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Comment by Mizza | Hacker News Reader

Incels call this "hypergamy": https://incels.wiki/images/thumb/c/c8/C57f84720fff59cf295616...

Although misogynistic incels are obviously abhorrent, I believe that they're probably right in their assessment of their own social status. It just seems like rather than trying to better themselves, they turn it into outward hatred.

I've also seen calls by right-wing thought leaders for "enforced monogamy," which obviously seems authoritarian, rapey and wrong. However I do think monogamy and commitment a good moral values to cultivate. Even though there's a lot of "slut-positivity" now, the people I know who live that way seem much less happy, fulfilled and stable.

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Enforced monogamy doesn't mean what you think it does. Catholics, for example, have enforced monogamy as part of their culture. Most Western cultures have (or did until recently) similar norms. It's talking about cultural pressures, not literal force. Even the wokest cultural groups have their own forms of "enforced" norms.

Surely, you and GP can differ on what you mean by “enforced monogamy.” Certainly some countries do enforce it with literal force, with premarital and extramarital sex being punishable by, in some cases, death.

The person I replied to was relaying their understanding of "enforced monogamy" as used by right-wing people. In that context, enforced monogamy is not being used to describe the things you are describing. Of course, you are right that what you described does occur in some places.

Making the world flat and hyper-connected seems as if it leads to a winner-take-all outcome.

Example: putting commerce online created the Amazon monopoly. It's easier than ever to buy from any store you want online, but paradoxically everyone goes to Amazon. This is mostly because everyone goes to Amazon, therefore virtually any product is available there. Only niche products require you to shop elsewhere.

So we've put sex online too: Tinder, dating sites, etc. It has never been easier to "shop" for potential sex partners. Is this paradoxically resulting in a narrowing of sexual pairings?

I wonder if the paradox can be understood if we look at biology. Imagine the Earth were a uniform environment with a uniform climate, no mountain ranges, no rivers, etc. I imagine that a single species would come to dominate each niche. There might be one large predator, one large ruminant, one bird of prey, one burrowing rodent, and so on... or maybe two or three, but not more than that. You'd probably have a biodiversity collapse.

No boundaries = no diversity?

I think your last point is absolutely the central paradox of global society. The goal seems pretty clear: brutual transnational neofeudal capitalism with a happy, politically correct face becomes the default universal position that defines the dynamics which subcommunities allowed within that framework interact - eventually, the whole planet becomes California.

Minus the California quip, I don't totally disagree. Globalism as implemented is turning out very different from what anyone hoped.

Returning to the sexuality issue, I do think there's more than one thing at work here. I think the narrowing of male sexual options has multiple causes: economic strain, easier "shopping" when dating, easy access to porn that distorts peoples' ideas of what sex is actually like, and men growing up under-socialized.

I see the latter a lot in the incel phenomenon. I literally saw a comment once to the effect that "real women are nothing like they are in Anime." So these guys are disappointed that women are not like cartoons. That's insane.

Also didn't mean to suggest that narrowing of dating is "womens' fault" any more than the triumph of Amazon in the shopping space is the "fault" of consumers. What we're seeing here are emergent behaviors in a complex system. Nobody planned this and nobody is really even choosing it. I don't shop at Amazon because I want them to be the CHOAM company from Dune. I shop at Amazon because its convenient.

Have you considered that those who prefer monogamy and those who prefer sleeping around / being a "slut" simply have different personalities?

Just because your monogamous friends are happy and fulfilled doesn't mean your slutty friends would be happy if they lived the same way.

Humans are varied.

Of course, I'm only speaking from my own experience, but I've seen what's being described here in real life. There are big winners and big losers.

Talking to my Tindersex-addicted friend about his behavior - which has been very destructive to his own life - he believes that it comes from a place of trauma as a coping mechanism, not simply a lifestyle preference. In a similar vein, many women I know who only had uncommitted relationships in their twenties are now in their mid 30s and interested in settling down but are having extreme difficulties in finding a partner.

Ok, maybe this is where our disconnect lies -- I also have friends who consider themselves "sluts" and have a lot of sexual partners, but for most of them it's coming from a very intentional place and brings them a lot of joy.

Note that these same friends also have stable, fulfilling (non-monongamous) relationships in their lives.

I think that's why I bristle when I see people equating slutty behaviour with lack of fulfillment or trauma. I think that sex absolutely can be an unhealthy coping mechanism; but so can alcohol, yet many people manage to use alcohol in a fun and safe way.

I think that presenting commitment and sluttiness as the only two options is harmful, and it keeps people in destructive sexual patterns because they don't think they can have broad sexual exploration at the same time as serious relationships, so they avoid relationships altogether. It takes a lot of work, but you can have both! And I think that the more we become comfortable with that as a society, the healthier we will be.

"Poly" people, who maybe number in the tens of thousands, aren't really relevant to the primary discussion - the vast chasm between winners and losers in modern coupling culture - who many number in the tens of millions, and in the hundreds of millions globally.

>Just because your monogamous friends are happy and fulfilled doesn't mean your slutty friends would be happy if they lived the same way.

This isn't backed up by research which seems to suggest that the more sexual partners you have, the worse your relationships are in practically every dimension.

Do you have any specific citations?

This is an area where it's very difficult to show cause and effect (since you can't exactly do a randomized controlled trial) so I would be skeptical about drawing conclusions that lowered relationship quality is caused by having more partners.

This was linked elsewhere in this thread: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/sexual-pa...

Non-causal and uses marital happiness as a proxy for actual happiness though.

If sex and wealth are both things that are desired by people and unequally distributed, then “sex redistribution” will likely becomes a political concept the way that wealth redistribution is today.

Bizarre as it seems, this has already been a topic of political discussion:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/opinion/incels-sex-robots...

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.html

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a20138446/redistributi...

It has become a genuine struggle to separate reality and parody.

It's really not that crazy of a concept, and it was attempted by Solon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon#Solon_and_Athenian_sexua...

> Solon established publicly funded brothels at Athens in order to "democratize" the availability of sexual pleasure.

Whether fact or ficion, this discussion has been going on a long time.

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