I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.
While there's a perception that incels are ugly, socially awkward nerds, the one's I've interreacted with online (and off) tend to be angry, misogynistic douchebags.
The nerdiest guys I know (IRL) all have significant others. The bitter guys I know (two) IRL are older, have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them". They are both very active online however. This is my personal experience, anecdotal of course.
It's an appealing message for a group who sees their intrinsic or essential power impotent in a changing world. It means that radical self-growth, a long and difficult process, doesn't have to happen, painful self-truths don't have to be addressed, and basic skills like empathy don't have to be cultivated. In short, issues can be externalized.
that is, they fell ill with depression because of lack of relationships, entering a loop of ever-furthering isolation and depression, which made them bitter and undesirable.
Some "ugly, socially awkward nerds" somehow find meaningful relationships and get saved. Others don't, and go down the nasty road.
A little bit of empathy wouldn't hurt.
My teens and twenties predated the term "incel," but I was horny, lonely, and unhappy about it, and I could identify with a lot of the online whining from men who felt the same way. I did some venting in the "woe is me" vein on Reddit. But in my real life, at least when I wasn't in a depressive episode, I was always trying to improve my situation by bettering myself and buffing my social skills. I was always thinking of ways to crack the problem. When I felt defeated and discouraged, I'd complain anonymously online, because I knew nobody in my real life wanted to hear it, and then I'd get back to work figuring out my life.
I have no evidence, but I would bet that the perception of the incel phenomenon is warped by a small number of angry people who managed to inflate their importance by expressing the frustration and humiliation of a much larger group of men who are like I was, who go online to express temporary (though possibly recurring) feelings of hopelessness. As an identity, being an incel doesn't have much to offer. It's about a desire for sex, but it doesn't offer any path to sex. I think the vast majority of horny, frustrated young men who have applied the label to themselves at one time or another probably spend much more time thinking about how to be more likable to women than they spend thinking about incel ideology. And if they get any reward at all from trying to improve themselves and their empathy towards women, that will be a better deal than they get from the incel camp.
Consuming the benefits of having a woman sexually interested in you is a very different skill from creating that interest in the first place. So they would just pay to skip all the steps that they are bad at, thereby never learning them.
If you're paying someone to live out those fantasies, you're probably not going to experience "normal" sexual relationships.
This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."
Plus you'd be (temporarily) alleviating the pain and frustration of loneliness, which is a huge boost in morale and will bring hope. That being said I've never tried a prostitute, although I've considered it in times of loneliness for the same reasons above.
Maybe if the prostitutes were more like escorts, you go out on a date, they give you honest feedback about how you're presenting yourself and so on. But that feels far outside the typical work of a prostitute.
EDIT: now I think of it I doubt it would work on sexual loneliness either. I can't imagine that loneliness is solved simply by the act of sex, there's feeling wanted, feeling desired, all those things. I have no experience (I swear, officer!) but I can't imagine getting those things out of something I know is a financial transaction for my partner.
Maslow would suggest otherwise.
9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0]
Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal.
From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's a higher correlation with being a Bloc State than legalized prostitution. Unsurprising to see UK and Germany here considering they are not only the most wealthy countries, but also the most populous. Netherlands... well I got no answer there but this is just a quick look.
Just given this quick look, I'd be shocked to learn that legalization of prostitution was a major causal factor in human trafficking.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Europe
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/4947/the-eus-hotspots-for-peo...
This isn't the same as saying that prostitution is legal because the transaction is still illegal. It also doesn't resolve the issue of the correlation, which is the main point.
And, no, women who move around a lot and live on-site isn't proof of trafficking--because that's also a way to make it much harder for the cops to investigate and thus a sensible safety strategy for them. I'm sure trafficking exists but I don't believe the claimed numbers at all.
I present to you, some pretty good data: the time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
There's also no convincing evidence (just cherrypicked data that is either pro- or con-) that legalizing prostitution results in more sex trafficking.
> Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not
Funny thing about you saying that, they can't choose anything if it's illegal- if it's legal, they can not only choose, they can bring legal charges against anyone who mistreats them.
Zero. It's not about the sex. It's about value and self-worth. It's about being selected. It's about being chosen by the person who could have chosen anyone. When people are rejected by other human beings, they are literally being told they are worthless. Wouldn't you turn violent if you were told you were worthless your entire life?
Prostitution is an incredibly dismissive and superficial solution to the so called "incels" and it's going to fail for the exact same reasons as sex bots solution that's often proposed: it's not genuine human acceptance.
Here we go: The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power", i.e., it IS "about sex", at least sometimes)
Sometimes, you don't need "genuine human acceptance." Sometimes, the only thing that will clear your head is that you just need to fuck. At least for some portion of men (and possibly, just to be inclusive here, women).
The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
Incels don't like prostitutes, they despise them. Incels believe that they are _owed_ sex, they don't want to pay for sex. You fundamentally misunderstand what Incel claim being.
Prostitution is legal in Germany, guess what country in the EU comes first when it comes to the number of self declared incels
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-10/ran_i...
Prostitution advocate often claim that legalizing prostitution will lower violence against females, there is absolutely not a single proof that true. All we know is that legalizing prostitution increase the demand for legal and illegal (minors, trafficked women) prostitution.
https://journalistsresource.org/economics/legalized-prostitu...
Nobody is owed sex. Not a single person on the planet, with anybody.
Prostitution is legal in my country. One can literally go to a clearnet website and get a menu full of humans to choose from. So called "incels" still exist.
Incels are a hate group only vaguely related to celibate. And legalizing prostitution (something I am for) will probably do as good to that group as language lessons would do against antisemitism as we know it today.
Maybe because you don't need or want to?
If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
If not, you're either expecting too much for too little compensation or regulation is preventing the market from being efficient.
> If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
I am the kind of person that wants to have sex with someone. I'd be willing to pay for it, i have the option. But I'd rather not have sex than be involved in such things. It's an ethical decision no matter how lonely I get.
The fact that women have chosen this way of interacting with men on a paid basis should tell you it's not because they are prudes about sex work. They don't feel safe, and for very good reasons.
This is yet another example of how men need to stop "solving" this problem with their own clever ideas. Stop and listen. You will hear answers.
That the 'oldest profession' is essentially paid rape says a lot really.
Better to criminalise only those who seek to use prostitutes, and provide help and support for those who wish to exit the sex trade.
Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity in a good read on this topic.
I started out married thinking of it as a nebulous thing. My marriage improved when I realized it was all an exchange and I need to make sure I'm always providing my bit rather than just working towards some nebulous idea of love.
Getting a long term badly limiting disability in anything but old age is a recipe for divorce. Eventually the loving spouse gets caretaker fatigue and is overloaded from carrying the weight without relief. I fully expect and will not hold it against my spouse if I'm seriously disabled for over a year and the marriage ends. Any high moral ground about love and honor or whatever falls apart when you're grinding in poverty and going to be sucked under yourself with no light at the end of the tunnel.
I never left her side or stopped supporting her. I didn't get fatigued, I got motivated and we found one of the best Neurologists in the world. It took a several years and surgeries for her to get better. She can walk, drive, and work today. I couldn't imagine throwing away my marriage over some ass. Also what kind of father would I be if I left their mother when she needed me the most?
If your entire marriage is built on sex and money transactions, your marriage will eventually fall apart no matter what.
Not all marriages involve people with the money to continue supporting the children when both rather than just one parent is bankrupted by medical debt, and not all disabilities end with being able to drive and walk. Usually don't involve people privileged enough to get "best in the world" Neurologists either.
There are people out there that may have to divorce precisely because they can't look their kids in the eyes with the marriage as it stands due to the disability, knowing a divorce will separate the finances and possible allow them to find more support for their child. Every human is susceptible to caretaker fatigue and you yourself can't possibly know you would never get fatigued if the disability never ended. Some people can go a 1 year without cracking, others a decade, others 100 years and until it happens you probably won't know your breaking point.
The fact of the matter is I get to see the people that deal with hundreds of seriously chronically disabled people. My dataset to work with is that it's a bad bet to expect that the counterparty will sacrifice themselves indefinitely for the sake of the marriage.
First you had family that worked in healthcare "I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories.". Now you're able to draw parallels because you get to see the people that deal with others? It doesn't even make sense. I have people that work in the healthcare industry including doctors too. Your evidence is andetoal at best, hearsay at worst. You don't have a dataset, you have stories. So which is it? Talk about a bad faith discussion...
The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
You have even less than an anecdote, and then when you asked me for a response which uses actual anecdotes where it doesn't get better, you suddenly get upset about it.
>You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.
This is just straight up sociopathy. You knew you had an unusual outcome, so you asked for the expected outcome with the trap that yours was a heartwarming but unexpected one. It was never coming from a place of curiosity.
>The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Marrying someone for this is also transactional if you expect this also of your partner as a condition of getting married. In this case it's like a transaction with an insurance policy built in as par of the transaction. You're just bragging about your particular transaction and terms for insurance.
To anyone else considering this, here's a test if you believe this applies to your situation. Ask your partner if they believe they would "love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." If they say yes, tell them you think that's all bullshit and you don't reciprocate the agreement. You'll find out fast whether a transaction happened.
Do you not understand the premise of the most common wedding vow ever to be spoken? "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." That's just a fancy way of saying I'll love you for who you are because I'm not transactional.
Honestly, your marriage sounds like a sociopaths dream. How many points and transactions can I earn so my partner thinks I actually care. You also lied about your data for some silly reason. Anyway, I'm gonna take my upvotes and move on. You have a great day.
Nobody says it like that. Usually it gets to the point where the end-stage symptoms resulting in their leaving is something like suicidal depression and the kids are badly suffering. The impetus is the disability but you're downplaying how it gets there.
It really shows gross ignorance to think you can extrapolate the yes UNUSUAL case that after getting world's best neurologist we did what the doctors said couldn't be done. And then extrapolate all the people other than you that faced disabilities that resulted in dissolved marriage must have started with weaker marriages.
Honestly someone that belittles the plight and hard marital choices of the disabled as much as you have, would be worthy of much worse name calling than anything I've seen here, and it's especially harmful to the disabled who have actually initiated the divorce out of LOVE for their partner.
>I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal, ad
Yeah investigate a bit people going through the serious disease of chronic addiction. When the husband uses the entire paycheck to keep from getting dope-sick and passes out while the toddler is crawling around after the second, at best third rehab the wife dumps them like a hot potato. Honestly it is rare to find a chronic addict that is still with their family. When push comes to shove when the kids are suffering the wife will drop your ass, even if you're trying your best to overcome the disease and act in love. All that shit about sticking around no matter what goes through the window, and these aint people in hospice care or even acting purposefully with malice against their family. Usually they genuinely and badly want to fulfill their responsibilities.
>"for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."
Again this is just smugness that you like your particular transaction more than others. I seriously doubt you would have entered this without the counterparty also agreeing to same terms as their bit of the transaction. Very few people making these vows are gonna go through with it if the spouse isn't vowing to offer the same in trade.
Imagine removing antibiotics, vaccines, screening tools, and any other medical treatment.
Anyone who was around for the AIDs epidemic will understand how quickly a large segment of the population can start dying off.
The early portion, it was literally a mystery disease that was killing off anyone that engaged in risky lifestyle.
If we have solved the public health problems, does it make Monogamy an empty construct? Or there are other social/economical/biological factors that hold it in place?
Most other sexually-transmitted diseases that existed in most of the world were unpleasant, but not life threatening, even before antibiotics. And it's also worth noting that most primates (and many mammals of all kinds) are not monogamous, and yet they are not plagued by STIs to any significant extent.
Instead, monogamy was much more important for managing babies, especially given how much hare human babies need, and for how long, compared to virtually any other animal.
As far as primates not having STIs, you might want to read up on the animal origins of HIV a bit. The only reason we have HIV is because SIV can proliferate indefinitely in another species and crossed into humans.
However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)
As for SIV, I am aware of it, but it is not a serious problem for most simians (though apparently Chimpanzees are being killed by SAIDS in serious numbers) - which is my point. STIs have not been so serious a threat to animals as HIV+AIDS has been to humans in the initial pandemic.