Dating, education, and sex ratios | Hacker News Reader

Dating, education, and sex ratios

robkhenderson.com

208 pointsMelchizedek420 comments

All the data is good, but the way it is framed is a bit misleading.

First, lets get one thing straight: dysfunction in the dating world negatively affects both men and women. So framing it as "men floundering, women most affected" is disingenuous. What is it about the prospects a man has that he has no desire to become desirable? If men's lives are less rewarding wouldn't it be them, not the women, that are the most affected? We are talking about these mens lives after all.

"They just want to play videogames" come on. This has got to be the most surface level trope quality take I've seen. Maybe men use porn and play videogames not because they'd rather have that than a real relationship, but because modern relationships don't offer much more than that. Maybe men prefer casual sex because that's about the best they can hope for in today's world. Maybe with the divorce rate what it is, the birth rate low, and the social stigma against division of labor to maintain a household, it's not worth it to meet anyone's expectations anymore. Maybe men do desire more and maybe women aren't interested in satisfying those desires either.

Many of these kinds of articles are always seem to be slanted in how it negatively affects women. Women desiring more successful partners, yet men aren't keeping up. I'd be interested if there was any good article broaching that subject more, instead of remarkably pithy answers like "it's those damn video games."

People are afraid to be direct and call the article/researchers sexist in their framing of the situation.

This could be framed as female incels insisting they have a right to a man who will support them.

I agree, I believe that this high difference between women and men in higher education comes from men being sufficient with a "physical" job that pays almost as a "mental" one. Women just can't these jobs and they have to choose between working at McDonald's or trying to find a job using a Bachelor's degree. Men have many more alternatives, hence the "unequal" pay.

I've seen it argued that it's also the nature of the education system. That it isn't designed for boys, that men are increasingly absent from teaching, that boys aren't encouraged and supported to the extent that girls are, that the success of sports teams can be a larger concern than making sure the student athletes are getting same level/quality of education, etc. I suspect that there are a ton of factors long before you deal with the issues at the university level.

I've also met many women with low abilities who will themselves to get degrees (barely) where as a man who feels he is not suited for higher education, usually chooses the trade routes. So even these two people are equal in ability, the woman would generally not go for the man who chose to drop out because "i am better educated." I've also noticed woman have a far better control of their impulses where as men would just give in (more emotionally intelligent on average).

Honestly it would be hard to touch on without insulting large swaths of society. Just thinking about my own friend and family circle the way a college aged woman is treated is vastly different, even just by parents. For example my sister (22) still lives at home, drives the family car, stepdad pays for her fuel, mom pays for food, is on the family cell plan, has basicaly 0 expenses except wanting to eat out. My brothers and I were expected to leave nearly right away, were not still on cell plan, and never had access to any of those other percs. I wouldn't be shocked if this played a large role into the why women are accessing higher education more today, because they financially can, because of their support systems, which many men don't have. Juggling a job to survive and scrape by while also going to school is although maybe possible, absolutely miserable at the same time, I can't imagine anyone pulling it off without hitting some kind of burnout after a few years of it.

Heh, is she the baby of the family? I am the middle brother and my baby brother certainly had extra perks.

Hehe, I think many parents do tend to sweeten the deal for the youngest so they don’t have to deal with empty nest syndrome

you make a good observation, but as the replies mention, it's likely a more nuanced reality than just gender. Id agree that at baseline a male gets certain crude roles thrust upon them, but i want to say it's not unreasonable to just not... accept them. yeah it may be uncomfortable, but really, like if your sister is cool with all these perks, i think a male is personally not gonna be cool with handouts due to his own machismo, it's not anyone else's machismo, it's the person's.

i know this is all enculturation, but same for the girl, when it comes down to it, it's our choice. i say, as a man, be vulnerable, ask for help. all good.

> any of those other percs

I mean, you’re probably better off without those ;)

Men suffer from "their own success" and are probably more romantic than women are overall and expect their relationships to be like dreams, hence they really can't put too much in a relationship that might fail, considering that the "market" is huge and it's hard to trust most people. It was way easier before to get laid, wasn't it?

Surely it’s easier to get laid now than before online dating became mainstream. Before online dating, relationships were formed mostly by proximity, convenience and timing. Now, there is a huge list of candidates to attempt contact, advertising themselves in apps and providing some details on what they want.

Is it easier to get a job now that we have many systems for handling applicants? Because it seems like hiring and getting hired is harder, or at least takes many more applications than in the past. Maybe there’s something similar where we’re spending more time tweaking filters to get to a manageable pool, but then accidentally filter down to a group of similar, yet incompatible people. We’re probably not great at judging what we want and maybe more constraints actually force us to consider people we otherwise wouldn’t and discover what we didn’t know we wanted by introducing some randomness. Perhaps dating apps would be more effective if it initiated the matchups and neither side was flooded with a list of people to filter through.

Yes, getting a job is easier too. More options, easier access, and easier application process.

You'd think so, but it's the opposite. Just look at making friendships, nothing makes you a friend better than proximity, convenience, and timing (childhood friends hello?). Facebook friends? Yeah, not so much...

We still have the friends that are proximal and convenient. Online dating augments that.

> he has no desire to become desirable?

Funny thing about that, it's women (for hetros) that are the determination of what is 'desirable'. As a man, I agree with a lot of those who are discouraged with dating and running through the unwinnable rat race.

In a hetero relationship context it makes perfect sense to me that women would determine what is desirable in men. How else would it work?

Society also determines what is desirable in men and women. In fact historically it was much more strict in determining what is desirable.

If most men had their way in what is truly "desirable", they would have mute sex dolls that cook their favorite meal every night.

If most women had their way, they would probably have something equivalently grotesque to fit their fantasies.

That you can't get the ideal extreme of your wants doesn't mean you don't desire them currently.

> they would have mute sex dolls that cook their favorite meal every night.

I can see how you could believe that under the current conditions and stereotypes that men are subjected to. I don't believe that would last for very long. Men do have needs of intimacy, companionship, and emotional support. We're socialized and punished for vocalizing, and we're manipulated from showing a need for it.

> have something equivalently grotesque to fit their fantasies.

I would argue, for most, we're already in that world. The amount of expectations that women have on men is excessive, and when we don't meet them... women get hostile. (Where are all the good men, shaming, etc). From what I've seen some of the "desirable traits include": "Is overly nice/giving, but not a pushover", "Is desirable to other women, but only will stay with me", "Well connected to his peers, but doesn't play video games or like sports", "Doesn't say or think 'misogynistic'/wrongthink things.. but isn't saying things to find favor with me"

> So framing it as "men floundering, women most affected" is disingenuous.

My 2c as a gay man that has many women as friends. They aren’t looking for “status” they are looking for someone who is emotionally intelligent. And thinking that gaining status is how to gain women is pretty much the opposite of that.

Patriarchy hurts both sexes. By thinking of status and power as avenues to sex you stunt your ability to connect with others. And it sets up a negative dynamic because if gaining power is the goal then having an egalitarian relationship with your lover is not possible.

> Maybe men use porn and play videogames not because they'd rather have that than a real relationship, but because modern relationships don't offer much more than that.

If you think that lowly of women, why would they spend any time with you at all?

As a bi man, the dynamics of dating men and women are very different. It ranges from the very explicit (you must plan the date; you must pay for the date) to the comparatively subtle (you must be emotionally stoic and not show too much vulnerability; you must have a stable, well-paying job; you must be "confident"). These things aren't standards you would be subject to in a purely platonic relationship. It's not even so much those things making you "hot" but those being prerequisites to being considered a potential partner.

Gay men are much less strict about demanding a performance of the male gender role (except for those elements of it relating to physique).

That’s true I might be biased by hanging with women who hang with gay men. It is also true that women perpetuate these dumb stereotypes of masculinity as well.

The kicker for me is how these dynamics ruin the ability for men and women to become friends. Like you say, these wouldn’t be issues in a platonic relationship. But this cloud of expectation looms over any straight-platonic friendship between men and women. How the relationship would have to change if it became romantic.

Makes me glad I’m gay.

Straight folk have lots to learn from gay folk. Probably starting with how to do marriage right[0].

[0] https://www.advocate.com/people/2020/2/13/study-gay-people-h...

The study can not be accessed without payment, but if they did not correctly control for kids, it is useless.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6731029/

> Covariates. We control for covariates that are likely associated with both psychological distress and marital strain including respondent age, education, and employment status (Mirowsky & Ross, 2003), spouse health status (Kiecolt-Glaser & Wilson, 2017), relationship duration (Proulx et al., 2007), and children in household (Mirowsky & Schieman, 2008).

So at least they attempted to account for obvious covariates.

This is my favorite kind of scientific criticism. People who can't even access a paper just saying "well I bet they didn't control for obvious thing X" and then moving on.

This is my favorite kind of personal attacks. Never have I said "they did not control", but here you are.

Not a personal attack. A criticism of the content of your post.

> Never have I said "they did not control"

They didn’t make this claim.

> "well I bet they didn't control for obvious thing X"

Is a close paraphrase of

> if they did not correctly control for kids, it is useless

The comment seems to be intended as a dismissal while calling itself out as uninformed (“cannot be accessed without payment” suggests it wasn’t accessed).

They did, but the study does not make the same conclusion as the article you linked.

TBH I am not familiar with the the way data is presented in this last link, and likely biased toward my own expectations, but my uneducated read of table 2 says that children, education, being a woman, and employment status are the largest contributors to the distress.

> It is also true that women perpetuate these dumb stereotypes of masculinity as well.

The ones who are complaining that men lack emotional maturity or inteligence are the same ones that will post on 2xc and say: "Am I a bad person for dumping a guy because I saw him crying and I'm no longer attracted to him?"

Actually, they are probably not the same people at all.

You can’t judge behavior of any group based on anonymous internet posts. When you run into the crazy person on the bus, it’s important to realize there’s a bus load of people around them that aren’t crazy. The internet just helps get all of them concentrated into the same place.

I said nothing "lowly" about women. I happen to have a very rewarding, honest and low stress relationship. It took me years to find anyone that I was willing to give my life to because, frankly, our culture nowadays is one where people want what they want but are willing only to give what they want to. This goes for both men and women. The give and take goes both ways, I self reflected for a long time and determined that I was willing to give of myself, and I expect the same from a partner, and people that have that insight are few and far between.

> They aren’t looking for “status” they are looking for someone who is emotionally intelligent.

That’s what they say, and that’s what women’s magazines have told them. Reality is the opposite, and has been demonstrated over and over both a scientifically and informally.

Or to put it another way: the reason even the hottest 1% of women complain about men’s poor EQ is because they’re not optimising for it when choosing a partner. They’re partnering with the matching top 1% of men based on social status and wealth, and every attribute unimportant to women has a random value. That’s why even attractive women with their pick of partners will complain about men’s EQ. They don’t care enough to choose a man with high EQ, but they care just enough to complain about it.

It’s like someone buying a Tesla and then bitching about minor quibbles. If they cared about those issues they would have bought a Toyota.

Not to mention that emotionally intelligent is somewhat of an insulting term. Men and women deal with and express emotions in radically different ways, that doesn't make one way more mature or intelligent.

Some people recognize that fact, some don't. Surely that disparity is itself an aspect of emotional intelligence?

I'm not sure I follow how that's insulting.

It's insulting in the sense that the stoicism of many men is considered unintelligent, primitive, underdeveloped.

You can frame it how you want. It can also be projected as a strength (emotional control). Or men simply being less interested in exchanging emotions intensely as it's just not that important to them.

The "emotional control" that causes them to absolutely blow the fuck up? It's not unintelligent, primitive or underdeveloped, it's simply a meme, an idea that some people can even sincerely believe but at the end it's a pure lie.

> blow the fuck up

I would consider the possibility of BPD. This is kind of a hallmark symptom.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disor...

Point being: I’ve known men who are “stoic” in this way and emotionally stable because they don’t otherwise have mental health issues.

Men experience significantly lower rates of most common mental disorders; that gap is wider in younger people, appears to be widening over time and persists after controlling for confounding variables. Men are more likely to die by suicide, but they're drastically less likely to attempt suicide; the discrepancy is accounted for by men choosing more lethal means.

There is simply no evidence to support the idea that women are better at coping with psychological distress, or that men would benefit from adopting stereotypically female coping strategies.

>Men experience significantly lower rates of most common mental disorders;

Men are diagnosed significantly lower, not experience.

Well we don't really know, as we have no blind test for this. Science on humans is hard.

I've known men that blow up in extremely stressful circumstances, like slapping things off the table or the stereotypical punching a hole in the wall, for me it is a sign of emotional immaturity. When you're 20 if you do it you've still got some growing up to do, when you're 30 and you do it honestly I judge you. And I know some circumstances can be extremely taxing emotionally, and in very extreme circumstances I can understand losing composure a little, but generally speaking a man should maintain his composure and only react aggressively to actual aggression.

As someone who would've never done this age 10-40, experienced extremely severe trauma at age 40, then started having uncontrollable rage fits age 40-43 (it's mostly subsided now, but I still do get more irritated than I used to) I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I thought the same as you before something happened, but it turns out PTSD is a hellofa drug. It's not something you're able control. I didn't learn my way out of it through maturity, I grinded my way through it losing friends along the way. I have no idea what caused me to stop either, other than just distance from the trauma.

That would be the opposite of emotional control. But surely you got the point that besides suppressing emotions men also tend to simply have less emotional needs or desires to express them.

To bring this down to a real world meme-like example: my girlfriend can fill a solid hour every day discussing her work day and in particular developments in her dealings with colleagues.

I struggle to fill a minute. I'm not suppressing anything, there's simply not much there as it comes to work.

These are just differences, nothing wrong with it.

Emotional intelligence and emotional control are different. They're separate concepts, though I'd bet they correlate a bit.

It's possible to be emotional and out of touch.

It's possible to be stoic and receptive.

It doesn’t sound like this is contrary to the idea that it’s insulting when men are considered to lack emotional intelligence because they are stoic. Indeed, it’s possible to be stoic and receptive and it’s insulting when people act like it’s not.

My cute toddler mini-me has a high amount of emotional intelligence and intuitively understands other people's emotions, and will reflect other people's emotions.

She also has no emotional control and is likely to bite you, or bawl on the floor crying when she doesn't get her way.

She sounds adorable! Mine doesn't bite any more but there are still fits of uncontrollable emotion. They very much grok other people's feelings though and are quick with empathy.

> It's insulting in the sense that the stoicism of many men is considered unintelligent, primitive, underdeveloped.

I've heard a lot about men needing to be more expressive and open about their inner emotional state, but I've never heard people mention stoicism in the same context or that stoicism necessarily leads to the opposite of that.

Or that stoicism is associated with being unintelligent, primitive or underdeveloped.

Have you heard it from your circle in a social setting? I'm curious where you heard such sentiments.

> never heard people mention stoicism in the same context

I’m not particularly familiar but I understand this “stoicism” is not really the Stoicism one might read about on wikipedia (maybe related but ultimately not congruent). In a practical sense, when people say “more expressive and open” they are necessarily talking about the opposite of this “stoicism”.

This “more expressive and open” is also often expressed as “more emotionally intelligent” and that’s insulting to the emotional intelligence of such “stoics”. It’s very literally “they don’t express themselves correctly” and I can’t imagine someone not being insulted by such a claim of their personality.

Emotional intelligence is about understanding what you are feeling and why, not about how you present your emotional state. It’s what allows someone to realize they’re getting angry because they had unspoken expectations that weren’t met, or because they were experiencing anxiety from unrelated triggers. This kind of understanding prevents someone from blowing up in the first place because they understand the root cause isn’t what our brain wants to jump on in the moment. A more “stoic” person may be that way because they are highly emotionally intelligent and avoid getting overwhelmed. Or, they may be bad at it, and are just bottling it up to explode randomly at inappropriate times. It’s related, but tangential.

I'm not a native speaker so it could be the wrong word. I wasn't aiming for Stoicism, the philosophy. Instead trying to describe the effect where some men seem emotionally indifferent, or present themselves as such.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense.

> Men and women deal with and express emotions in radically different ways

With this statement, I think you are coming from a place of cultural bias. I find that men and women are more alike than "radically different" with emotions, with similar emotional needs and wants (perhaps to different degrees, but there is much variation within gender, I feel). However, in some societies, how they are allowed to recognize, validate, and meet those needs and wants are strongly shaped and regulated. For example, in Roman society, a woman who would want fame and prestige from being seen as virtuous would try to become a Vestal, or show extreme fidelity to a husband publicly. Today, a surer route to fame and prestige will look very different.

I don't think you know what is being meant here by emotionally intelligent. An abusive person who cannot control their anger, or someone who abuses alcohol to cope with their feelings in a detrimental way is an example of someone who is not emotionally intelligent. A person who can, most of the time, empathize with you, and can give and accept help and advice based on your goals putting you first (and explicate and communicate situations wherein they have to prioritize themselves or someone else), and knows their own goals and emotions and what they need, are some of the traits and behaviors of what people refer to as an emotionally intelligent person. Sometimes you see the term emotionally mature, which means the same thing.

I feel like this idea of emotional intelligence is impossible to achieve without first having a partner to develop it along side . And given the surprising amount of men who never have a partner these days, to expect them to come factory installed with these settings seems like expecting a 3 year old not to spill juice on their shirt. I wouldn't expect a 25 year old woman who has never been on a date to understand the nuances of how to be a good partner either.

Very good point. I'm a straight man in my mid 40s. Had two long-term relationships over the past 20 years that eventually ended. Mostly had shorter ones and one longer one in my teens/20s.

I've been seeing someone now for just shy of 2 years and I've really noticed how much differently I approach things now. Obviously not perfect, but things I simply didn't understand or know how to deal with constructively in the past seem at least familiar now. Essentially, I have a clue now.

This isn't an "end state" but rather a process of learning and developing that continues - but has gotten to a point where I feel like a much better partner than I probably was in the past. I didn't have terribly great role models to emulate in this regard and I wasn't born knowing how to participate in a romantic relationship. But I've at least had some experience in what can work, what doesn't work well, and where I need to focus to avoid mistakes I've made or others could've handled better.

> Very good point. I'm a straight man in my mid 40s. Had two long-term relationships over the past 20 years that eventually ended. Mostly had shorter ones and one longer one in my teens/20s.

I mean, my relationship history is approximately similar, and I’ve got to say:

This qualifies me to give approximately zero relationship advice, and has gained me approximately zero insight in to the human condition.

"They aren’t looking for “status” they are looking for someone who is emotionally intelligent."

False. A lowly educated low earner male that is emotionally intelligent will not get selected. Every dating/marriage statistic confirms that women refuse to marry down. So they want both status/wealth and emotional intelligence.

A male friend of mine is 5'3" tall, no college education, and sells pottery for a living - and didn't make much money doing it, based on his apartment. He's also hilarious and kind. Anyway, he met and married a 5'10", attractive woman who is a principal at a PE firm and semi-professionally competes in salsa dancing competitions.

Happy for them, this should happen more. But an exception does not negate the broad pattern.

Sense of humor cuts right through a lot of obstacles. Plenty of women will feel attracted to you if you can make them laugh often.

But, of course, you have to meet up first, and the Tinder generation may not pass this first obstacle.

Wise words. When seeing a person in public they are so infinitely more rich compared to 3 filters in an app. But there doesn't seem to be any sign of this returning in big ways.

>They aren’t looking for “status”

Are you sure? Because multiple studies contradict that claim. I will point out that status can mean different things depending on the (sub)culture and context. Perhaps in some social circles, high EQ is high status.

>and it sets up a negative dynamic because if gaining power is the goal then having an egalitarian relationship with your lover is not possible.

Status is multifaceted. Women are attracted to status, but that doesn't mean women can't be high status as well. High status could be anything from being good at some niche hobby to making lots of money to being athletic.

Complete BS. You're telling me they want emotional intelligence from a janitor, retail attendant?

Vague phrases like emotional intelligence are often being used as a euphemism for other things unfortunately, for example, women are drastically less likely than men to be politically tolerant. So this can simply be women saying they only want to date very liberal men, but they don't want to phrase it like that because it sounds bad, so they decide that liberalism is the same thing as emotional intelligence (the liberal mindset seeing itself as more empathetic, in touch with other people's emotions).

https://unherd.com/thepost/is-wokeness-killing-the-marriage-...

Two of the most important trends in American life are the increasing tendency for women to identify as liberal, and the increasing intolerance shown by liberals to their ideological opponents. These trends are no doubt related, since women are more ideologically intolerant than men. Put together, they spell trouble for the future of marriage in the US.

[...] the 2020 American Perspectives Survey revealed that 79% of Democratic women and 48% of Republican men would be unwilling to date someone with a different view of Trump.

No discussion of dating trends can be complete without this.

What patriachy?

The idea only makes sense if you believe a matriarchy would be better. There has never been any anthropological record of a matriarchy, that is to say that any society that had a matriarchal structure was quickly overrun by those that didn’t. Some fate.

Men and women are different, and what you call a patriachy is just the natural order of things, some variation between individuals not withstanding.

I take it that your expectation is that a woman takes more care of the house?

Not really, my expectation is more general. I expect a give and a take, a natural process of finding roles, I expect a partner to do what it takes to keep a household going, you know, a partnership. I expect two people to find their strengths and act accordingly for the benefit of the family. What I think is too common is that any mention of housework has a stigma attached to it for women now and what you wind up with is a situation where men have to fit the gender role of being a successful breadwinner and still do their own laundry. This is not a give and take, and this is unappealing to most men. I personally don't care what the distribution of responsibilities is, so long as it's according to each person's strengths and is for the benefit of the household with no consideration of external social expectation. I happen to have a relationship like this, and I still do laundry when I need to. It's great.

> What I think is too common is that any mention of housework has a stigma attached to it for women now and what you wind up with is a situation where men have to fit the gender role of being a successful breadwinner and still do their own laundry.

Yet, when we actually measure things and include both professional work and home labor, women perform more labor than men in relationships.

How was this labor measured? What about the non-labor portions of life like financial planning and purchasing decisions which take time as well?

You didn't measure OPs relationship.

You're right, it's a play on the meme: "man dead, woman most affected".

Popular culture has become structurally anti-male. The ease at which we're described as simplistic, violent, sexual addicts doesn't seem to surprise anyone anymore.

This article almost makes a humanitarian problem out of a luxury problem: highly educated women unable to find somebody even richer than them.

Also women with impossible standards (e.g. 6'+, $200k+/yearly, loves dogs, wants (or doesn't) kids, is single, from a good family, won't cheat, owns his own house, blue eyes, etc.) refusing to lower them in search of a partner well into their 30s, then wondering "where all the good men are".

Bo Burnham's "Lower your expectations" is a hilarious comedy song covering this exact point. For both men and women.

It was good, thanks! https://youtu.be/llGvsgN17CQ

all 4 billion women want that laundry list of qualities?

that's silly to say isn't it, of course you didn't mean literally all women, but that's why i'm commenting - it's crazy to me how we choose to play other people's games. find other circles. lest you're attracted to who you're attracted... but then umm... so women shouldn't be?

Fundamentally, it's that women typically want a partner that's above them--but with society being basically equal now there is a dearth of such men. It's going to take a while to adjust to having to settle for someone who is simply your equal.

Did you seriously include "won't cheat" or did you plant that there to see if people read this?

There's also no fault attributed to modern university culture. Is there something about the way they teach that alienates men? Perhaps it's just a reflection of the job market and the fact that a university education doesn't buy much these days.

> come on. This has got to be the most surface level trope quality take I've seen

Is it a trope?

The article goes on to explain that they found men less willing to exchange leisure time for other activities.

It’s not just a one off line with no explanation.

>Maybe men use porn and play videogames not because they'd rather have that than a real relationship, but because modern relationships don't offer much more than that.

When exactly have relations ever offered much more than that, realistically? Relationships have always (since love marriages became common at least, which is actually relatively recent, historically) offered some rosy vision of love and affection and family and all that, but in reality, only a minority of marriages actually succeeded in having a happy couple without a lot of dysfunction. Unhappy couples were normal in days gone by.

The divorce rate is only high because it's now acceptable to divorce, so unhappy people aren't staying in bad marriages any more. And lately, the divorce rate is falling because people simply aren't getting married as much, and more people are instead avoiding getting into a bad marriage in the first place, unlike their parents and grandparents.

If two people can find true long-term love and affection in a relationship, that's really great. But let's stop pretending that this was ever the norm. It wasn't.

This is true for some, but probably not the majority, as women had much higher reported life satisfaction and happiness a century ago.

What I find interesting and I am curious if these conversations can happen anymore.

I no longer discuss anything related to gender, relationships, or personal life dynamics with anyone outside of my bubble. I would enjoy the conversation, learning about another's ideas and understanding although despite assurances of maturity and openness conversation ends due to their inflammatory pronouncements.

I do not believe ideas and ideals can be discussed with the general public.

Huh.

Over here in Europe, we have these discussions all the time. They do get opinionated, of course. But it's not yet taboo.

It's not in the US, but it seems some people have become socially fearful. I think that there is an artificial sense of risk possibly driving by 24x7 news and social media that prey on people's fears and anxieties.

I would not say artificial. An individual with whom I work spoke a common word, with respect, and despite being a respectable term for another person, a term agreed by all parties as acceptable except the offended party, the accused was contacted by HR and advised to no longer use that term.

There are other anecdotes of course but this is one example that even the best intentions the accuser is never told their position is untenable.

What was the term?

This anecdote is not only unverifiable (as most are), but vague to the point of uselessness. I don't doubt that there are all sorts of overzealous HR departments out there, but I can also think of all sorts of ways of using "respectable terms for another person" in disrespectful ways, and have met plenty of people far more creative than I am at doing so. And invariably these people will hide behind "I totally meant it respectfully" because frankly that's the game. A subtle jibe with just enough wiggle room to hide behind.

Which is the case here? Who knows? The description of events as written works just as well for both.

In either case, it feels a little overly dramatic to worry too much about a scenario where HR asks you to not use a word anymore. Is this what people mean when they worry about people being cancelled?

Is it overly dramatic to have HR dictate formally non-offensive speach? (I'm talking about non-derogatory and non-slur based language)

Right now there is a wave of people that are upset over "violent language" (https://hopeandsafety.org/learn-more/violent-language/) If push comes to shove.. they'd lose their marbles over that.

> Right now there is a wave of people that are upset over "violent language"

There's absolutely nothing on that page to indicate they're upset about violent language

> If push comes to shove.. they'd lose their marbles over that.

There's even less indication of that.

If the goal is for fewer people to overreact, why are we inventing boogeymen to overreact about?

That page is there making a statement of examples of "bad language". It's an organization shooting it's shot on language change.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11714189/Latest-phr... (DailyMail.. yuck yes)

https://www.fastcompany.com/90865534/its-time-stop-using-vio...

https://elizabethgrim.com/adopting-inclusive-and-non-violent...

lol, again it's the dailymail article that's trembling with terror at imagined grievances, while the non-violent language advocates are like, "hey, kind of weird these phrases are about shooting people, here's some alternatives if you want them."

> The guide is for those who would like to replace mostly violently framed idioms with more positive and inclusive language

Clearly this is a dog whistle and they're coming for me and my guns(-related words)

> Is it overly dramatic to have HR dictate formally non-offensive speach? (I'm talking about non-derogatory and non-slur based language)

Your question is phrased in such a way that I honestly can't figure out how to answer it, but non-derogatory and non-slur based does not mean non-offensive and never has. As I previously mentioned people are plenty creative at hiding insults in "respectful" words.

See also: the many nuances of "bless your heart"

Not cancelled per se, at least for me, but just the PITA equation of dealing with getting fired, having to find a new job, or having my language policed. Maybe that is being dramatic or pragmatic.

When it comes to my professional work - if apologizes are not accepted I will not work at the company. If there are words that I cannot say - I request a list. Thankfully my current company is great.

I've been in multiple organizations now that have the redefinition of whats appropriate. Many times there is training sourced from a third party company that does this.

I've had one organization call the "confederate flag" a form of racism. (For those who haven't been in the US South for a long time, those who display it aren't racist, but many are)

> I've had one organization call the "confederate flag" a form of racism.

Claiming it's not is not the hill I'd choose to die on. Modern display of what most call the "confederate flag" (it isn't) rose to prominence in response to the civil rights movement. It was a perfect example of hiding behind the thinnest veneer of legitimacy while attacking someone.

I don't doubt that many in the modern day display it out of ignorance, not understanding what it actually is and how it became a symbol of their culture, but it's definitely something HR shouldn't allow in the workplace.

> Claiming it's not is not the hill I'd choose to die on.

Me either, also I'm for banning all flags in the workplace.

But people who vastly generalize large swaths of the population in a negative light in an inaccurate manner is as bad.

> Modern display of what most call the "confederate flag" (it isn't) rose to prominence in response to the civil rights movement.

Growing up in the south the flag is used as an regional identification and lifestyle pride. (Mostly that you're a redneck, rebelious, you're going to own a pickup truck, like the idea of hardwork/farming, country music, etc). Making a claim that a race hate group has taken over the flag is pretty laughable. (About as much as the ok hand symbol being a "white nationalist flagging signal")

My concern with your statement is that you're making claims here and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence from a sociological point of view to back them up.

> many in the modern day display it out of ignorance,

Ask them why they choose to display it, and what it means to them. You made a judgement call to say what it is and that they're ignorant for doing so.

> Growing up in the south the flag is used as an regional identification and lifestyle pride.

I'm sure plenty of people believe this and it's why they choose to display it. It remains true it's display dramatically increased in response to the civil rights movement. It also remains true that the symbol they have chosen as a symbol of their "regional identification and lifestyle pride" is directly lifted from a group that fought a war of rebellion in order to continue their traditions of racism and slavery. That's a simple historical fact. The flag wasn't "taken over" by a race hate group. It was CREATED by a race hate group. Some may wish to take it back and use it for non-hateful purposes, but that's not an easy thing to do, and they have yet to succeed in divorcing it from it's original meaning.

> Making a claim that a race hate group has taken over the flag is pretty laughable.

I mean, it is literally the flag the South flew when they seceded from the Union in the name of white supremacy. The Southern states were very clear in their secession documents, as was Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens when he said of the Confederate government "its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."

This isn't laughable, this is plain history. Southern culture is white supremacy, end stop. And I say this as a born and bred white Texan - that flag is a disgrace, and what it represents is a disgrace.

White dude, grew up in the heart of Texas, only people with Confederate flags are white supremacists.

Knew plenty of kickers with oversized pickups and 4H stickers that didn't need to fly Dixie.

Everybody who flies that flag knows what they're doing.

It's not artificial. You can and will be isolated, excommunicated, wrong think, and separated based on your acceptance of new language definitions and sensibilities. There have been groups out there that have enforced this via "Code of Conduct" agreements in organizations.

I have a younger sibling who is much younger than me. I would have to disagree and say that they are hypersensitive about conflicting opinions to the point that it could destroy a relationship to have an argument about the wrong subject.

"Not yet" is the right way to say it. But there are more and more people who just totally love being in their self-reinforced victim narrative and throw a tantrum like a toddler whom you took his candy away if you disagree with them.

> I do not believe ideas and ideals can be discussed with the general public.

On the contrary, I love having these discussions.

> On the contrary, I love having these discussions.

Same, although my lawyer insists not to have them anymore when drinking.

When you say the "general public" do you mean the general online/Twitter public or, say, an acquaintance from a hobby?

People, not in my circles, who "touch grass" or are not entirely online.

> conversation ends due to their inflammatory pronouncements.

Where are you? In the US, most of us still have these conversations about gender, relationships, and life dynamics all the time. (If anything, this is arguably 70%+ of everything we talk about, among friends and acquaintances in the community).

> although despite assurances of maturity and openness conversation ends due to their inflammatory pronouncements.

Is there a common thread here? Can you imagine what might prompt such a response?

What’s the average age of people in your social group? I’m guessing over 35. It’s a very different story if you try talking to people in their 20’s or younger.

We're "millenial-ish" (in that, we're all between 25 to 40yrs old). I myself am not over 35 just yet.

> It’s a very different story if you try talking to people in their 20’s or younger.

Is it? We're old enough that half of us have kids, and some of us have teenaged kids (13-19yrs old), and they also have friends and such. It doesn't seem that different to me. (They're less willing to tolerate arbitrary BS, but otherwise, don't seem wildly different than we were at those ages)

Teenagers who haven’t gone to college yet won’t be that different. When they move out and live among peers and take courses from professors with views very different from home, you’ll see how things change!

> When they move out and live among peers and take courses from professors with views very different from home,

Why would professors have "views" all that different from home? Professors are regular people too.

(Two of us in our friend group / community, are literally employed college professors, others are elementary teachers, software developers, IT folks, one designer, one electrical engineer, two in marketing, one who is in HR, one is a city bus driver, one who works in an automotive parts plant, one is a nurse, etc)

You guys like, have friends, right? Like, people who you see semi-regularly and are from your community, but who aren't necessarily from your employer or in your career / direct field-of-work? Friends that aren't also LinkedIn contacts?

I have lots of friends, of different ages! I'm in my late 30's and a mature (undergrad) student at my local university. I am telling you from first hand experience that the views of my classmates (all in their 20's) are very different from those of my age group (in their 30's).

Professors are on average much more progressive and liberal than the average person and have a high amount of comfort and consequent belief privilege, so no I wouldn't say they're regular people. (Source: I'm a professor.)

IIRC, there is a strong correlation with higher education (rather than the job itself) - it's just that most professors have PhDs.

It's not so much level of education but lack of real world experience. PhDs in industry or outside of the Academy are very different.

> PhDs in industry or outside of the Academy are very different.

...but they all skew more liberal than those who have master's degrees, who in skew more liberal than those with honors degrees - and so forth until you get to those who are barely educated. This trend persists even when the individuals involved are not in academia.

I’m in my 40’s and I don’t know anyone at all around my age who talks about gender at all, let alone often. Many in my generation grew up with the view that those are just a bunch of stereotypes which are not helpful and should be ignored.

I think 70%+ might not be the right proportion for all or most people in the US. It's hard for me to estimate, but irl conversations I've had mostly skew towards media, computers, and gossip. Gender dynamics is in there for sure, but I don't think it's what most people I've met want to talk about most of the time. It's kind of a depressing subject.

> , but irl conversations I've had mostly skew towards media, computers, and gossip.

Same, but like, how do you talk about any of that stuff, without also touching on "gender, relationships, and life dynamics".

Like, I have no idea how a group of friends would talk about, say "that cool new Spider-Man movie" without also talking about gender / race / life dynamics / etc. Those topics are so fundamental, they're a part of almost everything.

For me that movie was mainly about how creative the effects artists were honestly.

> Is there a common thread here? Can you imagine what might prompt such a response?

What tends to prompt such responses in my experience is saying anything along the lines of "In my experience, I've noticed there is a tendency for (insert gender) to..."

Actually, in hindsight, the inflammatory responses mostly only happen when the inserted gender is women.

I'm sometimes the one firing off the "inflammatory response", and it's usually in a group of men where someone says something blatantly misogynistic, not just stereotypical.

Is your response coming from a kind of guttural, purely emotional place of having your values trampled on? Or is it meant to serve a purpose?

In these situations my default is to just observe as dispassionately as possible. If I'm in a cheeky mood maybe I'll troll a bit or try to find a humorous way to point out how the shoe could be on the other foot. And sometimes, although very rarely, the mood is just right that I feel safe enough to be earnest.

If I got all up in arms every time someone says something misogynistic or misandrist, I think I would end up being a very lonely person. I've seen a lot of these people. They either end up brainwashed on one end of the gender war spectrum (and usually just so angry and spiteful -- this is the polarized archetype), or get cast out of all possible ingroups if they make the mistake of attempting to be too consistent with their criticism (nerdy and socially unaware archetype).

Right, that's the sort of Problem People that are being discussed here. Without a doubt you use the term "blatantly misogynistic" in ways so far removed from the actual meaning as to be both useless and unpredictable. I've seen people use this term to describe hiring people with specific skills, for example.

99% of the time something is described as woman-hating, which is what that word means, it's nothing of the sort. But feminist extremists react so extraordinarily over the top, and our culture unfortunately forbids firing people for this type of OTT reaction, that everyone else lives in fear of triggering them.

So help everyone out here. Next time you think you've heard something "blatantly misogynist", stay out of it. Let people talk.

You are the general public!

I also avoid these types of conversations for the same reason. Even with people I know and have friendships with, I tend to be very cautious when approaching those topics. There's definitely a sense of "walking on eggshells", especially with the younger or more progressive crowd (note: I'm mostly progressive as well). I am nearly 40 and living in the West Coast of the US, so that may play a part.

What does it mean to be progressive w.r.t. dating these days?

Affirmative Affection

> I no longer discuss anything related to gender, relationships, or personal life dynamics with anyone outside of my bubble.

It's also pointless to discuss them. People say all sorts of things, but then act completely differently!

If you're in the US, the reason for this above is because certain political groups have adopted a zero-tolerance stance on discussion on many topics, and viciously attack people who try to have conversations about them that aren't affirmations of their positions.

> I do not believe ideas and ideals can be discussed with the general public.

Although most cultures have always had at least some small set of "taboos" for which this was true, I believe that we're in times where that set is especially large, or at least it is for the above groups of people.

Conversations about high income as a factor in attracting women often seem to neglect to mention that it's not enough to have a high income if you don't use it to signal wealth or to provide luxury experiences to women. Telling women you want to put your high income to work in enabling you to retire early but live a modest life and use that freedom to pursue creative pursuits doesn't have the same effect as taking them to the luxury apartment you rent or inviting them to join you on a romantic, paid for, tropical getaway.

This doesn't match my experience at all. In my experience, in most adult heterosexual long-term relationships it's usually the female partner who is insisting on long-term planning, financial planning, avoiding frivolous purchases, etc. and are happy if men don't start conflicts over this. Your exaggerated example basically screams "husband material".

Like most traits, I think men have a higher variance in focus on long-term planning than women do. Men are disproportionately both people who don't plan for the next paycheck and FIRE-enthusiasts.

If you look at FIRE-oriented online groups, men significantly outnumber women. I think that's what the parent is referring to. And there are fewer women (relative to men) who are willing to take a significant drop in consumption in order to e.g. max a mega Roth backdoor.

So a man who saves 20% of his take home income is husband material. A man who saves 80% of his take home income is a weirdo man child who needs to grow up and act like a "normal" person.

Every female partner I've had (except my current one) has pushed me to scale up our consumption and save less.

Women who do this have told me it can sometimes be about 'trying to live life before it is too late'.

Sure. But I'd argue that's an overly narrow view of trying to live life: living life is about being present in shared experiences with your friends and loved ones, not status-focused consumption. Otherwise non-rich people would be doomed to misery, which isn't the case.

Life is also about experiencing things (presumably as much things as possible) ... which cost money unfortunately. So it's not necessarily about status.

Women are the largest spenders by far, the ultimate consumers.

Hmm, I live in NYC and am early 30s but can only speak to my experiences here, I haven't found that earning a tech salary was impressive to anyone but I can say there are certainly a lot of women who earn high salaries who expect men they date to also spend as much as them on frequent international travel, eating out for $30-50 a head several times a week, expect to live in luxury apartments in Manhattan, etc.

Whereas if I wasn't willing to do that and put my money into the bank and just live in Brooklyn and don't travel super often, my high income holds no appeal.

Note that I do not think either high income or high spending are requisites to date successfully as a straight guy in NYC though. Just noting my observations on how those two factors do play in.

Not my experience. Maybe you're just talking to the wrong people? I find it easy enough to find people who aren't interested in materialism/rat race culture but are interested in ambitious, educated people.

My comment was poorly written, I don't mean to imply those things are required to date successfully or everyone cares about them, just that those who I've met who did seem to be attracted to wealth weren't attracted to wealth just the spending of wealth on status, signaling, or giving them experiences.

I can only assume, because it was unstated, and I didn't dive into the citations, but it looked like successful, educated women's preferences orbited around stability, and long term potential, rather than access to luxurious things or free trips.

I would think a high maintenance partner would be a turn-off for anyone chasing FIRE, anyways?

Depends on the woman and MANY would be attracted to the former. I'm pretty sure most would be better off with the kind of woman who is attracted to the former and that you should stay way clear women who values the latter.

Ding ding ding…. It’s not about education… or income, it’s about STATUS.

Maybe?

I know a lot of highly educated, successful women who wouldn't date Kevin Durant, for example. The idea of a rich man child trolling on burner accounts regardless of their high profile doesn't exactly drive them crazy. Replace Kevin Durant with Elon Musk if you're not a sports fan.

Well, perhaps those celebs want "young sexy and easy-going" and not "highly educated, successful"? So it's a win-win?

Status is subjective depending on your social circles.

If "high status" just means "people I like" then it loses all meaning and becomes a tautology. People prefer to date people that have attributes they find attractive. Those attributes vary. News at 11.

Bad examples, these 2 have fame in addition to status, which changes the game.

Are you actually offering people romantic paid for tropical getaways early on in dating to try to attract them? And does it work?

Cause that sounds more like some kind of old Hollywood romcom cliche than something a lot of women really want to have thrown at them to 'win them' in the past decade. But hey, I haven't tried it!

At the height of tinder, I worked in a sales office. When we wanted a bit of a laugh, we'd troll women by asking if they would go to whatever fancy spot with us, if we paid and gave various amounts of cash as spending money. That was our opener. You'd be shocked at the success rate. Some of the more innocent coworkers thought the girls were trolling us back. So we'd ask for phone numbers, and call them on speaker phone and troll more on the phone. At that point you can't deny she was serious, no girl gives away their phone number under that scenario unless she's serious.

As days went on we'd reduce the cash, and still many would agree. We eventually tried just offering cash and still some would agree, but eventually our account got flagged and banned.

Many women on Twitter are looking for casual relationships. News at 11. It's not different with men. If you're looking for a long term relationship, you have to filter out the casuals. The article says that surveys show more women than men are looking for long term relationships, so if that's what you're looking for, you shouldn't have trouble finding it unless your standards are higher than what you can get vs. competitors in the dating market. Being a misogynist will typically count against you, just as being a misandrist would count against women.

News flash, most people I know were surprised to find out a woman will accept a free trip in exchange for sex with someone they haven't met.

The only saving grace of that tinder experiment is that obviously the match meets a looks threshold since she swiped right on him.

Id still basically call it prostitution and the acceptance rate was like 30% flat out, and another 30% cautious but could have been talked into it.

Almost every woman I know under 35 has tried online dating. So yes I think it's surprising that almost half of women will agree to fly away with a stranger and have sex with them as long as they don't have to pay.

I’d guess most guys would be down for that too, if the roles were reversed. Humans gonna human.

Men would be down for just easy sex, no cash or trips required. The point is, most people believe women are a bit reserved when dispensing sex. But it seems as long as the guy is a little attractive and offers free stuff, women don't make you jump through as many hoops as some guys are made to jump through.

> News flash, most people I know were surprised to find out a woman will accept a free trip in exchange for sex with someone they haven't met.

That isn't what your anecdote showed. It showed they would be willing to meet you to decide if they wanted to take a free trip with you. Some of those with a higher risk tolerance would probably be willing to take the flight and money and ditch you even if you seemed sketchy. Believing they would automatically have sex with you is naïve.

The sex was flat out implied in the messages we were sending, and it would be a crazy girl to go and ditch you only to have to get her own place to stay and book her own flight back.

But your right, basically all wanted to meet ahead of the trip.

Absolutely. You have to flex or be willing to “spoil” in some manner/degree.

Edit: Or, most great products still need to advertise.

You attract what you advertise for.

If you're advertising flashy, high-spending lifestyle, that's who you'll attract. But the women who are looking for long-term stability will stay away. And vice versa.

Of course, if you want the not-high-spending women, you need to have something other than money and flashy lifestyle to offer. I think some guys get hung up there.

It's interesting that future security, free time to spend with your partner and do housework, and hobbies don't count as something to offer (at least relative to a flashy lifestyle). But, yes, a guy needs to find an effective angle that's in demand on the relationship market.

Maybe y'all just need to appreciate the value of working class women? I married a child of immigrants who is thrifty, values experiences over things, works hard, and appreciates that we want to live modestly so we can be free to retire as soon as possible!

Together seven years, married for three. Maybe when I was dating I was passed over by materialistic women because I drove an old car and don't wear fancy clothes, but I see that as an absolute win!

She teased me a little at first about how she "thought I was poor" because she didn't know how much an SWE makes and I was raised to find conspicuous consumption gauche. I just feel comfort knowing she chose me for me, not for my money.

But I'm extremely lucky, and blessed. Maybe I'm an absolute outlier. There are no rules in the game of love

There's lots of luck involved, which is always missing from these conversations. I've taken a similar route to you, and it's working out spectacularly, but, damn, it took a long while.

Same here. Wife is amazing: razor sharp, smart, beautiful, hard worker, happy to cook and help out around the home (we divide the tasks). Self employed, working class. Not particularly ideological, if anything she's conservative in the way self employed non-office workers often are (understands the value of money and stuff).

She also teased me because when we first met she thought maybe I was poor (don't own a car and am happy to stay in cheap hotels when travelling for work), she also had no idea what high end SWE salaries could be. Same for her friends who were a bit suspicious at first that maybe I was borrowing money or something to buy her/us nice things. The wider world still hasn't really understood how well programmers can do, it seems. I guess because yeah there's no culture of flashing it around like in some other job sectors. They all expect bankers to be rich.

And yeah, damn it took a while here too! Many years of searching to find her and in the end I got lucky.

There aren't enough women like that.

The problem is the "future" part. It's hard to sell "I'll be great someday!" especially in a dating profile or anything like that, and particularly since people lie a lot in such situations (the infamous "foreploy").

To be fair, it would also be hard to sell "someday I will have a ton of cash to waste on flashy spending."

But you can have hobbies and work/life balance now, and that can be attractive, albeit in a quieter way.

Women don't want a guy that is always broke. And they don't want a miser either.

You want a signal that women will pick up on? Buy nice good quality shoes.

> it's not enough to have a high income if you don't use it to signal wealth or to provide luxury experiences to women

Put another way, women aren’t attracted by men who earn a lot, but by men who spend a lot

It's not hard to find "Why is my boyfriend/husband so cheap?" as a recurring question in advice columns.

There's definitely a sense among many women that men should be demonstrably spendy - even flamboyant. Presumably because it confers competitive status.

I used to have a friend who used to do factory work. She said that whenever any of the women had a new boyfriend one of the first questions was always "What kind of car does he drive?"

Likewise many dating profiles say "I want a man who will spoil me."

Of course it's not all women, but it's certainly a significant number.

There is no way I would ever want to date those women. Come on guys, there are a lot of fish in the sea! Find someone who shares your values.

>Likewise many dating profiles say "I want a man who will spoil me."

"Looking for a man who is $trait, $trait, and generous."

When I was dating, I honestly thought that such verbiage was a code for signaling they were hookers without getting removed. I automatically discarded those profiles.

I think a lot of times it is. Either that or they want a sugar daddy.

Surely that illustrates the opposite: if women in relationships are complaining about their partners not spending enough that means they're usually forming relationships without that as a selection criteria. If it were, it cannot be the chief complaint because those boys would have no girls.

I'm not trying to poke the bear by saying this, but I wonder if you'd still believe this after speaking to 100 women from different cities, backgrounds, and walks of life. Women aren't a monoculture.

Buy some rental properties. They’re a great investment and as good a status signal as a car.

I've been a serial dater for 20+ years now (38M) I've been with 70+ women, and about 10-15 of those for long term. I think more about dating dynamics than basically anyone I've ever met. I'm not sure why.

The main takeaway I see from relationships is that I'm expected to give, understand, listen, and bend to be some perfect modern man. I need to be beyond financially stable, I need to be tough, but also have some romantic comedy movie side of me. And she's expected to technically not sleep with anyone else but also I'm not allowed to think about that at all even or I'm insecure.

Whenever I start dating a woman, even if she has a good job, I feel like I'm taking on a dependent. Which would technically be fine, if I was appreciated for it. But I'm not. I'm basically chastised if I even notice that I'm giving a lot. "What, youre giving a lot? This is a lot? You must not be as good as I thought you were if this is a noticeable amount of giving to you". I'm not talking about just money. It's everything.

I can summarize my main problem with relationships via this old joke: Q: What do women want? A: More.

And that's why I won't marry and more and more won't date. I have a big enough collection of previous partners that calls me every time their bfs act up or bore them or disappoint them. Another reason to stay away from them.

it might just be the type of women you attract and or are attracted to. There are definitely women out there who will give their fair share if not more.

Amazingly I haven't really met them, nor have most of my friends, even the married ones. Obviously women work and contribute to households. There are millions of well employed women. The question is, are they satisfied with their partners?

I am much younger than this guy and have dated way fewer people, and I’ve been involved with two people like that. So it’s almost definitely something they’re doing, given n>50.

I’m also not convinced I should date forever and never get married, nor that women are all seeking to simply extract and be entertained by me. This could be related (lol)

I was going to make a distinction in my post about age but decided not to, to avoid making it too long. And it caught me.

I will say there was a time this wasn't the case. My highschool gf gave a lot. My college gfs actually gave a bit too. Young women are pretty giving in a way. Eventually that goes away. I don't know if it's from being burned, or learned behavior over time, or just genes/hormones.. but it seems to go away IMO.

It might be because the "good ones", like the young women you dated early on, eventually get snapped up into marriages. Eventually, the only women who are left are the not-so-good ones, along with good ones who got into bad relationships and got burned.

That's a decent point, yes. For a second I wanted to argue that many people I know that did marry early have the same gripes, but it's also possible that people that married early long ago married because it was much more expected back then, meaning they may have even married non ideal women too just to get the process of life going. That would explain why many 50 year old men are just as jaded. They married what today would be a bad woman, but they did it early in 1985 when everyone was getting married at 24.

Yes, I think that's something that's changed a lot over the decades. These days, people are holding out for better partners, instead of rushing into marriage with someone lousy just because they don't want the social stigma of being a "spinster" unmarried by 30.

This is a known issue but the down stream effect won’t be felt for a while.

Let’s be clear we’re talking about general behavioral trend, not trying to police an individual, which is the crux of contention for these topics.

Many women still hold on to the idea of finding a partner that is wealthier and more educated. This is due to the past (over)reliance of their partners for stability. But this is no longer true.

The education gap between men and women are growing. More women enroll and graduate from college then men. Many young men, mostly lower-middle class, (whether fairly or not) feel like the education system does not work for them.

Society and companies are reconciling the barriers for women’s advancement and we’re only observing this initial gap. That is well and good. But in 10-20 years women will out number men in many fields requiring higher education.

The real problem arises when that clashes with traditional expectations. The women in the article is a successful Yale grad who wants a partner with better pedigree. If you include looks and height requirements her dating pool is like <0.01% of the population. As that cascades to women in general with college education refusing to consider men in trade, that mismatch grows wider.

The implication of the dating “market” not being able to match buyers and sellers would have some interesting dynamics.

> Many women still hold on to the idea of finding a partner that is wealthier and more educated. This is due to the past (over)reliance of their partners for stability. But this is no longer true.

I'm not sure this is absolutely true - at least for Germany. Here the figures show, that women and men, ceteris paribus, earn pretty much the same (+-3%). Until... children come into the mix. The lack of child care and societies view on parental leave (for men at least) means, that generally speaking the woman stays home to take care of the child and later on moves on to a part time position thus earning less and having to rely on the partners income again.

I think that’s a good point but the idea your (male) partner has to make more seems silly.

The core idea of finding a partner that is strictly better is the concern the article raises. If she makes 300k a year and he makes 150k a year, the studies suggest women would refuse to take that.

But if we suppose they get together, even with the haircut in wages from taking time for childcare, they will still have a great standard of living.

I'm skeptical that the studies cover income that far above the median actually.

I think it’ll sort itself out fairly quickly. Women who refuse to “date down” will find themselves getting older and lonelier. They’ll open themselves up to more potential partners because long term loneliness is much worse than status anxiety (and people tend to lose their status anxiety as they get older).

I am not optimistic that it’ll sort itself out. In my experience spinsters get more radical and less agreeable, in effect double down on their beliefs. It’s like watching a train wreck that takes 30 years.

I’ve seen both women and men become embittered over time and I don’t think any of them will recover.

Yeah, bitterness has a way of sustaining itself.

After a while being bitter becomes your primary coping mechanism, it gets harder to let go of it.

I had a striking conversation with my dad recently, where he said that the thing that helped him get better was being alone, because he had nobody left to blame his problems on except himself. But some people can sustain the bitterness even alone!

I don't think so. My anecdotal experience in life is that people tend to settle in their beliefs somewhere in their 30s, and will stick to it even if it's a type of self harm.

Both men and women will turn bitter and simply opt-out for life. Not all, but many. Women that do this tend to be better off than men, as they have a type of alternative support network whilst many men do not.

> The education gap between men and women are growing. More women enroll and graduate from college then men. Many young men, mostly lower-middle class, (whether fairly or not) feel like the education system does not work for them.

So, like, isn't the question "why"?

Why do boys, particularly lower- or lower-middle class, not believe in the education system as much as their sisters?

School sucks, work sucks, then you die. But that's not new. And it's not stopping the girls/women. So why aren't the boys doing what previous generations did?

I don't know the answer, but just saying "they don't like it" is hard to action on. Are parents too indulgent with boys in a way they aren't with girls? Is boy-oriented media setting up more unrealistic expectations relative to girl-oriented stuff? Are there just that many boys who can't deal with a world where uncontrolled aggression is less tolerated? I haven't seen a really good thorough investigation of this. (I've seen lots of bad-faith "this is what happens when you leave the Bible behind and women don't have to serve their men" ones...)

I'm also not sure how much "we" as a society should care in the aggregate, vs having empathy for in the specific. Things never stay static, the system (institutions, culture, and individuals) will likely adjust. It's sad an overachieving woman reaches the top and can't find the ideal person she had built up in her head. It's sad a man doesn't apply himself in school or to building his social skills can't find dates. But it's also great that that woman was able to do all that. And there are still countless happy relationships and marriages happening - and many of them eventually separate, but overall, it seems like there is less violence and misery than in the past.

A possible explanation is that most teachers in primary school are female, which creates an environment and behavioral expectations that favor girls, e.g.:

- Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement - https://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XLII/3/528

- Gender differences in teachers’ perceptions of students’ temperament, educational competence, and teachability - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.2010.02017.x

That seems weird though, right? Cause in the US teachers, especially for early-childhood, have been predominantly female since before this gap.

The world is much larger than the US ;)

It could be that there were other external factors that used to counter-balance this effect, and are now being removed, such as, for example, the quest for increasing female participation in STEM no matter what, or general societal norms beyond school spurred by the rise of femminism.

In any case, the academinc literature on this topic is vast (and not so clear cut), so if you really have not seen thorough investigations on the topic beyond "boys don't like it" or something from the Bible you can start by reading papers citing those I mentioned above:

- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=3048749496880924830...

- https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=8365905588440304050...

Let me rephrase my complain about what I've seen. There is a lot of academic work on this stuff, but I'd characterize it as very "leaf node" oriented on certain aspects. E.g., grabbing a few at random:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00652... - boys may not have or get given the right sort of motivations

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/016237371771405... - teacher demographic match affects student perceptions of abilities and confidence and such

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.12... - young kids tend to believe boys do worse at school

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/129/3/1409/181... - boys being more competitive pushes them towards more prestigious fields but the genders show overall similar levels of ability

That's just sort of how the modern academic system works. Specialization.

There's nothing wrong with that, but where I live it isn't turning into serious policy conversations that look at thing more broadly and with a longer view. It might in other places, but I can't speak to those.

I would love to see more of those serious conversations where I live. For instance, again specific to my experience in the US, it seems unlikely that "get more male teachers" would make a dent in a problem that started independently of primary teachers being overwhelmingly women.

I've read that even among female teachers theres a big difference in approach to misbehaving boys depending on if they had a male sibling or not. With declining fertility rates, you can imagine that being less and less common.

In France, the female teacher ratio is 80+% in primary school and ~60% in secondary.

From what I can see, women are statistically more OK to accept and fit in. Men are more likely to become the challengers and want to have their share of the pie.

We didn't just create opportunities, we also stigmatized challenging the status quo and shifted the focus to complying and keeping the lights on. Many men would find this deal kinda empty, pointless and ultimately depressing.

"It's sad an overachieving woman reaches the top and can't find the ideal person she had built up in her head"

If you're at the top, and select for men higher than that top, that's not sad. It's delusional. A 1%-er selecting for a 0.1%-er is the least of society's problems.

Unhappiness is the natural conclusion of unrealistic expectations meeting realty.

> School sucks, work sucks, then you die. But that's not new. And it's not stopping the girls/women. So why aren't the boys doing what previous generations did?

Because schooling is now expensive and doesn't immediately translate to better economic outcomes nowadays for men. It generally does over time, but it takes a bit for the return, nowadays.

For women, as the article points out, school is also an economic investment for hunting for a partner. The fact that women won't "date down" like men will means that there is a difference in reciprocity in the investment.

It's because the education system is systematically biased against males and they pick up on this, correctly perceiving education as a system run by sexists that will penalize them for their gender and which doesn't really want them there.

Anti-male hiring bias in academia:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35762380

Grading biases in high school:

https://mitili.mit.edu/sites/default/files/project-documents...

I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls when they grade. This favoritism, estimated in the form of individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts. Gender-biased grading accounts for 21 percent of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. On the other hand, girls who benefit from gender bias in math are more likely to select a science track in high school.

This is a problem with society but especially amongst liberals, who dominate the education system. Your own comments display very clear and strong anti-male bias, ascribing the issue to parents being indulgent (!), boys uncontrolled aggression being the problem, the media, that men don't apply themselves ... any explanation except the obvious one that teachers aren't treating people fairly.

Boys respond almost an order of magnitude worse to missing father figures than girls. This is understood to be one of the causes in aggregate. Fewer involved fathers these days.

"Many women still hold on to the idea of finding a partner that is wealthier and more educated. This is due to the past (over)reliance of their partners for stability. But this is no longer true."

This independence remains to be seen. The assumption is that a higher education for women will structurally lead to complete financial independence across their life's path but I believe this to be a rosy view.

First, for all but the top 10%, the cost of living is so high that it almost requires a partner. There goes your independence.

Second, you have to make it to the end. Say you go at it alone, that means ~45 years of relentless full-time work, managing the 401K and nothing can happen under way, as there will be nobody to help. This is the existential stress that men have always faced in their provider role. The complete lack of optionality, zero tolerance for failure, and lack of any safety net. This is not to say that women can't handle this, I'm saying it remains to be seen.

Third, whilst women may be highly educated, a huge portion of them work in administrative functions, NGOs, the like. Fields that are very exposed to the swings of the economy.

Added bonus of selecting for the 0.01% of men: if you're extraordinarily lucky to secure him, you have a new problem: the man has options.

Thats one thing I don't understand about hypergamy (dating app data proves it), why would a woman be in a situation in which she is easily the second, third wheel or worse

Status signaling to other women, I imagine. But perhaps also media/social media fueling these unrealistic expectations and incorrectly normalizing them.

I think it's a direct representation of how unequal the power in society is.

Being the 10th wife of a price is better than being the first wife of a commoner somewhere like Saudi Arabia (as an example - can pick any society with high power inequality) in terms of the chances of reproductive success of your offspring.

> But in 10-20 years women will out number men in many fields requiring higher education

The irony is, that those white-collar higher education jobs might be the first to be replaced by AI, and in the end not result in high income. We might be looking at a future where a builder, plumber, craftsman etc. will be high up in income and status. I'm curious to see if women with high education but low income would suddenly be attracted to men with low (formal) education and high income.

Because leftist women/men in "power cities" in the Coasts would be affected, I expect enormous regulations to protect them, unless strategically (against china) damaging.

I mean the research is nice, but I don't think that just a degree is going to up your chances. As someone who is using these apps constantly, I don't have any hope of finding a long term partner on there.

I am on pretty much every app, except Tinder (Bumble, Hinge, okcupid, pof and even muzmatch (im south asian)). I have a bachelors, and I make good money. I've been told that I am a decent looking guy and I have quite a few hobbies. It's easy for me to make friends, so I don't think I fit the programmer stereotype.

I am on these apps with the explicit intention of finding a long term partner and I've made it clear, but it seems that >95% of people are there for flings, fwb or casual hookups.

I am starting to realize that dating apps are broken, if you are looking for a serious relationship - there's just no way you are going to find it on here.

The focus of the study has been on guys with higher education, and from what I've seen girls here are not that well educated. Perhaps this is a small city phenomenon (pop. 1.5 mil), but it's quite shocking to see this disparity (That's another topic).

Take this as you will, maybe it's just me venting or whatever, but it's tough out there and these apps are just not it.

"I am starting to realize that dating apps are broken, if you are looking for a serious relationship"

Dating apps are optimized for usage, not success. If you find a serious relationship, you stop using the app (Hopefully).

A dating app that helps you find a long term partner has failed to maximize your LTV

I found my spouse on OkCupid but notably it was pre-Match buyout. Maybe try to find some non-Match sites / apps if you're looking for long-term.

This is mostly for large cities. As someone who’s lived in many big cities like NYC and London, education and pedigree is extremely important.

It’s also about the illusion of choice and “settling” for worse. When you know there are attractive Harvard lawyers, why would you bother with some state school government worker? Now there’s no guarantee these women can actually land the first group but why not try?

As rational actors maximizing their utility, that’s the right move. The real question is what utility entails for that individual. But the default norm is by school and job prestige alongside physical looks.

Chasing the top is not rational when considering the very rational fact that the top has options.

I'm taken, but if were single, I'd rationally consider myself average-looking to decent. I would not find it rational at all for me to chase a supermodel (if beauty was the selector), I would in fact not try at all. Because rationally, some things are too good to be true.

I would correct that to *chasing the top can be rational under certain assumptions.

The worse the inequality gets in society, the more rational it is to chase the top, in fact - specifically for women. As I wrote in another comment, it can be better to be the Nth wife of a prince rather than the first wife of a commoner (if you're optimizing for the survival/fitness of your offspring, albeit unconsciously).

im south asian

Races tend to date within their own race. Really wish we could see your profile though to see if you're doing anything I perceive as wrong. I've seen guys with your exact description show me their profile and they have only one picture where it looks like they haven't showered in a month.

Here's the gwern mirror of the okcupid blog showing the race preference. It seemed true there with the one exception: Asian women preferred White Men in the dataset from 2009 to 2013 though it matched the rest for 2014 https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/raceandattraction20...

Interesting result, though at that time the US demographics were not as they are today so Asian is likely not South Asian as GGP comment references self as. Though who am I to guess.

I've been to a few weddings now where the couple met on an app. Keep your chin up, king.

Just came here to say don't give up, like you pointed out the current wave of dating apps aren't optimized for long-term relationships. VC-backed apps have to optimize for retention and revenue per user.

I remember the previous era of dating sites (eHarmony) proudly published stats about committed relations + marriage.

Anyway, have you gotten friends invested in your search? The first thing I would do is ask friends, their partners, and their partners' friends, and their partners' friends meddling aunties to set up a few blind dates. Mention that you're trying to meet "the one."

Good luck out there, hope your story is different one year from now!

> the current wave of dating apps aren't optimized for long-term relationships

That sentence...

Nothing personal, you're obviously right. It's the sheer technicality of it. I wish young people would find love as they used to, at balls or smth..

part of the 'narrative' sold by society is that people fall in love while going through their casual dating 'phase'. nobody under the age of 30 (maybe 35) is going to be looking for a 'serious relationship'. if you explicitly state this in your profile or even on the first handful of dates nobody is going to respond well.

You state this as some casual observation, but it's wild.

In my country, 80-90% people in their early 20s are in long term relationship and thus already off the market. They may not be in their final relationship, but they are of a somewhat serious nature and not a one-night stand.

By the age of 30, should they be so lucky, many/most would buy their first home. And move in together. If you think that's early, my dad had all of this settled at the age of 19.

35 is almost middle-aged. It's absurd to only start looking for a serious relationship then. It's like extending college/party years by 15(!) years.

you misunderstand what i wrote. 30 is when people start admitting to themselves they're looking for serious relationships. before that they are pretending not to be.

Got it, and interesting point.

I got off all dating apps a couple years ago and I'm not going back. They're not optimized to help you find connection, but to extract value from you for shareholders through addiction and FOMO.

I changed my focus to meeting people IRL and my dating life is better than ever!

I'm getting married next month, a relationship started from a date found in possibly the worst of all the apps (Match, if you can believe it).

I dated for a lot of years and, despite having some positives outlined by this article, I was also divorced and have a son. That made it massively more difficult to find a long term match given that many women flatly reject that combo.

I learned though to be upfront. About your life. About what you're looking for. You're not looking for 95% of women to be attracted to you! You're looking for one. It sounds like you're optimizing the search already, so don't waste time worrying about 95%. People always say be yourself and I didn't appreciate what that meant until I started taking control of my dating journey.

For example, I stopped tailoring dates around what they wanted to do. I planned stuff that I wanted to do and if somebody I was talking to wanted to come along, awesome. If not, I did it anyhow. I stopped hiding my love for Country music and went anyhow. My wife loves Country. :)

Also, if you're honest in your profile and somebody wants to start casual.. consider it. People have a hard time in the dating scene and you can't fault them for not wanting to invest 100% right away. Have confidence in yourself and know the right one will stick around no matter what they said in the beginning. And if they don't, that's cool too. Hopefully you have some fun dates and life experience to make you a better date when the right one does show up. It does take practice.

Much of a long term relationship starts when two people are at the right points in their lives. You can't really plan it, it just happens when it does and that's why people say they feel lucky. Much of it is luck. Leave space for that to happen too!

Good luck to you.

I was widowed after 15 years and I have been using dating apps for the last few years and in my experience you are absolutely correct on pretty much everything.

I know who I am and what I like. I advertise that on my profile and I take folks on dates that I like to do by myself. I’ve had a lot of success with relationships of all different lengths and levels of casual-ness.

If you are a dude in the dating pool and you are positioning yourself as what you think women want, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

These apps are broken no matter what you search, unless you are a somewhat attractive woman looking for quick hookups and don't care with whom.

As I mention every time dating comes up on HN, often men on HN live in areas that skew male. SV, Seattle, Bangalore, etc. If you live in say, San Jose, there are 130 men for every 100 women. It not necessarily that apps don't work just the marketplace is not in balance in those cities. On the other hand a not insignificant portion of men send the dumbest msgs. Not that hard to write something better.

Also some women might say that are not looking for something serious when they really mean just not interested in long term with the person asking. Sadly, men murder women, so women have to be careful about letting men down.

Plenty of people have met their spouse on dating apps, so the idea "if you are looking for a serious relationship - there's just no way you are going to find it on here." just isn't accurate.

I read a book awhile ago called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, which basically argues that cultures which strongly promote traditional values, having children, etc. will evolutionarily outcompete groups that don’t.

It made me think that there must be a kind of cycle in human societies, where certain social values (like the ones mentioned in the article) are able to become popular for a short period of time (which can be over a century long) but ultimately have no ability to sustain themselves and then are outcompeted. The amount of “defectors” isn’t enough to sustain the population.

Given how difficult it seems for any genuinely universal cultural movement to take off in the dating space, it seems to me like a similar thing will happen over the course of the 21st and 22nd centuries.

> Given how difficult it seems for any genuinely universal cultural movement to take off in the dating space

?????

Dating culture is substantially different than a decade ago.

I meant to take off deliberately with the aim of correcting the problem mentioned in the article. Western society seems too self-absorbed to me to ever move past selfish motives at this point.

In other words, some kind of cultural movement that tells people to put their preferences aside “for the good of society” seems like it won’t work anytime soon.

Oh okay I don't see that happening any sooner than the heat death of the universe.

Indeed, it, has become substantially worse, even though that seemed almost impossible.

*Worse for the average person, better for the elite. Just another symptom of growing inequality.

As I said in another post, better to be the 10th wife of a prince rather than the 1st wife of a commoner (in a highly unequal society).

This only makes sense if quantity of population matters more than quality.

No, it doesn't. That's exactly the problem. It seems the more "quality", whatever that means, the less people reproduce, thus society falls apart.

I'm starting to view the relationship between the religious part of our society and the secular as being symbiotic in a sense.

What makes people defect from religious communities on the border to secular centers? Some combination of money, freedom, and power (to participate in shaping the wider society at scale). The cost of that defection is an uprooting and disconnection from "traditional values". I'm not as certain about this part, but part of it seems to be that it's easier to do the work of having and raising children on the border.

What makes people defect from the secular centers back to religious communities on the border? Just the opposite trade off -- less money, freedom, power. But you'll be more grounded and connected to a community, which can be immensely satisfying. And it's easier to raise kids.

Also I should note here that the borders and centers I'm talking about aren't necessarily physical -- in fact increasingly they are very much not, especially with the rise of remote work.

People in the secular center are doing a tremendous amount of very valuable and high leverage technical work to make a scaled civilization like ours function on a day-to-day basis. That's super important stuff.

People in religious (or cultural) communities at the border are doing a tremendous amount of cultural work to sustain a reserve of human values that can fuel those at the center when hard times come. Also super important stuff.

A balance in the tradeoffs between these places and a continuous cycling of people between them seems healthy to me.

I love this, but there's one thing I'd point out. With few exceptions, there's little defection from secular society into fundamentalist religious communities. Almost everyone in those communities was born there.

Reminds me of the period of people coming to America during colonial times. That there were stories and tales of people joining Native American tribes, completely leaving their old lives behind and becoming happier but you never heard accounts of the reverse. Native Americans willing joining the colonist, this rarely, if ever, happened.

I don't think is a good comparison. Native Americans couldn't join the colonists because the colonists were very racist against them, whereas apparently the Natives were more accepting of colonists who wanted to join them.

"...when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."[0]

I don't think "Natives were less racist" is a convincing explanation for how badly white colonists wanted to return to living with them (even when, according to Franklin, the white society they had returned to was as kind as possible to convince them to stay). It may be a part of it, but doesn't explain why everyone who lived in Native culture was so disgusted with white culture after.

[0] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-01...

>I don't think "Natives were less racist" is a convincing explanation for...

No, it doesn't explain that part at all. It does explain why the Natives never tried joining and integrating into the white colonial society.

Honestly, I'm curious why white people who had been taken prisoner wanted to go back so badly, but sadly, I doubt anyone ever asked them and then accurately recorded their testimony for people to read 250 years later.

I'd argue the religious are actually causing cultural destruction and are a net loss in every way except raw childbearing output. Having been born into one and 'defected', I found the community insular, stuck on platitudes, little to no critical thinking, full of unspoken rules and expectations, and with a ever shrinking dating pool.

They produce poorly educated children, heartache, cognitive dissonance, and perpetuate destructive traditions in the name of long dead / imaginary people.

> What makes people defect from the secular centers back to religious communities on the border? Just the opposite trade off -- less money, freedom, power. But you'll be more grounded and connected to a community, which can be immensely satisfying. And it's easier to raise kids

I feel like this is a more recent trend than vice versa

Another thing that the "religious" parts provide is population, some of which will flow to urban centers. Which will probably be exacerbated in the US in coming decades because of growing cultural divide between different states

I think fundamentalism is too brittle to persist like that over the long term.

Yes, the most conservative religions usually have a lot of kids, but over the generations, many of those kids will leave the religion, or at least join a less fundamentalist strain and have fewer kids. Unless the culture is kept strictly separate (increasingly impossible), the quality of life that the surrounding secular culture offers is too alluring. So standards are relaxed, women get educated and start working, have fewer kids. And it ripples down the generations. It hasn't happened yet in some of the less developed parts of the world, but as they get richer, it will. It always does.

The growth of the ultra Orthodox in Israel is an interesting counter example to your point.

> I read a book awhile ago called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, which basically argues that cultures which strongly promote traditional values, having children, etc. will evolutionarily out-compete groups that don’t.

That's happening in Israel, as the haredi out-breed the reform Jews and the seculars.[1] Religious societies that oppress women, breed lots of kids, and are dominated by old men in black with beards are a thing. That exists in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian forms, so it's independent of the brand of religion.

[1] https://www.jta.org/2021/03/10/israel/how-the-haredi-orthodo...

Those models can only exist as minority feeding on a majority. Without reform Jews and seculars, their country will be overrun by neighbors in a few hours.

Hinduist "four ugas" capture this idea very well: the golden age when strong and good create values, the silver age when weak and good uphold the values, the bronze age when weak with sloppy morals let the values decline, the iron age when strong and evil destroy the values.

I doubt that the current situation with marriage institute is seen as a problem by those in power. As we're progressing towards the iron age, the culture of indiscriminate hookups will prevail and will be celebrated by governments, the only motive of short connections will be greed and lust, and the kids, occasionally born from such encounters will be raised in the gov kindergartens. And people will worship AI that, among other things, will match pairs on the dating market.

Woah. The Ancient Greeks did the metal thing too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

Maybe it was an even earlier Proto-Indo-European meme that radiated out to everyone.

Speaking of Greeks, they believed that such universal ideas come from the world of ideas, or the world of archetypes; great thinkers merely perceive this world, and that's why different cultures seemingly by accident end up with the same ideas in their "books of wisdom". In this worldview, the achievement of greek or indian philosophers isn't creating the idea of the four ages, but expressing it in the limited thoughts framework they had to deal with. It's a lot like how painters try to express what they see on a small flat rectangle of paper.

They were wrong; it's all from the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Deveraux's blog makes a good argument that this meme is ahistorical: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

Tldr: we glorify the men of harsh societies shaped by scarcity, but soft liberal societies actually outcompete them militarily and economically.

"Strong" in the golden age has nothing to do with physical strength. It's about moral strength, when one does the right thing even under grave pressure. The harsh strength comes into play in the iron age when might is the right.

This doesn't pass the eye test. If it's true that religious people will outbreed non-religious people, why is religiosity declining?

The simple answer is that religion is not hereditary. Children of religious parents do not necessarily follow their parents' beliefs.

My family is an example. Several children taught that evolution is fake, and none of us agree with our parents. Only one of us have any religious beliefs at all.

Religiosity isn’t declining (globally) and the book addresses the “defection” idea, noting that most people still have similar beliefs as their parents, and that birth rates still outcompete defections.

Every source I can find says that secularism/atheism is growing worldwide. Not sure what you're talking about.

Even if "most" people don't "defect", you have to make up the remainder by people going the other way, for which there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

The nonreligious are growing in raw numbers but decreasing in percentage terms.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/how-religious-will-th...

You don’t need to make up the remainder by going the other way, as I mentioned above: religious population growth comes from birth rates, not conversions.

Towards the end, the article posits that the reason men fail to attain higher levels of education is video games.

I would be curious to see how the effect of video games stacks up against the effect of the significant support industry established for helping girls succeed in STEM while comparable support for boys is nonexistent.

Stuff like this is actually researched. It would be better to first look at the research before comparing anecdotal hypotheses.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/08/whats-beh...

> Men are more likely than women to point to factors that have more to do with personal choice. Roughly a third (34%) of men without a bachelor’s degree say a major reason they didn’t complete college is that they just didn’t want to. Only one-in-four women say the same. Non-college-educated men are also more likely than their female counterparts to say a major reason they don’t have a four-year degree is that they didn’t need more education for the job or career they wanted (26% of men say this vs. 20% of women).

> Women (44%) are more likely than men (39%) to say not being able to afford college is a major reason they don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Men and women are about equally likely to say needing to work to help support their family was a major impediment.

> In some instances, the gender gaps in the reasons for not completing college are more pronounced among White adults than among Black or Hispanic adults. About four-in-ten White men who didn’t complete four years of college (39%) say a major reason for this is that they just didn’t want to. This compares with 27% of White women without a degree. Views on this don’t differ significantly by gender for Black or Hispanic adults.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/mar/why-women...

> In this blog post, we argue against these explanations, showing it is unlikely that the gender gap in college attendance reflects some sort of failure on the part of educators or college admissions officers. A more likely explanation is that the labor markets reward women with relatively higher financial returns to college enrollment.

Well, maybe the reason why those men didn't want to complete college is because they don't have the same support that women do (or at least, that's what they percieve).

In part, lack of support (other than financial) is a reason it took me so long to complete college. But anecdata can't be relied on for population studies. These questions need to be asked, sure.

Based on the chart in the St. Louis Fed link, in the US women have outnumbered men since 1980 (shortly after the Vietnam draft ended). While the ratio has been increasing the only real visually noticeable upticks in the data were around 1993 for 4+ year colleges and 2001 for 2-year colleges. I wonder if some men who might have gone to a 2-year school instead enlisted following 9/11.

I don't think there was any particular STEM support for women in 1980 and into the early 1990s, at least. But maybe something did happen in 1993 (and possibly something additional to 9/11 in 2001). Are these additional women going into STEM majors?

Another strong reason is that the work they're willing to take doesn't require a college deplomia. (On top of that a university degree not demonstrating the value to the struggle it took to get it)

IMHO it's more likely because the education system from age 5+ is biased against boys and for girls.

I doubt that matters. There were barely any women in my classes at a school with a mostly female student body. Now that I work in software, at a company which requires at least bachelor's degree, there are still very few women developers employed here.

I had like six girls in my classes at school. Less than a third.

For my case at least I'd agree that video games, and the increased amount of entertainment more generally, are the biggest reasons I'm not very interested in a relationship. I did succeed at attaining higher education and a white collar job though. I just don't mind spending tons of time alone.

I'll probably be downvoted to hell for this but here goes...

The state of the current education system is outright hostility towards boys. feminists (specifically third wave) long ago, infiltrated k-12 and shove their ideology down little boys throats at every level. any overt show of masculinity is treated as toxic. I don't think a lot of this pride stuff being pushed by the mainstream media right now is about accepting lgbtqa+(and whomever else I'm probably missing) members of society. Its more about instilling feminine traits onto young boys. Since there are few male teachers, the boys without a strong father figure at home never get taught how to channel their masculine energy in a healthy way. It continues to university where all the programs are geared towards the advancement of women.

Its fairly unsurprising that incel culture has grown rampant given the massive scale of male disenfranchisment. I'm lucky to have been raised in a 2 parent household with a dad who gave a damn about making sure I had educational opportunities in life. many guys out there right now weren't so lucky.

Now we're teetering towards a system where a lot of men have simply been left behind. its a recipe for societal collapse. Meanwhile we can't even build a simple high speed rail line or critical infrastructure. I fear for the future and I'm not really sure what the way out is.

By their own admission the point is to socially dismantle heteronormative white men. These identity groups are considered oppressors in Western communist ideology. So they're to be taken down, as an adaptation of the old "seizing the means of production" mantra to modern cultural targets.

Wokeists have managed to get into powerful positions in most if not all Western institutions, so their attacks are being enabled throughout society.

That's why there's so much discussion about how to end whiteness, suppress toxic masculinity, and promote queerness. These are thinly veiled discussions about destroying the oppressor class and taking power. They were never about human rights, mutual respect, or acceptance.

Some Western communists are more direct and aware of it than others, and some actually want the system to collapse because it would create opportunity for their preferred system to emerge.

Male impotence serves its purpose of reducing resistance to the political project. Men can regain their social power by joining the revolutionaries, but at personal cost. For example, I've recently seen incels talking about transitioning as a means to access intimacy and support. I've also seen hetero white men change their entire appearance and cultural views in the last several years, in order to receive popular approval.

The men who don't do these things, either because they don't understand it or because they reject it, are being left behind. Many then join reactionary ideologies like The Red Pill (Andrew Tate-ism), Trumpland, Inceldia, or Christian nationalism. Many become akin to the hikikomori in Japan - socially isolated and withdrawn, playing videogames and watching porn all day. Others get on with their handicapped lives and try to avoid attention.

Those who do compromise are still constantly walking on egg shells. If people don't like them for some reason, their past will be dug up. If something is found, they get excommunicated.

To be clear, I have no problem with trans or queerness in people. I just recognize that it's one of the best ways for modern men to gain support and approval in a world where they're otherwise being systematically attacked. I see the appeal in picking up a pride flag in order to be embraced by the broader community. I can understand why an emotionally damaged person would go to great extremes to end the suffering, whatever the rationale.

The main points I want to get across is that this is all part of a demoralisation process, people are being victimized and coerced, and there is no intention to resolve the issue. The only allowable way out for men is to join the game, anything else is to be met with derision and hostility.

> Since there are few male teachers, the boys without a strong father figure at home never get taught how to channel their masculine energy in a healthy way

I'll give an alternative perspective: people who talk this way try to shame men into traditional "masculine" roles

I'm not just talking about hetero vs queer either. More like, pressuring men to "care about" the marriage -> kids -> nuclear family life track. Or pressuring men to (implicitly) see women as sex objects

Something I've realized: whenever someone talks about this "crisis", they're always making some implicit demand on how other people should live

that goes both ways. For sure I know exactly what you're talking about. I see this a lot in deeply religious movements. That said, its not particularly helpful to go from "you must participate in daily prayer" to "you must participate in pride." They key here is Tolerence. you don't have to like it or partificpate in it, you just have to accept that what other people do is fine as long as its not harming anybody. Sadly, neither the extreme right or the extreme left seem to get this.

Hear me out. But maybe guys have discovered what women haven't. That higher education isn't the be all and end all to social status except to others who seek or have it. I have many friends who started working right out of high school in the trades. Now we have MOOCs, bootcamps, trades, and certifications. And the value of locking yourself out of the job market for 4 years while and paying 100s of thousands of dollars just doesn't feel as smart financially as it used to.

I don't think that's the reason why guys are falling behind in education but I do agree that a career-focused lifestyle isn't exactly the paradise some people think it is.

Every time I see one of these threads, there's always a bunch of baggage in the comments. There's also a bunch of stereotyping I see, e.g. men "preferring" hookup culture

Also on top of this, whenever there's talk about a so called "masculinity crisis", there's a bunch of tacit demands on how other people should live. This is regardless of whichever political camp the talk originates from

It's gotten to a point that whenever I figure out a discussion or article is "directed" at men, I stop reading because I already know it's going to start telling me what I "need" to care about as a man

I'm honestly fed up with it at this point. If someone has something to say to me as a person, go ahead. But if someone has something to say to me as a man, I'd prefer it if they'd take their bullshit elsewhere

This problem seems statistically unsolvable unless people make vast behavioral changes.

The education gap will not be closed, it might even grow further apart. A significant amount of men will continue to work in blue collar jobs and thus will never meet the standards of being highly educated and/or wealthy. There's exceptions, some are making a killing, but on average not really. To make matters worse, there's a growing political gap between blue collar men and white collar women.

Another portion of "lost" men are described in the article as the unemployed gamers. A portion of them might be incels. The main thing to understand about this group is that even if they do better themselves, it's still not going to be a match. Because quite likely they're socially awkward and physically unattractive, struggle to socialize and make friends.

Bottom line, the popular phrase "men should step up" isn't going to work out. You're waiting for something that simply isn't going to happen. You can make of that situation what you want: opt-out and don't compromise on your standards, or deal with the cards given.

My advise: look for character in a person. The obsession with status, education and wealth is inhumane, superficial and greatly self-limiting. Character lasts. If a person is structurally kind, responsible, reliable and has a steady job, who gives a shit about anything else? Combined with your own "educated" income, it would be plenty to run a family. Why price yourself out of the market with steep financial demands? For additional luxury? A bigger house? One you never attend as you're always at work? Get real.

The article omits the male preference for younger women and that the majority of couples are of an older male and a younger female. This is extremely relevant to the analysis.

AND women's preference for older men, because they are more "mature" or whatever. It's a two-way street.

This article points out what is probably real friction from shifting mores but seems mainly preoccupied with implying that a return to more conservative values around women's role in society would be called for.

What I feel is needed is to understand what the fundamentals are and how those things could be achieved in a society that is also compatible with human freedom. Most of the problems described in this article stem from a totally artificial "bundling" of companionship, sexual satisfaction, child-rearing, economic support, and intellectual stimulation into a singular person who not only is expected to satisfy these needs for you (and sometimes fails), but often prevents you from satisfying those needs with other people.

So of course finding "Mr. or Mrs. Right" becomes existential, and of course we turn to dependable sources of entertainment as the anxiety of picking the "right" life mate prevents any of us from actually committing to anything. But with some creativity we can think of actual escape routes from this dynamic that don't require a return to treating women as property, like supporting single child-rearing, allowing people to form mutual support structures with friends or family, detaching self-worth from relationship status, a further liberalization of sexual mores, expanding economic safety nets, and so on and so forth.

Women's roles don't need to be reversed at all. Their success is earned, but that doesn't solve the problem of them selecting for men that do not exist due to their persistent behavior to exclusively select upwards.

The simple fix is to come to more reasonable selection criteria.

Remember Japan. People just don’t need each other anymore. They are good alone - in gaming, leisure or travelling. More and more businesses are switching to single-oriented service.

Hard agree, I have no intentions of marrying let alone having children.

I'm perfectly happy living my life going my way and my way alone as I see fit. Most human relations are straight bullshit and just aren't worth my time and energy in an age when there's so much to do, so much to see, and so little time.

The people moaning about marriage and birth rates can go pound sand.

I respect your individual right to this attitude, but consider that the wonders you enjoy today are sustained by a population of a particular size. As populations contract, the number of places that support the activities and adventures you want to have will necessarily contract as well. Imagine a campfire, throughout the night you'll have to move the dwindling coals closer together if you can't add more wood.

So, on an individual basis, this "alone and my way" approach is valid, but if adopted at scale it begins to look parasitic.

The opposite side, consider the fact that overpopulation leads to the inability to access the activities and adventures a person may want to enjoy. Imagine a campfire, throughout the night you'll have to move the dwindling coals closer together because the forest has been stripped clear and there's no more wood to add.

In this world, the parasitic nature of individuals on the environment robs it of its bounty.

In the original, the analogy was that the fire and wood represented the economic capacity of humanity and the population, respectively. Your rebuttal doesn’t make sense.

A dwindling population also has lesser impact on the environment. Ironically, with your example a smaller population would also mean you have fewer people to compete with in finding a camp site and gathering firewood. In terms of long-term health of humanity on Earth a shrinking population is not necessarily a bad thing.

I don’t think you understood the analogy either, but I’ll try to address your point.

Yes, fewer people means less human-generated impact on the environment. It follows that zero people minimizes the impact of humans on the environment. I don’t think that’s the direction you have in mind, or at least I hope not.

Let’s assume that you want a balance between the number of people on the planet and the carrying capacity of the planet, inclusive of all of the negative externalities caused by humans. Moreover, you probably want to build in some buffer so that people with disabilities or with varying lifestyles and ideologies that lead them to not reproduce can still exist in this world without causing populations to collapse utterly.

So what percent does that look like to you? Do the people of this world, intent on maintaining your ideal equilibrium, have compassion for 5% of their fellows who can’t or won’t reproduce? 20%? 99%? And why not one more?

What is the proper ratio between the members of society responsible for supporting the ongoing existence of the species and those who do not shoulder that responsibility?

Does that help you understand why I said that there is some threshold beyond which it seems parasitic to only take the benefits of a healthy population?

I'm not asserting that there's any correct number of children people shoot have - quite the opposite I'm respecting the choices people are currently making. I don't see any issue with that choice, I'd be indifferent if the population were expanding.

I can turn and flip this same question on its head. Why not 95% or 90% as much as whatever you think is the stable population mark. Why not 50% or 20%? This is not eugenics, this is people voluntarily choosing not to have kids. On what grounds are we justified in asserting that the "correct' number of children is higher than what people are choosing?

Since you raised concerns about the climate, I'm going to assume you agree with the concept that when people exploit the environment (e.g. nickel mines) it takes a long time for the environment to recover (thousands or millions of years). The environment is a resource for humanity since we need it to survive and it has a particular regeneration rate.

Similarly, humans need the production of humanity to survive, let's call that the cultural resource. People who want to do activities and have adventures and travel to see things exploit this cultural resource to do so -- literally, in a second law of thermodynamics sense. Now, this cultural resource takes time to recover just like the climate, but unlike the climate the mechanism of regeneration is people. People create technologies, art, places, activities, adventures, medicine, and provide all sorts of goods and services. By doing so, they regenerate this shared cultural resource.

Now, again, the population itself is a resource with a regeneration rate. However, people themselves exploit this resource primarily through their own birth and death, and themselves are the mechanism of regeneration through sexual reproduction.

I assume that none of this is a surprise to you, but only that you might not think of them in this way of being resources and having regeneration mechanisms.

Consider then that if you don't want the environmental resource to be exhausted (vs unrestricted free market capitalism) and you don't want the human population resource to be exhausted (vs death cults) but you also want to allow the free exploitation of the cultural resource (vs totalitarianism or the historical results of communism), then you need the people that opt-out of the population regeneration mechanic -- having and raising children -- to disproportionally contribute the maintenance of this mechanic and be happy to do so.

If enough folks opt-out (because reasons) and are unwilling to help families ("alone and my way"), then that is demonstrably parasitic and exactly equal to voting for the collapse of the population.

So let's talk about a 99% rate of defection (opting out). If you begin with a stable population in generation 1 and want a stable population in generation 2, then this population is demanding that the 1% of the gen 1 population regenerate themselves to create gen 2. This is tantamount to reproductive slavery. It gets even worse if those defectors are also unwilling to disproportionally support the population raising children. It will be a literal hell for those people. They would form a underclass worse than in the Handmaid's Tale. Literally farmed.

So, at a 99% defect rate, it is objectively true that defectors, individually and collectively, are parasites of the environment, the culture, and humanity.

At a 5% defect rate, it's probably tolerable. At 20%, one out of five, it's probably already unsustainable.

The bottom line is that we all need to share the burden of having and raising children.

So Japanese, South Koreans, and Italians are living in the Handmaid's Tale? They're being "literally farmed"? SK has a birth rate of 0.8, less than half the replacement rate. The rate of "defectors" is well above to 20% unsustainable figure you claim. You're making some very wild statements about something plenty of developed countries are already experiencing.

Back here in reality, humans have not needed significant labor to survive since the industrial revolution. Shrinking populations put strain on economies as there's less labor force participation, and it stresses financial systems as pensions and social security systems have to cope with fewer workers supporting more retirees. But it's not an apocalypse, automation eases labor strains and more taxes to fund retirement programs. Again, shrinking populations is something countries are already experiencing and it's not destroying countries.

You’re not reading and are reacting emotionally. I said farming happens when the 99% need the 1% to do all reproduction. If you want me to take your response seriously, I’d appreciate an apology.

Nobody owes you an apology because your argument is fundamentally flawed.

You say the 99% need the 1% to do reproduction, but do they really? The 99%, by opting out of having children, have clocked out on the very premise of the question of population stability. They either don't care insofar as procreation, or won't mind seeing humanity as a species go extinct.

The only ones who "want a stable population" (your words) are the 1% who do have children. The 1% who do have children will maintain humanity onwards while the 99% who didn't will eventually clock out of this plane of existence to no concern of the 1%. It's a self-solving problem, the world will always be inherited by those who outbreed the rest.

I'm going to include a response to your other post[1] since I can't be bothered to reply twice and it's related to this one:

What you're doing is implying people have arbitrary obligations and quotas to society and humanity, and guilt tripping the people who refuse to oblige those arbitrary obligations and quotas.

Nobody owes anyone anything coming into this world. Nobody is obliged to have children or otherwise continue humanity as a species. Nobody is obliged to marry someone.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36329392

Sigh.

I was setting up an argument to show how impossible it was for either everyone to have children -- we need to be compassionate for the disabled and tolerant of those who make lifestyle choices -- or for only a fractional part of the population to bear the responsibility for having children in order to motivate the point that there is some value between ~5% and ~95% of people that opt out where their collective decisions have become parasitic even though they each have the individual right do make that decision.

I'm not sure why that's so hard to understand. It seems like a simple, straightforward application of statistics of groups. I'd love to learn why you keep choosing to interpret it as an attack on the individual.

EDIT: > They either don't care insofar as procreation, or won't mind seeing humanity as a species go extinct.

The person I was responding to excluded extinction as a possibility that they considered valid. Obviously, if you individually want humanity to die off and want to consume its cultural outputs without contributing until you yourself die off, you're welcome to do so. Seems rather sad though.

The fact you are trying to guilt trip me, in spite of supposed respect for differing opinions, demonstrates my point that most human relations are bullshit.

I've got better things to do and see with my limited time than deal with that, let alone on a permanent basis like in a marriage.

Whatever you do as an individual is none of my business.

As to human relations, this is a public forum where messages are published publicly for everyone to read. My response to your post was not a reply to you, it was an opportunity to examine the impacts of the ideology you proclaim at scale. You feeling bad because it was observed that this ideology has extremely negative consequences at scale is not a guilt trip. Do whatever you want.

As food for thought: relationships are often greater than the sum of their parts.

My tribe/community/circle enriches my life well beyond the experiences I could have by myself.

But there in lies the condition. You need to have a tribe/community/circle to take you in. There's going to be people for whom no community will accept them.

You forget people who neither need nor desire a community.

Mountain hermits exist, even if they don't live on mountains.

You can create your own community. Rarely will anyone else do it for you.

Apple delayed our societies' faith by not allowing NSFW content on the VisionPro.

While the article offers nothing of value outside of its provocative title (but I clicked so I guess it works), I’m genuinely fascinated by why every article about dating here leads to such a slew of poor comments. I mean the discussion is full of entitlement, misogyny, cynicism or a mix of the three.

A casual reading lends me to think that this is because this place skews rather young.

My guess was always that HN has a lot of men who moved to Silicon Valley that has more men then women or work long hours in male only jobs. So, there is a lot of resentment over unsolvable situation.

The nature of dating is that the people who have a good experience dating get married, and so they stop dating. People who have only bad experiences keep dating. So the people who are eternally struggling have much more experience at it and have far more to say about dating.

It's kind of like job interviewing. If you do five job interviews, get three offers, are happy at the job you take and stay there for five years, then you're averaging one interview per year. If you're struggling to find a good job you can do ten interviews per week forever. So the people who are eternally struggling at the job interview process have much more experience at it and have far more to say about it.

> The nature of dating is that the people who have a good experience dating get married, and so they stop dating. People who have only bad experiences keep dating. So the people who are eternally struggling have much more experience at it and have far more to say about dating.

It’s kind of untrue nowadays. Married people get divorced. People split. Plenty are not interested in marriage.

As a data point, I am a currently single average looking and averagely successful guy with no intention of ever getting married (I will probably settle into a long term relationship at some point but I’m not planning to in the near term) and who has dates (as much as such a thing exists here) semi-regularly when I feel like it. I have nothing particularly bad to say about the experience. At its heart, it’s just meeting someone new. It’s not particularly complicated or difficult hence my puzzlement.

The second woman I dated I married. It's been 20 years so far. This is the opposite or what anyone tells you to do.

What misogyny? Women are not above criticism and most of the comments dropped here can easily be backed up by data.

Some people believe the notion that women are attracted to status is inherently a misogynist idea. When people allege misogyny and other *isms, it's often more telling about what they believe is offensive.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what misogyny is. The issue is not if statements here can or can not be backed by data (some probably can, some can’t, some are misrepresented).

Misogyny is not prejudice. It also simply is dislike or contempt for women as a gender. Something which is clearly on display throughout this whole page.

The whole page? Surely it must be trivial then for you to produce a few dozen examples?

In modern western culture, women as a group are indeed above criticism.

If you were to make the same sorts of broad generalizations and value judgements that are made towards men as a group every day in major news outlets and universities against women, it would be derided as misogyny.

Any sort of statement about women as a group that could be perceived as negative must be predicted on the assertion that the potentially negative trait is due to society, patriarchy, or men.

These are my personal perceptions based on observing how discourse on sex and gender has been conducted over the last decade or so.

Broad generalizations about any group, especially those that are obviously incorrect, deserve criticism. Half of the human population is not a monolith, lamenting that "women" all feel the same way about something just makes everyone else think you've never talked to many.

Tons of comments here are basically "women only care about using your money" which is just obviously untrue in the aggregate but does reveal that you have only interacted with gold diggers. It says much more about the commenter than women.

It is consistently reported to be an almost flawless pattern: women do not date/marry down whilst men do. And they continue to show this behavior unchanged even when they have plenty of resources on their own.

Hence, for women wealth is a primary and non-negotiable selector and they do pretty much behave as a monolith in this matter.

Surely you have noticed that online forums such as this have things they obsess over.

Consider any WFH/RTO thread is filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth referencing "they" trying to make their commercial REIT money; any Google thread has WAGOT referencing the shutting down of products; any Apple thread to contain WAGOT regarding CSAM scanning and so on.

It is the nature of this forum to Wail and Gnash One's Teeth.

Im not sure given the information from (my non - American) environment.

1.) I sometimes talk with young woman about this topic. A few mentioned who are ambitious and do wish having kids start to think about getting a house man as a father. Also when I mentioned this studies some women complain that man prefer women with lower earnings... We know that prestige, earning much etc. is a big thing in US. These observations should be checked and I think, only one mentioned study did it.

2.) The explanation with video games is very narrow. We know, that school teachers in high developed countries tend to prefer girls.

3.) Well I see myself as counter example. Though high educated I do have a lack of money as a long term CS student (well, a thing in Germany :D ) Though I have "manly" hobbies (sailing, techno clubbing, networking in mainly manly enviroments) it is not I have lack of interested women. Maybe, because I dont live in America.

Also incels movement are a thing and they cant be explained with the given text.

The first line was all I needed to know. “Oh he doesn’t got to Yale? He’s out!”

Online dating has is enumerating the qualities we think our ideal mate will have. We think that if we tick the boxes of what we like we can save time. Then we complain that there aren’t enough candidates! But this process eliminates people who might be an awesome fit because they don’t match some arbitrary metric.

My favorite is must be 6’ or taller. Seriously? You think you could never love someone who’s five foot eleven and a half? If you have criteria like that and can’t find anyone to date I don’t feel sorry for you. But I do have some advice. Put down your list and go meet people. You’ll be blown away by how unexpectedly you like or just click with the oddest assortment.

it seems like society has engineered itself into a real pickle as evidenced by all the hand-wringing articles on this topic.

personally i find serious relationships to be a giant waste of time, probably because i'm no good at maintaining them or i just don't check all the boxes, or whatever. i like dating and commitment-free sex, so i really don't have much incentive to improve. i'm basically financially independent so i don't really care about paying for things most people would split. in the few instances i've sincerely tried to keep it going, it ended after no particular incident/fight/whatever. just fizzled out, or a non-dramatic breakup over text message, which doesn't really bother me. these things come and go and i have no real hangups about attachment or have any dependence issues.

personally i think there is no "fixing" this, at least for 20 or 30 years until a brand new generational cohort come into their 20s and 30s. non-immigrants are simply just going to get married less and have less children than were historically 'normal'.

I like that you put "fixing" in quotes. People are of two minds. They think they want some things while their revealed preferences are different. Id vs. ego, maybe. There's good things about relationships, but I don't think anyone ever got into committed relationships for fun; I think they were forced into them by their environment (finances, family). It's good not to be forced into them, but then you lose the good things to be found in them. But people want to have their cake and eat it, which doesn't make sense. So it's not a black and white thing; even to a singular person, the "fix" or the "problem" may seem both good and bad.

I'm skeptical about future generations though. If you frame "not having kids/serious relationships" as "bad", then I think things will continue to get "worse". :p There's nothing for future people to figure out; the incentives that were once in play will continue to erode. It's like expecting war deaths to decrease as weapons continue to grow in power.

UNLESS you're talking about the state growing people in pods. And generally going transhuman/posthuman (and post-"relationship" and post-"two people fucking"). I think that's the ultimate future, and it's way better than the setup we've had traditionally in all but romance and current Overton window.

I found Scott Alexander’s article on the same topic more informative and accurate to what I’ve experienced https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/hypergamy-muc...

Off-topic, but on article, this starts to be the ratio at which disparate impact laws come in to effect (when it comes to hiring criteria, for instance):

> Broken down by degree type across all ages in the U.S., for every 100 men with bachelor’s degrees, there are 130 women. For those with master’s degrees, for every 100 men there are 134 women.

"you're out of swipes", then "oops, you missed a match", and "pay regularly and increasingly more to be even visible". Approaching in real life... my tolerance to being laughed off or ghosted is below zero. Can a man have any expectations and requirements these days?

> A study led by economics researcher Brecht Neyt of Ghent University found that, on Tinder, women were 91 percent more likely to “like” a man with a master's degree compared with a bachelor's degree. The researchers used the same male profiles, the only difference was level of education.

No ethics board in the economics department?

I’ll bite, what’s unethical here?

Then why are “Incels” a thing?

Then why are there dating coaches - always for men?

Then why online dating platforms always have a lot more men than women?

I'd love to see some data from Europe. The American education system is very limited and seems to reward obedience above all else. College graduation rates for graduates of all boys high schools would also be interesting to compare and contrast. 'Redshirt'ed boys is another demographic to look at.

Counter-argument: Pushing Boundaries: Female Sexuality From World War II to the Sexual Revolution [0]

* Millions of eligible bachelors were shipped across the ocean, leaving a huge imbalance. And yet the sexual morals became more promiscuous.

> Much of the literature surrounding women during World War II focuses on women in industry, family life, and military services and largely ignores those women who sought sexual liberation and freedom through promiscuity, casual sexual encounters, and a wide range of sexual interactions. These women faced a nearly impossible set of conflicting messages. For an odd slip of time, a vast majority of the female population was effectively single (Israel, 2002), and although they might not have directly challenged sexual mores, these young women left a legacy of “sexual self-assertion that would generate both conservative and liberal responses in the postwar years, inspiring calls for female autonomy during the ‘sexual revolution’ to come”

* Around the same time "Calling" was replaced by "Dating", with a complete flip of gender expectations.

> During the first several decades of the twentieth century, however, the calling system began to lose traction, as “courtship became more and more a private act conducted in public spheres. Dating had been established in urban, working-class youth in the first two decades of the twentieth century. By 1920, however, middle-class youth adopted the practice (Spurlock, 2016). The primary difference between the date and the call was where the event took place. The call always took place in the girl’s home and almost always with some level of supervision from her parents. The central aspect of the date was that it took place in the public sphere, at such places as restaurants, theaters, or dance halls. Along with the shift in courting systems from calling to dating came a reverse in the roles for men and women. If a young woman wanted to date, she could no longer extend an invitation to her home or ask the young man to take her on a date. The control in the dating culture moved from the woman’s sphere, the private sphere, into the man’s sphere, the public sphere.

* Dating in public became dominated by economics. With the flipped gender roles this economic burden fell on Men, while also introducing economic competition into the personal relationship.

> “Dating also moved courtship into the economy” (Bailey, 1988, p. 21), which required money- men’s money. Money became a fundamental part of the dating system, which led to increased competition in the American courtship system. The centrality of money in the dating system signified a system of exchange, with the woman contributing her company and the man contributing his company as well as his money. In economic terms, the woman was selling her company to the man (Bailey, 1988). Since the man was responsible for expenses, he decided when the dates would occur and with whom he wanted to spend his time. The culture of dating supported the economic system of scarcity and abundance, and thus created a culture of competition amongst America’s youth for the greatest resources, or the most popular date.

* With the competition there became a "rating" system (sound familiar?)

> Under this complex, Waller theorized, college students used a system of rating and dating to place each other in a systematical hierarchy of eligibility based on traits they deemed desirable. Students, both men and women, who met certain criteria, were considered to be at the top of the social hierarchy: “they may be placed in a hypothetical Class A” (Waller, 1937, p. 730). For men to rate high they had to belong to one of the top fraternities on campus, be well-dressed, know how to dance, maintain a proper appearance, use good pick-up lines, have access to a car, and possess enough money to spend on dates. Women’s guidelines were similar in regards to appearance, but it was also important that she be considered a sought-after date (Bogle, 2008; Waller, 1937).

* Finally, "Going Steady" was a method women could use to escape the sexual double-standard and have sex (and other fun sex-related activities)

> These relationships brought new opportunities and meanings for sexual intimacy, and teenagers, especially females, had to navigate the complex and often ambiguous social rules set forth. Going steady offered teens a level of commitment that allowed for more sexual freedom and young men and women could more easily explore the erotic (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988; Spurlock 2016).

> any heterosexual teen couples that were engaging in sexual acts, including heavy petting and intercourse, were going steady and experimenting. These relationships allowed for young boys and girls to engage in sexual acts, basically hidden in plain sight. The level of commitment of these steady relationships “provided the context, setting, and rationale for widespread sexual experimentation among heterosexual teens and young adults in the 1950s” (Littauer, 2015, p. 118), which led to increased sexual intimacy for young people that were in these relationships. Engaging in intercourse while in committed, steady relationships allowed young girls the opportunity to explore the sexual minefield of contradictory beliefs. This “created a cultural middle ground between explicit sexual mores and tolerated sexual practices that would influence Americans’ beliefs about sexual acceptability for decades” (Littauer, 2015, p. 113). Teenage girls and young women had the opportunity to experiment sexually due to the belief that their actions were justified because of the loving nature of their relationships.

* And yet the double-standard empowered boys and men, while only giving partial power to women.

> Although going steady afforded opportunities for increased sexual intimacy, young women and teenage girls continued to live with the cultural expectation that sex only occurred within the confines of marriage. There was little acknowledgement from older adults, the media, or society that women had interest in and the desire for sex. Girls were expected to act as if they wanted sex, but not act upon their urges (Littauer, 2015). In contrast, to be popular, girls were expected to participate in a certain level of sexual experimentation, at the very least petting, but they could not go too far or risk a bad reputation. The double standard that developed during the early part of the twentieth century persisted through the 1950s. It was very clear to almost every young girl that a double standard existed, yet where the line was drawn between just enough and too much was very ambiguous. If a girl’s sex life became a topic of gossip, she would be ostracized from the groups who were concerned over reputation, and to a vast majority of American, reputation was everything (Bailey, 1988; Bailey, 1999; Spurlock, 2016)

> The sexual “double standard worked mainly to the benefit of boys,” yet “enforcement came from the girls” (Spurlock, 2016, p. 93). Boys were free to express themselves sexually, while girls were expected to adhere to the confusing set of ideological standards. Since girls were expected to set the limits, if a couple went too far, it was the female’s fault. Boys, however, pushed the limits and often crossed the line from subtle pressure to outright aggression (Bailey, 1999; D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). Young men were even taught by their peers and professionals various techniques to coerce women who expressed sexual reticence. Sexual coercion and aggression were seldom categorized as assault or rape during this time period. It was seldom that women reported sexual assault.

[0]: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=189...

as somebody said below, the headline should be "highly educated women unable to find somebody even richer than them."

Quotas in education is always a fun topic.

This makes me wonder if Karl Marx‘ analysis of Capitalism is all wrong and not because of economic reasons but rather because men feel compelled to climb the hierarchy, even if it means turning into "exploitative capitalists", to impress women.

That's actually part of Marx's analysis in more words, specifically in how social status is a main driver for working people to give in to the logic of capitalism. Ultimately his argument is that this is fundamentally irrational and that even insofar as there is to be some kind of social status, it's more rational for working people to make that less dependent on capital as they are structurally prevented from achieving it.

But yeah as an argument in general "people are selfish and only care about struggling for themselves", if that's actually true it does undermine his whole argument.

Individual vs collective incentives no? An individual worker might have a say 1% chance of achieving high status in the capitalist society while the same worker will have a 100% chance of achieving average status in the communist society (though sure plenty of other ways to achieve high status than money).

Basically, except that it's so unlikely for a worker to achieve truly high status (basically, true financial independence, fat FIRE in today's terms) that it might as well be close to impossible.

Tldr, get your degrees up fellas

And a masters if you are interested in getting a almost 2x chance of getting swiped right on.

Programmers don't have time for love.

More like most women don't find men who program interesting/fun.

Most men who program aren't "good with socializing" let alone "good with socializing with women".

> More like most women don't find men who program interesting/fun.

I hear a lot of heterosexual male SW engineers lament this, but I find it not true in practice. We live in a world dominated (and even inundated) by messaging that navigating technology is a recipe for success. It usually pays decently to well. Programmers don't have dating problems from their profession.

The issue is that the personality traits that tend to correlate with good programming and software engineering - logic, reasoning, detachment, analysis, thinking outside the box - don't tend to correlate well with interpersonal and especially romantic interpersonal relationships. In order to be successful in relationships, those types of minds have to consistently and constantly do things they consider completely irrational and uncomfortable, which is difficult to maintain.

All these things have their own kind of logic to them. It's possible to learn/train people/empathy. There's a lot of people who can't get themselves to believe that it's worth investing, in though. But people skills do come in handy, also when solving non-romantic problems at scale.

It has little to do with lack of empathy. I've found the problem is far more to do with oversharing conclusions based on observations. Empathy is typically in hindsight. You expect the other person to be intelligent, observant, reasonable, and logical. What you did say is not something that would have offended yourself or other like-minded individuals. So when it does offend, the empathy kicks in and you realize your mistake. Which is often just over-estimating the other person.

Empathy as a skill is relevant in adapting the way you assert the same logical points toward a person, e.g. by taking their state of mind into account when it comes to phrasing, pacing, how much context to include. On the fly, with course-corrections.

If you want an engineering analogy, it's a bit like adding a suspension system to a wheel to improve traction.

It's very practical!

Your statement even downplays the negative reception thinkers like these receive when they share their observations. One "tactful" lapse and that first impression is set. It is a serious uphill battle from that point on.

many men who program have an avoidant attachment style?

N=1, but...

I'm a male who programs and have an avoidant attachment style. I haven't struggled to find a date since 11th grade or so.

thats a first world thing. I've met plenty of women outside the united states who found it interesting including my last two girlfriends. I ended up teaching them both the basics of javascript!

Programming is a low status job. You might make 7 figures as an engineer but you’re gonna be dateless because programming is still associated with low status.

Status is very important for most women.

The bullshit titles that so often make us roll our eyes come in handy here.

You write REST APIs thirty-five hours a week? "Communications Designer". You oversee two juniors? "Team Lead". You tweak microcode? "R&D Specialist". And so on.

The word is foundering not floundering.

Both work.

foundering = fail or break down floundering = struggle or stagger helplessly.

both work! I actually think `floundering` works better in context - "men breaking down" versus "men struggling".

To speak frankly, what are women doing with all this supposed surplus of education? I don't exactly see turning tides in terms of women beginning to dominate markets or leadership positions because they're starting businesses and startups and taking over boards and middle management positions.

Anecdotally, I've seen these single women, they're all waiting until they're past their 20s to find a partner and they expect them all to be complete people by the time they meet them.

I don't see as much of a concept of growing up together off the foundations of who you are as a person today as I've heard it expressed from older colleagues I've worked with.

Plainly, women are asking for too much, and too late in life.

> Plainly, women are asking for too much, and too late in life.

Ah yes, the hive mind of women.

> they're all waiting until they're past their 20s to find a partner and they expect them all to be complete people by the time they meet them

I don't think this is female-specific. I see a lot of young men around me delaying "getting serious" into their mid-30s too, and have very high standards by that point.

I'd include myself. I met my wife at 30, and by that time I was also looking for someone in a similar life stage to mine.

Yeah, I see the same problem with young men, too. People say the dating pool turns in their favor by the time they get to their 30s, but you've missed out on an entire possible era of your life together with someone at that point.

And the dating pool absolutely does not look the same.

It's definitely true that my wife I say "I wish I had met you five years earlier" a lot, e.g. around things like starting a fam. There's something to what you say there, it gives you more runway in HN parlance.

Then again, it's not guaranteed she would appreciate you-but-five-years-earlier, and vice versa. A person probably undergoes a bit more character development than a VC firm does.

Given that we're no longer with the people who we were seeing 5 years earlier ... yep.

"More people are waiting until their 30s to settle down" is a wildly different claim than "women are asking too much."

If the dating pool looks a lot different after that decade that also suggests that a lot of people are still "settling down" earlier, too.

So is the claim that "women are asking for too much, and too late in life" based in 30something men who fucked around in their 20s not having grown up as much as the women during that decade or something?

I met my wife in my 30s, on an app even, I also found I had lost patience for women who acted like they were in their early or mid 20s still.

Yeah, that's possibly me in five years.

"what are women doing with all this supposed surplus of education?"

Maybe a surplus of education just means...they spent more time and money on school?

Dominating markets and leadership positions, building businesses...how much formal education you have rarely plays a big role in these endeavors...

Just my personal experience.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. It's not a useful social signal: it just means you spent more time and money and incurred more debt than men without any additional context.

They are outcompeting men in their premarriage years; in the most significant metros, single women's income matches or exceeds single men's. And as of 2016 40% of managers are female.

I agree that women tend to not be going for the riskiest jobs or those that require significant tradeoffs in work-life balance; for those, you need a supportive spouse, and there are both demand- and supply-side issues in pairings where males play the supportive role to a female primary earner.

> I agree that women tend to not be going for the riskiest jobs or those that require significant tradeoffs in work-life balance; for those, you need a supportive spouse, and there are both demand- and supply-side issues in pairings where males play the supportive role to a female primary earner.

Choosing more risky jobs may be male biology and the gender equality paradox.

No increase in supply of supportive husbands would significantly increase the amount of women choosing riskier careers.

> Iceland consistently ranks as the most gender-equal nation. It is also the nation where men and women are most likely to pursue sex-typical jobs.[1]

Also does a person truly need a supportive spouse to undertake a risky career? My assumption is that people decide their career paths well before marriage, and some men choose their career to be a more attractive dating prospect.

[1] https://bigthink.com/the-present/gender-equality-paradox/

That was badly stated on my part, and I mostly agree with you on the risky-career part (though the work-life tradeoff is a separate axis and one where I think my point holds).

Men probably do choose riskier careers early on in significant part because it increases payouts in the relationship market relative to women. Going from well-off to rich doesn't actually improve material well-being much for either men or women, but it does significantly improve relationship prospects for men in a way it doesn't for women. It becomes a matter of economics: the real payout (inclusive of non-monetary elements) for success in a risky bet is higher for men than women, and so men choose to take those risky bets more often.

> they're all waiting until they're past their 20s to find a partner and they expect them all to be complete people by the time they meet them.

I'm in my 30s and never married. I fully expect someone to come as a full person with an education and career. I am beyond glad that I didn't get married to my high school sweet heart or someone I dated in my early 20s when I was still a kid. I am nothing like I was when I was 20, or 25. Maybe even 30.

I know way, way too many people who did that and are now divorced. And a lot of the women in those relationships had children very early and didn't have a chance to get an education or start a career so now that they're divorced and on their own they're having a very hard time securing good income.

Women are definitely not "asking for too much." I would rather be happily single than compromise heavily on my expectations, and I'd wager the sort of women we're talking about feel the same.

> I know way, way too many people who did that and are now divorced. And a lot of the women in those relationships had children very early and didn't have a chance to get an education or start a career so now that they're divorced and on their own they're having a very hard time securing good income.

My parents talked about how when they were married 'they were just kids' even though they married in their mid 20s.

I wonder if this trend of marriages happening more into the late 20s to early 30s has a large source from the difficulty of obtaining financial stability, and additionally if it is part of the causes of the US low fertility rate.

Would we still wait to mid/late 20s to get serious if all else were equal but the financial stability to buy a house etc. were there as easily as it was for previous generations?

I think a big part of it is a huge portion of millennials are the children of divorced families. I have zero desire or itch to be married. If a partner of mine really wanted to be married I'd be fine with it. I also have no desire to have children.

The other poster mentioned that eventually I'll get married or "life will pass me by". At least that's how I'm reading it. I don't need a partner or to be married to enjoy life. I don't feel that I'm missing anything. I can do whatever I want.

I think it is just your bubble. There is nobody who is divorced in my social bubble. Young and old, all manage it somehow. I am also a millennial.

No one is. It doesn't make you unique or more true to yourself by waiting later in life. You'll get married and _still change._

My point is that people are deluding themselves into this idea that you need to be a finished person before finding a partner.

You will grow together and effect one another. And if you're a committed partner, you'll build each other up.

If you think hard times are a limit for you personally and divorce is always an option in regular everyday struggles, you're going to face some real hard realities one day when you realize options that you had are no longer available while life passes you by.

I think definitions of "a finished person" are being mismatched here. in my experience most people just want a partner that is a functional adult. Knows how to eat properly. Understands taxes. Can speak intelligently about cost of living topics like budgeting groceries and entertainment. Can drink moderately on a weeknight knowing they have to go to work the next day.

Edited to add: In my experience, if you don't date someone who "can adult", you will have to parent your partner, which doesn't go all that well if you're not kinky like that.

Yeah, and all of that sounds totally reasonable until you have a working knowledge of lots of interactions between tons of real people you've actually spoken with and had connections with to learn how life actually works.

Your requirements per a "functional adult" are an example of people asking for too much because they have no practical understanding of reality:

Americans don't eat properly. The average American is overweight.[1]

Americans don't know anything about taxes.[2]

Americans don't understand cost of living. Barely anyone knows what the CPI-W is or how it differs from the CPI-U.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm

[2]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/americans-dont-know...

I wouldn't consider weight to be a good indicator of capacity to make meals. I know thin people who I wouldn't trust to make me a cup of water and I know fat people who can adhere to a strict diet for their children.

I also wouldn't consider CPI-W and CPI-U to be cost-of-living concerns. I consider being able to say "hey, honey, we can't spend 500$ on your mobile game because eggs cost 7 for a dozen at the grocery store this week, we need to revise our budget" to be adult behavior.

Missing the forest for the trees.

Fat people truly adhering to proper eating don't stay fat. Cost of living and budgets are two separate but related topics.

I think you're kind of missing the point I'm trying to make. There's no point in someone who can define a term for broader trends if they cannot balance a personal budget. The capacity to define a broader trend can inform budgets, but I wouldn't date someone who is shocked when they have no money left for food because they spent it all on a shoe sale. I wouldn't consider that person a functional adult even if they happened to be thin and understood nuances between cost of living statistical measurements.

[flagged]

I never said people don't get budgets wrong. I merely said it's reasonable to try to prioritize dating people who can sensibly budget according to their income and their cost of goods and services in their area. It shouldn't be a consistent problem that you run out of rent money because you didn't budget for paying rent. I think you're misunderstanding my words because you're conflating these sets of preferences like some kind of demand for idealized humans. I think I'm pointing out that people's desires aren't unreasonable and exaggerating them is just strawman behavior.

Savings rates being at all-time lows doesn't mean that people don't know how to budget. It might be that budgeting has become much harder. Similarly, I don't think someone being fat means they don't understand how to cook a healthy meal. It might be that keeping thin has become much harder.

Personal swipes will get you banned here, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points without any of that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> my early 20s when I was still a kid

You were not a kid. There's an old lady on my road whose (late) husband built their house when he was 18. Maybe he was still a kid.

> I am nothing like I was when I was 20, or 25. Maybe even 30.

It would be very weird if you did not change at all between 20 and 30 but nothing precludes doing that with someone else. 99% of modern relationship advice is bad because it tries to convince people that needing to show up to life with everything figured out is superior to figuring things out together. For almost everyone, the latter is a lot more workable. That doesn't mean it will be free from hardship, but it opens up enormous advantages. Time is not free.

I'm obviously not using "kid" in the legal sense. I cannot believe I'm having to write this. I'm referring to maturity and wisdom, experience.

If I want to call my 20 year old self a kid, I'm going to do so without any concern for your input.

I don't believe women past their 20s are "too late in life" to be seeking a partner.

I for one would not want to have a long-term partner with someone below their 20's. They're too young, cannot even go for a casual heart-to-heart over beers/wine, and have no understanding of budgeting, tax analysis, healthcare planning, or any other number of basic adult administration. I'll have to parent them though this, which is supremely un-sexy.

If she wants kids and she is ~35 then one bad shot means missing out on kids.

The poster above specifies <20, so I'm talking about <20 year old women.

You said "I don't believe women past their 20s are "too late in life" to be seeking a partner.". That means 30s. It's not too late, but certain risks are much higher.

I didn't say there is no upper limit. I disagreed that the 20s is the upper limit.

Making more money in better jobs, in better towns, healthier, better lives.

> To speak frankly, what are women doing with all this supposed surplus of education?

What's funny is that I talked about Bourdieu a whole afternoon during last week's strike, and today, two conversations where my 10 year old knowledge could be used.

Women historically had low economic, symbolic and social capital, but could have high cultural one. They used this cultural capital to gain the others.

But Bourdieu explain that capital structure is a chiasma, and that people with high economic capital will push to get their offspring to get cultural capital (or at least symbols, aka diploma), and people with high cultural capital will try to prevent it by creating other symbols (that was in the 70s, he basically predicted diploma inflation 40 years before it happened). In the meantime, people with high cultural capital will try to get high economic capital, and people with high economic capital will try to prevent that (basically having too much culture/knowledge is an hindrance to truly get on the highest march)

And I realized I don't understand him well enough to correctly explain his theories, so I scraped my explanations and left the basic, you should read him, but basically, it's inconsious phenomenon that isn't really caused by inconsious sexism (it might but I don't think so) but by capital structure.

Thanks for sharing this.

Please don't do gender flamewar on HN. "Women are asking for too much" is not going to end well, and the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I dont understand why they want me to login to read the article. I dont want an account, nor do i want to give you my email. I would rather leave the site than sign up. "Logins" are so antiquated.

A very longwinded essay whose obvious conclusion - that values will change in response to circumstances - is entirely missed, presumably to make problematising educated women the tacit point instead.

People learn and change: increasing numbers of women in education now will mean more relationships where expectations have changed in the future. This is likely to mean that, actually, some men with lower incomes than their partners stay at home to look after the kids. It is a natural consequence of an unequal society with greater parity of educational access. That's all.

It might suck for people who can't get over it, but on the whole, it'll improve society no end to see more fathers being full time carers for their children.

In all likelihood, we'll see a change of attitudes so that women will look for different things: domesticity seems the obvious choice. And frankly, it'll be nice to live in a world where doing the dishes is a personal characteristic that someone might value equally with income.

---

Not too related to the above, but the measurements of what women value is very likely to be WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialised, and the other two I forget. Economists have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail ($).

Not going to happen, women do not want an unemployed man.

Stay at home woman will "take care of children and household". Stay at home man will be first of all "unemployed".

Unemployment is easily made up for by a combination of "bad boy" personality traits and sufficiently wealthy parents.

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