>Perhaps the most volatile question: does widely available free porn encourage “incels,” the latest boogeymen from the Internet, and the calls for “enforced monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics who people inexplicably take serious?
In a world where objective journalism doesn’t pay, does every site become Vice?
Did you look at the linked article? The point is that it reinforces a potential implicit bias.
"Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."
No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
Perhaps I should have clarified that I wasn’t accusing the parent of being racist, but I do think it is an incidentally racist phrase we can probably do without.
Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic.
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to Hacker News? You've done it a fair bit and we're trying for better than that here.
> Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously.
While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece.
It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces.
> The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.
That would just be monogamy. The thing people are calling stupid is the idea that low status men should be assigned wives forcefully to prevent them from being sad, which is what some people have actually proposed.
It's pretty clear that TC is alluding to Jordan Peterson. When I read the enforced monogamy headline I thought that's an incredibly stupid thing for him to say, only to find out that (surprise, surprise) it was taken out of context. What he actually said can still be criticized, but isn't even worth a headline.
Let's be fair here, no one really cares about them being 'sad', the trouble is that having a lot of sexually frustrated young men around isn't going to help the stability of your society.
Which isn't to say that the way we dealt with this in the past, which was keeping women out of the work force and making them dependent on men for survival and status, is something we should go back to, just that there are consequences we'll have to recognize and deal with somehow.
False. That's how how was (deliberately?) misinterpreted. But "enforced monogamy" is a term used in e.g. evolutionary biology to describe, basically, just a societal norm of monogamy, maybe enforced by law (polygamy is illegal in most places). No-one's suggesting forcing women to marry someone.
> No-one's suggesting forcing women to marry someone.
The "incel" community frequently calls for the state to provide partners to incels. They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
Then, some portion of those incels believe that men should be able to expect that their sexual partners do not have any other partners, so suddenly this turns into believing that the state should provide incels a monogamous, long-term partner, essentially a wife.
But this is an extreme and absurd postition from a small group. It's not reasonable that people attribute this to Peterson. I would agree that he could've seen this coming, and could have clarified what he means from the start, rather than after the controversy.
He is purposefully obtuse. This way, hard core incels can believe he means the more extreme options, medium believers believe he means wherever positions they fall on the spectrum, and he has plausible deniability for journalists.
I don't think so. The problem is you have to be aware of other things he's saying to get at the correct, more charitable, interpretation. Namely, he's calling on people not to blame others or society at large for their problems, but to improve their own life and become a desirable potential mate. That's opposite of what he's accused of.
> Namely, he's calling on people not to blame others or society at large for their problems, but to improve their own life and become a desirable potential mate.
When Peterson calls on males to improve themselves, a substantial portion of his audience hears this as an exhortation to stop bitching and moaning, get off their asses... and then learn seduction techniques, push for political changes that would guarantee them a mate, or other steps that might be considered coercive or antisocial. Regardless of Peterson’s own position, never underestimate the ability of his statements to be interpreted in various fashions due to the seething anger of some of his listeners.
Dunno, seems like what we can label as "incels" (outside tiny violent group that pushed this term to mainstream) could now easily represent 50% of single male population. That's pretty bad for society. Look at Japan what is happening there. Or into China where planned male overpopulation is causing massive problems in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (stealing women) and they don't do the usual way of curbing excess males by the means of war, like practiced in the Middle East.
By definition sex workers are the opposite of monogamy.
Also what are you objecting to here? Prostitution in general? Having it subsidized by the state?
This argument:
> They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
This is not absurd. In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, anyone can buy the services of a sex worker. I don't know if it's true that the state subsidizes it for disabled people. If they do I imagine the idea is that having sex is an right and if you can't get it on your own (by either for free or by paying it) the state should supply it. Extending it to incels is not a huge leap.
The thing that confuses me about this explanation: we already do that. So it doesn't make much sense as a proposed solution to a supposedly new problem.
It seems plausible to me that the new problem (men without partners) is in part due to weakened social as well as legal norms around marriage, but via divorce rather than polygamy. In my opinion that doesn't mean we should go back to the old ways, but it's worth being aware of the connection.
That’s not the only way that monogamy can be enforced. For example, in many countries, sex outside of marriage is illegal with severe penalties, and divorce and adultery are either illegal or lead to social ostracism. These countries don’t assign anyone a spouse but they have very high rates of early marriage and low rates of divorce (even in abusive marriages) because of you want to have sex, which most people do, you need to get married.
Jordan Peterson did in a recent interview. Although he’s a university professor, it’s probably unfair to paint him as an academic when he’s devolved into a transparent charlatan.
They are referring to Jordan Peterson. He said something along those lines in a recent interview. I haven't read the interview, though, so I don't know the context.
Jordan Peterson is a blowhard conservative who's had more success wooing impressionable edgy teenagers than any actual academic pursuits. I don't understand how anyone takes him or his ideas seriously.
Most of the people I've seen praising and recommending him have pointed mainly to videos on YouTube; video is, in communicating ideas, very poor for informing and very powerful for emotional engagement. This isn't widely recognized (it's not something AFAICT well covered in regular education on source evaluation, critical thinking, etc.), which was mildly bad when TV news was becoming dominant, but there was still a pretty strong production and distribution barrier. In the age where every crank with a crackpot idea can, at basically no marginal upfront cost, produce videos and distribute them globally, it's one of the most important things to understand in approaching media.
In regards to academics - he taught at Harvard and University of Toronto for decades, has written books and released hundreds of hours of lectures for free.
The centrist wings of both modern American conservatism and liberalism are both grounded in classical liberalism (the language is different in most of the rest of the West, where liberalism tends to be classical liberalism but widely recognized as a center-right position), so even if true, that wouldn't rebut that he is a modern conservative.
Peterson, OTOH, seems to be a common modern conservative blend of elements from classical liberalism and classic conservatism with modern scientific-sounding rationalization for the classically conservative elements.
actually, he's a tenured professor at UToronto, has 9600 citations, and ran a clinical psychiatry practice for 20 years - including some time at Harvard. So, he's had more success at academic pursuits than like 99.99% of people. The fact that the opposite of what you just said is true, and the truth could have been found a keystroke away on Wikipedia tells me that you consume information from very biased sources and don't question it at all.
He said the phrase "enforced monogomy" (in a positive context) and everyone lost their shit.
> My motivated critics couldn’t contain their joyful glee this week at discovering my hypothetical support for a Handmaid’s Tale-type patriarchal social structure
> “enforced monogamy” does not mean government-enforced monogamy. “Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy, as opposed to genetic monogamy – evolutionarily-dictated monogamy, which does exist in some species (but does not exist in humans). This distinction has been present in anthropological and scientific literature for decades.
Basically...traditional (voluntary) marriage.
You know, the millenia-old religious/societal contact "to love, honor, cherish and protect him/her, forsaking all others and holding only unto him/her"
Faced with the decision to interpret Peterson's phrase as dsytopian lobster-like social structure, or pedestrian traditional marriage, the author and others assumed the less plausible interpretation.
They're talking specifically about Jordan Peterson, and he sees himself as a high priest who is a literal embodiment of Jesus Christ, rising to the top of the universal dominance hierarchy. He is signaling to his low status followers that he would redistribute sex if he were in power.
If you think I'm making this up or being hyperbolic, watch his 100s of hours worth of lectures on YouTube. Even if you think this is utterly ridiculous, there are millions of people who will follow this man to their deaths.
I read that and don’t see the inconsistency with regards to free speech. If he did call for budget reductions on universities that do not protect it, that’s logically consistent with supporting free speech even if the budget reduction caused less (in his view) non-free speech.
As an American I can’t wrap my head around the Canadian acceptance of criminal penalties to compel speech, based on the evolving views of an extrajudicial tribunal.
It’s terrifying to have that power in the hands of the far right or far left.
You’ll disagree with him, I certainly do, but I wouldn’t dismiss him.
I think he’s too utilitarian on family and marriage, but his position is intellectually defensible. For example, he’s pro gay marriage but believes research saying children have better outcomes with exposure to both sides of the (traditionally gender-based) parental roles. He doesn’t claim to know a solution to the latter, or even that one needs to be be found. Only that it should be researched and discussed.
It’s not hard to take that kind of view and spin it to something abhorrent if you take away the nuance and context.
> so it seems his appeal is primarily limited to the kinda-sorta-far-right.
That's actually not the case (just see what kind of questions he gets from his actual audiences to see for yourself). Though on a surface level some of the alt-right likes him because he pisses off SJWs. But they're mistaken to think he's any kind of ally. He's spent much of his career opposing their views and sees both the alt-right and extreme left as big problems.
The idea that he's alt-right is really nonsense. He taught for decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. As he says himself, you can go and look through his hundreds of hours of lectures and try to find where he's promoted anything alt-right. It's quite the opposite.
It's largely a false narrative driven by the extreme left, who are trying to dismiss and ruin him because he's critical of what they're doing.
It's only recently that Peterson has formally denounced the alt-right. Before, he was on JRE saying things like "as far as I can tell, Kekistan is a defense of comedy," when it was obvious to everyone else that it was blatant nazi propaganda. Only when the alt-right became emboldened enough to attend his lectures and start asking pretty direct questions about the Jewish question, globalist conspiracy, etc. that he finally saw what his audience was becoming and sorted himself out.
Most people on the left don't think that JBP is a nazi, or alt-right, or whatever is the inverse of the "postmodern neomarxist" boogeyman. People on the left are critical of JBP because of his blatant misreadings of Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, his confusion about Bill C-16, etc. His overly broad equivocation of postmodern critiques of power and Marxian class theory is the basis of his incredibly nasty attacks on these so-called "postmodern neomarxist feminists" yet he has published no real thesis.
He can't even be said to be critical of leftist ideologies because he never puts forward any real arguments, and all he does is signal that the left are evil.
And I'm saying all of this as a leftist who has supported Bret Weinstein from the beginning. I accept the postmodern feminist criticism of identity politics and agree that SJWs and their constant search for categories is harmful to the left. I would love for Peterson to put forward an actual, rigorous criticism of leftist ideology, but frankly he doesn't seem to have one.
Jordan Peterson, whose being referenced here explained what he meant[0] and it doesn't seem unreasonable. It's uncharitable to jump to a conclusion here without going beyond our presuppositions.
Peterson seems to have a knack for not explaining himself well and expecting people to just understand where he's coming from. He's also really bad at phrasing. He constantly seems to get into hot water for what he says, and then if you try to figure out what he says he actually said it's never for what we're told he says.
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor.
He is purposefully obtuse, so that wouldn't help. This way, hard core incels can believe he means the more extreme options, and he has plausible deniability for journalists.
Peterson doesn't want a really good editor. His books are known for being intentionally vague and incomprehensible while sounding clever and insightful, but in a way where most people can never really prove that he intended to make a statement about anything.
"You're ambiguous therefore you're malicious"? Yeah, I don't buy that he's being intentionally vague primarily because he will explain what he means when people ask him to explain himself in more detail. It's just that everybody knee-jerks today.
Every time I've seen an article about Peterson -- which, to be fair, has been all of three times so I'm not particularly well read -- it's saying he's done something or said something horrible. When I dig up what he actually said to get the context -- something that no article has ever done -- I'm usually left with a different interpretation or still being unsure what he was trying to say. When I look for Peterson's own explanations, they make sense to me and they're still consistent with what he originally said. Now, I don't agree with, well, hardly any of his points, but they're typically consistent even though the media consistently says they're not.
It strikes me more along the lines of how once James Damore, the guy who wrote the Google memo, was labelled anti-left and anti-feminist, it was just accepted that everything he said was immediately wrong and his entire argument was assumed to be the least favorable position. Nobody tried to actually read his memo and address those arguments. It could be interpreted as anti-left and anti-feminist there for it must be anti-left and anti-feminist and that engineer must be ceaselessly attacked for not toeing the cultural line even if he had good points.
It's like someone just gets labelled as an enemy and then it's red vs blue, left vs right, up vs down, and everybody has to be hardline anti-center lest you be labelled with that scarlet letter R or D. It's so intellectually dishonest. It's exactly what we used to blame Fox News and the religious right for doing! As someone who has been liberal and left their whole life, this recent behavior of mistaking character assassination and vitriolic reprisal for criticism has been one of the most disappointing and frustrating changes I've seen.
I didn't say he's malicious. I'm saying he isn't insightful or original. He has nothing meaningful to say that everyone doesn't already know. He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks.
You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here. I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken. I have pretty moderate political beliefs and I don't really see how they pertain to a conversation about a guy that writes self-help books.
> I'm saying he isn't insightful or original. He has nothing meaningful to say that everyone doesn't already know.
Forgive me if I suspect this is essentially an admission that you've only engaged with Peterson on a drive-by level.
Of the top of my head, were you already familiar with things like:
* Who Jakk Panksepp is, or have any outline of points from his work on affective neuroscience? (say, for example, the observation that if you deprive young rats of rough and tumble play they get hyperactive and their prefrontal cortexes don't develop very well and that can be treated with psychomotor stimulants)
* Anything about the narrative in the Enûma Eliš/Babylonian creation myth, or possible relevant interpretations for present day people?
* Questions of epistemology considering whether faculties of reason or attention are more valuable, and what the difference might be?
* Some neuroscientists/psychologists don't map the left and right brain to "logical" or "creative" but more as "explored territory" and "unexplored territory"?
* Anything about biological mechanisms that might underlying different systems for incentive/future rewards vs consumptive rewards?
* Much about Piaget's life or stages of cognitive development?
That's nothing like an exhaustive list of things I was introduced to following his lectures.
I don't have any desire to defend all of Peterson's statements, there's enough he's said that I disagree with. In some cases, I believe he's misrepresented things that I already do have some understanding of and so I certainly don't think he can be trusted without reservation. Perhaps he has even misrepresented some of the things I've mentioned above. There is plenty of room for criticism of him. And a good chunk of his oeuvre is synthesizing the works of others, so maybe the charges of unoriginality stick too.
But you'd have to be part of a considerably better educated crowd that's much smarter than I am to believe that the contents of that oeuvre are simply self-evident and empty.
> He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks
Perceiving people's inner motivations is hard, and unless you're better at it than you are at accurately summarizing their work, there's no reason to believe your summary is particularly good. I think anyone who's actually payed attention to Peterson would say that whether or not he enjoys the money that's come with his attention, he is also on some kind of mission and is potentially more helpful or dangerous than someone who merely wants to augment their standard of living or financial power.
> You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here.
You know, one of the things that Peterson said in his lectures that I'd suppose everybody might know is that when you argue with someone, one of the first things they're likely to do is try and turn the argument around on you. Perhaps it's inevitable. But did the parent really turn it into a team sports game? Seems to me they were criticizing a team they identified with.
> I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken... a guy that writes self-help books.
The problem I'm having here is probably the same one the person you're responding to is having -- you're claiming to have engaged with his words, but the picture you're reflecting is very different than the one others who have engaged with his work have.
Is it possible they've engaged it on a level that you haven't?
Even if you think Peterson is trouble (and he is, in some ways) is it possible you can be more effective at responding to the trouble he presents if you have engaged at a deeper level?
This is the hallmark of cult (or any organized religion's) literature. Also how therapists operate. Be vague, and let your customers project the meanings onto your words that they most want to hear.
If you actually gave people answers, their quest for meaning would be complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.
How do you manage to put the blame on the person cited out of context instead of on the journalists, whose job it actually was to verify such things?
I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.
Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal experience.
The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.
My take so far (with limited research) is that Peterson is trying to evoke debate on the issues in a centrist fashion reminiscent of Plato and his cave. The ‘shapes’ of traditional societal structures are being bound to new normals on the ‘wall’ of the human condition; solving this jig-saw of a problem necessitates open debate & negotiation.
That seems reasonable. I think he spent so much time in a classroom that it's colored his speaking. He's too used to leading students to the point that he's trying to make and waiting for them to make the final leap of logic instead of just saying what he's trying to say.
Is there a transcript or other textual artifact of his explanation for what he meant? I'm pretty tired of slogging through these tedious videos of these people pontificating at us while talking to each other.
It’s pretty interesting to see so many people in this thread repeating the claims of the NYT Op-Ed as fact as though Jordan Peterson is some far right ghoul. From what I’ve read of him, he seems pretty classically liberal and small c conservative, but because he made the pronoun thing an issue of free speech the assumption is that he’s some far right crusader.
Normally I think the Times is pretty solid, but they led with this distorted claim equating enforced monogamy with female slavery (irresponsibly, I think) and seem unable to rationally parse what Peterson is saying because of his infamy for being on the “wrong” side of the pronoun debate.
It’s a symptom of the age that no one wants to do the work of thinking through what people say and it’s exactly this looseness and lack of critical assessment that, ironically, permits demagogues to say and do outrageous things.
Academics certainly study how the end of societal norms such as monogamy impact those societies, although this kind of research is pooh-poohed by the large group of people who believe that all societal norms are worthless.
I am not following that absurdity reduction. In the context of discussion you could compare it with alcohol not sulfuric acid.
Alcohol creates concrete bad outcomes when for instance driving. I think there is a lot less people watching porn while driving than driving under influence. Alcohol makes you prone to some kinds of cancers, porn not much. Watching porn is at least order of magnitude safer than drinking alcohol. There is no way you can use sulfuric acid injections as comparison for porn watching.
I think your reaction to the first statement is an indication that you didn’t read the second. I specifically argue that there is no clear scientific indication relating to moderate porn consumption, whereas there are clear indications about injecting sulfuric acid.
The point being: it’s unclear as to whether porn consumption is harmful in moderation and therefore problematic to suggest that it’s “fine”.
But your comparison is just wrong. You try to bash argument that "everything in moderation is harmless" by taking example of something that is out of scope. Person saying "everything in moderation" does not imply jumping into volcanos done in moderation is harmless. "Everything" in that statement is more like, alcohol, drugs etc. not sulfuric acid injections.
> Person saying "everything in moderation" does not imply jumping into volcanos done in moderation is harmless.
In which case, the word “everything” is entirely the wrong word, is it not? I think we can agree that “many things” would be a substantially better fit here.
Again, I feel you’re missing the point. It’s not about the semantics of the statement; it’s about porn viewing. Again, it’s unclear whether porn viewing in moderation is “fine”, by some variable definition of “fine”, which is why his first statement is problematic. It’s not because of any particular word or any particular other comparison you or I may contrive.
I think porn, like opiates and other drugs, are hard to do "just in moderation". There is a powerful dopamine effect that pushes one to consume more and more. But even simply addressing the term moderate, what does that even mean? How much? What is the unintended consequence of getting sexual satisfaction from porn vs real life long term relationship?
I would venture that unlimited availability of high quality sexual stimulation leads many to delay pursuing (with all the associated pain and challenge) real relationship. Especially for those who it is more difficult to find a mate.
Read up on countless discussions about how abstaining from getting sexual gratification from porn leads one to become more motivated to go out on dates, look for a partner, be more confident in approaching women etc etc.
Also, if you look into the "no fap" discussions, many report feeling a strong drive to be more productive in other areas of their life. See a powerful drive to go to the gym and workout, have a healthier lifestyle, easier ability to focus for long periods of time on intense work etc.
I think the people here dismissing the point of view that porn can be very harmful to so many are simply selfish, they are defending their own habits, and they are not considering the full context of what "no fap" and abstaining from porn completely can have an immensely beneficial effect on many people.
Anything in moderation is fine basically by definition, including injecting sulfuric acid. Botulinum toxin, the most potent poison known to mankind and lethal at concentrations of a few ng/kg, is used by celebrities to smooth wrinkles. It's all about dosage.
Perhaps it’s not the best example. Replace it with something more specific if you wish, like “placing live fragmentation grenades in one’s mouth in moderation”.
“Moderate use of porn” doesn’t have to mean hardcore pornography. Playboy and erotic novels are probably not equivalent to Anal Whores 3.
Similarly, I’ve also heard the argument that high-speed internet pornography and “tube” sites in particular are the problem, because of how they present to the user a never-ending stream of novelty, and not necessarily because of the particular type of content.
If that’s the case then obviously the argument about moderation would have its merits.
The tube sites sometimes lead viewers into a constant state of high-chasing, in which, over time, the severity of the porn gradually increases for the viewer to achieve the same feeling of excitement or gratification. So, from a relative perspective, it can begin with Playboy-type softcore content, but can lead fairly easily to much more hardcore porn. And because the tube sites are free, there's no particular self-checked motivator for someone not to graduate. It requires the cognizance that it can eventually lead to a particularly problematic state of addiction.
It's possible to become addicted to much softer varieties of porn, but the potential ramifications of that addiction may be less severe (or they might be problematic in another sense, like financially).
Maybe then there’s some way to attack this problem without necessarily requiring full on abstinence from pornography, which is probably not realistic for the majority of people?
For example an extension that tracks your porn viewing habits and limits video recommendations.
I think that's a legitimately great idea, sure. I don't necessarily advocate abstinence (although I feel it's been a good thing for me, in general), so any tool that can help someone recognize when they might be veering down a path that may be harmful would probably be very useful.
Eh, live grenades are dangerous because their dosage is discrete. There's a qualitative difference. And if you argue that any amount of porn is harmful, well, that's a really strong claim and requires better arguments than silly analogues.
I’m not sure that’s a counterexample either? The claim is “if X is in moderation, then X is fine”. If we let X be necessarily not in moderation, the claim holds of X by impossibility of the antecedent.
IOW “if X is in moderation, X is fine” is logically consistent with “some things cannot be in moderation”.
It is important to be clear with our terms and definitions. Certainly we all can agree that we would need to know what a "moderate" amount of porn is right?
Also, the main problem here, and it is a problem with other highly addictive behaviors like drug use, is that simply sticking with a so called "moderate" amount is nearly impossible. It is the whole point of things being addicting, becoming habituated to them, seeing diminishing satisfaction to previous amounts etc etc (for some people at least.. and I would guess this number is quite large).
Watch the video I linked above and see if it resonates with your own experience. Many long term porn users find themselves seeking out more extreme content over time, as well as an increasing quantity of porn viewed over time.
And what about the opportunity cost? What choices and behaviors are given up in the process of receiving sexual satisfaction from porn? Many data sources show a delay in marriage and declining quantity of sexual relationships or volume of sex for young people. Would anyone argue that this might also come with psychological costs in the long term?
NoFap is of course the pseudo-scientific movement promoted by "Proud Boy" Gavin McInnes. When I consider the constellation of associated movements and groups with these sorts of things I have to step back and say "no."
You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and also with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.
I'm not involved in it, but I know for a fact that the "NoFap" movement goes back like 8 or 9 years, and probably further back, and the Proud Boys have only recently come about, maybe in the last two years. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only association between the two groups is via endorsement by McInnes. I just want to clear that up in case someone's at a party and touting NoFap and an insane person like yourself concludes that they must be a Nazi.
Now that you bring it up, from what I gather the "Proud Boy"s like Gavin endorse the no-fap movement because they view committed monogamous relationships between to long term partners as the best outcome for society, and individuals as well, and porn use as essentially a mental poison akin to drug use. It diminishes one of the most powerful drives in men: desire to find a sexual partner and a long term relationship.
The modern view of degenerate behavior where unlimited sexual partners with no commitment is somehow seen as "empowering" is viewed by many as terrible advice, especially to women. The long term consequence is unhappiness and regret when people age out of the primary dating pool, having wasted their prime years either either engaging in casual sexual relationships or heavy porn use.
Young men would do themselves a service to actually look into these movements themselves, and things like "No fap" and discover the benefits, instead of listening to porn users who recoil at anyone criticizing their addiction and lifestyle choices.
I listened to this series. At the end I was surprised that the author was not blaming 9/11 on porn, because he was blaming pretty much everything on porn.
It’s interesting that you mention 9/11 because one theory I’ve heard is that polygynous societies where there is a surplus of unmarried men breed violent young men (both married and unmarried).
Is it still a butterfly effect when it’s a first level effect of the phenomenon ?
Otherwise there seem to be a lot of pushing of that Montreal company, when the coming of free sex to the net must have been a more decentralized and varied phenomenon.
In particular there is a dynamic between pro and amateur pornographic content that is completely ignored to focus on the “incel” concept I am not sure is even correctly discussed in the article.
> Did you know that teens are having substantially less sex than the previous few generations? It’s true! And generally interpreted as a good thing. But Ronson suggests that this is in large part because porn is replacing sex, and, in fact, making real sex with real woman seem alienating and difficult.
Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality fallacy but there are surely other explanations for this. The rise of cheap entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice — the dating world for most men has become a lot more difficult over the last couple of years.
I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
Another element that i have noticed locally is that many more men pick up vocational work locally (because many vocational schools were established with support from local industry), while women leave for cities and such for education. And by the time they have finished that they have found a man that is also in that city for work or education.
Females only have the upperhand until their 30s, when the pool of suitable men begins to dry up. After this point they must become increasingly attractive and prurient to maintain the same level of options as the average young 20 something.
I’m not sure this disproves the comment you’re replying to. There will always be the ‘reject pool’ from previous years, but women in their 30s seem to be better at moving on with their lives. Men seem to resent it and demand the world provide them a partner and blame women when they say (collectively) “nah mate, we’re good”.
Women have plenty of resentment too, especially when they see men their age going after girls several years younger, something they didn’t really experience when they were young.
Women have always had the upper hand in terms of choosing a mate. What's changed now is that their selection pool has gotten a lot larger than just the people they encounter and interact with in person.
It's just perceived selection pool, mostly consisting of guys they despise and use for feeling better about themselves and desirable (they will tell you openly once they are comfortable with you they would prefer those guys not to exist at all), or momentarily top guys that are difficult to reach even for the prettiest/smartest of them, and where there is a literally brutal competition between them.
If you are one of those top guys, you have to invent elaborate schemes how to reject a female so that she thinks it was her decision and leaves you alone ("how much nice/beta do I have to go until I start repulsing her?"), or just state/enforce expectations you have with them, maybe being shocked by mind-blowing admission that they would be willing to share you with other women only if you kept them as well.
The problem of this is that it leaves females that are used to one-time attention from a top guy thinking that's their attractiveness level for the rest of their life and anyone marrying them walks straight into hell of "being never enough". So overall for society enforced monogamy might be way better than what we have now, i.e. most females flocking to top guys and using the rest for money, validation or easy life until their attractiveness fades away and they become broken shelves of persons.
But hey, they front-loaded their life, trading exciting time in their prime for desolation of middle-to-older age. Just please don't force men to support them with taxes once they fall through the bottom. Those men didn't study/work hard to trade their prime years for supporting women that didn't give them time of day when they still were interested in them. That's not fair either; no wonder many of those men go for pathetic sex dolls and VR porn, or just leave society completely.
I’m not judging but this reads, to me, like you’re bitter. The majority of men and women may pursue mates based on superficial qualities but there are plenty who do not.
I separated three years ago, divorced recently and met someone a month after deciding to date. I used Bumble. It was easy. She’s beautiful, smart (smarter than me), kind, honest, athletic, hard working, loving and a wonderful mother to her 10 Y.O.
I live well below my means and only after commiting to a relationship did I realize just how poor she thought I was. My advice to you is that any women who would pursue a man for his looks and money isn’t worth your time. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you either need to work on your self or you need to look somewhere else.
Again, I’m not judging but the idea that enforced monogamy is better for society leads me to believe that you’re the problem.
I don't think so. I mean, that is a change that has occurred, but I think the more important change was women's liberation. Society used to enforce that women could not attain social status or sustain their own quality of life except via a husband. Now that women can have careers and operate independently in society, they have significantly reduced pressure to couple and consequently tend only to do so on their own terms.
This is good if you believe in egalitarianism, as I do, but it does have consequences. It would seem, though I'm not sure to what extent available data backs this up, that women will tend to couple only with a relatively small percentage of men, and without societal pressure to behave otherwise, are either willing to share them or simply not couple at all.
Unfortunately for them men who aren't in that category, their hormonal drive to mate is significantly stronger, and our culture still ostracizes and humiliates men who are unsuccessful with women. The upshot of which seems to be that there are an increasing number of sexually frustrated young men in society, and they are held in very low regard because of it, which one has to imagine is a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.
> Society used to enforce that women could not attain social status ... except via a husband.
That is such as 21th century culture perspective when viewing history. Take any litterateur work of art and reduce all the women in it down to their husband and what you get is nothing like what is described. The classic definition from 19th century when we read about what they viewed as the most respectable upstanding woman of highest degree usually refereed to family attributes such as class, titles, blood line, heritage, honor, grace, and wealth. A husband and his family would add to that equation but social status would still combine the attributes of both families. A woman from a low class that married up was still seen as coming from a low class family, and I see this as a common trope in many old dramas. The common scene is that the new wife joins the other women in that social class and she instantly get put at the bottom of the social status because of her heritage regardless of her husband.
It could still be the egalitarianism event after the second world war when women got equal rights in regard to work, but then the data is not that clear cut. Sweden have had equal work force of both women and men for decades now but the trend of lower marriage rates, increased loneliness, increased disproportional amount of childless men, has not topped off and is still worsening. The question is why it then hasn't stopped when equal amount of both women and men are working and sustaining their own quality of life. Is it just culture moving slow or is it possible that something else is causing the change?
> There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice
How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
> I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
I can counter your anecdata with my own...many of the women I know are having great difficulty finding men online because, in their experience, they're very picky. Speaking as a man, I would say I've also become more picky over time, not less. Here we're trading localized experience, but I think that there should be an accountable cause that would explain only men being adversely impacted.
I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners, regardless of sexual identity or preference; conversely it seems to be getting progressively easier for attractive people to find partners. People are presented with significantly more options, which makes me hypothesize that they're willing to say no to many people they would otherwise settle for. I don't think that's particularly harder on men than it is on women.
>> There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice
> How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
Because there are large social differences between how the genders date. Given such differences, a change in how dating is done may favor one gender more than another.
In practice, the most noticeable difference is that men are expected to message women (barring rare exceptions like Bumble). In current online dating, that means women receive a great many messages and can pick between them, while men must send a great many to have a chance at a response.
At least that initial stage of dating has shifted in women's favor in recent years, but as you said, that's not the whole picture and despite all the messages women may have a hard time finding someone they like, depending on what they are looking for.
>>I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners, regardless of sexual identity...
On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below average.
It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.
This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.
IMO entertainment wouldn't be very high on the list of reasons. A cultural shift in the perception of sex maybe. Few decades ago it was a goal to liberate your sexuality, nowadays not so much, probably even the opposite.
There’s a lot of focus on how this relates to the happiness of men, but generally speaking hookups and pets aren’t an emotionally fulfilling alternative to a family for women, either. This is a worrying trend for everyone. Maybe a minority will be happier, but most are going to be lonelier and most likely more mentally ill. I suppose with legalization of marijuana we might not see a steady increase in alcoholism, but a quarter of the population being perpetually stoned probably isn’t really a good thing for society either. Oh well. Let’s just give them a UBI check and pretend everything is fine.
It does insofar that UBI is touted as the cutting-edge social panacea of these times, but is simply a wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't address the atomization issues plaguing our society. UBI alone won't save us- more solutions need to be pursued.
As the other comment under this said, it does in that UBI is taken as being the solution to the social issues largely stemming from technological change. But the problems are much broader than just automation and economics, and an economic solution isn’t going to help with the destabilization of families and offline communities which has really begun to accelerate along with globalization and the internet. In many ways even our politics has been poisoned by some of the negative aspects of this, and we haven’t made a meaningful adjustment in any area of this IMO.
> The rise of cheap entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
Those forms of entertainment have very little to do with sex, though. Pornography on the other hand is all about it by definition, so it would be odd to place gaming or Netflix on the same level as pornography regarding the influence they can have on sexual behavior.
I mean, gamers don't get an erection while playing and people usually don't masturbate when watching Netflix. Pornography is a sexual visual stimulus and it seems very hard not to suspect it has a significant impact on libido. I can also mention the many personal accounts on r/nofap that seem to confirm it.
Also, male sperm counts have been declining consistently for 30 years now (they are less than HALF what they were 30 years ago). Nobody has figured out why, but the best guess is chemicals.
Let's say I love to play video games and watch Netflix. Now, I could take time away from these things to workout, bathe, dress nicely, travel to some location, spend money, hopefully hook up with someone, etc. Or... just bring up some porn and masturbate (perhaps using a sex toy like a vibrator or fleshlight) and then get back to playing games and watching Netflix.
Real life sex with another person might potentially be better, but it's takes so much effort and money and there might not be a payoff in the end (no one has to have sex with you) that it seems like porn is a good enough substitute.
I get where you're coming from, but if a company decides that they'd rather fuck me around than comply with GDPR properly, I'm not interested in their service.
Wait, weren't dialogues that force you to give consent for non core parts of the experience forbidden under the GDPR? As in, you can't force people to consent by witholding service if they don't?
Yeah, and it's by far the worst part of the GDPR. It's based on the implicit premise that you don't own your company and can be compelled to provide services to random people by the government at the point of a gun.
And I find it the best part, just because I want to use a service from you doesn't give you the right to muck about with my data for other reasons than to provide that service and the GDPR makes that explicit.
It's crazy where the Overton window is that no one gives a shit about privacy issues unless they tie into politics somehow, and government trying to protect citizens' privacy by means of laws with actual teeth (read: fines) is equated to physical violence.
Ad tech has taken full carte blanche for long enough. If you actually dig into GDPR you find that it's quite reasonable, far better than the cookie law and other earlier iterations that fundamentally misunderstood technology.
Oh, I care a lot about privacy. Because of that I made many choices to never even start using services like Facebook or carry a cell phone with me. I also run white-list only javascript in browser and host all my own services (web/mail/voice chat/etc). These things have made it harder to stay involved with friends, harder to use the web, but it was my choice and the right one.
The idea that people have to be protected from themselves and their choices is at the heart of GDPR. It prevents people from making the correct choice of not using services you disagree with and keeps those services profiting and ever more centralized.
But digging even deeper, there's this delusion that your usage patterns of someone elses' property are yours and to me it seems crazy. You wouldn't say that physical grocery stores cannot keep track of who enters their premises and what they bought (or how long their phone SSID was in range of $x aisle). Or that they should be fined, and have those fined backed up with government violence, if someone demanded the grocer delete the data.
Two threads here: one is that copyright in porn has largely broken down, resulting in a single giant company making a lot of money from recordings without paying the performers.
The second is: what is the effect of production and distribution of porn, on those producing it, consuming it, and third parties? This was a huge issue for feminism in the late 70s and early 80s, with Camille Paglia on the pro side and Andrea Dworkin on the anti side. It has still not been resolved. It's a huge and complex question, and the answer almost certainly depends on the details of the content.
I wonder if there is a user content monetization scheme in porn industry. By that I mean whether all those people, regular people and not porn actors, who voluntarily upload videos where they have sex, bathe, undress etc get paid. I think a large portion of such videos are really private but are leaked by bitter exes, or stolen from lost mobiles etc, but there is a portion that is indeed voluntary. I wonder about that.
This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it happens.
I found only German Wikipedia page and had to translate to English. It says the same Fabian from the article owns this company, didn't expect that! It seems the users are actors and not regular people. The page even uses 'so called amateurs' to describe the users.
I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
I think with webcams, when not between lovers, it is already a paid service. If such videos end up uploaded, it can be considered 'leaked' by client directly or indirectly.
I was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in the billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much every competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I missing? Are the rumors for the industry's size overstated?
> I was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in the billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much every competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I missing? Are the rumors for the industry's size overstated?
Maybe he just bought up the competing free content sites for $362 million. Maybe the production companies made billions in the past when the industry was more profitable, who knows what they make now.
Exclusive relationships remove 2 or more whether they are committed monogamy, committed polygamy (polygyny or polyandry), or committed two-sided polyamory (the last seems the most rarely attested, if it is a thing at all outside of fiction, and is included only for the same of excessive completeness.)
Committed polygamy does so asymmetrically with regard to gender, particularly, a committed polygynous relationship removes more women from the pool than men, and thus can be seen (from a numbers-game perspective) as disadvantaging not-yet-attached men more than monogamous commitments.
That's the one I'm talking about. I'm living it for 10 years now and know many living it too.
The public awareness doesn't seem to be high in that case, but I have the impression most monogamy-proponents simply leave it out because it falsifies their points entirely.
The widespread availability of pornography probably does drive home several extra layers of resentment in someone whose personal track record with courting, dating, and sex has been unsatisfying. At a surface level, it seems to demonstrate that sex -- and not just fruits of performances thereof -- is a transaction, and that the attributes that they bring to the marketplace (appearance, aesthetic, attitude, interests, personality, attainment) are unpopular among the potential pool. Amateur pornography exacerbates this, because it appears to suggest that sex, and the mood of sexual adventurousness required to film it, is extremely common, and taking place between average, everyday people. This can further their fears of inferiority.
This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine. The protocols around communicating preferences to others and getting them accepted by one's peers is a quagmire where social conventions haven't ventured, so everyone lies for self-preservation ("I like you as a friend", "I don't wanna be tied down"), and those left out are left to draw their own conclusions.
This is all terribly unfortunate, but not really new; the incel movement, however, feeds not solely on rejection and obsessing over the base biological reasons thereof, but the implicit entitlement they they'd deserve otherwise.
"Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic"
What?
Where I come from you're allowed to date who you deem to be attractive. Nobody cares if you don't date anyone because they're fat, dumb, small, poor or what not.
Right. Personal dating preferences are sarosanct. There's been a tremendous effort over the past 50 years to replace freedom of association with egalitarian social engineering, and it's at dating where society has drawn a firm line and said "This far! No further!".
While there are activists out there attempting to use the standard social shaming toolkit to influence dating, their tactics won't work. Reproduction is too deep-seated a drive to tamper with that way. And fortunately, defeat here will blunt the entire array of tools.
It's as if an entire generation is hearing this internal monologue: "You mean that if I want you to consider me a 'woke' and good person, I need to have sex with this person I don't consider attractive? To hell with you and your morality then."
> Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine.
As they say, "'No' is a complete sentence." Anyone can decline to date anyone for any reason you like. And it's probably best not to give reasons, especially if it's something intrinsic or hard to change.
Many people lack a peer group capable of giving them effective dating advice. Men who don't have any friends who aren't straight guys of their own age should probably fix that first. And work on opening up emotionally.
I don't look to my peer group to provide me with advice on investing, diet, apartment hunting, or programming, so the notion of finding a peer group to advise me on dating would never occur to me.
> This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine.
Do you have sources to cite on that? Because this honestly sounds like an incel talking point. The idea that it's ok for women to judge and reject men -- for being short, or any other number of male-oriented deficiencies -- but men are not similarly free to reject women based on their appearance. It's bullshit and it doesn't really exist. Anecdotally, I've never once seen someone be judged for not wanting to date someone no matter how shallow the reason. It's just another way in which these men are claiming to be unfairly victimized in the dating world.
I figure that most incel-type dudes have never had the experience of rejecting someone romantically, for any reason, but have been rejected. The complaint that women can be shallow and men can't (which isn't true; everyone, largely, is shallow to some degree) is really a face-saving way of complaining that women get to screen and reject men, and incel-type dudes don't feel like they have anywhere near that level of agency.
These are basic human-type concerns. Which makes the angry, bitter, you-definitely-can't-empathize-with-me rhetoric of many incels even more frustrating.
While I agree that the message sounds a bit like that, I think he is right about that point. For me an eye opener was Tinder. Where I live it seems like half of the women have something like "Don't even try if you are less than 1.80cm" or something like that in their profile. I am actually relatively tall and happy with my sex life, so I don't take the offense personally, yet I can't help but wonder what would happen if a guy wrote something like that about weight or boob size, for example? (I sometimes consider opening a fake female account to see if some men actually do that...) Also interestingly, a lot of women profiles are just a collection of attributes they don't want in guys, written in a very negative language... instead of, I would expect, just some positive things about themselves. I wonder where that delusional way of looking at themselves--as an inherent "price" to be "won" by the very best in men--comes from? Are men in online dating like that too? In our society we are reflecting a on what "masculinity" means, and scrutinizing and redefining male sexual behavior. This is a good thing. But I wonder if maybe it would also help young women get an understanding of femininity that is not based on these backwards ideas that could help everyone have healthier and more equal relationships.
* there was that OKTrends blog article from 5-10 years back that noted women tended to rate 80% of men below average, while men tended to rate women in a normal distribution.
* there's apparently some indication that twice as many women as men manage to reproduce successfully.
* To the extent that books like _A Billion Wicked Thoughts_ reflect credible research, there's notable indications that women often employ a broader set of criteria along with a higher floor and aim for picking mates.
There may be methodological issues that I'm not in a position to evaluate, so I'm sure all of this is subject to review. Also, none of this means you have to make any categorical call about who has a more privileged or difficult life by gender; beyond the good reasons for anyone to be selective when looking for prospective mates, there are some that apply to women in particular. But it does look like there are studied reasons for suspecting that women are more selective and critical about prospective mates than men are.
A lot of people here are basing their view of gender dynamics (such as women being given 'the upper-hand' and so on, whatever that means) on Tinder and related websites/apps. It may be worth mentioning that the vast majority of people on Earth (or even the developed world) do not, in fact, use any dating apps at all. Most people's flirting activities still take place in meatspace, with all the associated awkwardness. In fact, in many parts of the world there is no concept of 'dating' at all, or at least not in its codified form as happens in the US.
I respect your experience and it may be that women do have much more power than men in the online dating world - that doesn't mean it's not an extremely skewed representation of the actual social dynamics that happens between humans. This is due to the many cultural biases of the people who make these apps and the audience they're targeting, both of which being typically college-educated urban American millenials.
Not everyone's approach to relationships is like that of a college-educated urban American millenial.
I do not think that women have "the upper hand" or that they have "more power than men", in general nor in particular when it comes to relationships. In particular, what others say here: in spite of these examples, men also reject and of course appearance is also a preference (sometimes even more so than for women).
And while I also agree that the sample from Tinder is a very restricted view, and in general I also prefer meeting people directly in the real world. What I found interesting about Tinder is, precisely, that I allowed me to directly see how women outside of my social circles and spaces I frequent present themselves. While I still live in a hipster urban area, I found that so many of these examples of very traditional views about courtship---all this "I am a price" logic I mentioned in the parent post is not so much a sign of power, but I see it as more of a conservative view that puts women in a passive role. It can be frustrating for men, but probably it is also damaging for women, and to me showed, somewhat, that the road to better gender equality and fluid roles is a long one.
> Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic,
No, advertising, either directly to the subject or to other
people specifically referencing the subject, a personal characteristic as the reason for declining to date someone has always (well, since the early 1980s, at least, don't really know how it was received before I was in elementary school) been recognized as a means of attacking that person and often a bullying tactic, (doubly so when it is done prospectively.)
Not dating someone itself, for any reason, is not generally, even now, and irrespective of the actual reason.
> At a surface level, it seems to demonstrate that sex -- and not just fruits of performances thereof -- is a transaction, and that the attributes that they bring to the marketplace (appearance, aesthetic, attitude, interests, personality, attainment) are unpopular among the potential pool. Amateur pornography exacerbates this, because it appears to suggest that sex, and the mood of sexual adventurousness required to film it, is extremely common, and taking place between average, everyday people. This can further their fears of inferiority.
Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Seriously, if these sovereign individuals can’t forge social relationships with others, especially women, and use that to further their understanding and connection with the real world, then that is their problem, as individuals. It’s not society’s fault that these individuals choose to not engage with society on society’s terms. It’s certainly not women’s fault and very much not their responsibility to fix.
> Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Acknowledging the existence of a problem affecting men?
> ... then that is their problem, as individuals ...
I agree, but the society needs to acknowledge that it actually IS a genuine problem for these men. We can then encourage the development and adoption of technological solutions, such as sexual VR and sexbots. It might not be the ideal solution for these men, but at least it's a solution (and it puts no responsibility on women to do anything).
I actually agree with you, society does need to acknowledge that members are in trouble.
I don't think anything that has come out of the MRA/Petersonian fringe is helping though.
There certainly is problems with men/masculinity in society, it's both sad and tragic, as illustrated by the tragic suicide of Scott Hutchison a couple of weeks back. I'm convinced that all these people who think they're sticking up for men are only making things worse though.
The answer doesn't lie in blaming female empowerment.
One important caveat here to add.
Just as it is not a failing black kid's problem ALONE that he does not have the opportunity to have a stable family and proper education, so is its society's burden to educate these men on etiquette AND provide them with a stable worldview that does not belittle them for not being like the demigods seen on tv (same as how we should not shame women for having body image issues, but rather tackle advertisement instead).
I wont say its entirely society's fault, but we cant just ignore the problem. As that leads to Brexit, Trump,etc.
I absolutely agree. I was responding to parent who was posing this elaborate hypothetical whereby the person who goes incel (or whatever) is somehow absolved of the responsibility for their situation.
I would argue that there are profound differences too between institutional racism and male sexual resentment.
Political and social institutions are systems that require system level solutions.
A call for individual impetus or responsibility to fix system issues isn't necessarily wrong, but it's usually futile.
Consider: some set of features that identify an individual, over time, begin to predict a worse or less ideal state. Is the cause and solution most likely to be a collective individual moral failure, requiring a collective individual improvement? It's possible. But is it likely?
Or perhaps a better question, is this proposed solution likely to improve the state of the world to one we all like? "Be better, it's not our responsibility to fix your issues." If this is repeated enough does the trend reverse? Or if it doesn't reverse, do we simply not care? If we don't think this will reverse the trend, and if we do care, then this seems like a poor strategy.
You don't have to care or not care about any individual, and you don't have to take any individuals belief or claim at face value. That's the difference between trying to divide up lines and attribute moral defect to society or individual, and trying to map out a complex system at understand solutions that aren't about assigning blame or worth, but rather improving society for all.
Still, an ability to have empathy for those who suffer, whether they are part of your side of the culture war or not, is (only in my opinion) a beautiful trait.
I agree and this has made me rethink my comment and the angle I took.
The suicide of famous artists such as Chris Cornell and Scott Hutchison - particularly Hutchison - has really shocked me and made me think more widely about what it means to live happily as a man these days. I think we need more people thinking about it positively. And more people need to embrace and encourage civility as you've done.
It's so easy to fling rocks in the culture wars, and satisfying too, but in a junk food way.
> The widespread availability of pornography probably does drive home several extra layers of resentment in someone whose personal track record with courting, dating, and sex has been unsatisfying.
IMHO, much worse is the prohibition of prostitution. In my country, pornography can be found for free on internet but prostitution has recently been completely banned.
That puts a young man who watches pornography but has, for one reason or an other, absolutely no idea how to get laid, in a very difficult position. I can totally understand how that would make him angry.
Declining to date someone fat is seen as bullying? That's a new one. I know stupid, controlling people who would say that declining to date someone of a different race is racist, although it's clearly not, but I've never heard this level of stupidity. Maybe there are some extreme morons who really think like this and don't understand the concept of personal choice or even the concept of personal taste and attraction but these idiots are certainly not the majority not do they dictate what is and isn't acceptable as far as dating. In fact the idea of someone else dictating who one dates or not is beyond stupid, controlling, infuriating, and authoritarian. I don't doubt that such shitty people exist, but their hate-because that's the only thing that drives such insane ideas-does not dictate culture.
It's how you wrap it with elegance and allure: just that your preference is to date e.g. petite females. Don't mention fat etc. at all. Or just simply state the person is not your type and walk away. They are pretty aware what they are doing, including taking photos from "slim angle" and trying to sell you "sub-prime CDS as class A-shares", and then just play usual shame game to force you to cater to them. Ignore it; it's like a bad business decision, be strong, enforce what you like and not what they would like you to - you can tell them once they can e.g. run 100m sprint in 13s, then you can date, as sporty ladies make you excited etc. And you even give them a S.M.A.R.T. goal; not that it matters as they will be stuffing themselves with whatever sugar they find, but at least you don't make a political mistake of aligning with the signature of fat shaming.
I'm a "gen Z" (born in the late 90s) and discovered porn early. I think it messed up my priors about sex because when I lost my virginity (I was 15/16) it was disappointing. Had a half-dozen partners since then, and it only got worse. I was always doing my best so that the girl had a good time but was extremely bored. Then I started watching porn a lot more and became further disinterested by sex. My life at University got rough, lost friends, anyway at this point I think I got addicted. I was masturbating 8/9 times a day to the point of my genitals hurting. I got ADHD meds which also helped fuck up my reward system.
Then I realized I had ED. Told my physician and she gave me the "blue pills". Now I always have one in my wallet. I can't do anything without. I never have orgasms with girls. I just pretend to have a good time, try hard to please, and get on with it. I'm 100% certain that my ED is caused by some damage I did on myself when masturbating compulsively.
Worst thing is that I can't talk about it to anyone. It's just so ridiculous and I'm pretty sure it's only downhill from there. I fucked up. I'm in my early twenties and rekt. It blows and honestly makes me sad. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to ever have kids.
To the people with kids here: please protect them, seriously, I had too much freedom way too early... my parents were busy and they meant well but I wouldn't wish what I'm living on anyone. There is so much potential for harm out there
These phenomena aren’t limited to porn. Content industries have several players competing for limited revenues. Customers don’t care who gets what, they’re willing to pay a certain amount for the content (even if that amount is in the form of advertising). The chief battle is between distributors and content producers. When copyright breaks down, as it has in porn, distributors get all the leverage and all the profits.
Accordingly, distributors have huge incentives to push for weakening of copyright. The lobbying of middle-man companies like Google, etc., against copyright can be viewed through that lens. Distribution channels like YouTube, etc., are a lot more valuable when they can distribute other peoples’ content for free.
I think pornography is going to be a significant selection pressure on the human race, much more than we realize. We're basically running a global-scale experiment right now. Who knows what's going to happen in 10-15 years, when the first generation with firehoses of firehoses of HD porn just a click away their entire lives, comes of age to marry and have children. I think it's going to effect both men and women pretty badly. Men will be emasculated by the relative difference between the pornography they watch, the expectations porn creates, and the barren reality of their actual sex lives. I think this is going to disincentivize men even more from pursuing sexual relationships, even more than just having their desires pseudo-satisfied by the porn itself. Women are going to be stunned by the attenuation of men's desire for them, desire that came as an assumption to thousands of years of cultural norms (male-led courtship) and perhaps even instincts built into our genes. Porn may require/cause a genetic readjustment. We won't live long enough to see.
I'm beginning to wonder if sex-related information has some affect of the 'universal acid' that dissolves too many of the fantasies we need to sustain ourselves. This seems to me one reasons society, as a whole, tends to hate sex workers so much: there's something about it that nakedly reveals the capitalist-market transactions we are all submerged in and can't escape from, and it reveals it in such way our only recourse is the instinctual reflexes of 'kill it with fire' and 'nuke it from orbit'. In regards to porn, or the discussions we have around porn, it often times seems as if we are on the verge of having to, or being forced to, articulate that not only can most people not tell the difference between reality and fantasy (how many people refer to an actor by a character's name, rather than at least, as 'the actor who played X'?). Instead, we come close to being forced to admit that not only is there no reality-fantasy divide, but that everything is fantasy, that everything is models in our heads, even our heads.
Video games are now more interesting than Hollywood productions; most TV shows/movies are borefests comparing to what you can experience in some advanced videogame with almost photorealistic graphics. Soon we will be able to deploy more AI-based goodies like completely replacing NPCs with people we know by providing single photos, realistically synthesizing their voices etc. At some point we will be able to directly stimulate brain's pleasure centers which might kill off drugs, porn, art and as a side effect, civilization. Our present time is already looking like a badly directed reality show; I believe it is going to be a lot worse, Kafkaesque and artificial.
I've read somewhere (but can't find now) that boys / men and girls / women reaction to porn is different in that for males, porn is a satisfactory substitute for sex, while it isn't for females.
Don't exactly know what to make of that, but was disappointed with the article because it didn't seem to take gender in consideration at all.
"Did you know that erectile dysfunction rates have risen tenfold among young men since the rise of free porn? Correlation does not prove causality but it’s hard to imagine that those two things aren’t somehow related."
I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so.
> I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so.
That is also a little harsh, but I agree. Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today.
It also could be that it was not considered manly to talk about your feelings 20 years ago...
You also did not access to hundreds of thousands of naked men and woman within seconds with a simple google search 20 years ago, whereas you had to find yourself some "contraband" if you were under 18 ,back then.
My understanding is that anxiety is a common cause of erectile dysfunction, at least until cardiovascular health takes over, which is usually in the older crowd.
Men's testosterone levels have been falling for decades... I agree there's definitely a trend happening that has causal effects other than what the author is postulating.
>As for beneficial — well, as a good San Franciscan I am of course sex-positive, pro-sex-workers, and pro-porn as a concept … but it would be disingenuous to pretend that Ronson doesn’t show a lot of dubious-trending-negative emergent effects of essentially unlimited free pornography.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] threadIn a world where objective journalism doesn’t pay, does every site become Vice?
The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
"Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."
No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic.
Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.
And that’s why America is where it is today!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece.
It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces.
> The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.
Who proposed that?
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-peters...
also
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/incel-meaning-explained
Which isn't to say that the way we dealt with this in the past, which was keeping women out of the work force and making them dependent on men for survival and status, is something we should go back to, just that there are consequences we'll have to recognize and deal with somehow.
The "incel" community frequently calls for the state to provide partners to incels. They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
Then, some portion of those incels believe that men should be able to expect that their sexual partners do not have any other partners, so suddenly this turns into believing that the state should provide incels a monogamous, long-term partner, essentially a wife.
When Peterson calls on males to improve themselves, a substantial portion of his audience hears this as an exhortation to stop bitching and moaning, get off their asses... and then learn seduction techniques, push for political changes that would guarantee them a mate, or other steps that might be considered coercive or antisocial. Regardless of Peterson’s own position, never underestimate the ability of his statements to be interpreted in various fashions due to the seething anger of some of his listeners.
Do you have any evidence for this? Or is this just your imagination?
Dunno, seems like what we can label as "incels" (outside tiny violent group that pushed this term to mainstream) could now easily represent 50% of single male population. That's pretty bad for society. Look at Japan what is happening there. Or into China where planned male overpopulation is causing massive problems in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (stealing women) and they don't do the usual way of curbing excess males by the means of war, like practiced in the Middle East.
Also what are you objecting to here? Prostitution in general? Having it subsidized by the state?
This argument:
> They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
This is not absurd. In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, anyone can buy the services of a sex worker. I don't know if it's true that the state subsidizes it for disabled people. If they do I imagine the idea is that having sex is an right and if you can't get it on your own (by either for free or by paying it) the state should supply it. Extending it to incels is not a huge leap.
Reading charitably, I think you mean "being aware of the possible connection". The connection with marriage still seems speculative.
Or to make sure they are sad and not intrinsically happy alone?:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902
;-)
Are academics advocating wholesale monogamy? That’s usually the field of organized religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhEG69ZGwUI
In regards to academics - he taught at Harvard and University of Toronto for decades, has written books and released hundreds of hours of lectures for free.
Peterson, OTOH, seems to be a common modern conservative blend of elements from classical liberalism and classic conservatism with modern scientific-sounding rationalization for the classically conservative elements.
> My motivated critics couldn’t contain their joyful glee this week at discovering my hypothetical support for a Handmaid’s Tale-type patriarchal social structure
> “enforced monogamy” does not mean government-enforced monogamy. “Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy, as opposed to genetic monogamy – evolutionarily-dictated monogamy, which does exist in some species (but does not exist in humans). This distinction has been present in anthropological and scientific literature for decades.
Basically...traditional (voluntary) marriage.
You know, the millenia-old religious/societal contact "to love, honor, cherish and protect him/her, forsaking all others and holding only unto him/her"
Faced with the decision to interpret Peterson's phrase as dsytopian lobster-like social structure, or pedestrian traditional marriage, the author and others assumed the less plausible interpretation.
[1] https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
If you think I'm making this up or being hyperbolic, watch his 100s of hours worth of lectures on YouTube. Even if you think this is utterly ridiculous, there are millions of people who will follow this man to their deaths.
Personally, seeing the guy talk makes me feel sleepy.
He’s not right wing himself though, he’s a classical liberal with libertarian leanings. I think of him more like Bill Maher without the comedy.
As an American I can’t wrap my head around the Canadian acceptance of criminal penalties to compel speech, based on the evolving views of an extrajudicial tribunal.
It’s terrifying to have that power in the hands of the far right or far left.
I think he’s too utilitarian on family and marriage, but his position is intellectually defensible. For example, he’s pro gay marriage but believes research saying children have better outcomes with exposure to both sides of the (traditionally gender-based) parental roles. He doesn’t claim to know a solution to the latter, or even that one needs to be be found. Only that it should be researched and discussed.
It’s not hard to take that kind of view and spin it to something abhorrent if you take away the nuance and context.
That's actually not the case (just see what kind of questions he gets from his actual audiences to see for yourself). Though on a surface level some of the alt-right likes him because he pisses off SJWs. But they're mistaken to think he's any kind of ally. He's spent much of his career opposing their views and sees both the alt-right and extreme left as big problems.
The idea that he's alt-right is really nonsense. He taught for decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. As he says himself, you can go and look through his hundreds of hours of lectures and try to find where he's promoted anything alt-right. It's quite the opposite.
It's largely a false narrative driven by the extreme left, who are trying to dismiss and ruin him because he's critical of what they're doing.
This also happened with the progressive professor Bret Weinstein - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM
They tried/are trying to destroy him. It's a real problem.
Most people on the left don't think that JBP is a nazi, or alt-right, or whatever is the inverse of the "postmodern neomarxist" boogeyman. People on the left are critical of JBP because of his blatant misreadings of Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, his confusion about Bill C-16, etc. His overly broad equivocation of postmodern critiques of power and Marxian class theory is the basis of his incredibly nasty attacks on these so-called "postmodern neomarxist feminists" yet he has published no real thesis.
He can't even be said to be critical of leftist ideologies because he never puts forward any real arguments, and all he does is signal that the left are evil.
And I'm saying all of this as a leftist who has supported Bret Weinstein from the beginning. I accept the postmodern feminist criticism of identity politics and agree that SJWs and their constant search for categories is harmful to the left. I would love for Peterson to put forward an actual, rigorous criticism of leftist ideology, but frankly he doesn't seem to have one.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
Every time I've seen an article about Peterson -- which, to be fair, has been all of three times so I'm not particularly well read -- it's saying he's done something or said something horrible. When I dig up what he actually said to get the context -- something that no article has ever done -- I'm usually left with a different interpretation or still being unsure what he was trying to say. When I look for Peterson's own explanations, they make sense to me and they're still consistent with what he originally said. Now, I don't agree with, well, hardly any of his points, but they're typically consistent even though the media consistently says they're not.
It strikes me more along the lines of how once James Damore, the guy who wrote the Google memo, was labelled anti-left and anti-feminist, it was just accepted that everything he said was immediately wrong and his entire argument was assumed to be the least favorable position. Nobody tried to actually read his memo and address those arguments. It could be interpreted as anti-left and anti-feminist there for it must be anti-left and anti-feminist and that engineer must be ceaselessly attacked for not toeing the cultural line even if he had good points.
It's like someone just gets labelled as an enemy and then it's red vs blue, left vs right, up vs down, and everybody has to be hardline anti-center lest you be labelled with that scarlet letter R or D. It's so intellectually dishonest. It's exactly what we used to blame Fox News and the religious right for doing! As someone who has been liberal and left their whole life, this recent behavior of mistaking character assassination and vitriolic reprisal for criticism has been one of the most disappointing and frustrating changes I've seen.
You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here. I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken. I have pretty moderate political beliefs and I don't really see how they pertain to a conversation about a guy that writes self-help books.
Forgive me if I suspect this is essentially an admission that you've only engaged with Peterson on a drive-by level.
Of the top of my head, were you already familiar with things like:
* Who Jakk Panksepp is, or have any outline of points from his work on affective neuroscience? (say, for example, the observation that if you deprive young rats of rough and tumble play they get hyperactive and their prefrontal cortexes don't develop very well and that can be treated with psychomotor stimulants)
* Anything about the narrative in the Enûma Eliš/Babylonian creation myth, or possible relevant interpretations for present day people?
* Questions of epistemology considering whether faculties of reason or attention are more valuable, and what the difference might be?
* Some neuroscientists/psychologists don't map the left and right brain to "logical" or "creative" but more as "explored territory" and "unexplored territory"?
* Anything about biological mechanisms that might underlying different systems for incentive/future rewards vs consumptive rewards?
* Much about Piaget's life or stages of cognitive development?
That's nothing like an exhaustive list of things I was introduced to following his lectures.
I don't have any desire to defend all of Peterson's statements, there's enough he's said that I disagree with. In some cases, I believe he's misrepresented things that I already do have some understanding of and so I certainly don't think he can be trusted without reservation. Perhaps he has even misrepresented some of the things I've mentioned above. There is plenty of room for criticism of him. And a good chunk of his oeuvre is synthesizing the works of others, so maybe the charges of unoriginality stick too.
But you'd have to be part of a considerably better educated crowd that's much smarter than I am to believe that the contents of that oeuvre are simply self-evident and empty.
> He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks
Perceiving people's inner motivations is hard, and unless you're better at it than you are at accurately summarizing their work, there's no reason to believe your summary is particularly good. I think anyone who's actually payed attention to Peterson would say that whether or not he enjoys the money that's come with his attention, he is also on some kind of mission and is potentially more helpful or dangerous than someone who merely wants to augment their standard of living or financial power.
> You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here.
You know, one of the things that Peterson said in his lectures that I'd suppose everybody might know is that when you argue with someone, one of the first things they're likely to do is try and turn the argument around on you. Perhaps it's inevitable. But did the parent really turn it into a team sports game? Seems to me they were criticizing a team they identified with.
> I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken... a guy that writes self-help books.
The problem I'm having here is probably the same one the person you're responding to is having -- you're claiming to have engaged with his words, but the picture you're reflecting is very different than the one others who have engaged with his work have.
Is it possible they've engaged it on a level that you haven't?
Even if you think Peterson is trouble (and he is, in some ways) is it possible you can be more effective at responding to the trouble he presents if you have engaged at a deeper level?
"I'm not right wing, or conservative!" from the man who says "Abortion is clearly wrong"
If you actually gave people answers, their quest for meaning would be complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.
I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.
Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal experience.
The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44
Then it would seem Peterson is doing poorly at being a cult leader. :/
"On the New York Times and 'Enforced Monogamy'" https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
Normally I think the Times is pretty solid, but they led with this distorted claim equating enforced monogamy with female slavery (irresponsibly, I think) and seem unable to rationally parse what Peterson is saying because of his infamy for being on the “wrong” side of the pronoun debate.
It’s a symptom of the age that no one wants to do the work of thinking through what people say and it’s exactly this looseness and lack of critical assessment that, ironically, permits demagogues to say and do outrageous things.
https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU
Related: "NoFap"
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/
Whether porn consumption is fine in moderation is a subject of fair debate. Unfortunately, the science on this is not sufficiently clear.
Extremophiles (Snottite) will be quite happy in sulfuric acid
Alcohol creates concrete bad outcomes when for instance driving. I think there is a lot less people watching porn while driving than driving under influence. Alcohol makes you prone to some kinds of cancers, porn not much. Watching porn is at least order of magnitude safer than drinking alcohol. There is no way you can use sulfuric acid injections as comparison for porn watching.
The point being: it’s unclear as to whether porn consumption is harmful in moderation and therefore problematic to suggest that it’s “fine”.
In which case, the word “everything” is entirely the wrong word, is it not? I think we can agree that “many things” would be a substantially better fit here.
Again, I feel you’re missing the point. It’s not about the semantics of the statement; it’s about porn viewing. Again, it’s unclear whether porn viewing in moderation is “fine”, by some variable definition of “fine”, which is why his first statement is problematic. It’s not because of any particular word or any particular other comparison you or I may contrive.
I would venture that unlimited availability of high quality sexual stimulation leads many to delay pursuing (with all the associated pain and challenge) real relationship. Especially for those who it is more difficult to find a mate.
Read up on countless discussions about how abstaining from getting sexual gratification from porn leads one to become more motivated to go out on dates, look for a partner, be more confident in approaching women etc etc.
Also, if you look into the "no fap" discussions, many report feeling a strong drive to be more productive in other areas of their life. See a powerful drive to go to the gym and workout, have a healthier lifestyle, easier ability to focus for long periods of time on intense work etc.
I think the people here dismissing the point of view that porn can be very harmful to so many are simply selfish, they are defending their own habits, and they are not considering the full context of what "no fap" and abstaining from porn completely can have an immensely beneficial effect on many people.
“Moderate use of porn” doesn’t have to mean hardcore pornography. Playboy and erotic novels are probably not equivalent to Anal Whores 3.
Similarly, I’ve also heard the argument that high-speed internet pornography and “tube” sites in particular are the problem, because of how they present to the user a never-ending stream of novelty, and not necessarily because of the particular type of content.
If that’s the case then obviously the argument about moderation would have its merits.
It's possible to become addicted to much softer varieties of porn, but the potential ramifications of that addiction may be less severe (or they might be problematic in another sense, like financially).
For example an extension that tracks your porn viewing habits and limits video recommendations.
IOW “if X is in moderation, X is fine” is logically consistent with “some things cannot be in moderation”.
Also, the main problem here, and it is a problem with other highly addictive behaviors like drug use, is that simply sticking with a so called "moderate" amount is nearly impossible. It is the whole point of things being addicting, becoming habituated to them, seeing diminishing satisfaction to previous amounts etc etc (for some people at least.. and I would guess this number is quite large).
Watch the video I linked above and see if it resonates with your own experience. Many long term porn users find themselves seeking out more extreme content over time, as well as an increasing quantity of porn viewed over time.
And what about the opportunity cost? What choices and behaviors are given up in the process of receiving sexual satisfaction from porn? Many data sources show a delay in marriage and declining quantity of sexual relationships or volume of sex for young people. Would anyone argue that this might also come with psychological costs in the long term?
You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and also with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.
You should be more careful about that.
Do you think you’ll catch wrongthink by even accidentally interacting with people that have different political views than your own?
I don’t have a dog in this fight but this just struck me as such small-minded thing to say…
No Fap is self-evidently apolitical. Though it’s true it is “pseudoscientific,” but really that should be obvious—it was started around a meme.
There’s also Porn Free[1] which evolved independently alongside the website Your Brain On Porn[2], that is very much evidence-based.
[1] https://reddit.com/r/pornfree
[2] https://yourbrainonporn.com/
The modern view of degenerate behavior where unlimited sexual partners with no commitment is somehow seen as "empowering" is viewed by many as terrible advice, especially to women. The long term consequence is unhappiness and regret when people age out of the primary dating pool, having wasted their prime years either either engaging in casual sexual relationships or heavy porn use.
Young men would do themselves a service to actually look into these movements themselves, and things like "No fap" and discover the benefits, instead of listening to porn users who recoil at anyone criticizing their addiction and lifestyle choices.
Otherwise there seem to be a lot of pushing of that Montreal company, when the coming of free sex to the net must have been a more decentralized and varied phenomenon.
In particular there is a dynamic between pro and amateur pornographic content that is completely ignored to focus on the “incel” concept I am not sure is even correctly discussed in the article.
Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality fallacy but there are surely other explanations for this. The rise of cheap entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
If you are one of those top guys, you have to invent elaborate schemes how to reject a female so that she thinks it was her decision and leaves you alone ("how much nice/beta do I have to go until I start repulsing her?"), or just state/enforce expectations you have with them, maybe being shocked by mind-blowing admission that they would be willing to share you with other women only if you kept them as well.
The problem of this is that it leaves females that are used to one-time attention from a top guy thinking that's their attractiveness level for the rest of their life and anyone marrying them walks straight into hell of "being never enough". So overall for society enforced monogamy might be way better than what we have now, i.e. most females flocking to top guys and using the rest for money, validation or easy life until their attractiveness fades away and they become broken shelves of persons.
But hey, they front-loaded their life, trading exciting time in their prime for desolation of middle-to-older age. Just please don't force men to support them with taxes once they fall through the bottom. Those men didn't study/work hard to trade their prime years for supporting women that didn't give them time of day when they still were interested in them. That's not fair either; no wonder many of those men go for pathetic sex dolls and VR porn, or just leave society completely.
I separated three years ago, divorced recently and met someone a month after deciding to date. I used Bumble. It was easy. She’s beautiful, smart (smarter than me), kind, honest, athletic, hard working, loving and a wonderful mother to her 10 Y.O.
I live well below my means and only after commiting to a relationship did I realize just how poor she thought I was. My advice to you is that any women who would pursue a man for his looks and money isn’t worth your time. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you either need to work on your self or you need to look somewhere else.
Again, I’m not judging but the idea that enforced monogamy is better for society leads me to believe that you’re the problem.
This is good if you believe in egalitarianism, as I do, but it does have consequences. It would seem, though I'm not sure to what extent available data backs this up, that women will tend to couple only with a relatively small percentage of men, and without societal pressure to behave otherwise, are either willing to share them or simply not couple at all.
Unfortunately for them men who aren't in that category, their hormonal drive to mate is significantly stronger, and our culture still ostracizes and humiliates men who are unsuccessful with women. The upshot of which seems to be that there are an increasing number of sexually frustrated young men in society, and they are held in very low regard because of it, which one has to imagine is a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.
That is such as 21th century culture perspective when viewing history. Take any litterateur work of art and reduce all the women in it down to their husband and what you get is nothing like what is described. The classic definition from 19th century when we read about what they viewed as the most respectable upstanding woman of highest degree usually refereed to family attributes such as class, titles, blood line, heritage, honor, grace, and wealth. A husband and his family would add to that equation but social status would still combine the attributes of both families. A woman from a low class that married up was still seen as coming from a low class family, and I see this as a common trope in many old dramas. The common scene is that the new wife joins the other women in that social class and she instantly get put at the bottom of the social status because of her heritage regardless of her husband.
It could still be the egalitarianism event after the second world war when women got equal rights in regard to work, but then the data is not that clear cut. Sweden have had equal work force of both women and men for decades now but the trend of lower marriage rates, increased loneliness, increased disproportional amount of childless men, has not topped off and is still worsening. The question is why it then hasn't stopped when equal amount of both women and men are working and sustaining their own quality of life. Is it just culture moving slow or is it possible that something else is causing the change?
How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
> I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
I can counter your anecdata with my own...many of the women I know are having great difficulty finding men online because, in their experience, they're very picky. Speaking as a man, I would say I've also become more picky over time, not less. Here we're trading localized experience, but I think that there should be an accountable cause that would explain only men being adversely impacted.
I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners, regardless of sexual identity or preference; conversely it seems to be getting progressively easier for attractive people to find partners. People are presented with significantly more options, which makes me hypothesize that they're willing to say no to many people they would otherwise settle for. I don't think that's particularly harder on men than it is on women.
> How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
Because there are large social differences between how the genders date. Given such differences, a change in how dating is done may favor one gender more than another.
In practice, the most noticeable difference is that men are expected to message women (barring rare exceptions like Bumble). In current online dating, that means women receive a great many messages and can pick between them, while men must send a great many to have a chance at a response.
At least that initial stage of dating has shifted in women's favor in recent years, but as you said, that's not the whole picture and despite all the messages women may have a hard time finding someone they like, depending on what they are looking for.
On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below average.
It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.
This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.
I think the proper word is: boring
That has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.
Those forms of entertainment have very little to do with sex, though. Pornography on the other hand is all about it by definition, so it would be odd to place gaming or Netflix on the same level as pornography regarding the influence they can have on sexual behavior.
I mean, gamers don't get an erection while playing and people usually don't masturbate when watching Netflix. Pornography is a sexual visual stimulus and it seems very hard not to suspect it has a significant impact on libido. I can also mention the many personal accounts on r/nofap that seem to confirm it.
This could a contender for reduced sex.
Let's say I love to play video games and watch Netflix. Now, I could take time away from these things to workout, bathe, dress nicely, travel to some location, spend money, hopefully hook up with someone, etc. Or... just bring up some porn and masturbate (perhaps using a sex toy like a vibrator or fleshlight) and then get back to playing games and watching Netflix.
Real life sex with another person might potentially be better, but it's takes so much effort and money and there might not be a payoff in the end (no one has to have sex with you) that it seems like porn is a good enough substitute.
That's probably connected, but unless the topic first and foremost is society's relationship with sex, what the hell are we even talking about?
(edit: I'm not shittalking you, parent poster. You're just responding to an article perpetuating a trend that I noticed bugs me.)
"Select 'OK' to continue using our products, otherwise, you will not be able to access our sites and apps."
Looks like I'm not reading this then.
Ad tech has taken full carte blanche for long enough. If you actually dig into GDPR you find that it's quite reasonable, far better than the cookie law and other earlier iterations that fundamentally misunderstood technology.
The idea that people have to be protected from themselves and their choices is at the heart of GDPR. It prevents people from making the correct choice of not using services you disagree with and keeps those services profiting and ever more centralized.
But digging even deeper, there's this delusion that your usage patterns of someone elses' property are yours and to me it seems crazy. You wouldn't say that physical grocery stores cannot keep track of who enters their premises and what they bought (or how long their phone SSID was in range of $x aisle). Or that they should be fined, and have those fined backed up with government violence, if someone demanded the grocer delete the data.
Yet services like Facebook will have a shadow profile for you from data built up through abusing access to other peoples' systems.
The second is: what is the effect of production and distribution of porn, on those producing it, consuming it, and third parties? This was a huge issue for feminism in the late 70s and early 80s, with Camille Paglia on the pro side and Andrea Dworkin on the anti side. It has still not been resolved. It's a huge and complex question, and the answer almost certainly depends on the details of the content.
This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it happens.
I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
Maybe he just bought up the competing free content sites for $362 million. Maybe the production companies made billions in the past when the industry was more profitable, who knows what they make now.
https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
Monogamous relationships remove 2 people from the dating marked, non-monogamous ones remove none.
Committed polygamy does so asymmetrically with regard to gender, particularly, a committed polygynous relationship removes more women from the pool than men, and thus can be seen (from a numbers-game perspective) as disadvantaging not-yet-attached men more than monogamous commitments.
That's the one I'm talking about. I'm living it for 10 years now and know many living it too.
The public awareness doesn't seem to be high in that case, but I have the impression most monogamy-proponents simply leave it out because it falsifies their points entirely.
This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine. The protocols around communicating preferences to others and getting them accepted by one's peers is a quagmire where social conventions haven't ventured, so everyone lies for self-preservation ("I like you as a friend", "I don't wanna be tied down"), and those left out are left to draw their own conclusions.
This is all terribly unfortunate, but not really new; the incel movement, however, feeds not solely on rejection and obsessing over the base biological reasons thereof, but the implicit entitlement they they'd deserve otherwise.
What?
Where I come from you're allowed to date who you deem to be attractive. Nobody cares if you don't date anyone because they're fat, dumb, small, poor or what not.
While there are activists out there attempting to use the standard social shaming toolkit to influence dating, their tactics won't work. Reproduction is too deep-seated a drive to tamper with that way. And fortunately, defeat here will blunt the entire array of tools.
It's as if an entire generation is hearing this internal monologue: "You mean that if I want you to consider me a 'woke' and good person, I need to have sex with this person I don't consider attractive? To hell with you and your morality then."
As they say, "'No' is a complete sentence." Anyone can decline to date anyone for any reason you like. And it's probably best not to give reasons, especially if it's something intrinsic or hard to change.
Many people lack a peer group capable of giving them effective dating advice. Men who don't have any friends who aren't straight guys of their own age should probably fix that first. And work on opening up emotionally.
Do you have sources to cite on that? Because this honestly sounds like an incel talking point. The idea that it's ok for women to judge and reject men -- for being short, or any other number of male-oriented deficiencies -- but men are not similarly free to reject women based on their appearance. It's bullshit and it doesn't really exist. Anecdotally, I've never once seen someone be judged for not wanting to date someone no matter how shallow the reason. It's just another way in which these men are claiming to be unfairly victimized in the dating world.
These are basic human-type concerns. Which makes the angry, bitter, you-definitely-can't-empathize-with-me rhetoric of many incels even more frustrating.
Have you browsed men's profiles on Tinder? You're comparing 50% of the actual data to your imagination here.
* there was that OKTrends blog article from 5-10 years back that noted women tended to rate 80% of men below average, while men tended to rate women in a normal distribution.
* there's apparently some indication that twice as many women as men manage to reproduce successfully.
* To the extent that books like _A Billion Wicked Thoughts_ reflect credible research, there's notable indications that women often employ a broader set of criteria along with a higher floor and aim for picking mates.
There may be methodological issues that I'm not in a position to evaluate, so I'm sure all of this is subject to review. Also, none of this means you have to make any categorical call about who has a more privileged or difficult life by gender; beyond the good reasons for anyone to be selective when looking for prospective mates, there are some that apply to women in particular. But it does look like there are studied reasons for suspecting that women are more selective and critical about prospective mates than men are.
I respect your experience and it may be that women do have much more power than men in the online dating world - that doesn't mean it's not an extremely skewed representation of the actual social dynamics that happens between humans. This is due to the many cultural biases of the people who make these apps and the audience they're targeting, both of which being typically college-educated urban American millenials.
Not everyone's approach to relationships is like that of a college-educated urban American millenial.
And while I also agree that the sample from Tinder is a very restricted view, and in general I also prefer meeting people directly in the real world. What I found interesting about Tinder is, precisely, that I allowed me to directly see how women outside of my social circles and spaces I frequent present themselves. While I still live in a hipster urban area, I found that so many of these examples of very traditional views about courtship---all this "I am a price" logic I mentioned in the parent post is not so much a sign of power, but I see it as more of a conservative view that puts women in a passive role. It can be frustrating for men, but probably it is also damaging for women, and to me showed, somewhat, that the road to better gender equality and fluid roles is a long one.
No, advertising, either directly to the subject or to other people specifically referencing the subject, a personal characteristic as the reason for declining to date someone has always (well, since the early 1980s, at least, don't really know how it was received before I was in elementary school) been recognized as a means of attacking that person and often a bullying tactic, (doubly so when it is done prospectively.)
Not dating someone itself, for any reason, is not generally, even now, and irrespective of the actual reason.
Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Seriously, if these sovereign individuals can’t forge social relationships with others, especially women, and use that to further their understanding and connection with the real world, then that is their problem, as individuals. It’s not society’s fault that these individuals choose to not engage with society on society’s terms. It’s certainly not women’s fault and very much not their responsibility to fix.
Acknowledging the existence of a problem affecting men?
> ... then that is their problem, as individuals ...
I agree, but the society needs to acknowledge that it actually IS a genuine problem for these men. We can then encourage the development and adoption of technological solutions, such as sexual VR and sexbots. It might not be the ideal solution for these men, but at least it's a solution (and it puts no responsibility on women to do anything).
I don't think anything that has come out of the MRA/Petersonian fringe is helping though.
There certainly is problems with men/masculinity in society, it's both sad and tragic, as illustrated by the tragic suicide of Scott Hutchison a couple of weeks back. I'm convinced that all these people who think they're sticking up for men are only making things worse though.
The answer doesn't lie in blaming female empowerment.
What do you mean?
I wont say its entirely society's fault, but we cant just ignore the problem. As that leads to Brexit, Trump,etc.
I would argue that there are profound differences too between institutional racism and male sexual resentment.
Of course, institutional racism is several orders of magnitude more severe.
(Update: wow, I get downvoted for this. Nice!)
A call for individual impetus or responsibility to fix system issues isn't necessarily wrong, but it's usually futile.
Consider: some set of features that identify an individual, over time, begin to predict a worse or less ideal state. Is the cause and solution most likely to be a collective individual moral failure, requiring a collective individual improvement? It's possible. But is it likely?
Or perhaps a better question, is this proposed solution likely to improve the state of the world to one we all like? "Be better, it's not our responsibility to fix your issues." If this is repeated enough does the trend reverse? Or if it doesn't reverse, do we simply not care? If we don't think this will reverse the trend, and if we do care, then this seems like a poor strategy.
You don't have to care or not care about any individual, and you don't have to take any individuals belief or claim at face value. That's the difference between trying to divide up lines and attribute moral defect to society or individual, and trying to map out a complex system at understand solutions that aren't about assigning blame or worth, but rather improving society for all.
Still, an ability to have empathy for those who suffer, whether they are part of your side of the culture war or not, is (only in my opinion) a beautiful trait.
I agree and this has made me rethink my comment and the angle I took.
The suicide of famous artists such as Chris Cornell and Scott Hutchison - particularly Hutchison - has really shocked me and made me think more widely about what it means to live happily as a man these days. I think we need more people thinking about it positively. And more people need to embrace and encourage civility as you've done.
It's so easy to fling rocks in the culture wars, and satisfying too, but in a junk food way.
As you say, there's a bigger picture.
Thank you.
I like the war and peace reference too ;)
IMHO, much worse is the prohibition of prostitution. In my country, pornography can be found for free on internet but prostitution has recently been completely banned.
That puts a young man who watches pornography but has, for one reason or an other, absolutely no idea how to get laid, in a very difficult position. I can totally understand how that would make him angry.
what world do you live on? Declining to date someone and bullying them are very obviously different things.
It's how you wrap it with elegance and allure: just that your preference is to date e.g. petite females. Don't mention fat etc. at all. Or just simply state the person is not your type and walk away. They are pretty aware what they are doing, including taking photos from "slim angle" and trying to sell you "sub-prime CDS as class A-shares", and then just play usual shame game to force you to cater to them. Ignore it; it's like a bad business decision, be strong, enforce what you like and not what they would like you to - you can tell them once they can e.g. run 100m sprint in 13s, then you can date, as sporty ladies make you excited etc. And you even give them a S.M.A.R.T. goal; not that it matters as they will be stuffing themselves with whatever sugar they find, but at least you don't make a political mistake of aligning with the signature of fat shaming.
I'm a "gen Z" (born in the late 90s) and discovered porn early. I think it messed up my priors about sex because when I lost my virginity (I was 15/16) it was disappointing. Had a half-dozen partners since then, and it only got worse. I was always doing my best so that the girl had a good time but was extremely bored. Then I started watching porn a lot more and became further disinterested by sex. My life at University got rough, lost friends, anyway at this point I think I got addicted. I was masturbating 8/9 times a day to the point of my genitals hurting. I got ADHD meds which also helped fuck up my reward system.
Then I realized I had ED. Told my physician and she gave me the "blue pills". Now I always have one in my wallet. I can't do anything without. I never have orgasms with girls. I just pretend to have a good time, try hard to please, and get on with it. I'm 100% certain that my ED is caused by some damage I did on myself when masturbating compulsively.
Worst thing is that I can't talk about it to anyone. It's just so ridiculous and I'm pretty sure it's only downhill from there. I fucked up. I'm in my early twenties and rekt. It blows and honestly makes me sad. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to ever have kids.
To the people with kids here: please protect them, seriously, I had too much freedom way too early... my parents were busy and they meant well but I wouldn't wish what I'm living on anyone. There is so much potential for harm out there
Accordingly, distributors have huge incentives to push for weakening of copyright. The lobbying of middle-man companies like Google, etc., against copyright can be viewed through that lens. Distribution channels like YouTube, etc., are a lot more valuable when they can distribute other peoples’ content for free.
Don't exactly know what to make of that, but was disappointed with the article because it didn't seem to take gender in consideration at all.
I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so.
That is also a little harsh, but I agree. Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today.
It also could be that it was not considered manly to talk about your feelings 20 years ago...
You also did not access to hundreds of thousands of naked men and woman within seconds with a simple google search 20 years ago, whereas you had to find yourself some "contraband" if you were under 18 ,back then.
Or what they're looking at is diagnoses of erectile dysfunction, which might have some connection to drugs being approved and heavily marketed for it.
I hypothesise oestrogen mimicking chemicals in toiletries, and maybe plastics?, probably have some part in this.
That 5 negatives in a row? Impressive.
(Yes, blatantly tangential).
If you count the "but" as negative then it's 6