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Comment by raincole | Hacker News Reader

Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship.

I'm not saying that intrinsitically wrong or right. I just like to know in which culture men are told these.

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I think this is accurate. Men are often ridiculed for thinking they are entitled anything. But especially so for sex and female attention.

It’s all accurate and inaccurate because people are all very different and come to different positions differently. Some believe they can “sin” under the cover of night and still keep their comfortable places in society as their sins weren’t seen nor known. Secrets and all that. Imagine how such a person would treat a sex worker. Could be very starkly different than what they’d expose the rest of the time.

You’ll notice I’m not working in absolutes here. She may have, but working the night she saw things that led her to draw certain conclusions from the things she saw and experienced.

I’d venture that she would be able to admit her experiences weren’t the end all be all of humanity though. But still very informative of the people in that space.

Edit-In my experience, whether someone is told explicitly that they can exploit another or not is irrelevant. The exploitive figure that out on their own often enough.

She only has experience with customers who seek her out though.

What about the type of men who would never ask for her services? She knows nothing about them.

You think the author has never had normal relationships with men? Why would you assume that?

Many normal men wouldn't want to form a long-term relationship with a current or former prostitute/sex worker, especially one that glorifies and defends that line of work instead of renouncing it completely, as the author does.

You’re saying that like you disagree

> Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected.

Walking up to a woman takes courage, which is a desirable quality. Why should a woman wan't a man, that lacks the balls to talk to her? The mating dance of many species has rules they have to follow. Complaining about them does zero for your dating success. The female decides if his display is good enough for her.

The App Bumble has women message first and it is strange for them.

The point that the OP was speaking to (refuting) is that men expect favors for free. OP's point is that they are not free at all and earned by subjecting oneself to risk and absorbing the adverse consequences of taking that risk.

That might work for some relationships, but not all. My wife made the first move, and technically I think she actually proposed first - but these gender roles are by no means hard coded and are primarily enforced through social structures.

Different strokes for different folks. Don't be so strict with your social structures and you'll probably be happier.

> Have men been told they're entitled...

Well...it is nice that you seem unaware of Andrew Tate, and the millions of boys and men who are eager followers of him and similar creeps...

I've literally only ever seen him mentioned for the sake of ridiculing him. I'm sure some followers of him exist just as I'm sure some neo-nazis exist, but is it anything other than a tiny fringe of irrelevant weirdos?

Interestingly enough, I had assumed the same thing. That, it was perhaps some cult-like very limited and extremist following limited to a select few.

My eyes were opened when I visited the Toronto area recently. From my (limited) anecdotal experience, there seems to be a fervent, messiah like following of Tate and the things he says. It was so bizarre to me.

P.S. not saying anything bad about Toronto! Just that it was my experience there. Please take things you read on the internet with a (bucket) of salt, and healthy skepticism!

No, he seems to have been able to effectively hack the social media algorithms and make himself an extremely prevalent voice. The mind virus definitely spread and touched millions, if not 10s of millions.

Young men are desperate for men they can look up to, to emulate. Rich, exciting, powerful, desired; this was Andrew Tate the image. Of course he was going to be popular! Mainstream media and the chattering classes are utterly powerless against this, we must elevate men of integrity so that young men do not throw their lives away. Black men, rich white men, Jordan Peterson if he cuts through, but men with integrity. Deconstruct society too much and you will just be left with the swirling entropy of nothingness. Socrates understood this, and we are fools to forget.

His YouTube channel alone had millions of subscribers.

The only thing I know about Andrew Tate is from this video (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=93i7xJDgUxQ) and I have come to the conclusion that he is hardly a person to aspire to.

> Have men been told they're entitled to sex and attention for free tho? I kinda feel it's the exact opposite. Men are told they need to pay for meals, rooms, travel, and housing and custody later. Men are told they should be the proactive side and take the risk of being rejected. I'd even say (at least in TV shows and movies) men are expected to be the funny ones and provide entertaining values in a relationship.

Do you think in providing those things, men then become entitled to sex or attention?

Which is to say you've listed a large number of material things, or fictional things (TV sitcoms have never been reality, but boy did they do a lot of damage to millenials), absent one core element: actually being a pleasant person. Or providing emotional support. Or empathy (I also note that excluded is "be attractive to the other person in some way").

Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person. To have any independent agency or preferences.

The list of things the commenter you're replying to brought up, in addition to "be attractive", is table stakes for receiving an iota of romantic attention from women.

We talk a ton about unrealistic beauty standards, "men talking, women listening", etc - but I have to wonder, maybe the world where women marry people one income decide above them is almost guaranteed to be a world where men are just more competitive in the workplace, even at the expense of running over their female colleagues. The incentives curve says that to expect anything at all of women, you have to be successful, ideally wealthy. So, you get the behavior the incentives curve tells people to enact.

An incentives curve that is set, ironically, by women

> The list of things the commenter you're replying to brought up, in addition to "be attractive", is table stakes for receiving an iota of romantic attention from women.

that's not true though. I'd say it's not great to be "ugly" (for some definition of the word) but you don't have to attractive. Heck, you can even be pretty poor, but as long as you you're a decent person to be around, it's not that hard.

Perhaps anecdotally a lot of guys find their way somehow (heck, I myself somehow landed a few serious relationships before I was successful, and I wasn’t above average looking then) but when guys read that women expect 6’ and 6 figures which is a very common thing you hear, and you consider that’s like 1% of men that fit just those criteria, it’s pretty off-putting to men who aren’t that and don’t expect to be that.

It’s certainly not all women, of course, but there are women who feel they shouldn’t “settle” for “less” than that. As though men who are 5’9 and make $85k are dirtbags or as though tall rich guys will treat you better or be better fathers. It is contributing to the big decrease in marriage even happening, in my opinion, as evidenced by increased average age of first marriage in the West.

To be perfectly clear: I’m not daft enough to think that no guys who aren’t in this “shallowly-defined 1%” are getting dates or getting married. Rather, I’m saying that culturally we are now saying it’s very okay, or even best practice, to be incredibly shallow in evaluating men, and that’s as wrong as evaluating women by their measurements.

Please read my comment in context. I was responding to this quote from the article:

> it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.

The article says for free. It doesn't say "for just being an attractive guy" or "for just being a nice person". For FREE. That's what the article says, not my word.

Also your comment is just appending more things to the list of things that men are expected to do...

The "for free" part is what I disagree with because it's almost totally the opposite of what I've seen.

Men are taught that their work is valuable but they are not; they feel entitled after putting in work, even if it's work that nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot or chatting up strangers at bus stops. No, they're not actually entitled to sex and attention, but the entire problem is that men feel like they paid and should therefore receive. "Free" is a complete reversal of the thought process of the entitled man.

>men feel like they paid and should therefore receive

Way to simplify something very complex. What do you expect men to do, quit trying everything and leave it up to fate? Keep up with women's magazines changing their minds by the day and chasing trends to get women to buy things they don't need? Accept the tax of women casually demanding 100+ bucks a date just to have a chance? Wait for them to socially atomize themselves even further to the point of 'maybe you should pick hobbies with more women instead of your own circles filled with men'? Oh wait, that last one also has the caveat of 'if you do it just to meet women, you are a creep'.

About everything in the world, people have expectations for putting in effort and others root for their success. This is the one topic society has gone nuts about chastising men, while both encouraging women to demand more and encouraging the same aggressive approach. Even just saying

>nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot

shows you're completely out of touch with the younger generations, given the increased demands in muscularity and fitness. Seriously, the women themselves are saying it and have been saying it for decades now.

The western world has gone completely mad in regards to dating, but the most vocal party can only shout 'men bad' no matter what they do beyond being a complete doormat with zero expectations.

Your comment is complete nonsense.

Men go to the gym for themselves and secondarily, because it raises their attractiveness and confidence in front of everyone, not just women. They chat up strangers at bus stops, because dating is a literal lottery for the guy.

Your second paragraph is true, but it's not related to entitlement.

When a man chats up women at a bus stop it's because he likes women and wants to date them, obviously; when he yells "fucking whore, you think your too good for me" after getting turned down it's because of entitlement, and part of the reason he feels entitled is that he put in effort to make the first move.

I have to admit I'm a bit tired and don't know where you're going with this. They're not saying that making the first move entitles one to sex; they're saying the standards are higher for men.

I do think that there are a lot of men who feel bitter that they'll never have sex with a woman, but I don't think anything in mainstream society condones such feelings. It's more of a subculture of lonely men turning misogynistic.

The article on question here is literally about prostitution. Sex can be bought for resources, people are selling it - the world's oldest profession.

It is also cheap.

So the notion that the problem is "men who will never have sex" is fairly obviously false.

When people say they’ll “never have sex”, it means they’ll never have sex with a romantic partner that wants them as much they do.

> Do you think in providing those things, men then become entitled to sex or attention?

You seem to have skipped the take the risk of being rejected part of that comment when reading.

If the ego damage of getting turned down by a prospective romantic partner is a risk worthy of any note at all then you need to be in therapy, not on the dating market.

So a normal, healthy person should be able to ask someone to hook up as easy as saying hello? The few people I've met who did that did not seem more healthy and well-adjusted than the rest of us; quite the opposite in fact.

This is a refutation of the claim of being entitled, not a complaint. If you're ready to be rejected, then you're not entitled. Reading sentences in context aids comprehension.

You sound just like my therapist, but you charge less

Ok, mr. thick-skin, not all of us are Supermen.

>actually being a pleasant person.

That is actually a classic "nice guy" trope. Women want a guy who is confident in stating his attraction to them and who doesn't dwell too much before asking her out or after being rejected. Being "pleasant" only works if you naturally meet a lot of women and the woman asks you out. The reason for that is that platonic friendships physically take up time and limit the number of women you can meet. If you have five female friends, the likelyhood of one of them being attracted to you is practically zero, because the number is way too small. Nobody is going to have a hundred female friends so that one of them is going to ask you out. The economics of male dating just don't allow it to happen.

>Basically: your list entirely excludes the right of the other person to...be a person.

How exactly did you come up with this response? Honestly, it feels like you copy pasted it from somewhere else and are now responding out of context.

How does splitting the bill dehumanise "the other person"?

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