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Comment by carbine | Hacker News Reader

I'm a woman and have had long serious relationships and long-ish stretches of being single. Took me a while to filter through all the social pressure BS and realize that, on balance, I have been way (WAY) happier single. Maybe this could change one day? But right now I have no interest in changing it. It'd take someone extraordinary. I'm not 'poly' or 'asexual' or any of that crap, I've just had to give up so much of my time and energy for relationships that ultimately left me worse off in every way. By contrast, on my own I can do what I want with my time and energy, and I'm surrounded by wonderful friends and family.

If we put less social pressure on people to pair bond, some non-zero percentage of the population would be genuinely happier.

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I'm a man and I definitely see more pressure on women to pair off, at least at younger ages. With men (particularly driven or ambitious men), there's a societal "he'll settle down eventually" but with women "eventually" is like "late 20s"

It's not just social pressure, it's simply a biological fact. For each year after ~30, the chance of having something wrong with a child during pregnancy goes up. On average in relationships, women's greatest value is their youth and beauty (early/mid 20s), men's greatest value is when they've progressed in their career and are amassing wealth (mid/late 30s). There's nothing wrong about pointing this out, they're just the realities about modern relationships. Yet we can never honestly discuss them because people have a hard time controlling their emotions about it.

Women are not baby machines or objects of beauty, they're people. Their "greatest value" is whatever they decide it to be. They should form relationships in the way that brings them the most happiness.

Reducing women to objects of beauty, saying their value comes from their fertility, and implying that if they disagree with that assessment it's because they're too emotional is almost the dictionary definition of misogyny. I hope you'll reconsider this attitude.

I think I understand the point you're trying to make, but this is the sort of discussion board where many people are literalists. Women literally are baby machines: from the perspective of biology, and as a critical asset in the development of the human race (especially during times of high child mortality).

People get upset when you point this out, but they don't get upset because it's the truth, they get upset because of what they think the consequences of people knowing that truth will be. There are many things which can't be debated in public because it causes people (not just women) to get extremely emotional and retreat to lizard-brain defenses. My hope is that on HN, we can learn to control those responses.

Appeals to literalism or objectivity often serve to create a seemingly objective and seemingly simple veneer over something that's truly subjective and complex.

In this case, "women are baby machines" is obscuring a lot:

- This is conflating being female with being a woman. Being female is a biological fact, being a woman is a distinct concept from being female. Conflating them serves to imply that our ideas about womanhood are objective rather than constructed. But most of our ideas about women have nothing to do with any biological reality - there's nothing about having two X chromosomes that means you wear dresses or engage in girltalk.

- Many women can't have children. However, if a woman has a hysterectomy, we generally don't say she's no longer a woman.

- Many people who can have children don't identify as being a woman.

- Having the capacity to bear children doesn't imply that this is your "greatest value." This is a normative statement, not a factual one. You can't prove a normative statement from factual statements. [1]

- We don't organize our society around biology. We weren't born with wings, but we fly. A woman's biology shouldn't limit her ability to pursue her own happiness. If she doesn't want to settle down in her 20s, chiding her for letting her biological clock run down is patronizing, moralizing, and unjustified.

People don't get upset because the truth is too hot to handle. They get upset because this is a bad faith line of argumentation used to justify bigotry - getting upset is a reasonable reaction to that.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

I think you're getting worked up over nothing. In particular, it's probably likely the person you're arguing probably doesn't think what you think they're thinking.

To say that women's greatest value from a societal perspective is baby-making, a person is not saying or implying: that women who can't have babies aren't valuable. Or that people (for example trans-men) can get pregnant and have babies.

As for your semantic arguments, nobody is "proving" anything here. This is an internet discussion board, we're discussing biology and society. There is no philosophical proof, because the systems we're discussing are not logical.

How about this: "due to its necessity to the continued existence of humanity, the ability of baby-making people to make babies is highly valued, often greatly above other abilities that baby-making people have, and this is strongly considered in mate selection." I think that's all the OP meant to say with the parts you're complaining about rewritten to be less imperative.

I think it's pretty clear we do organize society around biology, not exclusively.

I think the misunderstanding is yours. I think you're putting words in their mouth to make their statement more palatable.

Being a woman means being a female.

Not so. For one, trans women are women, but are not biologically female. For another, being a woman is primarily about fulfilling a certain role in society, having a certain relationship to people based on your gender and theirs. That's got very little to do with biological sex. Like I said, there's nothing biological about wearing dresses. Kilts and skirts are virtually identical, but one of them is seen as very masculine and one of them is seen as very feminine.

Nops. Trans "women" are not women. They don't meet any biological criteria for that, they can't operate functionally as woman. There are not trans-females in any other species, as this is exclusivelly a cultural and psychological phenomena in humans. As you said yourself, there's nothing biological about wearing dresses, thus, using a dress doesn't make you a woman.

As human beings, trans people deserve care and respect and the full set of human rights, yet, this doesn't include that we bend reality based on imaginary constructs.

Trans women are women. No other species may have trans individuals, but no other species has men or women either, or if they do, it's beyond our understanding (in the same way our understanding of their vocalizations or the way they think or experience is limited). Wearing a dress doesn't make you a woman, identifying as a woman and fulfilling that role in society does (which does often involve wearing dresses).

If you support trans people's right to exist as humans, maybe it behooves you to educate yourself about the difference between gender and sex, so that you don't repeat transphobic talking points.

Obviously we disagree on the fundamental point, but I appreciate that you took your time to have a civil discussion with me, and this makes me appreciate your point of view more rationally. I will definitelly think more about it. Who knows? maybe I'm wrong.

> If you support trans people's right to exist as humans

Absolutist statements like this ("if you don't agree with my point of view, that means your viewpoint is the worst of the worst") make people not want to look further into or agree with your ideology, and are ironically binary.

Those distingushing between trans women and women and those thinking trans people have no right to exist as humans are not the same group. You've bent this entire discussion to try and make it about the talking point you wanted to make, so hopefully you're pleased you did it.

You are confused so you try to get everyone around you to redefine their vocabulary.

> from the perspective of biology, and as a critical asset in the development of the human race (especially during times of high child mortality)

There are many things that may be true from the perspective of biology, but we collectively as a humanity choose to ignore or fight them. I think most people will disagree with the opinion that reproduction is the only goal of human life. Because that's it - an opinion (that you seem to share).

For example, there are many people of both sexes that consciously decide not to have children. In this context, reducing women (and women only) to "literally baby machines" is not really logically defensible in my opinion. Unless I misunderstood your point?

Nobody said reproduction was the only goal of human life. Although, one imagines, since it's the only reason that any human existed ever, it's a pretty important one. Probably the most important one!

I think you're imputing reduction when it wasn't implied or intended.

> People get upset when you point this out, but they don't get upset because it's the truth, they get upset because of what they think the consequences of people knowing that truth will be.

Or they get upset because they aren't Nihilists and believe in some form of personal meaning besides perpetuating the species?

Or because people conflate statements from biological and societal domains, when they should be separating them.

I mean when the person who made the "literally baby machines" comment, they did qualify it was from a biological (explicitly) and social ("a critical asset in the development of the human race") perspective, they later said that reproduction was probably the most important goal of human life[1], so I think people are properly conflating these statements...

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35548367

This is not being literalist or objective. That is having very specific ideological opinion about value and purpose of women. As in, nothing about us matters except our ability to have babies.

This would be like saying that men are nothing but insemination machines. And yet, analysis of what men want or do on this forum is way more complex, because men are actually more then that.

From the perspective of biology, all that non-baby related aspirations and wants are also part of our biology. You are ignoring them because of ideology, not because women would lack these for biological reasons.

So are men, from a strictly biological perspective. Darwin doesn’t dictate your soul

Women are not baby machines or objects of beauty, they're people.

Never said they were, that's you putting words in my mouth. However I think it's fair to say that most people form relationships to have children with people they find attractive. I know you r/childfree types are a vocal minority, but you are just that: a minority. There's plenty of analyses that does deep dives on the data out there. Check out the OkTrends blog that the OkCupid founders ran. You may have to dig for it a little; they deleted it since the facts they uncovered upset a lot of people.

I do actually want children. I think it rather undermines your claim that I was putting words in your mouth when you first put words in mine, and then immediately transition to a justification of your view that relationships are principly about raising children.

What you said was that social pressure for women to get married young was justified because that was when they had the best chance of giving birth to healthy children, and that their "greatest value" was their youth and beauty. "Baby machine" is a fair summary of what you've expressed - you're deemphasizing their agency in making decisions about their lives and emphasizing their beauty and fertility, describing them as if they were an object which suited a purpose.

FWIW, I didn’t read what GP wrote as being prescriptive nor “justification”, but rather an observation of the statistics involved in heterosexual males selection of dating/marriage prospects.

I hate the idea of anyone feeling inferior or less worthy due to not being chosen by someone else.

At the same time, we can speak objectively about what one group of people statistically find desirable in another group. I mean, we could also choose to not speak of it — but for many there is utility in understanding (and thus speaking of) what is desired by others: if you know what they want, you can decide if it’s worth making choices that would satisfy those desires, and you can also be realistic about how likely you are to satisfy those desires as a function of time and other variables.

As a heterosexual man, I can speak of the opposite side of the coin: over 99% of women I have seen on online dating apps clearly state that having kids is a must — my not wanting kids by that logic makes me unsuitable as a dating prospect. I could be upset: “how dare they see me as some sort of sperm dispensing machine?!” But the reality is that they don’t harbor any ill intent, they just simply want kids and that means I’m not a good choice to satisfy that desire.

Certainly it is normal & healthy to communicate what you're looking for in a relationship upfront, and to respond to that blamelessly as you suggest. I'm not convinced in the utility of using statistics to derive dating advice, I think by and large there's a huge diversity in what people are looking for and the best advice is to work on being a healthy and realized person and being patient with finding a partner, but I wouldn't suggest it simply shouldn't be discussed.

I don't understand how you can read the comment as being purely descriptive, when it makes categorical statements about people's "value" with a postscript about how these "truths" are too hot to handle. If it were simply about following the facts wherever they lead, surely there wouldn't be a need to preemptively declare that anyone who disagreed did so irrationally, and surely it wouldn't have been categorical without making room for nuance or disagreement.

In my mind, if you feel moved to discredit anyone who might disagree with you before they've had a chance to join the discussion, you're probably not neutrally sharing a simple factual observation. That's a strong indication that you're making a statement about how you think things should be, not how they are objectively. It doesn't matter so much when people disagree with you about something objective, they're simply wrong and the truth will win out. It's when you want them to behave in a certain way that disagreement is difficult to tolerate.

> I don't understand how you can read the comment as being purely descriptive, when it makes categorical statements about people's "value" [...]

I touched on this in a later response under your initial comment in this thread, but the tl;dr was that I interpreted their use of the word "value" being the same as its use in economics: something is said to be "valued" if it is desired/sought after, and whether that should be the case or how we feel about it is an orthogonal concern (though certainly not any less deserving of discussion itself).

> [...] with a postscript about how these "truths" are too hot to handle. If it were simply about following the facts wherever they lead, surely there wouldn't be a need to preemptively declare that anyone who disagreed did so irrationally, and surely it wouldn't have been categorical without making room for nuance or disagreement.

I think I see where you're coming from now. I suspect difference in interpretation is a consequence of differences in our individual priors: I have seen countless times that people will conflate mentioning of a statistic with support for that statistic being what it is -- there is, after all, the proverbial saying "don't shoot the messenger". So I can sympathize with (what I interpret to be) a preemptive "I know some of you are going to take what I've written uncharitably and/or irrationally, so fire away" -- which isn't to say that I think that's a productive way of communicating, but I see the rationale behind that (as misguided as it may be) just as much as I can see the rationale behind giving someone the finger, or cussing someone out, letting out a frustrated sigh, or any other emotionally motivated outburst. (I didn't take what was originally written to mean "if you disagree, it's because you're being irrational")

Their greatest value to themselves can be decided by themselves. But if they want to date other people then their value can be calculated the same way a market of buyers and sellers of items calculate value. Its no secret men prefer younger and prettier girls. Its no secret women like accomplished men.

People are free to have whatever preferences they wish, but preferences are diverse (rather than being monolithic as you imply), and aggregate preferences are largely irrelevant - if my partner values my ability to do handstands, I need not concern myself with the popularity of handstands.

Handstands wont win you any marriage material partners, though maybe it can win you 1 or 2 numbers in a mall in Vegas. Preferences are diverse, but the same biological needs drive humanity since hundreds of thousands of years ago. Beauty and ambition have both evolved as a result of procreation.

I think your response is resulting in so much disagreement in the comments due to differences in how this quote is parsed:

> On average in relationships, women's greatest value is their youth and beauty (early/mid 20s), men's greatest value is when they've progressed in their career and are amassing wealth (mid/late 30s).

Particularly what the word “value” means in this context.

I suspect you take “value” to mean something like “is deserving of positive self esteem; worthy of positive sentiment/respect/love”.

I, and I suspect most others here in the comments, take “value” to mean something very different; roughly: “that which is statistically pursued and/or desired by others”. In this sense, it can be said that (within certain circles) sticking a needle in your arm and checking out of your life is valued. That says nothing of how you and I feel about others doing that, whether that’s healthy/moral/ethical/whatever behavior, etc. The statistics regarding the pursuit of a thing and the sentiment regarding the former are orthogonal. This is, for example, what is meant by “value” when speaking of supply/demand.

If you look at what men want (and in my experience as a heterosexual male looking at dating prospects, what women also want — much to my detriment as a man who is uninterested in having children), it usually includes having healthy, well supported (financially and emotionally) children. While I am kind, giving, ambitious, funny, etc, I am reduced to zero “value” (i.e. they have no point in pursuing me because I won’t ever give them what they want) in the eyes of 99% of the single women where I live. And that’s fine to me, as we all have things that we want, and there’s no one in existence that will check the boxes off for everyone else in the universe. That doesn’t mean that my own self esteem should be diminished, and I don’t think most people would want me to have any less self esteem.

I take "value" in that sentence to mean "worth".

I think supply and demand is a bad way to look at it. Dating isn't a "market" in the sense that an auction is conducted to discover the value of goods. If you find someone you're happy with, you can't leverage that to find someone you're even more happy with, in the way that if you made a good trade in a market you'd have capital to conduct more trades with.

This model of dating relies on flattening people so that they can be considered fungible, but dating is about how someone's idiosyncracies complement your own. Markets rely on there being a ground truth of how valuable something is, and for every participant to bring their information about that to the marketplace. But in dating, one pair of people might be toxic and horrible, and those same people might do great with other partners - it's far too murky and subjective to be reduced to a market.

> If you find someone you're happy with, you can't leverage that to find someone you're even more happy with, in the way that if you made a good trade in a market you'd have capital to conduct more trades with.

I agree with this.

Though I also don't think anyone is really trying to suggest (express or implied) that there's a general, natural analogy to be made between dating and markets; I solely think the word "value" was being used in the economical sense, without implying any further connection to economic theory. I realize that, when I suggested that "value" was probably meant in the sense of supply/demand, I may have conveyed something I wasn't trying to; sorry about that.

At any rate, this is how I and most people within both my family and social circles have used "value" in conversation: not an expression of sentiment, but merely an observation of what others want. Given this meaning, it's actually nonsensical to speak of a person's value without any supporting context -- people don't have value any more than the color green has smoothness/roughness, or the a note played on a piano is righteous/unjust -- these descriptors just don't apply. I could say that my skills within my career field are valued, and I suppose I could restate that as "I am a valuable employee", but I myself have no intrinsic value. If you read that with "value" replaced with "self worth" (by which people generally would mean something like "self esteem"), then it sounds pretty bad -- but that's not what's meant. I suspect most people in the HN demographic also use "value" pretty consistently in the way I've suggested -- not that I'm trying to make the argument that "value" should be interpreted this way or that way, but just pointing out what I think I've seen in practice.

I think what was originally suggested upstream in the comments was that there are qualities that most men happen to be looking for (are "valued"/"valuable"), and that those qualities give rise to pressures (as unfortunate as they may be) on women to find a long term / life partner sooner than later.

That's not the point. Lots of of people want kids. If you're a man, you have the luxury of waiting much longer. Women don't have that luxury, it becomes increasingly difficult to have a successful pregnancy after one's early 30s.

From the comment you replied to:

> Yet we can never honestly discuss them because people have a hard time controlling their emotions about it.

Nobody here has said that women are baby machines or any such thing. Get control of yourself.

I'm in control of myself, thank you for your concern. Perhaps you should reread that comment, I think it may have escaped you. Have a good day.

I would think that self control would include avoiding, or at least not being moved by, any emotional response that leads one to making absurd straw men, but that could just be me, but the responses you’re getting indicate otherwise.

You can't make blanket statements about the "value" of a person's life in one breath and then ask people to eschew emotional reactions in the next breath. Value and emotion go hand in hand and you have to let how you feel lead what you value at times.

I think they meant perceived value as a potential mate. Not net value to society.

Unless these people are in your Dunbar Circle, those honest discussions you're looking for won't matter and won't provide value to your life. Craft your life how you see fit and let the results speak for themselves.

Besides, this problem we're in is just about ready to wrap itself up.

Masculinity can be quite isolating/toxic but it's emphasis on your intra-tionship, your living with yourself, on relying on yourself, has arisen in my mind in the past couple years as a kind of interesting aspect that feels undersocialized, out shadowed by other discussions of the male gender norms. I hope it wouldn't be too unfair to say that women are regarded as more social, as relying more on their friends & community. It's a complex issue with all kinds of problems wrapped in it, but there's a thread here that doesn't have the discourse or discussion that I think could help people somewhat identify with self focusing. That said, it absolutely does not have to be a gendered discussion either! But it does seem like there's so many examples walking around of a kind of neat way of living & modest not a-sociality, but kind of less compromising prioritizing of what is good for oneself in how we make & navivate our social arrangements.

And I'm shifting focus here some, trying to get a more macro view than just the question of partnership. But hopefully this idea of social temperament/directivity makes sense as being a broader difference in how we are nurtured or natured.

> Masculinity can be quite isolating/toxic but it's emphasis on your intra-tionship, your living with yourself, on relying on yourself, has arisen in my mind in the past couple years as a kind of interesting aspect that feels undersocialized, out shadowed by other discussions of the male gender norms.

I think somewhere along the line "self-reliance" became conflated with "anti-social". I've had to put in concerted effort to build my social network of men I can lean on for social activities and accountability. Being by oneself can make almost any task seem insurmountable. Couple that with being self-reliant and you have a recipe for disaster. It is no wonder so many men are committing suicide.

I think it might be because that self-reliance often comes with defensive language/attitude? It's one thing to be self-reliant and another to ooze a miserable attitude about it (e.g., "World's never done shit for me, guess I'll have to just look out for myself."). Without that outward expression, you don't notice that some people appreciate the importance of self-reliance without it feeling anti-social.

Yeah I had something similar and took a looong break from like 30-37 because I just couldn't deal with all the stress of someone else's expectations and issues while I was working on some personal and professional stuff. Eventually I was like, I don't want to be alone, I'm going to actually try dating again, got married and had a baby at 41 :) But it could have easily gone another way and I was mostly fine with it.

> If we put less social pressure on people to pair bond, some non-zero percentage of the population would be genuinely happier.

100% agreed.

Fully agree. I'm male, and all of my relationships that progressed to the "serious" stage ended in heartbreak (for me). After those experiences, it's just not worth it. And casual hookups have never been a thing for me. So I'm done with romantic relationships, and fine with that.

> I'm not 'poly' or 'asexual' or any of that crap

Not to detract from the rest of your post, which I agree with, but why call these orientations "crap"? That is somewhat hurtful.

Why does someone have to appreciate other sexual orientations? I dont run around demanding somebody be forced to appreciate mine. Grumpily ignoring other peoples choices to life and let life is good enough for society to work. The world is not there to be a comfy blanket..

Comparing somebody (or an important part of their personality) with excrements in a public forum is not "grumpily ignoring". I am all for civility, but this is not it.

As a man, this take is based and hyper-relatable.

Thank you so much for your reply. This.

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