on any side: there is (and will continue to be) growing instability when inequalities (relationship, wealth, or otherwise) result in a large portion of the population disaffected. Historically the solution to this particular problem has been enforced monogamy + the risk of pregnancy. Clearly that is no longer an option in the West, as sexual attitudes have become more open and birth control is widely available. It remains to be seen what the end result will be this time around.

Personally I think that technology will try (and largely fail) to address this imbalance. Think of K's "girlfriend" in Blade Runner 2049. This seems to be the route we as a society are heading toward. A civilization of hyper-individuals that attempt to fulfill all social and human needs through market-based product solutions.

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Enforced monogamy + the risk of pregnancy is not a "solution".

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

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

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

Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself

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

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

I don't know what "post-structuralism" means and I don't know the supposed tenets you're referring to. But I agree you can also make an economic argument for why marriage has been an enduring institution in society throughout history.

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

I'm not a native speaker, and may miss some nuances, but promiscuous is defined as "having multiple sexual partners" by my dictionary which I think is as neutral as possible.

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

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

I am a native speaker, and "promiscuous" is definitely a negative, pejorative term. (Dictionary definitions are good at capturing the denotation of a word, but are sometimes less good at explaining its connotations. If your dictionary lists additional/alternate definitions of this one that apply in non-sexual contexts, look at those to see if they appear to carry positive or negative implications.)

It's clear what is being discussed here, because "promiscuity" has a simple understandable meaning. In certain contexts the word has a negative connotation, but only because those contexts morally disapprove of the condition the word describes. One would have hoped that "native speakers" could have offered a different, more suitable word to employ in this discussion, rather than just ruling the discussion out of bounds because they don't like this particular word.

Promiscuous is a pejorative term because the act itself is socially seen as negative. There is no way of describing promiscuous behaviour positively, so the choice of word is irrelevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism

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

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

> The risk of pregnancy is a biological fact with far more severe penalties for women.

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

> which also unfairly disadvantaged women

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

Yes, enforced monogamy may be helpful to women in some circumstances. But I think we both know it's not that simple. Sometimes it's better to be a single mom than stuck in a bad marriage with a husband who didn't want that in the first place.

If the solution to "inequality" is creating another inequality which harms far more people, then it might not be a solution at all.

Your comment is simply veiled misogyny.

Is this a serious comment? Are we flinging accusations without explanation now? The bias seems all yours.

Maybe assume good faith and talk to them so you can educate us? Don’t leave us hanging.

I tried. I couldn't come up with a charitable interpretation of "harms far more people" that I could respond to in a meaningful way. So I concluded that it was a troll and lashed out.

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

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

Thanks. And yea I've experienced that too, people tend to engage on a similar level, and so the most engaging comments tend to be flamebait.

I think Japan is leading in this trend, or, that's what I'm hearing about; a lot of people who prefer to be stuck indoors, or work for most of the day. Actually I don't think they prefer it, but what is the alternative?

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

> Historically the solution to this particular problem has been enforced monogamy + the risk of pregnancy

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

I’d like to see the same data collected where sex work is legal.

I'm still highly suspicious of the narrative all of this is premised on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh well.

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

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

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

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

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

>It's exceptionally unlikely that a small subgroup of men who already refuse to adapt is large enough and motivated enough to hold the rest of society at gunpoint.

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

No. It's just hetero 24-33 year olds, and only the subset of those that arent celibate for other reasons, and then only a minority (albeit growing) percentage of those. And then only a very small minority of those that blame others for their own issues. We're taking about factions of a percent of the population.

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

>something like 80% of men that are becoming disenfranchised

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

I wouldn't call it a right, but as others have pointed out, it's an issue that might bring heavy consequences in the future, so maybe let's do something about it, or maybe we can't do anything about it and let's just hope for the best.

Jordan Peterson, is that you? :D

Hah, no. I think Dr. Peterson certainly makes some interesting points regarding these topics, but his solution seems to be a return to a pre-21st century model of societal values. I don't believe that this is tenable - the cat is already out of the bag and the Pandora's box of technology can't be closed.

I was just having a go at your vocabulary use - which I don't object to in any way - just reminded me of his. I actually agree with your analysis of his viewpoint on the matter. There are some valid aspects to it but that ship has sailed.

The risk teenage pregnancy would make more guys to have sex? That is odd.

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