Power imbalances and sex
knowingless.com
knowingless.com
For example in the States, in matching tools like group dating events and dating apps, men typically outnumber women by a sizeable margin. One could ascribe this to biology (with women as the choosing sex, like we see in a lot of primates and other species). I had to reconsider this when I saw some pictures from a group dating event among Chinese international students at my university, in which the women outnumbered the men! I was told by a Chinese person this wasn't uncommon for such events in China. I found out later that group dating events in Japan are similar in terms of gender balance as well.
I would very much like to hear some hypotheses for the reasons for what seems to be a pretty big cultural difference. To me it casts a bit of doubt on the author's narrative of "women have it and men want it" -- in some cultures, it seems like women want it too.
I have also seen a similar phenomenon at Ivies (at the undergrad level) if you exclude the athletes, so it’s not even a race or national culture thing.
Imho, the short answer is that it is the way a large portion of that sub-population is raised - lots of study, very limited socialization (esp. wrt the males), very few positive male role models who are like them in home life or in popular culture.
Do dating events in America target 20 something’s? Every one I’ve ever seen is nearly exclusively middle aged or retired divorcees
In east asian cultures, there's a very strong pressure for females to get married and have children. In China, there's also cultural desire to have male children - to the point people will abort girls enough to make a lopsided distribution of 51.3% males vs 48.7% females (by comparison, US has 49.2% males vs 50.8% females). Coupled with increased female participation in the work force over the past few decades, this leads to many females having unrealistically high expectations for romantic partners, or rebelling against the notion of being involved in a romantic relationship at all. Another thing worth mentioning is that in east asian cultures, femininity is also greatly associated with homemaking skills like cooking. See for example the concept of Yamato Nadeshiko in Japan.
So for females there, there's a really complex dynamic of parents pressuring young women to marry (either because of old fashioned marital values or because they selfishly want grandchildren, or both), ideologies that men are the head of the household and/or the carriers of family legacy and conversely the idea that ideal women are good homemakers, contrasted with an unprecedented level of financial freedom and choice of partners for females.
If anything, I think looking at east easian cultures only reinforces the OP's argument that there is inherent lopsidedness in cultural values and that men and women behave in a myriad of ways that can be explained well by cultural perception of gender roles.
Men are birthed more than women just naturally and exist in greater numbers in the world until about age 40. (Many men dying due to suicide and suicide related incidents which don’t get labeled as suicide)
[0] https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/country/china-sex-r...
Stats for USA are not as depressing but are still not great for men under 40. https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/country/us-sex-rati...
It can be worse for individual cities as well - such as San Francisco - where the ratio is supposedly closer to 115-130:100 depending on how you slice the population. (e.g. if you select only for single people between 18-35 rather than including married couples in the stats)
Blink 182 snuck a lyric into one of their songs that I think describes what's been happening in the American dating scene: "Nobody likes you when you're 23." People in college generally like dating other people in college, but after graduating, women tend to prefer to date someone a few years older than them who has their life a bit more together, an established career, might be a notch more mature, etc.
This leaves a permanent glut of guys in their early-to-mid twenties who nobody really wants to date, so they clog up all the dating apps and throw off the gender ratios. These guys should probably be pairing up with older women (where a similar glut exists), but for whatever reason, I suspect most younger men and older women aren't much interested in each other.
This is one those things that's important to keep in mind. If we compared like for like a 20-something and a 40-something man, the 20-something many would probably do very well.
But a 40-something man have had 20 extra years to learn how to interact with women, gain experiences, gain education, advance a career, so it's rarely a like for like comparison.
I mean, I personally can't blame the women who rejected me when I was younger. I know exactly what I was like.
Of course some will have physically decayed, but the spread of womens physical preferences for men is pretty wide, and many men still look more attractive to a large proportion of women in their 40's than their 20's.
> This leaves a permanent glut of guys in their early-to-mid twenties who nobody really wants to date, so they clog up all the dating apps and throw off the gender ratios. These guys should probably be pairing up with older women (where a similar glut exists), but for whatever reason, I suspect most younger men and older women aren't much interested in each other.
This is also massively exacerbated by dating apps that have no interest in redressing the issue, by allowing womens match queues to build up to the point that most of the women you swipe on will never see your profile, and allowing people to keep swiping on huge number of people in one go.
E.g. my ex wife told me at one point that she'd once signed up for Tinder's premium service out of curiosity and found she had several thousand matches outstanding. It's in Tinders interest to keep showing women who keep getting swiped even as their queues grow large enough that they'll never work their way through those queues.
At the same time this number is massively artificially inflated also because those most struggling to get a match are incentivised to keep trying to match with a huge number of people.
If these apps cared about their users and only showed profiles to other users that didn't have a huge queue of outstanding matches, and also put caps on the number of outstanding/unseen swipes, it wouldn't improve the number of matches much, but it would likely increase the proportion of swipes that leads to matches by drastically reducing the number of swipes.It would also show users who are actually realistically available. Maybe it'd make more people widen their search criteria.
Of course the problem with this is that it runs completely counter to the interests of dating apps, which are best served by encouraging desperation to get people to pay for premium services.
Just don't sell out to Match like everyone else seems to be doing...
I was going to say this if you didn’t.
The dynamics can be weird at times, but it works. I think more men in their early 20s should give this a go.
And maybe I'm boring! But when I date younger women this doesn't happen. So, in my experience, this does not work and I won't be trying again soon.
Yes, when I was in my early 20s.
I dated several women between 28 and 35.
As I mentioned before, the dynamics can get weird. Things that someone in their early 20s occupy their thoughts with are often very different than someone in their 30s.
That said, we all figured out how to make the most of our time together, and the sex was really good. I’m not going to pretend like these were deep relationships — that was not what I was looking for, and I don’t think that was their focus either. The focus was mostly companionship and intimacy, and I think that we accomplished our goals on that front.
>They only want you when you are seventeen >When you are twenty-one >You are not fun
In the China example, I'd guess there's other factors. Women do tend to compete and men tend to be choosers in some circumstances; the 'women as selectors' thing is a result of certain conditions that are super common, but not absolutely true always.
My dominant hypothesis here is maybe that "dating" in asian cultures is a prerequisite to something that benefits the woman over the man (e.g., more likely to end in marriage than sex). It's common to see this in very conservative cultures where sex before marriage is strictly forbidden; what a guy can look forward to going on a date is finding a woman to settle down with, which is less advantageous to him than in western cultures where he can have sex without commitment.
Hmmm… interesting hypothesis, possibly directionally correct, but the details are off by quite a bit imho.
1. Neither China nor Japan are particularly conservative about sex, specifically in terms of sex before marriage.
2. The issue about what the hoped for outcome with dating is closer to accurate, but with caveats. If people, especially relatives, know about the date, then there will be non-stop pressure about marriage. Sometimes that pressure is hopeful and positive, and sometimes it is critical and negative. If it’s more of an anonymous date (in that family are in the dark), very common in the larger cities like Tokyo or Osaka, then there is much less pressure from family and (sometimes) friends.
3. Sex without commitment is trivially easy in both Japan and China, especially in cities. One has to pass the relatively low threshold of the woman’s anti-slut defense (hate to use this “red pill” term, but this is exactly what it is), which is usually as simple as treating the woman with at least a modicum of respect.
4. A lot of single women in Japan and China have two goals in dating. The first is the potential to meet someone who will provide them with equal or greater status than they currently have. Often time this is a very high barrier, since being an office worker or business owner while having minimal living expenses while living at home can be a pretty posh life. Second, when they realize that the pool of well-off, nice, fun men is relatively small, they start seeking sex dates more aggressively (and sometimes surreptitiously due to family).
5. From the guy’s side, dating can be tricky. Dating that leads to a path of marriage can get very expensive very quickly (courting, weddings, marriage, and kids can all be very expensive). Dating for sex/companionship is doable for the guys who are good at it, but there is that small issue of where. Again, casual dating can get expensive quickly. People get creative, and if you’ve lived in Japan or China you probably know what I’m talking about, but there’s nothing easy about it. Rarely as easy as bringing a woman back to your place, which is very common in the US.
The theory is most applicable to animal populations, but researchers in this field do think the human race was subjected to the same phenomenon so our instinctive social behavior is still subject to it, and of course the biological economy/energy of male sperm and female eggs/wombs is the same as most mammals.
Online dating matches the tenets/predictions. My only complaint with it is that it doesn't really address societal structure in humans once they are raising children. It's mostly a theory that explains "single culture" and animals with shorter lifespans or less shared rearing of offspring.
So for this group meetup, let's look at whether men or women decide it's worth it to go to it.
In this group meetup situation, men and women will immediately "rank" their opposing peer group. Everyone does this.
Of course certain members of the opposite sex will often quickly be apparent at the tops of the rankings, the (yes, tiresome) "alphas". The difference comes down to how men and women act on those rankings.
The women know they can find a man if they settle. Disposable Male theory states that basically 70-80% of women successfully procreate. But they will "hold out" for a higher value male since they can always walk down their ranking and find someone to fertilize them.
The ratio of successful male procreation per the Disposable Male is in the 20-30% range. So 70-80% of males in biological times were "dead ends".
Women operate with a 50% "desperation differential". And the only way the numbers line up, is that the high value men are procreating multiple times. Thus lower value women will have the opportunity to procreate with "higher value" men, or can walk down their choice list until they find someone.
In a group dating situation, this will probably lend to 30-60% of men realizing quickly that none of the women are interested in them. At all. They'll all wait out for a higher value, or go somewhere else to try to find another high value.
The lower value men know that less numbers / options / context / immediate ranking will benefit their chances. So don't show up to group events where you'll be stack ranked immediately, or there's no point in investing the time.
Now, modern (mostly) monogamy really messes with the instinctual behavior. Men likely have a much better shot at procreating, and women need to compromise a bit more to find a mate.
But man, when it comes to Tinder and the like, it is full one alpha males attracting most of the interest from women, and women ignoring men at their level. The old okcupid pre-match data seems to corroborate this quite well.
Why are men afraid of dating events - https://www.originaldating.com/blog/2015/6/18/why-are-men-af...
Speed-dating event in Membertou cancelled due to lack of men - https://www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/lifestyles/speed-dating...
Art museum hosts a speed-dating night and only women show up - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-speed-da...
The death of speed dating - https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/charly-lester/the-death-of-...
This article answers its own question in the rather insulting tone it takes. Why would men go to these events if the women who go there are dismissing most men as not "eligible"? Maybe it's true, but when that is the impression, it helps cement the stigma she describes.
It also, I think gets to the point that where women as described in the article often see thing like speed dating as a "girls' night out", to quote the article, to most men these kinds of events are purely functional. I would have considered going to speed dating events if I didn't find dates in other ways. But it's far down my list of things I'd consider, because it constrains the number of people I can interact with to a set of people where only a small number is likely to interest me from the outset. If your goal is to have a "night out" it might well be productive. If your goal is to meet someone to date, it's only productive if you struggle to introduce yourself and need a crutch to do so. And so you get the guys the article writer describes who have done this because introducing themselves is far out of their comfort zone.
She's intimately familiar with the power – and costs – of The Thing.
It may be true that heterosexual men want sex. But so do heterosexual women and homosexual men and women as well, as well as those who are somewhere in the vast spectrum between these identities. The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration?
For example, consider the framing of calling the ability to reject male advances "power". Anyone can reject sexual advances from others for any reason, but it's rarely framed as a special position of "power" other than when applied to heterosexual male advances.
Male lust is given special consideration because it is the overwhelming majority of the lust expressed, leading to all the problems this article discussed. Perhaps it is a US-only thing.
The other core issue is not respecting natural biological function need based on gender
I taught English overseas right after college with other people from the states and it was the first time I saw women sexually frustrated. The local guys were too shy to approach the female teachers and most of the male teachers were going after the foreign women. It was also the first time I had women actively approach me, which shows you a completely different side of women than if you're an average guy (and showed me how where you live can VASTLY change your value).
Basically, they want to feel desired for more than just a ONS but then reject it anyway. I think many people are like this but it’s very prevalent with women I’ve interacted with…
Who do you think has more sex: lesbians, or gay men?
OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x more sexual lust than women, let's ask ourselves, are there more gay men or straight men? Straight.
"The question to consider then is why does male heterosexual lust get special consideration?" Probably because most sexual lust is male heterosexual lust.
* Maybe societal beauty standards are causing people to have unrealistically high expectations, thus shrinking the dating pool and making it harder to satisfy everyone.
* Maybe the average male lust has been artificially increased by something (porn? waifu gacha games?) and needs to be brought back down.
* Maybe female lust has been artificially suppressed by something (I’ll refrain from speculating on what), and matching will work out if it’s brought back up.
aka a micro-agression?
It depends the couple. Also depends on what you mean by "more" and what you mean by "sex". Is a once-a-week 4+ hour naked cuddle session with occasional touching/stimulation more or less sex than a multiple 10 minute BJs every day?
I would tend to say "obviously more". A longish session once a week is probably fairly common for lesbian couples and multiple short sessions -- but on the order of a few a week as opposed to a few a day -- is probably fairly common for gay men.
My genuine belief, having spent almost all of my life surrounded by lgbt folks, is that if you define "sex" in a way that isn't pathological, then lesbians probably spend more time on sex than gay men.
(I also STRONGLY suspect there's a heavy overlap between people who think "it's not sex unless my dick is wet the whole time" and people who have trouble finding consistent sexual partners.)
> OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x
LOL where did we settle on that? I agree with OP. Women enjoy sex (gasp!).
Gay men. A massage isn't sex, even if that's what you call it.
For what it's worth, I'm a bisexual man who's had multiple relationships with both men and women. I had more sex with the lowest-sex man than I did with the highest-sex woman, even when you do count cuddling as sex.
What is sex? What is lust? (The questions are rhetorical, but the point is that these terms tend to be defined in ways the exclude lots of queer foreplay.)
But, yes, a massage where both people understand the energy is building toward/from sexual stimulation is definitely part of sex. Foreplay is part of sex. I can't think of any definition of sex that excludes foreplay and that is, for the purposes of this conversation, useful.
If "women don't want sex", but we define sex as functionally equivalent to "someone's genitals are touching another person", well... idk. Maybe women just don't want really shitty no foreplay sex? Surprise, surprise, right?
> For what it's worth, I'm a bisexual man who's had multiple relationships with both men and women
Ditto and opposite experience. It's almost like people are different enough that gender-based generalizations are almost entirely unhelpful.
> Ditto and opposite experience. It's almost like people are different enough that gender-based generalizations are almost entirely unhelpful.
Gonna call bullshit on that, considering you think the average gay man's sex life is a couple blowjobs per week.
But you also willfully misread my other comment, so shrugs.
> OK so now that we've settled that men have 1000x more sexual lust than women...
I must be missing something, because I have absolutely no idea where we settled anything in this space of two sentences.
what is the answer to this question supposed to be? is there some stereotype that gay dudes have more sex than lesbians? i haven't found any clear trend here anecdotally.
A large body of scientific research documents four important gender differences in sexuality. First, on a wide variety of measures, men show greater sexual desire than do women. Second, compared with men, women place greater emphasis on committed relationships as a context for sexuality. Third, aggression is more strongly linked to sexuality for men than for women. Fourth, women's sexuality tends to be more malleable and capable of change over time. These male-female differences are pervasive, affecting thoughts and feelings as well as behavior, and they characterize not only hetero-sexuals but lesbians and gay men as well. Implications of these patterns are considered.
According to your own sources it's an effect that is literally closer to "women are bad at math" than "men are taller than women". Literally. The comparison of effect sizes for those three things is right there on the first page. And for a proxy that your own source chose.
Again, parent asserted 1000x. 1000x. And you post an article with an effect size that's absolute garbage data in any field outside of psychology and assert "Science!". To defend a post claiming 1000x.
Or, in your words: stop arguing in bad faith, troll ;-)
No, not remotely equally. We have a literal measure of this. Think about it: Sex work would be impossible if what you're saying is true. The demand for having sex with women is astronomically higher than the demand for having sex with men.
Consider that there are a lot of factors that go into markets, and if they were simple to understand everyone would be making a killing day trading.
A metastudy above concludes the same thing using unrelated data anyway [1]. Men masturbate much more than women and the effect size is greater than most all other psychological differences.
There is no such thing as a "voting market". At the least, where is the skin-in-the-game? or itemised quid-pro-quo?
> if they were simple to understand
The rules of pool are simple to understand, that doesn't mean the game is easy to master.
Trading is a matter of predicting the market - that is not what is being described here; is is not being predicted that women pay less for sex, it is known from the market already.
Having said that - for a short time in a young woman's life she is highly desired by men of all age groups. How can you take 50 year age range of of men who think they can (and should) get 5 year age range of women?
But if a woman survives this 5 year period then relationships with men can be balanced and satisfying. Men still want women and women still want men, but it seems to be balanced.
If you're wondering, "what happens to people that have a good gut feeling for fairness, but who aren't smart enough to subconsciously work out how 5 people are going to take care of a child, and who want kids," then the answer is, they are the vast majority of the population and they're not going to fit the non-monogamous system unless massive inequality (see bronze age) forces them there.
The reply asked worked for who? Then out of nowhere you're talking about men being killed in droves. Are you saying that monogamy didn't work for either gender (one that lost their freedom and and the other that lost their lives)?
Theirs is a borderline flame bait comment that added nothing to the discussion.
Not by women. Obviously it's not that simple, but that is a true statement.
Also, do you believe women would not be competing for resources if there were no men, and are not competing for resources in general?
We're not out here trying to convince men that being able to have sex with multiple partners throughout their lives is a good idea -- that part comes naturally to us.
Not all societies today even value monogamy. In France some consider the President weak if he doesn't have at least one mistress. And in fact the same thing in America.
Let's be honest you're trying to use a nature to excuse behavior most find unacceptable - there's risk residue if Christianity in that. I see this a lot in these appeals - you're essentially arguing that if you can show someone thing is natural it's beyond question. However, anthropologists admit that most human societies have developed monogamy of one form or another, with exceptions only for rulers.
Sexual compulsions are very influential, but people almost universally find relationships revolving primarily around sex to be completely unfulfilling (eventually).
Yeah, supposedly in such a society people would no longer be discriminating when it comes to sexual partners. They will have sex with anyone and everyone. It's a fantasy.
I've even seen feminists arguing this. "Feminism is good for men too, they get more sex!" Except the unattractive men are never invited to the party.
Amusing, because the communists actually thought of it, and come up with this solution: that everybody should just be willingly give sex to everybody (or another variant, that everybody should just considered to be equally attractive).
For example here in Germany there was the famous "Kommune 1" in the 60ies, and they had the mantra "Wer zweimal mit derselben pennt, gehört schon zum Establishment" - meaning if you have sex with the same woman twice, you are already the enemy.
I don't think that is the "freeing of women" that its proponents claim it is. Quite the opposite, it is the ultimate "utilization" of women who lose the rights over their bodies.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/two-types-of-envy.htm...
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/06/comparing-income-sex-...
Capitalism doesn't escape this either. The notion that you'll find a good wife if you work hard and become successful is ingrained into men since early childhood. It's magical thinking, of course. No such guarantee exists.
There are good reasons for stigmatizing nakedness, fearing STDs, conceptualizing sex as something that should exist in monogamous, emotionally close relationships, and so on. That's not to say tradition is infallible, only that dismissing it altogether is a mistake.
I think you meant "subjectively speaking". I don't agree with the way you conceptualize human history as gender struggle. It seems incorrect to me.
I don't think we have any option than continuing down the path. Reforms and changes are necessary but we aren't going to create a better way of living by abandoning the past. Our ability to meaningfully critique tradition depends on our treating it as a series of intricate answers to complicated problems, which is what it is.
But that doesn't necessarily mean we can abandon monogamy or un-problematize sex, nakedness, or bodily functions.
36 million people have died from AIDS related illnesses since the start of the pandemic: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
HIV has affected the life expectancy of entire countries: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Comparis...
As for HIV positive people, the number of such is going up, not down.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-and-new-cases-of-h...
This is partially because of a good thing, that less people die from AIDS than they used to. Mainly it's because HIV can't be cured though, which means you live your entire life with a weakened immune system.
We need more STD awareness, not less. Especially not dismiss STD awareness as "fear-mongering". Especially if you want to explore society models with less monogamy.
But you're right. As you move away from monogamy, sexual health becomes more important rather than less.
When monogamous, you can kind of address the question of health once and mostly forget about it for the duration of the relationship (modulo a few exceptions -- HSV-1 and Hep are transmissible outside of sex, any sort of blood-blood contact should be thought of as roughly equivalent to unprotected sex, etc; you get the point, though).
When non-monogamous, you have to think about STDs more like COVID in 2020 -- constant masking and regular testing as the default, and if you want to let your guard down it requires some special effort.
As to those teaching practices, they are horrible. Yes, in theory, "in the lab", abstinence does prevent STDs. But this doesn't work in real life. It can't ever inform the STD avoidance strategy taught to pupils, as enough people will have sex no matter what is taught to them. If they don't know how to reduce STDs when having sex, they will spread them more.
The reaction should not be to discard STD avoidance though, but to do it properly. Which is sadly tougher in places in which promiscuous behaviour is shamed, as they usually have less availability for STD testing, buying protections, and people might feel ashamed or even be ostracized to seek out such places.
Do you have any proof that the imbalances described have been decreasing as either belief in traditional gender roles and marriage rates have declined?
No. Non-monogamy is still incredibly rare. The vast majority of people are monogamous even before living together.
(She is pretty open about it on Twitter, or I would never have posted this information).
The "males have a hard time finding dates/sex" is just as much a thing in poly communities. In fact, I consistently have a harder time dating women when I have a steady partner than when I'm single. If anything, ENM makes the lives of men who struggle in singles dating pools even more difficult.
The basic problem I've seen, over and over and over, is that many men don't know how to form normal relationships with women. Even in situations where sex is... more liberated, for lack of a better term... those men still have a really hard time getting past first dates. Unsurprisingly.
There's also a strong overlap between this cohort and men who don't have female friends.
I think there's probably something deeper than "women don't want sex" going on here. There's a big cohort of men who aren't desirable as sexual partners and want to blame society instead of changing themselves. Non-monogamy doesn't solve that problem. Hell, I'm not even sure that legalizing sex work could solve that problem.
In my comment I touched on traditional gender roles vs egalitarianism. I too agree that we should absolutely not revert the changes. But one must admit that the traditional gender roles had an appropriate balance.
>or to throw our hands in the air and say "it's evolution!".
That's difficult to change though. The bell is ringing and there's no unringing.
>That way is to embrace and encourage sex work, to be open to non-monogamy and other non-traditional arrangements, deprogram ourselves from all of our subtle and not-so-subtle slut-shaming, stop pretending the naked body is illegal and sex is bad or dirty, stop dramatizing and fear-mongering over the impact of STDs, and just generally embrace a broader, vaster and more open perspective on sex and romance and intimacy.
Very long sentence lol. The majority of the world criminalizes sex work as well as even porn. Yet ironically those places are also far worse off. Japan is clearly a prime example.
STDs are certainly a complicated subject. Each individually represent a small percentage of risk but together isnt addition, it's multiplication of risk. It's compounding interest as it were.
I think we are looking at it incorrectly. This is outside real control, in fact efforts to control will always result in the opposite result as expected. This is kind of something jordan peterson goes over, in an attempt to fix gender inequality has resulted in greater gender inequality.
We likely can only measure and monitor what's happening. Where does this balance go now that the balance broke. Men are going to benefit greatly here. Is that what we want? Is that a good thing? I suspect not.
They are not necessarily chasing sex. They already have sex. In at least some cases, they're quite satisfied with the sex they have and aren't looking to cheat on their wives.
Yet we still see sexism and misogyny coming from this group.
Why?
Because sexism, while it might be caused sometimes by an unfulfilled desire for sex, is fundamentally distinct from that desire, and it can exist on its own, regardless of how much sex a man might be having.
From what I understand, a difference would have originated due to the danger and cost of pregnancy which can be as low as zero for men and as high as 100% for women (it can literally be cause death and they can be entirely abandoned.) This mostly ended with birth control, better healthcare and child support-like laws, but the unequal drives did not.
What I find particularly interesting about my experience having 'the Thing' is how instinctively I want to properly commoditize it. I can't price it out in monetary terms, but I have a very close estimate of what would be a balanced level of mutual vulnerability. Very strange feeling, and I wonder how much of it is my personal idiosyncrasy and how much is a natural instinct for anyone who has any version of 'The Thing'.
However, I happen to be interested in diy bio experiments and intrigued by the secrecy of the community she's a member of. If she and another member were to provide me with the results of DNA tests, and give their blessings to my trying to find genetic idiosyncrasies they share, I'd consider that a fair trade for providing small amounts of blood every so often.
The answer is of course, yes. From male strippers, to host clubs in Japan (compared to hostess clubs), and so on.
The next obvious question is whether or not this happens outside the traditional gender role with people who identify as queer or non-gendered?
And yeah, it seems to.
That suggests to me that this piece has missed the underlying cause.
One of the reasons why I like the host club example is because it's a business in demand, it has a big focus on privacy and it has an audience that choses to be there. The female patrons of the host club aren't there to put on a performance or make a political statement.
Put another way. Let's take nursing, which tends to be female dominated. Do you think the female/male power balance still occurs? Does it occur in the same way? Is it flipped?
A lot of male nurses report sexual harassment problems. That suggests to me that the underlying cause is not an innate male/female power structure. There is some other root cause at play.
I'm genuinely having trouble following your logic on this issue - it seems fairly obvious that heterosexual males are highly desirous of sex with attractive women, which creates a power dynamic based on that desire.
[1] http://feministing.com/2009/08/09/japan-male-hosts-and-femal...
Women do tend to engage in sex with hosts [1].
> it seems fairly obvious that heterosexual males are highly desirous of sex with attractive women, which creates a power dynamic based on that desire.
You're affirming the consequent. If men desiring women creates a power dynamic, and if that power dynamic is why men desire women.. we have a logical issue. The power dynamic cannot be it's own origin.
If we can show that the power dynamic exists in situations where women desire men - and I think this is both obvious and we have - then it clearly has some earlier origin. It is not the root cause.
[1] - https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Inside-Japans-Host-Clubs-Where-Wo...
Sexual Economics: A Model of Heterosexual Behavior by Dr. Kathleen Vohs
I'm not arguing for some weird Spartan-style separation of the sexes like the MGTOW/TRP people say. Most people are going to be happier having relationships; it's just a necessary suffering of life, like looking for a job or getting dental care.
On the positive side, things do start to equalize as people get into their 30s and 40s, because women face the time pressure to have kids. But I wouldn't say it evens out all the way.
Something that very few people - men or women - actually have.
The connection has always been the more important thing; sex is just a proxy for that.
A robot seems far away. VR seems closer but right now men are falling in love with women providing the faux girlfriend experience through fan experience sites, cam girls, custom videos.
- talking earnestly about mental health and how much therapy has done for them
- tears and vulnerability, especially around the hurts they've experienced in past relationships they now describe as having been "toxic"
- questioning their own self-worth and wondering aloud if they are lovable at all
- emphasizing the importance of flags/non-negotiables in relationships and encouraging viewers to cut out partners and family who don't measure up
- being "fun" and joking around, including about things like how much they enjoy getting kinky, giving oral sex, etc
None of this is bad on the face of it, but it is kind of a question mark when the comment sections for this kind of content are choc-a-block full of married women posting crown emojis and openly expressing their wish that their partners could be more like the persona being depicted by the content creator.
And neither am I judging the semi-anonymous women who connect with this kind of thing, but I think it is probably filling much the same gap for them as something like porn/OF does for straight guys in terms of unmet emotional needs— it's just that it's the stereotypically female needs that it's catering to. And it probably has many of the same potential pitfalls in terms of risks to real-world relationships when the line between fantasy and reality is not clearly understood. For example, I'm aware of a few cases involving a creator like this where women met up with him and ended up quitting the community altogether because it was just too jarring trying to square what they'd built up of him in their mind with what he was actually like to hang out with in person.
Hmmm… phrasing
If someone is starved of all human connection, their life is going to suck either with the sex bots or without them.
But not all people are in such extreme situations. Some have many "friends without benefits", and a sex bot might address the remaining need. Or there are partners who have different sex drives, and a sex bot might make their lives perfect.
Anthropologists studied many cultures that have no concept of monogamy and sexual shame: it's quite the opposite.
The strongest stallions getting all the women while everyone else is stuck with their VR girlfriends. Totally not a thing on a global scale because we are getting more and more. No, don't cite me aging population stats. They may be real but the math doesn't work out with your 30%
Sounds like someone in the 30% doesn't know how the rest of us live...
It seems to me these ideologies are just an attempt to make sense of the suffering.
One of my son's friends fell under the spell of an incel preacher who goes as "Wheat Waffles". He refuses to hang out with my son because my son is taller and more handsome and thus inevitably "mogs" him.
Waffles is running a pernicious cult complete with a catechism and what I saw looks a lot like Scientology disconnection.
Those of us with the right combination of desirable traits have a choice of partners, scheduling a few dates a week with attractive women is no big deal if you're in that group. Conversely, my friends without such a combination struggle to get a date at all even if they trying to date "down" or "at their level" (I recognize these are crude terms, not sure how else to express the idea). Most of these men are pleasant and have decent jobs but they appear to fall below some line where they're considered for dating unless things evolve very naturally within a longer platonic relationship.
There are many young people today who believe there is also an inequality of attractiveness at work which is, I think, a newer concern.
> "The first seems to be present in more liberal, hippie-esque communities I’ve been in. In some circles, all the men seem to be satisfied, and all the women seem to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. I’m extremely curious about what are the causal factors of these types of groups. They seem to have solved the problem."
Have several friends in tech that it turned out privately had lots and lot of groupsex or other such kinky things. Generally, with a dedicated friendgroup who had partners, where this was a habitual thing.
I don't consider myself hippie or what you'd term neo-liberal (I've done a lot of psychedelics and if I have to paint myself into a corner, it'd be "Libertarian") but I've also had non-monogamous relationships.
Not sure what exactly it is but it boiled down to me not having insecurities about the relationship and viewing sex as mostly hedonism. There's no logical reason for two people to deny each other the opportunity for more sex besides "I don't want you to."
Romanticism and love aren't things I equate with sex, and sex isn't something I do to someone because I love them, to phrase it another way.
This mortifies most people I've mentioned this to, and they can't seem to come to grips with it. It's not for everyone, that's for sure.
Denver, also liberal, less hippie.
> but are they not less likely to be homophobic
I could definitely see a strong correlation between homophobia and animosity towards groupsex involving more than one male.
Indeed, I've seen the "No way, that's gay!" reaction before.
However, most of my male friends who seem upset at the thought of a partner not being monogamous somehow were fine if the scenario involved one guy and multiple women.
I don't really understand what level of mental gymnastics goes on for such a level of brazen double-standards to occur, but hey, I'm not here to judge anyone's sexuality or stance on adult acts.
these seem disjoint? I care a lot about a partner of mine violating explicit boundaries that have been set for our relationship. I don't care much what boundaries others have or whether they choose to cross them; that's their business.
But I've also seen a lot of guys go seriously crazy in the eyes at the concept of another naked man in the room even if there are ten ladies.
Maybe there's an explanation for that other than homophobia, and I won't judge anyone for it as long as they're transparent and honest with their partners, but it's clearly unbalanced. We can try to blame biology or something but I don't see why it matters what the source is if it's harmful today.
We should think carefully about the tools various cultures use to deal with sex. Ultimately, sex is about children, humans are a species that reproduces sexually. Even if there's no chance of pregnancy, the chemicals and emotions involved are premised on the possibility of pregnancy.
> The first seems to be present in more liberal, hippie-esque communities I’ve been in. In some circles, all the men seem to be satisfied, and all the women seem to have a lot of sex with a lot of people. I’m extremely curious about what are the causal factors of these types of groups. They seem to have solved the problem.
One of the basic functions of a culture or civilization is to reproduce itself through multiple generations. These communities do not last over long periods of time.
For the advocates of sexual libertinism I have a question: how do you ensure male parental investment? As a society we value it and often legally demand it. I certainly could not argue for the alternative. How do you assign fathers under complete sexual liberation? A common thread is that somehow you socialize childrearing but I am seriously skeptical of the scalability of that approach beyond small tribal societies.
This article is about the road leading up to children and how people select each other. How we raise children today is completely different from our past and deserves its own article. Not to mention sex today doesn't always involve pregnancy for everyone.
It will always be a rare commodity because sex is costlier for women (because of pregnancy). These discussions seem to always miss that basic game-theoretic dynamic.
- affordable birth control
- affordable abortion
- mandatory paternal child support
The sexual invisibility many men feel as teenagers is a trauma that will live with them for the rest of their lives.
Eva Illouz writes about this stuff eloquently
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/05/24/book-rev...
and says that 30+ women who are still single want more of everything out of relationships than men will give them, including sex.
https://www.npr.org/2014/09/06/345884282/online-dating-stats...
And it looks like I wrote a comment about this five years ago!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12710536
OkCupid blog post I cited: https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-wom...
said assertion:
> women's sexual value is at a peak very early (let's say 18) but a man's sexual value peaks later (at least 30+)...sexual invisibility many men feel as teenagers...
OKcupid data scientist cofounder says in that article:
> Women generally like a guy to be the same age as them up until the guys hit about 40. But when you flip it around, when you look at how men perceive women, it's pretty much a just straight ticket vote for 20, which is the lowest age I looked at in my data set
So young men aren't invisible according to this data. And:
> This is just measuring people's opinions, not what they actually go out and do. What you see when you actually look at what people do, you see the realism set in. So these 40-year-old guys ... they people they actually have the courage to actually go out and message are a lot older: it's 30, 35-year-old women
So stated value is 20, but in actual practice women older than this are also doing just fine.
Many young men feel rejected/alienated. By age 35 or 40 men have often figured their life out (figured out what they want, found a partner, become more effective at approaching people, whatever).
I haven’t heard any men in their 30s or 40s mention that they aren’t being chased around by eager suitors the way they used to be. And I haven’t heard any women in their 20s complain that they can’t get a date however hard they try.
If you did the same analysis for Tinder you would probably see that guys 35+ do message girls under 21 years old A LOT, but that isn't meant to last, both sides are typically just looking for casual sex.
Back to the original point I was trying to make, in the chapter of the book on that topic (as opposed to his earlier data science blog posts), he uses not only OKCupid data, but Tinder and other dating apps as well. I remember there were a few small outliers, but in general that trend from the original data science blog posts still stands. Oh, and he also explicitly compares his old analysis vs. his present one. Definitely an interesting topic, and the book, luckily, applies similar rigor to a bunch of other topics completely unrelated to dating dynamics.
0. https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Identity-What-Online-Offlin...
edit: honestly, five minutes of casually browsing that sub, and I don't see a thing about "men should pay for more than half of a relationship" or anything about "extracting value."
Seems like a sub that's really into respecting oneself outside of the context of a boyfriend, and women unpacking and de-normalizing the toxic behaviors of previous partners.
I feel like you're trying to make that sub into something it is not. Why is that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/jo75a...
I just think it's super reductive to look at that sub and decide that the problem is that women are golddiggers. That place speaks to a lot of the fear, frustration, and disappointment that, anecdotally, plague many women's dating lives.
Funny. That's exactly what the red pill did for a lot of men.
But more substantively, basically all terrorists are men. This is true of terrorists from every group: white nationalists, black nationalists, Muslims, Christians, Trump supporters, Bernie supporters. If there ever is a terrorist spouting FDS ideology, he will be a man. The particular toxicity of the ideology has nothing to do with it.
Of course dating is difficult for women. But it's also difficult for men, and that doesn't excuse misogyny.
The obvious conclusion is that there are large groups of both men and women who have very unhealthy and sexist ideas about the opposite gender. How many women on that sub have actually talked to real men about these ideas? "If you wouldn't date a drug addict, don't date a man who watches porn"? Seriously?
Communities like FemaleDatingStrategy are just as bad as incel or MGTOW communities — just a place for sad people to outpour their bitterness and sexism into an echo chamber. Except places like FDS pretend to be feminist, so they get a pass. But they really, really shouldn't, and I hope one day society will see that.
Yep. There is a reason for why users of that subreddit are commonly referred to as "femcels" by people outside of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/rhd04...
Your claim here should be called in to question.
> A woman’s desirability peaks at 21
Somehow we have to compress that into something short enough to share.
https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
Comparing this to economic inequality is really interesting.
But for my part at least I've seen no indication that people treat people in real life like it's Tinder once they get to know you first. I'm not even sure what treating people in real life like it's Tinder would look like unless you're basically putting yourself forward before having had any meaningful interactions with them first.
... meanwhile according to this logic women are only valuable when they're just out of puberty and then they spend the next 70 something years invisible but yes let's talk about male trauma
First, it’s natural to expect children to be more traumatized by an event than adults.
Secondly, the period before and after a peak is a slope, not a sudden drop into nothingness. This means that a thirty year old woman is not “sexually invisible”. Similarly 40 year old men aren’t invisible either even though they supposedly peaked at 30.
Want to know why some older man is a jerk and treats you wrong and it might be the reason why: he is still that younger man inside.
as a young, then-virgin, then-sexually-frustrated man, coming across knowledge like this felt like learning important, key rules to the game you're playing halfway through, while people are screaming that these rules weren't actually in the game anymore, because they never should have been in the game to begin with, and that's why nobody told you.
now it's the top-voted comment on a top story on the front page of a website whose average community views would certainly not be described as "traditional" or "conservative" ...yet here we are.
it's very interesting to observe shifts in acceptable discourse and society in general within the span of my lifetime. who knows where we're headed next?
I'd expect the present trend to continue for at least another 10-20 years, with a large gap being created between the well-being of the median & average man and woman in the US (in the favor of women). The potent education, employment and income trends alone practically guarantee that outcome. Not much is being done to correct the growing imbalance, so by the time there is enough widespread cultural give-a-shit at a large scale, the gap will be substantial and it'll take a long time to correct (if it can be corrected for given the labor automation employment dynamics that are inbound).
The trend will make competent men that have something going for them, that much more valuable. As more men fall behind, men that don't gain value by scarcity.
Teenagers? How many teenage women do you know of that are fucking 30+ year old men.
I would say up until adult independence people are far more likely to date someone their own age due to large social interactions at school.
I also think it’s hardly traumatic to not get sex as a teenager
Plenty. Try seekingarrangement.com
Not many teenage women go for 30+ year old men. But many women do prefer men who are sufficiently older than them that the combined effect for young guys is noticeable.
Anecdotally as someone who is now 46, I feel like the attention from much younger women has kept increasing. Additionally the attention has shifted. If a 20-something woman shows interest in me it's almost always sexual rather than a woman looking for a relationship. My dating life is so much easier today than it was when I was 18-20. Heck, it's still easier to find dates today than it was in my 30's.
These negative emotions persist into your college years, 20s, and even longer and sabotage your success with women and domestic life not to mention work and all areas of your life. Even when something good happens your are inclined not to believe it because of what you have internally and the resulting effect is self-reinforcing.
The median teen is interested in teens.
I'm not saying that those boys are in competition with 30 year old men, but that those same boys are going to be in a materially better situation when they are 30 years old -- yet they might not be able to take advantage of it because they will still have that deprived and resentful little boy inside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia
in which young people experience "narcissistic injury" except it is the boy version instead of the girl version.
This sounds to me like people who tell people with clinical depression to "just cheer up, it worked for me!"
I didn't even try to have sex as a teenager, and I'm happily married now, no psychic problems. Honestly, I got more PTSD from playing basketball at PE classes.
That's the whole problem, right?
I just want everybody everywhere to occasionally step back and consider how that is the "why" of all of this; our society is set up, or has evolved (devolved?) into this place where people must consistently ensure a steady supply or source of money for mere survival, and from that is where the generally natural thing of sex and how it works among the genders et al creates these imbalances which can be converted into money. It's hard to understate how deep this goes; e.g. marriage et al.
As in, how you still described it as a "market." Point proven, I think.
>A catcall isn’t just a catcall, it’s a symbol for the entire social structure around the power exchange of sex.
The traditional gender roles were well balanced. throughout recorded history there were differing cultures and different approaches but it was generally balanced; but egalitarianism since roughly the 1960s broke this balance. Economically and culturally this has been one of the best things we have done.
However, that's what broke the balance on things like catcalling. Virtually nobody is doing it anymore and that's kind of a problem. It's worse, now we have tinder and tremendous amounts of high quality porn. The women's 'thing' has drastically reduced in value. Even if we want to get back to the balance, we cannot anymore. We must now find a new balance.
>Sometimes I feel like women who are trying to end the game don’t realize that the game exists because women have the Thing, and people want the Thing and aren’t getting it.
Oh yes, those folks who want to break the game don't understand the situation at all. Worse yet, this effort is not only doomed but the effort itself will only make the game worse in their eyes.
This is the complicated part. We have moved to a new balance and I'm not sure what this balance is or will become.
How is not catcalling a problem?
Let me requote the article.
A catcall isn’t just a catcall, it’s a symbol for the entire social structure around the power exchange of sex. It is no longer a compliment – an acknowledgement of the desirability of their Thing – but rather an insult, a claim that they are only desirable for their Thing.
Catcalls on the street are fine, because they are 100% okay with being a one dimensional sex object to strangers.
That's what the article said on the subject. Some women see the catcall as a compliment, others dont.
This is the balance. This isn't toxic masculinity being eliminated. This is men not being interested in 'the thing' and therefore the balance shifts accordingly. Men are thusly some amount more powerful and in control.
Here's kind of a big caveat as well. There's a wall on this balance. There is a point in which there's too much risk in sex and you will never catcall. When catcalling ends, it's because we are at that wall.
Moreover, now what are the consequences of being at the wall? Negative birthrates when excluding immigration. Huge increase in open border immigration. Reversal of abortion rights is certain. Birth control will almost certainly get banned.
Obviously 'catcalling' aka free speech isn't the problem. It's just a clear canary in the coal mine.
As a trans woman who passes for cis, I can tell you that lots of men want to sleep with me, but far fewer want to have a real relationship with me after I disclose that I’m trans (and from talking to women of color, this is not unique to trans women). There’s no power there other than transactional. So I’ve had to learn to always be on guard and find ways to filter out the fetishists to meet the men who aren’t ashamed to date me.
Is this different from being a cis-woman?
There is, as OP alluded to, a very strong fetishization of non-white, non-cis women.
What I read here is just that you’re just as discriminatory as the people who you complain about. I don’t see any mentions of race in the article and what it describes applies to most cultures and every race.
Stop being racist and maybe people will stick around after receiving the Thing.
What? The OP is trying to look at the premise of the post through a lens of race – non-white women are often fetishized by white men for their non-whiteness. I mean, shit, look at... any porn site. And they're right – fetishization makes for a totally different dating experience, a different experience of The Thing.
Where is the racism here? Is just mentioning the idea of race somehow racist?
We're talking about fetishization, sexual gaze, and power dynamics. It would be irresponsible to not talk about the role that race plays in this conversation.
Hard disagree. What you're saying reminds me of Seinfeld’s "Not that there's anything wrong with that" suffix and "I'm not racist, but" starter. You don't have to mention things that are obvious, you're just making the conversation awkward.
I fail to see how talking about race (keep reading) changes anything about the the concept at hand: People want you because you have "the Thing, and maybe only the Thing."
"Being an Asian woman" itself can be the Thing, that's still covered by the article.
(EDIT : the OP doesn't mention race though, so the blame might be actually more on the answerer.)
The whole concept is not only scientifically flawed (and so was largely abandoned by anthropologists, who prefer to use the much more culturally than genetically defined concept of ethnicity), but has also resulted in untold suffering in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Not that fetishization of skin color isn't an issue, but affirming the validity of race by using it to think about this issue is guaranteed to make matters worse.
Race as a sociological phenomenon is very real to those who experience it. Fetishization of race in sex is demonstrably real as well and not limited to women.
Regardless, race isn’t really the important part — it was just an example. You could replace race with any number of descriptors of a person (weight, height, etc) and it doesn’t make it feel any better to be fetishized; it’s not two people having sex, it’s one person having sex with an idea. Ideas aren’t supposed to have feelings, dreams, or agency.
Some combinations of these sociological states are just a lot more likely to be fetishized (and porn sites have the stats on that!) And when they are, it changes the power dynamics around sex significantly.
I disagree. Having to do with race is racial, not racist. The latter is inherently prejudiced. Merely mentioning race does not make something racist.
Both your comment and the parent are racist because you’re applying common issues to “white men” while they’re really not limited by race in any way whatsoever. Whether this or that race is fetishized by which race is completely irrelevant in the context of the article.
And I absolutely do believe white people can be fetishized! But this article is written in the context of a white person living in a predominantly white society. My main argument is that her experience is not generalizable to the wider population, who experience the power dynamics of sex very differently.
That seems pretty obvious considering one want is a subset of the other. If I’m physically attracted to you but not in other ways, I can still want to have sex with you. That’s a single box to be ticked, whereas “potential partner” is the title of the entire checklist. Surely this is a ubiquitous phenomenon that applies to mainstream beauties as well. In fact, you’ll hear them complain about it, too, as described in TFA.
I'd guess most of the men that are looking for a "real relationship" are doing so because they want to find somebody to have children with, especially at 30+. In general they are not going to invest time and energy into building a relationship with someone that lacks the proper organs to conceive a child.