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Comment by fuddlecarrion | Hacker News Reader

Is it a problem? People don't need to be having sex. As long as people are happy.

People need to feel close to others around them. Not just by texting, talking on the phone, and video chatting. But actual physical acts of love. People who do not receive hugs are statistically more likely to be unhappy and otherwise mentally unhealthy.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hugging-benefits

So yes, sex is not a necessity. But physical intimacy of some form certainly is.

Furthermore, intimacy among men is generally avoided.

I think you answered your own question.

If not, go visit a forum for incels and see how happy they are.

At the same time, people definitely can be happy without sex - various religious factions have been doing it for ages with vows of celibacy, and today there's a non-negligible "volcel" (voluntarily celibate) movement.

It can be done and result in happy people. It can also turn out that years later you have decades of sexual abuse victims coming forward years later.

I have never heard about vocel. Only about Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), which, at least on reddit, were a women hating incel community.

But this isn't useful to this discussion.

In aggregate, less sex may be a bad thing. In aggregate, more sex may be a good thing. That's what's being discussed.

Individuals and anecdotes just distract from the discussion.

> At the same time, people definitely can be happy without sex

Yeah, but that's really like saying "but people can be happy while they are fasting" to somebody that is being starved.

Something being voluntary often makes the difference between it being considered harmful or even torture and a weird thing.

>If not, go visit a forum for incels and see how happy they are.

Incels are a cult of hateful, misogynistic extremists who consider mass murderers like Eliot Rodger to be heroes. Simply not having as much sex as one would prefer, or any at all, does not make one an incel.

> Simply not having as much sex as one would prefer, or any at all, does not make one an incel.

It literally does though. You can't change definitions because someone gave the name a bad rep.

"Someone" didn't give the name a bad rep, and I'm not the one changing its definition. The entire incel movement changed the definition by giving itself a bad rep.

If you want to take 'incel' back and try to reclaim its neutrality and separate it from the toxicity of the culture, you'll have as much luck as someone trying to claim the alt-right movement isn't really about racism, even though racists have been all over it since the beginning.

"Incel" isn't a movement.

Maybe you can use context to differentiate two different meanings of the same word though

Something tells me that a lot of these guys would be angry and unhappy even if they were in a relationship.

Incels are not representation of guys without sex in general. They are people who are angry and hateful.

Dating any of these would be profoundly bad idea. It is better for a woman to be alone then to be with someone who has opinions of incel.

I would say it is a problem, given that the average person wants romantic companionship, and usually children at some point. It's hard to get there if you aren't successfully dating.

The question wasn't dating, it was sex. You can be dating but not having sex. That's fine.

Fair enough, but the two usually go together. Then again, I may just be old and out of touch.

Outside of an extremely small minority, dating and sex are intrinsically linked.

I would agree that most people seek companiship, but in a modern climate I think the number of people who want children is diminishing.

> People don't need to be having sex. As long as people are happy.

Sure. But given that women and gay men does not seem to be affected, I'd suspect that this is involuntary abstinence for a lot of these men.

> Is it a problem?

I don't know. But its probably worth bringing up and thinking about it. Its certainly a problem in Japan, and a few other countries where birthrates have declined.

The USA is also a democracy, predicting future demographics is pretty important with regards to the future political will.

There's also the issues of global warming, over population, overfarming and overconsumption. So maybe a declining sex rate could be a good thing.

Either way, its worth thinking about the future and what these statistics could mean for the next generation of citizens.

Birthrates did not declined because lack of sex. They declined because people don't want to have children or wants to have them less then used to be.

The article notes that it is potentially an area of concern.

"The trend is concerning as sexual relationships are important for well-being and health, researchers note."

You think a young heterosexual man who wants to have sex and doesnt get it is happy?

Why not? I’d like to eat steak every night for dinner but I can’t have that and I’m still happy. Sex is just one aspect of life, not it’s totality

Do you belong to that demographics?

Yes. My girlfriend and I don’t have sex.

If serious you are several sigma outside the mean.

I would also say people don't need to be having sex... even if they are unhappy about it.

That's some 'let them eat cake' type mess.

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