I always find something a little dark about this argument against letting men be single, and against practices like polygamy with some men having multiple wives and others not having wives.
There's a kind of 'or else...' vibe to it. As if some people think it's women's job to marry men to stop them being a menace to society.
I don't think anyone studying this seriously is making that argument or even trying to slyly imply it.
I think it breaks down like this:
We know "lots of single men" correlates with many indicators that are, broadly, "bad for society".
What is driving this change? What can we about it? The "what can we do about it?" is focused, again broadly, on "fixing men" or "fixing the incentives for men" or "fixing the opportunities for men."
No one is proposing, "Hey women, you better start marrying these unattractive layabouts or else society will collapse and you'll be living in dystopia...".
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/case-ag...
> monogamy's main cultural evolutionary advantage over polygyny is the more egalitarian distribution of women, which reduces male competition and social problems.
It's this 'distribution of women' that seems dark to me. That can't be that much of a crazy opinion as people here seem to think?
It's a very analytical, "cold" way to phrase it, yes, but you get this effect with many "human" problems that are studied scientifically, whether poverty, starvation, etc. Also note the same researchers can, and do, refer to the 'distribution of men' when discussing female mating preferences.
> incentivised instead marry someone else, someone you presumably did not really want to marry.
At a macro level, this is obviously true statistically. But do people experience it as such? You live in a non-polygamous society -- do you or the women you know feel like their spouses were forced on them? Because, to some degree, statistically, they were, as you correctly point out. But the mechanism is just via an accepted, background social norm... there are no arranged marriages, all marriages all voluntary, and everyone retains the option not to marry.
He can divorce and marry you, but that "frees up" his ex-wife to appease the roiling crowd of violent men. I'm being facetious, of course, because who thinks about it like that? No one. We just experience a cultural norm where people only marry one other person. And mostly no one complains.
And yet indirectly this norm has a macro statistical effect of keeping the peace.
Yeah I know - that's the situation I'm talking about. I know nobody seems to complain in public but I guess there are people out there is applies to. Maybe one day it'll change and people will be free to marry who they want.
People don't complain in private either. I've literally never heard it, even 2nd hand.
You're making it sound like a law against marrying someone of a difference race. It is nothing like that. Most Western women would be appalled at the idea of being someone's 3rd wife.
There is tiny subculture of poly-amorous people. Maybe some of them complain? But they can still be with who they want, just without the official seal.
Where are they illegal? Or are you talking about marriage?
Polygamy means multiple marriages at the same time.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/young-men-and-war-could-w...
If you're aware of this work and you think it's flawed, why don't you elaborate? That could be a great discussion.
If you're accusing Wiener and Mesquida of being sexist, or if you think research on this subject should be suppressed, you should come out and say that.
What's your contribution exactly other than strawmanning "some people" as bigots?
Why don't you elaborate on exactly who you were libeling here?
The answer to all their questions is basically 'I never said that in the first place.'
How's that going to lead to an interesting discussion?
I literally haven't used the word 'sexist' once in this entire thread. That's a word you used. See what I mean? I can't defend the use of 'sexist'... because I didn't use it... you did!
I've leave this thread to let you argue with your own choice of words on your own!
> some people think it's women's job to marry men to stop them being a menace to society.
So now you're saying this view held by these 'some people' isn't sexist?
I don't really have any desire to continue this, the fact is you posted a defamatory statement and don't want to own it, but I think to have posted it at all is against the spirit of Hacker News, which encourages open inquiry and curiosity, not attacking people for their immorality or whatever you were doing here. You should post that kind of thing on Reddit's r/politics instead where I'm sure people will upvote it like crazy. Have a nice day.
I'm at the point where I don't like it, but it is probably true regardless.
I'm not that familliar with situation in india, but in "the west", we've come to situations where young people (with a very wide definition of "young") are unable to afford homes (and in turn, kids), are underpaid, and in some of those countries (mostly usa) cannot even afford education and healthcare (in contrast to eg. europe, where education is taxpayer paid but healthcare is slowly going down lower and lower).
Maybe it is the time to say "stop", we want homes, better pay (and all the other stuff), and such major changes only come with enough people who are fed up and have nothing else to lose... so yes, young, childless, unmarried men.
I know most revolutions end badly, but find me a developed "western" place with affordable housing?
If it were not for these things, I believe that we would be much closer to revolution even if nobody can see it yet. Potentially Tzarist Russia or Weimar Germany close. I think young men have all the social indicators needed to cause them to broadly revolt; we just have some placating methods that didn't exist historically.
Sadly, the governments solve this by taxing the "rich" (=middle class, because the actual rich always avoid the taxes, and engineers, coders, tradesmen etc. are the one who get fucked), bringing everyone (except the actual rich) to some low minimum needed to survive while still being fucked in every other sense. So yeah... the only way this can be solved is (in my, controversial opinion), is for people to actually get angry and replace the whole set of politicians and people in bed with them.
The same argument is made for wealth transfers via taxes: pay up, or they might just take it, and it's cheaper and more efficient to codify wealth transfer instead of just letting it happen.
And you don't necessarily need men to get married to not be trouble makers. But you'll need them to have something to do. If that's not marriage, education or work, you better have entertainment or drugs available.